White. Bright, summer white. They were all dressed in pastels, and he felt sorely out of place in his gray attire and black mourning band. He felt too different, like an alien from a different land. He hadn't really wanted to come.

Robert had initially come to Crawley House to ask him to play, but it wasn't like he would be able to play, even if he had wanted to. He could barely walk, let alone run around playing sports like he did as a boy. He hadn't played cricket since his father died, and he didn't really want to pick it up again. But Robert had seemed so disappointed, so let down that Matthew let himself be coerced into coming to the annual House vs. Village cricket match. He would watch, and maybe even make conversation with the family, something he hadn't done very much in the past months. And so he was here, despite his conscience telling him he shouldn't go. He shouldn't go have fun at a cricket match while Lavinia was rotting in the ground.

He didn't really want to socialize with the family today, so he scoped out a bench that was on the sidelines, a ways away from everyone. He really didn't want to face any of them. Least of all Mary.

Matthew hadn't been up at the big house since Lavinia's death. He had barely left Crawley House for two weeks after her death, sulking and being a general nuisance to his mother. How she put up with his awful moods was beyond him. But after two weeks had passed, she encouraged him to at least do something.

Easy for her to say. She was always so wrapped up in her work. But he had returned to work. It was a welcome excuse to avoid dinners up at the big house and it kept him occupied, kept his mind away from anger and self-pity. There, nobody asked him about his personal life. The other men at the firm, some similarly scarred by war, did not ask him how he was feeling or wonder what his past was like. They simply came, did their work, and went home. It suited him.

Isobel had reluctantly suggested he go to Manchester and work there for a few months, just to get away from it all. She didn't really want him to go, she wanted to be there for him, but she knew it might do him some good. It seemed a nice solution, to go back to his home, where he grew up, and forget the past couple years. He considered it, and nearly decided to go, but for reasons he couldn't even explain, he had decided to stay. He couldn't leave Downton, not even now.

So here he was.

He carefully eased himself down onto the bench, propping his stick on the side. Sharp pain shot through his back, and he silently cursed his injury, though he tried not to show any expression of discomfort. The day was pleasant enough, a warm June day with sun shining and not a cloud in the sky. The cricket game itself was decent, although the house, which he felt obligated to cheer for, was losing sorely to the village. But all in all, he felt there was no point to him coming. Nobody seemed to notice him over here, and he would have been more contented at home reading.

That was, until she came over.

He hadn't seen her since the funeral, that awful day where he had accused her of killing Lavinia. Perhaps he was being overdramatic, but who else could he blame? He blamed himself, of course. But someone had to be at fault for a woman, barely older than a girl, to die that young. It wasn't natural, it wasn't fair. Flu wasn't supposed to take young women in their prime. Just like war wasn't supposed to take young men who should have been courting pretty young girls and falling in love. Instead, they were getting killed by the thousands and coming back completely changed, both physically and mentally.

Matthew looked up at her, wearing a loose, elegant dress of light blue and a white hat. She was a sight to behold, as always. He couldn't help but smile when he saw her, despite his best efforts. "Mary!" he exclaimed, his voice betraying his attempt at indifference. What was the point? No matter what he had accused her of, he was never going to be able to contain his feelings about her.

"Why are you sitting all the way over here? You seem awfully lonely." She was bright, cheerier than he'd seen her for a while. Richard Carlisle was nowhere in sight. But was she really this happy, or was she putting on a face for him?

He shifted uncomfortably. "Maybe I feel like being lonely. Besides, I walked up from the house and my back started hurting again so I sat down at the nearest bench." It was an excuse, and they both knew it, but he certainly wasn't going to admit that he was avoiding her. Besides, his back was hurting, so it wasn't a total lie.

"I haven't seen you around much." she replied, sitting next to him on the bench. He envied her ease, her smooth manner. She was so good at being alright, so good at pretending nothing had ever happened between them.

He bit his lip. "Well, I've been busy with work..."

"Yes, so your mother had told us. What do they do to you in that place that you can't get home in time for dinner?" she asked. It was a joke, but he looked uneasy.

"The firm is not quite as full as it used to be. It was actually easy to find a job. They're missing so many men these days..."

Mary sighed. She hadn't seen the war directly, but she had seen the men damaged by it, knew far too many who had died. "That's too bad. Without you and Sybil, dinner has rather become a trifling bore. Even Granny has been more subdued." She cracked a smile at her own joke. "But honestly, I've missed you. And I think Papa gets quite lonely being the only man in the dining room after dinner. I suspect he converses with Carson."

