A/N (a.k.a. Introduction): Canon for everything up to S4. I wanted to show that Anna & Bates can have an interesting S5 storyline without being dramatically and violently torn apart, à la Fellowes (who presumably has the rights to the characters, etc etc). I can't guarantee his level of high drama, but I hope you enjoy it. My goal is to translate the show's style to paper, and generally stick to what Downton might show on screen.

I'm neither British nor from the 1920's. I Googled a fair amount, but if there are anachronisms and other errors, please forgive me! You can point them out if you'd like - I hope they're not too distracting, at least. Finally, you might notice some crossover between my prison letter fic, "Dearest," and this one.

Thanks to terriejane first and foremost for giving my draft a glance and boosting my morale! But also, Gelana and bugs also deserve my gratitude for their feedback, wisdom, and general hilarity.

He had been happy to offer his services, and Mrs. Hughes had not hesitated beyond a cursory, "Well, only if you're sure you can spare the time," before rushing off in a desperate effort to catch up to her unusually hectic day. It was years since anyone had paused to consider his leg a potential impediment to such tasks as these, and he was glad of it.

In fact, John Bates was in a particularly cheery mood today, though he himself could discern no particular reason for it. Perhaps it was the sun, making a rare appearance through the benign, wispy clouds that hung in the sky — there were always clouds, of course, but today they seemed much less interested than usual in looming threateningly overhead.

Or perhaps it was simply that he had found an unexpected break, to escape the downstairs bustle and stroll past the estate's budding fields, the grass still wet with the morning dew. To be quite honest with himself, John had offered to post Mrs. Hughes's letter in the village not so much out of kindness as the instinct to seize a rare opportunity.

If only Anna could have accompanied him — then, he thought, this moment would have been perfect. Without this errand to run, he imagined he might at this very instant have been mending coats and cleaning shoes with her in the boot room. It suddenly struck him unjust that he should have have left her there, in that dark and stifling space, while he alone basked in the sunlight. Immediately, he resolved to appease his conscience by purchasing some small present from the village, though he would withhold the reason for it when he presented it to her; she would only think him silly if he told. And he was being silly, perhaps, but he was always happy to play the fool when it came to his wife.

The business of posting a letter went quickly, and when it was done, John swept a glance over the inside of the post office. Faded advertisements stuck wearily to the walls and windows, and the few posters, sweets, and other goods for sale reeked uniformly of a certain sourness from age. The room itself was gloomy and cramped, musty even, and he promptly decided there was nothing here to properly pay penance for his enjoying the sun in lieu of Anna's company.

Turning himself around, he exited the building and headed towards the bookstore, where he could also count on finding a few interesting trinkets and various knick-knacks that might tickle Anna's fancy. With this thought in mind, he turned a corner — sharper than was his habit, his pace quickening —

Thud. If he had been slightly more off-balance, he might have fallen, but John had managed to catch himself in time. The other party, however, was not quite so fortunate.

John stared down at the scrawny little boy, no older than eight or nine, who had taken a hard tumble onto the ground with a surprised grunt. It was difficult to tell if the sandy color of his hair was natural, for it seemed as though a layer of dust — it wasn't grime, per se, and so "dust" was the only word John could think of — clung to the boy from head to toe.

"Are you all right?" John briefly wondered if he should reach down and offer the boy a hand; but too late, the young lad had already sprung back onto his feet, brushing himself off and glaring at the tall man defiantly.

"You should watch where you're going, you great big oaf!"

Before John could recover from this surprise, the youth suddenly reared his foot back and gave a fierce kick to the valet's leg, delivering an even greater shock. At least it isn't my lame one, John thought woefully, as sharp pain shot up his limb and made him hiss.

For a moment, the little assailant studied John's face fearfully, but John was far too preoccupied with regaining his composure to notice. Satisfied that no terrifying retribution was to befall him, the boy sulkily turned his face away and began to scan the grounds for — ah, there it was — some object.

The pain was now fading, and John watched with mounting curiosity as the boy gingerly picked up what seemed to be a crude, makeshift airplane, made from snapped tree branches and twigs haphazardly held in place by bits of twine. Judging by its still-intact form, the airplane was surprisingly sturdy in construction.

"'A great big oaf,' was it?" John recalled in a mild tone.

The boy snapped his head up, and this time, John was alert to the alarm in his stare as well as in his defensive, rigid crouch. Reflexively, the valet smiled, hiding his unease. Why was the boy so afraid? Was it the cane? "Hardly proper language for a young man."

The young man in question scrunched up his face in response but said nothing, his tense limbs seemingly ready to spring away at any second.

