Summary: Months after Anna's attack, she decides she's ready to attempt intimacy again with her husband. But she is not the only one still traumatized by the events of that night.

Disclaimer: I still don't own these characters or Downton Abbey. Probably for the best as I would probably torture them relentlessly. TRIGGER WARNING

A/N: This one-shot is rated M for mature content, but this is not necessarily a fluffy happy fic, so be warned. I try to handle sensitive subjects with care while also being true to reality and the characters. Thanks to my partner in angst plotting for the story idea :) I'm also putting in a Trigger Warning on this because it involves references to Anna's attack.

She was beautiful. But of course, Anna was always beautiful. Even in the first light of morning with her hair escaping its braid and her eyes droopy with fatigue, he loved to look at her. But on this morning, she was especially lovely.

John lay on his side, his head propped up with one arm gazing down at her. Anna was on her back next to him, her eyes glued to the ceiling as she chewed nervously on her bottom lip, waiting for him to respond to her proposal.

"We don't have to," he told her.

"I know we don't have to," she responded. "But enough time has passed, and I think I'm ready. We can't continue as we have been. It isn't fair to you."

He shook his head at her mention of him, as if concern regarding him should ever enter her mind. They were not living in the dark ages. He was her husband - her protector. She belonged to him in the sense that it was his duty to protect her, not that she owed him any part of herself. Her body was her own, not his to touch or invade whenever he saw fit. Just the thought of treating her so made him taste bile in the back of his throat.

"All I care about is you," John told her softly. "And I don't want you to push yourself. I will always be here for you. You don't have to do anything on my account, Anna."

Even if they never got back what was taken from them, from her. Even if she could never abide him touching her or looking at her nude form. He could live with it if need be.

"I think... I think I want to try," Anna stated, her voice wavering only slightly. "I don't want this to steal our joy of each other."

"Neither do I," he agreed. "Just so long as it doesn't frighten you or make you uncomfortable."

Anna gave him a small smile of agreement.

"Then... soon?" she asked.

"Whenever you like."

He waited for her to pick her moment, a time when they were not both exhausted from the day's work or rushing to make it to the house in time for breakfast. Luckily, their half next days aligned and Anna gave him a knowing look when he asked her what she might like to do.

"Perhaps just spend some time together at the cottage," she answered aloud, but her expression held a deeper meaning.

Both excitement and trepidation raged through him as John walked with her down that familiar path to their home.

At least her nightmares had been better of late, and she rarely startled anymore at loud sounds or unfamiliar men's voices. He knew she still suffered from the occasional flashback, although she refused to tell him about them. "Why do that to you?" she asked when he suggested talking about them might help. He hadn't pressed her.

John still remembered the words she spoke to him the day he confronted her in the boot room, about why she would not tell him.

Because I knew the suffering it would bring you.

As if his suffering meant anything at all compared to hers. He would gladly endure any pain, physical or otherwise, if it meant even the slightest relief for Anna. She did not deserve the anguish which had been thrust upon her, and his guilt in not being there to keep her safe still nagged at him endlessly.

She helped him off with his coat when they arrived at the cottage, before she hung up her own along with her hat. Their movements were a perfect choreography forged through years of practice. Day after day, they did the same thing. John found the habit to be a comfort, one he'd had to live without when Anna moved back into the house after her attack.

As he followed her into their sitting room, he thought back to those dark days of confusion and fear. Their home held no appeal without her in it. He realized then that Anna's presence bid back the darkness more than the light of any lamp or candle. While she'd been back at home for many months now, he still remembered the loneliness, wondering if she no longer loved him, if he might have to live without her.

The afternoon sun flooded the room through the window curtains and Anna did not bother with a light as she set about preparing them a pot of tea. John followed her into the kitchen and watched her bustle about her work with brisk efficiency.

He always adored watching her. The way she moved when she walked, and how her simple black dresses hung on her frame. They were not as endearing as her housemaid uniforms, but really, anything Anna wore would suit her. She could dress in sack cloth and still look beautiful.

She spared him a glance every once in a while as she waited for the teapot to boil. There was a tension in her body as she looked at him - somewhere between anticipation and nervousness. John could tell that she had specific plans for their afternoon together.

