Every Adventure Requires a First Step
note: A big shout out to Yankeecountess for being such an awesome beta-reader for this…you are the grammatical queen!
When the Earl of Grantham orders Sybil to play chaperone to Rose MacClare she never imagined they 'd end up at The Cheshire Cat, an old Irish pub that's clearly seen better days. It was only meant to be a trip around the English countryside, a chance for Rose to spread her wings (not that she needed it if you asked Sybil) after finally graduating. England, countryside, green pastures…nobody said anything about Ireland.
Yet that's exactly where Sybil finds herself because when Rose gets an idea into her head there's no getting out of it. And when she found a note on her nightstand, informing Sybil that Rose was catching the 3pm train from Manchester to Dublin, which she's 'welcome to come along if you wish', Sybil has no choice but to follow. Because it's easier then trying to explain to Robert Crawley how in the age of smart phones, Facebook and twitter the young blonde had still managed to give her the slip.
"Bar tender, I'd like a drink my good man" Rose orders with a slight slur to her words, slinging her arm around Sybil's shoulder. It's clear to Sybil that her younger cousin has a buzz and while the chaperone in her wants to scold Rose she can't bring herself to do it.
The week they've spent in Ireland is the most fun they've had together in a long time, and Sybil doesn't want their last night there to end on a sour note. So instead she lets Rose's infectious behaviour take over and laughs in merriment.
While behind the roguishly handsome bartender there's an array of liquor bottles aligned in rows. But it isn't the liquor itself that attracts Rose's attention; instead it's the name of the bar itself, carved into to the top of a cabinet with gold lettering, that she finds confusing.
"What sort of name is The Cheshire Cat for a pub?" Rose asks bluntly without even a hint of subtlety.
"Rose!" Sybil scolds her with an aghast look, she still can't seem to wrap her head around Rose's need to voice all of her opinions…but then Sybil also surmises that not having the Dowager Countess for a grandmother might have something to do with it.
The barman shakes his head with a chuckle, as though it's not the first, nor will it be the last, time he's been asked that question. "My Da came up with the name; named it after my little brother Tommy...the rascal's an intelligent lad but he was always getting himself into trouble with the nun's at school, provoking them with all his annoyingly philosophical questions".
Leaning closer into the bar Rose flashes him a smile that she hopes he considers to be more flirtatious then drunk. "Sounds like a fun guy" she adds whilst eyeing him up and down.
To call him good looking would be the understatement of the year as far as Rose is concerned. With his striking blue eyes and thick ginger hair he looks like he belongs on a movie set instead of instead of behind a bar.
"More like troubled" he corrects Rose, refusing to let on that he knows exactly what she's doing…there's at least one woman who tries to hit on him every night. But if their dad taught him and Tommy one thing it was 'never sleep with the customer' and never take advantage of an inebriated woman.
"But that's enough about that, now what can I get you ladies to drink?" He asks to try and change the subject.
"I'll have a dirty martini and the names Rose MacClare, and this quiet one here is my cousin Sybil…Sybil Crawley and she'll have a sex on the beach…because good lord she could use one".
"Rose!" Sybil screams out in embarrassment, her cheeks burning red at her cousin's lewd suggestion that it had been awhile for her…well it hasn't been that long really. It's just that she and Larry seem to be stuck in a rut…or at least Sybil keeps trying to convince herself of that.
Out of the corner of her eye Sybil notices how the bar tender smirks at the two of them with a shake of his head before turning away to make their drinks, he's clearly amused by their antics.
Sybil leans in closer towards Rose; ready to scold her for saying something so inappropriate but realizes that her rant would fall on deaf ears. Rose seems to be too caught up staring at the bar tender as he moves behind the bar, his hands making light work of all the necessary ingredients needed to make their drinks.
"The behind view is even better than the front!" Rose whispers to Sybil with a lascivious smile and a hint of a sigh. She was too busy admiring the way his denim jeans fit him snuggly, and the way his forearms flexed, to notice Sybil's disapproval.
Sybil opens her mouth to speak when suddenly they're interrupted once again by the man in question. "Here ya are," he announces with a thick Irish accent before placing their respective drinks gently down in front of them.
"You know etiquette dictates that one should offer his name in a more formal introduction when a pretty lady is brave enough to introduce herself to him," Rose teases with a bashful smile, though she's clearly far from feeling anything of the sort.
