Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together?

Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences. - Emery Allen

December 24 and 25, 1920

The Branson Home

Patrick did not go to midnight Mass. He ignored his mother's tight expression, taking comfort in the words of his sister Maire. She had pulled him aside briefly before joining the rest of the family for the walk to church, making sure that no one else could hear.

"Do what your heart tells you, Pat," she had whispered, her eyes boring into his. "No matter what anyone tells you is right for you, or wrong for you, do what makes you happy! Don't worry about Mam, she loves you and wants the same thing, in the end." She tightened her grip on his arm.

"I almost lost everything," she went on, sneaking a look at her husband who waited at the front door. "I let my pride rule my heart, and I nearly gave up the only thing that mattered. Do not let that happen to you!" And she was gone, without a backward look.

Patrick stared after his family for a moment, and then walked into the sitting room where Edith sat, eyes downcast, hands clasped tightly in her lap. Suddenly he was as nervous as he knew she was. He sat down a short distance from her on the couch, and waited. This was her show; it was up to her to take it where it would go. He would listen.

They sat in silence for a long time, and when her voice came it was barely above a whisper. "I'm so sorry, Patrick. I'm not very brave. I was frightened, and I didn't know what to do." He nodded, but said nothing.

"It was never that I didn't care for you, you must believe me!" She raised her head and met his steady gaze. "Do you believe me?"

"I do," he said. "I knew you cared…apparently just not enough." There was a tinge of bitterness in his voice, but he held her gaze. "It's all right. I'm glad you came back to tell me that much."

She stared at him. "No…no. I didn't come back to tell you I cared about you. I…came back to say I love you. Now…in this moment. I realize now that I always have."

At his soft inhalation, she put up her hand. "Just please, let me finish what I must say, and then you can tell me to go." She took a deep breath.

"I'm not used to being happy. I didn't recognize it for what it was…not for a long time. And then it frightened me. You frightened me, to my core. You gave me everything of yourself, and it was the most amazing thing I had ever experienced, and I was afraid. I didn't think I deserved that kind of feeling from another person. I felt like a fraud, masquerading as the kind of woman who could be loved by someone like you. I was afraid that you would discover my mask and find the real me underneath it, and I couldn't bear for that to happen!"

Edith's voice shook and her hands continued to twist the fabric of her dress, but she did not cry. It surprised her that she, who cried so easily, was dry-eyed in the most important moment of her life. She took a deep breath, and continued.

"I started to look for reasons that I shouldn't be here in Ireland. I couldn't get into a teaching school, I'd never get a job, never fit in. But they were all excuses I made to convince myself that I was right. So I did what I'm best at. I ran away.

"When I went home to Downton, it was like going back in time. Back to an era which wasn't meant for me. It was like a prison. And I began to understand that that was where I would never fit in. I had been born to that life, but I never really belonged to it. I was floating through time, existing, but not living…until I met you."

She looked up again, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "I know I've ruined everything, and you have no reason ever to trust me again, but I had to tell you how I feel. I love you, Patrick Branson. I have loved you for a very long time, and I will probably always love you. I came back because I wanted…I want to be with you. Here…in Ireland."

A deep silence settled over the room. Patrick cleared his throat.

"You hurt me, Edith. I won't lie about that. When you told me you were leaving, going back to your old, posh life, I was hurt, and I was angry. I thought that everything you had said, everything we'd been, was just a game to you. A way to fill your days, to have some fun before you went back to being a lady."

The blue eyes bored into hers. "But I thought that if it was all a lie, you were a very good liar. Because it wasn't that way for me. It wasn't a game. He took a deep breath, looked away, and came back to focus on her face again.

"But no…you haven't ruined everything. Not by coming back. Sure and you ripped it up a bit…" and for the first time Edith caught a glimmer of humor in his blue eyes, "but you didn't ruin it. For me, it was love right from the start, and love takes a lot of hits before it's ruined. And it never really gives up." He held out his hand.

"Come here."

They sat in silence, finding that they fit into each other now just as they had all those months ago. Edith looked up into Patrick's face.

"Do you think the universe wants us to be together?" she murmured. "Do you think it was a coincidence that we met?"

"I don't know. But I think some things are too strange to be coincidences. Happy Christmas, love."

December 25, 1920

The Branson Flat

Tom and Sybil spent Christmas morning at home with Abby. At almost five months she was far too little to know who Daidí na Nollag was, but Sybil had made her a little sack filled with baby items. Tom watched from the doorway, his tea clutched in his hand, as his wife explained how Father Christmas came to all good little children and filled their sacks, and she must have been very good, because he had been so kind to her. His heart swelled, and he thanked God as he did every single day, for this woman who had changed his life so completely. I must have been very, very good, he thought. Thanks, Daidí na Nollag.

Later, as they sat in the kitchen sharing a Christmas breakfast of surprisingly unburnt toast and bacon, they returned to the topic that had distracted them from Mass and kept them up late into the morning.

"It'll be all right, Tom," Sybil said, reading his mind as she so often did. "I know Edith. What it took for her to come back is stronger than any fear she had before. I admit, I didn't think she could do it." He nodded, but concern for his brother lurked behind his clear blue gaze.

"I wonder what she told your parents," he said finally, a quirk tugging at his mouth. "I'm trying to imagine your father's reaction, but for the life of me I can't. We should have heard him all the way over here!"

