A/N: I am so, so, incredibly sorry. I know it's been forever since I've updated but life in addition to my academic life has taken over so my schedule has been entirely devoted to exams, paper writing, field work, presentations, and family responsibilities and I'm still catching up on sleep. I intended to post this last week but I wanted to build up my archive first so that I would have at least a number of fics to share, then my little cousin has come over to spend her vacation here and I've spent the last few days playing mommy to a seven-year old who is uncanily like me at that age so now is the opportunity I have to upload this. Again I'm so sorry for the delay, I'll try to be better!

And thanks so much for your responses to the Edith OS in the last chapter. I make no promises vis-à-vis how Edith's story will end (I'm still finalizing how I want that to end) but I can promise you that it will be explored again in my WWII fanfic which is writing itself in my mind right now. That aside, we're back with the Bransons in this one, specifically the Branson girls with cameos by Mrs. Branson (Tom's mother, not Sybil) and Nanny West.

I hope you enjoy this one and let me know what you think! ;D

1937

"Sybbie? Sybbie, are you awake?"

Her voice was soft, fearing its echoing beyond the confines of their small bedroom to that occupied by their parents across the hall, as her small hands seeking to shake her sleeping sister.

"Sybbie?"

Her sister's blue eyes fluttered open, a smile replacing the initial confusion that had accompanied her awakening.

"Aoife or Saoirse?"

"Aoife."

"Of course," Sybbie's soft laughter echoed throughout the room as she watched Saoirse fitfully toss-and-turn in her sleep.

Clearing a space she had previously occupied, she patted a spot in the small bed for her small sister to take. It was bound to be a tight fit – their grandmother had given her the much smaller bed in the bedroom that once belonged to their uncle while the twins, prone to turns and jerking movements in sleep, were awarded the bigger bed; of course, their grandmother was not ignorant of the problems posed by forcing the quarrelsome twins to share a bed, so Sybbie was installed to assuage any situation that may arise.

Aoife stayed rooted on the floor, however, hesitating at the side of the bed, shifting noiselessly on her tiny feet, wanting but refusing to look her older sister in the eye.

"What is it, Aoife?" Sybbie persisted, lifting her sister into the bed and snuggly tucking the covers around her to keep at bay the cold breeze of a Dublin evening.

This had long constituted a routine between the Branson sisters – Sybbie and one twin, sometimes both, cuddled into a limited space and confiding secrets under the moonlight – how Jack Bates had pressed a not entirely unpleasant kiss against Saoirse's rosy cheek and held her hand two months ago in Downton; how Aoife had tearfully considered throwing the beautiful doll Granny had given last Christmas into the Thames after being told by another little girl, long considered a kindred spirit, that no longer would she associate with posh girls who could afford such costly French dolls; how Sybbie had in truth fretted and cried over a long-drawn argument with George, the subject of which was known in full only to Mamma and in suspicions to Da.

"Sybbie…," Aoife resumed, her alabaster knuckles blanching even more as she gripped the covers under her palms, but the words were stuck in her throat.

Stray ebony strands fell into wet blue eyes and her sister brushed them back with a gentle hand, wiping away the falling tears with her thumb.

"Tell me what it is, darling," Sybbie's voice was soft, "or do you want Mamma instead?"

She shook her head no, perceiving that whatever she had felt, it would have been much worse for Mamma after all –, after a long pause, she found her voice at last which to her small ears sounded choked. She thought her voice sounded like that of a baby and for long now she had struggled to prove to the family that she was no longer that.

"Sybbie… are we so very disagreeable? So very hateful?"

Disagreeable? Hateful? The words that meant to cut made no sense in her sister's mind. They were not words one would accord or use as weapons against a child of six, a child that all things accounted for, was more sweet and empathetic than her age had called for.

"What do you mean, darling?" Sybbie asked.

"Is it because Granny gives Saoirse and me expensive dolls from the continent and because our shoes are new?" now that she was provoked, her words as well as her tears were unstoppable, "is it because you're to be a debutante and because Grandpapa has a title and lives in a castle with an estate and staff? Because of the way we talk? Because Mamma is English and because we are cross-breeds?"

At that Sybbie was startled into speechlessness.

Of course, Aoife, younger by eleven years had no way of knowing or comprehending the memories that constituted her older sister's early childhood, markedly different from her and Saoirse's own.

Don't let that chauffeur's daughter bother you…go to sleep you wicked little cross-breed.

