The Creggan White Hare

by phantomwriter05

PROLOGUE - in 1935, Haunted by a tragedy of which he was blamed, a young adventurer searches an abandoned Gilded Age Manor in Newport, Rhode Island for a precious heirloom of the once Levinson family. But danger lurks around every corner as he is hunted by Mercenaries hired by a former Ottoman Noblewoman to avenge her son who died long ago in Lady Mary's bed. COMPLETE!

4. Scared of the Dark

It was a stillness that was predatory in its unassuming quiet.

There was not a snowflake, not an accumulation of slanted winter sleet that fell from the sky. The illusion was much like the sneaking up of an assassin, wielding an icicle as its weapon of choice. It seemed such a normal, quiet, morning. Yet, you only knew it to be a trap when you stepped out of the furnace heated rooms and tasted the first raw and sharp slash of misery. It was like being stabbed in the gut, like burying your face in a bed of knives. It was like nothing that the village of Downton had ever felt before. The very air breathed contained an icy frozen fire that burned your lungs. Even the touch of moisture upon skin frosted on first contact. The setting outside seemed a booby-trap that so many would fall for in that first moment they stepped outside and felt the bitter cold that no number of layers could protect from. It was the most frightening weather that had ever been felt in the county - for mother nature's deception was as perfect as a Mantis or puffer fish's camouflage. It was a true killing frost.

However, it wasn't, exactly, how a young boy remembered it.

The cold was right, he'd dare say that it was the kind of cold that no one would ever forget, especially when in it. The kind that was so bitter and damaging to the body. The kind that you struggle and fight as if you were enduring a brutal and savage gauntlet, being hit and drummed with every step. The kind of environment that you finally get to warmth and feel as if you had been punched in the face, a burning pain that runs across your scalp, while your nose is bleeding. It was the kind of legendary weather that you comfort yourself in other bad situations - at least, it isn't as cold as that one Christmas Eve, nothing could be as bad …

Yet, nothing could be worse than that morning.

It was funny the things that one is acutely aware off when in a stressful situation. He knew how it felt, the pain running down his scalp from the cold that cut through his flat cap. He remembered the luxurious smell of his granny's perfume that he inhaled since his mother wrapped her scarf around his mouth and nose against Anna's protests.

But perhaps the empty stone streets of the old village, the half-built snowman standing alone by the War Memorial, was more a reflection of how he felt that day. What it was to be the only one that could do it, who was brave enough. He was custom made for these situations. He had the right genes, the right paternity. It was meant to be, this great romance, the destined Lady and the Lawyer that conceived him in love. Together they had reached out into the ether of the universe and took ahold of some stardust and created a fated hero. And all his life he felt, was expected, to be something worthy of a man who had saved a noble name from slipping into nothing. It was all he thought about that day, this moment. It never occurred to such a young boy that it was possible that he could lose. He had been read too many novels by his Aunt Edith, he had seen too many flickers with his Uncle Tom and Henry. They always won …

The hero always found a way.

Even as he raced through the empty cold of the village of Downton, the boy had forgotten how this had gone. Yet, maybe it wasn't that he had forgotten, but hoped, hoped beyond reason, beyond madness, that through some unfathomed dimension untaken that it would be different this time. That somehow, he had ridden through the translucent streams of infinity to be here again, wiser, smarter, and faster … so much faster than a small boy that day. That somewhere in the multiverse of infinite universes there was one, just one, in which he had done it today.

He was so sure that it would be different this time - it had to be. The bloody nose, the feeling as if the terrible cold was stabbing him through the head with a steak knife. The bitter numbness of his face which was engulfed in Parisian perfume - seventy pounds a bottle. It was all like it had been before. But now he knew what was at stake, what would happen if he failed. He knew what he'd lose if he couldn't do it this time. He'd lose a baby sister he cherished desperately. But he would also lose the love of the only parent he had left.

As the young boy rounded the corner, following ancient stone wall and towering hedge that ran alongside the gravel path to Downton Abbey, he was fueled by the flashes of the future. And It drove him harder, made his legs drill deeper into the slushing gravel at his feet. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth behind Lady Grantham's scarf, and looked up to the sky as desperation exploded with a new fire that consumed him. He passed the great barren oak which had icicles hanging from its limbs. The bench underneath its shade was covered in accumulation of frost, ice, and snow. A trail of powder followed his swift feet as he punched new foot imprints into the thick snowfield that was uniformed and evenly compacted on a flat surface of the grand country estate's yard.

Panting, he took the time, as he had before, to close the heavy double doors of the gothic castle behind him. It was something ingrained, a reflex he couldn't ignore. Not when Mrs. Hughes had always gotten after him and Sybbie for leaving them open. The old Scottish woman seemed to rue the day that all the nannies and nurses went away once the whole of the Imperium found out about the old Pamuk Witch's bounty on his head. Now the drawn down staff was forced to do their duties, plus, look after the children when they could. With Marigold at Brancaster and London, they had all assumed that it would be manageable to look after Sybbie and himself. But obviously they had underestimated the wild and adventurous inclinations of the two adopted siblings. But while Sybbie could always be relied upon to be a brat, he, himself, did the best he could to help everyone downstairs when he could to make up for the 'sissy prissy' he spent his days with. He was more empathetic to their needs than his best friend, who was always a princess about so much and would only get worse as they got older.

The minute the young child entered the room he heard the loudest noise he had ever fathomed. It made him stop and look around in shock. He suddenly realized what it was. It was nothing. What came to greet him as he took stock in his surroundings were the roaring and yawning quiet of sheer emptiness that surrounded him. After the loud echo of the closing great doors, he was confronted by the vacuous grandeur of the empty manor house. He panted hard into the void which swallowed the very sounds into the large hall. His small azure eyes glared above his covered mouth and nose as he looked around.

This wasn't how he remembered it.

There were items that matched his razor-sharp recollection of this very moment. The grand Christmas tree in the great hall was towering above him, the lights in the middle winking and twinkling in his tearing red eyes that were irritated from long exposure to the killing frost. He saw that there was a tray of tea and coffee that the new maid had accidently left out when she was called Downstairs by Anna. There was an Edward Stratemeyer book that Henry had left on the futon where his Aunt Edith liked to edit her articles and snuggle with the children while she read to them. It all looked the same as it had done that morning, but there was one problem …

Where was everyone?

He'd never forget running through those doors, stopping only a moment to look at the same sight as he did now. But then the entirety of the staff had gathered around the grand staircase. They looked sad, crestfallen. Daisy had been crying. Mrs. Baxter was holding hands with Mr. Moseley. Mrs. Hughes and Anna were attending to Mr. Carson who had fallen over in grief, sitting on the stairs that Mr. Bates guarded. It was then that the first column had fell in his heart. It was the first hint that he had lost today. Even as he approached the stairs at a jog, he had remembered pushing past the servants and storming up the steps. Mr. Bates had momentarily reached out to stop him, trying somehow to protect him from going up there and seeing what he would. But he never did, his hand held out, but never extended to grab him back.

He had remembered stopping in the middle of the first landing, pausing when he felt all their eyes on his back. The collected shock, sorrow, and pity for a young boy - the last to know - had weighed on him. But he couldn't make himself believe it. There was no way he could lose; it just wasn't possible. If he lost than it meant that he had failed, that he, in truth, was not a hero.

It would mean that he was not Matthew Crawley's son.

But as he mounted the first step, he found himself completely alone. There was no one there, not a hint or whiff of any semblance of humanity. His hand – covered by his mamma's own leather gloves - gripped the garland Christmas decoration that wrapped the handrailing of the stairs. It was alarming, unsettling, to be here, at the very first moment that he knew his life would be changed forever. Yet, for it not to be as it was. How many times had he relived this moment? How many times had he been locked in nightmares of reliving this repeatedly? He knew what was supposed to happen, who was here, what they were doing. But they weren't anywhere to be found. It seemed that the entire house was completely abandoned.

This wasn't a dream, but a memory that was trapped within an endless nightmare.

The boy mounted the stairs and took two at a time as he came bounding up. He and his clothing were torn by the elements. His nose bled profusely, frost and snow crusted to his ripped tweed jacket and flat cap, and one of his cerulean eyes was bloodshot from ice in the very air. Wherever he stepped evidence of the worst killing frost in four centuries was left in his wake as a white dusting frigidly clung to every fiber of him. But it was different than it was that day, yesterday, last week? He couldn't quite remember anymore.

As a young boy leapt up onto the ascent of the grand staircase up to the gallery above the Great Hall, he realized that something was off. Against one of the columns, something, someone, was missing. It was Henry – yes, Henry had been there. It was hard to forget the sight of a grown man, shrunken down into a sitting position against one of the stone railings above the coat of arms. The man had his legs drawn up to his chest, hugging his knees, rocking back and forth in quiet sobs. The small child remembered him halting his grief only a moment at sight of the torn up young boy battered and covered by the elements. They only exchanged one glance in that short length of time, and when the boy rushed past him, wordlessly, whatever relationship they had to one another came to an end, forever.

But Henry Talbot was not there now. The spot where the coward had wailed like a wounded fawn was empty. It seemed that all of Downton Abbey was completely barren, not a soul inside or out. His breath came shortly, visible in white froths. It was then that he realized that the castle darkened, and an eerie blue tint had overtaken the great hall. The crystal glimmer of the great Christmas tree was dimmed, and a long dark shadow of impenetrable gloom had pervaded through the Abbey. All about him, he heard the crumbling of cracking stone and looked about to see hairline fractures start to form on the railings and columns of the gallery. He looked over to the East Wing opposite the stairs where his mamma's bedroom was. But he saw only darkness, its deepening shadows groping out from the halls like a crone's twisted fingers, the fracturing like the rattling of long and rotted fingernails strafing against the walls.

"Mamma?" He called down the gallery. "Mu- Mummy?" He felt slightly ashamed to use the name.

"Grantham … Grantham … Grantham!"

The echoing reply that caused him to slowly back away was old and wizen. There was a marking of skilled and talented oratory that gave it an air of legitimacy and authority in, perhaps, many great matters. One might have even thought it grandfatherly. Yet, the boy found that it did not sit well with him. Out of ninety-nine children that might have been attracted by the warmth of this "Father Christmas" like air, the young boy would always be the one out of a hundred. Something about the voice, the manner, the very timber, seemed fair – a figure who sat small children on his knee and gave out candy. But the warning in the youth's heart spoke against such baser responses to sentiment. The voice, the garden of shadows, only enhanced the foul cord that the figure struck inside him. His eyes narrowed and he turned from it, rejecting its call.

