Two years ago on Tumblr I asked people to send me titles for stories and I then replied with the summary of the story that I would never write for that title. I actually really liked this title and the idea that came along with it, so for a couple of years this has been sitting unfinished on my laptop, waiting for inspiration to strike again. Well, today, inspiration hit and it's finally done! The title was provided by moira7 on Tumblr. Whether she's still around and in the fandom, I don't know, but either way, this fic wouldn't have happened without her, so thank you!
When Sybil and Tom were six years old
Sybil Crawley lived in a large house with her parents, two older sisters and a handful of staff. She had never moved house and she had seen little outside of her hometown. Of course, she had been on family holidays every year, but the only ones she remembered were the endless trips to London and that one holiday to Spain last year. Her parents had always told her and her sisters that whenever they were on holiday, they must be on their best behaviour because, whether they were in London or abroad, they were representing the Crawley family name. Sybil hated that. Pretending to be a "proper" little girl didn't make any sense to her. Wasn't it deceitful to pretend to be proper? Sybil wasn't proper. She hated the thought of being forced to be proper.
"I don't want to be a young lady," was always Sybil's reply, if ever anyone told her she was being unladylike. "Ladies can't climb trees and ladies can't play sports and ladies can't be themselves! But I do climb trees and I do play sports and I am myself!"
Even at the young age of six, Sybil knew her own mind. She knew what she wanted, she recognised the societal differences between boys and girls, and she wasn't having any of it.
Nobody seemed to understand that Sybil was very different from her sisters in many ways. When the three sisters were told the rules, they took the information in different ways. Edith would take the rules on board and follow them as closely as she could. Mary would follow the rules when it suited her, but when it didn't suit her, she'd blame someone else for making her break the rules and rarely got into trouble for it. Sybil, on the other hand, heard the rules, but chose not to listen. She didn't understand the point in rules, being only very young. She just wanted to be like the children from the stories she'd read and TV programmes she'd watched. And so she was. She broke endless rules, but had a happy childhood.
One afternoon, at the end of the summer, Cora decided to take her daughters to the park around the corner. Sybil's eyes lit up because she was going to be allowed to play, encouraged even. Edith quietly agreed to go with her family, but didn't have any particularly strong feelings. Mary, however, at the age of 10, was beginning to get to the age where she was too old to be seen playing in a park. To keep up her image amongst her friends, she would be spending her afternoon leaning on the fence at the edge of the park, dressed in a jumper which was clearly not warm enough to be keeping the wind off her skin.
Despite the wind and the risk of drizzle, Sybil wasn't going to let it ruin her fun. When they got there, Sybil headed straight for the roundabout. There was a boy already there, so Sybil introduced herself.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Sybil."
"I'm Tom," he said quietly.
"Can I play with you?" Sybil asked sweetly, waiting for his answer before climbing onto the roundabout with him.
Tom nodded and waited for Sybil to climb on. Once she was on, he stood up and ran around the roundabout, holding onto the handle so that it started spinning. When it was going at a decent speed, he jumped on next to Sybil and started talking to her, as the world span past them.
"Sybil, darling, come away from there," Cora said, walking up to her youngest, mere moments after they had arrived at the park. She pulled Sybil a few metres from the turn-table and crouched down in front of her. "How do you know that boy is safe for you to play with? He might push you off and you could hurt yourself." She looked around the play area. "Look," she said, pointing across to the swings. "Some of your friends from school are over there, why don't you play with them instead?"
Sybil unhappily plodded off in the direction of the swings. She wanted to play with Tom. The girls Cora had pointed to were unkind to Sybil and she absolutely did not want to play with them. They told her she was a tomboy and they wouldn't play with her unless she liked girly things. Instead of changing who she was to fit in, Sybil had decided a long time ago that she just wouldn't be friends with those girls. As soon as Cora turned her attention elsewhere, Sybil ran back towards Tom and grabbed him by the hand.
"Come on!" she whisper-shouted as she dragged him away from the roundabout, taking him behind the climbing wall that was rarely used and was out of sight of her mother.
They settled down on the floor and Tom said, "You're not allowed to play with me."
"I don't care what mummy says. I want to play with you. I don't like the other girls over there," she said, gesturing in the direction of the swings and making a disgusted face.
