I would like to thank 3down1up over on LJ. She gave the prompt for this fic, which gave me a lot of *feelings* and this was the result. I think it may be the first true romance I've ever done, yay!
Also thanks to AriadneO, my fellow Branson fan, for betaing :)
Between There and Here
"Please, stop badgering me!"
Sybil's plea is in earnest. Branson knows he should comply, and can almost hear his mother, her admonitions and warnings gliding through the thin line of her lips like razors, praying that at least one of them would be sharp enough to carve some sense into him – Moderate your passions, Tommy, measure out your words with consideration before they spill out your mouth and make a fool of you!
But he's already gone a few shades past foolhardy, and he had never been one to heed his mother's instruction.
"Sometimes a hard sacrifice must be made for a future that's worth having."
He's dealt his hand, is waiting to see if his bet's been taken, and for a moment – a single moment – he thinks his gamble's paid off. But it quickly passes, ends before it's even begun, and she walks out once again with all the chips in hand.
She's gone.
Countless times he's endured the rejection, but now the clack of that retreating heel echoes with such a note of finality that he spends all that night and most of the next morning in feverish pursuit, penning letter after letter to every editor in Dublin that he wouldn't cringe to be associated with. His breath catches, latching to his throat while he drops the missives, one by one, into the carrier's bag that afternoon.
The next week is a lonely one – she's decided to avoid him, as is her privilege, as is her wont – and by the end of it he receives the first of his replies. After ripping open the envelope and swiftly perusing the contents (he can start as early as two weeks), he smiles with something like bitter smugness. Not all of his proclaimed ambitions have proven futile – I won't always be a chauffeur – but the most important one surely has.
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Giving out hot drinks to a lot of randy officers.
Sybil sniffs. How wrong he is. The officer whose drink she is currently refreshing looks hardly the randy type. Rather handsome, in fact, and certainly more dashing than a self-possessed servant with a penchant for radical politics could even hope to aspire. Her mind's buzzing so loudly with the spiteful urge to flirt just for the sake of it that she barely registers her father addressing the butler.
"Yes, Carson?"
"Forgive the intrusion, my lord, but I've come to inform you that we'll need to put out an advert for a new chauffeur. Mr. Branson has just handed in his notice."
A barely perceptible gasp while every thought empties – she's sure she must have misheard – but she's suddenly and unaccountably disabled from hearing her father's response, or indeed anything at all, over the white noise crowding her ears to the point of deafness.
"Hey! Watch it now!"
Shrill and sharp, the exclamation cuts through the din and revives her senses. Sybil glances down at the over-filled cup and the puddles of water pooling beneath it, and then up to the face of her annoyed, not-at-all randy officer.
"I'm so sorry!" she manages through deflated lungs, hastily righting the pitcher and setting it down as Carson peeks his head around the screen.
"Is everything quite all right, my lady?"
The skin of her face feels taut and thin. Her wide eyes, she knows, must appear slightly bewildered – the proverbial rug just pulled out from under her feet – a look that overall would surely belie any words of assurance designed to contradict it, though it doesn't stop her from trying.
"Yes, I – everything is perfectly fine, Carson."
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The hood of the car shuts with a savage bang. Sybil jumps, and knows he's just relishing how uncomfortable she looks.
"I don't know why you've bothered coming if all you're going to do is yell at me," he says.
It is an inexplicable phenomenon that out of everyone in her life, her chauffeur is the only one awarded with the unique talent to send her fuming, but she maintains control, steadies her breath and cools her temper. She most certainly had not been yelling. And she most certainly will not be goaded.
"I just don't understand why you're leaving all of a sudden," she says mildly.
"Why does it matter?" He shifts that confident gaze, as if owning the entire world itself, over from the car to settle on her fidgeting face. "If anything, I thought you'd be relieved."
It's doubtful whether the thought even once crossed his mind. But she refuses to take his bait, to give him the satisfaction of making their conversation about "us." His innate directness was never a match for her learned prevarication.
"I'm not sure exactly why you would think that. And besides, I've told you before that you needn't give up your livelihood for my sake." She speaks with sweet-toned condescension, forcing Branson to suppress a groan.
"I've gotten another job, m'lady," he says in surrender, but is secretly elated at the way she flinches at the formal address. "At a paper. In Dublin."
"Oh. I see." She takes a step back, appears to be shrinking. "That's – that's wonderful, Branson. Of course you must go."
"I know I told you I'd stay on till you were ready to run off with me, but…well, we both know that's never going to happen. We both know that you're never going to leave with me."
Despite the firm tone that always butters his voice with conviction, she can see the doubt swimming in those blue eyes fixed steadfast upon her, searching her, questioning her – always questioning her.