Yet, the youth was startled to find the spot that Henry had once occupied was now taken by the figure of a young woman. She was dressed in an Edwardian evening gown of silver silk and navy-blue lining on the skirt and epilates. Her long raven tresses were pinned back stylishly. Both boy and young woman had matching waving curls, cerulean eyes, and facial features. The two looked quite the pair – easily mistaken for look-alike mother and son. He paused at the sight of the great beauty in front of him – dazzled by the soft glow of light that surrounded her and the distant familiarity of her lovely countenance.

He had seen her before somewhere.

"Darling …" Her voice was husky and luxurious to the ear in her soft polished accent. "Darling, listen to me." She walked up to him. Unlike the voice behind him, he did not flinch nor back away. The gleam of her light and love in her voice cut through the gloom that was slowly infesting the crumbling abbey and drew him to her. The beautiful pale woman fell to her knees in front of the boy, and with white silk opera gloves, took his small hands in hers.

"Darling, you need to wake up!" She said to him. "Wake up, Darling!" She implored.

"Heir of Byzantium, Dragon of Downton, Last of my fair Princess's yoke, come stand … the House of Grantham's doom calls forth!"

An impenetrable darkness, like oozing slime, spilled through the East Wing, a tide of black shading the corridor in a hollow abyss. The youth, frightened and unsure, felt a presence around the corner. Slow and menacingly, tauntingly, it took its time. He knew, with growing pressure of uncontrollable anxiety, that it would be upon him soon. He did not know what would come down the bend, but he dreaded it with all his heart, and the closer it drew near, the greater his panic became. He kept trying to turn, to face it, to see it, to know what tormented and daunted him, but each time he was turned back.

"No! Don't look back! Don't look at it! Don't look! Look at me, Darling, Look at me! Wake up! WAKE UP!"

The woman with matching eyes and face, gripped him by the torn tweed fabric on his shoulders, bracing him tightly. She shook him, begging, pleading with him to wake up. And he was caught in a duality. For the more he looked into her beautiful face, basked in her light, the more his sight grew darker, the room colder, and cluttered by obscurity. It was as if he was caught between two worlds, two plains of existence. He heard the angelic woman, and he trusted her - trusted her love, but the world that she begged him to go to was dark and empty. While here, in this moment, was Downton Abbey - his home. He did not know her, or if he did, it was only as a stranger in pictures on his Donk's desk, on his Uncle Tom's nightstand. It was taking a lot on faith.

SCHRUMMPH!

He startled when, suddenly, a column behind them finally gave way. He leapt back as the stone crumbled and fell over the railing. But after a long pause of waiting, he did not hear the crash of stone smashing onto the Great Hall below. It was his intention to ask the young woman what had happened when he found that she was not there any longer. Something had driven her away, something close – he could feel it. Quickly, the young child ran to the railing and looked down. Yet, to his astonishment and greater fear, he saw that there was no Great Hall of Downton Abbey. There was … nothing – absolutely nothing.

Below the overlook gallery was a deep and yawning chasm of pure emptiness. It was a darkness within darkness, no color, no sound, nor visibility. It was a silent vacuum that tunneled on for miles upon miles while seeming to be as solid as a block of ice. And the sight of it, this 'nothing', filled the boy with fantastic dreaded terrors, in which all of his thoughts, fears, and memories echoed loudly about him and yet were swallowed into the void. Unmanifested, unrealized, and forgotten were all thoughts and consciousness in the consuming abyss, even as they came to his very waking mind. Beyond that growing singularity there was no life, love, or hope. There was only the void – there, at the end of the Circles of the World, beyond the Timeless Halls, lay the endless pit of darkness where the cast out remains of fractured foul wights breed horrors in the coagulations of fell hatreds and venomous evils.

And somewhere millions, billions, of miles deep within the silent passages beyond the yawning black mirror, the boy felt a figure in the dark. The weight, the mass of its very presence was like standing at the feet of 'The Colossus of Rhodes'. The figure, the beast, itself seemed so titanic and powerful that it was as if all the gravity was pulled toward the very center of the great nothing beyond the black mirror. Then, with the breath stolen from his very lungs, the boy felt all that mass and weighted mastery turn toward him. Two eyes, wreathed in flames, burning brighter and hotter than the sun, colder and darker than the Poles, fell upon him as he looked deep into the endless abyss.

It asked his name - a deep, cold, and dominating voice.

He did not answer.

Suddenly, someone else flashed his mind to a time that he had broken his Donk's snuff box case. He was told not to play in his grandfather's dressing room, but he liked to use his walking canes as play swords. Sybbie's parry knocked his cane into the glass case and smashed it. He was lectured, chastised, and dressed down in front of everyone - corporal punishment by a deep and public humiliation. The memory of his Donk's anger, his mother's haughty chastisement, and his Granny's disappointment stung him as fiercely as if he was still standing in the drawing room in front of everyone. The forced memory made him deeply ashamed.

It asked his name once more.

He did not answer.

It probed his mind even further to a day three months ago. The boy was playing hide and seek with Marigold and Sybbie. They always – always - hid in the East Wing. He had been going to the bachelor's Corridor - last time, Marigold hid behind the stature of Hera and led Sybbie on a merry chase for half the afternoon. He would not be made to look such a fool, especially with company over. If it was one thing he did not stand for, it was to hear Sybbie gloat over tea, in front of everyone, how she outsmarted him. Yet, for a beat, before going up to the third floor, he decided to check 'his corners' just in case there was a break in Sybbie's pattern. Thus, he made for their mamma's room first, to see if she was hiding under her bed. He opened the door just a crack, to not give himself away. He paused, peering in stealthily, and was startled by what he saw.

It wanted his name.

He did not answer.

Their mamma was completely naked but for a pair of golden thigh high stockings. When he looked in, she was atop the bed on her hands and knees facing away from the door. There, he found Henry was shirtless and behind her. He watched with wide eyes as Henry thrusted over and over, harder and harder. His mother moaned, groaned, and cried out as if in pain. Yet, she was thrilled and smirking mischievously, watching herself from the mirror on her vanity as they continued. The boy didn't know what was happening, nor what they were doing. He had never seen people do anything like what they were. Yet, in that moment, seeing the look on his mamma's lovely and pleasured countenance and hearing Henry making lusty and desperate grunting noises … the boy felt something twist painfully in his chest. In the continued and prolonged physical interaction between their mother and Henry, the boy felt his fists clenched till his knuckles turned white. He found that in sight of what was happening to his beautiful mamma there was awoken a sudden rage that was directed solely at his stepfather ... and he did not know why.

It demanded his name.

He would not yield.

But all that sudden and black rage was frozen in his chest, when he looked to the vanity mirror and saw, to his fear, the red tinted amber eyes of his mamma staring right at him. For a moment, he thought that they'd stop, that she'd cry out, or angrily chide him for his habit of not knocking whenever entering Granny, Aunt Edith, or her own rooms. But as she continued to be taken from behind, his mama didn't do anything. She simply stared, locking onto him with deep and intimate gaze. She gasped, moaned, and yet, looked nowhere but right into his wide and shocked eyes. Her pallid face was bereft of any readable intention. Was she waiting for him to do something? To walk away? To announce himself? Or was it that she was expecting that he'd do something about it - to put up a fight and stop whatever it was they were doing. Was that it? Was she baiting him, wanting him to get mad, wanting to get a rise out of him? For what purpose … he did not know. But Henry didn't stop, and neither did she. And somewhere in that confusion of swirling unearthed emotions, something strange started to happen to him as he watched her being taken. But, after a long time, perhaps even being entranced by her, a sudden and deep shame came over the boy. Quickly, he closed the door, feeling incredibly daunted by his mamma's increasingly piercing focused stare as her noises grew to fever pitch. But just as he was turning to leave, he heard his mother cry out hisname in ecstasy … but she wasn't calling for him.

Mastered by wrath, it ordered him to surrender!

His spirit cried never!

Suddenly, in the distance, the young boy's battle and mental torment under the gaze of a great evil was broken by the sound of a baby crying. He shook his head soberly, as if clearing black cobwebs from his mind. He rubbed his eyes and looked down at the void again to continue the fight. But once more, like the holy chime of a church bell, the sound of a baby girl's cries broke his concentration. He turned away from this battle of wills with a frown toward the West Wing. With every cry he saw the darkened gloom recede little by little, as if there was something in the baby's voice, in her need, that repelled darkness. The boy knew the cry, for it was a special noise, deep in the throat, which was only sated by his appearance, his face dangling over the playpen. Then, she would clap and gurgle, reaching her tiny hands out to touch his face – giggle when he kissed them.

"Caroline?"

He said her name like a whispered prayer. Suddenly he was haunted by a vision of Thomas walking out of the nursery, his face was grim and defeated by sorrow, his eyes holding back tears. In his arms was a small thing, swaddled in a blanket. With slow and solemn paces, he carried it down the hall. As The butler passed the boy, the young child, slowly, dragged his cap off from the side of his head – dusted frost powdering the hall as his waving curls fell free. The man, the butler, his dearest friend, did not acknowledge the boy as he passed him with that sacred bundle.

She looked like she was sleeping.

"Caroline."

Long forgotten was the void, the encroaching darkness as Downton Abbey crumbled and fell away. His pace quickened as he heard the cries of the baby in the distance, coming from the nursery. It was a long an awful nightmare in which he thought that everything that he saw, everything he felt, for what seemed like days and weeks, was not true. Her voice, demanding but sweet, entitled but pure, was like a guiding light, a ringing bell in the night that would lead him home. Everything that had been haunting him, the dark dreams of late, would be healed once he was with her again. When he could lean down and kiss her brow, he knew everything would be alright.

Yet, among the crackling stone – fissures traveling up the walls and ceilings - he paused. The door to the nursery was flanked by a corridor in which the same oozing blackness that had overrun the East Wing was now stretching its foul hand out and was feet from consuming the door. A cold chill ran down the young child's spine at the sight of the darkness. In that instant, at the sight of it, he wished that the beautiful young woman with the lovely husky voice was there to help him. He did not want to go near the evil. But his feet danced in place in anxiety as the baby continued to cry, her wailing becoming desperate by the moment. She wanted him, needed him, and he had to go to her.

No more than a single step had he taken before he felt it again. The presence of the dark figure that had called to him from the East Wing, called to him from his own mamma's room. It was coming, slowly, menacingly, he could hear the approaching footsteps down the hall. He panicked, wanted to turn and flee at the sudden rush of uncontrollable anxiety at the knowledge of its coming. But still were the cries of Caroline's distress ringing in his ears, firing his heart with unshakable familial love. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, but at the calls of his baby sister, the boy strode forward toward the door.

