Downton Abbey Comment Ficathon

[dollsome]

With the new season upon us, and fandom all extra-enthusiastic, I figured now would be a great time for this. Because there can never be enough Downton Abbey fic, and there certainly isn't enough now!



Rules

1. All prompts must be for Downton Abbey. Which ... duh. :)

2. One prompt per comment, and please format your comment along the lines of: "[Pairing or character(s)] - [prompt]." Feel free to submit as many prompt-comments as you'd like. The more the better!

3. If you respond to a prompt, include the pairing/character(s) and a title in the subject line of your comment.

4. If your fic's got an R/NC-17 rating, please indicate as much in the comment subject line as well.

5. No spoilers for upcoming episodes, please!

6. PARTY ON, DOWNTONITES.



If you'd like to spread the word:

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Masterlist of Responses

Mary/Matthew - I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back by oltha_heri - "Tell me not to go through with it."

Cora & Edith - slipping through my fingers all the time by hacash - It shames her to say this, but she’s not looked at her second daughter for some five or six years now.

Lavinia & Mary - Damaged by promisethis - As Lavinia sobbed into her arms, Mary held her gently knowing that this is what Matthew would've wanted.

Thomas/Edward - To A Happier Year by dollsome - "I can arrange it," the Lady Sybil promises, and to her credit, she does.

Thomas, Sybil, & Edward - The Unexpected by espressolast - It’s not what she expects.

Sybil/Branson - Still Here by inafadinglight - She sees the way Mary looks at Matthew when she thinks he isn't looking, with a kind of soft sadness that speaks to a persistent internal ache, and she once thought she'd never understand it.

Sybil/Branson - Don't you worry there, my honey by tr1st3ss3du3r4 - There is a difference between being a nurse in wartime and being a nurse in peacetime.

Carson/Mrs. Hughes - Our love was comfortable, and quite broken in by hacash - You have never addressed her as anything other than ‘Mrs Hughes’; to your knowledge she has never spoken of you as other than ‘Mister Carson’.

Sybil/Branson - I love how it hurts by hacash - When everyone else is bustling over dinner, laying the table and polishing silverware as if it’s England’s last defence, he sneaks into Mister Carson’s study.

Sybil/Branson, Thomas - This fate could have been avoided if she'd had a sassy gay friend by espressolast - Branson held the door open for her as she descended, deferential in the transitional space between daughter of an earl and low-ranking nurse.

Sybil/Branson - Things best left unsaid by frostyblossom - She saw it coming.

Mary & Sybil - Playing Favourites by xx_pinkstar - Sybil is born on a sunny day in the height of August when even the consistently gray England is engulfed in heat and the slightest breeze is seen as sweet relief.

Violet & Isobel - Getting Along (and scaring everyone else in the process) by frostyblossom - “Lady Grantham!” Isobel addressed the Dowager with a happy, almost exuberant grin.

Matthew/Lavinia - Ask the Stars by fleasonparade - He can't move. He absolutely cannot move.

Sybil/Branson - the sky is getting heavy tonight by thewindwarns - Mary teaches her how to flirt and Edith demonstrates when not to; she is charming enough on her own accord and for that, Sybil never worries about her prospects.

Anna & Mary - The Midnight Vigil by hacash - On the third night of her vigil, she finds she has company.

Robert/Cora - Why the Earl of Grantham should never be allowed into his own kitchen by hacash - Robert stood there – rather pathetically, it has to be said, under the circumstances – and attempted to look manly and unafraid under the wilting stare of his wife.

Violet & Kemal Pamuk -- His Night Will End Well by espressolast - “Mr. Pamuk,” said the Dowager Countess of Grantham after dinner, “I wonder if I might have a word,” she turned to her son: “Robert, do excuse us, a moment, I would like to ask after a friend.”

Branson, Bates, William (and Carson) - Boys Night Out by frostyblossom - Carson squeezed at the bridge of his nose and screwed shut his eyes. He was getting far too old for this.

Edith - Wardian Case by thewindwarns - Sybil has causes and Mary, well Mary has (nearly) everything. Edith knows, however, that beauty fades and passion dies out.

Matthew/Mary - As We Forgive Our Debtors by frostyblossom - She will not look at him. She will not cry. He will know her shame, and he will not forgive her.

Mary & Lavinia - Love and Life Ever After by emstapole - You stand there, in one of the front rows, watching Lavinia in white, walking slowly down towards the front, and you know she wishes she was elsewhere, that it was someone else to whom she was walking.