Am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong.
His love for is like a well-worn oak, deep and durable, needing only the barest sustenance to survive. All it would take is a touch, a word, and she could keep him here, trap him here for as long as she well pleases. It is a powerful feeling, to own a heart, and she's tempted to keep his ensnared for at least a little while longer. But in the end she does what she knows is best, what she believes to be the best.
A true lady is demure, and retiring, and Sybil plays the part well as she averts her gaze, murmurs a faint and equivocal reply, and walks swiftly away, knowing she has just sealed both their fates.
.
.
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His departure is calculated with careful precision. He would take the first train out, so he informed Mr. Carson, much too early for any of the family to be up, and there's no need for any of the staff to bother with seeing him off. He'll simply drive himself to the station, with Pratt in the passenger seat to bring back the car.
Sybil awakens early, dresses quickly, and swings open the front door just in time to see the car ambling through the gate.
He's gone.
The knowledge rests upon her gently, like a small bird alighting on her shoulder. She'd often wondered how this moment would feel, if it would unburden the weight that seemed forever to sag down her mind and conscience. Now, witnessing the reality, she fears she's miscalculated, for instead of easing, instead of taking flight and dissolving into the glinting sun, the heaviness seems to settle, sinking through flesh and bone to take up residence in her stomach.
It's uneven and slightly nauseating, unbalancing her, and she must lean against the doorframe to keep her vision steady, while the breaths come fast and heavy, and the sting in her eyes grow dull, soothed by the gathering swell.
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.
.
He loves his new job. He loves his new flat. He loves that his mother cooks dinner for him every Wednesday and that his nephews and nieces no longer blink up at him as though being introduced to a stranger. To a bird's-eye view there was absolutely nothing not to love about this new life, this unquestionably better life.
A seagull perches on the battered windowsill outside his bedroom on the second story and declares its hunger with an angry squawk, just as it does every morning. And just like every other morning since first replanting his feet on the shores of his homeland, Branson wakes, bleary eyes taking in the smartly papered walls of his flat rather than the peeling paint of his cottage, and is overtaken with the feeling of being viciously assaulted.
I still love her.
Routines have been already established, and he mindlessly plods through them, the familiar motions somewhat allaying the awful truth that has him constantly besieged. In due time he's seated securely in his office chair and throws himself into the distraction of employment.
"Have you finished that piece on the latest protest held in Parnell Square?" his editor asks just as he's finished unpacking his things.
"I'll have it on your desk before lunch," he replies.
Article completed, and Branson moves on to his research for the next. But the building where he works is situated at the end of a very busy road, and the bustle is difficult to ignore after five years exposure to the quiet stillness of north Yorkshire. When the noise outside the window at last becomes so grating as to preclude any concentrated thought, his eyes stray out of the open panes to the flock of swallows spinning circles through the sky. They swarm as one, moving upward and onward and sailing out of his line of sight, spanning the distance between here and there, and Branson cannot help but envy their power of flight.
I will always miss her.
Wednesday night is family dinner. Barely a half-step through the door of his brother's house and his nephews and nieces tackle him to the ground and pummel his face with small, pudgy hands whose state of cleanliness he'd rather not dwell upon.
It's a lovely evening filled with laughter – none of it his own – and as Branson watches the rising spirits of his family, he feels himself singly rooted to the floor, the one bird amidst the flock whose wings have been severed. In their place is the gaping hole that he carries with him wherever he goes – to his job, to his flat, to his brother's house for dinner – and Branson wonders how long it will be until he heals, how long he'll remain just another sad, sorry addition to the ranks of walking wounded.
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It was a curious thing, Sybil realizes one evening as she sips at her wine, how even hundreds of miles off he still manages to infuriate her. As a young debutante, they'd told her to be on her guard for pretty words with little depth or meaning, those whispered warnings to never trust half the things that ooze out of a man's mouth.
Papa is speaking from the head of the table.
"Poor William. He was a brave boy, and we shall always be grateful for his sacrifice," he says. Sybil swirls the expensive drink around her tongue, savoring the bitterness that trickles down her throat.
He promised to stay.
Of course, in the back corners of her brain, the ones that she regularly neglects to consult, she's perfectly aware that Branson had meant every word he'd ever uttered, even to a painful, almost indecent degree, and it's probably unjust of her to cast aspersions when she had all but waved him off, breezily swept up each and every one of his long-winded declarations and tossed them into the dust bin.
"Of course. It was very unfortunate, and we must do all we can for poor Mr. Mason," Mama agrees. Sybil clutches tightly at the base of the crystal stem.
He broke his promise.