Closing his eyes, he knew it would be close. But if he could make a dash for the nursery door, there was a chance that he could take the foul intruder unawares and rush past them for the room. From there he could bar the door and wait them out with the baby. It seemed a mad plan, but he could not bear, not again, to be separated from her, not when she needed him. So, it was in that moment, that he took stock of what courage he had.

He false started once, twice, taking large strides in awkward half runs. Then, letting the cries of his baby sister drive his heart, he took a deep breath and sprinted hard for the nursery. In that time, he told himself, over and over again, do not look at it – like the Edwardian Lady coached him. All he needed to do was get to the door, to keep his eyes forward … and not look at it.

But he was less surprised that his childish curiosity betrayed him as what he found when he turned to see what was approaching as he passed it.

"Ma – Mamma?"

There she had been, sitting on the floor, next to the door of the nursery. It was as it had been that awful day. The color of her liquid satin nightgown made her flawless unblemished skin pearly in the hall lights. Her bob of chocolate dark hair was uncombed and frizzled slightly. But what he remembered most was her eyes. They were cold and distant, bereft of all life or warmth. Her beautiful and freckled countenance was chiseled and smoothed of polished marble, expressionless and empty, as she stared into the far-off distance. The devastation and despair had ruined her, stole the very humanity, the very soul, from her. There was not a twitch, not a spasm, she was as still and graven as a statue of Grecian antiquity. It was as it had been that day.

His hand was on the doorknob to the nursery, half turned. But he stopped when his eyes could not look away. When this happened as it did before, there were others about her. His Granny had been sitting next to her, her arm around her. His Uncle Tom was holding her hand as he knelt by her side. His Donk was facing the wall to the left, his forehead braced against it as his Aunt Edith held him from behind, burying her glamorous elfin face into his back. He had not forgotten the sounds of his Aunt Rose as she wept into his Uncle Atticus's chest somewhere further down the corridor.

But the boy paused, because, now, his mother was surrounded by darkness, Now, there was no sight of anyone. She was alone, alone in her grief. And something in the boy's heart grew greatly pained by it. The bearing of the very sight of it burdened him with sorrow. Slowly, he let go of the doorknob, and walked toward her. He paused a pace away as she stared long and deeply into the darkness.

"Mamma?" He was hoarse with emotions and memories.

At the sound of his voice, the woman gently lifted her head in recognition. She said not a word, gave not a tick of emotion. With a slow turn, her red tinted amber eyes fell upon him. And there, the boy's voice was frozen in his chest. In her eyes was a look of pure and unadulterated venomous hatred that went soul deep.

Had she not entrusted him with this mission? Had she not told him that no one – no one – could do this task but him? Did she not give him clear instruction? Go to the hospital, get the adrenaline from his grandmother and Doctor Clarkson. Get the baby's medicine and run back … before it was too late. Was it so very hard? Apparently, it had been, it was an impossible task for one such as the beaten and battered young boy bleeding in the hall, covered in snow and ice. Now – now, he addresses her by that name? That was not her name – 'mamma' – that was what Sybbie calls her, that was what Caroline would've called her. The boy standing there, five minutes too late, with the very medicine that could've saved her and Henry's new family, their very future. This wretched and useless orphan does not get to call her 'mamma' again … never again.

As he had before, when she looked at him with those hateful eyes, he backed away slowly. But unlike before, when his Granny interceded on his behalf - covering those eyes with her cupped hand and leaning her daughter's head into the crook of her neck – there was no filter. As he backed away, the beautiful pallid woman got to her feet and followed him. There was no rage, there was no aggression, only a marble sculpted face with hateful eyes that would not allow him to escape.

Quickly, he whirled and grabbed the doorknob to the Nursery. But just as quickly, with a painful vise, a slender hand grabbed his wrist. He let out a cry at the stone grip that was so cold that it burned. He looked up and saw that his mamma was looming over him, menacing him. As a boy that was quite undersized for his age, it had been his mother's exceptional height that frightened him most. The tall and statuesque figure of the grand Lady had always been used against him in many matters of authority and play. She had always been stronger than him physically, but the power in her grip was something that he had never felt before.

Like a rag doll, the beautiful great Lady twisted her son's arm awkwardly and threw him against the wall. He face-planted hard, collapsing to a knee. The pain blinded him a moment, as he quickly, defiantly, tried to get back to his feet. But before he could, he felt a slender pearl hand grasp him by the scruff of his coat collar. Once, twice, three times was he battered violently against the nursery door, before he was flung flat onto his back. His world spun, but his most basic and rushed instinct was to get up again. But as he tried to push himself, he felt a burning hand plant on his forehead. With a thud, the back of his head was slammed onto the floor.

The red eyed woman that held him in check still did not speak. The young boy struggled under her, he cried out loudly in a young child's squealing anguish from the searing pain of her burning cold grip upon his head as she mounted him. He grasped her wrist and attempted with all of his strength to remove her hand. When his auxiliary of desperate strength liberated her palm from his eyes, he was shocked and frightened. The great Lady was no longer wearing her nightgown. But for golden silk thigh-high stockings, she was as nude as she had been that day that he had seen her with Henry. But most disturbing was that now her amber eyes were filled to the brim with tears of blood that ran in stark contrast to her deathly pale and freckled cheeks.

Her tears were for her lost husband, her lost daughter, and the shame for ever birthing the son that had now stolen both from her.

In that despair, with the darkness about them, and the hateful venom in a mother's eyes killing her child's soul, the boy was trapped. In his struggle, in her eyes, there was an unconquerable shame in his heart. There was a part of him - rather a large part – that thought perhaps she was right. Perhaps he had failed in many ways. Perhaps this was all his fault. But also, running adjacent, was a small and defiant voice in his heart that said –

'If so, then, don't tell me about it!'

It was true that he had failed, but there was something in him, growing more and more powerful under that hateful gaze, that wouldn't admit defeat. He lost today, would lose again and again over the years, but that didn't mean that he had to accept it, that he had to like it. He would not be Mr. Moseley or his Aunt Edith, walking around like a puppy that liked to get kicked.

He wasn't the only one there today. This was not an empty house. There was Granny, Donk, Mamma, Henry, Thomas … and many others. It wasn't his job, his responsibility to save Caroline. He did what he could, he caught that there was something wrong with her when everyone else was content with celebrating Christmas, getting ready for the big party. Why did he have to be the one to go out there? Why could she not have done it? Why didn't she get Henry to get up when he broke apart? He was her father! Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it have been anyone else?!

Why did Mamma choose him to take all the responsibility and blame?!

A terrible mixture of anger, rage, shame, and hatred was let out in a vicious war cry that startled his mamma. Again, and again, a fist began pummeling her midsection. They were not powerful, but the pressure put on by their aggression and flurry caused her to loosen her grip. The boy, then, drove a knee up her inner thigh, bumping her forward at a lean. Then, the momentum of her falling face was met by a "thwack" of a headbutt from her son. Suddenly reeling from the defensive onslaught of a wild young animal backed into the corner, the boy shifted leverage and turned. For a moment of struggle, the two rolled in a combative embrace as they grappled across the hall like snarling and fighting beasts, the boy's forearms locked around the grand Lady's neck.

When they stopped, the tables had been turned.

The shame of everything that he did and failed to do that day grew from smoke to an inferno of anger, rage, and resentment. She had been there too, watching her useless husband be consumed by quicksand. She could've done something! She could've done anything! But, no, no, it had to be him, a boy, a small child. She sent him out into a killing frost, the worse that was in anyone's living memory. She put the life of a baby, his little sister, in his hands and told him to do something that most people believed was impossible. Maybe it wasn't, maybe not for someone like him - the son of Matthew Crawley. But it was unfair … it was not fair to put that on him. Then, to look at him the way she did when he came back, beaten and torn with what she asked for! He acted when no one else did!

HE ACTED!

Pinning and mounting the naked woman, the boy was incensed by the hateful gleam in her bleeding eyes, but also, now, the baiting and veiled look that she had given him in the bedroom with Henry. She did not care that it made him uncomfortable, that he did not understand what they were doing, or that it angered him to see her like that. She simply watched him, waiting – waiting for him to act, to impress her, to come and take her for himself. She blamed him for the death of the baby, she hated him for not saving her, and now she was looking at him mockingly, telling him that if it bothered him that much - if she bothered him that much - to do something about it.

The ground shook, the swirling darkness all about them began to slowly retreat. The house began to break apart, windows cracked and shattered, stone columns began to fracture. But the boy did not stop. He continued in a rash of anger and shame, lifting his fists in the air and swinging them down in a hail as he pummeled the bleeding eyed woman over and over again. He let out cries of anguish and pain deeper than that he was inflicting. Tears washed his eyes, the baby cried in torrents of distress for her brother, and the rage could not be bottled up. All about him the darkness pulled back like the morning tide, light broke through the fractured and crumbling Abbey. But he did not stop, not as the whole world crumbled about him.

With each fist strike, each choking grip upon the neck that slammed the head down on the ground, a fair and beautiful glamor began to crack like a shell. Her red tinted bloody eyes turned crimson red. Her pearly and marble countenance fractured like a smashing of a goddess's statue. The slender and sculpted perfection of her supple naked beauty fell away in the fissures of the boy's punches. Soon, all of the great Lady's attributes lay like broken and shattered plaster and the true figure was shown.

It was a sallow and ghoulish creature with a pale and elongated neck that still had a noose about it. There was a long wispy beard that fell down to a tattered and threadbare robe of ancient silk that had once been red and white. The emblems worn by a Cardinal of the Catholic Church in the reign of Richard III and Henry VII was faded upon his near translucent breast. His arms were long, and his hands seemed bloated and swollen in centuries of putrefaction. It's long and twisted fingernails were blackened with decomposition. Of its face there remained a gilded mask of a ram from some gay masquerade long ago that was faded over the many long centuries – greened and chipped was the satanic pentagram upon the brow. Yet, it did not cover the blackened and rotted lips around a deathly pale corpse mouth filled with green and blackened teeth. From out of the wraith's mangled and wizened maw there came a fell miasma of darkness that was exhaled with a diseased and sickly breath.

