AUTHOR'S NOTE: Firstly, happy Hannuka and Merry Christmas to everybody who celebrates this week!
Secondly, I don't even know how to apologise properly for disappearing from the surface of the earth again and leaving you all waiting for so long for an update to any of my stories. I found it hard to find time and motivation to work on them properly, but I never forgot them and you, and I hope to post several more over Christmas holidays. The Heiress chapter is halfway done, at least, and I am working on my poor, neglected Time Traveller's War. I promise they are not abandoned and they will be finished.
As for this one, it's nearly done. There is only one chapter left, although I am toying with a thought of an epilogue which would cover some of S3 plot points. Either way, I hope you will enjoy wrapping up this wild story.
Matthew takes his first steps post Amiens on a rainy day in May.
They make him both elated and feeling pathetic in a one dizzy mix. He takes four steps by himself – four! – but he leans heavily on parallel bars to do so and he's ready to collapse after it, his legs killing him and threatening to wilt under him. Yet his nurse and his doctors are cheering, and Mary has tears in her eyes when he tells her about it later.
"Matthew," she whispers, her voice audibly choked. "Matthew."
"It's nothing," he insists, embarrassed, but unable to bury a hope burning in him like a forest fire.
They might have been only four pathetic steps, but he did walk.
He walked.
It's a good thing he's lying in their bed by now, Mary in his arms, because he again feels dizzy at that thought.
Still, it's good, obviously – marvellous, really – but it doesn't guarantee anything. It doesn't guarantee that he's ever going to be whole again.
"What if it's the farthest it will go?" he asks, blinking hard to stop himself from tearing up like a baby. Good thing Mary has seen him worse.
"Then we will be as happy as we are now," answers Mary calmly, with no hint of hesitation, and he loves her so, so terribly much. "But with you upright for even a little bit every day, your risk of blood clots at least should be smaller."
"I just want to be a full husband to you," he confesses helplessly, earning himself an immediate glare from his wife.
"Still?" she asks, with an eyeroll. "Haven't we been through that? You are a full husband to me. I hoped you accepted that fact long ago."
No, he didn't, not fully. He tried – he did his very best to accept his condition and believe that Mary finds him enough as he is now – but it doesn't mean he succeeded. At best he got resigned to it, a state ruined by the surge of hope he's been dealing with in recent months. He doesn't think he ever could be wholly reconciled to his disability or stop longing for things to be different. To be able to dance with his wife, carry her to their bed and make love to her as they did on their honeymoon. To teach his daughter how to play cricket, ride a horse and a bicycle (even if teaching Irene how to ride a horse was probably best left to her mother, not that he was ever going to admit it to Mary).
To give Mary another child.
No, he hasn't stopped longing for any of it and a hundred smaller things yet and he's certain he never will. He's making do, gritting his teeth if he must, because he doesn't have another choice and wishing for a different reality is pointless and only will lead him straight back into the despair he barely crawled out of. But now, when there seems to be a hope for a full recovery… It's hard, so terribly hard to accept anything less than that. He's not sure he will be able to.
He remains silent too long for Mary's limited patience with him.
"Matthew," she says seriously, "it's going to be alright, whether you regain full use of your legs or not. I want you to recover as much as possible, of course I do, but it won't change how I feel about being your wife. Nothing will change that."
He swallows, his throat suddenly dry and scratchy, and closes his eyes. All the missing moisture from his mouth appears to have gone there.
"I love you so terribly much, do you know that?" he says desperately, his arms tightening around her.
"I know," she says, and he feels her slender hand rest on his chest, just over his heart. "And there's no one else I would ever want to be with."
xxx
It's funny to hear a growl of frustration very like his own coming from his baby daughter, struggling to learn how to lift her head.
"Oh, I know, baby girl," says Matthew amidst laughter. "I know very well. But you will conquer this and so will I. Eventually."
Irene doesn't look convinced – he hasn't realised how sceptical a baby can look – but she gamely lifts her head again from the mattress of her crib. She manages it for a few triumphant if shaky seconds, before it falls down again with a soft thud and an annoyed mewl.
Matthew nods solemnly from his wheelchair parked by the side of the crib, even as his mouth's corners are twitching in amusement.
"You'll get it, princess," he promises again. "Both of us will."
xxx
Sybil passes her exams with flying colours and is subsequently admitted to Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. Robert is visibly disheartened after getting the news, but orders Barrow to bring the champagne anyway.
