Chapter Text
A/N: My friend (who has yet to watch DA but is still awesome for all that) read Lux Facta Est and told me that George is the sweetest little boy (see I told you she's awesome!) so because of that, I'm posting this - a.k.a. more Sybbie and George adorable moments. I realized that, located in the Scottish Highlands, Duneagle would experience Aurora Borealis, and that invoked all my Frozen feels so this scene is partly inspired by Elsa and Anna. Originally, this was supposed to be 100% fluff but well, apparently the story has a mind of it's own and so we have this.
I'm so, so sorry for the delay but no net until last week and I went on a net hiatus until today so there's that. I hope this would make-up for the delay.
I hope you enjoy and don't forget that reviews will make Olaf a happy snowman!
P.S. The Aurora has reached into England this year! Have you seen the photos? One day I will see Aurora myself! =D
P.P.S. I've started on a new story of the Crawley-Branson families set in WWII and I've gotten three or four chapters on Sybbie and Tom and Sybil written down but my Comprehensive Exams are just around the corner so in the meantime, I would be greatful for some suggestions.
Dislcaimer: Si c'était le mien, DA, Sybil et Matthew resteraient encore vivant! (You know the drill)
25 December 1925
She could not return to sleep; rather, she would not return to sleep, not with the lights dancing outside her window. They were calling out to her – Sybbie. Sybbie. Sybbie!
Of course, Nanny would be furious. "Being awake before the sun was very naughty, Miss Sybbie," she had cried yesterday at the sight of the little girl gazing in wonder at the night sky, her place by the window seat. "Now you would fall asleep at the table at luncheon, Miss!" Nanny had pursued, "Please take care not to do it again, especially not tomorrow of all days! Imagine, the little miss, privileged enough to dine Christmas luncheon with their Lordships and all the adults, then dozing off in plain sight of the Dowager Countess and Lady Flintshire! Dear me, I wonder how Lady Sybil and her Ladyship managed it! And Master George!"
"But we always eat Christmas luncheon with everyone, Nanny!" Sybbie had retorted.
"In Downton perhaps, but it seems India has not warmed Lady Flintshire to the notion that children must be heard in addition to seen. Now, be a good girl and promise me not to do that again or Father Christmas might decide that Scotland is too taxing a journey to deliver your presents. You too, Master George."
They had then nodded their assent, fearful of Father Christmas' wrath if they were naughty.
But today – the green light seeped into the nursery at Duneagle coaxing Sybbie's lids open, willing her to leave her bed, pulling her out into the garden that overlooked the Highlands' vista. The temptation was too much to resist. She stood, walked over to her cousin's bed at the other side of the room and shook him.
"George!" she said in a whisper, lest Nanny be woken.
He replied in small mumbles and lisps.
"Georgie!"
More mumbles.
"George Reginald!"
"Still sleepy, Sybbie Josie-phine!"
"The sky is awake, George! It's time to be awake."
"No. The sky sleepy," he burrowed himself further into his pillow, "Wanna sleep, Sybbie. Go 'way."
She was not to be deterred; not now when fairy lights danced outside their window. George was her best friend and knowing him as she did she knew how angry he would be at the light of day knowing she had gone to see the beautiful lights without him. Not that sneaking out of the nursery to sit on the cold, frozen ground (it was too bothersome to grab their coats – and of course, that would entail rousing Nanny) at the break of dawn when the whole house was asleep would be as fun without her partner-in-crime.
"George, look! The fairy lights are back!" she ran as noiselessly as she could to the window and drew the curtains open a tiny bit. That tiny bit had sufficed to bathe the room in an emerald hue, mixing with hints of purple and rose, dancing ever so slightly against the Scottish winter sky. Yesterday, they had watched it from the window and decided that the lights were the road to some northern fairy's kingdom. Before Nanny had risen, they had decided to see it beyond the nursery's confines – perhaps then they could reach to it and touch the hues with their small, bare hands.