Yet as unfair as her ire may be, that rock that has nestled in her gut, the one that never seems to shift to a more comfortable location, has made her petty and irritable, made her every reflection tinged with a vague anger. The fault is all his, she rationalizes, painting her grudge over each memory of him, a candy coating that sweetens the pain of his absence till it becomes a much easier and more palatable pill to swallow.
"I'm truly sorry for Mr. Mason's loss, but I think it is Matthew we should be most concerned for right now," Mary argues. Sybil lifts the smooth rim to her lips and drains the glass with a single gulp.
He left me.
She sets the cup down, empty, with a quiet clink, and says nothing for the remainder of dinner.
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Branson is not usually a creature of habit, but he does have a few sacred routines – shaving, for example – which he performs religiously each and every morning. As he grooms himself, he stares bleakly into the watch glass and the eyes reflected within, a pair of fading lamps – a spark that's fizzled.
He's not foolish enough to believe that his family doesn't notice the difference in his demeanor, but hopes they'll chalk it up to maturity or perhaps a latent sense of cynicism that's been ripened by age and his time abroad. Anything would be preferable, really, than having them suspect the sickening reality of a broken heart.
Two staccato raps at the door, his mother's signature knock, and he's starting to dread just where exactly her suspicions might lie when she begins her interrogation.
"You seem a bit out of sorts, lately," she ventures airily, setting the bag of groceries perched against her hip onto the kitchen table. Saturdays are meant for rest and relaxation, and Branson is already resigned that his mother's persistence will ensure that he has neither. He presses a hand to his eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"You're always looking a bit peaky these days. And you're much quieter than I remember." If she's honest, she would have liked to omit the last grievance – he's rather more tolerable when half his thoughts never find purchase on his tongue – but her purpose here is to pry, not to provoke. "Is everything all right?" she continues gently. "Nothing the matter?"
"Everything's fine," he assures with an offhand wave. Two dissatisfied brows narrow at such a succinct explanation, so he elaborates. "People can change. It's been known to happen. Happens all the time, in fact."
"People hardly ever change, and when they do it's not by much."
He sighs wearily. "What is it you want from me, Mam?"
"What every mother wants. For you to be happy." She moves to stand before him, tilting her face up to his. "I don't know what's bothering you, and I do know you won't ever tell me. But will you try, Tommy? To be happy? For my sake, at least, if not for yours?"
Branson regards her, braves the fierce light of her gaze glinting like burnished steel. Even at his best and brightest his own had always been a pale imitation, and he places his hand over the one pressed warmly against his check.
"I will, Mam. I promise."
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Time assuages her anger, dulls the edge to a blunt aloofness. She takes great pride in the fact that she only cries at night. And they're quiet tears, mind, not the awful wailing of a broken-hearted heroine leaping straight off the pages of some horrid novel. She would never honor him with that.
And she'd be happy to inform him that during the day she's quite composed, every minute so occupied with the peace and solace of a nurse's usefulness that any dangerous thoughts are kept safely at bay. Her mind, at least, can be content, even if her heart never will be.
But when the sun wanes and the uniform comes off, replaced with silk, beads and other such sundry finery, when she's seated in the drawing room as she is now, surrounded by her family – that family that has bound her to this place – she despises the way her defenses begin to crumble.
The Crawleys themselves are in shambles, still quietly reeling over Matthew's injuries and the recent duplicity of a Canadian officer with a mangled face and a silver tongue.
P. Gordon. Sybil smiles softly, imagining what he would say about the absurdity of the situation. Probably something rote, something about "her lot" and "honor", and then he'd simply laugh at how stupid a person could be to suppose they could carry such a scheme off.
Yet there was Edith sitting right beside her, staunch in her stubbornness, scolding the family once again for the part they played in sending the obvious con man away.
"But he was Patrick," she proclaims bitterly. "He was! He came to us for help and we – his own family – we drove him away!" Sybil's head snaps up.
I drove him away.
It's difficult for her lungs to find air, when every molecule of it seems to instantly vanish. Sybil's left gasping in a vacuum, desperately hoping that no one will notice how she's silently suffocating.
"Are you quite well, Sybil dear?" Granny asks, examining her concernedly. Sybil should know better than to doubt the hawk-like scrutiny of her antecedents. "You look dreadfully pale."
She feels drained, the last ounces of resentment leaking out her every pore. She seeks to mumble something coherent, to deflect the attention, and eventually settles with, "Yes, Granny. Perfectly fine."
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The headlines are all the same: Germany Surrenders. The War is Over.
The whole world is elated. The skies soar a little bluer and the grass grows a little greener, even as the leaves on the trees lining the walk to his flat crumble to red and brown dust beneath his feet. Branson is inundated, working overtime, every waking minute devoted to covering the war's end, its complicated aftermath, and what it all means for Ireland moving forward.