They drank their tea in relative silence. He was still getting used to the quiet, with Anna speaking so much less than she had before. In truth, he missed her periodic chatter and the way she would interrupt his reading to tell him some story or part of her day at the house. He wanted to say something to her, to let her know that he noticed the change. But he did not want to draw attention to the deviation from her old behavior.

So they sat without speaking much of the time, and John took the opportunity to study her features and try to imagine what was going through her mind.

With the tea done, Anna made her intentions clear, and he had no need of reading her thoughts.

"I think we should go upstairs," she said pointedly.

"As you wish."

She slipped out of her clothes slowly. Her movements were more determined than sensual, but Bates enjoyed observing her just the same. She removed her corset and breathed in deeply as she set it aside. He understood the design of the garment was to accentuate the female figure, but Bates thought she did not really need it. Her body was perfect, especially as she'd been regaining some of the weight she'd lost in the past few months.

Anna hesitated as she went to remove her shift. She glanced over her shoulder at him. "What about you?" she asked. "Aren't you getting undressed?"

"I was too busy watching you," he told her honestly.

Turning to him, she reached for the lapels of his jacket. He let her push it off his shoulders and take it to the closet to hang up while he unbuttoned his vest and removed his tie. They used to go through the same motions all the time, her helping him out of his clothes after he helped her out of hers. But all of that stopped after the house party, even when he knew the truth of what had happened to her. For the longest time, she could not even undress in front of him. Even now she would keep her back turned and shrug into a nightgown before he could catch much of a glimpse of her.

Anna set about the task of helping him remove his clothing with determination. John could tell it bothered her a little, that she was not the carefree person she'd once been. She did not let her fingers drift over him as she helped him remove his shirt, nor did she let them linger temptingly. But she did not shy away from him when he was down to his undershirt and he pulled her to him.

"You are beautiful," he told her, meeting her eyes as he put his hands to her cheeks. He leaned in to kiss her lips, letting his eyes flutter closed as he drew near. It had been so long since they'd even kissed...

But before their lips could meet, her head turned slightly away from him and he instantly withdrew his hands and straightened. "Anna?" he asked, studying her profile.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, shaking her head.

"Don't be," John told her. "There's no reason to be sorry."

She sighed wretchedly. "But I made such a big deal about being ready and wanting to do this..."

"If you aren't ready, then I won't push you, Anna," he reassured her.

Anna stared at him for a moment, the longing in her eyes clear. Moving slowly, she reached out a hand to touch his shoulder. Her fingers ran across the soft fabric of his undershirt until she reached the skin at his neck. Curling her fingers behind his head, she gently pulled him down to her while rising to meet him on her tip toes.

She kissed him with the faintest of touches at first, their lips greeting like acquaintances rather than lovers. But after a moment, Anna let her lips move between his, finding the crevice of his mouth and teasing it open with hers.

John nearly shook from the deliberate sensuality of their kiss as it deepened. He could not resist her, nor could he ignore how her bottom lip shook slightly. Did she feel desire? Or was it fear? Was this truly what she wanted, or did she do it to try and please him?

Breaking away from her, he began, "Anna, you know-"

But she interrupted him with another kiss, this one stealing his breath and his protest both until he lost himself in the feel and taste of her. His hands went to her waist, and then they stroked up her back until they found her hair. How he loved her hair when it was down and free. Though he was distracted by their kiss, his fingers found the pins easily, removing one after another until the bun fell into waves of gold along her back. The strands flowed through his rough fingers like silk over unfinished wood. They broke apart just long enough to travel the few feet to the bed, and Anna pushed him down to sit on it as she stood between his legs and looked down at him. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she leaned over him and let their lips meet again.

But as Anna pulled away from him, a lazy smile alighting her face, another image entered his mind.

He saw her as she was that night after the concert - bruised and scraped, her eyes wild with something she dare not share. How had he believed her when she said she'd fallen? Could he have spared her those weeks of miserable grief, alone and isolated, had he confronted her then? Just the thought of her from that night dampened his desire like a cold wind.

"Anna," he began, but she made a movement which stopped him. Deliberately, she grasped the fabric of her shift in both hands and pulled at it until it went up over her head. Without pause, she pushed down her knickers and stepped out of them. His mouth went dry at the sight of her. It had been many months since he'd seen her so, fully illuminated in the light of day, as his body was quick to remind him.

