Author's Note: This story begins near the end of Season 2, episode 7, immediately after Tom Branson has closed the door of what is now only "his" room at The Swan Inn.
Disclaimer: I'm not even a custodian, my dears, let alone an owner. These characters and their setting are the work of others. I hope I do not offend with my homage.
In the first few seconds that Tom stood alone after closing the door, he was convinced that Lady Edith and Lady Mary had ripped out his heart and taken it away with Sybil. He had heard soldiers who had had limbs amputated talk about 'phantom' pain, and that was what this tearing sensation in his chest must be, a purely physical grief in an organ he no longer possessed. Almost immediately, he realized he was quite wrong: his heart was not gone, it was still in his chest. In fact, it was hammering, apparently in a mad effort to get out of his chest and follow Sybil. It pounded four or five beats, then slammed itself against his ribs. He put a hand up to his chest to hold it in, to soothe it. The gesture did no good. Thud, thud, thud, thud-WHAM!
He told himself to calm down. She had said she would stay true to him, that she had given him her heart. He tried to think of what he was going to do now, but was distracted by the fact that he couldn't breathe. No- that wasn't right, he definitely could breathe, he was breathing, in loud, ragged, sobbing breaths. Tom tried to control it, to quiet himself, to NOT SOB LIKE THAT, it was a wonder everyone in the inn hadn't rushed in to see what all the noise was. Maybe they were distracted by the wake downstairs. As soon as Tom got his breath under control, he could hear the keening, a thin, wailing sound: eerie, unmistakable - "Beloved, why did you leave me?"
WAIT- they had seen no wake in progress when they arrived. Tom realized he was making this sound, too. He started to raise his hand to his mouth to make it stop, but his heart chose that instant to gather itself for a final assault against its prison: Thud, Thud, Thud, Thud-WHAM! He pressed both hands against his chest to keep his heart from breaking his ribs and escaping into the room. Raindrops fell on his hands. What was next, had the roof blown off the inn? He heard the roaring of the storm, and looked up at the ceiling to try to see what would have to be a gaping hole. He couldn't see, but he thought it hadn't been storming when he and Sybil arrived. He risked removing one hand from guard duty on his chest to rub his eyes. They were wet! Rain, or tears, poured down his cheeks and dropped off his chin-
'The tears run suddenly from my eyes,' he thought, '...Will I shut the door with a weary sigh?' A few nights before he had left Ireland to take the job at Downton Abbey, his cousins had given him a farewell dinner. When they were singing afterwards, a girl from Belfast whom he'd never seen before sang a beautiful song about a girl waiting for the boatman. He had supposed the boatman to be the singer's absent lover, but realized now that he had been wrong. The boatman was Charon, and Tom's heart, too, was 'broken and weary.'
Relieved that he had come up with a viable plan, Tom crawled onto the bed to wait for the boatman, laying his head on the pillow where Sybil's head had lain, so that he could breathe in the lingering scent of her with his final breath.