the mary & lavinia comment ficathon

[dollsome]

a.k.a. the oltha_heri and oliveoyl and i get an excuse to post lots of prompts ficathon

It's a legit thing, okay! The world needs all the Mary/Lavinia adventures.

rules (?)

+ One prompt per comment. Feel free to submit as many prompt-comments as you'd like. The more the better! If you'd prefer platonic fic to shippy fic, just specify that in your comment.

+ If you respond to a prompt, include a title in the subject line of your comment if you are using a lj layout that has subject lines. If you're not, please put that same information at the top of your comment.

+ Okay, that's as authoritative as I feel like being right now!

+ Spread the word:

<center><a href="http://dollsome.livejournal.com/1760701.html"><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/dollsome/pic/001f4gf6"></a></center>

Masterlist of Responses
My dear, my dear, it is not so dreadful here by oltha_heri - You reach out a hand, slowly oh so slowly you inch closer to the porcelain skin of her wrist, and then dark eyes are fixed on you.

with grace in all she offers by dollsome - You are Lady Mary Crawley. Cold and careful, soulless and heartless. Selfish. Thorn-sharp to those who would stand in your way.

throw over your man, i say, and come by screamlet - "Lavinia, what about London?" Matthew asks as he clasps my hands.

it's you season by dollsome - "It's tradition," Mary says. "It's barbaric," Lavinia says.

Scandals Bear No Meaning by femme_slash_fan (crossover with Upstairs/Downstairs) - The fact that Agnes Holland had stood by her good friend and, for the moment, only company at home, had meant a lot to Blanche Mottershead.

The Truth Will Out by femme_slash_fan - Lavinia had come to Mary’s side when she called, gently taking her hand, feeling the girl’s trembles and gently squeezing her hand.

Comments

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Any questions can go here!

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

downton_girls, I'm already a member there so should I go do the pimping there?

ps I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FOR SETTING THIS UP

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

Are we allowed cheeky crossovers? (namely Upstairs/Downstairs and Titanic??? just for others to have around the lovely Mary/Lavinia couple of course.)

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Let's go out late, drink a lot, stay up past eight and then dance, dance all night, leave our boyfriends behind

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

I apologise, I don't even know what this is. I MEAN IT IS IN SECOND PERSON. I apologise.

You reach out a hand, slowly oh so slowly you inch closer to the porcelain skin of her wrist, and then dark eyes are fixed on you. Your hand falls back down to rest on the bed. Your attempt to discover if the thin pale flesh was as soft as the silk nightgown she has lent you has sapped your remaining strength, and you find your eyes clothing as Mary leans down with soft words and a cold flannel.

***

The sun burns the next time you open your eyes. Matthew is asleep, hunched over, at your bedside. His hand grasps tightly, so tight, onto your still sticky hand.

You are better.

You feel it in the bones the way the fever has broken; it still is exhausting to draw your hand from Matthew's. For a second the love you feel is overwhelming, he stayed. Mary's lips against his, her long pale fingers tangled into the short hairs of his neck. You turn away from him.

She sits there staring at you, and perhaps she sees the lucidity in your eyes, because she smiles. It is not large. It does not rival the brightness of the sun that filters through the window, it barely shows her teeth; but she is Mary and you would not expect anything more, not for you. And then Mary shifts closer in her chair. You see her eyes. They are warm. Like a hot water bottle to curl against in the middle of January; like a fire to read against; like coming home from a downpour.

"You stayed." Your voice is hoarse, your lips chapped.

Mary's smile tightens, grows just a little bit too far for it to be genuine. "I-"

"Thank you."

The smile softens again, and though it pulls at your dried lips you return the gesture.

***

She is there as often as Matthew is on the path to recovery. Matthew sits in the sun by your bed, his hair gleaming his golden and his pale eyes translucent as he talks to you and makes plans for a future you believe he wants less and less.

Mary comes at night. Her hair fading into the dark walls that are only illuminated by the fire. Mary comes and stretches alongside you. Mary reads to you.

You do not talk when she comes in these hours where she is in her nightgown. You merely pat the bed beside you and she climbs on top of the covers to read you to sleep each night.

Her voice carries you to Verona, to Crete, to India, to the lost palace of Kubla Kahn. But she is beside you as you dream and so you are not afraid.

***

"You should set a new date for the wedding." The Countess' voice is kind but firm as she sits of the foot of your bed (in her bedroom, in her house, you do not need to remind yourself of this even as her words suggest it will someday be yours).