Tom came from a very different background to Sybil. They lived in the same town, but there was so much diversity in the area that it meant very little. There were large and expensive houses only a few streets from two-bedroomed council houses, largely inhabited by people who lived, at least partly, on government benefits. Though Tom's family had never lived on hand-outs from the government or anyone else, his house was far from the likes of Sybil's. He lived with his three older sisters and his mother, his father having died shortly after he was born.
Even at only six years old, Tom was very smart. He took pride in often being top of his class in homework assignments and tests. He attended the local state primary school; his mother could never have afforded to send one of her children to private school, let alone all four of them. Sybil, on the other hand, attended the private school, which consisted mostly of children from other aristocratic families who were destined to inherit large estates and heaps of money.
Tom's mother encouraged him to explore and learn new things about the world. As long as he was safe and wasn't causing trouble for others, he was allowed to go where he wanted and do as he pleased. Tom's family wasn't particularly special. They were a normal family with normal worries and normal memories, living a normal life.
"Why doesn't your mum want me to play with you?" Tom asked, visibly a little hurt at Cora's harsh comments.
"She thinks you're too poor. Rich people aren't allowed to play with poor people. That's what my daddy says," Sybil said.
"I'm not poor!" Tom protested. He most certainly wasn't well off, but he had everything he needed. His mother worked hard for every penny that she earned, and was proud of the household and the lifestyle she managed to maintain. Despite her strong work ethic and even stronger value of money, she was a generous woman and that quality had been passed down to all of her children. She had brought her children up with the mind-set that as long as there was love in the house, nobody could be poor. Everybody deserved to be rich with love.
"I don't think you're poor," Sybil said, smiling at her new friend. "I think you're lovely!"
Tom smiled, realising that although her mother had been cruel, Sybil was nothing of the sort.
"Can we be friends?" he asked a little sheepishly.
"Yes, I'd like that!" Sybil beamed.
They spent the remainder of their time at the park sitting behind that climbing wall. It was the only place where they couldn't be seen by everyone else. They talked endlessly to one another, finding out about each other bit by bit, making up games to play with one another as they went.
When it started to rain lightly, Cora sent Mary to find out where Sybil had got to. Mary plodded off to find her irritating little sister. When she found her behind the wall, she said,
"Come on, Sybil. Mum wants to go home before the rain gets worse."
Sybil huffed at her sister and said her goodbyes to Tom.
Cora took her children back home, and Tom was taken home by his own mother. As they each left the park in opposite directions, Sybil and Tom kept looking back at each other, hopeful that they would be able to see each other again soon.
When Sybil was ten and Tom was nine
Each year, the fair came to the town of Ripon for a period of a few weeks at the beginning of the summer holidays. The fair was popular everywhere it went, providing entertainment for young children, teens and adults alike. There were a few small-scale rollercoasters, and endless stalls. There were stalls for shooting cans and hook-the-duck and splat-a-rat and all sorts. On top of that, there were various food huts dotted around the place, selling burgers and sandwiches and pasties and candyfloss and almost anything you could think of.
Generally, the fair was a time for the town to come together. People could go a year without talking, but would happily speak to one another if they bumped into each other at the fair. The atmosphere at the fair was unique and entirely electric. The whole place was buzzing with energy, which proved useful for Sybil and Tom.
Since their first meeting at six years old, they hadn't spoken a great deal. Of course, they weren't old enough to be allowed out on their own, so they had to rely on chance meetings at the park, which weren't often enough for either of their likings. Luckily for them, though, the fair provided an opportunity for them to spend a good few hours alone without their parents dragging them apart due to their class. Once they were inside the gates, their parents would let them go free to explore the stalls and blow all of their pocket money on candyfloss and little toys.
Once Sybil and Tom found each other they stuck together like glue all afternoon. They played and laughed and ran around like headless chickens from one stall to the next, spending all their change on anything and everything they saw.
Every so often they were passed by some of Sybil's classmates, who sniggered about how Sybil was hanging out with a "dirty, working class boy", or by Tom's friends, who laughed at him for spending time with a girl, risking the possibility of being infested with "girl germs".
"I don't know why they think you're dirty," Sybil said to Tom apologetically.
"They think everyone is dirty if they're not rich," Tom said, looking down at his hands and picking the actual dirt from under his fingernails.
"But you're not dirty!" Sybil protested.
"Yes I am," Tom muttered, still messing with his nails.
"No you're not. My nails are probably dirtier than yours. Look!" Sybil said, thrusting her hands in Tom's direction. He looked at her nails and realised that there was more dirt lodged beneath her nails than beneath his own. Despite the fact that Sybil had been made to have a bath before she came out to the fair, she found that she got dirty very quickly if she was allowed free rein. She was an adventurous little girl and adventure came with the price of a little mud. Not that she cared at all.
