I've done it! This is probably the first time in my life where I have not "submitted" something "on time" but work's been a bitch, so what can you do? This is a prompt requested by shana-rosee for her birthday.

A million fics could never thank you for being such a wonderful person, Taylor, but I hope you enjoy this!

**Note: Not beta'd. Not even kind of beta'd. All mistakes are mine.

Prompt: Takes place in the Don't You Mind? universe. Sybil struggles with her roles as a mother, girlfriend, and med-student.

Sybil knew only of early mornings and late nights; her days were spent entirely on auto-pilot with each event blurring together like an image taken out of focus. Most days she was up before the sun, showering and feeding herself all before Isla or Tom awoke. If she were lucky (and lately she was not) her and Tom were given a few silent moments in the kitchen before their daughter greeted the day. Often Tom would stand at the counter, sipping at his tea while Sybil kissed his shoulder blades as she stood behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist. Soon Tom would move to grab Isla from her crib and then Sybil would greet the two at the door to Isla's room, grabbing for the child so Tom could get himself ready for work. While he did, Sybil fed Isla. With the child far beyond infancy, she was able to feed herself, giving her mother time to refresh her memory on last night's readings. Lately it was too common that Sybil would slave over chapters in her anatomy book only to find the sleep she was lulled into shortly after had her forgetting most of what she'd read. She was doing a fair job at Columbia but was beginning to wonder how long she could play this game. Her body ached and even Tom knew that the smiles she gave both him and her daughter were forced out of pure exhaustion.

Tom spent his time at work attempting to tame a wandering mind. All day he found himself thinking of the things he could do to fix this — to lessen Sybil's stress and insist that she slow down. A long list existed now, all outcomes procured by the extension of his work hours or the forfeiture of Sybil's already scarce morning hours with Isla. Even if the perfect remedy existed it was likely Sybil would ignore it as a possibility. To state that she openly craved change was to admit that she was vulnerable and Sybil struggled to show this side of herself to Tom lately. He'd fallen in love with a beautifully strong girl, a woman made special by the adversity she'd faced and the proclivity toward kindness she managed in spite of it. He was still in love with her and he knew he always would be, but Tom felt guilty asking her to love his flaws when she wouldn't allow him to do the same for her.

If she wouldn't give in, Tom knew he must. That's why, without asking for permission and only telling Martha of his plans, Sybil returned home from class one night to find several bags packed by the front door.

"Are we moving?" she asked casually. Immediately she was walking to her vanity, removing her earrings while accessing her own reflection.

Tom smirked and stood up from his spot on the bed where he was previously editing an article he'd written. Slowly he was given more freedom at work with one of his proposed pieces even being picked up for publication. It was this project that would finance his most recent idea.

"No," he chuckled. "Not moving."

"Are you leaving me then? What's with the bags?"

"I'll have you know that some of those things are Isla's…" His arms were around her waist now, inhaling her scent while she softened back into him.

"So you're leaving me and taking Isla?" Only in such a numb state could Sybil ask such things without feeling touched by them. Even jokes to Sybil were never just jokes; the truth was never too far, even if hidden beneath humor.

Tom looked in the mirror, gaining Sybil's attention only when she stared at the glass too. "We're going on a trip," he promised softly.

Sybil looked back to him. The caresses she made to Tom's arms while they held her tight stilled. "A trip?"

"To the beach…"

"It's freezing out," she reminded simply.

"It's not freezing out," Tom dismissed with a small snicker. He detached from her now and moved to clear his notebook from the bed. He sat down and expected that she follow. Instead Sybil stood at the foot of their bed, her arms crossed over her chest while she waited patiently for an explanation. "It's not beach weather, sure, but it's perfectly fine weather to get away."

"And why do we need to get away?" Tom deadpanned, the action causing Sybil to finally break. "Alright, so I suppose we do need to get away but—"

Already he was moving toward her, now kneeling on the mattress in front of her, cupping her face to ensure her attention was solely donated to him. "No buts," he said, shaking his head. "We're going. You have a long weekend and—"

"Tom…"

"No, Sybil!" he let out. The sound and volume of his voice had Sybil taking pause. He was not angry, but the layer of agitation that he'd been doing his best to keep concealed was now glaringly evident. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Syb," he mumbled. "Really love, I—"

With closed eyes she nodded. Soon he was before her again, standing and cupping her face, stroking her cheek in hopes of stopping the tears that soon came. "No...no, you're right," she gave with another nod of acknowledgement. "I've been a witch and—"

"No, Syb, nooo," he assured, "that's not what this is, okay? You're great! But I don't want you to have to be great. At least not all the time. You need a break and you deserve a break and Isla and I would like to give you that break so you're going to have a break, yeah?"

