Spoilers for series 3.

This story adds dramatic detail to episodes 3x06 and 3x07. I was generally happy with what happened in the broadcast episodes, but I thought they didn't go far enough; they lacked detail, explanation and drama. So, I have attempted to provide that.

Many of the scenes can stand on their own as one shots. The events of the broadcast episodes are sort of interspersed throughout them, but I generally haven't written them in, because I don't want to make you read dialogue that you've already seen. So, you'll just have to deduce from what the characters are saying what has happened already and what has not happened yet.

...

Anna's body contracted rather jerkily as she collapsed onto the crate with a sigh. Her feet relaxed a little, but nothing else did. Until last autumn, the longest day she'd ever had was when Thomas had left for his army medic's training two days before a major luncheon attended by everyone who was anyone in the surrounding counties, and Ethel hadn't known what she was doing so Anna had had to do most of the work herself. Well, Anna and William. She sighed again at the thought. Poor William. Another young life lost.

This evening in late 1920, Anna had seen Lady Mary truly loose her composure for the first time ever. She'd seen her cry before, sure. Not often, but she had – usually over Mr Crawley. But they had only been short and temporary tears, just briefly spilling over the top of Lady Mary's usually tightly guarded wall of composure. Anna had often marvelled at the strength her lady showed in the face of heartbreak. But her strength had deserted her tonight.

The bell had rung only twenty minutes after Alfred and James had taken the dinner up. Lady Grantham's bell had rung at the same time, and for once, Miss O'Brien had not complained at being called to her duties early.

Anna had emerged from the servants' door in the young ladies' corridor to find Mr Crawley approaching from the far end of it. "Is everything alright, Anna?" he asked. It was a pointless question in a house that was drowning in grief.

"Lady Mary has just rung for me, sir," Anna replied.

Mr Crawley stopped in his tracks. "Ah," he said. He looked unsure, nervous. "I was just coming to see if she was alright."

Anna stopped also. If Lady Mary was not alright, then perhaps the person who should be comforting her should be her husband, not her maid.

Mr Crawley stepped aside. "Perhaps you could…" His hand waved in the direction of the door.

...

Anna could not have been prepared for the sight and sound of her mistress lying face down on the bed, sobbing uncontrollably, but she took it in her stride. She gingerly placed a hand on Lady Mary's shoulder, and began to rub it gently. She didn't say anything. There was nothing that could be said.

...

Anna reflected that the crate really was very uncomfortable. And the courtyard was cold. She wondered why she'd never particularly noticed this on all the many nights she'd sat there with Mr Bates.

She sighed again. She'd come here, to the place that reminded her of him, hoping to somehow gain some comfort from it, but it was no use. The thought only reminded her of all the many other long days she'd had in the past year. Anna wished she could lose control in the way that Lady Mary had. She wished she had someone to come and pat her on the shoulder. But that would never happen in a house like this one, where everyone, including herself, was too reserved to contemplate such gentle mercies. She reflected that it had never happened for Lady Mary before either.

Anna's reverie was broken by the sound of footsteps approaching from the driveway that led to the back of the house. They sounded slow and unbalanced. She heard a grunt and a crash, and began to get to her feet to see if the person was alright, but the crash was followed by the sound of the footsteps recommencing in a much more brisk manner and continuing to move towards the house. Then Anna saw a flash of light from a match as the figure came to a halt a few metres in front of her. He was facing away from her, taking a long drag on his cigarette.

"Are you alright, Thomas?" Anna asked.

Thomas jumped and looked around. "Jesus! You scared me out of me bloody wits."

"I heard a crash."

Thomas turned his back to her and took another puff. "Just kicked that old wheelbarrow," he grunted.

"Oh. Did it help?"

"Not really."

The atmosphere between them was still there, of course it was, but it had softened. Last night, Anna had seen a different side of Thomas. A side that she could identify with. A grief that she shared. She thought that she should go back to her room, but something kept her sitting on the crate.

"Where have you been?" she asked him.

He took his time replying, exhaling another cloud of smoke. "At the pub. With Dr Clarkson and some other people who…worked with her."

"That's nice. A kind of…colleagues memorial?"

"Yeah, I guess you could call it that."

Silence again. There had been a lot of silence in the house today.

"It was Dr Anderson's idea – he's the director of the General Hospital in Ripon. Just happened to be visiting today and heard the news. Lady Sybil dealt with him quite a lot, apparently, making plans for the hospitals and the convalescence homes. Not that she had any power over it, she just liked to help."

"I know she did."

Thomas stubbed out his cigarette on the wall of the laundry. He stood holding the butt for a moment, and then threw it at the ground with force. "Does it make you angry?"

"What?"

"The whole thing. That someone as young and as special as that can just be taken…for no reason."

"It makes me wonder why."

"Yes. Why. Why?"

"It is a cruel world we live in."

"Yeah, I know that, the world's always been cruel, especially to me, but to someone like that, someone who never hurt anyone in her life…"

"It's not her who's suffering now, though. It's the ones left behind. Lady Sybil's suffering is over."

"What, and you believe she's in heaven now?"

"Well, if anyone would be there, it would be her."