"I-" your voice falters, for what do you say? Your engaged daughter is in love with my fiancee and I would quite happily stay ensconced in this room forever to see them happy. Is that would one would say? No, you have a feeling it is not what one would say.

"Mother, let Lavinia decide her own matters."

You need not say anything, for she is there to protect you.

***

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

Mary has no book with her tonight. Mary does not fall to bed beside you when you pat the coverlet. Mary does not smile tonight. You are worried. You are as worried as when you learnt about Matthew, because this is Mary and things do not disturb her and yet she stands there uncertain and sad before you. You think the world must've ended for Mary to be so. But you don't know what to say. You reach your hand out, reach out to enclose the pale bare shoulders that seem too burdened. You reach out- and she is gone.

***

Perhaps it was a dream you think. Without her warm weight beside you, you could easily be convinced all of her nocturnal appearances were a dream. But last night there was no warm weight. You feel a chill through all the day.

It gets worse and she does not come that night either.

***

Matthew is the one who tells you. Mary is exposed. Mary is unvirtuous, there is disappointment when he tries to tell her. Tries not to offend her sensibilities. But she understands.

He is angry when he tells her how it all came out. He is angry at Carlisle for apparently blackmailing her.

Lavinia is not angry, for she is not thinking of Carlisle. Lavinia is worried, and empathetic, and needs to see her. But this is not the time for that, and so you wait.

You wait until night falls, and Matthew leaves, and the house quiets.

You are stronger, and though not quite prepared for stairs yet you are determined to reach the hall of Mary's room. With legs shaking from disuse and a hand on the wall to balance you slowly remember the path to Mary's room.

You have been there once, the first night you were ill Mary was there to care for you. You will return the favour.

When you finally reach her room you do not hesitate. She starts when she sees you, but in a second she is up reprimanding you for leaving bed and she is there with an arm around your waist to support you. When the comfort of her bed is under you and you have a minute to recover she begins to withdraw.

You hold on.

You hold on to one pale bare shoulder, you hold on to one thin, fragile wrist, your thumb moving over the soft vulnerable skin over her veins.

She is tense under your fingers, and you wonder if this was the bed, it must be the bed, where that man had died. You shake at the weight with which she has been living. You pull her back, without losing your grip on her manage to move back on this large bed that has had sex and death where it was only supposed to hold a young lady. But you are not her bed, and there is nothing predestined about who you hold but your choice, so for tonight you hold on, her tears soaking through your night gown.

You will not let go.

[themirrorofsin.livejournal.com]

don't tell me that's it's over, it's only just begun

[themirrorofsin.livejournal.com]

it's you, it's you, it's all for you

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

with grace in all she offers

You are Lady Mary Crawley. Cold and careful, soulless and heartless. Selfish. Thorn-sharp to those who would stand in your way.

In a way, you've been waiting for Lavinia Swire your entire life. Granny and Aunt Rosamund scheme and smirk and all but cackle like the wyrd sisters: how eager they are, to watch you do what you have always been meant to, to unleash a talent you no doubt inherited from them. You may be a woman, your battlefield a drawing room, your rival an unassuming English rose with a smile that is inconveniently sweet and true. That doesn't mean you won't go in for the kill to take back what is yours.

You would have once. Edith will certainly attest to that, if asked.

And yet it only makes you tired, tired and sad and a little ashamed, sitting at tea and listening to your aunt and grandmother plotting the ruin of the mousy and inferior Miss Swire. You think of the way her hair catches the light at the dinnertable, hovering sweetly somewhere between red and gold. Everything about her seems soft and inviting; if chamomile tea and May mornings could be shaped into a person, they would be Lavinia Swire. You don't wonder that Matthew has had the good sense to fall in love with her. You can't blame him a bit.

+

Perhaps it is the thought of Matthew that stays your hand. Your love of him: selflessness at last, and you don't even have anyone to show it off to. Matthew deserves a good girl, a kind girl like Lavinia after being dragged around by you every which way. He is living through hell; let him have his angel to think fondly of. To live for.

And yet it isn’t only that. You wonder what you would have thought of her if you’d met her in any other world, one where she was not Matthew Crawley’s Inconvenient Fiancee first and foremost, and never mind any of the other facets of her soul. Those under the roof at Downton certainly don't. You imagine shaking hands with her, hearing her name for the first time from her lips. A few years ago, you would have thought her very dull.

