#blaming weird shit on merzost

[jomiddlemarch]

And a long watch you would keep

“Ah, Nurse Stark, good, you’re here. Matron says you have a way with the hopeless cases,” Dr. Clarkson said, gesturing for her to approach the patient’s bed. “Major Morrow is one such and I hope you shan’t mind being assigned to his care.”

“Of course not, sir. But what of my other duties?” Alina replied, keeping her eyes trained on the physician in front of her; he wasn’t an officer, but the convalescent home at Downton Abbey was an odd chimera of civilian and military, the Earl of Grantham known for calling in favors and trading on his own past service when it suited him. It was a far cry from the field station in Samogueux, a place she still dreamt of, waking with the taste of mud in her mouth, her hands scrabbling through the crisp sheets for an elusive length of bandage; everything at the Crawley’s grand estate was pristine, polite in a way she’d assumed had been destroyed with the insidious, strangling creep of mustard gas, the grounds remaining perfectly manicured, the ladies of the house elegant in their day-dresses. Tea served in china cups, little sandwiches filled with cress and egg cut in cunning shapes to tempt genteel appetites.

“Your primary responsibility will be Major Morrow but I think you shall find you have plenty of time left to attend to other patients. The Major is not given to complaints or demands, nor much conversation at all,” Dr. Clarkson said. The remark might have sounded sardonic except for some odd amalgam of compassion and respect, as if the Major’s silence was a matter of willpower.

“Is he in a coma?” Alina asked. The man in the bed was pale, but appeared largely unmarked, though there were shadows beneath his closed eyes and his lips were chapped. He was quite tall, dark-haired, in need of a shave, and terribly, terribly still. He was breathing, she could see that if she looked closely, but otherwise, he might have been carved from marble.

“I don’t believe so. Quite the worst case of shellshock we’ve had here at Downton in some time, though,” Dr. Clarkson said. “He’ll need to be fed, bathed, but beyond that, it’s not clear what will bring him out. If he is still intact within, whether there’s man left or just remnants. If we don’t see any change in the next fortnight, I’m afraid we’ll have to send him to one of the larger institutions.”

“To be treated?” Alina asked.

“To wait to die properly, Nurse,” Dr. Clarkson said, dispensing with any obfuscation, his brusque manner not concealing his utter sadness at the suffering and waste the War had wrought. “So, do what you can, will you? The men say he saved their entire unit, more than once, until he finally fell.”

“Certainly, sir,” she replied. “If I could ask a question—”

“Yes, Nurse Stark?”

“Major Morrow, what is his Christian name? I don’t mean to be impertinent, but sometimes they’ll answer better to that than their rank,” she said.

“Yes, I quite see. Major Morrow is Major Alexander Ernest Kiril Morrow. Believe there’s a Russian noble in the family tree. Poor devil has the look of one, never heard him speak but the men never mentioned any accent,” Dr. Clarkson said, nodding at her by way of leave-taking and walking away. She took a step closer to the narrow white bed and looked down at Major Morrow’s face, knowing somehow that he was not asleep.

“I’ll be right back, Major Morrow,” she said, keeping her voice low and even, audible but not startling. She took in the sweep of his lashes, the beginning of silver at his temples, added, “Alexander.”

Nothing happened at first, for all her vaunted talent with the most difficult cases. Nurse Crawley offered her an encouraging smile and an even more encouraging mug of builder’s tea to see her through the evening hours when the men grew sleepy and then silent, but Major Morrow lay motionless in his bed even as Alina dabbed his face with a cloth soaked in cologne and spoke to him as if he were wide awake and prepared to respond. She thought she saw some flicker of awareness when she took his pulse, another when her fingers grazed his cheek, but his eyes remained closed. Most of the water and broth she tried to spoon between his lips dribbled down his chin in a way no enlisted man or officer would have brooked if they had the wherewithal to manage. Whatever was left of the man he’d been was locked away and it was up to her to find the key, if she could.