"I suppose we might as well celebrate your achievement," he tells beaming Sybil grimly. "Even if your goal is to throw your life away."
Sybil, too elated by her success and her father's tacit approval, however begrudgingly given, throws her arms around him in a hug.
"I am going to live the life I want," she tells him, her eyes shining with joy and conviction. "I only throw away what is meaningless to me."
Robert sighs, long suffering, but hugs her back tightly.
"You better write to us more often from Dublin than you did from France," he says, obviously trying for a stern tone, but missing the mark widely, the reprimand coming out more fond than anything. "Your mother is going to miss you," he shakes his head and admits thickly. "We all will."
"I will miss you all terribly too," says Sybil, releasing Robert to look at the whole family gathered in the drawing room. "But Dublin is not at the end of the world. We will write and visit, as often as we can."
Mary swallows against sudden thickness in her throat. Sybil has been spending most of the last few months in London with her tutors, but Mary is very keenly aware of the difference between having her there, four hours train ride away, and the whole way away in Dublin, busy with her studies and her new husband. She's glad for Sybil, fiercely glad, but already feels the shadow of missing her even more fiercely when she goes.
"You can all visit Ireland for my wedding," continues Sybil, giving Robert a challenging look. He still hasn't declared if he's going to attend.
"We will see," mutters Robert, clearly unwilling to commit to any action still. But he doesn't voice any protest against anyone else going, and Sybil takes it for a victory it is, even if Mary knows how deeply she wants to have them all present there, to have Robert walk her down the aisle.
"Are you sure having the Earl of Grantham there wouldn't make one of the other guests bring a bomb instead of a wedding gift?" asks Violet dryly. "From what I hear, those Irish radicals are easily provoked."
Sybil flinches.
"They have reasons for their anger," she defends instantly. "And I don't believe any of Tom's family would bring violence to his wedding."
Which is an admirable but probably undeserved sentiment, thinks Mary cynically, especially since Sybil hasn't even met any of them.
Nonetheless, she is going, and so are Matthew and Edith. Irene as well, come to think of it, although obviously nobody is asking her to make her own choice on it. Mary just hopes dearly that her daughter is going to bear the sea crossing with equanimity. Cora is still waiting, probably assessing her husband's mood before declaring her intentions, and Violet, to nobody's surprise, is staying put.
"It's all very well to keep face and frame that unfortunate business in the best possible terms to outsiders," she said before and that was her final words on the subject. "But it wouldn't do to go so far as to admit we condone it."
xxx
In early June, Matthew stands up with the crutches. His legs feel dangerously wobbly, his arms are so strained they are trembling, but he is standing, and when he looks up at the visiting Dr Coates, he grins so widely he thinks his cheeks may burst. Dr Coates' smile is nearly just as wide.
"Good job, Mr Crawley," he praises, rubbing his chin in satisfaction. "Terribly good job. Haven't I told you that we're going to get you out of your chair? Now, we need to get on with the business of getting you to walk."
The hope in Matthew's chest is a beast too enormous for him to be able to even pretend to contain it.
xxx
Walking, as it turns out, is not easy. As Matthew grumbles at great length to Mary and William, the only people in the know besides the team of sadists posing as his doctors and nurses. Now that he can get upright, he's beyond impatient to get back to normal, and yet his bloody legs are not cooperating in the slightest.
"It's like trying to get leaden weights to move," he complains as they're having their afternoon tea in their cosy living room after he comes back from physiotherapy session in York. A scowl turns his mouth downwards in the expression which used to make his mother threaten him that it's going to stay that way. "I can swing them when I push the crutches forward, but that's about it. This is not walking."
"Maybe not," shrugs Mary, with astonishing lack of empathy for his struggles. "But you still got around the hospital room twice this afternoon. However you call it, you are still back on your feet."
Matthew's scowl deepens. Mary is right, of course she is right, but as much as he yearned to get where he is now when rising up from his chair seemed nothing more than a pipe dream, now it is nowhere near enough.
"I just want to be normal," he says plaintively. "I want to walk."
Walk, run, jump, dance, ride his bicycle, drive a car – everything he used to take for granted, then mourned as lost forever. Now, when the possibility of getting it back hangs tantalisingly just beyond his grasp, everything in him screams to get it back. He thinks he may cry like a baby when he actually gets to play cricket again.
If he gets to play cricket again, which he won't, if he never gets further than swinging his useless legs on crutches. He scowls again at the thought.
Mary, in another heartless display, calmly takes another sip of her tea.