And yesterday, when the office secretary proffered him a cup of coffee and a flirty smile, he almost had the urge to smile back.
Only almost – but it's clearly a start, and Branson finally feels his life beginning anew.
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"We'd like to get married here, at Downton," Matthew announces.
Sybil reviews the mixture of emotions playing across each face as they react to the news. Some are glowing, others wilting, and Mama must think she is being quite furtive in her side-glance to Granny. What startles her most is how blank she knows her own face must appear, her neutral expression imposed not by the pronouncement of the nuptials, but rather their startling implications.
The war is truly over. Life is moving on.
Her work has ended. She's becoming stifled by the old ways. She wants to get away, and there's nothing to stop her, neither youth nor uselessness. Idly she contemplates how she could leave the next morning, be in London or Manchester by that afternoon. Images of days spent in blithe, solitary independence parade grandly through her mind, but there again, in that little cobwebbed corner, springs an obstruction that halts the procession clean in its tracks.
I don't want to be alone. I want –
She kicks the thought away before it has a chance to be completed.
So consumed with the joy of Matthew's miraculous recovery, no one cares when she slips out after dinner with the shaky excuse of an evening stroll and braves the winter winds without so much as a thin shawl. Her feet have always been quite the traitorous sort, constantly commanding her steps to the garage despite her repeated threats to slice them off. They speed her there even now, when she knows it will be empty, the new chauffeur possessed of too much age and sense to keep the odd hours that the previous one did.
But the previous one had at least kept the abode a sight neater, Sybil thinks as she peers through the doors she has not entered for nearly half a year. Tools and rags are strewn carelessly about. The entire room looks cluttered and unkempt – a stark deviance from the tidy, shining haven of her memory.
She walks inside.
"I'm ready to go," she boldly declares to the dark, empty space. "I'm ready to leave with you."
A heavy silence answers.
Sybil closes her eyes, and is beset with an overwhelming desire to be anywhere else but here. Leaving, she paces her steps with the breeze, quick and brisk, serenaded along the way by the wind that sings through the shriveled blades of grass, whose haunting lyrics stalk her – too late, too late, too late – as she covers her ears and runs swiftly back to the house.
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"Why do you still subscribe to that paper? Not very much exciting news to be had in Yorkshire, is there?"
Branson deigns only a single glance over to his brother on the sofa, no less than three children struggling for dominance on his lap, before continuing to scan hungrily through the pages of his most recently received copy of The Ripon Times.
"I just like to keep up with what's happening. I still have friends there, you know."
"What friends? And how often did I have to hear you complaining about how no one understood you over there?"
Mind full to overflowing with the small, block print, Branson doesn't reply, and instead leaves his brother to referee the wrestling match taking place on his person. Page after page and he still sees nothing. Surely, he frantically thinks, surely they'd report it if any members of the Grantham family had taken ill, or, God forbid, died. Finally, mercifully, on the twenty-first page Branson spots a list of the affected – Lady Grantham is numbered among the sick – and further on when he reaches the obituaries his heart sinks as he reads a familiar name – Miss Lavinia Swire.
A terrible news day, and yet he sighs in wholehearted relief.
She's still there, and he can't control the deep stab of pain to his chest at the thought, but at least she is safe.
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There is no escaping the gauze, Sybil at last resigns herself, when every banister is practically lined with it. She watches the servants tear down the last of the wedding decorations, every movement producing a burst of air that sends the flimsy material floating nimbly upwards – a trailing veil for an absentee bride.
The worst is now over. Lavinia is several days buried, Mama is on the mend, but as Sybil reaches over to remove one of the wilting garlands she sighs in only partial relief. She cannot be completely easy, not when the illness claims the young and old alike, not when there's no reason for anyone to send news of a person's welfare to his former employers.
"Are you all right, m'lady?" Daisy timidly asks, ready to bolt at the first sign of becoming a nuisance.
Sybil's long grown weary of fielding the same exact question nearly every day, but forbears a sigh, aware that at the moment she must be presenting quite a ghastly picture, nothing but an ashen complexion and bloodshot eyes.
"Yes, Daisy," she smiles. "Perfectly fine."
She leaves the servants to their work and finds the least occupied corridors in which to roam. With no employment it's difficult not to let her feet and mind stray, and she deceives herself that it is simply the not knowing that drives her to distraction, that like a potent caffeine keeps her tossing and turning till the sun crests the horizon. In the end she submits to the exhaustion, and along the path to her room resolves to indulge in a short inquiry to alleviate the distress.