"No!" she shot out nervously. "I don't want to be alone, Tom! I want—"

The raspy chuckle he gave had Sybil instantly relaxed. "You're not going to be alone, love. Isla and I will be joining you."

"Where?"

"I already told you," he stated with a cocky grin. "The beach. Sagaponack."

Sybil thought of her grandmother's cottage and the last time she'd been there. That was where she'd delivered Isla, the same place she wrote Tom letters and explained she was out of the city due to a relentless sickness. She was depressed and Isla was not always the most gentle on her stomach, but she was certainly not sick, just days away from what would eventually be a rather peaceful delivery. Actually, if Tom had been there, it would have been near perfect. Only now did she realize she hadn't explained all of this to Tom. They spoke so briefly about their time apart that when it would come up, in times much like their current situation, she breezed past the reality of it all.

"Alright, yeah…" she sighed out. "Let's go."

~!~

Tom spent the first morning holding Isla's small hands while the child toddled through waves that lapped lightly at the shore. Sybil watched from where she sat on a nearby quilt, her body covered much like the rest of her family's in a knit jumper and a faded pair of blue jeans - those of which belonged to Tom and were kept up with a belt looped tightly around her waist.

Originally Sybil insisted that Tom leave Isla's shoes on and when he later failed to comply with her request, she made him promise that he at least wouldn't allow her feet to get wet. Not even inches away from their spot in the middle of the beach and Tom had already broken both rules, assuring Sybil that their daughter would be perfectly fine dipping her toes in the ocean.

"She's a Branson," he reminded. "Her body's just like her heart and her mind...tough," he stated proudly.

Sybil couldn't help but to accept his declaration with a wide smile. She wore the same expression when Tom walked back toward her, now carrying their giggling daughter in his arms, her body casually resting flat on one of his arms. He used to hold her like this when she were just a baby and now, only a month from her second birthday, he continued to do so. Sybil wondered if this would be a difficult habit to give up come Isla's third and even fourth birthday.

"Look at this lightweight," he jested, gesturing to the way Isla's eyes didn't seem to want to stay open.

Sybil reached out for her but her actions were ignored by Tom. He reached for the child's fluffy blanket and wrapped her in it, maneuvering so that by the time he was sitting beside Sybil, Isla was comfortably resting against his chest, practically asleep.

"You have the magic touch," Sybil commented.

"No, I just have more surface area than you do. I'm a more comfy bed," Tom joked.

Sybil smirked and gave a small snicker of her own. "Fair enough."

Tom paused, taking just a moment to admire Sybil. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she nodded toward the ocean. "Just thinking."

"I suppose that's allowed…"

"I don't have much time for it in the city," she explained. "I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing."

Tom thought for a minute. "Me neither," he finally agreed.

Sybil looked to her boyfriend and gave him another smile. "I think I've become a robot. Everything is a routine and we're always on a schedule. There's not a minute of my day that is unplanned and I hate it. But if I break...if I change things, I lose my mind. We can't have it any other way right now." She looked to him once more. "Well, I can't…"

Tom glanced at Sybil. "You can speak for me. I don't mind. We're a family, Sybil. If you're feeling it, there's a good chance I am too."

"Why haven't you said anything?"

"Well, it doesn't bother me that things are so structured right now. I mean, I'm honestly more in awe than anything else. I'd only say something if I thought things were wrong and—"

"Well aren't they? Isn't that was this trip was about? To recharge?"

"Of course," Tom confirmed. "But nothing's wrong. I don't dislike our life now that you're back at school or now that Isla's in daycare. I love our life…"

Sybil rolled her eyes. "You have to say that."

"No, I don't," Tom scoffed incredulously. "I do believe that once upon a time I told you I hated my life. And if I remember correctly, you fell in love with me because of it. I couldn't lie then and I certainly won't do it now. I hardly think that's fair."

"Well maybe I'm not being very fair. There's hardly time for us to be together with Isla and there's definitely no time for us to be alone. I know that's not easy and I'm sorry—"

"Love, you don't need to be sorry. I'll say it again...I love our life."

"I love our life too," she whispered back. "But I wonder if this is how it always will be. If we'll just work really hard only to use that money to put Isla in daycare so we can continue to work really hard and at the end of the day, there's still nothing to show for it. I don't think the balance in our bank account has changed since we moved out of my grandmother's…"

"So? Isla's savings has grown. We bought you a new desk and you bought me a new suit. The money hasn't disappeared, it's just been reallocated."

"Yeah," Sybil scoffed, "put toward the work that keeps us from seeing our daughter."

