A/N: This was supposed to go up much earlier but well, net had broken down at home and I haven't had it for a week except for stolen moments of 3G so here you go. We've had too much a dose of anst lately, haven't we (I'm feeling very antsy lately as well so there's that. I'm in a mood better put - when does feeling like this end or will this go past my twenties, does anyone know?) ? Oh my! So as penance (and balm) here is a healthy dose of 100% unadulterated fluff, complete with a fluffy bunny bouncing around - or two noisy and stubborn toddlers exactly like their parents bouncing around. And this chappie focuses on S/T again! Yay!
I've imagined that Sybil would be a mother much more relzed with her children than how she herself was raised so her girls would inevitably be allowed free reign to do many Sybil was not allowed to but on the other hand, Sybil is a nurse and in place of propriety, there's the clinical mentality to see to her family's health so those sides of Sybil is what I tried to explore here.
And I think we can all agree that without Sybil the Branson family will be running like chickens with their heads cut off!
Reviews are medicine to cold-infected sinuses! Vote for the next - angst or fluff? ;D
Disclaimer: If DA was mine, Sybil and Matthew will still walk the Yorkshire earth.
1934
"AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO!"
He woke up with a start, to the sound of his own voice, ringing through his pounding ear drums. He realized that he felt warm and congested, and that his muscles ached, but nowhere near as painful did they ache as the burning sensation at the back of his throat.
"Sybil?" he croaked.
No response.
He forced one eye open and registered the emptiness of his wife's side of the bed. On the night table beyond it, the small clock read 8:30. Feck. Feck feck feck feck.
He jumped from the bed, as quickly as his fevered and aching body allowed and ran to the wardrobe, dressing in a panic, not stopping to verify the state of his appearance by the mirror against the side of their bedroom. Early lark that she was, Sybil must have long since left for her morning shift at the hospital, he realized; but it explained in no way why she had not woken him as she normally would when he overslept following a long day at work, an exhausting evening of corralling two arguing toddlers, or a prolonged night of love-making. 8:30. Feck feck feck. He had a deadline due, concerning the growing unrest of the political climate in reaction to Himmler's assumed control of the German police forces. Tom's editor was nothing if not a slave driver and he had not risen through the paper's ranks by lazing about.
Rushing out the door and onto the stairs, he prayed fervently that whatever breakfast Poppy, their maid-of-all-work, had lain out was something he could carry and eat on the tube ride to the newspaper office.
"AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO!"
The sight that greeted him as he descended the last step was atypical of the Branson household – his eldest daughter groaned at the table, already dressed in her school uniform but of whose curly coiffeur was in a state of disarray that emphasized the rouge of her eyes and nose, it was her sneezing that he heard at the stairwell; old Poppy at the stove, as per usual, but of whose breakfast menu today consisted not of pancakes or shortbread but of soup, "Chicken noodle, Mr. Branson, my mum swears by it as a cure for many an ailment!"; and Sybil – his wife stood by the door, one hand on the sneezing and red-eyed toddler at her hip, the other at her waist, in a pose that was meant to be threatening, she wore what she called "house clothes,". Beside her stood the elder half of their twin girls, hands at her waist, no doubt in a pose meant to imitate her mother. Her sunny disposition in a house full of sick easily contradicted the supposed menace she was meant to exude. The picture mother and daughter painted was so funny, Tom would have laughed aloud if his throat did not ache so painfully.
"And where do you think you're going?" Sybil challenged as he moved to kiss her before heading off to work, brown suitcase and report in hand.
"Da sick! Da bed!" Two-and-a-half-year-old Aoife commanded, she was uninfected, it seemed.
"AH-CHOO!" Both Sybbie and Saoirse sneezed and groaned at exactly the same time.
Yesterday, home from work early, he and all three of their girls had played a game in the back garden of their little house – a cross between tag, hopscotch, and hide-and-seek, and London being London, it did not take long for a shower to descend – not that it stopped their fun in any way. Sybil arrived home from her shift soon after; she had not scolded them nor prevented them from pursuing their play, only remarked coldly in a combination of an aristocratic Crawley affectation and a firm, no-nonsense Nurse Branson tone, "We've had fifteen children and five adults complaining of a cold today. They all thought a little early spring rain was harmless too – don't say I didn't warn you." As it was, only sensible, little Aoife took her mother's advice and happily trailed after her into the house for a long, hot, and disinfecting bath.