Sybil & Thomas - Newfound lonesome by duckface666 - After getting Carson settled, but before her Mother could instruct someone to lock the door for the night and prevent any of her children from scattering, Sybil slipped out of the house and walked back down to the hospital.

Thomas & O'Brien - after Lt. Courtenay's suicide by duckface666 - She comes out for a cigarette when he calls and he knew she would because her nicotine habit is more pronounced than even his – which they tell themselves – and she’s always been there to help him, like the phantom of the big sister he never had.

O'Brien & Vera - First Meeting by duckface666 - When Mr Bates burst out of Mrs Hughes sitting room, looking frankly rather alarming and she would have been scared had she been some daft girl like Daisy and not Sarah O’Brien, she can’t help but wonder what happy circumstance has led to this.

Mary/Branson - I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you by tr1st3ss3du3r4 - It isn't that he could be anyone - she has great difficulty forgetting who he is, his position, his obvious attachment to her sister - but there are times when she is just glad to be enveloped in someone's arms.

Thomas/Edward, Dr. Clarkson - their spirits must be lifted by thewindwarns - There are ghosts that follow men back from the front: allies and enemies and innocents, names and faces to haunt you, waking and dreaming.

Mary & Edith - Things We Cannot Change by inafadinglight - War changes things.

Sybil/Branson - Branson has a cold by tr1st3ss3du3r4 - He would have expected more sympathy from a nurse.

Downton Abbey from Pharoah's POV by tr1st3ss3du3r4 - All of these people. All of them.

Branson - Malevole by dizzy_whore - Sometimes he was unsure as to whether he wanted to destroy the world or celebrate it- to follow Coleridge or Collins.

Tom Branson and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week (Part 1, Part 2) by frostyblossom - The idea came in a flash of brilliance (or rather a glob of oil) that struck like lightening in his mind (or rather splattered ignobly onto his nose).

Comments

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Anna/Bates - Years may go by

[snowfire.livejournal.com]

Mary/Matthew - I don't have a choice but I'd still choose you

i wish you'd hold me when i turn my back | mary/matthew

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

First, THE CIVIL WARS! Second, awesomely appropriate line choice. Third, fic, sorry it is so short.

"Tell me not to go through with it."

He stands before her. And once upon a time she might've thought him a fitting petitioner for her but now it takes everything in her self control not to get on to her knees before him and hug his waist and never let him go again. But she can't tell him. She can't. It is the best thing for him, she wraps this belief around her to keep them both safe.

"Mary, please."

She cannot look him in the eye. "You are to be married in two days time. She is a good woman."

"I do not care if you would have me."

And she knows he must be desperate, must be half drunk and his heart as much hers as it ever was to be here at this time of night so close to his wedding. For all that he would separate himself from their aristocratic pride it runs through him as deeply as it does her; the only thing keeping tears from her eyes and promises of forever from her lips. She knows too that he will not leave until she looks at him and so she does, looks him straight in the eye, "You will marry Miss Swire."

And his looks change, from pleading to suddenly belligerent and shrewd, and she thinks now she understands why he was so praised during the war. And then he kisses her.

It is not the soft kisses of their earlier courtship. She knows he sees through her because he is claiming her with such certainty and like calls to like and she could no more easily stop her hand from pulling his body closer to her than she could stop the earth from turning.

And just as she thinks that if she has nearly gone so far with another man why should she not pull him back into her room at least for an evening he withdraw his lips. He looks at her, and the lightness in his eyes has turned dark and his hands are firm against her cheeks making sure she looks at him. "I will not be married. Whatever your answer, I will wait."

And then he leaves. Leaves her breathless and lost for anything to hold on but a slowly strengthening hope.

[summerstorm.livejournal.com]

Anna/Mary, sleepless nights

Prompt: Mary Crawley

[little-giddy.livejournal.com]

Prompt: Mary Crawley: anything featuring her in London.

[summerstorm.livejournal.com]

Sybil and Thomas, newfound lonesome

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

Tracking this like WHOA.

[snowfire.livejournal.com]

Edith - there's hope in the air, there's hope in the water but sadly not me, your last serving daughter

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

Thomas Barrow, I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth/Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove/These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth/What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'/Then straight the first did turn himself to me/And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame/But I am Love, and I was wont to be/Alone in this fair garden, till he came'

[cathalin.livejournal.com]

Omg. This is perfect. The love that dare not speak its name...

[summerstorm.livejournal.com]

Violet and author's choice, strangers on a train

[summerstorm.livejournal.com]

Ensemble - murder mystery! Someone is found dead in Downton Abbey, and everyone must remain in the house until the killer is found. Your choice as to who gets killed, as long as it isn't a lady.