"I think you should come to my school," Tom said kindly. "Nobody cares about dirt at my school."
"Everybody cares about it at my school," Sybil sighed, slouching slightly.
"Why don't you move then?" Tom asked.
"Because I get to start secondary school soon," she said. "I'm starting Year 6 in September, and then I'm moving to the academy for Year 7."
"I'm starting Year 6 in September, too," Tom beamed. "I don't think I'm going to go to the academy, though. None of my sisters go there. They all go to Ripon High. The academy is too expensive for our family."
"I wish I could go to school with you," Sybil said. "We'd get to see each other every day."
"I'd like that, too," Tom said. "But I don't think we can."
"There's no reason we can't be friends though," Sybil said, her face lighting up as she had an idea.
"We are friends," Tom confirmed, stating the obvious.
"I know, I know," Sybil said. "But we never really see each other. My mummy told me that when I start Year 6 I'll be allowed to hang out with my friends on my own at the park or in the meadows. We could start meeting there."
"I don't know if I'm allowed to," Tom said.
"Where's your mum? We could ask her," Sybil said, desperate to know if their friendship could become a viable, sustainable force.
"She's over there," he said, pointing towards a group of mothers, sat around a table, chatting over coffee in the fading light. "Wait here," Tom said, leaving Sybil sat on the bench, as he strode over to his mother.
Sybil watched him. She could tell from the body language that Tom's mother was friendly and kind. She was a small woman, petite and slim, with large glasses resting on her nose and auburn hair that was beginning to grey.
Tom practically galloped back towards Sybil with a beaming smile.
"Mam says," he said, trying to soften his excitement, "that I can start playing with friends on my own when I get back from Ireland."
"When are you getting back from Ireland?" Sybil asked.
"At the end of the summer holidays," Tom said, sitting back down beside Sybil.
"Why are you going to Ireland anyway?" she asked.
"Most of my family live there," he said. "I'm Irish by blood, but I live in England," he said.
"Oh," Sybil said, having not recognised his accent.
"Sybil," Edith called, searching for her younger sister.
"That's my sister," she said to Tom.
"Do you have to go?" Tom asked, fretfully.
"I think so," she said, standing up. "Coming, Edith," she called.
"Wait, before you go we should agree when to meet," Tom said.
"How about the first Saturday in September? Meet me at the park after lunch," Sybil said.
"Okay," Tom said, smiling at her.
"Bye, Tom," she said as she ran after her sister.
"Bye," he said back, though he didn't know if she heard him.
True to their word, they met up at the park on the first Saturday in September. Little did they know that this one meeting would spark a lifelong friendship. This was their new beginning.
When Sybil and Tom were thirteen years old
Sybil had an ongoing agreement with her parents that as long as she had finished all of her homework and household chores, she was allowed to spend time with her friends every Saturday. Whether that was going shopping or going to someone's house or taking the dog for a walk, Sybil managed to meet up with her friends almost every week.
She enjoyed the freedom of not having to obey her parents' rules. When she was with her friends, she could say and do whatever she wanted without needing to justify it. It was this sense of autonomy that Sybil had always craved, so she made the most of it now that she had it.
When she met with her friends it was usually the same group of people – Matthew (who was far more interested in Mary than in Sybil) and Imogen from her class at the academy, and Gwen, Tom and Alfred from Ripon High. Imogen was Sybil's best friend from school. She was tall, had very pale skin, mottled with freckles, was very sporty, and was very clever. As much as Sybil loved spending time with Imogen, she would often spend their Saturday gatherings gravitating towards the Ripon High lot. Gwen, Tom and Alfred led such different lives to Sybil in terms of where they lived and how they lived, which intrigued Sybil. In a small way it made her jealous, but in a much larger way, it made her want to get to know them more. She clicked with them so much more quickly than she did with so many of her so-called friends at the academy, and on a much deeper level. Especially with Tom.
Sybil's parents had agreed that she was allowed to meet with her friends every Saturday, but still, they asked her each time who exactly was going to be with her. If Matthew or Imogen (or anyone else from the academy) was going to be with them, she would be allowed to go. If the only people she would be meeting were from Ripon High, she wasn't allowed. Imogen's parents had the same rule imposed upon their daughter, so Sybil and Imogen had come up with a plan. Even if no one else from the academy was going to be there, Sybil would say that Imogen was going and Imogen would say that Sybil was going, just so that they could go and meet with their friends from Ripon High without their parents stopping them. Sybil's parents rarely spoke to Imogen's so there was little chance of them finding out that their children had lied to them about who would be with them.