"You will walk again," she says matter-of-factly. "Dr Coates says so. You simply must be patient until it happens."
Simply! As if any of it was simple! Matthew has a biting retort on the tip of his tongue but then he sees the smirk Mary is hiding behind her teacup. He sighs heavily instead.
"Care to explain why you're trying to provoke me, darling?" he asks, put upon.
Mary's smirk grows more pronounced.
"You were dangerously close to self-pity," she tells him blithely. "I saw no need to coddle you too."
When he glares at her, crossing his arms over his chest, she relents a bit and looks at him more gently.
"You're making wonderful progress, Matthew. Dr Coates is so proud of you. I am so proud of you. You're the only one who's dissatisfied with your progress."
"Yes, because I am the one living with it," says Matthew, but some of his petulance and irritability dissipate under Mary's gaze. Again, he knows she is right – that what he has already achieved is so much more than he was capable of mere weeks ago – but it's so woefully pathetic when he feels so close to putting it all behind him.
"I want to be normal again," he repeats, more weary than petulant now.
Mary lies her slim hand on his forearm.
"I know," she says, and Matthew knows that it's true, that if anyone understands what he's feeling it's Mary. "I want to be normal again too. But Matthew – it may not be something which is possible, for either of us. Even if you walk one day."
It rankles, it rankles so much, but she's right again, of course. Everything in Matthew rebels at the thought, but deep inside he cannot deny the truth of it. What they went through, what they witnessed there, what they did, it all changed them, irrevocably so. However his recovery progresses, however Mary's still terrible sleep improves, they are never going back to who they were before the war started. It's not the kind of innocence one is able to regain, for all that neither of them considered themselves innocent back then. He sometimes wants to laugh when he thinks back to his pre-war self and all his naive optimism regarding humanity and the world, all his rigid convictions.
He would give anything to be that young man again. To not know how it feels to have killed a man, to not know that he is capable of it.
He looks up at this wife and sees the same regret in her dark eyes.
He would give even more if he could help her lose it forever.
He imagines sometimes what kind of people they would have been without the war or that blasted Turk in their lives. If they simply had fallen in love and married, to the joy of their family. The simple life he had once upon a time imagined for them, one where neither of them would know the kind of strength they are capable of, but also one where they wouldn't have a need for it. Where they wouldn't know quite how far they're willing to go to survive, to make sure that the other will.
But would their love be the same if not honed by fire?
It would have been a nice life, muses Matthew. A happy one. He doesn't expect that he will ever stop regretting that they didn't get the chance to experience it. And yet, looking into Mary's understanding eyes, he can't deny her point. There is no way for either of them to be truly normal again, but that they are both changed, that they are in this post-war world together as they were during it, is a reward in itself.
Which doesn't change the fact that he wants to walk again so terribly much.
xxx
He does, several weeks later. He needs two canes to support himself, but he does, shuffling his heavy, cumbersome, uncooperative feet. When he looks up at his nurse and the York doctor, they answer his triumphant smiles with the beaming ones of their own.
That night, when Mary enters the living room before dinner, Matthew gets up from the chair to greet her. It's a slow, painstaking process, but not only he succeeds but, canes gripped tightly in both hands, he walks towards her to offer her his arm and accompany her to the dining room. He basks in the look in Mary's eyes as they fill with tears of happiness and her hand flies to her mouth in amazement.
"Matthew," she whispers, incredulous. "Matthew."
He gives her a cocky grin and tilts his elbow in her direction, cursing inwardly the cane which stops him from offering his hand as he would like to.
"Shall we?" he asks, and something in Matthew which has been broken for months settles a little at the feel of Mary's hand in the crook of his arm as they slowly make their way together.
After that, there is no need to keep the rest of the family in the dark about the extent of his recovery, and they are both giggling and excited like a pair of children when they travel the short distance between the Countess' Cottage and the Abbey. Matthew is in his chair, which William pushes, as usual, and Mary walking by his side, but he grips his two canes in his lap, all ready for the grand surprise.
It feels good to have a happy one to offer.
They are the last to arrive, purposefully so, and all the eyes turn to them when they enter the drawing room and stop by the fireplace.
"Good to finally see you," says Violet acerbically, looking significantly at the clock. "Any longer and we would need smelling salts for Mrs Patmore over the necessity to postpone serving dinner. She's never done well with having her schedule disrupted."
Cora raises her eyes heavenwards.