She stepped forward and helped him remove his own undershirt. She did not remove his shorts, but left him to it as she crawled onto the bed beside him. Making short work of the task, he joined her a moment later, stretching out on his side next to her. She gave no indication of discomfort at their nakedness, but her eyes did not stray from his face.

He reached out a hand to touch her, letting his palm slide from her cheek to her neck and from there down, past her bare collar bone he until the found the softness of her breast. Her eyes blinked shut at the sensation and he massaged her gently until he heard her sigh softly at the contact. She moved to him, bringing her lips to his, this time with more certainty.

Seeming to lose himself in the kiss, John found himself responding more and more to her body beneath his questing hand. The curve of her hip was a familiar spot, like a favorite place in the garden which had gone unvisited for too long. Her skin was smooth and perfect beneath his fingers, just as he remembered.

He ached for her in an eager and natural way, but even as he reveled in the warmth of her body, John's mind would not let him rest.

She had never told him much about the night she was attacked, and he could never bring himself to press her for details. But he did wonder. Where did it happen? He seemed to remember Mrs. Hughes saying something about the boot room, but much of his initial conversation with her on the subject was lost in the turmoil of his mind. Anna's face was so marked that night, she must have fought her attacker a great deal. He must have been rough with her, must have struck her or worse to subdue her.

Suddenly feeling sick, John pulled away from her and Anna's brow wrinkled with confusion. "What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing," he responded quickly, trying to push those thoughts from his mind. Her wounds were healed, her skin no longer blemished by the blood and bruises. She did not even carry scars from the ordeal, at least not physical ones.

Perhaps sensing his thoughts and growing turmoil, Anna took charge of their encounter again. With a firm hand, she guided him so that he lay on his back, his head cushioned by a pillow. She straddled his torso with her weight born on her legs, a position they often used to spare his knee. But John sensed that it would be better for her this way as well, being the one in control, without his body on top on her, trapping her.

She moved over him, teasing at first and then with more firm contact between their bodies. A smile ghosted her face as she touched them together, her nakedness both tantalizing and unnerving. She had begun to regain the lost weight, but she still looked thin and fragile. He could see the outline of her ribs more clearly, and it alarmed him.

His mind took him back to Downton, back to the downstairs rooms where he should have been that night. He should have followed her. He should have protected her. But he'd failed, and because of him that monster had struck Anna, had torn at her clothing and held her down and-

She moved above him, positioning her body on top of his as she grasped him gently in one hand. But his hardness had lost its rigidity. He swallowed in humiliation as he watched Anna realize what had happened. It would not return, not even as she began to stoke him with thoughtful pressure.

Shame flooded through John as he watched Anna try to prolong his arousal. But he knew even as her attempts grew more frustrated and confused that it would not do. He could not banish from his mind the thought of her in such pain and fear, not when he was about to be with her in the very same way.

He knew it was different, what she'd been put through by that villain and what the two of them shared as husband and wife. But what he knew in his head could not banish what he feared in his heart: the knowledge that he was about to invade her body, just as her attacker had. But rather than do so by force, he'd be doing it by unwitting coercion, by letting her believe this was an act she had to perform, that he needed and expected it of her as a condition of their marriage.

The ring on her finger gave him no such rights to her, no such liberties. If they were never intimate again, he could only count it as the price of his failure to protect her, and it was one she paid as well as him, for her enjoyment of their love was equally as important.

"Anna, stop," he commanded her.

With a dejected sigh, she slowly let go of him. She could not meet his gaze. Through his own turmoil and embarrassment at his body's betrayal, John noticed her eyes filling with tears.

"I understand," she said, her soft voice rough with emotion. "I didn't expect you to desire me as you did before. I'm not... I'm not..."

Her words seized him as he suddenly realized she blamed herself. As she moved to slide off of him, he sat up and caught her in his arms, pulling her against him.

"It's not you," he told her. "It could never be you. You have no idea how much I desire you. When I look at you, sometimes it is all I can think about, and that shames me."

She sniffled against him, and he could feel the warm drop of one of her tears land on his bare shoulder. Pulling her tight against him, the position grinding her against him in a delicious feeling of pleasure, John sighed in frustration.

"Why should you feel shame?" she asked, her sobs which threatened to overcome her barely kept at bay by her sheer will.

"Because of what you've been through, what I failed to stop. How can I ask this of you - ever ask it of you - when it was perverted for you by such violence?"

And yet, even as he spoke, her nearness and warmth, the feel of her bare breasts against his skin, was a physical torment.

