Chapter Text
The key to being a successful butler, in Charles Carson’s mind, was knowing which battles to pick. He had long since decided to front several campaigns against poorly ironed tablecloths, wine in need of decanting, and silver goblets that ought to shine even when in storage. But there was one battle that he’d given up for lost so long ago that his white flag had been left to rot and crumble. He currently sat surveying the battle ground with dismay, wondering at the state of the kitchen while Beryl Patmore squawked and squalled at the state of her electrical wiring.
Charles had no desire to get near Beryl when she was in a rage. She was, to date, his only lost battle.
“I can’t be expected to work like this!” Beryl squalled, jiggling the handles of her dead mixer as if hoping they might spring back to life. Overhead, dusty copper wires open to the air swayed ominously. “If we’re going to rely on ekletricity, it ought to work!”
“Electricity,” Elsie corrected her. Beryl looked ready to have a stroke.
“Whatever it’s called, it’s a lie!”
Charles let out an exhausted sigh, wondering when this blasted day would ever end.
With Lord and Lady Grantham scheduled to take tea at Beryl’s house of horrors, and Thomas Barrow recovering from suicide in the attics, Charles could not imagine anything worse that might befall the family. He hated the idea of scandal and felt like Downton Abbey was dancing upon the edge of a hot knife. If anyone found out Lord Grantham was taking tea at the adulterer’s table, what would they say? The papers would be askance with gossip; oh, Charles would never hear the end of it!
But even worse a thought, what if someone found out about Barrow?
Charles had told no one, but he’d had nightmares as of late of all the wicked ways that Barrow could have ended his life. He’d dreamt of finding Thomas hanging from a chandelier on the main floor; of Thomas floating lifeless in the outer laying pond, of Thomas blue on the floor with an empty bottle of lye laying in his hand and blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Awful, horrid things.
He’d made the fatal error of imagining Barrow didn’t have a heart; but who could blame him? After years of scheming, conniving, blisteringly rude comments, and apathetic replies, Charles had been unable to find a scant trace of emotion within the man.
That’s a lie… a nasty voice whispered inside his head.
Charles grimaced at the memory of Barrow before him, trembling and weak in his office, head bowed as he admitted to loving another man.
Imagine… the sodding nerve of it!
But even as Charles tried to work himself into a temper, tried to give himself a basis for hating Barrow so that his self-hatred might dwindle away, Charles found an ugly sort of pity eating at his rage.
Did he really care? Really and truly?
Because if Charles were entirely honest, there was another reason entirely Barrow’s sexuality made him so uncomfortable. Nights, hidden away in a London theatre, when he’d been young a whole… things that had slipped through his moral defenses, slicked up by the wicked ways of alcohol. Things he’d never admitted to, not even to his wife.
“- Charlie?”
Charles gave a start, looking about at Elsie who was watching him concernedly. Across the kitchen, Beryl was now belligerently yanking the connector chord to the beater in and out of the copper wiring in the hope that something should start.
“Mrs. Patmore, if you please-“ Charles called out; Beryl froze, head whipping around on her meaty neck. “You’re frightening the maids.”
“Would you rather me frighten the family when their dinner is uncooked?” Mrs. Patmore demanded. Somewhere off in the distance, the bell board began to ring. Charles looked over his shoulder, noted Andrew heading for the stairs, and returned his attention to Beryl.
“Copper wires are not play toys, if the beater is broken then you’ll simply have to make do without-“
“If I couldn’t use the beater then I should have started the mousse hours ago!” Beryl complained. “I can’t stand these blasted contraptions!”
She gave the beater up for lost, shoving it away down the counter line to instead yank out a large ceramic bowl and a large whisk.
“Gertie! Get me the eggs from the larder!” Beryl commanded, “As many as you can grab!”
The scullery maid skirted away, practically carrying a haze of dust around her for all the filth on her day dress and apron. Daisy, having watched all this with light irritation, began to clear away counter space so that they might begin making a mousse by hand.
