Road to Downton, June 28th, 1917
"You're an idiot, Crawley," said Jack candidly as they were driving through Yorkshire in his car.
Matthew scowled at him.
"How am I an idiot for not being able to do what she's asking of me? It's not that I don't want to!"
Jack rolled his eyes.
"It's not that. Although, personally, after coughing up half of my lungs I might be less enthusiastic about duty to King and country than I used to be. But that's not what I mean. How could you leave the matters between you two like that? And allow Lady Mary to stew for close to two weeks? You will be lucky if there even is a wedding tomorrow."
Matthew's scowl deepened.
It's not that he didn't want to talk to Mary about their quarrel. He ached to do that. He just didn't know how.
He did his best though. He did write, after frankly agonising over the blank sheet of paper for hours on end. Only…
"I wrote," he muttered. "She didn't write back."
Jack rolled his eyes again.
"I wonder why," he commented sarcastically.
Mary's bedroom, Downton Abbey, June 28th, 1917
Mary stroked the creases on Matthew's letter. She had read it dozens of times in the last few days, but hard as she tried she could not find the words to answer him.
"My darling,
You can't know how sorry I am for hurting you so with my decision which must, I realise, be utterly incomprehensible to you. I understand why you accused me of lying to you, even if I've never thought about it like that before. I did not mention General Strutt's proposal to you, because to me it was irrelevant since I never considered accepting it, not truly, even though I wished to be able to do it so much. You can't even imagine how tempting it was for me: to be safe, to be out of that hell, to be able to see you so much more often. To never be forced to kill anyone ever again. Yes, it was and is terribly tempting. But Mary, I just can't accept it. I never could. I would feel like a traitor, like I abandoned my men who are fighting and dying out there at the very moment as I sit here in comfort and write. Even getting a respite of three months made me so awfully guilty, you can't even imagine how much, but I could justify it as temporary. It enabled me to set the matters right with you and to marry you; there was no way I would have given up the chance of that. You mean the world to me, my darling, please believe me that you do. I have never imagined loving somebody as much as I love you. But I couldn't live with myself if I stayed. I simply couldn't. I know it's partially irrational, I know I've spent nearly three years in the Army and over two of them at the front, I understand why you say that I did my duty already, but that's not how I feel. I feel like I won't be able to have a moment of peace at home while this war keeps raging on. If I accepted the General's offer, I would never be able to look myself into the eyes again and it would kill me inside, darling, I know it would.
I am sorry this letter is so incoherent and rambling. My thoughts are all over the place after the turmoil of the last few days. I know you think me a hypocrite for mentioning my fear for you during those awful hours when you see me as forcing you to endure such suffering for months, maybe years yet. You're probably right. But darling, please believe me that I do truly love you. Please don't doubt that. I can't stand the thought of you thinking that I don't. It hurts so much to even consider it. I know I gave you cause to doubt the strength of my feelings for you and the place you hold in my life and I couldn't be more regretful for it. I am so sorry for hurting you, Mary. But I can't act otherwise on this matter, however it pains me to acknowledge the suffering I'm causing you by it. I can't act otherwise and live with it.
I love you so terribly much, my darling. Please at least tell me that you believe me, even if you can't accept my decision or forgive me.
Matthew"
He was coming today. Tomorrow, they were supposed to be married. Except she wasn't at all sure she wanted to go through with it.
Oh, on one hand there was nothing she wanted more. If she was guaranteed to have him as hers for only nine days, then she would greedily take every second of them. She could not stand the thought of giving even those paltry nine days up when very possibly it could be all she would ever have. But on the other hand it hurt, it hurt so incredibly much that she was clearly not the most important thing in his life; that his love for her was not enough to keep him by her side, safe. That his bloody honour and his blasted overgrown principles were the priority. She still wanted to lash out, to hurt him back the same as he had hurt her. It would serve him right if she called off the wedding.
Drawing room, Dower House, Downton Village, June 28th, 1917
"What was so urgent that you demanded talking with me in that tone?" asked Violet with exasperation as she entered the drawing room where Cora was sitting, waiting for her. "Shouldn't you be busy with preparations for the wedding?"
"I should be," answered Cora darkly. "And I would be, if I was sure that there will be a wedding tomorrow."
Violet raised her eyebrows and looked at her shrewdly as she sat heavily on the opposite sofa.