"Mama, even the most accommodating of cooks is not going to be able to do much when some dishes are cooling too much and the others boil for too long," she gently chides. "Mrs Patmore plans all her steps precisely so the food is perfect."
Before their discussion can escalate – Violet has that dangerous look in her eyes and Isobel looks all too eager to join and stir the pot – Mary claps her hands.
"Excuse us for our tardiness, everyone, but it couldn't be helped. Matthew was preparing a surprise for you all."
There are some surprised gasps when William hands Matthew his canes, hidden discreetly by the back of his chair, but they are nothing to the shock of him getting up and walking a few steps closer to them causes.
"My boy!" exclaims Isobel tremblingly, her voice full of tears. "My darling, darling boy!"
Matthew looks at her, lost for words for once in her life, and feels the overwhelming wave of love and gratitude towards her for everything she's done in the last year to help him, even when he was more resentful than receptive of her efforts. He slowly walks towards her, soaking in incredulous happiness his every step evokes in her.
"I think you might have forgotten how tall I am, mother," he says teasingly. "After all, it's been some time since you saw me standing."
It's too much for her to stay seated and she jumps from the sofa to embrace him, careful not to unbalance him.
"Oh, my darling boy!" she exclaims again. "Why haven't you said anything?"
Her question is echoed by several of the others, and Matthew glosses over his initial fears by claiming they wanted to surprise them. He tells his conscience it is mostly the truth, even if his mother is giving him a look clearly stating that she knows he is hiding something.
Dinner is late that evening, but nobody cares, according to Barrow not even Mrs Patmore, not in the face of such a miracle concerning Lord Grantham's heir and Lady Mary's husband. Champagne is brought up again, and Matthew can't remember when the dining room at Downton was filled with so much of pure joy.
It gets only slightly shattered by Robert, unwittingly and predictably.
"How far is your recovery supposed to go, my boy?" he asks eagerly, clearly forgetting delicacy in his relief and glee. "Can we expect a brother for Irene after all?"
Cries of "Robert!" and "Papa!" echo through the sudden silence in the room, and Matthew uses all his formidable will to keep himself from wincing at the question. To say that Robert managed to hit him in the most vulnerable of places would be a severe understatement, but the last thing Matthew wants is to discuss that part of his recovery in the crowded dining room, with the whole family present.
"We will have to see," he answers, with a somewhat forced smile, and reaches for his wine. He rather thinks he deserves some. "But Dr Coates remains optimistic about all aspects of my recovery."
Robert, sheepish and chastised, blessedly doesn't make any further enquiries on the topic.
It doesn't stop Mary from spitting fire when they are finally alone in their own bedroom later that night.
"How could he!" she rages, pacing the room angrily. "After all he said about being happy with Irene too!"
"He didn't mean it like that," says Matthew placatingly, even though he suspects that Robert actually did. Irene has him wrapped around her tiny finger, there's no doubt about that, but deep in his heart of hearts Robert Crawley is never going to stop wishing for an heir of his blood. Still, he doesn't want Mary to be hurt by it. "You know he adores her."
Mary purses her lips stubbornly.
"It's not enough," she says bitterly. "Not when neither she nor I are ever going to be enough for him."
As much as it pains him to hear her in such sorrow, Matthew can't help being distracted by the more immediate and personal implications of Robert's question.
Namely, his own inadequacy as a husband, whatever Mary says.
While quite a lot of feeling returned to his groin with the return of it to his legs, there is no escaping the fact that things are not back to working order down there. To put it plainly, he can't seem to get hard, no matter how pleasant Mary's caresses or his own desperate hand feel. He can't get rid of a persistent fear that this is the one effect of his injury which is never going to get better.
Mary, either desperate for distraction from her own gloomy thoughts, or reading some of his unhappy reflections on his face, walks decisively over to join him in bed.
"You had to practice to get your legs to work, didn't you?" she asks, and there is a gleam in her eyes which sends a current of warmth through Matthew's body.
"I still have to," answers Matthew cautiously, wondering if she is going in the direction his own brain is taking him at both that look and her closeness. Her iris and vanilla perfume fill his nose and make his stomach clench in the most pleasant of ways. "Dr Coates said I have months of physical therapy still to get rid of those canes."
Mary's lips twist in a slight smirk. A downright naughty one.
"Well, I don't think it unreasonable to assume that you should practice other activities than walking too," she says, all reasonableness. "And as it happens, I don't mind helping you with it."
With that said, she dives eagerly under the blankets, and it doesn't take long for Matthew to lose any ability to focus on morose thoughts at all.