Yet despite the urgency of a mousse going unprepared, Charles found himself unable to focus. Dreams were nothing compared to reality, and the ugly image of Barrow nearly dead upon his bed with slit wrists wrapped in thin gauze now haunted him like the spectre of Christmas Future.
You did that to him, a nasty voice whispered in his head.
There were, in fact, many people that Charles could try to blame if he so wanted, but his moral conscience was so strong that it did not allow him to pass the pain to another man. He’d been too sharp with Barrow, he knew that now. He’d imagined Barrow hadn’t cared, that he’d had some scheme tucked up one sleeve or another. That he’d slip away from Downton Abbey in the middle of the night like a rat abandoning a sinking ship.
Now, Charles could see that he’d been wrong, terribly, terribly wrong. Thomas hadn’t been a rat, he’d been a passenger being cast out without a life vest upon frigid and churning waters.
“If I could just be sure,” Charles had seethed, imagining that Thomas was violating an innocent youth.
It had never occurred to him, not even once, that Thomas himself was the innocent youth. He saw Thomas now not as a man but as a boy, staring up into the infinite universe that stretched out before him wondering where his place was. In some ways, Downton Abbey might have been a prison to Thomas, but it was also a fortress that protected him from a very cruel world.
Sighing, Charles bowed his head, twiddling with his fingers behind his back. A slight tremble ran through them.
“What’s wrong?”
Charles jerked, as if from a sudden snooze, to find Elsie staring at him concernedly. While the others were consumed with keeping the house running, she alone had noticed his maudlin slip.
Charles tried to warn her off with a polite if terse smile. It only served to annoy her further.
“You can tell me, you know,” She urged. “I am your wife.” She said it as if Charles himself had forgotten.
“... I don’t know what to do with him,” Charles muttered under his breath. Elsie leaned in close so that she might hear where the others could not. “As irritating as Thomas is, his zest for life4 made him a sharp employee. Now?” Charles shook his head, looking up at the ceiling over his head. Thomas had been drifting like a spectre through the halls. “There’s nothing to him anymore.”
But instead of offering a solution or sympathy, Elsie grew wary. She’d developed this odd edge where Thomas was concerned, seemingly wary of leaving Charles alone with him; it wasn’t hard to imagine why. Though no one pointed the finger at his person, it was obvious that those who knew the truth knew the reason for Thomas’ downfall. It had all been funny, such a grand joke, until Thomas had cracked beneath the pressure.
Beneath Charles’ pressure.
“Let him alone,” Elsie warned him. “He’s had a hard enough time as it is.’
“Hard enough or not, we cannot allow standards to slip,” Charles warned. “We have to find a way for Thomas to regain his spirit, or he will have no place here.”
“Well standards are already slipping in the kitchen,” Elsie gestured helplessly at the chaos before them. “We have to do something about this electricity. It keeps going in and out. Mrs. Patmore cannot be asked to perform like this.”
In her own corner, Mrs. Patmore was still desperately trying to get the mixing bowl to behave by shoving the socket in and out of the cooper wiring. To her left, the maids were cracking and sorting egg yolks from whites.
“Damnable thing won’t start!” Mrs. Patmore moaned.
In the background, Charles’ ears heard the telltale sound of a bell ringing from the dial board. Andrew skirted past the kitchen, heading up the stairs to answer the family’s call. Everything was running smoothly, or about as smoothly as things could ever run in Downton, but Charles’ neck hairs began to stand on end as if he were being watched.
Which he was.
In the shadow of the hall, almost pressed flat to the wall and leering like a vulcher, was Thomas Barrow.
It was a surprising change to find him downstairs in the kitchen. Since his near slip with death, Thomas had instead been hiding in the eves of the upstairs and rarely venturing below the first floor.
