Title: i love how it hurts
Characters: Branson/Sybil, hints of Anna/Bates and Daisy/William
Rating: T
Summary: You did this to yourself, Tom Branson. Don't you know that when people leap for the stars they always fall to earth with a bang? Branson struggles through the aftermath of his confession to Sybil.
Notes: Huge spoilers for S2E01, set between E01 and E02
ooo
I'm just waiting till it mends,
Then I'll let you break it again and again
Three little words, that's all that I've got
Three little words, like it or not
Tell me you noticed? Tell me you heard?
For you I'd have run to the ends of the Earth
I couldn't keep you, but I'll keep my word
It's the most beautiful pain in the world
I love how it hurts
Love How It Hurts - Scouting For Girls
ooo
He's no writer, no young lord with the time and the money to employ thesauruses and poetry books and even people with the crafting of a perfect speech. Somehow at this very moment, half-hidden by the shadows of foreboding brickwork and with the voices of wounded soldiers ringing in his ears, it doesn't matter. His words might not be flowery enough or fancy enough, but they're precisely what he feels, and that's all there is to it.
His old dad once said, a month before he died, don't waste time with flowery words and false promises if you don't mean 'em son, no use with them at all. Just say what's on your heart, what you feel, and you'll come through.
I'll make something of myself, I promise. I promise to devote every waking minute to your happiness.
It's the truth. Every word he says is God's own truth.
His old dad taught him a lot of things. How to drive, how to read, how to know when a girl is upset. What to do when she weeps at you, shouts at you, laughs at you.
It's cost me all I've got to say these things.
He never taught him what to do when there's no words at all.
The silence pounds in his ears so hard he thinks his very mind's begun to split. Her face is turned away, shadowed, hidden. The ground's gone from under his feet. Please say something, anything, tell me I'm a fool for reaching so high, tell me you love me, tell me you hate me, tell me everything's going to be alright, tell me you never want to lay eyes on me again. Just please say something to me.
ooo
He's ruined everything. There's no way of getting round it.
His hands don't shake as he drives along the lonely road to the Hall with no-one chattering in his ear, no angry tears fall from his eyes. His face is impassive, almost blank. Every time he passes another motor car he considers swinging the wheel and aiming straight for it – not to kill himself, nothing like that, he's not a lunatic, but just to see the shredded metal and spinning tires, to have a chance to shout and curse and rid himself of the hell that seethes inside of him.
Idiot. Downright idiot.
Branson imagines joining up, marching down to the local office and receiving orders, a uniform, a gun. He'd be gone by the time she returned, no-one would ever have to know. Get out. Get away, far from here, go and get yourself blown up in some miserable part of France and show her, show the lot of them. After the day he's had the notion sounds quite appealing. A short, bitter laugh escaped his lips. Now wouldn't that be a thing. Tom Branson. War hero.
With a wrench he pulls the car over to the side of the road; the wheels screech against the ground beneath.
Stupid, stupid, what were you even thinking he repeats under his breath as he gets out of the car, he doesn't even know where he's going or where he's walking to, he just wants to get away from everything. Bloody fool, it was never going to happen, you should have known that and now look at you, you've torn everything apart. On he goes, muttering and walking, walking and muttering and stamping against the ground with forceful steps until the air tears in his lungs and the car's nowhere around and he can't see for the silver lights of pain flashing before his eyes.
What in God's name was he even thinking?
ooo
"You look done in, Mister Branson," Mrs Hughes remarks quite cheerfully when he walks in through the door. "Long journey, was it?"
ooo
"Well then Branson, how did Lady Sybil get off?" Lord Grantham asks jovially when he's summoned to the library. Behind him Lady Grantham stares greedily at him, as if he might hold some last echoes of her daughter, as if he might offer up home hidden clue that will tell her Sybil's alright.
"Well enough, your lordship."
"How was she?" Lady Grantham begs, staring up at him like a supplicant. "Did she seem alright to you? Did she seem happy?"
He thinks of her dark eyes, their damp reflections in his rear view mirror; the way her hands shook as she alighted from the car. 'It will be hard to let you go, my last piece of home.'
Branson manages a nod. "A little shaken up I think, my lady, but determined. She's a trooper, is Lady Sybil."
