AN: Thank you for everyone that sent me prompt ideas/scenes they wanted to see extended. I am working through those. However, this one wouldn't leave me alone and since it fits the miscarriage storyline I thought it was best going next.

Please leave reviews, and please feel free to leave prompt ideas in the reviews or PM me with them. Cobert love to you all.

It wasn't the first time he had thought about their son. He doubted it would be the last. But it was the first time, since the day the baby had been lost, that he had felt so consumed by it.

He felt bad. Thinking about it now. It seemed very backward to be thinking about his son only as a reminder of the once more shattered entail.

Matthew was going to be unable to have children.

They had come full circle.

How different things would have been if he had fathered a son. If their son had lived.

It was not a thought he tried to have. Accidents happened. There was nothing that could be done about it. But the fact remained that as the entail hangs once more in the balance, his lost son had resurrected in his thoughts with a clear question of 'what if?'

He didn't like that it took the entail to remind him. He knows that this is somewhat selfish. He should be thinking about his lost son because his life had been stolen from him, not because he would have solved a raft of problems.

"Darling what are you thinking about?" Her words startle him and he speaks the truth before he has a moment to think.

"Our son." She furrows her brow and he watches the darkness settle over her face. It was the same darkness that had clouded her eyes for months after the miscarriage. Months. It had never really vanished for a significant amount of time until the house had become a convalescent home. She slides into the bed beside him silently and slips her arm across his chest. Her circling fingers don't offer any comfort. He sighs. "Matthew can't father any children."

"I had realised that." She adjusts her position so she can look at him. Her hand slides comfortingly up his chest. He should have known that she would have thought about it. She might be a woman, but she was a married woman. "Do you think about him often?"

"I try not to. Do you?"

"Sometimes." Her finger circles one of his pyjama buttons. It twists around and around. He watches. His thoughts a million miles away. The pain had been unbearable for him. But for Cora he knew it must have been worse. Not because she loved their son any more than he had, but because she had been the one that had felt their son move within her. She had shared her body with him. It was a link he would never have. Then she had given birth to him, knowing all the while that their baby was already dead. "He would have been four this year."

"Do you ever imagine what he might have been like?" He isn't sure why he asks the question. To continue to dwell on such a topic was morbid and pointless. The past was the past. But life was a constant stream of death and heartbreak at the moment and there was something almost comforting about settling into an old pain. One that wasn't burning and scorching anymore. It was just there, a dull ache. He was also curious about how far her thoughts of their son went and whether they went as far, or further than, his own.

"I try very hard not to."

"But when you do?" He watches as she visibly swallows.

"He's like you. Blue eyes, that hazelnut mop of hair, a serious expression and a kind heart. He's completely spoiled, what with having three adult sisters and his parents being completely besotted. But somehow, like Sybil, he's too serious and kind to be truly spoiled. He would have helped Edith with the officers, going around and giving them their books and letters. As he grew he would have grown more concerned about the responsibilities of Downton, fearful that he wouldn't do as well as his Papa." She stops. Seemingly running out of breath. Her eyes have dropped from his. He can tell she is embarrassed as well as upset. He's upset too. He can feel the tears prickling in the corners of his eyes. Her imaginings are so deep he can practically see the little boy she describes as if he is someone they know. He takes her hand from where is still fidgets with his buttons, squeezing it firmly. She looks up at him and her eyes are glassy.

"Anything else?" His voice almost cracks but he just about manages to hold it together.

"He's a little shy. He's more reserved than the girls. It's almost as though having been surrounded only by adults his whole life he's grown up quickly. I always imagine him walking with his hands behind his back." They lapse into silence as she finishes speaking. Robert's head is filled with her imaginings. It had never occurred to him that she might have such a deep attachment to the idea of their son. He knew she would think of him, just as he thought of him. But to have imagined such a great many of his character traits, he couldn't imagine how painful that might be. He had always limited his thoughts to what it would have been like to have a son. He had never given much thought to what his son might have been like. Not beyond possibly wondering if he would have dark hair like Cora's. He doesn't know what to say, so he wraps his arms around her so she can come to rest against his chest. He kisses the top of her head. "Do you think about him?"

"Not like that. I think about what it would have been like to have a son. To have a young boy in this house who would be growing up to become the Earl. I wonder how his experiences might have differed from my own. But I don't see him like you do. I don't imagine him like that."

"Maybe it's because I held him. I saw him. He stopped being an enigma." He kisses the top of her head again. He had never asked for the specifics of that moment, beyond what she had divulged - the perfection of his tiny fingers and toes and his overall minuscule size.

"Maybe, maybe." She kisses the curve of his neck. Seemingly trying to settle into some of their normal sleep pattern and leave the horrors of the past behind. They were living with enough horrors in the present. Maybe that was why there was comfort in imagining the impossible. In conjuring up images of a life that could have been and an escape from the realities of now. The horror that had been and gone and was now largely healed was easier to live with. "My imaginings are simpler than yours. I never think much beyond him having your hair. The dark striking beauty of his mother." He kisses her head again and she hums in soft contentment. He knows that's her silent acceptance of his compliment. "And his name. I think about the years we spent waiting for him. For our Edward William." He stops. His throat closes over the lump in his mouth. They had never spoken the name out loud since he had been born. The name had been discussed during Cora's pregnancy with Mary. It had never changed. But they have never spoken the name aloud in relation to their lost son.

"Do you ever go to the grave?" At Cora's request their son had been buried in the family plot at the church, near his grandfather. A small stone had been placed to mark his resting place with a simple inscription of Master Crawley 1914. Robert had never visited. The war had come along and his grief for their son had been passed over, others in the world were facing far greater loss than he was, and it seemed wrong to wallow in it.

"No. Do you?"

"Only if I think about it when I pass by." They lapse into a silence again. He draws her further into his arms, knowing that the emotion churning in the room is best pushed away by holding each other tightly. "He would have been loved, he is loved, that's what has to matter now." Her words are murmured somewhere near the curve of his neck. He kisses the top of her head in agreement with her sentiment. He can sense that she is not going to move, she would be falling asleep resting against him tonight and he was happy about that. They undoubtedly wouldn't wake like that, but it gave him comfort to feel her physically beside him, keeping him fixed in this current moment in time and allowing his emotional thoughts to be put to rest.