“Charles,” Elsie whispered in his ear, nodding her head in Thomas’ direction. The pair of them watched, almost entranced, as Thomas milled about from corner to corner, seemingly directionless. When he eventually crossed over the threshold of the kitchen, he was almost knocked over by Andrew returning from the stairs.
“Tea for Lady Mary and Mr. Branson in the drawing room,” Andrew pronounced.
But Mrs. Patmore was still damned and determined to get the egg beater to start. For a woman who despised modern implements, she certainly was loathe to let them go.
“I think I’ve just about got it!” Mrs. Patmore declared, using her meaty hands to force the prongs of the egg beater more straight. “The wire’s all bent out of place. If I get higher up on the copper lead, I can use the beater. Gertie-!” The scullery maid screeched to a halt, her worn out leather shoes skidding on the slickened floor. “Get me my step stool!”
“Peter’s using it in the attic, Mrs. Patmore!” Gertie said.
“Well then, go fetch the blasted thing!” Mrs. Patmore snapped, leaving the scullery maid running for cover. “Or do you expect me to turn into a giraffe?!”
Gertie fled, heading for the stairs and the attics.
Elsie stepped forward, cutting neatly behind Andrew to address Thomas. He did not seem to notice her, his blue eyes vacant as they took in the controlled chaos.
“Mr. Barrow…” But Thomas did not answer her. Elsie leaned in a little more, placing a tender hand upon his elbow. He jerked, shocked at the approach. Still, Elsie tried. “Thomas. How are your duties coming along?”
But instead of giving a report, Thomas just bleakly repeated the word back to her like it had no meaning. “Duties…”
“Do we have any more water left in the kettle?” Daisy was left to make tea for Lady Mary and Branson, peering into the copper kettle at the back of the stove. She sighed, clearly finding a lack. “I’ll have to make a new pot.”
She took the kettle off the stove and walked it over to the sink, turning on the tap so that water began to flow. It was a well known trick of servitude that if one filled a kettle with water that was already hot, it would make the time of serving tea cut in two. As such, Daisy waited by the tap with her wrist beneath the stream, waiting for the frigid temperature to rise.
“Come on now, you daft thing-!” Mrs. Patmore was trying to get more copper wire down from its hanger on the ceiling. She pulled, but despite her grip she could not get more strand to lower.
Daisy rinsed out the kettle pot. Charles wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, save that for some reason Thomas was starting to pull out of his reverie from the site of it.
Why?
“Daisy…” Thomas croaked. But his voice was too soft to be heard over the pall of the kitchen. “Daisy. Daisy!”
Finally able to hear him, Daisy looked around glaring at Thomas. She, like most, did not enjoy the man’s company or his comments.
“What?” She demanded. When Thomas did not answer, she added. “Spit it out.”
“That’s unsafe,” Thomas said.
Daisy blinked, taken aback. She looked from Thomas to the kettle which was still being washed beneath the tepid water. “Wha’? How is washing a pot unsafe?”
“The wire,” Thomas said, taking another step closer. Daisy looked overhead, to where the copper wiring lay exposed upon the ceiling. It was layered with an inch of dust, undisturbed since its installation in 1914.
She rolled her eyes, unimpressed. “Stick to your business and I’ll stick to mine,” she muttered, turning her back on Thomas to continue washing the pot. The water was almost warm enough and starting to steam.
Elsie walked around the kitchen island, trying to pull Thomas back from bothering Daisy and the maids. “Why don’t you take a break, Thomas? It’ll do you well to get some fresh air.”
But now Charles was starting to notice the wire too. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue, but Mrs. Patmore was still pulling on the loose end, trying to get more length for her egg beater. She was too short to reach the exposed wire without her step stool.
“Almost got it-!” Mrs. Patmore gave one hearty tug, finally getting the wire to pop past its initial hanging hook.
But the weight of the wire, already laden down by ten other plugs, caused it to begin to fall. It swung in a wide arch, careenning past Mrs. Patmore who shrieked in shock and flung her arms up over her face as sparks popped through the air-!
“DAISY!”