For a moment he worries he's said too much; one of Lord Grantham's eyebrows quirk just a little too much for comfort. He can imagine the man's thoughts. Don't tell me who my daughter is, as if you think you know her better than me, don't you presume to tell me what I already know. Don't forget your place, don't you ever forget that. He remembers being hauled up in front of the Earl the day after the count, being stared at for what seemed like an eternity through eyes still smouldering with anger and hurt and restraint before being told stiffly that he was aware of Sybil's actions, that it was not his fault, that he would not – and here his voice became hard – be punished for what happened at Rippon. But Branson, the older man had remarked as he was turning to leave, It goes without saying that nothing of the sort will ever happen again. I am trusting you with those that I love, each time they enter that car. Do not let me regret that trust.
And as for his wife, well, she's too giddy with relief to even notice his slip.
"Well, that's…good to know anyway," the Earl remarks tartly, a little too tartly for comfort. "Isn't it good to know, Cora, that the servants know our daughters well enough to tell us what they feel?"
"Robert!" Lady Grantham rises, a sophisticated mist of American perfumes and white lace, and shoots her husband a withering look. "That will be all, Branson. And pay Lord Grantham no mind," her eyes narrow towards Lord Grantham once more, "it's not your fault he's been in an absolutely foul mood lately."
He toys with the idea of blurting it right in their faces, flinging the words so inescapably loud that they have no choice but to listen to them. I asked your daughter to marry me. I asked her to come away with me. There; dismiss me, turn me out, do what you want to me, I don't care anymore. See the looks on their faces. He feels the wildness thrash like a tempest inside of him; he wants to do something, anything. To give himself that one little bitter triumph, fleeting and poisonous, another morsel of scandal for the Granthams to nibble on like caviar. The moment rises in his chest and then falls; he bows and departs with his lips gutlessly shut.
ooo
You did this to yourself, Tom Branson. You wanted to take the risks, you wanted to change the world. Don't you know that when people leap for the stars they always fall to earth with a bang?
ooo
He manages to keep it together all the way through dinner, with Mrs Patmore fussing and Ethel and O'Brien sniping away at each other and the chatter ringing away like birds in his ears. When William seats himself down at the piano for a bit of a sing-song he abruptly rises from his seat and hastens out the back before anyone spots him.
In the cool evening air out back he lights a cigarette – hasn't smoked in nearly five years, he doesn't even know why he still has them– with almost vicious alacrity, takes a drag until he's gasping from the fire and heat filling him up inside. It doesn't make him feel any better. All he feels is smoke curling through him, clinging to his every particle, dragging him down. When he leans his forehead against the brickwork of the wall – stupid word, he smacks it there, as if he might drive all the stupid notions and impulses straight out of the brain – he feels the skin split with force.
Did you truly think that she'd ever, ever, go for you? For someone like you?
He paces, curses, curses clearly and fluently. A figure catches his eye. He recognises a slim build and a maid's uniform and soft blonde hair. Hunched in the shadows, bent over with pain.
As he stands there, uncomfortable even in his own skin, she turns, stares at him for a moment. There's tear-stains tracking their way across her cheeks, he knows there's blood staining his forehead. For a moment there's utter stillness. Then they both nod, twist away, imprisoned in their own misery, unable to comfort even each other.
ooo
Posh people, he decides, probably have some specific formula for dealing with this sort of thing. They go and shoot a servant, or get themselves killed in a handily present battle, or go and languish poetically under the shade of an old oak tree, the smug bastards.
He doesn't do any of this, of course, because he's not stupid, not bloody stupid, and life mercilessly goes on even when the only thing you want to do is curl up under the blankets and sleep for a week, soaking in your own self-pity. It sounds tempting to sprawl in the fields and drink entire bottles of strange French alcohol and smoke funny smelling cigarettes and do all those things that they do in novels, but he can't. Life, real life, keeps battering at him. The Granthams still need ferrying thither and yon, the car still needs tending, things need doing. He doesn't have the luxury of moping.
What he does do is wander down the village, on his day off, and hurl pebbles into the pond until his arms ache and he's panting for breath. There's nothing else to do; Ireland's a mite too far to visit with his free time. He used to amble through to his lordship's library and skim through the tomes, praying she might be there, flustered as a schoolboy when she was. They used to talk over what books they'd read that week.
Now he doesn't go near the place; despite knowing she's miles away the ghosts continue to lurk behind the bookshelves.
ooo
"Are you alright, Mister Branson? You've been wandering around in a daze for the past week now!"