George's eye opened the tiniest bit, then both his eyes, growing bluer and rounder as he took in the tableau playing out before them. His feet hitting the ground noiselessly, stealthily as a child in fear of rousing Nanny could be. He looked his cousin in the eye, "Let's go, before Nanny catches us."
"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" Sybbie laughed, her voice soft.
She padded to the wardrobe, pulling them each socks and knits from a drawer she could barely reach, careful to keep quiet. Clothing on their feet and on their backs instead of splayed on the floor, they tip-toed out of the nursery, silent as thieves.
The sound of footsteps greeted them as they stepped into the hallway, undoubtedly that of the footmen who had risen early to clear the residue of the previous night. They pressed on undaunted. After all, aged four and five were they not already veterans at the art of mischief and of stealth? Sybbie understood perfectly that it was in her blood, and George, from the moment he had been laid on the bassinet next to Sybbie's crib in the Downton nursery, had trained only from the best.
They rounded the grand staircase and hid by several cupboards and shelves, away from the eyes of the maids purposely rushing to tidy the drawing room and the library. Several minutes passed, they at last found themselves out the back door which had mercifully been emptied by the staff's morning routine.
Beyond the gardens they trudged until they stopped near a cliff that overlooked the contours and heights that made up the Scottish Highlands. From this vantage, mountains of green-and-brown spanned the horizon, rising majestically from the inky depths of the still-dark sky. Dots of yellow and white lights rose from the heights, the picture of habitation, the hearths of the great houses and the villages that surrounded them. Above, beyond the mountains, beyond them, and beyond everything, green bursts abounded, casting illumination over the otherwise dark sky; rose mélanged the green, and so had shocks of purple. Far from being stationary, the lights danced – slowly, gracefully, advancing and then withdrawing against the dawn. They had never seen anything of the sort in Yorkshire, so alluring, so magical, it felt as if they were watching a fairy story come to life before their eyes.
"What do you think the fairies are doing?" Sybbie asked as they settled against the snow, their backs flat against the ground, their eyes to the sky.
"Maybe they're celebrating Christmas too? Do you suppose Father Christmas comes to them as well?"
"I know he does. They have to be happy else they won't make such pretty colors, don't you think?" Sybbie answered, her voice just as her eyes continuing to marvel.
George responded with a sound of assent and Sybbie continued, "Do you know, when we were in Dublin last summer, my Nanna told me that at the end of every rainbow, you can find a pot of gold."
"Gold, you mean treasure?"
"Yes, treasure, lots and lots of treasure. But it's the treasure of the leprechaun, the little men who make shoes. And if a human finds it, the leprechaun will grant the human three wishes."
George's blue eyes grew wide in amazement, "Do you suppose there's treasure at the end of the fairy lights too?"
"I don't know, maybe. They have so many colors, they look like some funny rainbow."
"I want to find out, Sybbie. I want to see if there is treasure at the end of the light. Suppose we go find out someday?"
"We will, when we are old enough and tall enough to touch the lights. Do you think we will ever be that tall, George?"
"We would! Papa and Uncle Tom and Grandpapa seem tall enough to touch them, so we would be too!"
Sybbie made a sound of assent before they returned to watching the light of day beginning to join the mixture of colors. Soon, the house will be up and Nanny will come looking for them and would no doubt scold them, but for now none of that was on their minds – the beauty was so overwhelming that it had charmed two raucous children into silence.
"Sybbie…" George began again after a few minutes had passed, hesitancy in his voice.
"Mhm-hmm?"
"We are going to look for the treasure at the end of the light someday, right?"
"Of course we will, Georgie! Or are you turning into a scaredy cat on me? Don't tell me you're scared of a leprechaun when the man-with-a-funny name almost ate us!"
"Of course not!" George retorted indignantly before laughing aloud.
"What would your three wishes be when we find the treasure?" he continued.
