The preliminary details have been settled: for three weeks, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from one to four, he is to double his work as a footman and assistant teacher to familiarize himself with the basics.

And he starts tomorrow.

It's a surreal, dream-like trance that plagues him. Being footman no longer takes precedence because teaching has become a priority, and he talks of nothing else.

Thomas has told him more than once to drop the subject for the sake of everyone else's boredom, but it's a cloud off of which he cannot fall. With a spring in his step, he floats about the house because after years and years of missing the metaphorical train of life, doesn't he deserve it? Perhaps he's over-confident, putting on airs of worth to which he's no right. But oh, God, Cambridge and Oxford, that's worth something; he's worth something.

Giddiness, is what he feels, like a child who's seen his gifts before Christmas, the anticipation of conformation gnawing away at his insides.

So much has been decided, but there are discrepancies of details like plot-holes in a novel, but he can see it all: the hundreds of paths itching to be taken, each choice bowing before a million outcomes. Teaching school children, someday giving lectures at Oxford, research in France, trips to America-

Okay, perhaps nothing like that, but it's not impossible, and that's what's so horribly enticing.

"I've not thought about where I'll live," he realizes one evening while he buries his nose in a book. Miss Baxter sits beside him, equally engrossed in a book of her own. Thomas sits across from him, invisible behind a newspaper, likely the jobs section.

"That is, when I've left service as a proper teacher," he finishes.

The newspaper rustles as Thomas turns the page behind his mask of tiny black font, "I'd imagine in a house or a cottage, Mr. Molesley."

"Well, I know that," Mr. Molesley shrugs, unaffected, "But I haven't made any inquiries as to where the said house or cottage may be."

The newspaper fidgets and sighs once more before being folded and flung in Mr. Molesley's general direction, revealing a weary-eyed Thomas in its place.

"Then you'd better start looking."

He snaps his book shut and eyes the newspaper with disdain, "Maybe I'll just live with my dad…"

With a frustrated sigh, Thomas stands, retrieves the newspaper, and makes his way to what is presumably his room.

Once the sound of footsteps could no longer be heard, Miss Baxter speaks without moving her eyes from her book, "Don't mind Mr. Barrow. I suppose he wants a future, as well."

He anticipates that she'll say more, but it's not anticipation so much as hopeful thinking. What she has said, however, strikes a chord within him and he shakes his head woefully. "It amazes me," he watches her an she reads, "That even after he bullied and threatened you, you'll still stand up for him."

She holds her page with her thumb and bites her lip, "We're never as we really seem, Mr. Molesley."

His breath hitches, "Right you are, Miss Baxter."

She closes her book with a sense of finality and bids him a soft goodnight before following in pursuit of the path Thomas had taken.

Before she leaves, he manages to call after her. He really shouldn't ask, but it's a thought that's been nagging him, clawing away at his certainty, his one shred of true confidence.

She's heard him, and appears in the doorway as he moves to stand before her.

"You are… pleased for me, Miss Baxter?" He studies her expression carefully for any intonations, "I've not managed to ruin that, have I?" He averts his gaze to his feet and stares at them sheepishly, "With my bragging and boasting- it's no wonder Thomas-"

"I'm very pleased for you," Miss Baxter counters, "But I knew you'd pass, Mr. Molesley."

He huffs modestly, as if to deny it even when it's the truth itself that sometimes he can hardly believe. There's something more unsaid, either that he's forgotten or doesn't have the courage to find, because she doesn't leave quite yet. The half a foot that separates them seems impossibly far, and yet strikingly, painfully intimate, and to finally bring his eyes away from both their feet requires the physical strength of lifting an anvil.

To which he is quite unsuited.

It's there, however, and so the dense fog of unsaid or forgotten words becomes tangible, and his voice leaves his throat before he can bludgeon it back into the depths of his thought.

"Miss Baxter, I wonder…" And oh, no, her eyes have gone wide and circular like prey, she's terrified, but he has to finish, he's come this far- "If you've ever considered what you may do… when the time comes to leave Downton."

If anything, she looks relieved, and the implication of what she anticipated is enough to gouge out his heart. He hasn't said it, really, and he wouldn't have- but they both thought of it, and that's what hurts the most.

The answer sounds rehearsed, justified, "I've thought about it, of course, but her Ladyship will likely need a Lady's Maid for some time to come, and that's my job, unless I'm sacked."

"Of course," his voice cracks like an eggshell, "Silly of me to ask."

"Not silly at all," A moment passes like an eternity in the eyes of the Earth: brief, uneventful, and quiet. In any other lifetime, they might've been children in a staring contest; but he'd have lost, because the instant he can no longer look at her face- drawn up and tense with worry and history- she leaves him in the servant's hall.

His book falls from his grip and hits the floor with a thud.