"Why wouldn't there be one?"
"Because ever since the air raid, Mary hasn't mentioned Matthew's name even once," said Cora with evident worry. "She didn't call him or receive any calls from him. She got exactly one letter, a week ago, which she still didn't answer. She barely took any interest in the preparations – in fact, she scarcely left her room at all!"
"The air raid was a terrifying experience," pointed out Violet. "God knows Rosamund hasn't gotten over it yet!"
Cora stared at her incredulously, momentarily distracted from her mission.
"Rosamund was seriously injured!" she exclaimed, making Violet roll her eyes.
"And does she milk it for every second of attention and compassion she can," she muttered. "You wouldn't be half so shocked if she chose to convalesce in your house."
"Haven't you worried about her at all? She's your daughter."
"I am very aware of that fact," answered Violet dryly. "But I wasn't informed of the air raid by anybody until I knew Rosamund was safe, so I didn't have any cause to fear for her. And now Dr Clarkson says that she's going to be perfectly alright, even if she will have to wear long sleeves for the rest of her life, which is not enough to make me wrangle my hands in despair or tolerate her penchant for theatrics."
Cora gave her one more incredulous stare, but clearly gave up this line of discussion as hopeless.
"Be it as may, I don't think it's just the air raid," she said, determined to get her point across to her mother-in-law. She was desperate, after all. "I think Mary quarrelled with Matthew when he visited her in London. When her dress arrived yesterday and she didn't even want to try it on, I asked her point blank what the matter is and she said that she's not sure if she wants to marry him! Now she is not sure!"
"Well," said Violet slowly, looking clearly disturbed, but unable to resist taking a dig at Cora. "Wasn't that what you wanted? Mary changing her mind?"
"Not on the eve of the wedding!" objected Cora hotly. "Not when we have two hundred guests coming tomorrow, not to mention the press!"
"The timing is rather inconvenient," admitted Violet. "Did she mention any reason at all?"
"No, she didn't," huffed Cora in pure frustration. "And you know how obstinate Mary can be. So as much as it pains me to ask, could you please come and talk with her? She may talk with you. She always has been more likely to confess her troubles to you than to me."
Violet looked like she was tempted very much to answer that with several pointed remarks regarding Cora's character and understanding, but in the end she magnanimously decided to deny herself this pleasure.
"I will," she said instead. "We are just a day away from Mary assuming her rightful place in the world. It really wouldn't do to allow that to come to nothing."
Drawing room, Dower House, Downton Village, June 28th, 1917
Mary startled at the insistent knock on her bedroom's door. There was only one person commanding an entrance in this way.
"Please come in, Granny," she sighed, putting Matthew's letter down on her vanity and covering it with the Vogue just in case. Granny had very sharp eyes, after all.
Violet entered imperiously and didn't waste any time in looking Mary over critically.
"I've been told you're hardly a bride on the brink of heaven and I see it is accurate," she said without preamble, sitting down regally in the armchair in the corner. "Considering that I know for a fact you love Matthew and that he loves you, not to mention you are going to gain everything you've ever wanted with this match, why is that?"
Mary considered briefly keeping a stony and dignified silence, but crumpled before she even attempted it properly. She was sick of dealing with her thoughts alone and at least Granny, unlike Mama, didn't object to her marriage from the start on the grounds that it was a madness to marry a soldier. She would have bitten off her tongue before admitting to Mama that she might have had a point, but she could speak to Granny.
Once she began, it all poured out of her. Matthew's insistence that he had no choice but to go back to the front as soon as their honeymoon ended, her conversation with General Strutt which revealed it to be at best inaccurate and at worst a blatant lie and finally her nasty, horrible fight with Matthew when he admitted it was true, but refused to even try to find himself a safer post, which he only reiterated in his only letter to her.
"I see," said Violet thoughtfully, her eyes not leaving Mary. "Those men of moral high ground… Best kind of men to marry, until you hit that one hurdle when they exasperate the hell out of you and there's no reasoning with them."
"Yes!" exclaimed Mary vehemently. "That's exactly it!"
Violet nodded.
"The question is though," she said evenly. "Whether you're truly determined to call everything off and let Matthew go or are you just too angry at him to think straight?"
Mary recoiled as if slapped.
"I don't want to let him go!" she said. "I want him to come to his senses and stay safe!"