"I'm fine, Mrs Hughes."
Mrs Hughes watches him like a hawk every time he comes downstairs, like a mother unsure whether her child is more sinned against than sinning. He barely notices anymore. What does he care? But as he absent-mindedly picks up the paper, his hands moving like clockwork, he sees her face soften into something – wariness, concern, I'd help you lad if only you'd let me – something like that.
"If this is something to do with Lady Sybil…"
"I said I'm fine, Mrs Hughes."
ooo
Three times in the next two days he begins to pack, setting books and shirts neatly into his suitcase and then flinging them across the room until they land on lampshades, bookshelves, knock featureless little ornaments from the shelves with a tinny clatter. He drafts letters to Lord Grantham solemnly and sadly announcing his resignation, before scrunching them up into tiny little balls and tossing them over his shoulder. The place looks like the setting of a bomb site.
Oh God, he wants to leave so badly, wants to get away from this place when every curve of the architecture reminds him of her, he wants to free himself of her shadow and yet he can't even summon up the strength to write a simple letter of resignation. Every time he steels himself to get up and go to speak with his employers his muscles are sapped of energy. He tries to think of life beyond Downton, beyond her, and finds his mind going blank.
He hates this, this wanting and not having. This ache inside, like a need for strong drink or a noxious drug.
What are you waiting for? You wanted to do something, go somewhere, be someone. This job was only to get some money together, money you now have. Go on, Tom Branson. Be someone.
With one last, angry gesture he slams the case shut and kicks it halfway across the room. His foot screams with the pain. Then he self-consciously gets down on his knees beside his narrow bed.
He thinks of his mam, who always described the Heavenly Father as a kindly old soul, protective as any parent, always waiting to listen. Smoothing the creases from his uniform, patting his hair straight, he feels like a bit of a fool: but if you're going to speak with the Almighty isn't it right to be neat and tidy first?
It's something he's not done in years. He has a rather casual relationship with the Almighty; he'll talk to the old fellow when he feels like it (usually questions, angry, bitter, burning questions; there are always so many he wants the answer to) but otherwise leaves well enough alone. But this time – oh, he's desperate. He's on the verge of begging. He needs someone's help.
'Lord . Um. It's Tom, Tom Branson. But you already know that of course – "
His hands are clasped so tightly they leave white marks on his skin, his eyes are screwed up tight; he hasn't prayed like this since he was a child.
'I don't know whether you're really there, or if you can hear me…or whether you're even listening – there's plenty that deserve your attention far more than me. But…if you are, and you ever wanted to give a helping hand – well, I'm begging you now. I really am. Just please…help me forget about her. Help me to stop loving her. I don't want to make any more stupid mistakes, I don't want to make things worse anymore. Just help me to forget her. Please.'
ooo
"I'm sorry I snapped at you the other day," Lord Grantham says when they're in the car, driving down to Crawley House one afternoon. "You didn't deserve that, and I apologise. It's just," Branson glances up and catches sight of the older man pushing a hand through his hair in the mirror; he's been looking exhausted recently, "the stress of it all, what with the war, and now," he sighs, "with Sybil leaving…"
There's a heavy thunk of a fist against the inside of the car.
"You can't know what it's like, Branson, to see someone you love and want to protect, and know that you can do so little for them because they simply will not allow you to look after them. To see someone so precious to you slip away; and especially for Sybil – after that dratted Ripon business a few years ago – you cannot imagine what it's like to see her leave…"
Branson thinks of Sybil's hand light in his as he escorts her down from the car, of pamphlets and bright blue trousers and ribbons tied to hats in purple, white and green. He remembers the glittering smash of the bottle as she falls against the ground, her weight warm and secure in his arms; the first rush of panic that wasn't my job, my job but Sybil, Sybil. When she stepped out of the car outside the hospital her foot skidded against the cobblestones, nearly tripped. If she falls now, who's going to catch her?
You'd be surprised, my lord, he thinks.
ooo
The girl at the post office smiles at him when he goes to send a letter home one morning, all fresh blonde curls and fluttering dusky eyelashes. He's seen three or four lads hanging around outside the doors when it's time for her to walk home; each time she dismisses them all. It's flattering, in a strangely detached sort of way.
"She's awfully pretty. Well, not as pretty as my Daisy, obviously," William says loyally the next time they past the post office together and see her watching from behind the shutters. "You should ask her to walk out with you some evening."