"Whatever."

"When something bad happens, all you can do is try to make sense of it. Try to move on. If you can, try to make something positive out of it…Though I confess, I haven't had much luck doing that today."

"Does it annoy you how everyone's harping on about it in the servants' hall when they hardly even knew her? I mean, Mr Carson did maybe, a bit, and you did, but Daisy was blubbering all through breakfast, and honestly, what's it got to do with her? So what if someone whose father you work for dies? It only means something if you knew her."

"Don't be silly. Lady Sybil was kind to everybody – of course everybody's sad."

"Alfred and Jimmy aren't. And Ivy. I wish they were but they aren't. They didn't know her."

"Daisy did, though. She taught her to cook."

Thomas looked at Anna for the first time, old memories passing across his face. "Oh yeah. She did."

Anna smiled. "I remember sitting in the servant's hall one afternoon – I just had a minute to myself and I was doing some mending, and I could hear what was going on in the kitchen, and Mrs Patmore said something loud like, 'Oh my lord, what on earth is that?' and then she realised who she was talking to and she quickly had to change it to, 'I mean, ah, I'm not entirely sure what it is you've tried to achieve, my lady'!'" Anna smiled again, and for a moment, Thomas joined her. "Lady Sybil wasn't offended, though."

"No. No, she wouldn't be. She never would be offended by something like that."

"No."

"That was one of the things I liked best about her. That she wasn't like the rest of them, she wasn't too lah-di-dah to muck in with us real people and do real things. And she talked to me like a real person, she didn't make me feel like I was less than her."

Anna frowned and raised an eyebrow. "Do the other Crawleys make you feel like you're less than them?"

"Yes."

"Lady Mary doesn't make me feel like that."

Thomas scoffed. "Does she not?"

"No."

"Well maybe that's because you know what she really is, you know all about her, so she can't lord anything over you."

"No, it's not like that. I treat her with respect and she treats me with respect."

Thomas scoffed again and sat down next to Anna. "I'm sure she's nice enough to you, but she doesn't think of you as her equal and she doesn't appreciate how hard you work. Anything she does do for you is probably out of gratitude for what you did for her over the Pamuk thing. It's only big things like that that they appreciate, or even notice. It's like his lordship only gate Bates a job cos he saved his life, and he only made me valet cos I tried to find his dog, but all the times I served him at dinner he didn't appreciate it at all."

"It was your job to serve him at dinner, Thomas. It wasn't your job to look for his dog."

"It wasn't your job to move a dead body for a fallen woman."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're still hiding it? When everybody -"

"I understand what you're saying about Lady Sybil – yes, she was different, but if you insult the rest of them you insult her memory."

Thomas looked at her for the second time. Her gaze was unfaltering. He realised he didn't want to argue with her. "Fair enough," he conceded.

"You know, if you're worried about people not being kind to you, perhaps you should be kind to them – if you're nice to someone, then they're nice to you back, that's how it works."

Thomas nodded. "I know. I just can't bring myself to be nice to people I don't like."

"Well, it's your loss. You're the one who's lonely."

"Oh, and you're not? Name me one servant who's not lonely!"

"What? Plenty of servants aren't -"

"No, well you're not, are you, because your Mr Bates is coming back, isn't he?"

Anna looked away.

"He is, isn't he? And where will I be then?"

Anna turned back, fire in her eyes. "For your information, I don't know if he's coming back, or when, but if he is, and all you can think about it is your stupid job rather than the triumph of justice in the release of an innocent man, then there is really no help for you, Thomas, because if you're that shallow and selfish that you don't even care that -"

"Alright, alright." Thomas put up his hands. "You do care, I know. I shouldn't have mentioned it."

"Look, I only started speaking to you because we're both grieving about Lady Sybil and I thought it might help to talk about it - I wanted to talk about it, anyway, but instead you've spent the whole conversation insulting people I care about, and maybe it's good to get some anger out once in a while, but I don't see why we should -"

"Yes, it is good to get anger out."

"Is that what you're doing?"

Thomas shrugged. There was silence again. Anna wondered why she wasn't in bed yet. Because there was no sleep to be had, that's why. She frowned again.

"I'm sorry, Anna, I shouldn't have mentioned it."

Anna's frown became a grimace of surprise. Thomas, apologising?

He sighed and adjusted his position on the crates. "It's hard for me. That's all."

"Well, life can be hard. We can't control that. What we can control is our attitude to it. I assume, since you apologised, that you're trying to be nice to me, and that therefore you would like me to be nice to you in return, but I'm not going to do that if you insult the people I care about."

"I didn't insult Mr Bates. I merely implied that when he comes back I'm going to lose my job."

"You did insult Lady Mary."

Thomas lit another cigarette and nodded nonchalantly. "There aren't many people in this house that I have a high opinion of."

"Well, that's your loss. I'm going to bed." Annoyed as Anna was, she did appreciate the new emotion. It had pushed away the grief and the worry. She got up and began to walk towards the back door. Just before she got there, she heard him say something, but as she was now on the other side of the courtyard, she couldn't quite hear it. But she thought it was,

"You're alright though, Anna. Thanks."