"But you might not get your wish," pointed out Violet calmly. "Or are you unaware, after all those years, exactly who you are engaged to?"
Mary bit her lip, getting up from her vanity stool and turning back from Violet to hide the tears suddenly threatening to fall from her eyes.
"He's being completely unreasonable about it!" she insisted. "He volunteered a day after the war broke out. He went to France as soon as he completed his training and stayed there for years. Hasn't he done enough?"
"You and I are in full agreement that he has," answered Violet calmly. "But I want you to consider that he very well might not be."
"And I apparently don't mean anything in all that," said Mary bitterly. "He professes to love me and yet he cares nothing for leaving me like that, very possibly forever, after only nine days."
"Which is abominable. But tell me that, my dear, do you think your father loved your mother?"
Mary turned back to her, staring at her in shock at the question.
"Of course," she answered without hesitation. "Everybody could see that Papa loved Mama, even if he married her for her money at first."
"Yes," agreed Violet with a sour expression. "And did he love you and your sisters?"
"Yes," answered Mary, increasingly baffled by the turn of the conversation. "He might have had trouble with seeing us as rational creatures, but I know he loved us all deeply."
"Did he love Downton?" probed Violet further, making Mary roll her eyes.
"More than us, at times," she muttered resentfully. "Granny, what's the point of all those questions?"
"And yet, when the Boer War started, he left your mother, he left you and your sisters and he left Downton – without a proper heir, I might add – to fight on the other side of the world for over two years."
Mary felt as if Granny's words hit her squarely in the chest.
"Because he believed he had to," she whispered with numb lips. "That it was his duty to do so."
Violet nodded, the memories of that time, that other war, more distant and abstract than the current one except for the painful absence of a man they both had loved and had feared for, hanging between them.
"Men of moral high ground," repeated Violet, shaking her head. "They pose a unique kind of challenge. The very same things we love them for are also the very thing which makes us hate them at times. You can't have the good without the bad."
Mary swallowed.
"So I should just accept it?" she asked bitterly. "Marry him with a smile and say goodbye to him with a kiss, proud of his honourable sacrifice?"
"Of course not," answered Violet with a shrug, making Mary start. "You can just as well decide that this is not what you want or are willing to endure and break things off with him. Find a different man, one who is not noble to the point of stupidity. You would probably make your mother very happy, even if she was forced to tell two hundred guests to go home. Just don't choose that plutocrat, please, I can barely stand him. But don't expect you will ever be able to change Matthew, not to this degree. You're bound to be disappointed."
She got up from the armchair with an effort.
"Think about it, my dear," she said kindly. "Just don't take too long, would you? He is coming here tonight and while he is not supposed to see you before the wedding, I have a suspicion he will get around it one way or the other after the way you left things."
xxx
"All will be well," said Violet to Cora, who had been waiting anxiously by the staircase, "She just needs to think a little bit more."
"You're sure?" asked Cora, sending a nervous look at Mary's door. "She can be awfully stubborn."
"That she can be," agreed Violet easily, walking purposefully towards the telephone. "But if she actually throws him over, I am going to be very shocked. No, she will marry him tomorrow, mark my words, but it's up to us to ensure they will have a future together."
"Whatever do you mean?" asked Cora with a puzzled frown.
Violet looked at her with a determined set of mouth as she picked up the receiver and ordered a call to Marquess of Flintshire.
"It's time to remind Matthew about chain of command and the concept of following orders," she muttered before she got her nephew by marriage on the line. "Hallo, Shrimpie? It's Aunt Violet. What do we know about General Strutt and how can we use it?"
Downton Abbey, June 28th, 1917
Jack whistled when Downton came into view.
"That is your new house?" he asked incredulously.
Matthew shrugged.
"I told you it was big," he said dryly.
Jack rolled his eyes.
"Big," he scoffed under his breath. "This thing is big as English weather is wet. Understatement of a century."
They were welcome at the door by Carson, who was apparently waiting by the window.
"Welcome home, my lord," he said with the frostiness which took Matthew right back to 1912. "William has arrived in the morning with your luggage and I am glad to report that your uniform is pressed and ready for tomorrow."
"Thank you, Carson," answered Matthew with determined politeness. "This is my friend and best man, Major Jack Weatherby. I trust we managed to find a room for him, even with being overcrowded as we are?"