That counted among her first memories, a nanny from long ago. Sybbie could not recall if she was stout or thin, stocky or svelte, old or young, buried as the memory was beneath Mamma and Da's loving smiles and cuddles and happy romps with the cousin who that very nanny had insisted was Sybbie's superior. Sybbie however remember the unpleasantness of that voice, the strength of its poison that reduced her to a dog and not a little girl, forcing her to cry for Mamma and Da. In a haze, she recalled the sound of Mamma's hand colliding against nanny's face, then the feeling of Mamma's arms lifting two-year old baby Sybbie and marching out of the nursery, leaving indignant Granny, with laudable calm, to dismiss the wicked creature.

She's the chauffeur's daughter, isn't she? Pity. She would have made a most desirable debutante.

Lord Grantham's granddaughter is delightful, truly, strikingly beautiful too, only…Poor Lord Grantham.

Tragic isn't it, when one thinks of those three delightful girls? If only Lady Sybil had not been so young and foolish, liberal too!

Sybbie's childhood had been privileged, in truth, far more privileged than that of her sisters upon whose birth that grandiose past had already been far behind, briefly relieved only in snippets during short visits to Yorkshire. All that had long since been far behind, but the whispers have remained ever present, whispers from elsewhere – eyes that judged, voices that condemned in low tones, that ascribed them all to that world and ignored the injuries it had accorded them. They did not see how independent and proud Mamma and Da had been humbled in their relief when Granny, coming into anxieties of finances becoming more difficult to come by amidst the depression, had replaced the twins' holed and ratty school shoes with new durable if expensive pairs that would hopefully last two years. They closed their eyes to the fringes in Da's worn coat and to the blisters in Mamma's hands as she sought to fit Sybbie's old dresses to the twins' proportions. They did not know that Sybbie's coming out was a concession constituted by guilt and duty for an extended family on the last fringes of the old ways and normalcy ("I thought it best that you won't be shocked to it," George had two months ago announced to a drawing room struck dumb, "I'm enlisting with the RAF should this war happen. I'll be of age in '39 so there won't be any problems.").

Here in Dublin where memories reached long into the past and pain was raw as of yet, all that was made even more stark. Here, the Irish blood that ran through her and her sisters' veins was neglected for the Englishness of their accents and the perceived riches of their heritage; Mamma's determined flight from wealth, comfort, and the privileges of the English aristocracy had done nothing to efface the conaissance of her high-born roots; Da, who had fought through ink and turmoil for Irish freedom, was regarded with contempt for marrying into the English nobility and fathering English children. Nanna was protective of them all, of course, and would not hear the smallest slight against her son, her daughter-in-law, and not against the three granddaughters she adored; yet centuries of slight had also been received by their family, most recently Nanna's sister who had screamed and thrashed and once called little Sybbie an English brat, her mother an English bitch, her father a traitor, and cursed them in the name of her late son's memory.

The hatred was not unfounded, of course, and scars such as their father's cousin cold in his premature grave, would never heal, but that did not make it any easier for any of them – in one world Mamma was pitied and looked down upon for following her heart and choosing beneath her, in another Da was ostracized for stubbornly choosing love when his beloved represented the blood spilt of Ireland, in both their three daughters were variously regarded as curiosities, outcasts, or freaks.

Sybbie, very much her parents' daughter had long ago found the strength and indifference not to care, to close her eyes and ears to people who refused to see her beyond the identity imposed by her birth. Saoirse, the freest spirit of them all, had simply never cared ("Yes, my Da was a chauffeur at Downton before he and Mamma married, what's it to you?" "Yes, my Grandpapa lives in a castle in England, so what? I'm perfectly happy with our small house in London!"). But Aoife, sweet Aoife had always felt such things more, had always detested the labels and the designations much more.

"Aoife…" Sybbie began when speech returned to her.

"Does all that make us so hateful then, Sybbie? Are we that hateful?"

"Darling, who said we are hateful? What has that person said to you?"

"Ciarán Finnegan did," Aoife replied. In the moonlight, tears flowed from her blue eyes, "when Rory left to get the ball from the neighbor. He said I was an English Rose but he was so spiteful when he said it, then he said that rich little ladies like me are the reason why his Grandda and Uncle are dead."

The little coward, Sybbie fumed, of course he would say that when Rory's back is turned! Twelve years old, of paramount wit, and considerable strength, their cousin Rory ruled the lads this side of Dublin, feared by even Ciarán Finnegan who would not dare utter a single insult against Rory's English cousins in his presence, but in his absence…

"I didn't kill anyone Sybbie. I don't want anyone hurt," Aoife continued to cry, "does being English mean that I want people to get hurt? But I'm Irish too, am I not, Sybbie?"

