A/N: Originally started as drabbles, but I couldn't keep them to one hundred words.

Disclaimer: I don't own Downton Abbey.

(Lifting) The Fog of Misery

1. Sacrifice

He lies in the darkness of his cramped prison room, staring blindly at the ceiling. Mere hours before his life is set to end, he can't sleep. So he thinks. And reflects. And decides.

Anna has given up so much for him. Too much. He doesn't understand it. In a distant time—a time that seems a lifetime ago, when in reality it is only a few years—she gave up the right to a proper courtship; he'd been cautious about being open about their relationship at the beginning, knowing all-too well what people would say. Married. Damaged. Unworthy. He hadn't been able to bear the thought of the servants whispering about Anna's virtue, wagering between themselves that she was no better than a whore to cavort with such a man. There had to be something in it, they'd say. Money or suchlike. No one in their right mind would ever fall in love with the crippled valet, especially not a young, pretty housemaid who was almost twenty years his junior. He'd worried that they wouldn't be able to understand how pure and true Anna's heart was, how utterly selfless she was. He'd vowed that he would not be the one to bring any unjust judgement down on her head, and had told her that they couldn't have what other couples who were walking out together could. She'd accepted his reluctance to court her openly with complete grace, acting the image of propriety at all times when they were out and about in the village together, even when he knew that she longed to take his arm and claim him as her own.

She almost gave up so much of herself when she found him skulking in Kirkbymoorside. Despite her initial coolness when they'd been reunited (and how could he ever blame her for that after what she'd endured at his hands?), it had not taken her long at all to forgive him and offer herself to him as nothing more than a mistress, a cheap, worthless version of the wife who ought not to have been his at all. His heart had bled for her in those moments when she had laid herself bare to him and trusted him so implicitly with herself. He'd looked into her eyes and seen the sincerity there, the willingness to throw everything that she'd ever known away, to alienate herself from the people who she loved so that she could be with him. There had been a part of him that had been tempted, that had longed to say yes, to take her back to the tiny room that he was renting, to make her his wife in body if not in anything else, but that thought had quickly been chased away. He'd vowed that no matter what he would not be reduced to that, to treating her like a whore who did not get paid at the end of the time. Because, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he'd be making her his wife, he wouldn't. Not until he'd placed a ring on her finger.

She gave up so much when he married her. He knows that and she knows that, even if she will never admit it to him. It can't be easy, being married to a murderer. There hasn't been anything about it in the papers, she tells him, but the news will be known locally. He can only imagine the gossip, the sneers, the whispers that circulate as she walks past them. Wife of a convicted murderer. Perhaps a willing accomplice—the first wife had been an obstacle to their marriage, after all. She tells him that she can handle anything for him, that she has the strength to get through the days because she has his name and the ring on her finger, but he can't see how it helps. A snatched moment of happiness is all they've ever been allowed to know, and one night in a room that they couldn't even call their own cannot be enough to satisfy.

And yet…and yet it must be. Anna will never know the comfort of a warm embrace in the middle of the night, or the joys of a family life with him. He should never have allowed her to sacrifice so much for him. But he did. Because he is a weak man. A worthless man.

Anna has given up so much to stay by his side. But, lying in his dark prison bed, staring at the ceiling as his knee burns and sleep continues to elude him, he vows that she will not sacrifice her life after he has gone. He will convince her to go on living, to live and dream and love. He will beg her to find a nice man who will be able to offer her more than he ever has. She is young and beautiful and need not ever breathe word of him again. He can be forgotten, a ghost, a faded memory of a time best forgotten. Anna will be able to move on, seek out better opportunities. Perhaps she will even be graced with children. Anna is destined to be a mother. Seeing her with Ethel's Charlie had seemed like the most natural sight in the world. But the children she bears won't be his. They will be someone else's. Perhaps even Mr. Molesley's. And, as much as it hurts him to think about her making love with another man, he will be glad about it. Because she deserves happiness, and Anna sacrificed hers the moment she tied her affection to him.

She will, of course, deny that she can be happy again. She'll cry and mourn and wallow. Her grief will be profound. He cannot deny that. But he needs to know that she will move on with her life.

He shifts on the bed. His heart seems to be beating sickeningly fast, as though it is attempting to fit in the heartbeats of a lifetime in his remaining hours.

Anna is due on her final visit tomorrow. And he is determined to make her see that there is a life after him. He will make her see that she can move on. Because he is not worth the ultimate sacrifice of a life of loneliness and grief.