She looked around and took all of her surroundings in as her gaze wandered over the big window, the empty walls, the clock hanging straight ahead of her. She had become so well acquainted with the interior in the last few weeks that she truly felt sick of it. It was considerably better than any room at their local village hospital, but it was a hospital room nonetheless, and Cora could not wait to finally set foot back into the real world. She could not wait to leave here and be back in her home, in the house she felt most herself.

Her look at the clock told her it was almost 3 o'clock in the afternoon - 3 o'clock in the afternoon on what would be her second to last day in the hospital. She still could not believe it, even though the doctor had come in just minutes ago to confirm her transfer back to Yorkshire after doing another quick exam. Robert had refused to leave the room, but he had conceited that he would go over to the window and look away, even if just to put her mind at ease. It had been the first time he had not budged.

Robert had just fluffed her pillows again, something he did much more frequently than he probably had to. Her husband was fussing. Constantly. About anything and everything. Especially things to do with how comfortable or not she was in her room. It was incredibly sweet of him, but also slowly driving her mad at the same time. Cora only hoped that he would reign in this, sometimes overly, caring side of him at least a small amount when they were back home. One could only handle being asked to please scoot forward so many times before getting well and truly annoyed, after all.

He was about to start reading to her from the new book of poems he brought that day when someone knocked repeatedly at the door. One of the pages held in between his fingers, he looked up from the opened clothbound book before smiling knowingly to himself. Quickly, he closed the book with a thud, placed it on the table next to him, and called out to whoever was waiting outside to come in. It was all quite puzzling to her.

"Is it okay if we come in?" asked Tom with a sheepish smile on his face, only poking his head into the room through the open door at first.

Cora expected to see Rosamund or one of her daughters standing in the doorway, similar to what had happened repeatedly within the last two weeks, but who she certainly did not expect to see was Tom. Her surprise was very clearly visible on her face, her eyes wide and her eyebrows up so high on her forehead they could have just as well reached her hairline.

"Oh, Tom, how wonderful to see you! Of course, come in," exclaimed Cora as she sat up more.

Tom smiled at her gratefully before he turned to look back out into the hallway. She could hear him say: "Come, we can go in," right before he finally stepped into the room, dressed in a dark brown day suit, his hat in hand.

Cora could not even ask who he was talking to before the two young children were already skipping towards her, quickly running past him and heading in her direction.

Robert watched it all happen with a benign smile on his face. That, however, faded quickly when he saw his grandchildren enter and come closer at such speed. They were clearly very excited to see their granny; they had not seen her since New Year's, after all. He assumed they would greet her like they always did — rapturously with a hug, and he did not quite trust them not to unknowingly hurt her in the process. "Careful, children! Granny is very, very sick," Robert rushed to say calmly, authority in his voice, just before they had reached her bedside.

He must have had the right hunch, because they suddenly walked slower and kept some distance when they finally greeted them, saying "Hello Granny, hello Donk" in near-perfect unison.

"Hello, my darlings. What a nice surprise!" Cora replied tiredly, while still beaming brightly at her eldest grandchildren and son-in-law. She had missed them terribly in the weeks that had passed since she had left Downton to undergo her treatment, but she had not wanted them to see her when she was in such bad shape before. It would not have been fair on them to witness her illness any more than they necessarily had to. The poor young children had already had to face so much in their still short lives, both losing one of their parents on the days they were born.

As Tom approached with long strides, he asked: "I do hope it is okay that I brought them along? Only they asked repeatedly to see you and we could not say no any longer."

He came to a halt next to Cora's bed and pulled up another chair to sit down opposite his father-in-law, an uncertain smile on his face. He still was not sure if he was entirely welcome here, despite Robert assuring him that he certainly was, just the day before in fact.

"Oh yes, I do not mind at all. I have missed all of you so terribly much" Cora said while scrunching her nose in delight, reaching her hands out to George and Sybbie. And looking up at her son-in-law, she added: "You too, Tom."

Her grandchildren were still quite excited to see her, happily taking her hands and talking over one another so that neither Cora nor Robert and Tom had any idea what the two of them were even saying.

Waiting until they had stopped their rambling, Tom smiled appreciatively before he replied, a guilty undertone in his voice: "I know I should have come sooner, I am very sorry."

"No, no. That was not what I meant at all! Robert here has kept me excellent company the entire time." George and Sybbie had let go of her hands, Sybbie staying next to her father and George having walked over to Robert's side and staying there close to his grandfather like a shadow on his shoulder. Cora's hand then reached out to pat her husband's hand resting on top of the mattress close to where she was lying, smiling vivaciously at him. Turning back to Tom, she added: "No, but even at Downton — it is a weird sensation not to have you and Sybbie around all the time, like in the past. How is family life at Brampton treating you?"

A guilty smile graced Tom's features when he heard her say this. But he was also glad she thought that way because it made asking what he had come to ask that day just so much easier. "I am glad, truly. Life at Brampton is much as you can expect with a lively 8-year-old," he turned to smile at his daughter who beamed brightly back at him, "and another baby on the way. So, quite hectic."

"And Maud is surely not entirely faultless in the hectic, is she?" Robert asked, the smallest hint of a smile on his lips.

