Home was a small cottage in France – she had a lot to get used to, having known the sprawl of Downton for most of her life. A lack of staff, too – having to do things for herself had begun as a marvellous adventure but was a struggle now. She knew, in time, it would not be struggle, it would just be life.
Her Tom was not the same man she had known before, but she had expected that – she knew that she was not the same woman she had been (had she been a woman, or had she been a little girl?)
It was not an easy life – they still had struggles with the language, sometimes, and the children had their unruly moments. She rarely heard from her family, although she wrote to them, frequently. Mary had promised to visit, soon, in a short letter that Sibyl suspected had been sent without anyone else knowing.
Years of learning things an accomplished young woman should know had left her mostly unsuited to work – she took in other's children, taking care of them during the day, and did some sewing. She was learning, slowly, but she knew Tom wished she could learn faster.
He worked on the fields – it broke her heart, her soldier, her politician working in the fields. They had both given up so much for this – she wondered, sometimes, if he thought it was worth it. She wondered if she did.
But then her daughter would tug at her skirt, or her son would gurgle happily, or her common-law husband would come home from the field and pull her into his arms.
There were moments when she wondered about asking him if he were happy, but she'd catch him just studying her, or see him reading to the children out of the corner of her eye. She saw the family that had grown around them, with them barely noticing, and sometimes she could even forget the scandal they had caused, forget the mess that lived in Britain.
It wasn't the happily ever after for them that she had dreamed of, but she had learnt quickly enough that a fairytale ending was just that. That reality was a different beast, but that did not mean that there was no happiness to be had.
...The last chapter is tiny, isn't it? I barely even noticed until looking at it now. Anyway - I hope you enjoyed this story, and I hope that... It feels weird to say that I hope you like the ending, just because I don't think it could have ended any other way, you know? Thank you for the reviews and the alerts and all of that business, they meant a lot, especially with work-crazyness.