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Chapter Text

*London, 1919*

Thomas Barrow stood before the expansive windows of the gallery, watching rain streak across the glass in erratic rivulets. The war had ended, but its ghosts lingered everywhere—in the somber faces passing on streets below, in the black-edged letters still arriving at doorsteps, and most persistently, in his own damaged hand and the hollow space inside his chest.

"We're closing in ten minutes, sir," called the attendant from across the room.

Thomas nodded without turning. He had been wandering London's galleries for weeks now, since his discharge and subsequent dismissal from service at Downton Abbey. Lord Grantham had provided references—generous ones, considering Thomas's history—but positions for former footmen with war injuries were scarce, especially those with his particular temperament.

He moved to leave when a small painting in the corner caught his eye—one he hadn't noticed during his listless circuit of the room. It depicted a military hospital ward, rendered in muted blues and grays. A solitary figure sat upright in bed, face turned toward a window that showed nothing but fog. Though the figure's eyes were obscured, there was something in the set of the shoulders, the tilt of the head, that seized Thomas's attention with unexpected force.

"Excuse me," he called to the attendant. "This painting—who's the artist?"

The young woman glanced over. "Oh, that's new. Just arrived last week. Artist unknown, I'm afraid. The piece is simply called 'Lieutenant, 1917.'"

Thomas approached the painting, pulse quickening. The figure's features were indistinct, deliberately so, but Thomas thought to know with absolute certainty who it depicted.

Lieutenant Edward Courtenay.

As he stared at the painting, the room around him seemed to dim. For a fleeting moment, he could have sworn the painted fog shifted, revealing more of the window, and the figure—Edward's figure—turned slightly toward him. Thomas blinked, and the painting was static once more.

"Sir? Are you quite all right?" The attendant was at his elbow.

"Fine," he muttered. "Just... reminded me of someone."

Chapter Text

*Yorkshire, 1917*

"You're doing much better today, Lieutenant," Thomas said, carefully rewrapping the bandages over Edward Courtenay's eyes.

"Am I? I wouldn't know," Edward replied, his aristocratic accent clipped with bitterness. "One day of darkness feels much like another."

Thomas worked in silence for a moment, studying the lieutenant's face. Courtenay had been brought to Downton Abbey convalescent home three weeks prior, blinded by gas in the trenches of France. He was handsome in the classical English way—strong jaw, noble brow, and lips that, despite their current downward turn, suggested a smile once came easily.

"I've left the book you requested on your bedside table," Thomas said finally. "Perhaps Nurse Crawley could read to you later."

"I'd prefer if you did it," Edward said quietly.

Thomas paused, glancing around the ward. It was nearly empty—most patients were at physical therapy or in the gardens enjoying the spring weather. "I'm not sure that's appropriate, Lieutenant."

"Please," Edward's hand shot out, finding Thomas's wrist with surprising accuracy. "You're the only one who doesn't speak to me with that awful pity in your voice."

Thomas looked down at the pale fingers wrapped around his wrist. Such a simple touch, yet it sent warmth spreading through him that he had long learned to suppress.

"Very well," he said, pulling a chair closer. "But only for a quarter hour. I have duties."

That quarter hour became a daily ritual. Thomas reading poetry, Edward listening with his face turned toward Thomas's voice as though it were the sun. Thomas found himself looking forward to these moments with an intensity that frightened him. In Edward, he recognized something of himself—not just the pain or isolation, but a certain defiance against a world determined to break them.

"You know," Edward said one afternoon, "I used to paint. Landscapes mostly. I wonder if I'll ever—" He stopped, voice catching.

"There are blind artists," Thomas offered quietly. "Different techniques, but—"

"It's not just the blindness," Edward interrupted. "It's that I can't see anything worth painting anymore. The world seems... empty."

Thomas wanted to say that he understood that emptiness, had carried it inside himself long before the war. But such confessions were dangerous. Instead, he described the view from the window—the rolling green hills of Yorkshire, the changing light on the abbey stones, the first roses beginning to bloom in the garden.