Because of the girls' pact, Sybil had been able to spend some time alone with those from Ripon, getting to know them better. She liked Tom a lot. She had a huge crush on him, but didn't dare tell him, for fear that his feelings for her might not be the same. She liked him too much to risk ruining their friendship. Gwen and Sybil had been close friends from the moment when Tom introduced them. Gwen was fiery and driven and believed that she could do anything if she put her mind to it, and Sybil was spirited and passionate and strongly believed that your background shouldn't dictate who you become. They were well matched and when they put their heads together, they were a pair to be reckoned with. Sybil got on well with Alfred in the capacity of friendship. He relayed stories about his encounters with a girl named Daisy whom he clearly liked, but he was too scared to do anything with his feelings. It was common for Sybil and Gwen to give him advice, only for Tom to mock them for advising him on relationships, when neither of them had ever been in one.
A few times, Sybil had been able to spend her Saturdays with nobody but Tom. When the others had been at family events or had been grounded for not completing their chores, Sybil and Tom were left alone, which often resulted in deep conversations between the two.
"Do your parents still hate me?" Tom asked on one such occasion, hoping the answer to be no.
"My parents never hated you," Sybil said. "They hated the idea of me spending time with you."
"Same thing," Tom mumbled.
"No it's not," Sybil said. "They don't know you. They're just old fashioned in their thinking. They don't want me mixing with anybody who isn't from the aristocracy."
"But why?" Tom asked.
"Because they think people from the aristocracy will suit me better. And if I'm friends with people from the working classes then everyone else in the aristocracy will look down on my family for not being pure enough, I guess," Sybil said.
"So your parents think that your class is better than mine," Tom stated.
"Not exactly," Sybil muttered. "They have a lot of respect for working class people. They just don't want to be working class themselves."
Tom huffed and folded his arms.
"But I don't agree with them," Sybil said quickly. "The working class people I know are so much nicer than most of the upper class people I know."
She paused.
"I really like hanging out with you, Sybil," Tom said. "But I wish I didn't have to keep it secret from your family."
"Me too," Sybil said. "Hopefully in a few years' time they won't care about it at all."
"I don't think that's very likely," Tom said.
"But we can hope, can't we?" Sybil said. "We might not have our parents on our side yet, but we do have hope."
"Hope isn't very useful though," Tom said. "Hope means nothing if we get banned from seeing each other."
"Haven't you ever broken any rules?" Sybil asked, taking pride in the rule-breaking side of herself. "It's so easy! You just need to bend the truth a little bit and suddenly anything is possible!"
"How do you get away with it though?" Tom asked, not convinced.
"It's easy," Sybil said. "As long as you are confident and your parents can't tell what you are really thinking then it's simple."
"So you're good at lying?" Tom asked, sceptical.
"I'm good at twisting my words, that's all," Sybil said. "Trust me, breaking rules is easy. I'll teach you, Tom Branson!"
When Sybil was sixteen and Tom was fifteen
As Sybil got older, her parents mellowed out a little and began trusting her more. Whilst she did sometimes go out on Saturdays with her friends, like she used to, she often spent evenings with them during the week instead. They would often go to the cinema or just spend an evening chatting at someone's house. Sybil's parents were less fussy about who she was with, but still liked to know where she would be.
On this occasion she was at a barbecue in the meadows in the centre of Ripon. All the friends she usually spent time with were there, but there were also a lot more people. It was a barbecue organised by someone from the academy as a way to celebrate the end of GCSE exams for everyone in the year. So nearly everyone from Sybil's year at the academy was there, and a large number of the people from Ripon High were there as well.
Sybil's parents usually wouldn't have allowed her to meet with so many people that they didn't know, but since there was going to be adult supervision, they allowed it, much to Sybil's pleasure.
About two months ago, when their friendship group had gone to see a film and had then gone back to Gwen's house, Sybil and Tom had admitted their feelings towards one another while they were stargazing in the garden. The whole group had been lying in the garden together, but some people had gone inside to get drinks, leaving Sybil and Tom alone to reveal their true feelings, which they had both been harbouring, scared to expose, for years.