"Syb, love...we knew this wasn't going to be easy, right? But I made you a promise and I'm not going to let you break it. You're going to school and you're going to finish because someday you'll get paid for being as brilliant as you are. Isla will be able to tell the kids at school that her mum's a doctor—"

"And that her daddy writes for The New Yorker."

Tom chuckled, pressing his tongue to his cheek thereafter to hide how proud he felt at hearing Sybil's wishes aloud. "Maybe."

"So we're doing okay. Or...I think we're doing okay. Isla and I certainly are. As long as you are okay, we're okay."

"How do you do it?" she asked honestly with eyes that demanded the truth. "How are you so supportive?"

"It's easy," Tom shrugged. "You're easy to support. You...you changed my life, Syb. You know that. You make me patient. You make me more thoughtful and more understanding. And despite what you think, even with you attending school now, I'm still a better person because of you. That hasn't stopped because things are a bit hectic right now. I've worked to be a good man because I know what it's like not to have all of this. I'd take our busy lives to the boredom I had at Killjoy anyday."

Sybil swallowed. Again she felt as if she might cry but she stopped herself, her skin warmed by the stillness in the salty air and the way Tom now adored her with his eyes. "I had Isla here, you know."

Tom's gaze narrowed. "Here?" Sybil went to speak but Tom's sarcasm interrupted. "On this beach?"

Sybil gave a scolding grin. "No. Here. In Sagaponack. With just my grandmother and a doula. Out of the city. It was as close to Dublin as I could be, I guess…"

"Syb…"

"No, it's okay, you know? Cause you're right. You're here now. Things aren't perfect but they'll always be better than they once were. We've gotten past the worst of it and I have to believe that."

"We have. And you do...god, Sybil, you really do need to believe that, alright?"

Sybil nodded quickly. "I know. I do," she assured.

"Promise me?"

Sybil giggled. "I promise you, Tom."

"Because if you ever aren't...you know, happy with your life...I need to know, okay? It's my job to fix that. It's my job to make sure you and Isla are always happy. I couldn't do that before but I can do that now and you need to let me."

"Yeah," she nodded again. "Yeah, of course." Soon Sybil turned to Tom. "I am. I don't just believe it. I am," she repeated, this time for him. "Happy, that is."

Tom agreed to play Sybil's game, if only for a few moments. The impact of her words had his heartbeat slowing down and he concentrated on his breathing to keep it as such. He feared the more he thought about it the more he'd realize how glaring it was that he was not present for Isla's birth. It was something he could not control but something he'd forever feel guilty for. Something wonderful he and Sybil had shared created something equally as wonderful nine months later and only Sybil was there to witness it. It was further proof of how much Tom had missed, how in promising to Sybil that they'd leave Dublin he was vowing to walk her through what would undoubtedly be the most difficult days of her life; as she'd once said, Dublin and New York were quite literally worlds apart. He made these promises without knowing of her pregnancy and even then he knew they'd be difficult to uphold. Perhaps he shouldn't have given her such false hope and Tom wondered now if he were currently doing the very same thing.

"I didn't know…" he muttered gruffly. "About you having Isla here. I mean, I knew you weren't in the city. I've read the letters over and over again and—"

"You've read my letters?"

A sly smile spread across Tom's face. "In prison, yeah. But since we've been here...several times. You don't talk about it, Sybil. We can't pretend that year didn't happen. It did and it was fuckin' awful and I wish it hadn't but…"

"But it did," she whispered back. Sybil took her eyes off the ocean so she could stare at Tom instead. "I feel years away from that person. I was…," Sybil's voice trailed off into a small nervous laugh. "You're not going to want to hear this but I was terrified Tom. In coming here I felt like a child because I needed so much from my grandmother. It was more than just money. I wasn't used to the layout of the city and the people and the weather. I was a child and I was having a child and I was doing it without the one person in this world who never judged me. I guess...I guess I don't talk about it because I don't recognize that girl. I'm not her anymore."

Tom shifted, repositioning himself so he could regain feeling in his arm while still cradling Isla softly against his chest. His back ached but he didn't mind if it meant the child remained asleep so he and her mother could talk. Sybil was more than correct in saying the two were barely alone anymore.

"You weren't a child, Sybil. Your letters...definitely not a child."

Sybil pushed at Tom's smile, hoping the action would distract him from how rouged her cheeks had become. "Well either way...I'm not a child now. Maybe I miss it though. We were...we were so stupid that weekend—"

"Syb…"

"No! It's a good thing!" she assured. "It was great, Tom! I loved every minute of it. But god were we dumb. So careless and...I felt so alive with you."