"You have a painter's eye," Edward remarked with a small smile. "The way you see details."

"I don't see anything special," Thomas replied. "Just the world as it is."

"No," Edward's hand found Thomas's again. "The world as you see it. That's what makes it special."

Chapter Text

*London, 1919*

"Sir? We really must close now."

Thomas blinked, realizing he'd been standing before the painting for several minutes. "Is it for sale?"

The attendant looked surprised. "Yes, but—"

"How much?"

She named a sum that represented nearly all of Thomas's remaining savings. He agreed without hesitation.

That night, in his rented room, Thomas sat before the painting in the flickering gaslight. He traced the brushstrokes with his fingertips, wondering by what strange miracle it had found its way to him. The hospital depicted wasn't Downton—the architecture was wrong—but the figure, the posture, the atmosphere of melancholy hope... it was unmistakably Edward.

Edward, who had taken his own life when told he would be transferred away from Downton. Edward, whose loss Thomas had never properly mourned, never spoken of to anyone. How could he explain that in those few weeks, this blinded officer had seen him more clearly than anyone ever had?

Thomas fell asleep in his chair and dreamed of fog lifting.

---

In the morning, Thomas went to the gallery with a purpose. He asked about the painting's provenance, but the information was sparse: it had been donated anonymously with a small collection of wartime works.

As he left, a young woman brushed past him on the steps. Something about her movement made Thomas turn. She was an ordinary-looking girl in practical clothes, perhaps a nurse or secretary, but she carried a leather portfolio case like an art student.

"Excuse me," Thomas called, surprising himself. "This might sound peculiar, but that painting inside—'Lieutenant, 1917'—do you know anything about it?"

She stopped, studying him curiously. "Why do you ask?"

"I knew him," Thomas said simply. "The man in the painting."

Her eyes widened slightly. "That's impossible."

"Lieutenant Edward Courtenay. Blinded at Arras. I was his medical orderly at Downton Abbey convalescent home."

The woman's face paled. "The painting is based on stories my brother told before he died. He was a doctor at a London hospital. He mentioned a patient—a blinded officer who spoke constantly of an orderly from some previous hospital. An orderly who had described the world to him so vividly that he could still paint it in his mind."

Thomas felt his legs weaken. "Edward died. In 1917."

"My brother said this patient claimed he could sometimes see his orderly when he dreamed—watching him, following him. He painted dozens of portraits of this man, though he'd never seen his face with his physical eyes." She hesitated. "May I ask your name?"

"Thomas. Thomas Barrow."

She nodded slowly, as if confirming something. "The patient called his orderly 'my Thomas.' My brother thought it was delirium from his wounds, but..."

"That painting isn't of Edward," Thomas said, realization dawning. "It's what Edward saw when he looked at me."

"The patient died last year in the influenza epidemic," she said softly. "He left his paintings to my brother, who left them to me. I've been donating them anonymously. I kept only one."

She opened her portfolio and withdrew a small canvas. Thomas found himself looking at his own face—not as it was now, hardened by war and disappointment, but as it might have been seen by someone who glimpsed beneath his carefully constructed armor. It was his features but rendered with a softness, a vulnerability he scarcely recognized.

"He titled it 'Thomas, As He Truly Is,'" she said. "I think you should have it."

Chapter Text

Thomas hung both paintings in his small room. The one of Edward as Thomas had known him, and the one of Thomas as Edward had somehow seen him. They became his talisman as he rebuilt his life—no longer in service, but as an administrator at a veterans' hospital where his experience with war wounds proved valuable.

Sometimes in dreams, Thomas would find himself back at Downton, reading to Edward. But in these dreams, Edward could see him, and Thomas could speak freely about all the things he'd kept hidden.

"You found my paintings," Dream-Edward would say.

"How did you do it?" Thomas would ask. "How did you paint what you never saw?"

Edward would smile that gentle smile that haunted Thomas's waking hours. "You described the world so I could see it again. I only returned the favor—I described you so the world could see you."