Anna responded, "But you've never asked me. You've never even hinted at it, and I worried you no longer wanted me."

"That could never be true."

How could he explain to her his feelings when they were in such contradiction to each other? Desire warred with grief, guilt with love. At one moment he saw himself as her husband, a useless old man who'd been powerless to stop this terrible thing from happening to her. And in the next moment, he saw himself in the place of the villain, wanting her in the same way. Not against her will, never against her will, but wanting her just the same. Because if she could be hurt by wanting, then he knew such thoughts should be banished from existence.

"If I disgust you, or if you think about it when you look at me-" she began.

"It isn't that, not at all." He sighed at the pain in her voice and at him as the cause of it. "You don't disgust me, Anna. Nothing could be further from the truth. But when I look at you, I do think of what you've been through. And I worry I will make it worse."

As much as he ached for her, both physically and in his thoughts, he would suffer through a lifetime of such feelings before knowingly doing anything that might bring her more anguish.

Anna pulled back from him slightly so she could look him in the eyes. Sniffling again, in a small voice she said, "But I want to please you. I don't want that taken from us. I am your wife, and I couldn't bear it if you no longer looked at me with desire."

He nodded, acknowledging her feelings even as they ran contrary to his own. It still felt wrong. He felt wrong and vile and lecherous. "I don't think I could ever look at you with anything but love," he assured her. "As long as you know I have no expectations on you. Not now and not ever, Anna."

Smiling through her tears, she answered, "I know. Nor do I have expectations of you."

He sighed at the reminder of his body's let down, mortification reasserted itself as the crisis of calming Anna's doubts passed. Having struggled so long to overcome his feelings of inadequacy with Anna, it bothered him tremendously. Looking away from her, he frowned tightly and let out a deep breath as he tried to pull away from her.

But Anna kept her arms around him and burrowed her face into his shoulder. She observed, "I was so caught up in me being ready, it didn't occur to me that you might not be ready yet."

"You shouldn't have to worry about me."

She was the one who had been traumatized, her body used and violated by an evil man. He had no right to indulge in such feelings.

"You are all I worry about," Anna professed. "And now because of my naivety, because of what happened to me, it has caused you such turmoil..."

He could see the regret in her eyes, as though she were in some way to blame for his reaction.

She continued, "I wish I could spare you all this. I feel as though the harder I try, the harder it becomes for us to get back what we had. And I so want it back, for both of us."

Anna was near tears, so he hushed her and pulled her close. The need for her was still great, and he could feel his body stirring with each movement she made against him. But his mind was the barrier that kept it from happening. His doubts and fears, not hers.

They held each other like that for a few minutes before the position became too much for his knee and they stretched out together on the bed. John still enjoyed the sensation of them touching, skin to skin, even if it made his desire for her all the more frustrating. Anna stirred restlessly against him, and he could sense the same need for release in her. But on this night, at least, it was not to be for either of them.

"I think I just need some time," John suggested. "And perhaps more moments like these."

Anna nodded thoughtfully. "I'd like that."

She shivered in the still, cool air of their bedroom, and he reached across the mattress to pull the edge of the blanket over the top of them.

"We can try again another night," he offered.

"If you want."

There was a hesitance in her tone born of rejection, and he hated the sound of it.

"I do," he assured her. "If that's what you want?"

"Yes, very much. I didn't realize how much until... until a little while ago."

"I'm sorry."

Anna sighed at him. "Please, don't be sorry. I have to admit... I was a little terrified."

He tried to push himself up, to get a better look at her face as he heard that admission, but Anna steadfastly refused to let him. Quickly, she added, "Not of you. I could never be afraid of you. I was terrified that I might... react badly. That I might close my eyes and be back there, in that room with him. And I didn't want you to see me that way, not when we're together."

"Did you," he asked, "have a flashback?"

"No. I didn't."

The contentment in her answer was enough for him.

"Then we'll try again," John stated decisively.

Anna let out a breath of relief. "Good. Because I'm not keen to give up that part of our marriage."

They fell into a comfortable silence, their breath coming evenly as the tension began to slowly drain from their bodies. While their evening was not a success in the way Anna had probably hoped, just touching so intimately, without the barriers of clothes or expectations, was its own reward.

She fell asleep first but he followed her into the realm of dreams shortly after.

fin