#needs more thought

Thank you!

Ahem... Btw:

Chuck = Michael

Sam = Oscar

Dean = Meredith

Castiel = Dwight

Jack = Erin

Death = Toby

could work...

WELL! It’s really an AU - obviously, canon Thomas is not the lost heir, or we’d know about it by now. It would be one hell of a twist to waste, lmao. 

But in this AU, these are my basic thoughts, pretty much off the top of my head as I type this:

Firstly idk if he’s really Mary’s twin? That would stretch belief a little. It would be hard to hide from Cora that she gave birth to two babies, lmao, unless Mary isn’t hers and she knows it and adopts her but not the male heir because she wants her own son, and won’t have his inheritance threatened - but that doesn’t seem very Cora, does it? 

So, no, not her actual twin. But Cora and Thomas’s mother were pregnant at the same time, and they were born close together - Thomas the unacknowledged bastard above a clock shop, Mary in the lap of privilege, Robert aware of both. It’s all very Dickens. 

He was probably conceived when Robert was a dashing young soldier in training. A few months later he receives a letter from his mother telling him she and her new husband need a place to live and pulls a little Thomas-stylin blackmail to get the money for them to settle down above a clock shop. 

Thomas’s childhood is not ridiculously awful, but his father is not kind to him, and favours his siblings, despite that he is the first-born - and he makes the leap early on, as a young teen, to guessing that it’s more than just him being different, that he can’t be his real son; they don’t look very alike, he’s much taller than his siblings, his hair is that particular jet black that nobody in his family shares. 

Then finally, his mother tells him whose son he is, and it’s like he’s been cheated and vindicated all at once. He’s always had ‘airs and graces’ and dreamt of better things and known he was worth more and it’s like this proves it. He is worth more, he’s got blue blood. 

He leaves home. He works as a hallboy, for a while, and in the meantime, he writes to Robert twice but gets no response. And then he sees an ad, in the paper, for a Footman at Downton Abbey. And in typical cocky young!Thomas style, he decides to just… insert himself into his real father’s life, where he can’t ignore him. 

AND then, there he is, standing at the dining table, being introduced as their new footman, and Robert absolutely recognises him before Carson even says his name. It would be impossible not to - he and Mary have the same skin, the same eyes, the same hair. 

I don’t really know why no blackmail actually occurs, I haven’t thought it through, I kind of want to jump ahead to the bittersweetness of the both of them just being used to living as they do - Thomas is never going to chase after Daddy’s approval like a schoolboy, so he doesn’t bring it up, even when he valets for him. Robert is certainly never going to bring it up, though he finds - he finds himself keeping an eye out, from time to time. Just keeping him out of harm’s way, like at the cricket match. Encouraging second chances from Carson in as subtle a way as he can.

In a servant and master way, they even kind of get along. 

Better than he did with his step-father, anyway.

The way I originally conceived this fic was to have Tony’s POV spliced with Natasha’s flashbacks. But I’m concerned at a certain point I’m going to screw myself because there’s things only Natasha knows that I’m not sure can be told in a flashback. I want her to have closure and peace and that’s difficult to do in a flashback and it’s difficult to do from an outside POV too. Especially when they’re not really going to be able to talk right in front of Clint about literally anything. 

And I’m sure this seems like a really obvious solution -- just have her last scene not be a flashback or something butttt I’m one of those pain the ass people for whom consistency in my own work is painfully necessary.