And in these dreams, Thomas would feel the weight of his secrets lifting, like fog from a spring garden, revealing the landscape of a different life—one where he was seen, and known, and still found worthy of love.

In the mornings, Thomas would wake to find the paintings watching over him—windows into a world that existed once, briefly, and somehow, against all odds, existed still.

Chapter Text

*London, 1920*

The dreams intensified. Night after night, Edward appeared to him, their conversations growing longer, more detailed, less like the fragmented imagery of typical dreams. Edward would speak of things that had happened after his death—descriptions of the London hospital where he'd apparently been treated, names of doctors and nurses Thomas had never mentioned to him, details of the influenza ward where he claimed to have died in 1918, not 1917.

"You didn't die at Downton," Thomas said one night, realizing with sudden clarity. "You survived."

Edward's smile was sad. "Not in the way you think. But I'm trying to come back to you, Thomas. I've been trying for so long."

Thomas dismissed these nocturnal conversations as his mind's attempt to process grief and guilt. But then came the morning he woke to find the painting of Edward had changed—subtly but unmistakably. The figure was now clearly turned toward the viewer, one hand slightly raised as if reaching out.

Thomas touched the canvas with trembling fingers. The paint was dry, undisturbed. Yet he knew, with bone-deep certainty, that the image had altered.

In the weeks that followed, other small changes manifested. Objects in his room would be moved—never dramatically, just a book shifted on the nightstand, his pocket watch placed at a different angle. Once, he found a single page torn from a poetry anthology, Keats' "Bright Star" circled in pencil—a poem he had read to Edward in those quiet afternoons at Downton.

Thomas began spending his evenings at the veterans' hospital long after his shifts ended, combing through records, contacting other military hospitals. There was no evidence that Edward Courtenay had survived his suicide attempt at Downton. Every official document confirmed his death in 1917. And yet the dreams continued, more vivid than ever.

"How are you doing this?" Thomas asked one night, as they walked together through a dreamscape resembling the gardens at Downton, though more vibrant, more alive than Thomas remembered them.

"I don't know exactly," Edward replied. In these dreams, his eyes were clear, seeing. "It's like... finding cracks between worlds and pushing through. It takes enormous energy. That's why I could only reach you in dreams at first."

"At first?" Thomas echoed.

Edward stopped walking, turned to face him fully. "I'm getting stronger, Thomas. I'm finding a way back."

Chapter Text

A cold Tuesday in November brought fog rolling through London, thick enough that streetlamps remained lit well into morning. Thomas struggled through it on his way to work, the familiar route rendered strange and otherworldly in the gray soup.

Near the hospital entrance, a figure materialized from the mist—a man in a long coat, standing unnaturally still. Thomas slowed his pace, something about the silhouette tugging at his memory. The figure turned slightly.

"Thomas?" The voice was hesitant, faint as if coming from a great distance, yet unmistakable.

Thomas froze. "Edward?"

The fog swirled between them, briefly obscuring the man entirely before parting again. He was closer now, features becoming clearer—the strong jaw, the aristocratic nose, the eyes that looked directly at Thomas with recognition.

"I found you," the man said, voice stronger now. "I finally found you."

Thomas reached out, half-expecting his hand to pass through vapor. Instead, it met solid flesh—cool to the touch, but undeniably real.

"How is this possible?" Thomas whispered. "You died. I saw—"

"I did die," Edward said quietly. "But death isn't what we think it is. It's not an ending, just... a different state of being. And sometimes, rarely, when the connection is strong enough, the barriers can be crossed."

"You're a ghost," Thomas said, though the word seemed inadequate for the solid man before him.

Edward smiled—that same gentle smile that had haunted Thomas's dreams. "Not exactly. I'm... between states. Neither fully here nor fully gone. But I've been learning to manifest, to hold form in your world."

Thomas glanced around anxiously. "Can others see you?"