The letter begins safely enough, gentle inquiries to family and health. But the weariness must be muddling her senses, permitting her hand to flagrant betrayal, for by the time she pens "sincerely" she realizes that her entire heart has somehow been poured onto the page, the ardent strokes capped off with a final, desperate plea – Please come back here – that stares dangerously back at her.
She blinks several times. How did this happen? Surely there must be some mistake.
But there it is, in inerasable ink: she wants him back.
She wants him.
There's no denying it anymore, and she's already half way to the fireplace to destroy the evidence when a burst of courage seizes her. Before her better judgment has a chance to reassert its authority she returns to her writing desk, hastily seals the envelope, scribbles out the address of his work place, and hurries down the stairs to leave her card on the mail tray.
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The squeaking wheels of the mail cart announce that it's close to lunch. Branson reaches for his jacket just as Danny the mail boy stops to a halt next to his chair, fishes through the stacks of sorted files, and casually tosses a ticking time-bomb onto his desk.
He stares with a wide-eyed blend of greed and dread at the elegant, well-practiced scrawl – a hand that is impossible to mistake – refusing to so much as touch it.
"Could you take this away, Danny?" he says quickly. "I think it was misaddressed."
Danny leans down to peer at the envelope, scrutinizing every letter.
"It says Tom Branson right there, with this address." He flashes Branson an odd look. "I think it's meant for you."
If it's a weapon meant to wound then she's already accomplished her goal. Branson would love nothing more than to bury the dagger deeper, to rip into the seal, set the bomb off, let it explode in a cloud of expensive paper and a reawakened longing that completely undoes all the carefully repaired damage.
He tears his gaze away and puts on his coat.
"Just send it back where it came from," he tosses over his shoulder before heading swiftly out the door.
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The clouds hanging over the Abbey are barely beginning to part, but enough light ekes its way through to start lending a sense of normalcy back to the beleaguered household. Familiar patterns recommence; dinner at seven, luncheon at half noon, and Carson fetching the morning post and delivering it promptly to the breakfast table by 9:30 sharp. Sybil abuses the last of the mangled eggs growing cold on her plate while she pensively waits for the butler's arrival, and nearly jumps out of her chair when he enters the parlor and she catches a glimpse of the topmost letter laid neatly on the stack.
Common stock paper, the direction typed, no return address; it's all but screaming with conspicuity, and clearly what she's been waiting for. But Papa has never been a keen observer, and, already absorbed with the headlines, he favors it with barely a passing glance before extending it towards its intended recipient.
"Here you are, Sybil. One for you."
Shining eyes and a shaking hand accepts the prize. Flooded with giddiness, she stems the flow, and maintains enough composure to contrive an excuse that sends her speedily off to sequester herself in her bedroom. Lightly seated on the bed, she turns the card about in her hands, bracing herself. This is it, she thinks, this is when everything will be made right again.
Sucking in a breath, she rips open the seal and reaches in, removing from inside a familiar piece of stationary – her own, unopened envelope – thick red letters reading RETURN TO SENDER stamped unfeelingly across the address.
She stares numbly. Whole minutes tick by. Mouth ajar, her letter rests limply in her hand, every one of her muscles relaxed to jelly as if just swallowing a vat of morphine.
Somewhere inside a dam is bursting and finds its overflow through Sybil's anguished eyes, a downy pillow the repository for her tears. But even amidst her noisy sobs she's not senseless, nor hopeless. When the wells have sufficiently dried, she retrieves a handkerchief from the vanity and pats her eyes heroically, deciding that her change of heart is something he will simply have to see to believe.
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The vision of her hand writing out his name, one looping letter at a time, arrests every free and waking thought.
His unconscious thoughts are no better off, having been recently waylaid by incessant dreams that leave him panting for breath. Branson feels his carefully constructed world beginning to unravel, his latest dream of her the first to start plucking at the errant threads. The particulars are elusive, as his dreams often are, but he can remember with disturbing vividness the scene of their last exchange.
She had been here, with him. In Dublin. In his flat. He had stroked her hair and kissed her lips.
"Why can't it be like this?" he had asked her, and she had looked at him sadly.
"Because you didn't wait for me."
The words were still ringing in his ears when the high pitch shrill of a gull had snatched him away from her. He had awakened with a gasp, and a gnawing feeling that he'd committed an irredeemable mistake.
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"I'd like to go to London," Sybil announces at breakfast one morning. It's a fairly natural request of any bored young daughter to make, but she still can't look her father in the eye when she says it, fearing he will discern the deceit behind her motives.
"Very well. Send a letter to your Aunt. How soon would you like to leave?" he asks, buttering a roll, while her mother fondly beams in her direction, visions of gaiety and suitors dancing in her eyes.
