AN: So this is just what I'd like to see at the beginning of 6.06. Naturally contains spoilers! I hope you enjoy.
He was back. He was lying in her bed. Awake. Watching her. His hand squeezing hers. There was no blood, just a line of stitches on his stomach.
She rolls onto her own stomach to face him, her hands sliding beneath her pillow to protect her from the chill.
"How did you sleep?"
"Fine. It's always fine when you're here."
"And nothing hurts? No pains, no aches?"
"Cora. I'm fine." It doesn't make her relax though. His morality, their morality was suddenly flashing before her eyes. The warm blood hitting her neck, staining her dress, trickling gently down her arm- it had been a week ago, but she knew she'd still remember it perfectly in years to come. The smell of dry blood that had tinged the air of the dining room for the last week, no amount of flowers pushing the taste from her mouth. But she'd stayed strong, stomached it, just as she was going to now. "I'm more pleased than ever Tom is back. I think perhaps it's time the house was less of my 'fourth child' and Mary and Tom's second."
She didn't want to say she was glad to hear it. But she was. She truly was. The house had always come first. There had been times when he'd forget it, think of himself for once. But it was rare, Downton and his family had filled his every thought for years. He had never been a self obsessed man.
"I came very close to giving my life to the estate. And I fear looking back, that sometimes I may have given too much of my time. That I didn't share it equally where it was deserved." She can hear him tearing up beside her and she shuffles across, leaning herself so gently by his side. Letting the length of her body lie beside the length of his. Her hand touches the skin by the collar of his pyjama top, the pulse of his blood throbbing beneath her fingers. She resists the urge to count it for ten seconds and work out his heart rate.
"Darling. You can't go back now. And many, so many are very thankful for everything you've done."
"No. I can't go back. But I can alter the future. Our future. I think we should travel some more, when Clarkson gives me the all clear. Just a couple of months, the two of us." He never used to take her by surprise. But he was at the moment.
"Robert-"
"We had so much fun. Egypt, Italy, France. I want that again. In one second Cora, my life flashed before me. It wasn't the house that came rushing to my aid, to be my support as I fell. It was you. I meant what i said: I do love you, very, very much." It was all very endearing but she secretly dreaded the thought of it coming back, of her being alone in a foreign place and him being ill.
"But surely-"
"There's been too many 'buts,' I'm determined. We'll plan it for Spring next year. That gives me plenty of time to sort my diet and live without drink." She chuckles at that, her finger threading neatly through his hair as she shifts to rest her head on his chest. "I've passed you over too often for something I deemed more important Cora. And I wouldn't have any of it without you."
"You're becoming amazingly sentimental." He chuckles cheerfully into her hair at that.
"I had the best teacher." A silence passes between them, her fingers rubbing at his chest, his smoothing her hair.
"You did scare me." She'd felt him twitch as her fingers had traced the scar. It had reminded her of what this was all about, the table she'd set up beside the bed with the games, her dressing table that had become her desk overnight; letters arranged into hers and his. So she could sit with him and write both: he hadn't been back from the hospital but she'd prepared it all. The terror lurking in her mind that every moment could be the last.
"You didn't look scared."
"No, well, your mother was a formidable teacher. But I felt it. There was terror, fear and guilt at having not foreseen the incident mingling in equal measure. It was love that conquered though, in half a second I knew I just had to be calm; for Mama, the girls and for you. I knew you'd want to see me calm, being the support that you needed. The strength." She pauses, thinking she might continue once she's caught her breath but she can't. Her stomach shakes, her breath rattles between her teeth. She turns her face against him-he can't see her cry. Not now. He might not see the tears but she knows he's felt them, he's recognised the signs. His hand comes up from his far side, clasping the fingers on his chest.
"Clarkson said you stayed in the hospital overnight."
"Of course." The dark eerie corridors penetrate her mind for a second and she squeezes her eyes more tightly shut.
"Did you sleep at all?"
"No." The click of the nurses heels echoes in her mind. The opening and shutting of doors, each refusing her sleep on the creaky chair. Each a reminder that the click could be Robert's life over; his operation finished; news for her. Her eyes had barely closed, let alone in sleep.
"I think. When I'm free of this bed. I would like to spend some days in the summer house. A treat for you. A treat for my brave wife." She rolls her eyes against his shirt.
"Let's focus on getting you rested."
"I am Cora. Don't you see, by setting up a line of events I'm desperate to see through I'm more likely to behave myself."
"Still, after a near fatal incident you're all boy." She chuckles to herself.
"We had some good times in that summer house. That was the first place we went after I finally realised I loved you." Cora blushes as her memories come to mind.
"Quite. But you are far too fragile for anything like that. And I am far too old!" The irony of her statement was known to them both. The weeks after Bricker flash through her mind. Late nights, lazy mornings. Even in the months after the first bout of his ulcer at Brancaster, when he'd been on no alcohol and white fish, they'd hardly been calm.
"But you will contemplate it?"
"The summer house, yes. But not the other things. Nothing that risks your health." He doesn't seem to disagree, his fingers tracing the contours of her hand. She eases back a little, conscious of her weight against him.
"Don't move. You're not hurting me."
"If you're sure."
"Cora, I'm sure. I've been sure about everything to do with you for years. Three and a half decades to be precise." She shifts gently to her side, resting her face firmly in the crook of his neck. Her lips graze the stubble on his chin- she'd plainly refused for Bates to shave it last night, instead she was planning on it herself this morning. Robert had never understood her obsession of his unshaven look, he'd been brought up to be so clean and proper that he failed to see how a woman could enjoy how it looked. The truth was she liked him more relaxed, more hers. Only Bates had ever seen him in this unkept manner and she liked the thought she knew something unique. After all, she was the only woman who enjoyed the way it scratches over her forehead when she rests her head on his neck. It was unsettling to think that this had almost been taken from them. Such a small thing but it would have been taken nonetheless.
"I've been sure of you for that long too. It's strange to think that we've been together for well over half our lives."
"Strange is one word. Marvellous and exciting would be the ones I'd use." She chuckles, pressing her lips to his neck again.
"I would use those words too."
"I know you would. Who wouldn't married to me?" She'd tickle him in any other situation but she couldn't hurt him today, so she just rolls her eyes a reluctant blush flourishing on her cheeks for a second.
"You are very lovely to be married to, I will concede."
"Apart from when you're covered in my blood." His voice had suddenly gone cold. And her eyes close slowly and then reopen: the metallic smell of the hospital simmering beneath them.
"I don't know...after all, I have and do, love you, very, very much." It was all that had to be said really. His lips press to the side of her face and she releases the tension in her muscles and the hurt throbbing in her head for the first time since that rather red dinner. She relaxes perfectly beside him. She always had been relaxed there. Always in love.