"Some might, fleetingly. Those who are particularly sensitive, or at thresholds of their own—the very young, the elderly, the ill. But to most, I'm just another shadow in the fog." Edward's hand reached up to touch Thomas's face. "But you—you've always seen me, haven't you? Even when I was alive and blind, you saw *me*."

Thomas felt tears burning his eyes. "I never stopped seeing you."

"I know," Edward whispered. "That's how I found my way back."

Chapter Text

In the days that followed, Edward appeared to Thomas with increasing frequency and solidity. Always in liminal spaces—at dawn or dusk, in fog or rain, in the shadowed corners of empty rooms. Their time together was measured in precious minutes that gradually extended to hours.

Edward explained, as best he could, that he existed in a parallel plane adjacent to Thomas's reality. The paintings had created a tether between them, a fixed point where the boundaries between their worlds grew thin enough to cross.

"The woman who gave you the painting—her brother was a spiritualist as well as a doctor," Edward said. "He helped me focus my energy, taught me how to project myself into dreams. But it's only been recently that I've grown strong enough to physically manifest."

"How long can you stay?" Thomas asked, fearing the answer.

"I don't know," Edward admitted. "Each time is different. Some days I feel more anchored than others. But I'm learning, getting better at it."

Thomas dared not introduce Edward to others, fearful that any disruption might sever their fragile connection. Instead, they created their own private world in Thomas's small apartment—reading together as they once had, talking through the night, Edward describing the strange beauty of his existence beyond the veil, Thomas sharing the mundane details of life that Edward now found fascinating.

Sometimes Edward would fade without warning, mid-sentence, leaving Thomas alone and aching. But he always returned—a day later, sometimes two, materializing in the kitchen or beside Thomas's bed, continuing their conversation as if there had been no interruption.

Chapter Text

*London, 1921*

"You're becoming more real," Thomas observed one evening as they sat before the fire. Edward's form had grown increasingly substantial over the months. Where once he'd been slightly translucent in bright light, now he cast shadows. Where his touch had once been cool, now it carried warmth.

"I feel it too," Edward said, examining his own hands with wonder. "It's as if... as if I'm being drawn more fully into your world each time I come."

They discovered that Edward could now venture further from Thomas and the paintings—first just to other rooms in the apartment, then to the street below, and eventually across the city. They began taking midnight walks through London, Edward delighting in his regained sight, seeing landmarks he'd only read about in books.

One night, walking across Westminster Bridge, Edward suddenly stopped. "I feel different tonight," he said, voice tinged with both wonder and alarm. "More... present. More solid." He pressed a hand to his chest. "Thomas, I think... I think I can feel my heart beating."

Thomas reached out, placed his palm against Edward's chest. There it was—faint but unmistakable, a steady rhythm beneath his fingers.

"What does it mean?" Thomas whispered.

"I don't know," Edward admitted. "But I'm changing. The boundary between my world and yours—it's becoming more permeable."

That night, for the first time, Edward didn't vanish. Thomas fell asleep with Edward beside him and woke to find him still there, watching the sunrise with tears in his eyes.

"I've never seen a full sunrise from this side before," Edward said softly. "Always had to return before dawn."

Chapter Text

The transformation continued, gradual but undeniable. Edward began to experience hunger, thirst—physical sensations he hadn't known since his death. He could be seen by others now, though they assumed him to be merely Thomas's reclusive friend, noting nothing unusual beyond his somewhat old-fashioned mannerisms.

Thomas worried about documentation, identity papers—all the bureaucratic trappings of existence that Edward lacked. But Edward himself was too fascinated by the miracle of his return to concern himself with such details.

"We'll manage," he assured Thomas. "One step at a time."

Yet there were complications to Edward's increasing corporality. He began experiencing flashes of pain in his eyes—phantom memories of his blindness. Sometimes he would wake gasping for breath, reliving the moment of his death.

"What if there's a price?" Thomas asked one night, after a particularly bad episode had left Edward trembling and weak. "What if your body remembers what happened to it?"

