A/N: I am very sorry for the length between chapters. Thank you to 98% of you who supported me through the hiatus (although I never officially called it that). I will tell you that I very seriously considered stopping this story and quitting fanfiction altogether during my time away from AGYK. That is not me exaggerating. I was so serious, in fact, that I felt it would be a disservice to write another chapter before I knew whether I was quitting or not, even though people have threatened me through PMs, anons on tumblr, and the like (which kind of sucked if you were wondering). But I guess I am finishing this thing. Thank you very much to everyone who has supported me and sent me a kind word. Every single one has warmed my heart even as I was so scared to tell my lovely friends (not the rabid people with the PMs and the anon tumblr comments) that I really wanted to quit. Thanks.
As to the story, consider this chapter to be the end of yet another section; there will be a bit of a time jump next chapter. I will address this at the bottom. Also, thank you to the reader who pointed out that Isobel did not come to the wedding yet asked Lavinia if she was all right during the wedding. That has been fixed. Isobel was never there. Thanks.
Chapter Eighteen
Lavinia thinks she may be like the gramophone they received as a wedding present, only she cannot play music. She is hollowed out; so if someone were to put his head through the hole where the noise comes from (her very mouth) he would not find anything inside of her except all her bones rattling, rattling about in pieces. Someone has taken a spoon and carved out her insides, her flesh giving way like a ripened peach.
They are almost home, the journey long and taxing. Yes, it is very taxing to avoid a husband on a ship. He is a little apologetic (his expressions are apologetic; there is never anything said on the matter of the lake incident) but he still drinks at dinner. She still wakes up to the smell of his sweat in the middle of the night and it reminds her of port. He doesn't stumble and fall nearly into a lake, hitting his head, nearly killing himself; he does not confess his love to someone else on the ship but he doesn't stop drinking either.
Her heart is not broken because it is not a beating thing anymore. It is as dry as dust, crusted without use. When she saw Mary and Matthew together, it didn't even hurt the way she thought it might. She could only think: of course. It was the night the Spanish Flu struck her all over again.
The gramophone was there that night too, playing a song for Mary and Matthew to dance to. Lavinia doesn't even remember who the present is from, if she is honest, and now is a time for honesty. She imagines they picked it out thinking the newlyweds would turn it on and dance, his hand pressed into her hip, her arms drawing him closer. You know, they never even used it. Not once. Mary and Matthew are the only ones ever to hear sound out of it.
And Lavinia, in the corner, listening. She heard too.
Lavinia wonders why she married him and she knows the answer but she hates it because it is the wrong one. She wanted to save him from himself and she loved him. Oh, she loved him and she wanted to save him from himself. For so long, that is the reason she watched how much he drinks, divided by hours and amount eaten, why she begged him to stop drinking on multiple occasions, why she cried at him, her voice going hoarse.
But she realizes (on the ship, the train, the car) you cannot save someone from themselves. You just can't.
Lavinia watched Mary's wedding and suddenly so many things made sense. She was so angry at Matthew, the seat next to her empty, worried and angry and wondering how all of this worked out for Mary when less than two years ago it appeared Lavinia had it all. And then they opened the doors to the church and there was Mary on her father's arm, looking so lovely and vibrant. The duo took a step forward and Lavinia saw it on Mary's face. Here was a choice.
I am choosing to love you, to walk towards you.
Another step.
I am still choosing to love you, to walk towards you.
Another step
This is me choosing to choose you.
All the way down the aisle, that is how it went, Mary's eyes on Mack's back.
For quite some time now, Lavinia feels quite a connection to Mary, as if they are twins, as if Mary broke her arm, Lavinia would feel that same sharp pain. So she sees it all on Mary's face: she is choosing to move forward and choosing to let go at the same time. She is choosing Mackenzie with every part of herself that matters. She is choosing to let Matthew go, with the same same tempo of the same music, and Lavinia knows if there is a heroine in this sick and twisted story it is Mary.
Maybe someday Lavinia will tell her: You were braver than all the rest of us combined.
Lavinia remembers quite clearly the control and steadiness in Mary's shoulders and the lack of emotion as Mary set down her tea, cradled in the small dish in her hand, back at Downton so long ago, before the dance with Matthew, before Lavinia married him.
Aren't all of us stuck with the choices we make?
Even then, Mary understood what everyone else refused to recognize: it came down to choices, and the harsh truth of it, the way everyone stared at her aghast as if she was the strange one, the unfeeling one, showed just how much denial filled the room. But that Mary with the teacup and the expressionless face used the word stuck and surely, now, Lavinia knows Mary felt stuck then. But she's fixed that too. Each step towards her new husband is a choice that is made freely and during the wedding Lavinia aches and hopes Mackenzie knows this is a choice Mary is making because what a gift to be given.
Lavinia and Matthew finally arrive home and it is as if they are two strangers. Lavinia tries to think of the letters they wrote to one another during the war, sharing intimacies and secrets, falling in love but it exhausts her and she cannot remember that girl at all anymore. She is a woman with a heart that cannot break. It is only dust packed solidly together.