In the silence that ensued, the two of them regarded each other, sizing each other up: one curious, the other apprehensive.

"What's your name?" John finally asked, as kindly as he could manage.

John's steady, placid manner seemed to be increasingly emboldening the boy. "That's none of your business," he shot back.

A pale, thin woman seemed to materialize out of thin air just then, though of course it was only that John and his new acquaintance had been too engrossed in their little encounter to notice her. She seemed anxious and almost frantic, as if by nature her nerves were in a perpetual process of being torn to shreds.

"Henry!" she called urgently in a lowered voice, making the boy jump and whip his head around to face her. "Where have you been? You'd better get yourself back to the house right this moment!"

Henry — so that was his name — scrambled to his feet, as John allowed himself a smile at the mother's near-comedic timing. The woman, on her part, had by then noticed the large man, dressed impeccably in a modest but neat black-and-brown outfit. "I hope my son hasn't been botherin' you," she said anxiously. Her hair, John noticed, was the ash blond of her son, and the same layer of dust coated her worn clothes and skin.

"Not at all," he reassured her with a smile meant to comfort the woman and a glint of the eyes meant to unsettle the boy. "If anything, I should apologize for having bumped into young Henry here." With a slight emphasis on the name, his eyes flickered to the boy's face, unable to resist a glimpse.

On his part, Henry stared up blankly at John, his face puckered by an unreadable expression.

"You work at Downton Abbey, don't you?" the mother questioned. "I've seen you before, with the other servants in town."

Henry's mouth fell open slightly. An expression of surprise, then.

John nodded, bowing politely. "Yes, I do work at the Abbey. I'm the head valet there." He was beginning to find this entire situation rather amusing — and curious. His two new acquaintances intrigued him. Admittedly, it was hardly surprising for him to find unfamiliar faces in the village, since he was generally so confined to Downton Abbey. Furthermore, as Anna sometimes liked to teasingly point out, John Bates was no social gadfly. A book and his wife were all the company he required.

The mother was visibly flustered now, terrified of having offended someone to whom she apparently attributed great power and influence. "Oh, I'm ever so sorry if Henry has troubled you—" she began to stutter.

"No trouble at all," John said quickly. "I assure you. Please, don't fret on my account." He paused. "I'm John Bates."

Relieved by his words, the mother glanced back at the way she had come, her mind having already shifted to whatever her next worry was. "Well, I'm Louisa, wife to Douglas Stowe, the carpenter," she said with a hurried curtsey, "And this is me son, Henry — and we really had better get going. It was a pleasure to meet you." Her words flew out, empty but well-meant, and John smiled politely in response.

"The pleasure was all mine," he said with a light tip of his bowler, as ever the picture of decorum.

Grabbing her son's hand, Mrs. Stowe fretfully headed off, though Henry could not resist turning around to give John a slick glimpse of his tongue. John chuckled, shaking his head at the child's insolence. He remembered having once been just as young, though not quite scraggy as much as plump (he had, thankfully, grown tall and burly in his adolescent years), with a sharp tongue of his own that he had never fully mastered.

The church bells rang the hour off in the distance, jolting John back to reality. He was beginning to overextend his brief excursion, and he still had to buy that gift of atonement for Anna.

Musing over what he would tell Anna later — well, what was there to tell, but that a cheeky boy had tackled and kicked at him, only to be dragged away by his mousy mother? — John set off as briskly as he could manage to the bookstore.

In the end, John had settled for a pack of scented candles. He was somewhat disappointed with himself for it, but a valet's salary, even with His Lordship's generosity, could accommodate only so much outside the necessary purchases. Besides, he hadn't had the courage to try his luck with the cheaper but decidedly odder goods in the store, particularly when the memory of his last experiment still stung so smartly: John had recently brought home a whistle that promised to chirp like a robin bird — and he and Anna had had a good, startled laugh when it produced a noise vaguely resembling a duck's quack instead. He had, however, then been forced to admit to his horrible taste in impulsive purchases.

"You can't accuse me of not being practical this time."

His wife shook her head, amused. "No, I suppose not." She fingered the package. "It does seem quite random, though. What struck your fancy?"

"I suppose you did."

She rewarded her husband with a kiss for that, just as he had hoped.

"Well, then," she said as she drew back, settling into her chair again, "We may as well light one of them now."

John watched as she withdrew a candle and set it on a holder to light with a match. "It's lavender and chamomile. It should help you sleep."