This time he can't help holding it in anymore and gives them both a spirited laugh in reply. Rose and Sybil were quite the entertainment, especially Rose because he's never met anyone quite like her. Sure there is an audaciousness to her that he's seen in a lot of girls over the years, but she also seemed to carry with her an air of sophistication and decorum that makes him think there is more to this Rose MacClare than she's letting on.
"The name's Kieran, Kieran Branson, and something tells me you don't scare so easily," Kieran winks at Rose before excusing himself to clear some of the vacated tables.
"Would you just look at him…" Rose sighs as she follows his every move with her eyes, drinking him in like a starved lioness ready to pounce on her prey.
"Oh Rose come off it, the man's old enough to be…"
"To be?" Rose whips her head around towards Sybil, scowling in exasperation at the way Sybil's quick to poke holes in her fun.
"Well…well he's older then you"
"Sybbie darling…" Rose slumps against the bar and takes a sip of her martini; letting out a small sound of delight; Branson definitely knows his way around a bar. "Sybbie, you know the laws of biology".
Sybil pauses with her drink midair, her face scrunched up in confusion. "What does biology have to do with anything?"
"Sybbie…"
"I've told you a million times before Rose, stop calling me that," she cuts Rose off with a frown, choosing to ignore the way the young blonde rolls her eyes in dismissal.
"The point is Sybil, that men mature at a vastly slower rater then we do. To date someone my age would be like dating a pubescent teenager…"
"Oh, because you've matured so much in the last year?" Sybil scoffs in disbelief without even thinking. Generally the word mature and Rose have never really worked well together or gotten along.
Rose slams her martini glass down on to the bar, taking no notice of the way it splashes all over the dark wooden surface. "That's right, take a pot shot at the only one in this screwed up family that doesn't look at you like some sort of freak." Rose is quick to pick up her purse and makes her way over to a group of men she'd introduced herself to earlier in the evening.
"Rose, I'm sorry, Rose…Rose come back here!" Sybil calls out to her but she knows it's pointless. When Rose MacClare is upset it takes a lot more than a simple apology to get back in her good graces.
"Looks like she has a fiery temper that one…" Kieran comments having overheard Sybil's plea to Rose.
"It's my fault, I said something I shouldn't have," she sighs into her drink, hunched over with her head in her hand.
"We all put our foot in it once in a while," he offers in a comforting gesture, "at least it looks like that cousin of yours also has big heart…forgives quite easily."
Sitting up straight Sybil eyes Kieran suspiciously, wondering how he's managed to understand Rose so quickly when she was a mystery to her own family. "Are you sure you two haven't met before?" she asks with a raised brow.
Kieran shrugs his shoulders as he goes back to drying off clean whiskey glasses with a tea towel. "I'm just good at reading people, it comes with the job."
The charming smile that comes with that statement catches Sybil off guard; Rose wasn't wrong…he was a pretty handsome guy.
Swirling her drink around with a straw, Sybil concentrates on the way cubes of ice look to have fallen into a whirlpool, getting thrown around by the current of the orange liquid. Sometimes that's exactly how Sybil felt, like she was caught in a current that was impossible to swim out of…like she was drowning in a sea of nameless faces that only she could see.
And after what felt like a while Sybil finally looks across to Kieran and offers him a sympathetic smile. "I'm sure you've had to listen to your fair share of stories over the years."
"Well what about you Miss Crawley, what's your story?" he answers her question with a question, casually leaning back against the cooler doors with his feet crossed as he continues with his chore.
It's an immediate reaction, one that she's always had when it comes to strangers asking her questions. Her body stiffens up, the hairs on her forearms rise and she can feel her heart beating wildly in her chest. But over the years Sybil's also learnt how to control her emotions on the outside, to appear calm and collected even if she wasn't on the inside.
So she goes quiet instead, sheepishly shrugging her shoulders as she drops her straw and stares straight down to the bottom of her drink. "There's nothing to tell really. My cousin and I decided to travel around England in celebration of her graduating from the London School of Economics."
Kieran stops what he's doing when he's caught off guard by her answer, his hand frozen inside the now dry glass. He looks across at Sybil blankly before looking over to Rose with an arched eyebrow; looks can definitely be deceiving.