She remembers her father instead. How he loved her. Her eyes well up with tears as she changes for bed. He loved her so much. Reggie chose to take all of his love for her mother and give it to Lavinia. He chose to read to her at night before bed, to kiss her before the room darkened, to say, "Goodnight, my little lion."
She never told anyone that her father used to call her that–his little lion. Sometimes, she might laugh and say, "Oh, I am nothing like a lion."
Her father's face would grow serious, lax, almost as if he knew the future. "Of course you are. You are a lion and my darling girl."
Anyone else would have called her a kitty cat with quiet smiles and demure replies and a downturned face when Matthew asked her to leave and cheeks blushing with color when she returned upon Cora's insistence. Look at me, I' m helpless and pretty. I come and go whenever you call.
Lavinia could not be a lioness. That was Mary, all boldness and brashness in equal measure, perfect breeding to the point of pain, sipping her tea with a coldness that left the entire room silent.
Aren't all of us stuck with the choices we make?
"Goodnight, Lavinia," Matthew murmurs into the silence as they both settle in the bed.
There is an empty space where the I love you should go. But it does not hurt her anymore.
"I want a divorce." Her voice is not soft or demure. She is not sleepy but completely awake. This is not a spontaneous announcement, though her timing could be better. Where is my tea, she thinks, almost hysterical (although her voice gives away nothing; Mary would be so proud), where are the judging onlookers to remark later on my cold acceptance of harsh truths.
"Yes, well..." He listens so poorly sometimes. When her words finally hit him, he sits up and turns on the lamp. "Lavinia."
"Don't say my name like I am a little girl to be placated," she replies. "I've made a decision."
He almost laughs at her, the cad. "Go to sleep. Everything will look different in the morning."
Will you be different in the morning? "Listen to me, Matthew. I want a divorce."
"Lavinia–"
"You can tell the courts that I was unfaithful to you, that you caught me. All I want is what was my father's. And I will go away. It doesn't matter where."
"You don't know what you are saying!" He stands, agitated now. She watches his hands fist and clench for a glass.
"I do know what I am saying," Lavinia replies with a measure of calm that unnerves him all the more. "I want a divorce."
"Will you stop saying it like that?" he demands, pulling at his hair a bit. "You don't even sound like yourself. You don't even know what that would mean for you. You would be–"
"We are all stuck with the choices we make," Lavinia tells him levelly, shoulders straight beneath her nightgown, face removed of feeling. "I shouldn't have married you. And I can't go back but I can go forward. And there are consequences. I know I won't be accepted in English society." She shakes back her hair, as if it is a mane. "That is the price I will have to pay and I am more than willing to pay it."
"That's how much you want to be rid of me?" He is a little boy. Oh, she would like to push the hair off his face. She would like to save him from himself but she cannot. Look how well that turned out the first time she tried. And the second. And the third. And the fourth.
"That's how much I want to feel anything but what I feel now," she replies. She reaches over and turns off the lamp. "Go to sleep. We will talk more tomorrow."
"How do you feel now?" he whispers in the dark, still standing. He does not return to bed. "How bad is it?"
"It's like I am dying from the inside out," she says in that same calm, patient, yet firm voice. "And I don't want to die while I am still alive. I'm willing to pay the consequences, whatever they are."
"In the morning–"
"In the morning, I will tell your mother my plans. In the morning, we will talk more of how it shall go, but in the morning my choice will still be the same," Lavinia interrupts.
"That is not the type of people we are!" he declares. "We don't get divorces. We don't just announce things like that. We–"
"I don't want to talk as if we are a we. There is you and there is me and maybe that is not who you are. You are a drunkard; you are in love with another woman. That is the type of person you are," she pauses and takes a breath, takes another plunge. "I don't know what type of person I am. I thought I knew but now the only thing I know for sure is that if I don't leave you, I will never find out."
"Plenty of people live in unhappy marriages." She cannot believe he even has the gall to say such a thing to her. Is he so far gone that he is willing to live like this? But what does he have to lose, after all. Mary is already lost.
"They do." None of her disbelief shows in her words. She is Mary holding her teacup. Aren't all of us stuck with the choices we make? She is her father's lioness. "I don't. I won't anymore."
"The consequences for you–"
"I don't care." For the first time she speaks fiercely and passionately. "I will pay whatever consequences are demanded of me. But I'll have a divorce, Matthew. Now, I am going to sleep."
He never comes to bed. But in the morning, her eyes open to greet the day with a refreshment she hasn't felt for quite some time.
A/N: Before everyone jumps on my back, Lavinia (and I) know exactly what she is demanding. We (Lavinia and I) know that getting a divorce then had major consequences. Serious consequences. They will be addressed throughout the rest of the story. But Lavinia is that desperate. She is that willing. That's what I wanted to come through here. I understand the differences between divorce then and now but I am trying to show just how much she wants out. She wants out that much. She cannot go on this way and survive...very much like Mary in the first chapter.
I won't beg for reviews but I mean, they would put some balm on all the threats I received. Joking/Not Joking