Such years of built up tension had led to them kissing beneath the stars, only to be found by the others who had returned to the garden with their drinks. They mocked the two of them for kissing so openly, only to admit that they had all known for years that Sybil and Tom liked each other and were just waiting for them both to realise it themselves.
Now that all of their friends knew about their growing relationship, Sybil and Tom weren't afraid to be seen together at the barbecue. They were practically attached at the hip. If they weren't kissing, they were hugging and if they weren't hugging, they were holding hands. They wouldn't leave each other's side, wanting to make the most of the time that they had together.
The stars were an important part of their relationship. They had confessed their feelings beneath the light of the stars and they knew that when they were apart, they were both watched over by the same stars.
At the barbecue, they were lying on the grass together, looking up at the stars. There were people all around them, who were shouting and laughing and running around, but Sybil and Tom were concentrating only on each other and the clear sky above them. Tom's arm was wrapped around Sybil's shoulders and her head was resting on his shoulder.
They were murmuring sweet nothings to each other as they took in the night sky.
"You two are revolting!" Gwen said, coming up to them and laughing lovingly.
"What?" Sybil protested, not moving away from Tom.
"How many public displays of affection can one couple make in one night?" Gwen laughed.
"Is that a challenge?" Tom said with a smirk.
"God no!" Gwen exclaimed. "Please God no! The less public canoodling you do the better."
"We are not canoodling!" Sybil protested, sitting up, leaving the comfort of Tom's arms.
"Looks like canoodling to me!" Alfred said, walking up behind Gwen.
Sybil shot him a look of evil eyes, but melted back into Tom's arms when he put his hand on her lower back.
"The burgers are ready," Alfred said to Gwen, Sybil and Tom. "If you want one, you're going to have to be quick before they all disappear."
"Come on Sybil," Gwen said, taking her by the hands and pulling her to her feet away from Tom.
"Fine," Sybil said, plodding away from her boyfriend as he followed more slowly with Alfred.
With their burgers in hand, they sat back down together, eating and talking and loving one another.
Between mouthfuls they were kissing each other and behaving like love sick dogs.
"I love you," Sybil said sweetly.
"I love you too," Tom said. "But I wish we didn't have to keep us a secret from our families."
"Me too," Sybil said. "I wish our relationship could be out in the open."
"It will get better soon," Tom said.
"Will it?" Sybil questioned. "We're still at different schools. We're still going to have to hide from our parents and we're still going to be apart more often than not."
"Trust me," Tom said. "We'll find a way to make it work. If we don't then we know it's not meant to be."
"Do you believe in fate?" Sybil asked, seriously.
"Not exactly," Tom said. "But I believe that anything's possible if you try hard enough. And I believe in the stars."
Sybil smiled. The stars were theirs. The stars were the symbol of their relationship. Without the stars, they were nothing.
When Sybil was eighteen and Tom was seventeen
Sybil and Tom had really grown up in the last few years. They had both recently finished their A level exams and were waiting to find out their results to see if they had each achieved the grades to get into their chosen university. Though Tom wasn't legally an adult yet, he would be in a week, and they would hopefully be going to the same university so they would be able to live close to one another and spend as much time together as they wanted.
"We're so close, Syb," Tom said, holding her hand as they lay on the grass of the large meadow in Ripon.
"I know," she said. "But there's no guarantee."
"You have to believe, Sybil. The one thing we have always believed in is the stars," Tom said. "They won't let us down now."
"I love you," Sybil said. "You always have faith in the things I doubt."
"Look," Tom said, lying back and staring up at the dark sky above them. He pointed to certain stars and constellations. "There's the Plough. So there's the Pole Star." He moved his arm, following the line from the Plough up to the North Star. He knew that looking at the stars and identifying constellations calmed Sybil's mind.
"There's Cygnus," Sybil said, pointing to a different constellation.
"There's the double-u," Tom said. "What's it called again?"
"Cassiopeia," Sybil said quietly.
"And there's Hercules," Tom said.
Sybil sighed.
"What's up?" Tom asked, pulled her close to him and kissing her temple.
"What are we going to do if we don't get into the same university?" she asked, hugging Tom's torso tightly, scared to ever let him go.
"We'll manage. Like we always do," Tom said.
"We've spent our whole relationship trying to hide from people," Sybil said. "I'm not sure I can keep going like this."
"We won't have to," Tom said. "We'll be away from our families."