Now your standards have reinvented themselves. Now she seems quite wonderful. A treasure. The sort you'd want to call a friend, if you had any of those. You think you could tell her anything and she would take it to the grave. Let you cry on her shoulder. You are remarkably unacquainted with the shoulders of other people -- at least those that don't belong to the serving staff.

Your mind keeps wandering back to the garden: Lavinia crying, saying things that no one says, especially not here. Empty polite lies don't come naturally to her. No one could doubt that she has a heart.

+

Perhaps you envy her.

If you ever admitted it aloud (which you won't), of course everyone would think it had to do entirely with Matthew. You almost wish it did. It would be so much easier to recognize yourself, then.

You wonder what she might see in you; perhaps you're softer in her eyes. You hope that she can feel it back -- this thing she's done to you.

[themirrorofsin.livejournal.com]

and you're just a little too late

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

MINE!!

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

Modern-AU!

"You said forever, now you change your mind?"

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

"Is Matthew really why you came back?"

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

AU! Cora lives through the flu, but this time Lavinia is well and it is Matthew who dies. Hurt/Comfort please!

[oliveoyl.livejournal.com]

"...throw over your man, and we’ll ... come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come."

[screamlet.livejournal.com]

I HATE AND LOVE YOU

[oliveoyl.livejournal.com]

Boston marriage (or: the girls recolonize America)

[oliveoyl.livejournal.com]

queen(s) of the county

[oliveoyl.livejournal.com]

I am a hunter. And it's you season.

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

I want it so much....

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

Crossover with Upstairs/Downstairs.
After Blanche's scandal two women still frequent the Hollands residence without qualms.

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

Scandals Bear No Meaning.
By Ros Sawyer.

The fact that Agnes Holland had stood by her good friend and, for the moment, only company at home, had meant a lot to Blanche Mottershead. She had been stunned by how quickly she had been cut from society. She had wondered if she’d ever see any other friends, if she even had any.

Her answer had come soon enough. Cora Crawley, one of Agnes’ more discreet family friends, had sent her daughter and her… companion, Mary and Lavinia, to visit.

Agnes had excused herself soon enough, leaving Blanche to have a little more personal time with the girls. Blanche had found herself flattered by how kindly Lavinia treated her and how genuinely happy Mary seemed to be to have met someone who understood what she was struggling to come to terms with.

Lavinia had smiled softly, glad to see Mary so confident and relaxed. Both Blanche and Agnes had been happy to see the girls getting along so well, even if Agnes had seemed a little quiet.

Mary had solved the problem somewhat daintily, inviting Cora down to join them, sensing that Agnes was perhaps feeling a little lonely.

The group had stayed together for a long time, long enough for Cora’s husband to relax and for it to be safe enough for Mary and Lavinia to go home.

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

Matthew brings back Amelia (as seen here (http://archiveofourown.org/works/346712) & here (http://dollsome.livejournal.com/1760940.html)) following Lavinia running away with Mary for a bit. When the whole family is once again gathered Matthew is paranoid about leaving Amelia alone with Mary. Hilarity ensues.

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAH GOD I JUST LOVE IT.

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Robert and Cora react to The Truth About Mary/Lavinia.

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

MINE MINE MINE!!

*clings to prompt*

I'll write it soon.

[lady-with-cats.livejournal.com]

matriarchy AU, Lavinia is engaged-to-be-engaged to the heiress Lady Mary, gossip rags.

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

THIS IS SUCH A BEAUTEOUS IDEA.

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

Mary and Lavinia discuss just what it is Matthew sees in Amelia, anyway.

(Because I must admit, I am totally intrigued by this mystery woman who Mary finds unbearable, Lavinia finds not precisely charming, and yet Matthew finds lovable enough to marry.)

[oliveoyl.livejournal.com]

ME TOO. I am contemplating this.

[dollsome.livejournal.com]

2.08 AU - Lavinia breaks things off with Matthew, does not die of the Spanish Flu, and goes back to London, leaving Matthew and Mary to their happy ending. But that isn't the last time she and Mary cross paths.

dun dun DUNNNN!

(... I originally typed 'cross baths.' Even my typos are shippin' it.)

[jadeandlilac.livejournal.com]

YES PLEASE. This is in the works right now (but obviously everyone should feel free to do it too!)

No baths...YET.

[femme-slash-fan.livejournal.com]

Mary is in a car-crash, can Lavinia keep her alive?