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]

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.

[jadeandlilac.livejournal.com]

Hello lovelies! My fic is finally done, and is too long to post here in its entirety. I give you the first section and links to what follows. Thank you for the wonderful prompt and I hope you enjoy it! :)

***

How right, she had thought when she saw them together that night. She thinks it again at her breakfast table in London when a cousin who has come to stay turns over the newspaper and pales, gasps, squeaks out with wide eyes (and a glimmer of delight at the prospect of such melodrama) that the engagement of Mr. Matthew Crawley to Lady Mary Josephine Crawley, eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham, has been announced. Lavinia thinks, how right.

And then she thinks, Josephine – perhaps she was named for Jo March, proud and fierce, the bravest of the sisters. She imagines what she has a hundred times, a scene she did not witness and merely pieced together from a few lines of Mary's (I have broken my engagement to Richard but it was easy – I only followed your example. It was awful, too, of course. We have all been so very foolish.) In spite of Mary's dismissal of the situation, Lavinia knows Richard Carlisle, knows that he will have raged and threatened, that his voice fills one with doubts, makes one feel utterly helpless. And his eyes are always sharp, all-seeing; they have a knack for spying weakness. (She felt them search her more than once in the drawing room or the library as Matthew and Mary talked together, and she took some small comfort in the knowledge that there were things they did not, could not discern.) Lavinia knows Mary Crawley, too, and she is a storm-braver, fierce and proud, Diana the huntress in lace and pearls. Jo March ought to have been named for Mary Crawley.

"Well?" prompts the cousin, a tiresome spinster with a round, childlike face and a voice to match. She has come to London to Lavinia's father's house – Lavinia's house, now – to fill the space after his death. He is nearly six months buried now, and it has been almost a year since Lavinia stood up from her sickbed and left Downton for good.

"Well what?" Lavinia busies herself buttering toast. "We would never have been happy, Matthew and I." She does not know why she bothers with this cousin, whose eyes grow, if possible, even bigger and more incredulous.

"Not with her around, I shouldn't think. You poor dear."

Lavinia does not correct her. "I wish them every happiness."

Read on at ff.net (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8015730/1/Speak_of_a_Life_Already_Wild) or AO3 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/381307)!