It was difficult to say who moved or spoke first. In unison, both Thomas and Charles lurched forward, their hands outstretched for the kitchen maid who stood in shock at the kitchen sink with her hands in the water. Daisy’s eyes were wide and blank, like a doe about to be shot by a hunter.
The copper wire landed in the water filled sink, and everything went white.
The explosion which occurred was so shocking, so sudden, that Charles had no way to prepare for it.
Thomas had reached Daisy first, being closer, and had knocked her out of the way and onto the ground. As a result, when Charles reached out to grab Daisy he actually grabbed Thomas by the neck. The blast of the copper hitting the wire knocked them both off their feet, tumbling into one another as they were projected a good foot in the air back towards the hallway.
In unison, like some macabre spider, they smashed against the window which divided the kitchen from the hallway, the power of the electric shock taking them right through it and onto the other side.
They crashed upon the floor, entwined in a mass of limbs and liveries.
And then everything was gone.
~*~
Something cold was touching his chest.
Charles slowly opened his aching eyes, his vision spiraling in and out till it finally solidified on a wooden ceiling where a large fan rotated at a lazy speed. Light was coming in from the left, illuminating the figure of one Dr. Richard Clarkson who seemed quite relieved to have Charles back amongst the land of the living.
“Good,” Dr. Clarkson beamed at the sight of him awakening. “Deep breathes, Mr. Carson-”
But he cared nothing for himself. His thoughts were only of Daisy, the poor girl- “Daisy,” he moaned in pain. His whole body ached as if he’d run a marathon.
“Perfectly fine,” Dr. Clarkson assured him. A breeze fluttered past the open window, sending the curtains swaying. What day was it? How long had he been unconscious.
“Mrs. Hughes-”
“Just fine. All of them are fine-- well---” Dr. Clarkson amended himself. “Mr. Barrow is in about the same shape as you are, but besides that everyone is fine.”
“But…” Even so, Charles was having trouble piecing it all together. He could only remember so much. “What happened?”
“The copper wire above the kitchen sink fell loose from its holding bracket and hit a sink full of water,” Dr. Clarkson explained. “An electric explosion knocked you backward through a window and you took Thomas with you. At your age, surviving such a trauma is frankly something to be celebrated by science.”
As if through a fog, Charles recalled the sight of Thomas, his pale face tense with pain and surprise. They’d spiralled around each other, the universe reduced the to width of their pressed bodies. For one second, nothing had existed save for the other. When they’d crashed through the glass, Charles had almost felt like he’d been protecting Thomas. Like Thomas had been protecting him. It had happened so quickly that Charles hadn’t been able to register it at the time, but now he knew that if only for just one second… they’d been one.
“How is he?” Charles groaned as Dr. Clarkson continued his examination, listening to Charles’ aged heart through his stethoscope. This had been the cold sensation Charles had felt upon waking.
“Thomas wasn’t on good ground to start with,” Dr. Clarkson admitted. “But he’ll improve. Both of you are lucky to be alive after what you endured.”
Content with his findings, Dr. Clarkson laced his stethoscope around his neck, and pulled the curtains about Charles bed back so that he could see the ward beyond. Sure enough, laying in the bed to his left was Thomas. There was a heavy burn mark upon his neck and his cheek was taped as if it had been cut. He was staring listlessly, but his eyes slowly settled upon Charles as Dr. Clarkson walked over to his own bed.
“Just rest, Mr. Carson,” Dr. Clarkson urged. Dr. Clarkson took the bed hangings which surrounded Thomas cubicle and pulled them shut so that the sight of the two men was suddenly cut off.
Charles tried to do as the doctor had bade, laying back against his pillow. He raised his hands up to eye level, noting that there were cuts and burn marks upon his fingers. A great deal of pain came from his chest, and Charles pulled at his pajamas so that he might see the skin beneath.
There, right over his heart, were four oval burns they were in succession, barely half an inch or so apart, and looked oddly human in shape.