The 'Black Breath' spewed onto the boy's face. But it only bought the wraith a moment, before the enraged child assailed it once more with fists of fury. It was a most terrifying and gruesome figure of cruel evil. But such things held very little sway compared to the terror and horror of the loss of a beloved and beautiful young baby - so pure and innocent. And thus, it could not escape the hate nor the undaunted rage of one that it had pushed too far. Through the dark mist, punches fell in punishment on it's already putrefied face. It wiggled, rived, and slid, but the boy was like a fierce pup of a guard hound, his jaw locked. He would not release the intruding wraith, gripping it by the belt buckle – as they say. This was not the outcome that it had expected, this was not what anyone both for and against the young boy had foreseen. Rather than frighten and despair the boy …

The evil wight had only enraged and weaponized what was supposed to be its victim.

With mist all about them, the fell spirit melted into vapors with its black breath. For a long time, the youth punched the floor till the obscurity dissipated and left nothing in its wake as if fleeing far from his mind. Yet, even then the boy continued to punch the ground. The foe, the invader of his nightmares and sorrows had fled, but the rage had not. Tears fell freely as he made angry sobbed noises as he punched and punched. When he felt it wasn't enough, he began to pound the ground where the enemy … where his mother, had once been.

It might have gone on and on, the rage and hatred from the sorrow and shame. But one more time, like the holy chime of a church bell that calls the faithful to Mass, the cries of the baby vibrated through the empty dreamscape. The boy's chest shuddered, and his breaths were hic-upped by sobs. Slowly, with hard sniffles he turned to find that while the rest of Downton was gone, the door to the nursery remained. And it was from inside that it cried for him, the baby, his sister. As he stood, he slid down his granny's scarf from over his bloody nose and cut lips.

Removing his flat cap, he turned the knob and opened the door with a creak.

"Caroline?"

---

1927

"Caroline?!"

With a startle a small figure sat up in a bed. He was panting, sweat poured from his cheeks and brow. His chest heaved in and out, his throat glistened in the dim light. Cerulean eyes were wide and alert as a small head of waving blonde curls looked about a pitch-black room. His breath was heavy and audible as he looked back and forth. Yet, he couldn't see anything. There was a panic, a phantom memory of a void, black upon black, and a titan of great evil at its core. Even now, in his woken state, he could feel its cold eyes wreathed in flames. Had he fallen in? Had he let the wraith trick him into going into that terrifying and hopeless place?

"Caroline!" He called again.

He flinched when something by his bedside moved. There was a soft melodic clicking of uniformed shoe that paced across floorboards. For a beat he was reminded of the strange comfort of the sound of clacking heals and clapping shoes on the polished floors of the Hospital when he visited his Granny and Grams there. Eventually, he felt the mattress dip and felt the warmth of a body sit next to him. A hand reached out and cup his cheek comfortingly.

"You're alright, it's alright … you're safe."

It was that voice again. The same one from the dream. It was gentle, deep, and so lovely to the ear. The woman's hand was not hot, nor cold, but cool and soft. He couldn't help but turn into it, feeling the anchoring of human touch. The woman did not move away, but instead, scooted closer. He fell into her arms, as she wrapped him close to her. He buried his face into her breast as she nuzzled his head gently. "I've got you, Darling. I've got you. Don't worry, you're with me now." The love was potent in her lovely husky voice.

"You've been sick for a while." She whispered. "I was afraid you would never wake up … then, I'd be out of a job." She chuckled. He didn't know what that meant, but he never felt more comforted in his life than when she held him. "It seemed everyone gave up on you, but you just wouldn't give it to them, would you?" She buried her face in his blonde curls.

"I – I can't see." He said with deep concern.

At the comment, the woman broke their embrace. She studied him a moment and then smirked gently. "Oh, right … I forgot." She chastised herself with the playful lilt of a young woman in her chuckle. He felt her reach up with two gentle hands and clasp his cheeks, her middle and index fingers on both hands lightly massaged his temples. "Look at me, Darling." She whispered huskily. "Look into my eyes." She said with concentration.

He did so - or where he approximately thought they might be. His lids fluttered at the relaxing and disarming comfort of her fingers on his temples. But, to his amazement, he realized that as the seconds past, the darkness began to fade away and there were shapes and textures to the room.

Yet, the first thing he noticed was the same familiar young woman from the dream. She had a striking and beautiful countenance with ruby lips, sparkling cerulean eyes, and a creamy face. Yet, unlike in his dream, she wore a grey nurses dress and white apron that covered her hourglass figure. The young woman's waving raven curls where pinned back in a work bun and drooping fold. When his pupils shrank, he could see the smile she gave was enchanting. And from it, he could've sworn he'd seen it somewhere – in a picture on his Uncle Tom's …

"There …" She removed her hands from his cheeks. "You should be able to see normally in a few moments." Suddenly there was sadness in her voice. "Not many have been able to fight off 'The Black Breath'." She ran her hand through his hair. "The Wraith thought it could get you, after what happened, didn't it?" She asked rhetorically. There was a flash of the elongated neck with noose and green corroded ram masquerade - an anxiety fell over his face.

"But you had more fight in you than it was ready for or wanted …" She smirked. "And it found out." She leaned in and kissed his forehead.

"For now …" There were strange prophetic words that were spoken by a young boy that still had a foot in two worlds.

"Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, you and I." She was unshaken by his prophecy.

There was the softest shared grin when she reached over and took his hand when he looked down at the bedspread nervously. It was a promise, made many times - if the boy had ever been allowed to remember. No matter how deep he got stuck in, or how dangerous the road would become, she was always right behind and beside him. It had been that way since the very moment he was conceived, and it would be that way till the day he died. If he had no one else in the world …

He would always have her.

She kissed his hand maternally, like she used to when he was a baby, and petted his hair. Then, gently she scooted off the bed and stood. He watched the lovely nurse pace toward the door. She only looked back once more with a loving smile before she walked into the nightshade. The boy waited for the door to open and close in the room – but it never did. Then, after a long moment, waiting and staring, he forgot what he was doing. Had he been talking to someone? Had someone been in the room with him?

He suddenly couldn't remember.

It had been a long dreamless sleep that he had awoken from, completely alone. The boy took a moment to get his bearings. His sight was drawn to a single dim lamp that shimmered and flickered at his bedside. He could smell the gas and see the unquenched flame dancing on an end table. For a long moment he stared at it, trying to recall details of a fading dream that only patches of emotions played out. He was at its dark edge but could not translate images. They had all become muddled in the slow ballet and chorography of the dancing flame trapped within scorched glass.

The first thing he felt was weak, incredibly weak, there was a weariness upon him that he had never felt before. It was as if he had been marching for days through country or had been wading through some fell bog. His whole body ached, and he saw strange shadows that danced in the corners of his vision. But even in his discomfort, to see the dancing flame, and to breathe the free air, was like basking in the light at the end of a long dark tunnel. He took in a deep breath in the chilled room and look about it.

The last light of flickering embers of a fire were dying in a stone fireplace that was blackened with soot. All around him there seemed to be shelves and shelves of books. For a moment he thought he was in a section within a library. But something about the worn covers, the smell of the pages, and the unorganized half-hazard of their placement spoke to a rather personal collection. It seemed that whoever's room that this belonged too had their own system of management and index. There were stacks on the floor, on a corner chair, and opened on a desk. It seems only their owner knew why they were in such a state and would be incredibly cross to know someone had disturbed their purpose.

He sat up a little taller in the bed and looked out to a desk to see a regiment of tin toy soldiers in red Napoleonic Uniform in square formation while surrounded by painted miniatures of Heavy French Cavalry. He remembered suddenly that the display had not been finished, and that he spent many weekends in that chair, using the magnifying glass and reading lamp painting the French Hussars. He remembered picking up those books many a time, leafing through them - but never daring to lose the page they were set too. There used to be a great mystery in what the sacred texts said and meant, some lost wisdom waiting for him to understand. Though his reading comprehension had improved, he still did not know what "Conveying of Last Will and Testament" meant or "Rights of Tenant Property" was … but he thought it must be important.

In a flash he went from being scared and confused to being quickly comforted in the surroundings and feelings brought about in a room that he knew very well. He turned to his left and found old magazines with the headlines of "A Princess of Mars" in parts of ascending number in their stack. On the nightstand was a leather-bound book with a title in gilded letters on the spine '"The Sign of Four" - By Dr. John H. Watson'. That was not left by the owner, but by him … fore he had forgotten it last time he was here.

But of all the comforts of books and old Victorian toys about him in the room, there was no greater than in the old portrait that hung ever above the bedroom fireplace. She was young and exceedingly lovely, with long luxurious locks of nutbrown in perfect silky ringlets and piercing green eyes. Her skin was fair, and her countenance was gentle and prim. About her tall and slim figure was a Georgian gown of fine cerulean silk and black choker. He had always thought her beautiful, exceedingly so, though Sybbie had always said she had a bit of a 'horse face' – to which he did not appreciate. There was nothing short of elegance and the embodiment of class to the young woman in the portrait, though, the boy always felt that there was something rather sad about her.

Elizabeth Chenoweth Poldark had been a direct ancestor, a sainted foremother, of the Crawleys of Nampara. Though her legacy seemed mired and long hoarded in her day and death by a rival family of whom she remarried into – some say unwillingly. Yet, though achieving the riches of Midas in their prime, the name of Warleggan has since been long forgotten to time and does not come into this tale. But what could be salvaged of the 'Rose of Cornwall' and been found in the days of Matthew Crawley's young manhood. It was Mr. Crawley's very first case - indeed, a personal crusade of his - to break the entail and ownership of the late Warleggan name and their ownership of the beautiful Elizabeth Poldark.

Fore it was long known to many generations of the Crawleys of Nampara – tauntingly so – that her many memories and possessions were locked away in a forgotten and derelict estate, guarded by what some said was an impenetrable vault wrought by her evil and greedy second husband. For near a century, even after his death, George Warleggan had kept his wife's most treasured possessions and secrets from her Poldark/Crawley grandchildren. But Matthew Crawley of Nampara, having passed the Bar Exam and newly anointed as Solicitor, would not allow a long dead monstrous man to hold his foremother and her memory captive any longer.

And it was said that Lady Mary Crawley had been in London – waiting to be presented to the King and his Court - when Lady Annabel MacClare, her cousin and rival, showed her the article in the London Times. It was then, so here marked, that Lady Mary Crawley first set eyes on her soul mate. He was in his father's suit, his uncle's bowler hat in hand, foot perched on the Warleggan's prized vault like it was the neck of a tyrant. The debutant - minutes from being presented to the king - suddenly found inspiration in the confident countenance of dash and swagger of a cousin she never knew – and a man whose love for her would not know death. It was a great victory, the final victory of the Poldark family over their archenemies, and the moment had not passed unnoticed by young Mr. Crawley – the last of that ancient race – nor a young teenage beauty in white gown and matching feather in her long dark hair.