Carson puffed up in clear offence at the implication that there would be no place for a guest at Downton, despite the dozens of patients, nurses and orderlies they were already hosting.
"Of course we do have a room waiting, my lord," he grumbled and turned to Jack. "Allow me to lead you there, Major."
Jack raised his eyebrows at Matthew as they meekly followed Carson inside.
"If I had any doubts whether Mary forgave me or not, here is the answer," whispered Matthew resignedly. "Carson hasn't hated me so much since I first arrived here."
"Are you sure he's not going to poison your soup?" Jack whispered back. "That glare was truly impressive."
Matthew looked doubtfully at Carson's rigid back ahead of him.
"I hope not," he said slowly. "He has an enormous amount of respect for aristocracy and I am technically an earl… But I wouldn't be surprised to get it poured into my lap, with profound apologies for his clumsiness, of course."
xxx
To Matthew's extreme frustration, everything was orchestrated in such a way as to make it impossible for him to talk with Mary. She was out for lunch with Violet and Rosamund when he arrived and he and Jack were supposed to dine at Crawley House, so he wouldn't see the bride before the wedding.
"It wouldn't do to invite any back luck, would it?" asked Cora brightly as he ate his soup gloomily. At least it didn't end up in his lap, despite Carson's continued glowering.
"Of course not. Matthew has always needed all the luck he could get," agreed Jack with a bright smile, but Matthew didn't miss a concerned look his friend threw at him.
By the time they returned from Crawley House, he was determined. There was no way he and Mary could meet at the altar with things unresolved like that between them. If she was going to show up there at all, that was, and he was not at all sure that she would.
He knew he had hurt her too much.
His heart clenched painfully when he entered his bedroom and found a vanity there, in preparation for the married life they were supposed to share. Some of Mary's things were already placed on it and the sight of them haunted him with visions of the future which could very well never come to pass. With the planned departure for their honeymoon straight after reception, they would not spend any night together in this room before he went back to the front – and possibly never if he didn't come back. He wondered torturously whether Mary would stay in here in such a case, take over the room which was so briefly his and never truly theirs, or if it would be too much for her to bear.
He hated the war and himself in equal measure for bringing her so much pain.
As he paced the room, he could not deny the deep sense of unfairness he felt for his own fate too. To be able to marry Mary, after all those years and everything that had happened, only to be forced to leave her after mere days – it was torture, he had no other word for it. To know that she suffered equally, no, that she suffered more – he wouldn't have to worry about her safety, after all, like she would for his – it was more than he could bear. To know that his own choices, however inevitable, made her doubt his love for her… He had no words to express what that made him feel. Love for Mary was such a defining part of him, had been for years; to realise that he destroyed Mary's faith in that love, possibly forever, was beyond any pain he had ever felt before. He tried to console himself that she didn't really mean it, that she was just lashing out at him in her justifiable anger and hurt, but he didn't dare to hope for that. No, he had done the damage and he had to find out how to repair it now; how to prove to Mary that she was as deeply loved and valued as she deserved, even if he was so terribly poor at showing it to her.
But first he needed to find a way to talk with her. RIght now. Even if she was going to spit in his face and tell him she was never going to forgive him for leaving her behind, he had to talk with her.
He left his bedroom and walked decidedly towards Mary's, protocol and superstitions be damned.
Mary's bedroom, Downton Abbey, June 28th, 1917
Mary sat in front of her vanity, trying to allow the familiar sensation of Anna's careful brushing through her long hair to soothe her turbulent spirits.
Granny's words echoed unpleasantly in her head. Yes, she knew very well who she got engaged to. Matthew was a wonderful, kind, thoughtful, loving, honourable man and she loved him so fiercely because of it.
If only he didn't take those wonderful qualities to truly absurd lengths!
Don't expect you will ever be able to change Matthew, not to this degree. You're bound to be disappointed.
Did she want to change him? No, not at all! She loved him just as he was; because of who he was. She just wanted him to be safe, for God's sake, it couldn't be too much to wish for, or too unreasonable, could it? She wanted him to be out of harm's way and she could not forgive him for passing up a chance to ensure that. She resented him so bitterly for putting his sense of what was the right thing to do over any consideration for her. She felt guilty, so terribly guilty, for throwing it into his face that she didn't think he truly loved her – she knew perfectly well that it wasn't true – but it hurt so much to realise that all the love in the world was not enough to change his mind on going back.