He snorts. "I don't think I'm her sort."
The younger man nods solemnly, takes everything he says as holy oath. "Well, maybe not. Still, stranger things have happened."
Thanks, Branson thinks, and grins for the first time in days.
"A fellow ought to have a sweetheart. Someone to be there for, someone to fight for."
I've seen the way she looks at you, the words hover on his tongue, and it's not good. He's not sure that a sweetheart in love looks nearly as scared as Daisy does whenever William hovers by her side, or moves to take her hand. As if she's been handed a heart formed entirely of glass and doesn't want to break it. As if she's swum out to sea and only just felt the tide threatening to tug her under, sweep her miles from the shore.
But he doesn't say anything. What right does he have to smash William's illusions and dreams, just because his own have been? Somewhere in the last couple of weeks the footman's been dancing on air, floating through starlight, you can practically see the lights in his eyes when he looks at Daisy. He's found someone. And he's right, in a way. Everyone ought to have somebody else.
Branson pretends to preen, patting on hand over his hair in an overly-affected manner until William snorts. "We-ell – there's no harm in trying, I suppose…"
"That's the spirit!"
Her name's Beryl, she's lived here since the day she was born, and she puts him in mind of chocolate and honeysuckle and all things sweet. He walks her home when the post office closes, holds her hand as they stroll, talk to her about books (she likes Little Women and Pride and Prejudice; and has never picked up anything heavier). He kisses her chastely on the lips when they arrive at her little white-washed gate, and feels cold all over as he walks back the way he came.
He waves to her whenever the car passes the post office, but she's gone from his mind the second he looks away.
ooo
Forgetting is the worst part. He's always had a good memory; now the images flicker through his mind like coloured reels of film in a picture house. He holds the door open for Lady Edith and remembers her sister smiling at him as she dismounted from the car, not because she wanted anything but because she wanted to. He flicks through a book and remembers how she always carries a slim leather-bound tome in her bag, remembers her brandishing copies of Shakespeare and Keats, quotes spilling from her lips.
Go away, he thinks. Leave me alone.
The memories won't leave him alone. He can't lose her, no matter how hard he tries.
ooo
Life seems to fit back into its original pattern once again, insofar as it can to with the war crackling all around them. Like a machine with the cogs damaged; things work, but not entirely. Anna begins to join in with conversations around the table, but her skin is always pale and washed-out; the number of garden lads and hall boys slowly deplete. He thinks about joining them, before pushing it once and for all from his mind. He's no coward, but he's not brave [foolhardy?] enough to die for a cause he's never believed in.
Instead he takes walks with Beryl, talks to her about life before the world, does everything in his power to conjure up a proper courtship. Occasionally he finds himself staring at her and thinking you're not Sybil, God you're not Sybil, you're nothing like her. He hates himself for it. She's a nice girl after all.
She's just not…
"You seem tired," Beryl says more than once, her hand squeezing gently against his arm. Longing to help. "Is there anything I can do?"
[I want to help people, Sybil had said vehemently in the car, the day she told him about the place in the hospital. I want to do something. I feel jolly useless just sitting around doing nothing, I want to be helpful. Nothing anyone says will change my mind.]
"Nothing," he says, and manages to smile. "Nothing you need to trouble yourself over."
ooo
One day he drives the Dowager Countess and Lady Grantham to Rippon and overhears her ladyship reading out a letter from – well alright, he'll just say it – from her, from Sybil. It's filled with schedules and procedures and names he's never known, every line echoes of her voice. He can't get away from her, he realises with the sickening ache in his throat that's become as familiar to him as a mother's touch; he might bury himself in work and friendships and the war effort and Beryl; he'll never outrun her.
When they return to Downton he holds open the door for the two women, drives around the back afterwards and then calmly and collectedly puts his fist through the window of the gardener's shed.
Damn it, but it hurts like hell.
"Mister Branson, you are bleedingall over that newspaper!"
"It's nothing, Mrs Hughes."
He thought he could escape her. He hoped so hard that he would.
In the end Lynch rigs up a cart and horse and takes him over to the hospital; a scar curling around the base of his palm is stitched up as neat as can be, and he's reassured the blood will come out of his uniform with a couple of washes. Doctor Clarkson is oh-so jolly, ha ha ha, don't want you chaps injuring yourself on the job, we have enough of the wounded coming back from France don't we?