Sybil immediately notices the way Kieran's staring at Rose, confusion and disbelief written all across his face. It's not the first time that somebody's judged Rose based on first impressions, sometimes Sybil wonders if Rose intentionally plays the ditzy blonde just to screw with everybody's head.
"She's smarter then she looks," Sybil argues; ready to defend Rose if need be because surprisingly over the years they really have grown closer.
Kieran quietly puts the glass away and throws the now damp tea towel over his shoulder, then leans toward Sybil with his hands resting against the bar.
"Dublin's a long way away from the English countryside," he points out looking squarely into Sybil's eyes. His years of training taught him how to sniff out a liar and the lovely Miss Sybil Crawley was deflecting, she was trying to distract him from getting too close.
"We must have taken a couple of wrong turns," she puts it simply and throws in an endearing little grin to help lighten the mood.
"Touché, touché." Kieran holds his hands up in surrender and laughs. He knows when he's been beaten and Sybil would make one hell of an adversary.
Resting her folded arms in front of her Sybil leans closer towards Kieran, as if she has a secret to share with him that's for his ears only. "What about you, you don't look like the bar tending type of guy, care to share?"
Without even thinking twice about it Kieran turns around to grab an old photo that hangs on the wall behind him. He passes it to Sybil with a rather sorrowful look in his eyes, and in that moment Kieran Branson looks to have aged at least five years…she can see all the burden he carries weighing down on his shoulders.
She looks down to the photo in her hands and is surprised to see a younger Kieran dressed in a recruitment uniform…military or something or other. While on the far right there's a younger boy, definitely his brother Sybil thinks quietly, with a buzz cut wearing a leather jacket and a thin leather necklace dangling around his neck with a cross on it. And in the middle stood an older man with the same ginger coloured hair as Kieran looking proud as punch, and with both arms thrown around each of the boys.
"You were in the military?" Sybil asks; struggling not to sound surprised by what she's seen in the photo compared the man standing in front of her.
"Army Ranger Wing actually…or better known as Special Forces," Kieran corrects her with an exultant smile, a little bit of pride shining through.
"What happened?"
"You mean how did a specially trained serviceman end up slinging drinks and cleaning tables?" Kieran corrects her as he takes the weathered photo frame from Sybil and gently puts it back in its rightful spot, carefully straightening it up by the corner.
Sybil decides that it's probably best not to say anything and quietly shrugs her shoulders. The offer of a "shoulder to cry on" or so to speak is left unsaid but becomes clearly obvious to Kieran.
"About five years ago our father was killed in an accident. My little brother Tommy didn't handle it so well…still isn't actually, and mum…well this place and all the attention it demanded was just too much to for her," he explains, his eyes taking in his surroundings of the rather popular bar forlornly.
Sybil's throat tightens up; she could feel a knot beginning to form as her eyes welled up with tears. Her grandmamma Martha always called her an 'old soul'; telling her that the experiences which came with her "gift" meant that Sybil had learnt more beyond her years, and in turn made her into someone who felt too much and cared too deeply for the people around her…even for strangers.
"So you left the army to come home and take care of your family?" she questions with a cough, trying to clear a tickle from her throat.
"Well there's no point in trying to protect your country if you can't even protect your own family," Kieran argues, wringing the tea towel around his fists because he needs to concentrate on something other than the feelings that keep getting drudged up with the memory of his father. "And what a good job of it I'm doing too," he scoffs sarcastically, finally letting some of the bitterness ebb through.
Suddenly Kieran can feel himself spiraling into one of his more somber moods, apparently he's a real bastard to work for whenever that happens…or at least that's what his staff tells him. So Kieran quickly decides that he needs to snap out of it; he doesn't have the luxury of lingering in the past, which is where his mother and Tommy seem to always be.
"Anyway," Kieran shakes his head as he tries to clear his mind of those uninviting thoughts. "I thought I'm the one who's supposed to be listening to all your secrets, how did this become about me?"
Sybil throws her head back and laughs in such a carefree way that she hasn't been able to do so for years. "Well I've been told that I have a very trusting face, that it makes people want to open up to me," she offers him a dazzling smile to prove her point.
Pointing his finger at Sybil he laughs along with her. "My grandmother would call you a 'changeling'," he adds playfully but is completely clueless about the affect those words have on Sybil.
Licking her lips Sybil's eyes start to dart around the room, looking for the nearest exit and trying to think up of a plausible excuse. "Wh…what?" she stutters from the chill running down her spine, her body gripped with fear that her secret was suddenly about to come out.
