Duration
This is just an idea I had that has no connection to series 2 spoilers. Sybil/Matthew but not necessarily the way you'd think. Feedback is greeted with some of Mrs. Padamore's non-salted sweets.
The Dowager of Grantham would probably required smelling salts at the mere notion, but Lady Sybil Crawley was inspecting the aftermath of a below the knee amputation. The wound was dark red, oozing, and a smell wafting from the tissues was worrying her. This was how she spent her days marching around a field hospital, cleaning up the sick, promising and sometimes lying to patients that they would get well. None of her lessons in deportment were much use in this world. This life of disease, shattered bodies, discarded limbs was thousands of miles from Downton. She used to waste hours selecting the appropriate dress for dinner, now she reached for a clean uniform without much concern. Her two lives were as different as… Mary and Edith.
Thinking of her sisters pained her. She knew her entire family was terribly, terribly hurt by her decision. She knew too that each of them worried incessantly and prayed only for her to abandon her duties and return to the estate. She knew she wouldn't. Not until the troops were demobbed.
She'd watched as one after another the young men she knew vanished into service melting into battles with French and German names. The next she saw of most of these men were in the names of the casualty lists in the Times. Young men she'd danced, and laughed with lost to guns and angers that she doubted they really understood.
East lost life filled her with a little more frustration. Volunteering at the local hospital, wrapping bandages, sewing scarves it all felt so safe and so domestic. Hugo Napier had walked across No Man's Land and died in the mud. Thomas had been shot through the heart carrying the wounded to safety. And all the while she was knitting scarves for men who'd ceased living in the most unimaginable conditions.
It had never occurred to the family that they should do anything more than their prescribed bits. Edith searching for someone wounded to marry. Mary dithering and lost but to stubborn to write Matthew and tell him anything. Her mother and father carrying on in their way-acting as if patriotism meant carrying on as if the war was a mere blip in the social season. Sybil began to feel it gnawing at her insides, the inactivity pushing her ever closer to a kind of madness. If she'd carried on she knew she'd come to hate them, hate herself even more.
One day she simply packed her bags. And that night when Downton slept she crept away, sneaking toward a new life. Six months later she was standing on the French coast wearing a nursing uniform. Then and only then did she write to her sister. Mary had the task of telling her parents, Sybil had like the men around them marched off to war.
That had been nine months ago, nine months was a lifetime out here. Most of her progressive ideas had fallen away, what was left was a developing work ethic, a stubborn determination, and a will that she might save a few lives. Still, she ached for some of the comforts of the old life, even if she could not really imagine herself back at Downton.
The sound of heavy footsteps disrupted her thoughts. Turning away from the amputated wound, she walked briskly toward the incoming matron preparing herself for a tongue lashing for her sin of the moment. Instead the woman offered a unusually warm smile, "Your brother is here. A captain." Sybil restrained herself from smiling, the matron was a tigress with her nurses but she turned into a mewling infant at the sight of an officer. "He said he would return this evening and take you to supper in town." Sybil nodded and turned back toward her work. It was only ten or so minutes later in the midst of changing a bandaged drenched in blood and pus that it occurred to her that she had no brothers.
Preparing to go out that night, which was really just donning her nicest uniform, Sybil reflected that nine months ago she would have blurted out that she had no brother. War had taught her to hold her tongue and keep her counsel. It was best she'd learned to take everything moment to moment without rushing heedlessly toward any action or conclusion, Granny she thought would approve of that course of action.
Stepping into the hall she called a quick goodbye to her roommate. Crossing into the front of the building she stopped suddenly saying, "You?"
"Do you have another brother?" He said a light flickering in his blue eyes.
"Matthew." She called hurrying toward him, and since they thought she was his brother no one thought anything of the way she collapsed against him holding tightly as if he was a life raft in a stormy sea.
"Older brother." Sybil said as she walked arm and arm with Matthew toward the restaurant. They had driven but 20 minutes from the hospital and found a town where people were living normal lives. It seemed a miracle, a place without blood or shattered limbs. A place where people went to shops and lived a normal life, with only the sounds of war. "However did you think of this?"
"Oh I am full of mysterious and magical ideas." He replied lightly, sounding a little strained as if unused to levity.
"However did you find out where I was…"
Matthew shrugged, "There are an infinite number of casualty stations."
The idea of Matthew visiting place after place looking for her, caused Sybil to tighten her hold on his arm, she could only squeak out, "Thank you."
The restaurant was small and the menu pathetic. Still it felt so good to be away from blood and the trenches that Matthew and Sybil felt as if they stumbled upon one of Mrs. Padmore's delicious meals. As they ate they caught up on trivial matters.
"Mother wrote Edith is to be married." Matthew said taking a sip of the sickly sweet tea.
Sybil fought the urge to roll her eyes trying to force an optimism she hardly felt. "He is a pilot."
"Good god." Matthew said sitting his tea cup down.
"She might as well don a black gown, become used to the color." Sybil replied coolly.
Matthew eyed her for a moment before observing, "That does not sound like you."
"This past year has disabused me of all of my romantic notions." Sybil did not offer further explanations, trusting Matthew to understand.
He did, though he said sadly, "That is a very sad thing." He paused only briefly to eat a bite of the concoction on his plate before saying, "Mother wrote me about Branson's actions." Matthew kept his tone cool, unsure the exact nature of Sybil and Branson's relationship.
Sybil sighed quietly, "He told me once that he was a socialist not a revolutionary." The end of the sentence was said so softly he strained to hear her words. "That was a lie apparently."
Matthew considered her words carefully, "Perhaps it was not….. at the time. This war seems to have changed everything." He looked down at his hands as if seeking an answer.
"He wrote to me," Sybil confided looking over Matthew's shoulder. "He was so proud to be going home, so proud of what would happen." She shook her head as if trying to dismiss the notion. "I cannot think about it, its to awful."
Matthew nodded putting his hand gently atop her shoulder. "If you need to…"
"What is to discuss?" She said harshly, "It is all my fault. I encouraged him."
"No," Matthew said firmly, "Branson was a grown man he had his own beliefs. You may have encouraged him, but his choices were his and his alone."
"If I had not encouraged him." Matthew was silent knowing that self-recriminations were often impossible to dislodge. "I did encourage him you know. My votes for women, education…. All those ideas fed into his own revolutionary ideas."
Matthew considered her words carefully, measuring his own response. "It may be correct that your ideas encouraged his own, but your differing paths indicate he could have made different choices. If," Matthew added pointedly, "You feel his path was incorrect. Myself, I believe in Irish home rule."
Sybil looked up in surprise, "I do too."
"Then perhaps… Branson's demise is better than others who fall for madness."
It was a suggestion, and one Sybil knew she would need to contemplate for awhile. For the moment she merely reached across and squeezed his hand, "Thank you for listening."
"Of course," He said formally. "Any time." He promised.
He might have said more. He might have said a thousand things, but something made further reply not only unnecessary but also impossible. For the man sitting next to them loudly gasped and then without a further word dropped to the floor.
"Oh my." Said Sybil scarcely guessing that she and Matthew were about to start on a wholly different experience in the war.