Author's Note: I posted this on tumblr about two years ago, recently it came up again and I remembered the plans I had for it. A chapter for Sybil, Mary, Edith, and Cora. Mary's chapter was sitting in my drafts halfway done. So I am posting it on here and in the next couple days will add Mary's chapter.
He hadn't expected Sybil to be upset by his death so her tears caught him off guard, just as the quiet comfort her husband expressed surprised him. Robert hadn't ever gotten along with Tom and had assumed the younger man would have been glad to see him go, but instead he seemed genuinely sad. Robert's biases were challenged again as he watched Tom and Sybil figuring their finances together. They were making decisions and plans as partners. He had to smile. His smart girl was being respected, just as she had always wanted. Robert's heart softened at years of moments like these; the way Tom was the first to go to someone's aid, the way they had wrangled and taught their daughter and rowdy sons, shaping them into such good people that Robert never got to know, the way they worked together around the house, the obvious tenderness between the two of them. It all made Robert recognize that maybe he had been wrong about his opinionated, Irish son-in-law, and maybe he had been too harsh with his baby girl.
Sybil found herself at Downton in the chilly fall of late September, just as she had every September since the telegram bearing the news of her father's death had sent her there years before. A person of lesser character may have let former disagreements keep her away, but Sybil had always been forgiving.
This year she had spent the morning with her family, leaving lilies in the cemetery, but after lunch they had all drifted off. A phrase from a book had stuck itself in Sybil's mind earlier but she wasn't sure what it was from, so she found herself alone in the library in search of answers.
Book after book came off the shelves, got looked over and returned again. At some point she heard a noise behind her and still holding her current book she turned. She blinked against the sun streaming through the windows. It can't be,she thought. She shook her head a little, trying to get the image of her father to straighten into whoever was really there. "Hello?"
The voice that returned was the gentle voice of her father, the late Earl of Grantham. "What are you reading?"
Sybil held up the book in her hands, "I'm trying to find something," she closed her eyes, trying to remember and get it right, "such hours are beautiful to live, but hard to describe."
He nodded sagely and said, "Little Women."
"I didn't think you would be familiar with Little Women."
Robert laughed as he moved towards the shelves, searching for the desired book. "Your mother loves it. She would read bits a loud to me whenever she was reading it." Upon finding it he pulled it out and read aloud "I don't think I have any words in which to tell the meeting of the mother and daughters. Such hours are beautiful to live, but very hard to describe, so I will leave it to the imagination of my readers, merely saying that the house was full of genuine happiness." He handed the book to Sybil so she could read it as well. "I heard that part lots of times. I thinks she always wished our house could be described as full of genuine happiness."
She turned the book over in her hands, fingering the spine, "It was sometimes. Not always, but sometimes it was."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry for the times it wasn't," he paused as she looked up at him,"I'm sorry about Tom and your children. I am sorry you didn't feel welcomed here for so long." His words drifted off, as if he had just realized that words were not enough to make up for the years of pain he had caused.
Arms found their way around him, hugging him like a little girl glad to see her father after a long separation, which really it had been a long separation. "I forgive you, and they forgive you. We are all right. We've been all right."
He held her close, soaking in the last moment with his youngest daughter. Finally when his presence seemed to almost flicker he spoke, his voice seeming far away. "I have to go, Sybil. I don't want to but I have to go." She stepped back and one last time Robert ran his fingers along the edge of his books. Sybil blinked and was alone, the book in her hands still.