Of Elizabeth Poldark's many jewels, diamond broches, and silver ornaments, had they all come in inheritance to Matthew Crawley. Though, much of it was given and remained with Lady Mary Talbot, leaving till later in the years to 'discuss' what jewels she would be willing to part with as part of her son's rightful inheritance. Yet, of the many treasures found in that vault, Matthew Crawley only kept some out of sentimental value. And the boy knew that in the trunk at the foot of the bed were many late Georgian gowns of silk, velvet, and lace in colors of cerulean, crimson, and pink. It had been Sybbie and Marigold's favorite pass time, on rainy days, to take them out, and run their hands over the material and dream that they might go back to an era of time and wear such finery.

But of everything else kept in lock boxes or Lady Mary's jewelry box, there remained the greatest prize in the mind of Matthew Crawley, and that of the boy in bed. And that was Elizabeth Chenowith Poldark's portrait. She had enthralled her great-great-grandson from the moment he laid eyes on her from a picture in the Oxford Library while helping a friend catalogue books on Cornwall one late night. Since then, it was not her finery, jewels, or ornaments he was after. It was her painting, her countenance, her memory that Matthew had wanted back. She was Geoffrey Charles Poldark's mother, much beloved, and she had been taken from him at a young age by a cruel man, kept from him in life and death. Of his diary, he spoke often of the pain and the regrets of her loss in her youth – for the love held between mother and son was true and pure. And laying in his room at Oxford, staring at the ceiling, Matthew had made a vow that he would return Elizabeth to her children - of which he was the last.

Ever since, from Nampara, to Manchester, and to Downton, had Elizabeth Poldark hung in the bedroom of Matthew Crawley. She was a comfort, a warmth of the heart, to know that she had been saved. Her foul husband had tried to lock her away, to make sure that no one but him, and him alone, could have her. But now she was where she belonged, with her family - what was left of it. She would not be forgotten. And as it was with father, had it been the thoughts of a son. For the boy loved her greatly, though he knew little about her. But to wake up in such a state, in cold and sweaty confusion, alone in the dark on the edge of a nameless terror, he was greatly calmed by her lovely long and elegant face, half covered by shadows of the flickering gas lamp.

Crawley House - The young boy was in Crawley House.

He let out a sigh of relief upon figuring out that mystery. In the meantime, he took strength in Lady Poldark's eyes, calmed his mind, and took stock in this strange situation. He could not remember his last memory. A woman in Edwardian gown handing him a book outside the nursery. He remembered feeling cold, his vision going dark. He coughed and gasped, he remembered Anna and Mr. Bates rushing toward him as he collapsed, falling down the servant's stairs. Thomas was crying his name, but it was distant, as if he was a thousand miles away. 'The Black Breath' – it was that name that struck a chord in him. There were dreams, many dark dreams, the he could almost picture, but they were closed off. How long had he been sick? How long had he been asleep? Why was he in his grandmother's house … and not home?

"Grams!"

"Dickie!"

"Grams!

"Gra- Dickie?!"

It was in that moment, for the first time, the boy knew something wasn't right.

He threw back the covers and slid to the edge of his father's bed. He found himself dressed in the same clothing that he had worn that morning – that terrible morning. He felt stained and uncomfortable as was often the case when he slept in his day clothes. He wore a white button down that had a yellowish hue of salt stain as one who had sweated through their shirt many times. He wore the same brown trousers whose legs felt cold and slippery. His small feet were covered by thick woolen socks that felt heavy - soaked through by sweat. The blonde child immediately slipped off the side of the bed as he would normally.

His entire body hit the cold wooden boards with a loud thump. He let out a startle of pain holding his cheek as he rolled onto his back. The moment he put weight on his small legs, they had given out from under him. The boy immediately collapsed, face planting hard on the floor. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he made a wheezed sob as he cradled the side of his face. There was the distress of a small child in his voice.

"Grams!" He called out crying.

"Grams, Please, I need help!"

But no one came.

For a long time, the small boy lay in the darkness, tears falling down his cheeks. He cried out again and again, his voice falling away in frightened helplessness. He did not know when, perhaps it was simply the realization that he had too, but slowly, he began pulling himself across the room. He huffed and breathed heavily, dragging himself across the floor with sputtered little sobs. Stacks of his father's old legal books and references collapsed and tumbled over him as he slid to a study chair by the old oaken desk. He let out a cry of surprise and then frustration when a stack of heavy books fell on him as he pulled the wooden leg toward him.

"Gramhahahams!"

It hurt, not just his head and shoulders, but his pride. The small child was buried suddenly by heavy tomes. He squealed with shrill sob for his Grandmother, but still there was no one who heard him, no one who came. Now, at the end of his rope, in fear and sorrow, came the famed Grantham temper that shadowed the hearts of Robert Crawley and his daughter Lady Sybil. It had passed his eldest child, but had taken hold of his only grandson, which also carried in him the old Poldark hair-trigger wroth. Books were flung violently across the room, striking Grace Poldark's hope chest, knocking over the entire Waterloo diorama of miniatures that father started, and son finished years later. When his fierce anger subsided, it was the fire reawakened in him that caused a desperate rush of determination. He grabbed the seat of the chair with one hand, then two, and used all of his strength and anger to pull himself up. He climbed up the sturdy furniture by the armrests.

The boy that still had a bloodshot eye, now had a black one on his opposite side, and a yellowish bruise on his right cheek bone. His breath came short and heavy as he steadied himself. Again, and again, he collapsed under weak legs. But not once did he give up the task. There was determination that seemed beyond the capability of one so young. And it seemed by some pig-headed and unmovable strength of sheer will that the young boy finally took to his feet and stayed on them. Tears were on his cheeks, a pained grimace on his grim young face, but he stood on his own legs. His pace was wobbled at first, but eventually, he made it stiffly to the bedroom door. He turned the knob and opened it to a rush of cold air.

He was taken aback by the familiar hallway that was darkened. The only light he could find was that of the open hall windows that let in the dim light of the starless midnight hour. Paintings and portraits from the Downton Abbey basements were half visible as the distant glow of the Gaslamp on his father's nightstand clashed with shade of midnight from the uncovered windows. He did not know what he was expecting, but to find the house empty was not one of them. It was there, at the threshold of his father's old bedroom door, that he came to realize that this was the first time that he had been alone, completely alone, in his entire life.

"Grams?"

"Dickie?"

His small voice through the upstairs of Crawley House gave a hollow echo through the many dark and empty rooms. He made little grunted noises, as he leaned on the far-wall, limping forward into the dark. As he continued on, he might have been more afraid in any other place in the world. But here, in Crawley House, there was a strange contentment in the old stone and glass Regency relic. Since he could remember, his father's house had always had a certain unshakeable comfort and warmth that gave it a strong feeling of home and safety. Whether you were looking to sleep, to eat, or simply think in quiet … perhaps all three - there had never been a place with a warmer hearth and homely air than Crawley House. Even in the dark of the midnight hour, in confusion and sorrow, the magic of his father and grandmother's house was unshaken in his heart.

From his grandmother's room, to the two guest bedrooms – of which Sybbie and Marigold slept in when the three of them stayed over on weekends-, to the bathroom, all the doors were open, dark, and boasted not a soul. He frowned, calling out for not just his grams and his step-grandfather, but perhaps a maid, a cook, wondering if anyone was home. But as he reached the steps, he stopped. There at the foot of the staircase he saw that, though all the lights in the upstairs were off, downstairs both the study and the kitchen lights were on. There was a spring of hope in his small chest, and after living in such darkness for so long, the youth rushed toward the light like a dehydrated man that finds an oasis in the middle of a hellscape wasteland.

But his enthusiasm outran his strength.

He made a gagging and gruesome noise as his legs gave out under him and he fell down the steps. There was a great and painful racket that thundered loudly through the house as a small child rolled and crashed down the stairs. A thwack shuttered paintings and sundries on end tables when he landed flat on the wooden floor. The boy held his side and wheezed out a small sob caught in breathless cough. For a long time, he lay, rocking on his back, writhing, desperate for the wind that had been knocked out of him. His eyes were suddenly blinded by the diversity of twinkling lights that shimmered and glinted from a tall and elegantly decorated Christmas Tree that stood in the rounded sill of windows in the study. He shielded his eyes after so long in darkness.

Again, the boy waited, pained greatly by a clicking in his rib area, but no one heard him, and no one came. He had run out of names and the strength to call for them, alone at the foot of the steps, lying in a heap. The noises he made were tiny and anguished as a small hand grappled a peg of the white railing of the stairs. Again, a small body pulled itself across the lacquer wooden floor. The banister shook as two hands climbed from peg, to railing, and finally poster, pulling a small body up to stand again. His tiny breath was labored and short, a hand cradling his rib. After a long moment, he let go and began to hobble toward the kitchen, away from the painful Christmas lights in the study.

With a push of the mostly open green door, a sense of strange normalcy came over him. He couldn't say if this was the hundredth or thousandth time he had walked through that door. But never once in all of those times had he been more grateful. The soft lights eased him back into the world of the living as he shuffled inside, his woolen feet slippery on the floor, the sweat residue absorbed was cold and damp with every step. He walked about the table, the island, and checked the pantry. But he found no one inside. Then, as he walked back, he saw, much to a delight that nearly brought him to tears …

Cake.

It looked moist, with a yellow crust and white icing on top. It was cut into slices and there was still half of them left. It had been a cake for tea, perhaps something for elevenses. He didn't know when it had been made, or how long it had been sitting under glass dome at the center of the kitchen table. All he knew was that he was suddenly ravenous, and that his mind had gone blank upon looking at something so gloriously moist and tasty. He shuffled quickly to the table and reached out for the glass display. But just as quickly did he retract his hand.

Suspiciously, the boy looked all about him. He knew Mrs. Hughes's rules, and Mrs. Patmore had put a cap on Sybbie and his sweet intake – especially Sybbie's. At any moment, just reaching for the glass knob above the dome, he expected Anna to come out of nowhere and chastise him for being naughty. But after a long moment, waiting, he drew out a chair from the table and balanced knees upon it.