The day before she's set to leave she telegrams Rosamund that her arrival will be delayed for a week. There's no outcry of foul play when the new chauffeur pulls into the drive to shuttle her away, and once at the station, when the hawk-like gaze of Pratt is at last firmly fixed on the road back to Downton, she disembarks from the train, finds the nearest porter, and requests him to remove her luggage to the 9:15 traveling Eastbound to Liverpool.
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Branson steps out of the doublewide doors of his office building at the end of another long day, a day just like any of the rest that came before it. In typical fashion he waits impatiently for the last lorry to pass before crossing the street, and is halfway to the other side when on the sidewalk beyond he spies a Lady.
His Lady.
And although she is all that is fair and lovely, the sight of her has more the effect of Medusa than Aphrodite, rendering him unmoving as the asphalt, freezing him to the spot until a loud and ugly horn startles him out of his stupor.
"Sorry!" He lifts up one hand to the disgruntled driver, waves it in some form of meager apology, and swiftly crosses the remainder of road to stand before her.
Dressed simply, hair tied back neatly, she's just as crisp and real as his dreams are not, and her presence – so near, so achingly close – is enough to rob him of breath, and every rational thought save one:
She's here.
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At the beginning neither of them has the courage to venture anything beyond the smallest of pleasantries. Both are agreed that the weather's been just grand lately, he's glad to hear her crossing was largely uneventful, and she has just finished asking politely after his family when they reach the pub around the corner – he frequents it often after work and she professes to be thirsty – and are seated in a small, secluded booth in the back.
An eager-faced waiter scribbles down their orders and scurries off with a perfunctory grin before Branson replies that, "Everyone's doing fine. One of my cousins was taken ill last month, but she pulled through."
"I'm so glad to hear." She smiles. She waits. The earnest words have long faded into the din of the pub without any response to support them. Chatter laps up against them, but between them is moored an awkward silence – Sybil begins shifting – until Branson realizes he's drinking in her face rather than attending to her words.
"And all of you?" he sputters through the silence. "Your family – they're all well?"
"Mama was very sick, but is much better now. And Lavinia – do you remember her? Matthew's fiancée? – she died several weeks ago."
"Yes, I read about that," he says solemnly, and at her inquisitive look he falls back into old habits, and naturally offers, "I subscribe to The Ripon Times. I get the Sunday edition through the post every week."
"Oh." Her eyes widen to match the perfect circle of her mouth and he immediately regrets the admission.
"I just…I like to keep up with what's happening over there." The explanation sounds even weaker out loud than it did in his head, and he frantically attempts to bolster it. "And I…I like reading newspapers."
"Of course," she says innocently, and God help him if there isn't a sly little gleam doing pirouettes in her eyes.
The waiter's abrupt reappearance, grin still plastered insufferably to his face while two foaming mugs of ale balance precariously on a tray in his hand, spares Branson from any further punishment. He wastes no time in grabbing for his drink and fortifies his defenses with a long draught, only to have them quickly and effortlessly dismantled when he sees her, over the rim of his glass, sipping at her own drink like a little mouse, freckles twitching as the tiny bubbles fizzle and pop at her nose.
A handkerchief emerges from an undetected location and she uses it to pat delicately at the stray suds. "So tell me about your new job," she says, light and airy as the froth floating in his mug. "I remember – that is – you used to talk so often about becoming a journalist. I'm sure it must be quite thrilling for you!"
She shines and flickers, radiant as a midnight star. Branson stares at her, captivated, throat tightening with so much force that it cannot be eased even by the bitter liquid draining down it. Does she not remember how they parted? Has she completely forgotten what sent him packing up for Dublin in the first place?
His glass lands on the table with a punctuating thud.
"Sybil –" He stops, remembering himself. "Lady Sybil." She minutely wilts at the enunciation. "Are you going to tell me what you're doing here?"
She looks away. The amber fluid bubbling away in front of her tethers her eyes.
"I think it should be obvious."
"Nothing with you and me is ever obvious." His curt tone severs the chord, but when her eyes ascend to his expecting to face anger, she winces when she's instead confronted with pain. "For all I know you're out here on holiday and you just had a fancy to visit an old friend," he chokes out.
"I'm not here on holiday!" she cries, an uncomfortable heat springing up from her collar.
"Then why are you here?" he demands. "Here, in Dublin? You, who can go anywhere?" He shuts his eyes to close off the sight of her paling face. "Sybil, please, just tell me –"
His words cut off as he looks down at the table. The hand holding his is small and trembling.
"I'm here to see you. That's why I'm here."