The scar throbs red and angry sometimes, until the garden boys gawk and Daisy refuses to so much as look at it. Sometimes he presses his thumb down deep into the ridge, until fire spirals through his hand and he's bent over double, gasping for breath. Damn, bloody damn. It wasn't supposed to hurt as much as this. None of it was.
The damage to the gardener's shed is blamed on children from the village. He never utters another word about it.
ooo
"Well then, seems you've been spending even less time than usual in here of late," Mrs Patmore remarks without a word of warning one night at dinner.
"Course he has. Got himself a sweetheart, hasn't he?"
He levels a look over at Miss O'Brien, who hurls it straight back at him. He refuses to back down. Give it all you've got, you grumpy so-and-so. You don't scare me. "Good to know my own business is of such interest to you, Miss O'Brien."
"I've got eyes to see with, haven't I?"
"Well, I think she's very pretty, Mister Branson," Daisy pipes up boldly. "William told me, y'see."
But O'Brien's not done yet. "She must be deaf as a post," she drawls without looking up from a flimsy paperback novel. "Can't imagine a girl who can hear putting up with you and all the socialist drivel you spout on about."
"Don't you have a kind word to say to anyone, you miserable old trout?" Ethel demands from the other side of the table. Several snickers are promptly muffled.
O'Brien promptly explodes in an outbreak of blistering invectives and withering remarks, enough to make a grown man's eyes water just to listen to it; Ethel flings her apron to the floor with a defiant toss of the head. Carson, an almighty terror when it comes to blundering garden boys and scheming footmen is reduced to a wordless lump of exasperation as first one, then both of them round on him for allowing the other to speak like that. The rest of the staff gathers around to watch.
Anna, watching the chaos unfold before her eyes with a distant look, shakes her head gently. "Well, if you truly care for her, Mister Branson, I think you should tell her so straight away," she says softly, the ghost of old loves in her eyes. "None of this stoic upper-lip stuff. Tell her before you lose the chance to do so."
The words brim on his lips, every emotion boiling to the surface, confusion and exhaustion and but what if I don't and Mrs Hughes is looking at him and oh, she knows the truth doesn't she, she might nod and smile like everyone else but inside she knows and Almighty God, but he isn't cut out for this, not for any of it, he's so tired of it all.
"It's always important to tell those you care for the truth," Mrs Hughes murmurs, eyes lingering on the head housemaid like a mother dwelling on a particularly sickening child. "Even when it hurts."
ooo
He isn't a good man. If he was he would have let this go a long, long time ago.
ooo
When everyone else is bustling over dinner, laying the table and polishing silverware as if it's England's last defence, he sneaks into Mister Carson's study. Cradles the telephone mechanism in his hands, feeling the weight of it. His voice cracks in his throat even when the telephone operator's tinny voice comes through on the other end.
'I'm sorry.'
"Hello? Hello, can I help?"
He mumbles the name of the hospital she's training at, the words stick in his throat. Outside the door the clatter of evening activity continues, the sound of Ethel flirting with the gardeners.
'I'll leave, if you want me to. I'll hand in my notice, and you'll never have to see me again. If I ever made you feel uncomfortable, or ill at ease, or unhappy in your own home – you only have to tell me, and I'll leave, I swear.'
The whirring sound of connections being made, the clunk and spin of tiny electrical signals being flung over miles, travelling over a distance unable to be made with a few words.
'You've no idea how brave you are – how brave I think you are. Every other high-born woman in England is sitting at home fussing over party frocks or worrying over their menfolks' well-being, but you…you've gone out there with your head held high and you're making a difference. And I know you're scared. I know that. I saw your face as we drove away from your home. And that's – well, that's alright, you know, because you can't have bravery without being frightened first, and you're so, so brave for everything you're doing. And so strong. So I just wanted to say – good luck.'
"Hello?" Another click and the whirr of machinery, a muted voice calling down the lines and coils of the telephone, and he nearly drops the entire contraption, thinks of young women with soft wisps of brown hair and bright, kind eyes. "This is Nurse Crawley; I'm afraid Doctor Pierce's secretary isn't here. May I take a message?"
'You're stronger than me, any road.'
He imagines a young woman in a stark, strange uniform alone in an alien office, so many miles from home.
"Hello? I'm sorry, can you hear me? Is there someone I can fetch – someone you need to get a message to?"