He winced, gripping his side, as he pulled the heavy glass dome off the display. He licked his lips at the sweet aroma of the cake scented air that escaped. Still paranoid, he looked around as he reached out and took a slice with his barehand. Quickly, as if hiding evidence, he shoved all of it in his mouth whole in a manner that would make Granny chuckle and Donk frown from over his newspaper. The moment the vanilla flavor hit with sticky satisfaction in his mouth, his eyes fluttered shut. He sighed as the cream and flour rolled around in his mouth. He winced when he swallowed, both his battered face and rib reacting to contraction of muscles. He didn't care how old it was …

It was the best thing he had ever eaten.

Immediately, the boy scarfed down another slice in one shove. He made a small satisfied noise, shaking his head at the sheer heavenly experience of cake. With his mouth still full, he took two more slices, one for both hands. He still hadn't finished eating the second slice, before he began devouring the third. Stealthily, with a wince at his side, he lifted the heavy glass dome and set it back over the remaining cake, looking from side to side to make sure no one was watching. Then, he hopped off the chair. Almost immediately, he felt strength returning to his legs, just from a few slices of cake. Feeling a backup in his esophagus, the boy waited before he started his last slice as he exited the kitchen.

With the taste of cake in his mouth and his legs in better shape, the youth limped slightly to the last room that he hadn't been inside. As he shoved his last slice in his mouth, he gave a grimace once more, shielding his eyes at the lit Christmas tree that had such a terrible glare. He was starting to see double as he approached it. Suddenly, something childlike came over him as he looked down. There, at its foot, on the tree skirt, were half a dozen presents. They were wrapped in different shiny packages of glistening wrapping paper under Christmas lights. Swallowing his cake, the boy found a sudden excitement rise in his breast.

For all the presents were for him.

Quickly, without thinking, he slid to his knees. With a bright grin on the small child's battered and beaten face, he picked them up. Each rattled and jangled, parts sliding and clanking in wrapped packages. The grin slightly fell at the unornate amount of noise they gave. With a frown, a slight dip of his heart, he began to open each one with the tearing of paper.

Having finished his father's diorama, the boy found a certain shared fondness for military miniatures, painting them, setting them up. He asked his mamma – or Father Christmas, rather - for a set of miniatures for "The Battle of Towton" and some paints so that he could make his own diorama. As he removed the blue wrapping paper with golden stars, his heart leapt at the cover of the set he saw in York with his Uncle Tom. But the floor rattled as pieces of aluminum scattered. The boy's face fell as he clutched squashed pikemen and broken knights. His bottom lip trembled as he took in the sight of it.

Someone had crushed, smashed, and broken, his present.

Tears began to form in his eyes again as he opened another present. He had also asked for a book - "The Hound of Baskerville" by Dr. Watson. As he tore open the wrapping, he found a leather-bound cover of the book he wanted, it's title glistening in the lights of the tree. But when he opened it, he found the pages warped, stained, and fused together. The paper inside clung, or even soggily tore in his hand.

Someone had taken his book and dunked it in boiling water.

There was a deep sorrowed look on the small boy's face as each present was the same. He got everything that he had asked for this Christmas. Even with his mother often threatening to telephone Father Christmas for months when he did not listen or react to what she asked of him. But no matter what it was, or who it was from, each was ruined. Someone had gone out of their way to completely destroy his presents, smashing, gutting, or boiling them. Even the gifts from Mr. Bates and Anna, Mr. Barrow, were destroyed, obliterated. He didn't know why someone would do that, why they broke and ruined his toys and books, but the tears of a bullied child began to fall. He clutched his diorama to his chest - a connection to his father - as teary eyes look about puzzled and forlorn. But something else - something worse - caught his eye.

There in the center of the rug, by the fireplace, next to his father's tall backed leather chair, was a clutter. They were crates, cases, and a familiar chest that were piled half-hazard and helter-skelter about Crawley House's study. The sound of the miniature set falling to the floor was followed by the slush of broken Yorkist soldiers as the boy bound to his feet. His limp was now more pronounced as he approached the many crates and cases. At first, he opened one slowly, cautiously, disbelief in his face. Then, faster, and faster, did the child open a crate, unsnap a case, go through the contents that fell or clattered to the floor. His action, going through everything inside, was desperate and manic. His eyes were wide and his head shaking, shock on his very beaten and broken face.

There had to have been some sort of mistake.

In each crate, case, and a familiar chest was every article of clothing, every toy, and every book, one small boy ever owned. But it was not just toys, books, and clothing. In the crates, stacked like unwanted chaff, was every picture that existed of the boy. Pictures of him as a baby - in front of the Trenwith Church in Cornwall with his Aunt Edith, Uncle Tom, Donk, Granny, and Grams at his christening. A picture of his mother holding him in her riding outfit when she raced at the Sinderby's Point-to-Point. He and Sybbie sitting down next to one another, shoulder to shoulder, on the couch in the library. His Aunt Edith holding Marigold as she sat by a piano, watching with a smile as he toggled a couple of keys when he was a toddler. It didn't matter what picture it was, if he was in it, they were in the crate of frames. But it didn't stop there. Every document, from birth certificate, medical files, Title of deed to Trenwith and Nampara, shares of Wheal Grace and Wheal Leisure - even pictures drawn in the nursery with his name on it. They could all be found in the crates and cases.

Everything, toys, books, clothes, pictures, and documentation … everything that proved that the boy ever existed in this world at all, lay piled, like garbage to be collected, at the center of the study.

A single tear fell on a golden furred teddy bear as the boy picked him out of his toy chest. He looked about at the accumulation of his life, everything that ever belonged to him. Taking the bear to his chest, he looked down at all of his ruined presents, the broken York Soldiers on the floor, the boiled books. Quietly, he closed the chest and walked out, unable to bear the sight of it.

He wandered into the hall, and there, with his teddy as companion, a lone small boy placed his back against the wall and slid down till he was sitting on the cold lacquer floor. Tears fell freely as he hugged the bear to his chest and wept bitterly. Fore it was clear now who had done this. It was why he had woken up in his father's room, why he was alone, why no one came when he called. It was why they had broken his presents and piled his very existence off to the side - It was so very clear now …

He had failed today.

It couldn't be anyone else, it had to be him. He had to run to the hospital to get the baby's medicine. It had been deathly cold, dangerous to a man grown, but Lady Mary Talbot had sent a small boy into the thick of it. All her hopes, all their hopes, had been placed on the son of Matthew Crawley – a man, a legendary figure in their own lore, who had saved them from utter ruin twice. And now it was the time of his only child to do the impossible, when no one else could. But when he returned, when he had in his hand the medicine that could save sweet and innocent Caroline Violet Talbot … he was five minutes too late.

They had watched a baby girl slowly faulter, watched her small chest wheeze out the last of her strength and go still in her crib. Yet, the most taunting, the most perverse folly of all, was watching both Mary and Thomas try everything to revive her, against all hope. And when it was over, to see that same small child sent out to be standing there, believing that he had succeeded with the medicine that could've saved the baby just minutes prior. It was in that moment, bereft of hope and in great trauma, all that helpless and misplaced wrath and blame, all their anger and malice had turned to a boy that proved that day that he was not Matthew Crawley … not by any measure. Everything they had done since then, since he had collapsed, ice cold, and barely breathing from some dark wind out of the North, had been done to send one lasting message.

They wanted no part of that orphan, of this useless 'Fool's Gold' any longer.

Yet, at the height of that boy's grief and shame, his tears halted. He sniffled and looked up from the furry face of his teddy. It suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten. That in his sorrow and confusion that there was something else, something rather important, that had slipped his mind. And as it became clear, he was so terribly frightened at the prospect of it. He immediately placed his teddy on the end table near the bust of Pallas. The stairs thumped as strong legs stamped feet back up to his father's – now his own – bedroom.

Some minutes later, the front door to Crawley House swung open. Into the gloom of the frigid midnight, a single gaslit lantern winched as a small figure in ripped and frost stained tweed coat – collar done up in the back – wandered into the darkness of the frosted front yard. The iced limbs upon the ivy trellises and plant stems were dreamlike in their glinted and sparkle - like diamonds in a cave - as the lantern light passed them on a boy's way to the green gates. A stubborn and ugly squeal of hinges carried down the still and quiet stone streets of the Village of Downton as a small boy pushed it open and stepped out into the night.

The foggy white of his breath sputtered as he lifted the lantern higher and surveyed the area with a frown. The neighborhood of tall stone houses was deathly silent, not a light on the sill nor a soul wandering about. The windows were as pitch of darkness as could be seen of the houses behind ancient stone walls. With every shuffle of his feet, he heard it echo down the cobble street for what seemed like miles. There was something eerie and different about the village that he could not put his finger on, fore, he had never felt such an empty and dark atmosphere that had so pervaded and thickly. Never had one felt so suddenly isolated from the world as the boy did in that moment.

With a nervous sigh, and a cold shudder, he continued on. His trek was a short one, fore he had only a minute's frigid walk to the right. On his journey, the winching lantern glared against the glass reflection of an announcement case in which tours of Downton Abbey were scheduled for late January to mid-February – reserve tickets were sold at "Bakewell's". These protected fliers were posted just outside of the place that the boy shuffled to, the ripped shoulder of his coat brushing against the bulletin as a small garden gate open and shut with a hollow squeak that reverberated down the stone streets.

For a long pause, lantern held high, the young boy stood at the mouth of the Downton Graveyard that was all about the ancient village church. A shudder of fear ran through the boy and out as a frothing breath. Though, unlike most children – perhaps even himself some weeks past – it was not the prospect of entering a graveyard at midnight that frightened him so. It was the idea, the very notion, that he would find something in there that he did not want to see. It was not ghouls, wights, wraiths, or zombie … but a simple name.

("Castle of Time" – Joe Hisashi)

Tall shadows of crumbling headstones, weed eaten crypts, and ivy wrapped memorial obelisks danced and flickered in the gas light that was shone. Small feet in worn and stained leather shoes crunched and crackled on frosted brambles and weeds as he moved off the stone path to the entrance of the church. The names of long dead Earls and their noble Lady wives were shown in the passing of lantern as well as blood shot and blackened cerulean eyes. Out of instinct, habit, more than consciousness, a small hand slid familiarly over a stone crypt surrounded by seven years of weeds. "Lady Sybil Cora Branson" had not yet began to fade, though frost caked the carved letters. But there was a consciousness to a boy that walked up slowly, reverently, to a memorial obelisk that was certainly as old as he had been – give or take a month or so.