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Branson instructs her to wait by the dimming sunlight peaking around the edge of the door, and briefly vanishes into the darkness. She discerns a barely audible click before the room is thrown into lamplight. Bright and modern, though still frightfully small compared to the vastness of aristocratic privilege that has been her life thus far, the flat is clean and well ordered – terribly like him – with a small work table resting in the corner that is coated with paper and ink.
Sybil beams at him.
"I like it!" she happily chirps, and for a second he pictures a seventeen-year-old girl waltzing into the garage for the first time in her life.
"You don't need to pretend with me."
"No, I mean it," she says. Walking further inside to better observe the room, she nods approvingly, casting her gaze this way and that, while Branson continues to stand stupidly by the lamp, mesmerized by the turn of her neck. "I think it's lovely," she declares.
He wants to laugh at her heartfelt tone but instead says, "It's just a flat."
"Yes, but I've never been in one before. You hear all these stories about how other people live and you think – well, all I mean is that it's much nicer than I imagined it."
"Not a Dublin slum, then?"
Vaguely bristling, she stands stiff as a tree trunk and looks close to being offended.
"I never thought you were living in a slum!"
"No, but this place may as well be a cave compared to what you're used to."
She takes his jesting as permission to make herself comfortable and perches herself delicately on the sofa – like some exotic bird alighting on the roof of a barn, Branson thinks as he sits himself on the sofa beside her, mindful of leaving adequate room for a proper escape route, should the need arise.
"So," he starts and apparently finishes. After a sizable pause, Sybil finally takes his silent cue.
"Yes?"
"Why have you come to see me?"
Sybil's eyes slide from his face over to what must no doubt be a fascinating trinket on the mantle. "Surely you can guess."
"Not really." Lies, lies, and the people who tell them; but Branson is not a natural liar, and when Sybil looks back to him she is very put out by the knowing gleam in his eyes and that he's chosen now of all times to be reticent. What does he expect of her?
"What do you want me to say, Branson?"
"Whatever it is you've come three hundred miles to tell me."
Nothing's changed. Still so unflinchingly direct, his way of speaking, the flagrant broadcasting, is doing unpardonable things to the tempo of her heart, and she's wishing she'd had the foresight to remove her gloves and spared her hands from drowning in their frequent bursts of perspiration.
"I'm not good at this," she says, flustered, forcefully nipping at each finger till the death traps are off. "You were the one always making speeches."
"Yes, and they were all made to you, so at the very least you've got something to go by."
She bites her lip. He's going to make her say it, isn't he? But summoning courage – aren't they always calling her the brave one? – Sybil squares her shoulders and aims her gaze square in his face.
"I miss you. Everyday," she starts shakily, and is taken aback at how suddenly nervous he appears. It strengthens her, that she is not the only one unbalanced by this encounter, and her next words are steadier. "Indeed, I've thought of you so often, and I've always regretted –" She pauses to swallow around the tangled knot in her throat. "You see, I couldn't leave with you, like you wanted, not before the war ended, and I wasn't even sure I'd ever be able to go, to give up my whole world. I thought it would be wicked to give you hope without giving you a promise." She stops to collect her breath – each intake is too rapid to be efficient. "But the war is over, and now I am sure. I know I can leave it all behind and be happy, and I…I know that I won't be happy unless I am with you."
She ends on a bright, expectant note. Branson is undecipherable, mouth strangely shut as his head turns away. Fear creeps in, and she feels her confidence slowly unpinning, loosing strands of desperation that erupt her next words in a cloud of un-lady-like fervor.
"Oh, Branson!" she cries. "I never should have let you leave! I should have been honest with you. I should have told you what I was feeling. I should have –"
The gap between them vanishes and the breath required to finish is promptly dispatched by the lips pressed firmly against hers. Anymore of what Sybil should have done then is shoved aside by what she should do now: Return his embrace, shutter her eyes, and abandon herself to this – her very first kiss, and with Branson of all people – while a liquid fire drips through her veins and courses from torso to scalp and straight down to her fingertips that are threaded through his hair.
She's lightheaded by the time they part and wouldn't be surprised to witness her head floating up to the ceiling like a balloon, but she's quickly tugged back down to earth when her vision clears enough to see the insufferable smirk set on his face.
"Sybil Crawley. Did you come here to propose to me?"
His illusions of superiority are begging to be disabused; instead she only smiles, albeit reluctantly, and is unsure of how to respond until recalling Branson's earlier words. As far as speeches go she does have some great examples, and she draws upon each of them now, the familiar words retraced so often in her mind as to be permanently engraved.
I know that my family will cast me off. But the world has changed, and I don't think it will be forever. And even if they do it won't matter, it won't stop me from devoting every waking minute to your happiness.