'I understand – why what I did was so stupid, I mean. I know that now. There you were about to start a whole new life and I – I just blundered in. Like a bull in a china shop. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. It was so stupid. I just wanted to tell you that. I don't want you thinking that I was trying to make life difficult for you, or anything like that. That's the last thing in the world that I want.'
Her voice lowers to a murmur, tender in his ear. "Are you looking for a relative – one of the wounded, I mean? I can check the records if you want – "
'I never meant any insult, if that's what you believed. It was nothing like that. I don't want to possess you as some sort of pretty trophy, or have you as – well as a novelty, as a way of snubbing the aristocracy, or anything like that; or even as some sort of helpmeet to fight politics together. I didn't mean any of that, and if you thought I did – well, I'm sorry for it.'
"Hello?"
'You're wonderful. I never said that, and I should have. I should have told you every day how wonderful you are, and I should have told you from the second you got out of the car at the hospital how much I care about you. How I can't stop thinking about you. How much – how much I love you, how I want to spend every moment I have left with you. You make me happier than I ever believed possible, and all I wanted – all I ever wanted was to return that.'
"Nurse Crawley? Why are you dawdling on the telephone, might one ask?" The voice is faint in the background, making him think of starched handkerchiefs and willow-switches and sensible shoes; he imagines a tall, imposing figure.
"I'm sorry, Matron, the phone just rang – I thought it might be a relative of one of the patients. But no-one's speaking."
'I love you. And that scares me more than anything else in the world.'
"Now then, Nurse Crawley, just you hand me the phone." The strident voice suddenly echoes loud and abrupt in his ear. "Hello? Hello, is anyone there?"
All of these words, and so many more, stick in his throat like poison.
"There's no-one there, Nurse Crawley. Off you go now."
He thinks of young women spinning through grand halls in brilliant silken trousers, of nurses in austere uniforms as stiff as card, of lost chances slipping through fingertips like ribbons.
"Sorry," he whispers, already dropping the receiver into the cradle. "I'm so sorry for wasting your time."
ooo
Honestly? He doesn't know what he would have done if she'd said something different. Another job, maybe, in another part of the country completely. Chauffeuring, it's the only thing he really knows how to do, the only thing in his life that's not some idle fantasy. Setting up a home in the tiny little cottage he would receive, a life of nursing and tending house and learning how to cook. Small spaces and mismatching furniture. A few tear-stained letters to her family and angry silences in return, perhaps the odd visit from her mother and sisters ending in bitterness and lack of understanding and things best left unsaid.
The more he thinks on it, the more he realises what a bloody fool he's been.
ooo
When it comes down to it, all his dreams are hopeless. Gold dust falling from his grasp.
Believing he could make a difference, thinking he could make a change. Equality for all men (and women! Lady Sybil would cheer from the backseat, pamphlets clutched in her hands like sweets), freedom for Ireland, a better way of living – all of this. Some things are etched in stone.
Men like him will remain chauffeurs and shopkeepers, not politicians. Powerful men will always use their hands to press down the weak rather than lift them to their feet. Ireland will always be shackled to her greedy, stronger neighbour. And Sybil will always be a lady, unreachable and beyond him. These are the unassailable truths.
On his half-day off, with the Crawleys' permission, he takes to driving the ambulance to and from hospitals and convalescent homes. The men inside are quiet, hollow, when they talk and joke it sounds harsh, like shards of broken pottery. They're trying too hard. One day a young corporal falls from his stretcher when he goes around a particularly sharp curve in the road; the shriek from the back of the ambulance makes his ears split from the pain. The boy twitches on the floor of the ambulance like a dying animal. It takes three men to haul him back into place. He feels the weight of every other wounded man's stare as he shuts the door once more.
This is real, he reminds himself. This is the inescapable reality. Live with it.
ooo
Branson walks into the servants' dining room one evening to find Anna hunched over a torn skirt and crying. Not loudly, not even audibly, that's not like Anna, but silently, her entire body shaking as she presses a hand to her mouth and tries to push the tears back into herself.
"Anna?" He feels stupid for speaking out, but there's nothing else he can do. "Are you alright?"
"Mister Branson!" She jumps, hastily blowing her nose. "I didn't realise anyone else was here."