"But they still won't know. I want to be together. Really together. In the same city. In the same place. I want to scream from the rooftops that I love you. I want everyone to know. But I can't do that. I don't know if I'll ever be able to."
"Even if we're not in the same place," Tom said, "which I truly hope we will be, we'll still have each other."
"How?" Sybil protested.
"People make long distance relationships work every day," Tom said. "And we don't even know if we are going to be long distance. It all depends on our results."
"But what if we don't get the results we need? Or if one of us doesn't? Then we will be long distance. We need a plan for when that happens. If that's happens," Sybil said.
"Our plan is the stars. It always has been and always will be."
Sybil frowned at him, not understanding his meaning.
"If we end up in different cities, and we miss each other, we can call each other and talk things through under the stars. We might be in different cities, but we'll be under the same sky. You can look up at the sky where you are and I can look up at the sky where I am and we can be together in the stars, even if we're not together in the same city."
Sybil smiled at Tom and looked into Tom's arms.
"I love you," she said. "You always know the right thing to say to make me feel better."
"Well, I like to think I know you pretty well," he said smugly.
Sybil leant in to kiss him, and he responded by placing his hands on her waist and pulling her closer to him. She truly hoped that her next three years of education would be filled with moments like this.
When Sybil and Tom were twenty six years old
Sybil and Tom had stuck together through thick and thin. Since they first met at six years old, each of them recognised the importance of the other and they had been thick as thieves ever since. They had both ended up at the same university and they remained together throughout their years of studying. When Sybil became a qualified nurse, Tom started studying for a master's degree in history. He had always been a high achiever and studying history at university as his undergraduate degree just wasn't quite enough for him. He wanted to continue his education just a little bit longer.
Now, Sybil was an experienced nurse in the local hospital and Tom was a history professor, teaching at the local university. They had remained close to Ripon. They had both grown up there all their lives and they both loved the place too much to leave it, at least for the moment.
Despite their relative youth, they felt as though they had been together their entire lives, which is why they had decided to get married.
Their wedding day had been a huge success. Since they had gone to university, they had revealed their relationship to their parents. Despite some initial hostility, they had each been welcomed with open arms into the other's family. Though they were perhaps not in a relationship that their parents would have chosen for them, it was hard for anyone to deny that Sybil and Tom were happy with one another, and their relationship was much stronger than that of many other people their age.
After all the excitement of the day so far, Sybil and Tom were glad for some more chilled vibes. They were together in the middle of the dance floor, holding each other and swaying slowly, with a large proportion of their family and friends doing the same around them, but they were paying attention to nothing but each other.
"I love you," Tom whispered.
"I can't believe we're finally married," Sybil said. "Twenty years later and finally we're here."
"We wouldn't have got here without the stars," Tom said.
Sybil took Tom's hand and led him off the dance floor. The others on the dance floor made way for the newly married couple. It was obvious to everyone that they were the most important couple in the room. Sybil's dress was made from a flowy material, with a small train and lace sleeves. It was elegant, but slightly different in the design. It suit Sybil's style entirely. Tom had taken off his jacket and had undone his tie and top buttons to make himself more comfortable.
"Where are we going?" Tom asked Sybil as she led him out of the room.
"You'll see," Sybil said.
She took him out of the building and sat on the front lawn. It was quiet and dark and peaceful compared to the hectic atmosphere inside.
Tom sat beside Sybil and together they lay on the grass, arms wrapped around one another.
"Look at the stars," Sybil said.
"They're ours," Tom said.
"Those stars have kept us together for twenty years, you know," Sybil said.
"And they'll keep us together for the rest of our lives," Tom said, tightening his grip around Sybil.
"It's nice to know that the stars will always be there, even when everything else is falling apart us."
"We've got each other," Tom said. "Nothing could ever fall apart when we have each other."
"Sybil!" Gwen called as she stood at the door to the building.
Sybil sat up and looked behind her.
"The Cha Cha Slide is the next song on! If you stay out here you'll miss it!"
Sybil stood at that, and reached down to grab Tom's hand and help him to his own feet.
"The dance floor calls, milady," Tom teased.
"We can come back out later," Sybil said. "The stars will always be there to hold the universe together."
What started as a way to talk without being found out became a way to learn about the stars and constellations. When Sybil and Tom looked back on their secret meetings, the stars had brought them closer together. The stars had made them them.
Thank you so much for reading this fic! It's a bit different, but I'm really proud of it, so if you could spare a minute to leave a review I'd really appreciate it.