Disclaimer : Downton Abbey is the work of Julian Fellowes.
Summary : Despite the ocean that separated her from her granddaughter, the pain of losing her was just as unbearable. [Writing Month Challenge 2020 – Day 2]
Author's note : English isn't my first language, I'm french. I like to think I'm good in this language and I do use Grammarly to help me with some more corrections. However, if you spot any mistake or weird sentences, feel free to let me know! I'd love to have your input so I can improve even more!
This story is part of the second edition of the writing month challenge from TheWritter1996: Write a one-shot per day and share it for an entire month. For more challenge, I decided to go one different fandom per day. This story is also a translation of a french work of mine.
Beyond the ocean
Her hands tightened around the telephone, Martha couldn't hear her british son-in-law's words. She couldn't anymore. One sentence endlessly waltzed in her mind and a painful gulp imprisoned her throat. She felt iced, frozen in place, completely anaesthetized by the cold that had just invaded her, suffocated by the piercing pain in her heart. Robert was still talking but this sentence, this killing almost, was parasitising her brain:
Sybil has left us while birthing a baby girl.
Sybil, her granddaughter, her youngest granddaughter, this magnificent soul, this person so gorgeous on the inside just like on the outside, her rebel, her modern granddaughter, had died.
Died giving birth.
And Downton, as if it was punishing her for her inclination towards the twentieth century, had murdered her with its practices fit for the Middle Ages/
Robert wasn't to blame, she couldn't give reproached to a father who had made a choice thinking it was the right one when it came to his child.
But this doctor, this aristocrat, if he set foot in America, oh the trial she'd give him! She'd make him pay so much his own grandchildren would still be in debt! He hadn't listened to the other doctor, the one who had known Sybil ever since she was a baby. He had put his titles first, the good that came out of it! Sybil had passed away in her husband's and her mother's arms, banging her head as if she had wanted to smash it as the pain was so unbearable before suffocating, only hearing around her screams of anguish and tears! But what had she done to deserve such a demise?! Why did God put her in such a horrible agony?! Sybil, her Sybil, who had learnt to cook, who had become a nurse during the war, who had renounced everything out of love for an irish commoner, catholic and socialist!
The last time she had seen her, her belly wasn't round yet but she was glowing already.
Sybil was dead.
She could never see her again, see her becoming a mother, see her blossom with her husband and her child!
She hung up the phone before falling to her knees, her eyes watery, a visceral scream, such as the ones of wounded animals, escaping her lips, echoing throughout her villa, a scream so heartbreaking it alerted all of her servants and even her nonchalant son.
Sybil was dead.
She had survived her granddaughter.
This was such a nameless injustice.
Sybil was dead.
And no one and nothing could change that fact.
And while she continued to crumble on the floor, her tears still as strong, Martha was begging God to kill her right here and there, the pain being too much to bear.
Sybil was dead.
The End