The body of the man was not at Downton but had long since been settled to be buried in the Poldark Cemetery outside the ancient Trenwith Church in Cornwall with the rest of their family. But still, Lady Mary and Lord Grantham insisted that he had some representation in their own graveyard, somewhere that his boy could visit every day if he wished – back when they cared. Tiny bare fingers ate the pain of frigid stone on skin as a gentle index finger traced the name of "Matthew Reginald Crawley" on his memorial marker. The small digits picked out the crusted frost, and rooted out brown ivy, tossing it away. After a long moment, staring, his hand resting on the base of the monument, something moved in him.

"I'm sorry …" He whispered. "I – I really, tried …" A deep and terrible shame shadowed his small and roughed up countenance. "I didn't mean to let anyone down … especially you." He hung his head. "I just don't know what else could've been …" He was about to explain, but halted, nodding his head. "I know …" He retorted as if it had answered him in chastisement. "There's always an answer … if I was half the man you were, I guess I would've found it." He sniffed but did not cry – refusing to show weakness in that place of all sacred places.

"I'm sorry."

His hand trailed across his father's name; head bowed in contrition as he stalked onward. But he halted when a deep and terrible cold wind gusted, fluttering his waving blonde curls, and cutting through his torn jacket. He cringed, shielding his beaten face with a hand. But in that moment of knifing pain, he heard the sudden rickety cry of rusted metal. Looking up, he saw that in the distance, near the entrance of the church, there were twin lanterns hanging about a workstation. With a deep frown, he walked from his father's grave back onto the stone path to the front of the tall gothic church.

Before approaching, finding enough light needed, he set his own lantern down on the crypt of the Third Earl and walked up to the tall double doors in the out cove of ancient stone. As he got closer, it became increasingly easier and harder to see. It seemed to be a plaque of some sort, a stone mount with a gilded brass plate. However, he could not make out what it said, as the fresh finish on the gilded metal made it impossible to see what was written. The clap of his shoes filled the graveyard, pausing only to realize that the wind had turned and with it came the soft drizzle of snowflakes that began to fall freshly, dusting lightly his head and shoulders. He frowned when he approached the station, straining his eyes till he read a single name. Then, as the snow began to select waving blonde locks –

A young boy fell to his knees.

In Memorial of Caroline Violet Talbot

1926

The boy had thought that it had still been Christmas Eve, the night of that awful day. At worst he thought it Christmas Day, going on Boxing Day. But the truth of the matter had been that the boy had been in a black coma for a straight week. In that time, he had awoken at the chime of the New Year that had passed. It was now 1927. It had been days since his baby sister had been buried, somewhere he did not know. And all he had to mourn now was a simple brass plaque outside the village church. It was a poor replacement for one so innocent and filled with life.

He remembered every morning, waking up next to Sybbie to the sound of a loud and obnoxious caterwauling baby girl. She'd pull herself up to stand in her crib, and then she would scream. It would go louder and louder. And he would just lay there, hands behind his head in sloth, Sybbie burying her head under her pillow, sighing sleepily. Then, finally, their door would open, and Henry would appear. Without a word he'd give that same put-upon look, eyes begging a small boy under the covers with Sybbie. Then, he would smirk roguishly and slip out of bed in his pajamas. All he had to do was stick his head inside the nursery, and a scream would smoothly transition into a coy little gurgle. But if he dipped out too quickly, she would scream shrill cries, her little legs bouncing up and down. Yet when he came in again, and gave her 'that look', then would she give a shy playful giggle and sit back down and be content.

Every morning, rain and shine, illness or health, all she wanted was to see her big brother, to be acknowledged by him first thing, to know he was there … that he heard her.

Each night, before bed, he would race into the nursery as Mr. Bates and Anna would come to collect Little Johnny home. He would leap up on the tall railings of the crib and hang over the edge. The baby, with her soft hazel eyes and dowdy chocolate curls would squeal with sleepy delight as he leaned down and kissed her forehead, let her little hands tap and touch his cheeks as he made noises, feverishly pecking her temple. When he came up, she would give a big smile, grabbing a tiny foot as he said goodnight.

All those memories, all those feelings of love and joy, the remembering of what it was like to be wanted, needed, was welled up in the picture of a beautiful baby girl. A baby girl that he had not been there to hear her final breath, see her eyes close – wondering if she had been afraid, was saddened in not seeing him there, her brother, who had always been there when she needed him. The last time he saw her had been in Thomas's arms, carrying her down the corridor … but she was already sleeping. Now, he had not even been there to see her buried, his final and only chance, to kiss her temple and wish her goodnight one final time.

"I never got to say goodbye."

In that great moment of grief, the world fell away, and time seemed to stop. The late-night snow that began to fall in the shifting direction of the wind seemed stalled, floating weightlessly, suspended in the dark. The shadows of the precipitation were pronounced in the flickered lantern lights of the old gothic church, crossing against the stone walls.

And it was here, stepping out of the darkness, a figure let itself be known. It was a long and still silhouette, slender and stalwart. Tall boots crunched on frosted brambles and crushed weeds as they paced out from behind forgotten crypts and ancient obelisks. There was a rattle of gilded scabbard against thigh, a hand baring opulent rings resting on the pommel of a regal saber as the figure stepped behind the boy on his knees.

For a long time, he said nothing as the boy seemed lost to all sight and knowledge of the world. The swaying lantern lights caught in the snow laden winds sparked the gleam of dark eyes that carried wisdom, knowledge, and the madness of sorrow compounded in the burdened centuries that haunted a troubled soul. Yet, the darkness, the hatred, and the madness, seemed lessened, as they stared at the despaired creature at his feet. There was a familiarity, a kindred sympathy of loss, and a haunted startle of one who had passed a shadow of a former self. For a deep reflection in the sacred silence of the dark and abandoned graveyard, he considered the young boy.

"Did you know her, Pashchim Ka Aadamee?"

A steady and imperious voice asked, there was a hint of an accent that had lost its potency, but still lingered like an era past behind museum glass. The young child did not answer right away, caught in a trance of deep and soul scarring sadness. But eventually, beyond all hope, in the patience of the man who did not expect an answer right away, the boy quietly nodded.

"She was my-" He cleared his throat of a sob. "She was my sister, sir." He finally said in a quiet mournful voice.

The tall silhouette did not say a word, he only made a knowing, perhaps sympathetic, grunt, placing his hands behind his back, leg put forward. But he did not stare at the plaque, the baby's name, he stared at the boy. There was wonder and amazement in his eyes, and immediately did he glance thoughtfully at the small figure kneeling in the accumulating snows of early January – perhaps sizing him up. After a silence that seemed dominant, the figure behind the boy made a grunt and looked back to the plaque.

"They say, in your village, that you are dead …" The imperial figure stated. "Taken by a killing frost that was conjured by 'The Black Breath'." He nodded.

But after a long moment, he looked down when the boy did not answer. He could not see his face, for it was shaded by night, but there seemed to be a confusion, a puzzlement, as one that had forgotten that there was a world beyond the dark horizons of despair and grief that knew no end in the loss of one so beloved. Indeed, for a time, the boy had no concept of a world that had existed beyond this nightmarish hellscape in which he had lost everything - his home, the love of his family, and a baby sister. But no words could be found at the comment of the stranger.

"So, are you, Pashchim Ka Aadamee?"

" …"

"Are you dead?" He asked again, tilting his head.

"I don't believe so." The boy answered solemnly, thoughtful as a lilt of sorrow shadowed his beaten face. "I don't know much about death, sir." He continued. "But I heard that the pain stops …" there was a small nod. "So, if I am dead … I, uh, I don't think I did it right." He bowed his head mournfully with a sniffle, a single tear fell down his blackened eye, glimmering like a miniature crystal in the lamp light.

The stately figure only looked away, dignity in his face. "I know much of what you speak." He nodded. "But in the end, dead, alive – this is more than a state of being." His breath frothed thickly. "It is a state of mind, a state of choice." He turned sharply to the young figure. "Are you alive or are you dead, Pashchim Ka Assdamee?" there was a stalwart doom upon his steely voice.

Cerulean eyes looked deep at the name on the gilded plaque shadowed in the swaying lantern light. "I don't know …" He answered. "The pain is too strong for me to be dead …" he shook his head. "But after today, I don't know how to continue on." He bowed his head. "They've abandoned me. They don't want me anymore … My baby sister is dead … what am I going to do now?" He asked himself more than the mysterious figure. "What am I going to do?" reiterated in sorrow, a sob nearly breaking his voice.

The man looked out at the circular stained-glass window under the steeple of the gothic church. He made a contemplative noise and took a deep smoking breath.

"A boy's father once bought him a horse for his fourteenth birthday and everyone in the village said, 'Isn't that wonderful, the boy got a horse?' and the Zen Master said, 'We'll see.'" The figure began. "A couple of years later the boy fell from his horse, badly breaking his leg and everyone in the village said, 'How awful, he won't be able to walk properly.' The Zen Master said, 'We'll see.'" He continued, staring down at the despairing figure. "Then, a war broke out and all the young men had to go and fight, but this young man couldn't because his leg was still mauled and everyone said, 'How wonderful!' The Zen Master said ..."

"We'll See"

The boy finished for him.

The imperial figure's face was unreadable as he looked down at the youth. "The choice of what to do next is your fate, and your fate alone. You are not of the Eldar Race, your destiny and doom tied to this world, unchangeable. You are your own man, the master of your own destiny. You've lost today. Your sister, your family, and your home. There is a time to mourn, to grieve … but what you do next will define how these things will shape that destiny, Pashchim Ka Assdamee." He quirked an eyebrow.

"We'll see …" The boy repeated, maybe a bit more defiantly, stronger.

This amused the figure. "There are two narratives that are pervading your Imperium right now." The man stiffened. "The first: Is that being spread in Belgravia, Warrick Avenue, by the Dowager Lady Grantham. It tells of a troublesome child who prefers solitude and does not get along with his stepfather. A strange boy who goes into the woods alone and returns home at odd hours trailing twigs and fireflies, speaking of elves and ruins of ancient days. This is the same boy who was tasked with getting medicine for his baby half-sister and failed to do so out of incompetence or perhaps hoping to catch advantage in his cowardice … but what could one expect from an eccentric and unreliable creature? 'Fool's Gold' they call him in all the most privileged circles that his poor rich and beautiful mother belongs to." His brow furrowed.

There was a harsh tone that spoke with the voice of what was said among the aristocracy. It was a narrative, a story, spread to damage a young boy's reputation and a figure to point a finger, to give an effigy for the superficial outrages of the upper classes on behalf of their wronged queen, Lady Mary. Every tragedy – especially the most senseless of them – needed a villain. And, yet, all too easy had a single young boy – already different from the others of his age and class – fit so well in the crosshairs for the cathartic need of blame and hatred for a death so sudden and needless. And for a moment, the boy shrank underneath it, let its tar fill his heart and scorch it with shame and scorn. Though something visibly sharp took shape in his cowed cerulean eyes.