Reflexively, Anna averted her eyes. So he had noticed the other night, when her slumber had been suddenly shattered to pieces by an unexpected return of the nightmares — sometimes, she feared they would never fully disappear.

She noticed John had his gaze fixed on her hand, which had begun nervously rubbing the handle of the candlestick. She willed herself to breathe in deeply, letting the soothing scent fill her lungs. Within seconds, she felt the tremors within her quietening somewhat. Her husband had bought this for her. He was here now, as he always had been, with his gentle smile and a peculiar penchant for showering her with arbitrary gifts. And for a brief moment, she recalled the lavenders he had picked for her all those years ago, to accompany the magnificent dinner tray with which he had furtively furnished her. (She also remembered attempting to imagine their scent, as her nose had been too blocked up to actually smell them, to her chagrin.)

Reaching out her hand, she squeezed John's hand for a moment before letting go. "Well," she said, "Thank you for this."

He only smiled at her in response.

Anna breathed in the scent deeply once more, then slowly released it. "John, do you think—" Hesitant, she looked up to see her husband's eyes crinkle again, an automatic response to the sound of his given name.

"Do I think what?"

She gathered up her courage. "Do you think we'll ever have a child?"

He was taken aback by the sudden question, she could tell. To be quite honest, she herself was not sure where it had come from. But it was a question she had agonized about, on and off, for the past few years.

He still hadn't answered.

"We could go see Dr. Clarkson," she suggested tentatively. "Perhaps he could tell us something, something we could do."

He sighed deeply, a weary sigh that betrayed the amount of thought he, too, must have privately poured into the issue.

At first, they had been cautiously hopeful. In the meantime, what with their attachment to Downton and their busy lives, they had been content — no, happier than either had ever dared to dream — to spend their days with each other. Then the grim incident — neither ever called it anything explicitly, but they never had to — had eclipsed everything else, and it had taken both of them everything they had to claw their way back into some semblance of domestic felicity again.

Frankly, it was still an ongoing process, one Anna sometimes despaired would never end. But it was enough, for now, to keep the shadows at bay as much as possible, and to remind herself that she had survived another day, while he had not.

It helped that the monster was dead. She had stopped jumping at every sudden movement and every shadow, and for that at least she was grateful. The vile man walked the earth no more. The suddenness of it all had been alarming at first, but after the shock and spasm of paranoia had worn away, Anna had recovered her wits. It was ludicrous, really, to imagine that her limping husband had managed to sweep into Piccadilly Circle with impeccable and miraculous timing, just in time to happen upon Green; then deftly stage an accidental death, in plain daylight and in public view, with the help of a conveniently timed bus; and to move with enough alacrity and stealth (with his cane!) to avoid notice by anyone in the vicinity, including Green himself; and then, finally, to coolly return to Downton without a hair out of place. Furthermore, it was impossible that it had all been so carefully plotted to such meticulous detail, and John was not one to risk so much on luck alone. (Sometimes it troubled her to realize she had needed to rationalize his guiltlessness, rather than relying on her usual faith in him, but she pushed the thought away. But what had he been up to, in York?)

On occasion, she liked to imagine Green's death had been brought about by Providence itself, the very wrath of God striking down the basest of men in a spectacular show of divine intervention. The thought gave her a tiny, but welcome, bit of peace.

Her husband had been silent for a long time. "John?"

"I'm sorry," he apologized, emerging out of a reverie. "Yes, you're right. We should go see Dr. Clarkson." He smiled gently at her, though Anna sensed his unease. "It wouldn't hurt," he added, mostly for his own benefit.

"Surely we've faced worse than Dr. Clarkson's office, you and I," Anna jested.

This time, his grin was more genuine, lingering into the comfortable silence that followed. Her knee rested against his leg, and her hand had somehow found its way back into his hefty ones, his thumb gently caressing her knuckles, but both were lost in their own thoughts.

"Well, Mr. Bates, I think it's high time we went off to bed."

John blew out the lantern obediently and lumbered to his feet. They began to ascend the stairs, Anna leading the way with the candle.

"By the way," he said, his tone casual, "I ran into a family called the Stowes in the village. Have you heard of them? The husband's a carpenter."

"The Stowes? Yes, they do sound familiar," Anna answered slowly, turning the name over in her mind. "They rather keep to themselves, I think."

"I wonder what that's like."

He heard her chuckle in appreciation of his dry humor. As they climbed the rest of the stairs in silence, John found himself picturing the young boy, with his brazen words and blazing eyes. It was doubtful he would see the boy again, especially in the near future; nevertheless, John could not help but feel once more that he had found a kindred spirit, of sorts, in little Henry Stowe.