"A beautiful princess doll with curly, black hair like Mamma's, all the lemon drops and butterscotch and gummy worms in the world, and a baby sister!"
"But you've already asked Father Christmas for one!"
"So? It can't hurt to be pers-is-tent," Sybbie replied, helping herself to big words in a manner only the daughter of a man who is to become a journalist once more can.
"But aren't you scared, Sybbie?"
"Of what?"
"Of Aunt Sybil and Uncle Tom not loving you anymore when a new baby comes."
"But why would they do that?" she asked, genuine confusion in her tone.
"Clarissa Westford said that her Mamma and Papa stopped caring for her when her baby brother was born because he was heir and Clarissa was just a little girl."
"What is an heir?"
"I don't know, but whatever it is, it made them stop loving her," George answered.
Barely halfway through the first decade of their lives, they mercifully remained protected from many cruelties, still shielded by their innocence, still cosseted by parents who sought to protect them from a world that had tried so hard to beat them down. Your father loves you very much. Then why won't he fight for me? I'm not asking you to agree with the system, merely to acknowledge it. But I don't acknowledge it. You want me to give up the man I love for a system I don't believe in. Where's the sense in that?
"Well, Clarissa's Mamma and Da are awful. Mine are not," there was conviction in Sybbie's small voice, "and I want a baby sister. I know Mamma and Da would want another one to baby, they don't say it but I know, and I'm getting too spoiled, my Uncle Kieran says, being an only child and all. But I don't want a baby brother – I already have you!"
George grinned and Sybbie continued, "And you, what would you wish for?"
George hesitated a moment and then, "I wish you would stay at Downton. I don't want you to go to London."
"Georgie…"
Sybbie frowned at that. Leaving for London was hard, there were so many she could not bear to leave at Downton – Grandpapa and Granny, Aunt Mary and Uncle Matthew, Gran Violet and Aunt Isobel, Thomas and Mrs. Hughes and Isis, most of all, more so than everyone else, George, her greatest ally and the closest thing she had to a sibling. But London made Mamma and Da so happy. Renewed freedom had made them so happy.
"It will be an adventure, darling!" Mamma had said.
"It will be us Bransons starting over again and we only have to play by our rules!" Da had smiled.
"You will have your own room."
"There would be no more Nanny."
"You would go to a real school, Sybbie. Imagine that! With little boys and girls your age! And you would be so clever, darling! You would learn so much more than I have, not just French and how to curtsy and how to say yes!"
"When you're old enough, you would go to a university! What would your Nan say to that?" there was so much pride and hope in Da's voice, "And all three of us could go see the pictures, like your Mamma and I used to do in Dublin, and maybe you could come to Da's office and tell your friends that you've been to a real newsroom! Doesn't that sound nice?"
And so she was happy too because Mamma and Da were happy; but George...
"If it won't make Aunt Mary and Uncle Matthew sad, my second wish would be to bring you along to London, George, honest."
"But why do you have to leave? Don't you like Downton anymore? Don't you like playing with me anymore?"
"George! Of course I do!"
"Then why?"
"You know why. Da's got a job at a newspaper, it's a real chance! And Mamma will be working in a big hospital again! They can't just leave me at Downton."
"But, why do Uncle Tom and Aunt Sybil have to leave Downton? They have jobs here too! Don't they like Downton anymore?"
It wasn't that. They did not dislike Downton exactly, but it suffocated them. Downton to them was like a swallow falling into its nest to wake with its wings cut off. They did not belong there, not to a life of comfort and repetition and stalemate; they belonged to the skies, to ambition, and persistence, and freedom. Sybbie was a perceptive child; while she did not understand it completely, she at least felt that, and she was nothing if not her parents' child. Today, she already had her small rebellions – cookie crumbs between meals that would ruin her appetite and her frocks, sneaking into Mamma and Da's bedroom when Nanny had been mandated to keep her in the nursery at night, unbounded curiosity, scraped knees, muddy skirts, and many a curl out of place. Sooner rather than later, the great stone walls and gilded frames of the Abbey would smother her as well.