“You mustn’t give up,” Miss Crawley said, not the apple-cheeked nursing sister, nor the middle one who read for hours to men most disfigured, but the eldest, Lady Mary with her cut glass voice and her equally sharp cheekbones. She had been the last person Alina would have expected such encouragement from. “That’s what they expect, that we’ll leave them. That no one could ever care for a man who’s seen what he has, horrors beyond recounting.”

“You’re not a nurse,” Alina said. Lady Mary took her meaning, as she thought she would.

“No, I’m not. I’m not made for that, I can only manage it for a select few,” she said. Alina remembered the hours Lady Mary had sat beside the bed of a blond man who turned his face to the wall and the glimpses she’d caught of them when he’d recovered enough to sit in a wheelchair. “Really, just the one. But if I may, I’ve seen how it is with the patient you treat. Clarkson’s no fool, no matter what Grandmama and Cousin Isobel think.”

“I’ve only been given a fortnight,” Alina said. Was it a confidence or a challenge—or a plea?

“Then I expect you shall need to make the most of it,” Lady Mary said. “I’ll speak to Carson, Mrs. Patmore can send you some biscuits and tea for the nights, when the house is quiet. Or brandy, if you’d rather.”

“The tea is all I need,” Alina said.

“Spoken like a true Englishwoman,” Lady Mary said, her face changing into something else entirely with her smile, the resemblance to her younger sister suddenly apparent. “I won’t think any less of you should you reconsider the brandy though.”

“Ah vy, seni, moi seni,/ Seni novye moi,/ Seni novye, klenovye,/ Reshotchatye...” Alina sang, very softly, almost as if she were singing just to herself. Her voice wasn’t very good, she could carry the melody but there was little strength behind it, but she knew her limitations and didn’t mind them very much. She’d started singing the old Russian folk song on a whim, thinking of the Major’s middle name, that Kiril so startling hidden within the traditional British names. Thinking perhaps the song would be something he remembered from his early childhood as it was from hers, a song she’d learned from the great aunt who’d raised her after her parents and grandparents all died of a fever.

“Kak i mne po vam, po senichkam,/ Ne hazhivati…”

His voice was raspy, a voice that had screamed Get down bloody well get down for days and weeks of days and cursed and never wept, the tears all held, counted like stars or bullets, the ghost of a lovely tenor. His dark eyes, finally opened, were ones that had seen what wasn’t there so often he might be forgiven for forgetting the difference, except that he hadn’t. Couldn’t. His dark eyes, finally opened, were full of the tears he hadn’t shed. Looking up at her, she saw the age the War had stroked into his cheeks, across his brow, swiped upon his lips like a caress; he could not have been more than twenty-five years old.

“Why did you stop?” he asked. “You didn’t forget what came next.”

“I was waiting for you,” Alina said. Major Morrow was speaking to her as if they’d been talking for hours, a conversation between people who knew each other well, intimates if not friends; she would match him if that’s what he needed, even though she couldn’t help the thousand questions crowding her own mind.

“You were so sure I would answer?” he asked.

“I thought you might,” she said. “If I were patient enough.”

“I’m the patient, though, am I not?” he said. “This is no field hospital, but something like—”

“You are. My name is Miss Stark, I’m one of the nurses. The doctor asked me to look after you. You’re back in England, a ward in one of the great houses, Downton Abbey,” Alina explained. “You’ve been…asleep since you arrived here.”

“I haven’t been sleeping, I’ve been trapped,” he said, his voice tight, filled with an unutterable anguish.

“Are you in pain?” she asked. He made a sound that must have been a laugh, except it was so bitter, so hopeless, no one could have called it that.

“Not the kind that can be helped,” he said. “My misery is of my own making, I must nurse it like a mother with her suckling babe.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think you can be held responsible for the War, for the injuries you suffered,” she said, leavening her gentleness with the practical tone most of the men responded to.

“With all due respect Miss Stark, you have no idea what I’ve done. What I’m capable of,” he said, turning his face away. She sensed his imminent retreat, a door about to close, perhaps irrevocably.