"I'm sorry, I'll just – "
"No, no, no, that's fine." Anna gestures to a nearby seat into which he sinks gratefully, his muscles have been aching of late, screaming when he stands. He's always liked Anna, laughed at the way she outmanoeuvred Thomas and O'Brien, the way she stuck up for the younger members of staff.
The day after the garden party, the realisation that he loved Sybil, that this was more than admiration and infatuation and this wasn't going to go away he looked over at Anna and thought why oh why didn't I fall for you? He began to spend more time with her, trying to sit next to her at dinner, walking with her on trips to church, telling her jokes to make her laugh. Until she turned around, hands on hips and chin jutted out, and demanded to know exactly what was going on.
He'd been honest. He'd told her he was in love with a woman that would never have him, and he was trying to make these feelings go away. She'd laughed, biffed him gently on the shoulder. You won't get anywhere with that, she told him. No use trying to get rid of your feelings, they'll come back to get you in the end. But I'm flattered all the same.
"How are you, Anna? Are you alright?"
To his knowledge Anna has never told a single lie in all the time he's known her. The emotion in her eyes when she looks up at him is pure and raw and honest pain, naked and exposed.
"No. No, I'm not alright," she says and then – against all odds – grants him a bleak, watery smile. "But I will be. I have to be."
Branson nods, slowly and surely. She's right. Of course she's right, Anna's always right. They have to be. They have to be alright, they have to go on. It's impossible to not do so. Time and wars and the Crawleys wait for no man, and certainly no broken-hearted head house maids and chauffeurs.
"Mister Moseley was asking after you the other day," he offers tentatively as a comfort, and nearly cringes with shame when a tight little smile passes over her lips. Stupid, stupid. Just break her heart all over again why don't you? Old Moseley might be a friendly enough sort, in a gentle, stuttering kind of way, but no-one looks at him and sees him. They see Not-Bates.
"Yes, Ethel told me."
He doesn't want to make her feel bad, honestly he doesn't, but if anyone knows it's got to be Anna – how it is to look at someone and not see them, only be reminded of who you've lost, who you want them to be. To look at a pretty, lively lass and see only Not-Sybil. To live with the loss. "Are…are you going to be spending more time with him?"
"I don't think so, no."
"But why?" He knows he's pushing it, knows by the way those damp eyes become quizzical, but he's got to know, he's got to find out. How can you move on if you don't let yourself? Isn't second-best better than nothing? Crumbs of bread better than starving? His mam used to have a saying – particularly when he turned up his nose at the food she was serving – beggars can't be choosers. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to press – I mean, if you know he's never coming back…"
He doesn't have to say his name. They both know who.
She dashes a hand across her eyes, even gives a watery little laugh. "If you know what love – real love, proper love – is, you can't ever settle for anything less. It's just not possible for me. There's not a day goes by when I don't think about him, not a single day, and – and anything else wouldn't be fair, to me or Mister Moseley. When you're in love with someone…well, everyone else falls short. And I don't want second rate. Not when I know what the best is."
He thinks of Beryl walking beside him, her face alight with the glow of the setting sun. And then he thinks of Lady Sybil in the car, the way she talked, the way she laughed. He thinks of the day at the garden party, twisting his fingers around hers quite by accident, like a naughty child stealing sweets, so nervous and yet so sure. As if he'd found the place where he properly fit, properly belonged, and was never going to leave. The silent gasp of surprise on her lips, the look of shock and – he thought at the time – pleased surprise.
"Yeah," he murmurs. "I think I can understand that."
ooo
He tells Beryl, late the next day, quite truthfully that he's no good for her, that he loves another woman and there's no use pretending otherwise. That it's not fair to either of them to carry on like this, and he's sorry he got her involved in the first place. She takes it very well, actually, shakes his hand most properly and walks away with her head held high. If he wasn't so tired of the entire bloody mess he might be insulted.
So now it's back to flinging himself into work, reading snippets from the newspapers to the rest of the staff, pacing in his bedroom late at night. It's back to trivial worries about the state of the car and miserable reports from the front and trivial arguments between Miss O'Brien and Ethel.
And young women all in purple and blue dancing through his dreams, spinning on golden ballroom floors, their laughter as clear as air.
They'll never leave him, after all.
ooo
"The thing is," Anna murmurs one day after breakfast, "I don't think I'll ever give up."
"No?"
She shakes her head with pride. "No. I won't. I won't be hanging around here moping, but I won't be losing hope either."