As if they were the marks of someone’s fingers.
Charles laid his hand over the burns, noting that they’d been covered with a paste to help them heal. His suspicions were confirmed when he noted that his own fingers looked slightly similar to the burn marks.
It was the touch of another human being, rendered into his flesh forever by the power of electricity. But whose hand had it been? Daisy’s?
Or perhaps…
“Your hands are like ice,” Thomas spoke up from behind the curtain. “Just like your soul.”
Charles twitched in shock, looking left abruptly to where behind the curtains Dr. Clarkson was surely examining Thomas.
“Just relax, Thomas,” Dr. Clarkson said. He certainly was being kind to a man that didn’t deserve it.
“How can I relax with you lording over me like the Grim Reaper.” Thomas hissed. My god, the mouth on the man!
Charles wished he had the strength to reprimand him.
“Your blood pressure is still a little low,” It was as if Dr. Clarkson had not even heard Thomas call him the Grim Reaper. “I want you to eat a heavy protein diet to get your blood count back up. This shock did you no favors.”
“More favors than you,” Thomas muttered. Once again, Charles wished he could smack the man about the face. Where was his sense of gratefulness? Why did he have to spit on everything the world gave him?
“Do you have any questions?” Dr. Clarkson asked Thomas kindly.
“... When can I leave,” For some reason, Thomas spoke in a croak though only seconds ago he’d had a normal voice. What theatrics.
“When I’m satisfied,” Dr. Clarkson said.
At this, Dr. Clarkson left, pulling Thomas’ bed curtains back so that Charles could see that Thomas was rolled on his side. Now, Charles could only see his back; Thomas was curled up like a child, his head tucked deep upon the pillow.
“Liar,” Thomas whispered.
Dr. Clarkson either did not hear or did not care, leaving the ward with a comfortable pace and a calm smile upon his face.
Charles watched him go, amazed at the man’s bedside temperament.
~*~
The hours passed, and Charles fell asleep. His head was splitting with a migraine, feeling muddled and thick like heavy potato soup in a cold tureen. When he awoke for a second time, it was to the sight of Dr. Clarkson once again making his rounds. Now, however, it was well into the night and the hospital had fallen into a hush. A few gas lamps were lit, but their wicks were low and a gentle gloom encompassed the beds they touched. Thomas had rolled back on his other side, so that Charles could now see his wane and pale face. He looked even more childlike without pomade in his hair or a bowtie at his neck.
Fragile, almost.
Charles wouldn’t have called out to Dr. Clarkson, but the man was scanning the beds and noted he was awake.
He walked over with a gentle smile, bending over so that the pair of them could speak while whispering. Clearly everyone else was asleep.
“Mr. Carson, how are you feeling?” Dr. Clarkson said.
“Better, thank you,” Admittedly Charles head was starting to hurt much less.
“You’ll start to feel your body returning to normal soon enough. Sit up for me?” Charles did so, and Dr. Clarkson carefully checked his chest where the burns still lay over his heart. “Everything seems to be progressing well. No bleeding, and no swelling-”
“Listen, about what Barrow said, I want to apologize-” Charles murmured. It didn’t sit right with him that a man like Dr. Clarkson ought to suffer such abuse unnecessarily.
But instead of smiling and waving it off, Dr. Clarkson stopped examining Charles’ burns and looked at him in confusion.
“What?” He asked.
“I could hear him through the curtain,” Charles explained. Still, Dr. Clarkson was wary.
“It hardly offended me,” He said, straightening up. “He has every right to want to know when to leave.”
“But no right to call you all the other things he said.” Charles said. “You’re certainly not a Grim Reaper.”
“What?” Dr. Clarkson was taken aback. “When on earth did he call me that?”
“I heard him!” Charles was surprised. How was it possible that Dr. Clarkson had not heard Thomas when Thomas had all but yowled in the man’s face? Was it plausible that the man was going deaf? “He said it to your face, and all sorts of other things too-”
But Dr. Clarkson just looked even more disturbed.