He too was able to manage a tight smile. He hadn't really, truly smiled since Lavinia died. Even so, the thought of stoic, traditional Carson having an after-dinner drink with Robert was quite amusing.

"So, anything else new and exciting?"

"Well, we're going up to Sybil's wedding next month, Edith and I. Papa and Granny won't come, and Mama still isn't feeling up to a trip to Ireland. And you? How is your recovery coming?"

"Pretty well, I think. I go up to London for therapy on Saturdays, and it's helping a great deal. They say I should be completely back to normal by the end of summer," he said, a little bit of a grimace crossing his face. How was it fair that he had gotten all this back, that his only inconvenience would be a lingering bruise on his spine that might cause him some pain? He had hurt so many people and taken so much, and now he was nearly back to normal. A cane that he didn't need as much anymore and could soon get rid of altogether was the only visible vestige of his injury.

She patted his hand. "That's wonderful. I'm so very glad for you."

"Why was I so lucky though, Mary? So many men, far better men than I, they died on the front or got injured to the point where their lives would never be the same again. But here I am, nearly unscathed, and I hurt Lavinia like that. I've hurt you as well." He stared into her deep brown eyes looking for something. Answers, maybe? He knew he wouldn't find them there, but he could look all the same.

"Don't think that way, Matthew. I'm not sure why you survived, or why you recovered, but surely there is a reason. But...I can't deny that you've hurt me. In fact, you've hurt me a great deal. I didn't believe you when you said we killed Lavinia, but all the same, you've hurt me. Matthew, that kiss...we shouldn't have. We both knew that we would go back to our fiancees, and that this would just linger between us. We were stupid, Matthew, so stupid."

He laughed, but it was a hysterical, depressed laugh. Laughing at his own misfortune, like he had in that hospital bed, while she had sat by his side. That angry laugh that in turn made her angry. It made her want to slap him sometimes, to try and get him to see sense. But he laughed, and he gave her a glance that seemed to say that she was stating the obvious. "We've always been stupid. If we were smart, we would have been engaged in 1914. If we had been smart, maybe we wouldn't have gotten involved with each other in the first place. You could have just kept ignoring my puppy dog eyes and calling me a sea monster." Another laugh, another humorless laugh at himself.

Mary cast her eyes downwards, thinking about the truth of his words. Had she not been stupid, she wouldn't have flirted her way to disaster. If she hadn't been so stupid, maybe she wouldn't have gotten engaged to Carlisle. But she had been stupid, a bonafide idiot. "Here we are again. Knowing we've gone too far. And yet, we can't ever stop it, can we?"

He didn't reply. There was no answer to her frank words, no way to really say how he felt. How he would love to have her, to call her his. In the nagging corner of his mind, he knew that wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. It would be so unfair to poor Lavinia, and besides, Mary was engaged.

"Why are you engaged to Carlisle?" he asked finally. It seemed out of the blue to Mary, so random. He hadn't asked it before, why would he ask it now? He never seemed to question it, not when he was engaged to Lavinia. But then again, maybe it felt wrong then.

"There isn't a simple answer to that question." She silently willed him to accept her answer.

Of course he didn't. "Nothing is simple with you."

She shook her head. "He likes the power and position it gives him. I'm not sure how much he actually likes me."

"Then why marry him?"

A pained expression flitted across her face. There was no way to explain it without telling him about the Pamuk incident. And she wasn't ready to tell him about that. "It isn't black and white, and there are things I can't explain. Not yet anyway. But I have to marry him."

The wheels were turning in his head. His bright blue eyes stared at the game in front of him, not even noticing the players. "No, you don't."

"Oh, I remember me telling you I didn't have to marry him and what did you say to that?"

"I said that you did, didn't I?" He looked to the side, up, anywhere to avoid her heavy gaze. "I suppose Carlisle isn't too fond of me. Am I being an argument to your marriage now? Perhaps I should go jump into the river. At least I'm able now."

Mary would have laughed if what he was saying wasn't so true. So painfully true. When he had been injured, she would have gladly spent her life by his side. There was no Lavinia to worry about, no hard feelings between them anymore. The war had put what was important and what was not in perspective. But now the war was over, Matthew had recovered, Lavinia was dead, and she was still trapped in an engagement she didn't want. And once again, there was tension upon tension. She opened her mouth to speak. "No. Of course you shouldn't. Don't bother worrying about what Carlisle thinks of you. I don't think about it."