"And you don't now?"

Sybil looked to the sand. "I never said that. I still crave you, Tom. I adore you more than you'll ever know. I can't be around you without feeling just as I did that first day in the bookshop. But do I miss how spontaneous all of that was? It was a good kind of terrifying. I guess terrifying is okay as long as you're there."

"I'm here now," he offered up. It was their mantra, one forever repeated and always needed despite both insisting that was not the case.

Sybil dropped her head down to Tom's shoulder. "Yeah, you are. I think I was just expecting all of this to be just as easy as those two days were. We kind of just fell together and it wasn't planned and I couldn't have predicted the way I felt about you and certainly not the way everything happened so quickly. But there's structure now. School and jobs and Isla. There's—"

"Responsibility," Tom finished for her. "Who'd have guessed it was this version of the real world that would surprise us?"

"Maybe that was the problem," Sybil said simply, giving her words with a small shrug. "None of that felt real until you were put in that police car. None of it. I was dreaming. I had to have been."

"Not dreaming now, are ya?" Tom kidded causing Sybil to once again smirk. Perhaps it was the child he held in his arms but the two were incapable of cutting as deep into these old wounds as they maybe should have.

"This is what I wanted though. And I mean it, Tom...I wouldn't have it any other way. Life just...it happens in ebbs and flows. It's like the ocean, I guess. We met and that was magical and then we were apart for a year. Then you came home and—"

"Home," Tom repeated causing Sybil's breath to hitch and the two to share wide grins.

"You were home and that was magical too. I think for awhile I was on holiday from the real world again. But we're back now. And I just wonder if it'll always be like this. Good things followed by bad."

"I think it levels out eventually, no?" Sybil looked to Tom, silently gauging if his question were a curious one. Before she could speak, he continued. "You'll graduate someday. I'll be promoted someday. Isla will walk and talk and as much as I hate to think of it, she'll become a bit less dependent. I believe in those things. It just takes time. And if us being so busy and maybe a bit off-balance is bad...well, it's certainly nothing compared to me being in prison. Maybe the bad will eventually go away completely. I mean, if this is our bad, I think we're doing pretty well."

"It's not...it's not bad," she dismissed. "Just different. Not as perfect as I thought."

"Well if there's—"

"I wanted Medical school so badly, Tom. Before you it was all I thought about. And to be honest, I fell in love with you and I got pregnant and I just...I stopped caring—"

"Sybil, please don't say that."

"I love it! I do! And I'm good at it, which...thank God because if I weren't this really all would be as big of a mess as I think it is. But when I'm in class my mind isn't on the compounds in our blood or the way brain tissue regenerates. I'm just wondering if you and Isla are having a good night. I wonder if she's being picky about what you've made her for dinner and I just stare at the clock and try to experience the night with you. I think 'oh, Tom is giving Isla her bath now' and then 'Isla should be asleep now...so what is Tom doing?''"

"Sybil, I...I wish you could be there for all of those things. Isla and I miss you but someday she's going to understand that her mom was gone because she was working hard to give her a better life. She'll understand that you can't give up on dreams just because life gets tough. She'll have those things in her because her mum is a warrior."

"To be honest I do it for her. I wasn't going to tell you that but I do. I've thought about it so many times, Tom...just dropping out. I'm a much better mother than a medical student."

"You can be both though. You know that right? And you can be amazing at both. The medical stuff just takes a bit more practice. You've definitely got this mum stuff down…"

Sybil smirked at her boyfriend's compliment. Soon her grin faltered and she was back to facing the truth head-on. "Maybe it's you too." Tom looked perplexed so she continued. "I do it for Isla but I do it for you too. Or because of you."

"Syb, I want you to do school because you want to do school. This isn't about me. It shouldn't be about me," he repeated. "It can't be. You've already given up far too much for me."

"You're supportive, is what I'm saying. Endlessly supportive. You always have been."

"What else am I supposed to do? You've seen me at my worst, Syb. I was a really shite person and you loved me anyway. I fucked up bad...and you only loved me even harder. I mean, I don't know how you do it. I have to think if you can love me you can do anything. Mum, doctor...whatever you want."

At hearing Tom's words, Sybil wrapped her hands around his arm and once again dropped her head down to his shoulder. She momentarily looked to Tom, adoring his features before returning her gaze to the ocean, all of it moving and changing while she sat completely motionless for the first time in what felt like weeks.

I don't know how I always manage to bring these two to the beach…

Thanks for reading! I promise I'll do my best to post the next chapter of Crash Into Me sometime next week. If you follow me on tumblr you know my life has been a bit all over the place lately. The support/patience is appreciated!

x. Elle