The very same things we love them for are also the very thing which makes us hate them at times. You can't have the good without the bad.
She pursed her lips unhappily as she considered that. Granny had been spot on, as usual. Wasn't it truly what made her fall for Matthew in the first place? When he had shown her kindness despite her awful treatment of him because he felt that she'd been wronged? When he had researched the ways to break down the entail, against his own interests, because he felt that this was the right thing to do? Matthew believed that there were moral obligations which trumped individual happiness and didn't she admire him for it? Didn't she share those beliefs to an extent? Hadn't she been prepared to sacrifice her personal happiness to do her duty to her family at times? She might not value the duty to the king and country, or to God, in the same way Matthew did, but couldn't she understand the reasoning behind his approach?
Even if it shattered her heart into pieces to do so?
"Lord Grantham is a good man," said Anna quietly, as if reading her thoughts. "He has to be true to himself."
"That's the point. He puts himself above me, above all of us. Don't you see?"
"What I see," repeated Anna calmly, "is a good man, milady, who tries to do the right thing. And they're not like buses. There won't be another one along in ten minutes' time."
"I know!" snapped Mary miserably. "But it's not going to console me at all if he gets himself killed while doing it!"
Anna nodded, her eyes, visible in the mirror of the vanity, full of compassion.
"I know, milady. But will it make you feel better to part with him like that? For your last words to be angry?"
Mary dropped her head into her hands.
"No," she answered in a choked voice. "It won't. But why can't he be reasonable? Why can't he admit he has done enough? I know he doesn't want to go back, so why does he feel he must?"
Anna pursed her lip and focused on dealing with a difficult tangle in Mary's hand.
"I don't know, milady," she answered finally. "But I know that you won't forgive yourself if you allow him to go back with a broken heart. Not again."
Mary shuddered, the familiar guilt for making him run to the war in the first place threatening to overwhelm her. Would he have even enlisted at all if she hadn't broken his heart in the first place? Was everything which had happened to him since, breaking him in all the ways she did and didn't know, her fault? Was part of the fury she was feeling at him now misdirected from anger at herself? From the guilt which had been consuming her every day since August 1914?
An unexpected knock on the door startled her out of her musings. She exchanged a surprised look with Anna as her maid put the brush down and went to check who was behind the door.
"I just need a word."
Mary rose as soon as she heard Matthew's voice. She was not at all ready for this conversation. She felt much too vulnerable and confused to face him right now.
"No. Go away. I'm undressed. You can't come in."
"One word. Come to the door, please," she could hear him sigh in exasperation. "I won't look at you."
"It'd be unlucky if you did," said Anna, still blocking the door and looking inquiringly at Mary to see how she wanted her to proceed.
"Only if we were getting married," shot Mary, even though she knew she didn't mean it, for all her pain and anger.
There was no way she was going to give him up, even if he insisted on taking himself away from her.
"Which we are," insisted Matthew, but she could hear he was not as sure of it as he wished to appear and this, more than anything else, made her relent.
"Very well," she said, nodding at Anna to go and leave them alone. "But you mustn't look."
"Come to the door," he repeated, relief permeating every word. "I promise I won't."
She approached it, putting her hand on the heavy wood and feeling inexplicably vulnerable at the realisation that he was leaning against the other side of it.
"Well?" she said, uncomfortable with the silence stretching between them.
xxx
Matthew swallowed and wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his trousers. He couldn't help feeling that this was the most important conversation of his life.
"I wanted to apologise first," he started, choosing every word carefully. "For so many things. For lying to you – it was never my intention, but I realise you're right, the way I kept my conversation with General Strutt from you was ultimately dishonest, even if I didn't look at it like that at the time. For leaving you so soon after the wedding, with no assurance that I will be able to come back. But most of all for making you feel that you don't matter to me, that you're not the most important person in my life. I can't regret it more, Mary, because you are. You have been for years."
"But it doesn't change a thing," answered Mary in a choked voice. "You still feel that going back there is more important than ensuring we have a life together. A future."