[magicalsibylle.livejournal.com]

Absolutely tracking!

[(Anonymous)]

Sybil/Branson - voyeurism

[mayonegg.livejournal.com]

ACK! YES PLEASE.

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Cora & Edith - Poor old Edith. We never seem to talk about her.

slipping through my fingers all the time - Cora/Edith

[hacash.livejournal.com]

Sorry if this isn't any good; haven't actually tried my hand at writing Cora or Edith - wanted a bit of a challenge!

+

It shames her to say this, but she’s not looked at her second daughter for some five or six years now.

Not truly looked, not properly looked, not when you look at your child and see not only what she is but who she is, who she might become, what lies buried deep beneath the skin. She finds herself doing this all the time with Mary – darling Mary, who weaves dramas like other women might weave tapestries, glittering and golden and drawing all eyes towards her – she can’t be in the same room with Mary without looking at her and wondering what’s inside. And Sybil – more and more she turns to see her youngest child watching her with soft, quizzical eyes and she begins to think How, in all this grand English pomp and ceremony did we ever create a girl like you?

But Edith. Edith is a mystery.

It takes her by surprise, one particularly sunny afternoon sitting in the garden, to glance up from her novel and see a perfect stranger striding along across the grass. A friend of the girls’? she thinks, and raises a hand to greet her. But no – another look and she sees this young woman, clad in men’s trousers and a tatty old tweed jacket dug out from one of Robert’s trunks, is her middle daughter.

It shouldn’t truly be a shock to her, but Edith is quite wonderful out there in the sunlight and the first blossoms in the trees.

Mary is fashionable and Sybil is lovely, but Edith is what men might call ‘fair’, a true country girl, reminiscent of spring and summer and autumn all rolled into one. Her cheeks are flushed with colour, her hair splays like knotted grass beneath a crooked hat. She strides out with hearty, confident movements; her face cast back to receive the beams of the sun. Something has changed, and Cora realises with her heart in her mouth that she appears comfortable in her skin for the first time in an age.

When they were little, in their nursery, it was always Edith who would toddle up to her – she was never a confident walker, even at the age of five she was tripping over her feet – and curl up into her mother’s lap. Her sisters would plan great adventures and expeditions and plans to tease the servants, and there Edith would be, contemplatively sucking her thumb, her head nestled into Cora’s shoulder. She always said she liked it better there.

Where oh where did my clumsy little girl go? she thinks to herself in abject wonder.

And then, right on the heels of that thought: I see you. Oh, my darling, I see you.

“Hello!” By now Edith’s almost on top of her, mud and dust streaked down the side of one cheek, breathing heavily. “I’ve just come back from the Drake farm; I was on my way in to change.”

She nods, cautiously; faced with this new creature she isn’t quite sure what to do with herself. “Good, good.” Can it really be that she doesn’t know how to speak with her own daughter. “How was it?”

To her everlasting embarrassment, Edith looks surprised she’s even asked.

“Rather well, actually.” This little encounter done with, she smiles, turns to go.

We said Edith would be the one to care for us in our old age. Can she be slipping away from us already?

“Wait!” Sunbeams thread through her fingers as she reaches out, snatches at her daughter by the sleeve. Edith’s hands are as warm as the sunlight. “I…would like you to tell me a little more about your work on the farm.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Edith looks around, as if certain she’s the victim of a practical joke. “You don’t…want me to go and fetch Papa, or Mary, or anyone like that?”

“No darling.” Cora turns and signals to one of the gardeners labouring peacefully under the hedges; within seconds a second chair is brought to her side. She pats it hopefully. “I want to talk about you.”

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Thomas/Edward Courtenay - heart and shoulder

Thomas/Edward, Dr. Clarkson -- their spirits must be lifted

[thewindwarns.livejournal.com]

(Ahhhhh.... finished writing this and no longer know whether it fits the prompt.)

There are ghosts that follow men back from the front: allies and enemies and innocents, names and faces to haunt you, waking and dreaming. There are things that keep the living fighting: a mother's words, a girl back home, a love for God and king and country.

Companionship and camaraderie, Dr. Clarkson thinks, are just as necessary to keep you alive, to keep you trying during the After (the wound, the injury, the amputation and the operation, the shell shock, the anger, the numbness and the melancholy). He once believed he could recreate that sense of brotherhood within these walls, resigns himself now to hoping for some mere semblance of that armor in his hospital. (There is enough of a battle with -- between -- his patrons as it is.)