"Of course you are, darling. Me and Saoirse too, and it doesn't mean that at all," Sybbie consoled as she ran a soft hand through her sister's fine raven locks in hopes of calming her.

It was a tragedy of course, what had happened to Ciarán's uncle and grandfather who had been tortured then shot in Mountjoy Prison in 1921 during the War of Independence. His father had certainly not forgotten its horrors and raised his children in contempt of all things English.

"Then why do they all think us so hateful, Sybbie?

"Because wounds remain fresh and scars run centuries deep on this side of the Irish Sea, Aoife."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that," Sybbie breathed deeply, "there are things, many horrible things that the English have done to the Irish that have merited Ireland's anger."

"But we've never done anything so horrible, have we? Mamma is a nurse, she was a nurse here, and you're going to be a doctor! You're just like Mamma, you want to help people, not harm them!"

"I know, darling. I do. It's just…well, things are complicated. The world is awfully complicated when it should not be, don't you agree?"

Aoife's little head nodded in acquiescence.

With her thumb, Sybbie wiped away the tears on her sister's cheeks. Poor little Aoife, it was a quality she will carry well into adulthood and define the woman she would become – the constant search for a middle ground or an outer ground, where being an Irish chauffeur's daughter will not define her limitations and the respected granted to her as defined by a cruel man-made world, where being an English earl's granddaughter will not define her as cruel, indifferent, and imperial.

Aoife was too young to know such a world, to little to be thrown into it. Not yet, please.

"But Aoife," her sister persisted, "you don't have to be defined by your accent or who you were born as. You're Aoife Branson, darling, and that's all that matters. Mamma, Da, Saoirse, and I don't care about all the other details and the world shouldn't either."

"Sybbie? Aoife?" a small voice called from the other side of the room, followed by lithe footsteps that brought the baby of the family into the same small bed where her older sisters cuddled. With no need of an invitation, she wedged herself into her eldest sister's other side and drew the sheets to her chest.

"Have you two realized," Sybbie laughed as she put an arm around Saoirse's shoulder just as she was currently doing to Aoife, "that Nanna gave you the larger bed for a reason? It's bad enough that you crowd my bed in London too."

"What are you talking about?" Saoirse ignored her sister's question in favor of her own, sleep had long since gone from her voice. Since infancy her energy had known no bounds and neither had her impulse.

"It's nothing, darling."

"Are you…talking about why everyone here except Nanna is so mean?" Saoirse asked

"Ciarán Finnegan says you're an English Rose too, Sissy," Aoife responded from Sybbie's side.

Saoirse shrugged, "Charles Grey told Meg that she would best keep away from chauffeurs' daughters because we're contagious, when we were last in Downton."

"Contagious of what?" Aoife queried.

"We are not contagious!" Sybbie's tone was indignant, "Listen, being the daughters of a hard-working man does not make us any less human than anyone else. I'm proud that Da and Mamma work for a living! It makes everything more meaningful. Boys of that Grey boy's kind on the other hand –,"

"I know that," Saoirse retorted grinning, "and I told him that at least my Da and Mamma work enough so that they don't turn into fat pigs like his parents! Do you know, Georgie says that they must weigh eight hundred pounds, each!"

Aoife and Sybbie laughed softly, careful not to rouse Mamma and Da and Sybbie continued, "What did Meg do?"

"Tripped him, then Jack Bates punched him the face. He cried," Saoirse giggled, "and Meg told him that if he went peddling on such nonsense, she would get Georgie to throw him into the lake or into the pen with Aunt Mary's pigs."

"Charles Grey is a pig, Cousin Rose says," Aoife assented in a stand of sisterly solidarity, ""A disagreeable child more swine than man'. Granny says it's a pity because his grandfather is such a nice man."

The sound of the door opening penetrated the darkness, followed by their Nanna's thick Irish brogue and a lamp that casted an orange glow. She slept like a cat, "Heavens! What are you three girls doing awake and laughing at this unholy hour? You'd think that trip would tire you! Thank goodness you haven't waked your Mam and Da!"

"Nothing, Nanna," Sybbie smiled as her sisters shook their heads no.

"Well, if you want to be awake when we go to the coast tomorrow, you girls better sleep. Now!"

Sybbie drew the blanket higher around them three and the twins settled against their sister, their brilliant blue eyes shutting.

"Heavens, not there! Aoife, Saoirse, have pity on your sister! You don't want to waste the big bed I set for you, do you?"

The twins giggled and padded across their room to the bigger bed. Settled in, Nanna tucked the blankets around their small bodies and pressed a kiss against each of their foreheads, before doing the same to Sybbie.

"Good night, girls."

"Good night, Nanna."