Pretty and sparkling, the words revolve about her mind like a painted merry-go-around and make her just as giddy and dizzy, so much so that she loses the mental clarity to even say them at all and is left to utter something much more mundane and to the point:
"Yes."
Honest. Direct. Just as Branson likes it – though his speechlessness at the single word suggests that he's ill equipped in dealing with his own brand of frankness. Sybil's skin grows hot and clammy at his dazzled silence, and she wonders how Branson could have possibly endured several years of uncertainty when she can barely survive several seconds.
"Please, say something!" she cries. "Don't torment me the way I always did you!"
He shakes his head.
"I can't. I'm afraid if I do then I'll wake up and this…this dream will be over, and you'll still be back there and I'll still be here." She laughs lightly, strokes his cheek as surety of their present reality – but he's still looking dazed.
"Branson." He remains in his trance. "Tom." His eyes begin to focus – that got his attention. "I'm here."
"You're here," he agrees dreamily, and in lieu of pinching himself he leans down to kiss her once more, to feel her body so firm and real beneath his that when he finally pulls away she can see that he is at last willing to believe.
She smiles.
"And I'm not going anywhere."
END
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Or is it…?
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IRRELEVENT EPILOGUE!
(fair warning: the following contains crack)
Buckets of money, an obscenely large house, a loving wife, and three dutiful (if at times trying) daughters. Yes, it was a good thing to be the Earl of Grantham, at least most days; but Robert Crawley would soon have the misfortune of discovering that today would be a most heinous and marked exception.
It was foreshadowed by a mere irritation – a nick on his neck while Bates gave him a shave – and he was still inwardly grumbling over the slight sting while he chewed the last of his breakfast scone and Carson materialized with the morning post, a stack of three messages in his ungloved hand.
"Here you are, my lord." He bowed, handing the letters over.
"Thank you, Carson," his lordship replied and tore into the first one with a subdued groan – a telegram from his sister, which occurrence alone was enough to cast a pall over any morning:
WENT TO STATION TO COLLECT SYBIL[STOP]COULD NOT FIND HER[STOP]NAME NOT ON LIST OF PASSENGERS[STOP]PLEASE ADVISE WHICH TRAIN SHE IS ON[STOP]
Robert's face contorted to a mask of puzzlement. Why was Rosamund just now commenting on Sybil's arrival, when he'd seen his daughter to the car himself nearly one week ago? It was peculiar, and just touching the surface of alarming. But the Earl was of a mind not to dive head-first into a pool of hysterics, nor to ponder too significantly on matters with the potential for unmitigated ruin, and simply flipped to the next missive, pleased to see that it was a letter from Sybil herself, if the handwriting was anything to go by. Surely this would clear up any misunderstanding:
My Dearest Family,
By now my deception has most likely been discovered. I told you my intention was to spend time with Aunt Rosamund in London, but in truth I have gone to Dublin and have been there this entire past week. You may recall our former chauffeur, Tom Branson, removed there to take a position as journalist some eight months ago. Unbeknownst to you all, my heart has long been with him and I have at last decided to pursue it there, and am even now staying with him. I am truly sorry for the deceit, but I could see no other way. Know that I love you all and fervently hope that one day you shall be reconciled to my choice, but whether or not you are, it will not change the fact that when next you see me I shall surely be,
Yours Sincerely,
Mrs. Sybil Branson
Madness. Complete and utter madness. Tom Branson? The chauffeur? No – the ex-chauffeur? It took all his lordly might to fend off the vertigo as he sat there, the floor crumbling beneath his feet, and looking as though about ready to vomit. (He would eventually vomit, but much later, and in the privacy of his dressing room.)
His teeth clenched. His vision swam red and black. A storm of high dudgeon rained down strictures in his mind: How dare she! I forbid it! Seducing my daughter behind my back….and from hundreds of miles away!
Slightly wheezing, he glanced down at the last card in his hand: a letter from Jane, his dearest Jane. His jaw relaxed and his vision cleared with the anticipation of her serene and steadfast words, which would no doubt fight back the bile rising dangerously in his throat.
My dearest Robert (it read) –
I'm pregnant.
Robert felt the last drop of blood drain from his face. Cora glided like a swan into the parlor to see her husband stock still, pale as linen. He glanced up to her and could hardly expect such a dutiful and caring wife not to comment on his haggard appearance.
"Darling? Is everything all right?" she asked with such devoted tenderness she may as well have thrown acid into her husband's eyes.
Robert smiled weakly.
"Yes, my dear. Perfectly fine."
END
I thought very long about what my irrelevant epilogue should be, and decided that nothing short of a thorough Robert trolling would do, LOL. Anyway I hope you enjoyed reading :D