"You're engaged to him."

"And as I am engaged and he doesn't seem keen to let me go anytime soon, I don't feel like I need to worry about his impression of me. He's seen the real me, the true me I'm not exactly proud of."

Matthew lifted an eyebrow. "And I don't know the real you? I'd like to think I do."

"As it stands now, I'm afraid you don't. And perhaps it's better that way. And I didn't really want to show Carlisle that side of me, but I had no choice. And now I have to marry him."

He found the courage to turn around and look back into her eyes. Those deep brown pools that he had found himself lost in many a time. "Sounds like a perfect basis for a marriage to me."

"Oh don't be sarcastic, it doesn't suit you," she said quickly. She was getting uncomfortable with this conversation. It was too close to home, too close to the things hidden that she wanted to keep hidden. She couldn't talk to him about Carlisle. She suddenly felt that it was wrong to be talking to him all. She was alone with a man who had once proposed to her, and while Matthew was nothing short of honorable, propriety frowned on these kinds of encounters. "Granny's probably wondering where on earth I am. I promised to sit with her so that she and your mother wouldn't tear each other apart."

Matthew laughed, or at least he tried to. He was unsatisfied with the end of their conversation, of course, not pleased with the answers he had gotten. It was nearly impossible to get anything out of Mary, at least anything that convinced him. And he was nowhere closer to making sense of his tangled emotions. His twisted web of a relationship with Mary.

She was heavenly as she walked away, the sun reflecting off of the bright white rim of her hat. A dark-haired angel who made him question everything. A perfect paragon of beauty and style, coolness and grace, and yet, such a complicated woman. Why would she have ever come even close to love with a fool, a cad like him? He bristled from the effects her glib words had on him. She was so nonchalant about the whole Carlisle situation, although he was more convinced than ever that she didn't love him. Sure, she chatted politely with him at dinner, even hung on his arm and simpered to him some nights, but Matthew knew her too well. He knew it was an act.

A fist hit his leg, a frustrated motion that he regretted seconds later. Only Mary could cause that kind of emotion in him, the kind of high feelings that would make him hurt his already weak legs in frustration. And he resented Mary for it. Mary and her stupid, stupid charming ways. Mary who rejected him, or maybe he rejected her. Mary who was now engaged, and seemed okay with her engagement, if a little bit wary of Carlisle. She had her own life.

And where did he fit into all of this, into Mary's personal life? Maybe he didn't fit in at all, just the cousin who had taken what was rightfully hers, who rejected her because he was so blind as to not see that she truly loved him. Surely as a child, he would have cast himself as the knight in shining armor, coming in to save the fair princess from a dreaded marriage to a horrible man. But this was not a fairy tale, and everything was so much more complicated. He certainly was not a knight in shining armor, perhaps not even a knight in rusting armor. He had deprived a woman of her will to live through thoughtless actions, That wasn't what the knight in shining armor did. Mary was not a quiet, demure princess, and should she be in trouble, she would certainly fight her corner. And Carlisle was no evil count, even if he wasn't the kindest of men.

He grabbed his stick and stood up. Stiff all over, and he hadn't even played in the game. The village team was celebrating, while those from the house stood to the side, looking slightly dejected. A disappointment, for sure, but he couldn't say he was too sad. He had barely watched the game at all. And there they all were, in their bright white clothing, all so happy, all so settled into their lives. And he teetered at the edge of it all. He didn't know where he stood with anyone, really. Not with Mary, not with Robert, not even with his own mother. She was an absolute angel for putting up with him, but she had seemed more distant, more reserved. He didn't really blame her.

He took one last glance back at everyone. Mary, there with Cousin Violet and his mother. Robert, looking rather upset but trying to make meaningful conversation with Edith. The people from the village. Their lives all looked so black and white from the outside, while his was thousands of different shades of gray. He found that he suddenly had a headache, and so he started his way slowly, painfully towards his home.

Matthew knew very little anymore. When he was younger, he thought he had everything in place. He was a young lawyer with strong convictions and a heart that was is love with Mary Crawley. Then she didn't accept his proposal, and he didn't know what to think, and everything changed. He went off to war, and in the battlefields of France, he wasn't sure of anything. And then when he came back, everything was so thick, people so unreadable, friendships carried so much baggage. And he felt he knew nothing.

All he knew was that nothing was black and white.