"Sybil, I have to go to work" talking hurt, as did walking, "I have to meet a deadline at 9."
"Not in that state you don't."
"Love, David is waiting for the report on Himmler, you know how he –,"
"Yes I do," she retorted firmly, "and I told him that if he did not give you a day off he's bound to lose more reporters by the end of the week to the cold. He asks to tell you to get well as soon as possible because he'll need you to cover Westminster's response and says that he wants an editorial on Himmler before the end of the week."
Rendering him stupefied and speechless, she softened and smiled, "Darling, half your shirt isn't even tucked in, and you're wearing mismatched socks. Now, be a good example to your sick daughter and come eat some soup."
She handed him the still groaning Saoirse and lead him to the table where the motion of their firstborn daughter reaching for her school bag and standing up brought back the firmness of her tone.
"Just what do you think you're doing, young lady?"
"We have an examination today, Mamma," Sybbie croaked, "Miss Adams said it would constitute thirty percent of the grade. I have to go to school."
"Sybil, your father is staying home today and so are you."
"But Mamma –"
"No buts, Sybbie," her mother retorted. Nurse Sybil Branson was widely celebrated at the hospital for her bedside manner – her uncanny ability to soothe patients in the highest degree of pain, her sympathetic nature, but to the most stubborn of patients she was equally as stubborn and in the form of her namesake who was so like her, she was not to be defeated in a battle of wills, "I already called your school and Miss Adams said that you can take the examination whenever you are well enough to do so."
Sybbie answered with a grunt to which Sybil replied with, "Lie down in your room and I will bring your next dosage in four hours. Try to get some sleep, darling."
"Shouldn't you be at work, love?" Tom asked as the sounds of their daughter's footsteps echoed down the stairs?
"Are you trying to get rid of me?" Sybil teased, pulling the grinning Aoife into her lap, happily munching on a piece of gingerbread.
"You know that's not what I mean, love," Tom laughed softly, the pain in his throat increasing with every laugh.
"I substituted for Nurse Collins last week when her little girl was ill. She was more than happy to return the favor."
"Da, gingerbread!" Saoirse called out from her nook in her father's arms, glaring at her twin with the lovely little gingerbread.
"You have nice, warm, chicken soup, Saoirse," her father replied, "you don't need gingerbread, love."
"Aoife no soup! Aoife gingerbread!"
"But Aoife's not ill, darling. You have to eat your soup so that you can get well and eat gingerbread too," her mother added, brushing away the stray strands of ebony locks that had fallen into her daughter's face.
"Not fair! Saoirse gingerbread!
From her corner in her mother's lap, Aoife grinned smugly, biting into her treat with even more relish, as her sick twin's cries gave way to wails and tantrums.
Today was going to be a long day.
For luncheon, the whole family sans Sybbie found themselves coped in his and Sybil's bedroom – He and little Saoirse snuggled, sneezing, and miserable under the covers; Aoife happily singing to the doll Sybbie had long passed on to the twins, a tow-haired beauty named Niamh, at the armchair by the window; and Sybil, an apron round her waist, attempting to force a bowl of hot soup down his swollen throat while watching the clock for Sybbie's next dosage (he had taken his only an hour previously and Saoirse's immediately followed Sybbie's).
"Love, I'm not an invalid, I can walk down the stairs and dine at the table," he whispered, his voice, it seemed was decreasing in volume by the second.
"And leave me to manage a sick and fussy toddler by myself?" his wife retorted, "and you know she'll be asking for her Da the minute you step out of this room. All three of them do when they're sick, you should know that by now."
For almost fourteen years now, their girls clung to him when they felt poorly, burrowing into his neck, asking to be swayed around the room, begging for stories and promises of treats when they were well. Worship and adore their mother as all three of them did, they shied away from her when ill, fearing the foul-tasting medicine she would inevitably force them to drink, as well as the less pleasant meals she would make them endure until the end of the illness.
"Da…," Saoirse croaked, waking from a fitful slumber and raising her hands in an action that meant that she wanted to be carried and babied.