-----

Corporal Barrow is a changed man -- Dr. Clarkson does not know of one that would not be -- a reasonably steady worker struggling to maintain a calm face in the midst of battles he himself is reliving. He thinks, after initial inspection, that it will do Thomas some good to see others heal, to help them in that healing. It is different, so different, from praying for your own safety while patching another man's guts in the trenches, never knowing whether the blood flowing freely is your own.

He does not reflect on the boy's initial motivations to enlist, to the manner in which he has returned. It was years ago, and there are far too many pressing issues at hand. (Dr. Clarkson has long learned that there will never be enough time to dwell on one soldier; he owes that to all his patients.)

-----

Nurse Crawley alerts him as to the progress of Edward Courtenay, and while the blindness is still hesitantly referred to as temporary, there is a remarkable change in disposition. Dr. Clarkson makes his rounds, watches as his patients laugh, a smile forming on both their lips as they converse quietly with one another. Though no mention was made of the corporal, it is quite apparent, even without an ounce of medical training, that he too looks much better than when he first arrived. Major Clarkson does not need to hear the words to know the catalyst: companionship and camaraderie and brotherhood.

It is his sincere hope that these fonder memories will be carried with him to the convalescent home. No man could ask for a sturdier crutch, one that could be shared so freely with those that needed it and those only learning to begin that they did. He will not -- can not -- admit that he would prefer the recovery process to continue under his care, but he is a doctor and soldier, has duty to too many and resources so few. He will have to inform the lieutenant and his caretakers of this news before the end of the night. (The war will still -- may always -- be there in the morning).

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Mary & Lavinia - Matthew dies

[snowfire.livejournal.com]

DO WANT.

[espressolast.livejournal.com]

Field Marshal Haig over at Downton for a visit with his old chum Robert.

Lang has to serve.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

Mary and Edith, Don't test the ones you love/It'll only tear us down/If you want to feel alive/Then learn to love your ground

Mary & Edith - Things We Cannot Change

[inafadinglight.livejournal.com]

Giving it another try (and hey, the subject line didn't disappear on me this time!), but again, haven't seen any of S2 yet.

Mary & Edith - Things We Cannot Change

War changes things.

Isn't that what everyone says? It does change certain things, she supposes, like the now-unrestricted flow of gossip downstairs, or the sudden shortage of men at dinner parties, or the way her father stomps around with a scowl on his face and fire in his eyes. But in other matters her world hasn't changed at all. There are still gowns to wear, parties to attend, smiles to feign. There is still an emptiness in her chest when she looks at Matthew, an emptiness that spreads and threatens to consume her until she fades away completely, threatens to engulf her with each day that passes, each day that takes him closer to war and further from her.

There are still her sisters. Sybil, blessed Sybil, marches on without missing a step, refusing to let this war wear her down. Always the most socially conscious of the three, she somberly turns it into yet another opportunity to help. Whereas she can't seem to care about more than herself, Sybil is at her best when helping others. She finds her heart swelling when her youngest sister paces the room spouting plans and ideas, or spends an entire week refusing to eat anything but biscuits and water in case a rationing comes. For a woman who can barely love herself, it is remarkably effortless to love Sybil.

And Edith. Poor Edith bumbles along trying to find a place for herself amidst the casualty reports and the propaganda amidst all the repositioning happening as people - upstairs and down - try to right their world that has been tilted off its axis. She doesn't love Edith like she loves Sybil, all warm smiles and sisterly pride and budding hopes. Their rivalry, which had worked so well before, now seems ridiculous and jarring against the backdrop of death.

She thinks of what Matthew would say, and tries to make herself better, tries to take an interest in the middle sister so long forgotten. It's harder though, when he goes to the frontlines, and no one is left to show her how to be the better version of herself. She makes missteps, lots of them, and each one makes it ten times harder to return to the right path. But she always tries. For him.

Fidgeting while Anna puts the final pins in her hair, she looks in the mirror at her sisters flitting around the room. Sybil is subdued, fingering her frock without appearing to actually see it. Edith, though, wears a familiar smile that says she has a secret.

There are no secrets in wartime, no secrets between sisters.

But when she works up the courage to ask, the answer isnot at all what she expected. Edith prattles on, but three words echo in her mind until she cannot hear anything, not even the beat of her own heart.

"And his fiancee . . ."

And everything else - any burgeoning sense of sisterly affection she might be trying to make herself feel - falls away in the face of stunning heartbreak.

[iwillrememberu.livejournal.com]

Mary/Matthew - I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited // But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it. // I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded // That for me it isn't over.

[snowfire.livejournal.com]

Gwen/Sybil - she can never go back to how life was before the war

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

Thomas/Edward (the soldier from the hospital), It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart, but the welcome I receive with the restart

[haikitteh.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes please!