"Anna," he says patiently, "he's gone – "
"Don't you think I know that?" she retorts, in that voice that was only ever aimed at Miss O'Brien and Thomas, and it's the first sign of life from her in almost two months. "But I'll not be giving in just yet, Mister Branson. Not just yet. And I don't know where that will take me, and I don't care. But I refuse to take this all lying down. I won't give up on him as easy as that. He's worth more than that to me."
ooo
The day Lady Sybil's due to return to Downton Hall her eldest sister summons him – summons, good word for Lady Mary – to the drawing room and announces she will be riding in the car with him to bring back her sister. He could nearly kiss her for it. Doesn't, of course. The image of her, seeing him stand there beside the car, moving to turn away because she can't bear to look at him – well, it's been plaguing his every waking thought for a week. The knots in his stomach have knots themselves.
He's never fumbled so many times with a car he knows like the back of his own hands; stalling, slipping on the gear change and the clutch, hands clammy beneath his gloves. Sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. As he rounds the corner to the hospital he slows the car to a snail's pace, creeping along the curve and wishing, praying for more time – until Lady Mary drums her hands like a child on the back of his seat and orders him to get a move on.
And – well. There's a figure at the gate. The force of it hits him like a ton of bricks, so that the car shudders to an ungainly halt and he's literally gawping and Lady Mary actually turns to ask if anything's the matter.
She is everything he remembers, and nothing at the same time.
Her hands are clasped demurely together, her lovely soft hair hidden beneath a nursing cap, her ladylike clothes (he can never rid himself of that memory, the second week of his place at Downton, of her spinning through the drawing room all in brilliant turquoise; she was so proud of herself) gone and replaced by a stark uniform.
All grown up.
"Sybil darling!" Lady Mary cries, and her voice rises and cracks on the last edge of the exclamation, the first show of genuine emotion he's heard from her since the evening of the count at Ripon. She flies from the car like an arrow launched from the bow and flings her arms around Sybil, whirls her around so hard and so fast he thinks this brave new woman might nearly break. And she's embracing back too, crying and sighing and shaking her head – but laughing too, truly laughing, she's happy, there are no shadows beneath her eyes or nails bitten down to the quick, and that means everything to him, everything.
He hastens to load her bags into the car, almost unwilling to be seen. When they part – Lady Mary still gabbling nineteen to the dozen as she gets in, how were the sisters, what were the men like, are you utterly exhausted – she turns to get in, and pauses. Her eyes flicker back to him, cautious and apologetic and tender all at once.
Branson nods to her, very slightly.
Damn, he thinks as she alights into the car, I still love her.
The knowledge doesn't hurt as much as he thought it might.
ooo
She almost looks afraid, the next day as she passes by the garage. Branson's half immersed in the opened-up insides of the car, motor oil smudged on his nose and shirt sleeves rolled up. When she coughs tentatively he rises so fast his head smacks right against the bonnet.
"I hope," she begins cautiously, while he's still rubbing his skull and wondering if there's some guardian angel up there who just loves to see him make a mess of things, "that everything is…alright, now that I'm back home."
"Alright, your ladyship?" He's a little slow off the mark today, must be that bash on the head.
"What with…one thing and another."
He knows what she means, knows it as soon as he looks properly, really properly, into her eyes and sees the silent entreaty written all through them. It's the same look she gave to him two months ago. Don't do this to me. Let me go. I can't be responsible for your heart too.
It's not the right time.
"Everything's quite alright, my lady," he replies, most clearly and properly.
"Oh, thank heavens! I mean – " this with a blush, and a bashful little smile that is impossible not to love, "I didn't mean anything rude – or to laugh at you – not in the slightest – I just – well, I just meant – "
"I understand, my lady," Branson interjects smoothly, if only to stop her from running on because truly? He doesn't know what she might end up saying and he isn't sure he wants to know. "I won't go flinging any more ill-thought words your way. I wouldn't embarrass you like that ever again."
"Don't be silly, Branson. That's not what I meant at all."
She smiles gently, gives him a respectful little nod, and then turns on her heel and walks away. Leaving him there, oil-smudged and with a dirty great bruise pounding against his forehead, staring after her with a million thoughts rushing through his mind.
It's not the right time – but maybe, someday, it will be.
And then, in the tender recesses of his heart:
I'm not giving up just yet. Oh, just you wait, Sybil Crawley. You're worth fighting for.
~o~