"You'll always be my bestest friend, George, no matter who I meet in London," Sybbie finally said, entirely eclipsing her cousin's question.
"But you won't be in Downton anymore!" Tears had begun to gather round his blue eyes – they had always been a team, more brother and sister than cousins, more twins than the baby sisters Sybbie would one day have, and never had a separation felt so keen and striking, worse even than when Sybbie had gone to Dublin for an entire month, "You're leaving, Sybbie! "You're leaving me and I'll be left with Nanny and you're never coming back!"
Away from the eyes of the world, in the privacy of her bedroom, George's Mamma had more than six years ago wept just as pitifully, just as heartbreakingly, for the sister and confidante who was about to board the ferry to Dublin. More than six years ago, it had seemed she would never return again – not to the world Lady Mary Crawley had persisted in inhabiting – You're leaving, Sybil! You're leaving for the life that had always been meant for you and you'll be happy and you'll never come back. The one person who saw good in me! And I'll be left here alone to suffer the consequences of my choices. Oh, my baby sister! She remembered then the shared nursery where she had stood tall as her sister's defender and protector – how could she have imagined then that the lives they would lead would lead them to two different worlds – her engaged to a man of wealth and means, a force to be reckoned with as he set her teeth on edge, her sister to marry a former servant, a penniless writer who promised her love, the world and an escape from this life of inutility? Six years later, were her small son's tears a presentiment of the differences in his and his cousin's destinies – he as the earl to a great estate upon the now inevitable fall of the English aristocracy, her as a pioneering woman surgeon in a strong and versatile middle class?
"Of course I'm coming back, Georgie! Mamma and Da promised – "
"No you won't. You would love London because there's no Nanny and because there are no rules and you would never ever go back to Downton!"
"Yes, I would," Sybbie's voice was soft yet insistent, "Of course I would. London won't be much fun without my best friend. Anyway, Mamma and Da are too big to play hide-and-seek with and it's no fun seeing who can eat more gummy worms since they're bigger and always win!"
"It's unfair!" George retorted indignantly, "we're smaller! We can't eat as much!"
"It's absolutely unfair!"
Sybbie smiled, taking her cousin's hand and squeezing it. More than six years ago, Sybbie's own Mamma stood at threshold of Downton Abbey and kissed her mother, grandmother, and sisters goodbye at the dawn of a new life in Ireland. In front of her eldest sister, ever her greatest ally and her great confidant long before Tom Branson had graced the garage of Downton, she lingered, clasping her hand tight and commuting to her in a way no words can ever speak – I'm not leaving you, Mary. Even away in Dublin, I won't leave you and I will be there for you. And someday I will come back, not to this life, not to any of it, but I will come back for you. I promise. Six years later, her small daughter's gesture echoed her own to the most minute detail – I'm not leaving you, George. Even away in London. I will come back for you. I promise.
"And when you come to visit us in London," Sybbie resumed, "I will bring you to the bestest, biggest candy shop and we'll see who can finish the most gummy worms."
"And lemon drops!" George added, returning the pressure in his small hand.
"And licorice sticks!"
George's face contorted in disgust, "You know I hate licorice!"
Months later, tears would be shed again, but they would be tears of acceptance and understanding. Now, hands clasped, tears dried, all was right with the world.
"Do you know, Georgie," Sybbie laughed, "Granny made me swear not to tell…"
"What?" his tone was conspiratorial, ready for a round of secrets.
"I saw what present Grandpapa and Granny have for you!"
"Is it the train from America? Is it the sailboat? Do tell, Sybbie! Do tell!"
Sybbie grinned just as conspiratorially and only said, "Oh, look at that dancing purple light! Do you suppose the fairies know we are watching them?"
The eating so much candy contest was inspired by a fic I've read a while back so credit to that -- I can imagine Sybil playing that game with her daughter tho!