"There are so many things I can never tell you," said Matthew heavily. "I just can't, even though I know that without telling you I can never hope for you to understand, even a little, why I feel I must go back. I hate every minute there, Mary. There is not a moment while I'm there when I don't desperately wish to be home. It's hell on Earth and it forces me to be one of its demons, to forget so much about who I am that I am often afraid I will never be able to return to who I was, not even close. But Mary, there are other men who are trapped in that hell with me. Men I am responsible for, even though I can do pathetically little to protect them in any way. Some of them saved my life instead. There were men who died for me. And I know them, Mary. I know of their dreams and their wives and sweethearts and children. They are not perfect and while some are very good men, I wouldn't want to exchange a handshake with some of the others if we met in any other place, but there, together, we went through such unimaginably horrible things... I can't abandon them, Mary. I would be haunted forever if I did. I'm so terrified of going back I often feel like throwing up, but I can't not go. I can't stay and live with myself."
"So instead you may die within days," she answered harshly, her voice thick with repressed tears. "You may die and leave me alone. You can't abandon them, but you're willing to abandon me."
Matthew closed his eyes in anguish as his head fell against the thick wood of Mary's door.
"I don't have a choice, darling," he said, defeat permeating every word. "I know you can't understand it, I know I am explaining it so very poorly, but I truly don't. I will understand if you can't forgive me for it."
The silence between them felt heavy, oppressive. Matthew wondered why he had ever thought that leaving Mary then, when the war had just started, had been heartbreaking. Surely whatever he had felt then, convinced as he had been that she hadn't loved him nowhere close to how much he loved her, was nothing to the shattering knowledge that she did love him, so terribly much, and he was the one mercilessly breaking her heart.
"Very well," said Mary and Matthew shuddered at the finality resounding in her tone. Was this the moment when she was going to tell him that he was right; that she won't be able to forgive him? That she won't be marrying him tomorrow after all? He deserved it if she did, of course he deserved it for all the suffering he had caused her, but his own heart broke thoroughly at the prospect. "I forgive you."
Matthew blinked.
"You do?" he asked carefully, disbelieving he heard her right.
"I do," said Mary decidedly. "It's who you are, Matthew, and it's pointless to blame you for the very same things which make me love you. You wouldn't be you if you weren't too damn honourable for your own good."
Matthew blinked again, this time against tears he could feel coming at her words.
"But Mary..." he couldn't help saying although he barely knew what exactly he was going to say. He just knew he did not deserve her unexpected absolution.
"Are you honestly going to argue with me about it?" asked Mary incredulously and he laughed softly at the familiar exasperated note in her question.
"No," he answered. "I simply can't believe what I'm hearing. You hated me a moment ago."
"I still hate you a little," said Mary matter-of-factly. "And if you die and leave me, I will probably hate you a lot. But I love you more."
"Enough not to murder me yourself on our wedding night?"
"You should be safe," Mary deadpanned. "Probably. If we are getting married, of course, because I am still not completely decided on that."
He laughed again, feeling dizzy with relief and love for that woman.
"Mary, can I kiss you? Cause I need to, very much."
"No. It's bad luck to look at me and bad luck is the very last thing we need in the circumstances."
"What about if I close my eyes and you do, too?"
She hesitated for a moment, but then…
"All right. But you mustn't cheat."
He couldn't resist smiling when he closed his eyes tightly and felt his way around the door to her room. He put his hand in front of him and shuddered when she captured it, pulling it gently to her face. It felt exquisite to be able to touch her like that after the torment of the last two weeks.
"I love you so terribly much, my darling," he whispered fervently, caressing her cheek gently, his eyes still closed, as promised. "I promise I'll do anything in my power to come back to you, to have a future with you, a family, as long as it is not against my conscience. My darling, if it comes to it, I'll die for you. Do you really ask more than that?"
"I suppose not," she whispered back and he could feel as well as hear her taking a deep breath. "I apologise for telling you I don't believe you love me. I know you do. I just wanted to hurt you when I said that, because I felt that you hurt me."
He swallowed, resting his forehead against hers, his fingers getting entangled in her wonderfully soft, rich hair. Only his promise to her kept him from opening his eyes to see how she looked with it down. He nearly shuddered at the realisation that he was going to get a chance to do so the very next night.
"Thank you for telling me that," he said softly. "The thought that you might not has been torturing me for the last two weeks."
"Good," said Mary with equal softness. "You deserved it."
But it was her lips who reached to kiss him first and it felt like an absolution.