“Tell me,” she said.

“You won’t believe me,” he said.

“That shouldn’t make any difference,” she replied.

“I used the power at my disposal to protect my men, I made darkness from fog, I made a deadly weapon of shadows and I struck without mercy, even as the Germans cried out for mercy,” he said. “I made monsters.”

“For your men. For their lives,” she said. That was all she knew, all that had been said of him. He spoke as if he’d used some perverse magic but she’d worked with enough wounded soldiers to know how their mind would trick them, delude them into memories that had the barest tie to reality. “You sacrificed your peace for cause, Major Morrow.”

He turned back towards her, looking into her face and struggled into a half-sitting position. His eyes glittered with a fervent energy, making her worry whether he had a temperature. She laid her hand across his forehead and saw a curious, queer ease take him.

“What are you?” he murmured. His skin was warm but not hot and the frantic light in his eyes settled into something between bemusement and appeal.

“I told you, a nurse. Someone to look after you,” she said. “I think it would be best if you had something to eat and drink. You haven’t taken much since you got here.”

“It’s late,” he said.

“It’s not too late. I have my ways,” Alina said. “I know how these great houses work, I made sure to make friends with the cook, Mrs. Patmore. Let me get you a cup of tea and maybe something to tempt you beyond broth.”

“You don’t—”

“But I do, Major Morrow,” she said.

“Alexander,” he replied.

As it turned out, he had a fair appetite once the tea and treacle tart were within his reach, a nearly beatific look on his face when he took a sip of the very milky, very sweet cup, his lips forming a soundless Oh! as he swallowed. She’d nearly ladled in the sugar; it was what she might have given him if he’d been in shock, which, she supposed, he had been for the past weeks. He closed his eyes with the first bite of the tart, clearly savoring each mouthful; it was a pity the Cook wasn’t there to see his appreciation. When the last crumb had been licked from his lips, he settled back on his pillows.

“Do you think they’ll send me away now that I’ve rejoined the ranks of the living?” he asked. “Or send me back to the front?”

“You’ll stay right here,” Alina said. “You’re nowhere near well enough to fight and you’re not ill enough to go to the institution Dr. Clarkson had mentioned.”

“You say that with a particular conviction,” he remarked.

“Dr. Clarkson wouldn’t have assigned me to your care unless he was willing to listen to my opinion,” Alina said. “And if it came to it, I’d go above his head—”

“To whom?”

“He could hardly gainsay the Earl of Grantham,” Alina replied.

“You’d speak to the Earl?” Alexander asked.

“I’d speak to his daughters, Lady Mary and Lady Sybil,” Alina said. “I have no doubt, between the two of them, they’d make sure you don’t stir from Downton Abbey until you’re properly better.”

“Why would you do that?” he said.

“You’ve fought such a long time,” she said, patting his hand lightly, noticing how slender and well-formed it was, the hand to draw a bow across a violin’s bridge. The hand that had drawn a bayonet across how many Germans? She felt how he trembled, pressed down and took his hand in hers. “You’re not alone anymore, there are people to look after you, to care for you.”

“You mean, because you are a nurse. Because it’s your job or your profession, your vocation,” he said, all the sweetness gone from his beautifully shaped mouth. She squeezed his hand, startling him.

“No,” she replied, seeing his confusion. He was not used to being contradicted or corrected; what Major was? “I am a nurse and it’s what you said, my profession, my vocation. But that’s not why I’m here now. That’s not what I meant when I said I cared. I’d be in a fair way to get dismissed if Matron finds out what I’ve done, no matter what Dr. Clarkson says.”

“You shan’t be dismissed,” he said. “And if you were—”

“If I were?”

“I’d offer you my hand, but you already have it,” he said, glancing down and then looking up into her face.

“I do,” she said and let him make of it what he would. He sighed and smiled and closed his eyes. She didn’t worry about when he would next wake. Morning wasn’t far off.

This is the picture that inspired the whole fic-- look at little Alexander!