Edward took Thomas's damaged hand in his own, traced the scars that remained from Thomas's self-inflicted war wound. "All bodies remember their traumas," he said quietly. "It doesn't mean we can't live with them."

Chapter Text

*London, 1922*

On the anniversary of their reunion in the fog, Thomas returned home to find Edward standing before the two paintings, his expression troubled.

"They're changing," Edward said without turning.

Thomas looked and saw immediately what he meant. The painting of Edward in the hospital bed was fading, the colors becoming muted, details blurring. Conversely, the portrait of Thomas had grown more vibrant, almost luminous in the dim light of the apartment.

"What does it mean?" Thomas asked.

"I think," Edward said slowly, "they've served their purpose. They were... conduits. Bridges between worlds." He turned to Thomas, eyes bright with mingled joy and fear. "I don't think I need them anymore."

That night, as they lay together in the darkness, Edward whispered, "If I'm truly becoming alive again—living in this world permanently—what happens to my place in the other? What happens to that part of me?"

Thomas had no answer, could only hold him closer.

In the morning, the painting of Edward had faded entirely, leaving only blank canvas. But Edward himself remained, solid and warm beside Thomas—no longer a visitor between worlds but fully present in this one.

Chapter Text

*Yorkshire , 1923*

They left London eventually. The city had served its purpose as a place of transition, but both men felt drawn to quieter surroundings. With Thomas's savings and Edward's unexpected talent for investing in emerging industries (a perspective from beyond proving surprisingly valuable in financial matters), they purchased a small cottage on the Yorkshire moors, not far from where Downton Abbey stood.

Edward's existence had been officially established through carefully crafted documentation suggesting he had been misidentified among the war dead, spent years recovering in a French hospital with amnesia, and only recently returned to England.

Few questioned the story - the chaos of wartime record - keeping made such errors plausible, and Edward's aristocratic bearing lent credibility to whatever he claimed.

They lived quietly. Thomas continued to work in medical administration at a nearby veterans' facility, while Edward, his sight fully restored in his new body, returned to painting.

His work - landscapes suffused with otherworldly light, portraits that seemed to capture not just physical features but something of the soul beneath - gained modest recognition in local exhibitions.

Sometimes, Thomas would catch Edward staring into the distance with an expression of vague longing, as if hearing voices from the other side, the realm he had left behind. On those days, Thomas would take him walking on the moors, where the boundary between earth and sky blurred in mist and heather, where it was easier to believe that worlds could touch and overlap.

"Do you regret it ?" Thomas asked once, as they stood on a windswept hill watching storm clouds gather." Coming back fully? Leaving that other existence behind?"

Edward was silent for a long moment, his gaze on the horizon where darkness met light." How could I regret choosing life with you?" he finally said. "But I do miss...the perspective. Seeing beyond the veil of this world, understanding how brief and precious each moment is."

He turned to Thomas , his eyes clear and certain. "That's why I paint now - to share that vision, to show others what I've seen."

"And what have you seen?" Thomas asked. Edward smiled, the same gentle smile that had first captivated Thomas years ago in a hospital ward. "That love and life doesn't end. That death is just another beginning. That some connections are strong enough to rewrite the rules of existence itself."

He took Thomas's hand, pressed it to his now steadily - beating heart. "I've seen that the most extraordinary miracle isn't that I came back from death — it's that I found you in life to begin with."

The storm broke above them, rain mingling with the tears on their faces as they stood between worlds - not quite belonging to either, but creating their own.

In the attic of their cottage, wrapped carefully in cloth, the portrait of Thomas remained — the only physical evidence of their extraordinary journey. Its colors never faded, its brushstrokes never dulled. And sometimes, in certain lights, if one looked carefully, the background of the painting seemed to shift and change - as if showing glimpses of all the possible worlds where their souls had found each other, would always find each other, across the boundaries of time and death and life. In one corner of the canvas, barely visible unless one knew to look for it, was a tiny signature added in Edward's distinctive hand after his return: In every lifetime , I will find you.