Muscles aching, he gathered their baby into his arms and started to stand.
"Tom, don't!" Sybil countered, turning to their daughter, "Darling, Da is sick too, don't you want to stay in bed and cuddle?"
Saoirse shook her head no. Sick and uncomfortable, the reception of refuse was much harder to accept. She burrowed her ebony head into his neck and exclaimed in a cracked voice, "Walk!"
"It's alright," he told his wife as he paced the length of the room to sooth the discomfort of the child in his arms, rubbing a hand up and down her small back, "and I do know, love. But you already have two sick children to take care of, you don't have to worry about me too."
"You're sick, Tom, of course I'm worried. And that's why you're here, to help me corral them into submission," she laughed, giving him a quick peck as he passed by the place she stood with the bowl of soup.
The clock strung 12:30 and she turned to her only perfectly healthy child still singing to her doll, "Darling, can you please see if Sybbie is awake so that I can administer her medicine?"
Saoirse's small face contorted in disgust upon hearing the detested word while her twin left the room, doll still in tow.
"Sybbie!" Aoife's voice was sunny and in all instances, incredibly loud, echoing through his throbbing ears and no doubt both of his sick daughters'; Saoirse fussed even more in his arms and covered her ears, "Awake? Mamma said medicine!"
"Wake-y, Sybbie! Wake-y! Mamma said medicine!" she laughed still echoing through his ears.
Poor, uncomfortable, almost-fourteen-year-old Sybbie responded with an indignant and strained, "Go away Aoife!"
In perfect health, Sybbie was her mother's daughter – sweet and helpful, active and restless, in search of some activity to do, and infinitely patient with her persistently squabbling and equally active baby sisters – a quite remarkable feat that many, including their Irish grandmother who had grown-up in a large brood and raised one of her own, and their aristocratic English grandfather who fathered two daughters in perpetual enmity, found especially trying. Sick, Sybbie would withdraw into herself, enclosing herself in her bedroom ("Where I'm less likely to hear the little monsters screaming like a pair of banshees!" she had said), and becoming so disagreeable that only her mother and father dared to trespass into her domain.
Aoife was not to be deterred however.
"Sybbie still ill? Aoife asked, her voice still impossibly high-pitched.
"Yes, Aoife. Sybbie's ill, now, go away! Mamma! Da!"
"Sybbie awake, Mamma! But Sybbie's grumpy! Up, Da! Up!" she exclaimed returning to her parents' bedroom with a sunshiny smile still plastered on her face, lifting her arms up to be carried as well
"Aoife and Saoirse share Da!" she added charitably despite her sister's gaze of scorn.
"Gimme Niamh! Mine!" Saoirse screeched, grabbing at the doll as their father bent to take Aoife with his other hand.
Whether understanding the flurry their mother had to endure and the awfulness their father felt, or because she felt smug that she could eat gingerbread and play to her heart's desire while her sick twin was not allowed to, she held out the doll, hesitating at the last minute to say with a smile, "After medicine."
Dinner was not much better, but at the least it offered the prospect of a night's rest – unless, of course, the sick toddler who they had decided would spend the night in their bedroom, was to wake squalling in the wee hours, which inevitably would wake her equally ill and inordinately crabby older sister across the hall – a prospect that did not at all sound appealing to an equally ill parent (More than a year ago, shortly before the twins turned one, they rejoiced over the fact that they were leaving behind midnight wake-up calls forever – he knew now that it was a silly assumption).
"Saoirse, please. I promise this is the last one and I won't give you another one anymore. Please, darling," Sybil pleaded with their youngest as he held her tight to prevent her from thrashing and throwing the crimson syrup onto the sheets. Again. But their child, much like them, was hard-pressed to be forced to do something she did not want to, vigorously shaking her head no at the sight of the spoon filled with the foul-tasting liquid.
Presently, their second daughter's footsteps penetrated the room, skipping happily from the dinner Poppy had prepared and already in her nightdress, fresh from her bath. She too, they had decided, would spend the night in their bedroom if only to ensure she would not feel ignored or left-out in favor of her sick sisters; he had fretted to his wife that Aoife may catch whatever he, Sybbie, and Saoirse had but Sybil had early on ruled out its likeliness, reasoning that if Aoife was going to be sick from playing in the rain, she already would be now.
