1917, London

The military hospital on Endell Street isn't the holiday spot Wimereux was. And winter's coming again, dark and dreary rather than bright and cheery. Any general optimism anyone had two years ago, even a year ago, is gone gone gone as the war drags on and on and on.

Sometimes men or soldiers or doctors ask her to step out for a flick or a walk or a drink. She always has to decline – all her free time is occupied with a secretarial course. She doesn't want to be a nurse when the war ends, if it ends. She likes the work but it's continuously heartbreaking. She still wants to be in an office or at a newspaper, working, in some way, toward building the future, doing something that might be part of averting wars like this, rather than patching up its victims.

The other reason she has no time for men is perhaps silly, but she doesn't want to dishonor the memory of Lt. Weir, devalue their very, very brief but lovely time together. She didn't and doesn't love him – it's not about that. She wants to hold onto that time, that memory, and prize it.


Two days before Christmas is a sodden and quiet day, and everyone riding the bus seems lost in their own little worlds, quite devoid of holiday cheer. Sybil is, at any rate, and staring out the window but not seeing much, even disinterested in reading the papers. Nothing but bad news there.

"Sybil? Sybil! Sybil Branson!"

She finally tunes in enough to realize someone is saying her name. She looks up and finds a young woman in a smart black hat and a beautiful hunter green suit standing over her seat, beaming and bright-eyed. She stares at the young woman, trying hard to place her face. A nurse? Who? And then she sees coppery red hair tied in a bun at the back of her neck.

"Gwen Dawson?" she shouts suddenly, startled and amazed. People turn to look at the disturbance but she doesn't care. Gwen is nodding furiously. Sybil's eyes rake over her, take in the smart clothes, the bright complexion. Sybil's not sure how she expected Gwen to look, really. Destitute? Like a lady of the street doing what she must to keep food in her bastard child's mouth? Instead she looks...fantastic. "My god, it is you! Good lord!"

Gwen bends down and Sybil reaches up and they hug, a little awkward at this angle, but heartfelt. Funny how years apart and a war on can instantly wipe away whatever petty ill-will there might between two former friends. The past is dead as she and Gwen clutch each other tight.

"How have you been, Sybil? Lord, it's good to see you! I have to hear absolutely everything," Gwen insists.

She wants to hear everything? No no no. Not until Sybil hears Gwen's everything first.


Sybil sits in the quiet pub, her half-pint of cider mostly untouched, staring back as Gwen stares back at her in shocked silence. "Thomas Barrow said I was what?" Gwen hisses, leaning forward.

"It wasn't him, it was Miss O'Brien."

"O'Brien said I was with child?"

"Yes. Well, no. She...inferred it."

"Why in god's name would she do such a thing?"

"Because...because why else would Tom Crawley have you sacked and sent away so suddenly."

"Not because I was with child!"

Sybil's inside sink further, some hint of a terrible truth starting to emerge. "You-you weren't?"

"No. My god! That's what everyone thought? Lord. I haven't kept up with any of the downstairs lot, it's true, but maybe I ought to have! Is that what you thought, Sybil? All these years?" Sybil nods, feeling more and more miserable, feeling like the room is starting to move. "Oh my god. Sybil, Tom Crawley didn't get me that way and he didn't sack me. He got me a job as a secretary in the Home Office, here, in London."

"He. What."

"I was...well you know. Intimate with him. I was in love with him. I thought I was, anyway. I knew he didn't love me but I didn't care, I was so... I was such a dippy little girl, really. Tom knew I'd been taking secretarial courses and he encouraged it, he encouraged me to look for a better job, go after my goals. But I didn't want to leave Downton, I wanted to stay with him.

"He finally sat me down and he told me he'd never be able to give me the life I wanted at Downton, but he could get me the life I deserved, a better one, here in London. So he arranged for me to work in the Home Secretary's office. An incredible position for a first-timer. He even found me a nice room to rent, paid for it for the first month or two. He was brilliant and he did me the biggest favor anyone ever could. But, lord, I was so angry at the time! I was a fool, I was blind. But I suppose even then I knew it had to be."

"Why?" Sybil croaks, her world turning on its head.

"Because he was in love with you, Sybil. I knew it. Everyone knew it."

Sybil didn't know it. Did she? She feels ill.

"Why do you think all the girls at Downton hated you so? Even me, I admit. Not because we thought you were sleeping with Tom – everyone was sleeping with him. We hated you because Tom loved you. And didn't love us. He never talked with us the way he talked with you. He never carried us through the whole downstairs in front of everyone and never would've snuck up to the servants' corridor, into our room, and risk getting caught by Mrs. Hughes, not for any of us."

"He said he did it all the time," Sybil says, bewildered, feeling stupid.