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

Mary/Matthew. In the meantime, I'll be waiting for twenty years and twenty more. I'll be praying for redemption and your note underneath my door.

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Civil Wars + Matthew/Mary = my new otp?

[austen.livejournal.com]

Sybil/Gwen. I learnt to pass the time in the same room, so remind me how the world stood still.

[hacash.livejournal.com]

Branson/Sybil -- don't you worry, there my honey / we might not have any money / but we've got our love to pay the bills

[tr1st3ss3du3r4.livejournal.com]

There is a difference between being a nurse in wartime and being a nurse in peacetime.

She doesn't ever say it out loud (no point to it, they both know it, saying out loud would just add to the unease that occasionally creeps over the two of them) but she misses when she worked to feel useful, not to pay rent on a house her inheritance could buy twelve times over.

If she hasn't been disinherited - she hasn't heard that she has been, but she hasn't heard anything at all. He keeps reminding her that they don't hate her, that they love her (and he whispers in her ear that of course they love her, that it's impossible not to love her, and he holds her tightly and she can almost forget, almost) and all they need is time.

She's fairly certain (it's another thing on that evergrowing list of things they don't talk about) that he misses being a chauffeur, that he wishes he had more time to spend on his political pursuits, that labouring like this in the field whilst they build up some sort of savings is taking its toll on him.

It isn't the life she had expected (she doesn't think it's the one he expected either) and, if she's honest, she's surprised by how happy she is. All of the difficulties seem to pale into comparison when she feels his hand in hers without a glove between them.

[austen.livejournal.com]

O'Brien/Ethel. It's hard to argue when you won't stop making sense, but my tongue still misbehaves and it keeps digging my own grave.

[irelands.livejournal.com]

Matthew & Mary - 2x02 - Matthew's thoughts while he was spaced out, before he looked up at Mary.

[(Anonymous)]

Mary/Matthew - bondage smut. FORGIVE ME, GOD.

[broadwayyy.livejournal.com]

YES. Um, I mean... how terribly wrong.

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

Anna and Mary - The Curse of Penelope

Anna and Mary -- The Midnight Vigil

[hacash.livejournal.com]

Hoping you like - sorry it's so short!

--

On the third night of her vigil, she finds she has company.

Somewhere, deep in the weary recesses of her heart, she knows he is not coming back. That he belongs to another, that in truth she never had any right to him at all. She is a usurper, a thief, a foolish woman. But still, when all other eyes are closed and the house is filled with the slow, steady breaths of the dreaming, she finds herself drawn to this place, to this window. She will stand here, hands pressed against the cold glass, and stare out into the depths of night as if waiting to see something – a light, a movement, anything to herald his return. Her lips move unconsciously.

Bring him back. Bring him back safely to me.

This night, however, she pads across the polished floors in nightgown and robe, only to find she has been beaten to it.

Another figure. A ghost, half-visible, in the soft glow of the starlight, all shadows and mist and unseen things. Tall and stately where she is small, dark where she is fair, clad in lace and silk where she wears only the most sensible cotton. But as it turns, the look on her face – ah, the look on her face she recognises so easily. She sees it in the mirror every day.

“Lady Mary?”

“Oh,” the ghost-creature murmurs, stretching a hand to press against her eyes. “I didn’t realise anyone was here. I was…” she gestures helplessly, and seems to struggle, searching blindly for the words. “I couldn’t sleep.”

No, her mistress cannot sleep, and neither can she. She fears to sleep. Her dreams are all too regularly the stuff of nightmares, of his parting, of his words, or even – and she fears these dreams more than most – happier times, the laughter, the joy, the plans they had. She cannot bear to put herself through that again.

Besides, she must wait. What will happen if he returns, and she is not here to greet him?

Without word, without explanation and query, she moves to stand by her mistress, to take up her vigil.

The minutes slip away like silk, silent and gentle in the night.

“I know I am foolish,” her lady says, so quietly that it seems to be nothing more than the echo of another dream, the shadow of a thought. “I know – of course I know – that he is gone, that he is many miles away and he will not return like some thief in the night. But I have to keep watch – I have to wait, so that he might see at least one friendly light to guide him home.”

Of course this could all very well be dreams and wishful thinking, her own thoughts speaking to her; for it is late and she is tired and her mistress is not the sort of person to speak so. But she nods anyway, rests a hand on her lady’s cold, slim shoulder, and gazes back out over the miles.

For though it might take him a thousand days, over a thousand leagues, he must return someday; and she will wait for him.