When the boy did not respond, the imperious figure continued. "The Second: Is a tale spun by the everyday people that live in this village, the tenants who farm this land – the miner and Pilchard fisherman of Cornwall. It tells of a troublesome child who prefers solitude and does not like his stepfather. A strange boy who goes into the woods alone and returns home at odd hours trailing twigs and fireflies, speaking of elves and ruins of ancient days. A boy who would not be bullied by his effete and snobbish mother – a woman who got more than she bargained for in a child who would not be dictated to by the matriarchal dogma of a vain old woman and her worshipful granddaughter."

"They tell a story of a household filled with adults whose focus was of glamor and finery for their opulent Christmas party. Yet, there was that same boy, the only one wise enough to realize that there was something wrong with his baby sister. And when they did not take his warnings seriously, he went to his butler, and showed him that his grandmother at the local hospital had given his baby sister the wrong dosage of medicine. Yet, they amazed me further to tell tale of a household in despair – a father of a baby girl frozen in his helplessness and grief. But in that moment, in a house full of adults, it was that odd young boy that put on his tweed riding jacket, his flat cap, The Countess's scarf, and his own mother's gloves and rushed out alone into a killing frost. A storm of the century – a once in a four-hundred-year weather phenomenon. It killed hundreds, men twice the boy's age and thrice his size. But he went out alone, not once, but twice. They say it was the bravest thing they had ever seen a child do. But alas, by minutes - mere minutes - was he too late when most grown men would be dead."

"Then, there came The Black Breath from the Old Fortress. Perhaps the weather, the killing frost, was not of the earth at all. They say that same young boy fell into darkness that very night. Cold as a corpse, his eyes darkened, and his breath slight and uneven. His family, filled with anger and spite – at the direction of a vain old crow who hated the boy – sent his icy body to his father's house, took all of his possessions, all memory of him, and crated it up. Like a Saxon barrow, did they dump it in what they thought would be his tomb. But the boy would not yield. Each day, waking up, thinking that today would be the day that they'd get the news of their exiled heir's death. Villagers, tenants, old friends and distant family from Cornwall stopping by in groups and parties to pay tribute to the boy's bravery – Lord Merton thanking each one as his wife despaired. She was told that her only grandchild, her only child left in the world, would not be allowed to be buried in the Grantham graveyards. But no matter how dark the hour, left alone as Grandmother and Step-Grandfather left to secure burial in Cornwall … the boy did not succumb, would not yield to the darkness, fighting till even evil itself was mastered by his will."

The man stepped closer to the light.

"And out of cold and darkness, from shadow and fear, from loss and grief … and triumph and victory, the time has come, Pashchim Ka Assdamee. They wait and see – all the lives you've touched and will touch, a thousand universes in the great music that your song will join too. What will it be? Life or death? Belgravia or the Tenants and Fisherman? Coward or Hero?" He questioned.

"Are you the Zen Master in this story?" There was a growing strength in the transforming boy's voice that had not been there before.

The man's lip twitched at what sounded like wit. "No. I merely heard a story … and I've come to see." He said. "Yet, there's an old saying – a very old saying – that says when the pupil is ready the master will appear." He stepped forward again.

"What are you offering?"

"You have been wronged yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Even now, they sit in splendor, weaving tales and dreaming plots of many days without you." He motioned his covered head toward Downton Abbey. "It will take time, dedication, and determination. But someday, you will have your day with those who sit and wait for your demise, who took your home and your life from you. What I offer is steel, knowledge, and honor in their use. I can show you many a splendid wonder that not an aristocrat in your empire had ever dreamed existed. By my side you will see things - ancient and forgotten - that will challenge everything you thought you knew of this world, that would shake the foundations of everything those people in your Abbey build their meaningless lives upon. With me, you will face and confront terrors and horrors that will test your mettle as a man, that would shatter the courage and feeble minds of those who have wronged you this day."

"Why do you want to help me?" He asked after a long pause.

"I too, once, lost everything. I was once upon my knees in the darkness as my palace burned and those whom I loved the most were taken from me. But I heard the music and followed it down dark and forgotten roads for near a century till by fate or chance they led me here to this cold and desolate countryside in the Kingdom of my enemies. And it is here I find myself confronted by my own shadow from where I started." Then he spoke solemnly.

"'Evil shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not it's uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite for he that attempteth shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful which he himself hath not imagined.'" there was something unguarded and musical in the wisdom of a passage, a verse, the boy did not fully comprehend, yet it resonated deeply within him. "There is a greater doom that walks near you, Pashchim Ka Assdamee, and by some greater plan or fate that I cannot decipher, I have been caught in its net." The man then, for the first time, stepped into the light.

He was tall - near seven feet. His skin was olive colored, perhaps darker in another life before he spent much of the rest of it below the depths of the ocean. He wore a distinguished and regal beard of white, like all of that mighty Sikh race. Upon his head was a turban of black silk, it was threadbare, and battle worn, with long wrappings falling in scarf like loops about his neck. He wore a long blue peacoat of supple cloth - accented by a sash of regality and station across his chest, pinned by a broach of gold that was in the design of the capitalized letter "N". At his side was sheathed a Rajput Sikh saber with a jewel encrusted hilt and handle fit for a king. But it was the man's eyes that would never be forgotten once you saw them. They were wild, piercing, and all seeing. After a century upon the waterways of the known and unknown world, this prince amongst men had forgotten nothing and forgiven none.

He was a madman that could rule an empire, whose voice could lead revolutions, and who inspired a fanatic loyalty from those whom he counted as dear as his brothers. But of the world of men he had long since lost all ambition, all hope. His hatred for humanity was only sated by his divorce from its comings and goings with no care of the rise and fall of its monsters and saints. He was a genius, a villain of old who conquered death itself. Yet, found no use in the ambition to rule the kennels of wild dogs that trod the land and call themselves enlightened. What he treasured most of all things was knowledge of the unknown. And of it he would learn by peace or take by force all the secrets of the universe which would be at his grasp.

"What I offer you, Pashchim Ka Aadamee, is a chance – just a chance – at something greater than any heirloom or ironed and starched path of peerage set before you … I offer you revenge on all those who wronged you today."

What was in a single word caused the boy to stir for the first time. He knew it, felt its pull. There was something enticing about it. In this world of darkness, in the frigid winter of his broken heart, such a thing was like fire, both light and warmth, in the desolation of all that was left of his fallen world. The man with the wild and piercing eyes could see the life stirred by the prospect, knew its pull in these darkest hours when it seemed that there was nothing left to lose. Such a thing, both terrible and dark, might be the only sustenance that could drive those such as him and the boy, those who had everything taken from them. It might be all that was left to sustain them, all they crave in the brightest day and blackest night.

And it seemed to the imperious figure that such a realization brought life to the lifeless. Fore, in that moment, the young boy came to the world again. Forgetting all sorrow, all helplessness, he rose to his feet without help nor hindrance of despair. He drew himself to full height – it was not much of one, but in his shadow and dignity a small boy seemed a giant. Slowly he turned to face the Sikh pirate.

The boy was now unrecognizable.

("Hello, I'm James Halliday" – Alan Silvestri)

Gone was the small child that had cried for his Grandmother's help, whose heart broke at his ruined Christmas Presents, and who mourned the stack of his memories piled in his father's study. That boy had gone alone into the graveyard like a beaten and battered animal goes into the woods to die. There the small child had fell by his sister's memorial and was slain. No one saw him die, no one was there to mourn him. Now, what took his place was someone new, haunted, hardened, and angry. He was a figure that was sentimental to all toys, yet, had no more use for them. He proudly displayed his books, but those he would read from now on had knowledge, had instruction, and meaning to sharpen a mind whose will was bent to a single purpose. The crates of sailor outfits, little silk ties, and short pants would be gone – everything bought by Lady Mary Talbot to coordinate with her own wardrobe would be burned in effigy as if it was heresy. Even his look seemed different – a child still, small, equal in strength of body. But all innocence of childhood was lost forever. Haunted would his cerulean eyes be, hardened to unbendable steel that would not break. Still his face would remain exceedingly fair to behold and noble to trust – but ever his countenance would be grim and seemingly bereft of all joy.

Newly baptized, risen from the ashes of despair, he made purposeful steps to the unmovable figure that seemed momentarily amazed by what he beheld. The boy paused and looked into the madman's eyes. For a long time, they stared at one another, into one another's very souls it seemed. The man unflinching at the steely cerulean glance, the boy undaunted by the darkness that lay at the center of a century's worth of forgotten and ancient knowledge in an elemental gaze. Finally, without fear, the boy spoke.

"I don't want revenge."

"Indeed …" The man spoke in puzzlement, not expecting such an answer from one who was offered the world.

And it was in wonder that he beheld the young apprentice. He could've sworn that the idea, the satisfaction, of revenge against all those who would slander him was what brought him back to life. But in that hour it was with great amazement that he beheld of just who it was he found in this graveyard, what manner of creature was this who found his world destroyed, and yet, would not seek to punish those who most believed was to blame for it.

"Then, what is it that you are looking for?" He asked with a glare. At the question, a glimpse, a phantom of the boy he had been was shown as he looked down, cowed.

"The narratives, the things that people are saying about me …" He replied, still looking to his feet. "The hero, the coward, bravery, or incompetence …" He shook his head as he listed them.

"Yes." The Sikh frowned.

"I don't …" He looked up. "I don't know the answer." He shook his head again. "I don't know which one is true. I don't know what I am." He glanced back at his sister's name on her gilded plaque. "You promised wonder I've never dreamed, things that would shake my faith in the knowledge of this world, and danger that would test my courage, my manhood." The boy interrogated.

"I did."

It seemed an eternity that he mulled over such things, before looking up again and giving a nod. "Then, maybe, at the end of it all …" He paused. "Maybe, then, I'll know which story is true – who I really am." He turned back to the Sikh.

There was a long pause before, slowly … a lined and amused grin came over the fierce old warrior's countenance.

"Follow me, Pashchim Ka Aadamee, and we'll find out together." The man held out his hand to the small boy.

"Nemo, Captain of the Nautilus."

Shadowed against the memorial obelisk of Matthew Crawley were two silhouettes that with a single clasp of a handshake changed the destiny of a family.

"Crawley, George Crawley."

---

Entr'acte Music

"Jukebox Hero" – Foreigner