“... Mr. Carson,” Dr. Clarkson spoke reproachfully, “Thomas said nothing to me, save for when he asked when he could leave. I was watching him the whole time. Are you sure you heard these things? Because if so-”
The blood drained from Charles’ face. As certain as he was that he’d heard Thomas speaking, Dr. Clarkson’s assurity was making him panic. Determined not to be put in some sort of madhouse over a slip of the tongue (or ear), Charles rapidly backed up.
“I must have been mistaken,” he said in a rush.
Dr. Clarkson was still cautious. “If you’re sure? You haven’t been having any headaches?”
“I… I have, admittedly,” Charles said.
“It may have been an auditory hallucination brought on by stress,” Dr. Clarkson said. “What’s needed now is rest. If you experience any other unsettling changes, please let me know at once.” At this, he urged Charles to lay back upon his pillow, and even poured him a glass of water.
“Try to sleep,” Dr. Clarkson said. “In the morning, I’ll come see you again.”
Yet as Dr. Clarkson walked away, Charles did not feel that he could rest. So disturbed was he at the thought of experiencing an auditory hallucination that it robbed him of all peace. He lay, sweating, upon his pillow.
It suddenly occurred to him in rather ominous fashion that the reason why Thomas’ croak of a voice had taken him aback was that it had been Thomas’ actual voice, and not a hallucination of his own imagining.
It made him feel queasy to admit it.
Charles rose from bed, swinging his legs over the side with the intent of perhaps taking a short walk about the ward; anything to get his mind off the fear that now was coursing through his aged bones. But standing just made him feel wobbly, and he did not know if his muscles were strong enough to support him just now.
He looked across the gap that divided him and Thomas, noting that Thomas was asleep. His mouth was slightly ajar, tiny huffs of air passing between his pink lips. When he wasn’t seething with rage, the man looked like an entirely different human being. It occurred to Charles that what he was seeing now was a Thomas free of strife. A normal Thomas.
For a moment, Charles simply stared at the man, wondering at how things had spun so far out of their control. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Thomas had crossed the threshold of the abby searching for work as a footman. Even then, young and whole, he’d been angry. Even then, there’d been this awful hate inside of him that Carson had not understood nor wanted to examine.
But here, in sleep, Thomas was innocent of all charges.
Charles head began to ache again, and he palmed his forehead. Ugly muddled whispers were floating through his ears, like static coming out of a gramophone. He wondered if he was beginning to hallucinate again, and quickly lay back down lest the stress overtake him.
But he was hearing things, even so. Hearing them as if someone had pressed a pillow to his ears to cover the sounds.
Somewhere, distantly, a woman was whispering.
“It’s not you he doesn’t like. It’s the whole word,” Charles pressed his hands over his ears, hoping that the voice would fade. Hoping that what he was hearing was the voice of a mother consoling her child on the ward.
But there were no visitors at this time of night.
“I wish he liked me,” a little boy answered back. “I wish he loved me.”
“He doesn’t even know how to love himself, Thomas,” the woman replied. “Some men don’t have the courage to face what they see in the mirror. Just make sure that’s never you. Be what you are, but be aware of what it means. Be proud.”
“Proud?”
“Well…” Charles could hear a squeaking noise as if someone was sitting on a bed nearby. “I’m proud of you.”
A pause.
“I’m always proud of you.”
“I’m dreaming,” Charles whispered to himself, hands pressed over his eyes to block the world out. “I’m dreaming and this will stop. I’m dreaming and this will stop.”
There was a soft hushed whisper, like folds of fabric floating through the air to lay upon still ground.
The woman and the child’s voices faded the silence, the auditory hallucination gone. With shaking hands, Charles slowly uncovered his eyes to find the world just as he’d left it before.
To his left, Thomas was still asleep. His expression, Charles noted, looked slightly more pained though… as if he was missing something.