"Knowing Edith, she probably didn't tell him," Sybil offered. She looked at her husband, remembering. Had it been only a year and a half since she herself had stood in Downton"s drawing room, facing her furious father and stunned mother and sisters, and told them she was leaving for Ireland with their chauffeur? How on earth had she ever had the courage? She caught Tom's eyes again, and knew he was remembering that night, too. The anxiety, the fear that somehow they would be stopped. The love in those blue eyes as he stood quietly beside her while she had it out with her father. The night that had changed everything.

"But Edith didn't have the support I had," she said softly. "She was all alone. She probably told Mama, in private…although I can't imagine that would have been easy, either."

"Well, your mother is a bit more understanding than your father," said Tom. "And we set the standard for the Crawley girls, didn't we?" He grinned. "Come to think of it—Mary's the odd one out; all she got was some middle class future earl!" Sybil choked on her tea and Tom patted her back.

When the three arrived at the Branson home later that afternoon, Edith was not there. Patrick was helping Daniel to set up the playhouse they'd built for Connor and Fiona, with Evan's dubious help, and Bernadette was supervising. Kathleen and Maire were in the kitchen helping Mam with the goose, and the Collinses hadn't arrived yet.

But Sybil could tell with one glance that everything was different. Patrick's eyes shone as he worked, his banter with his two brothers-in-law was light and unforced. He was back from that dark place in which he had been living, back to being the old Patrick. They're all right, she thought in mingled amazement and relief. Her eyes met Tom's, and he smiled. He saw it too. But there was worry in his eyes still—worry that Edith would hurt his brother again, concern over what another betrayal would do to him. It would take time, and Sybil, remembering her own early days in Dublin, did not envy her sister the road ahead.

January 13, 1921

O'Connell Bridge, Dublin

Deaglan stood on the bridge and stared into the muddy waters of the River Liffey, but his thoughts were far away. People hurried past him on their way to their own lives, but he didn't notice. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders against the cold.

Did he dare, he wondered? Was he finally going to ask her? He'd meant to do it at Christmas, but what with all the going's on with Patrick and his girlfriend, it just hadn't ever seemed the right time. He'd been saving for so long, finally had enough to get a place of his own…of their own. If she'd have him. He knew what they'd say—"you're only twenty-two, too young to get married. Give it time!" But he wasn't too young. Deaglan had been raised by a man who knew the value of time. His uncle was only thirty, and already the head of a formidable army, second in the country only to the president of Dáil Éireann, Éamon de Valera.

In these times, thought Deaglan, it didn't pay to wait for what you wanted. In war you seized life while you could, because anything could happen. Hadn't Patrick been beaten near to death last year by Northern Unionists? Hadn't Kathleen's older brother Tom been shot by the Black and Tans? That had been a near thing, for sure. And Deaglan himself knew that he was always a potential target, merely because of his association with his uncle.

Not everyone admired Michael Collins. Assassins generally weren't loved; patriots weren't revered by those whose opinions collided with theirs. Deaglan had to be wary of groups of men who might be looking to take out their frustrations on him or seek to harm his uncle by coming after him. The irony of it all was, Deaglan was the least political person in the family, except maybe for his sister Aislinn.

As the two had grown up, their uncle had tried to keep business separate from his family life, seldom talking about the doings of the IRA or the running of the Dáil in their home. Perhaps he had sensed that, in a family rife with passionate republicans, his nephew and niece were that rarest of creatures in Ireland—pacifists. Aislinn and Deaglan wanted Ireland to be free from England, but they hated the violence that gaining that freedom sometimes demanded. Growing up too close to the edge of it had shown them that there was no romance in this war, for either side.

His Kathleen was like that, too. She came from a pretty fiery family—hell, her brother Michael was in the IRA—but she just wanted people to live in peace.

He grinned. His Kathleen. Never in a million years had he imagined he would find someone like her. She knew his story, knew who his uncle was, and still she wanted to be with him. He was the luckiest man in the world, he was sure of it. And he was going to ask her, tonight. He was expected at the Bransons' for dinner, and he was going to get her away from her family somehow, and ask her.

The sound of gunshots rang out from one end of the bridge, where the British checkpoint was located. Screams followed the shots, and people began running toward Deaglan, pushing each other out of the way in their blind panic to get away. Confused, he turned just as a burley man barreled into him, lifting and knocking him onto the stone rail of O'Connell Bridge. It happened in seconds. He teetered on the cement rail, grasping for a handhold. In the next instant, unseen by any of the frenzied mob on the bridge, his hand lost its hold and he plummeted over the edge of the bridge. Just before he hit the frigid water of the River Liffey, his mind whispered, Kathleen! For a moment he floated in the icy water, stunned. And then Deaglan's heavy coat pulled his body under the water, dragging him down into darkness.

A/N: On January 13, 1921, British troops manning a checkpoint at O'Connell Bridge, in the very center of Dublin, opened fire on a crowd of civilians. It is not clear what precipitated the attack, but the result was that two Irish citizens were left dead and five were seriously wounded.

Pronunciation Guide:

Aislinn - ash + ling

Dáil Éireann - doyl + air + uhn

Deaglan - deck + lan

Maire - my + ra