"Rubbish. He's scared shitless of Mrs. Hughes, frankly, if you'll pardon my French," Gwen laughs. "You really didn't know any of this?"

"I didn't even give him a chance to explain," she mutters. "I thought...I was so..." She has no idea what to say, her head spinning.

"Well. It's not too late, Sybil darling."

"Too late for what?"

"It's not too for you to get him back! You still love him, don't you?"

Sybil stares at Gwen. Love him? Love Tom Crawley? Did she love him? Does she love him? But then a gear grinds to life and she has a brand new thought: "How do you know it's not too late?"

"True love never dies-"

"No, no, I mean how do you know he's not dead in a trench in France somewhere?" Sybil asks. She thinks of her beautiful American.

"Oh, well that's easy. Because he's still at Downton Abbey."

But that can't be. "But he said he was enlisting as an officer." Something awful occurs to her. "Was-was he injured? Did he get wounded?"

"No, no, he never got into the service. They turned him down for a heart condition. A murmur? A heart murmur."

A heart murmur. Thank god.

A heart murmur isn't good but he's not lying dead in a trench. Or even injured. She feels rather limp with relief. It's so strange – she hasn't given thought to Tom Crawley's welfare in...a while before this afternoon. And now it feels like the most important thing in the world. "How do you know all this?"

"I saw him last year here in town. He came for business and checked in on me. He told me he was rather disappointed after getting rejected from the service, especially since they accepted his brother Matthew. 'Rather disappointed' indeed. He probably felt rather impotent, which, I imagine, he dealt with in a variety of unproductive ways. But when I saw him, he'd been working one of the tenant farms after the farmer got called up. I mean, can you imagine, Tom Crawley driving a tractor, working the land, milking cows or whatnot?"

She tries to imagine it. And fails. But she can imagine him with a milkmaid.

"It seemed to do his head some good, anyway – he said he'd started helping his father with the running of the estate, and, this you'll find interesting, darling, he was telling me he had plans to turn Downton into a convalescent hospital for wounded officers."

"You're joking with me." That does pique her interest. Very much. "Do you know if he actually did it?"

Gwen shrugs, shaking her head. "I don't know for sure, I haven't caught up with him since. But he seemed very keen at the time." She pokes a finger into Sybil's arm, punctuating her words as she says, "It would be worth checking into, Sybil. You follow my meaning?"

Sybil toys with her half-pint, shaking her head, saying, "I don't know. It's been a long time. Too much time has passed, too many things were said. We're nothing to each other now."

Gwen sighs and says, "Look, it comes down to whether or not you still love him. That's all. That's it. The rest is detail."


She can't sleep that night, every single one of Gwen's words rattling around inside her head, her mortification and remorse growing as the minutes tick.

How wrong she was.

How awful she was.

How stupid she was.

She'd always thought of herself as a reasonable, fair, open-minded, considerate person, never one to judge a book by its cover, always willing to hear the opposing argument, always one to hate an injustice. But the one person in the world who treated her as an equal, she treated with the most injustice and high-handed disdain. She never gave him a chance to explain—

She never gave him a chance to explain.

He sent her a letter and she never opened it, she put it in the fire. That was his explanation.

If she were him, she would never forgive her.

She hears Gwen's voice again, ringing over and over. It comes down to whether or not you still love him, the rest is detail. Rather big details, though. And she's just not sure she ever did love him, let alone still.

But at three a.m. on Christmas Eve morning she decides it's a good idea to write a letter to Dr. Clarkson in Yorkshire to see if they ever did turn Downton into a hospital. And, if so, if there might be an opening for her there. It takes her two hours to write the letter, word it properly so as to sound businesslike yet keen to help and appropriately longing for the good old Yorkshire countryside. Anyway, it's unlikely he'll respond or that there will be a place for her, so no harm no foul.

By the time she reaches the postbox near her boarding house that morning, she's not sure why she's written to him at all. And the moment she's dropped the letter in the box, she wishes she could take it back, groping around in the box for her envelope, her arm engulfed up to her elbow. It's no use.

If Clarkson does write back, she'll simply ignore it.

Her secretarial course is over and on the last day of the year she receives in the post her final scores in typing, shorthand, proofreading, and grammar. Top marks. She could get just about any secretarial position she wants with such scores. In the same post, she receives a letter back from Dr. Clarkson, his reply telling her to come on up to Yorkshire as soon as is convenient, for there is most certainly a place for her as head nurse at Downton Abbey.

She's on a train to York the day after 1918 begins.


TBC.


A/N: Thank you so much for your lovely comments! And thank you for giving this AU a chance. I wasn't sure how it'd work out but I do hope you're enjoying it and will continue to do so.