"No, she is fussing quite a bit already," Tom retorted nervously. "The renovations are taking forever and she has turned out to be a perfectionist as well. But enough about that. How are you doing, Cora?"

She sighed, maybe a tad bit too dramatically because it made her husband roll his eyes. He knew she wanted out of the room, but she had simply not been strong enough before. If he was honest, he still did not think she was, but the doctor had cleared her to go home, so who was he to argue with that?

Luckily neither George nor Sybbie registered their grandfather doing so, or else they would have thrown a fit. Rolling one's eyes was hardly proper etiquette and he had always talked about how important that was.

"I cannot wait to get out of here soon. I am in dire need of a change of scenery, and so is Robert. Aren't you, darling?"

She turned to face him again, knowing his answer only too well.

Robert took her hand in his once more, squeezing it gently as he spoke. "Of course, I am. I have never been too happy about staying in the city for so long, let alone at hospitals. But if you need to stay here, then so be it. I shall still be more than glad when I get to see you in your room to recuperate at home in Downton, where you belong," he smiled.

Cora looked at their joined hands on the mattress and smiled at the fact that he did not seem to be able to stop his hand from covering hers for longer than a few minutes. She smiled lovingly at him with her eyes sparkling brightly in the room lit by the afternoon sun. Robert had to admit that he was beyond relieved to slowly see the spark of life return, it had been diminished, almost gone, for far too long.

Robert smiled back at her equally as lovingly before he let go of her and stood up and faced his eldest grandchildren. "Now, shall we go and ask for some more tea?" he asked, an excited twinkle in his eyes.

"We can do that on our own, Donk. We are not small children any more!" said Sybbie, a pout forming on her face. It startled Robert. She looked so much like her mother, she behaved so much like her, his darling Sybil. And she had never even met her.

Before Robert could dwell on that thought, though, George piped up from next to him. "Yes, we will go find a nurse and ask for some more tea. Easy as that," he added, sounding entirely too confident for a seven-year-old boy who had been to the city only a handful of times in his short life, and never without Mary or the nanny.

Robert smiled at them, knowing he could never say no to anything when it came to his grandchildren. He adored them all. A proud smile appeared on his face as he watched them skip out of the room in pursuit of some tea for their grandparents and Tom.

Just after the door had clicked shut and Robert had reclaimed his seat next to the bed, Tom nervously said: "On that note-"

He stopped, his gaze flickering between Cora and Robert as he tried to think of how to word his request best. Robert had a vague idea of what he wanted, he had told him that he had a request for them when he arrived the night before, but Cora had not even the faintest clue.

"Yes?" she asked tentatively, looking expectantly at him, a hint of wariness in her eyes.

"Brampton is nice and we are sure that it will indeed be very beautiful once all the work is completed. But it doesn't truly feel like home. For none of us, we have found, even in just the few weeks we have been there."

"What are you saying, Tom?" Robert asked suspiciously, his eyebrows knitted together in confusion and question. This was the part that Tom had refused to go into detail on the night before, it had annoyed him then, as it did now.

"I wanted to ask if we could return to Downton and leave Brampton to Maud for the time being. Maybe we could move into the cottage on the estate I was supposed to some years ago when Sybbie was younger and I became the agent?" he asked, refusing to look at his parents-in-law. When neither answered, he looked up at them and added: "I have spent the best years of my life at Downton, and so has Sybbie. You have all been there for me in my darkest days and you have made me one of your very own despite everything that happened in the past. Downton has become my home, and I do not yet feel ready to leave that part of me behind. It would also make being the agent a whole lot easier without having to commute from Brampton."

Robert's face lit up like a Christmas tree upon hearing this, and one glance over at Cora showed that she was just as excited by this as he was. To say that both were touched by the Irishman's words was an understatement. They all remembered the early stages of their relationship, how Robert treated Tom back then, and how bitter Tom was about everything. It had taken a lot for them to be so easy around each other, and they all secretly wished Sybil could have seen their relationship evolve.

"Of course, you are always welcome. All of you are!" said Robert once he came out of his surprised stupor.

Cora only watched her son-in-law for a few seconds, an expression of awe on her face, before she reached out to take his hand. "I agree, you are more than welcome to come back, under one condition."

Both Robert and Tom whipped their heads around to look at her incredulously. It was not like her to establish conditions like so.

"What's that?" Tom breathed, suddenly very nervous once more. He kneaded the brim of his brown hat in his hands without even noticing it, a fact that amused Robert greatly, who recognised that sort of behaviour instantly.

With a strong and quite authoritative quality to her voice, Cora raised her chin and looked at her son-in-law, saying decisively: "You move into the Abbey again, and not some cottage somewhere on the estate. If we're having you with us again, I want you there as close as possible. I want you there, and I want to get to know Lucy better, too. And I want Sybbie and her future sibling around their cousins. Children belong together."

"I think that is a condition we can all live with," Tom replied with a bright smile, relief apparent as he heaved a deep breath and he chuckled while squeezing Cora's hand in his.

"We brought some tea!" Sybbie then exclaimed from the doorway. Both, she and George, were walking in, balancing tea trays with a nurse following them close behind, keeping a close eye on the children and their valuable freight.