"Lemon square! Yum! Yum!" Aoife exclaimed, earning a murderous gaze from her twin whose dinner was limited to chicken noodle soup and whose dessert consisted of syrup. Tom's dinner was more or less the same, and he sighed in envy.
"Saoirse still sick, Mamma?" she asked as she pulled Niamh into her arms, mercifully abandoned by the sick child on the far side of the bed.
"I'm afraid so, darling."
"Sybbie too?
"Sybbie too."
"Da too?"
"Yes, darling, Da is still sick," he answered, pulling her close and pressing a soft kiss to the crown of her head.
"Poor Da!" Aoife cried as she put her arms around her father's neck and allowed Niamh to slip back into the bed.
She had stayed a long while in her father's arms, trying and succeeding in comforting him, when her blue eyes lit in excitement and delight, "Aoife read Da and Mamma and Saoirse a bedtime story! Aoife always feel better after bedtime story!"
Before any of them could react, Aoife had already slipped out of his arms and out the door, presumably to go to the nursery where they kept a small collection of children's books, some of which they had read to a little Sybbie and a little George many years past in the nursery at Downton, and which they now read to the twins nightly. Through the open door, they could hear Aoife's sunshiny voice humming a tune she had learned from Sybbie the week before. When she returned, she was clutching a colorful volume sketched with rose windows and which read La Belle et la Bête. He groaned inwardly at his daughter's choice, one of the aristocratic French stories his in-laws had stocked the Downton nursery with; at least, he concurred, it was nowhere near as predictable as those other fairy stories which ended with the princess waking with true love's kiss. His wife was always one of the sort to take action in the story instead of passively waiting for prince charming to come wake her and he was apprehensive about passing such fairy tale ideals to his daughters.
Aoife settled herself once more in the crook of his arm before easing out once more and running into the hall. It was to Sybbie's room she had run off to judging by the grunts that echoed back to them. When Aoife had finally returned for good, she led her older sister by the hand and directed her to the place she had previously occupied on the bed, settling herself at their feet, her book wide open.
"Aoife read to everyone! Just like Mamma and Da read stories to Aoife! Once upon a time," she began eagerly, her voice high which may not have been the best option for her sick family; the gesture was nonetheless appreciated, "in a land far, far away."
She paused at that, confusion taking over her features only for tears to gather in her wide blue, eyes.
"Mamma, I don't know what comes next!"
"Do you want me to help you, darling?"
She nodded eagerly, passing the book to her mother who had since abandoned the syrup bottle on the bedside table and had taken a spot at the corner of the bed. Sybil stood and carried her daughter off, only to settle her firmly on her lap as they took their place again at the end of the bed.
"Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a merchant who was extremely rich. He had six sons and three daughters," Sybil grinned at that, watching her own three daughters who eagerly listened to her voice, silenced from the sneezes and grunts that had plagued them all afternoon, "Because he was a man of wit, he stopped at nothing for the education of his children, giving them all sorts of mastery…"
When Sybil had read the last page, "His subjects welcomed him with much joy and he married the beauty, with whom he lived long and in perfect happiness because this happiness was founded in virtue," their two sick girls lay fast asleep as did the perfectly healthy one in her arms, but Tom was not.
"Your daughter is right, you know," he smiled despite the croaking that remained in his voice.
"What do you mean?"
"One does feel much better after a bedtime story, especially when you're the storyteller, love."
"Oh, but I'm not," Sybil laughed, her voice ringing like bells, "Aoife is the real storyteller. I was only helping out."
A/N: Heinrich Himmler was a leading member of the Nazi party and an overseer of the extermination camps during the Holocaust. In 1934, he took control of the police forces in Germany. [Wikipedia]
La Belle et la Bête is a seventeenth-century fairytale written by Madame le Prince de Beaumont. With significant changes, Disney adopted it to what is now the 1991 Beauty and the Beast. The original varies in that La Belle (who is not given an actual first name, referred to only as "the beauty") has siblings and Gaston and Le Fou are non-existent and most of the drama take place at the hands of La Belle's sisters. A celebrated film version of the story was directed by Jean Cocteau in the 1940s.