"A changeling, a fairy child," Kieran repeats in a deadpan tone, along with a blank expression on his face because he can't see anything wrong with what he's just said.
"Aren't fairies considered to be evil in Celtic lore?" Sybil asks. She can even hear the tone of her own voice cracking out of apprehension.
"Some are, but you're definitely one of the good ones," Kieran winks at Sybil before turning away to serve another customer.
Sybil can feel her body begin to unwind as she sighs in relief; he was still just as clueless as everyone else. She manages to convince herself to take a deep breath, to calm down and enjoy the rest of her drink…then she'd drag Rose back to their hotel even if she was kicking and screaming.
So after taking another sip of her drink, Sybil looks around the place, finally letting herself take it all in. And really it's not a bad bar to be in; sure the carpet looked a bit drab, some of the walls looked like they could use a fresh coat of paint, but all in all it wasn't bad…she'd seen plenty worse in London.
And when she looks across to her left Sybil notices an older man leaning against the end of the bar in well-worn clothes. She doesn't think much of it and smiles politely at him in a fleeting glance. But then suddenly she can feel a wind chill in the air, as if the temperature of the room suddenly lowered drastically on its own.
"Can you see me?" the older gentleman asks bluntly, already moving closer towards Sybil.
Sybil's breath catches in throat, her heart's racing and coldness pulses through her veins. Please not again, not now, not here, she's silently begging to whoever is listening 'up there'. She starts to run her hands up and down her arms to try and warm herself up but Sybil just can't seem to fight off a sense of dread that's lingering around her.
She refuses to acknowledge that he's there; she even tries blinking her eyes a few times in the hopes that he's nothing more than an apparition of her imagination. But when Sybil carefully looks at him from the corner of her eye there's no such luck…he's still there.
"You can see me!" he laughs boisterously, clapping his hands like a little kid at Christmas time. The fact that none of the other patron's inside the bar react to his outburst, or even look at them, confirms her fears.
"No I can't!" Sybil refutes without thinking; fighting it always seemed to be Sybil's natural reaction to it all as an adult.
"Beg your pardon love," another barman asks looking around at the empty bar stools with a frown.
"Nothing…I was just talking to myself out loud," Sybil tries to laugh it off before throwing a couple euros onto the bar, hoping it'll be enough to cover their drinks, and grabs her purse to leave.
"We need to go," Sybil orders bluntly as she gently pulls Rose away from the group of men she seems to be deep in conversation with.
"Oh come on Sybbie, don't be such a spoilsport, it's our last night here…" Rose tries to persuade Sybil to stay a bit longer, "it's our last night anywhere before we have to go back to our dreary lives in London."
"Look, Rose," Sybil closes the distance between them, clasping her hand in Rose's. "I'm really sorry for what I said back at the bar but we need to go…please I'm begging you."
Rose is taken by surprise at how afraid Sybil looks, her eyes silently pleading with her to understand that they can't stay here any longer and not to ask any questions. Rose immediately catches on, understanding Sybil's desperation to escape, and she doesn't need to be told twice either.
After gently squeezing Sybil's in reassurance Rose makes her way back over to the table of men. "Sorry boys but the ball's over for this princess…gotta make it back home before my carriage turns into a pumpkin," she announces cavalierly, as if her sudden exit without any sort of explanation was to be expected.
Arm in arm Sybil and Rose head towards the door when Rose suddenly pulls back, ordering Sybil to wait by the door for second. She ignores the sound of Sybil's protesting voice and quickly dashes over to Kieran who's wiping down an empty table with one hand while a tray of dirty glasses are balancing on the other.
Tapping him gently on the shoulder Rose takes Kieran by surprise, and quickly kisses him smack on the lips, nearly causing him to drop the tray but luckily for him he has pretty good reflexes.
"Couldn't leave Ireland in the morning without kissing at least one Irish lad," Rose winks at him with a teasing smile, and as quickly as she came Rose was gone again; leaving a dumbfounded Kieran behind.
As they leave the bar altogether Sybil looks back over her shoulder, quickly stealing one last glance at the man back at the bar, when recognition quickly flashes in her eyes.
Sybil's seen this man before.
In fact she only saw him a few moments ago in the picture Kieran had shown her.
It was Kieran's father!
His dead father.