Chapter Sixteen

A/N: Last one, here we go...

After a long and tiring day, Sybil seated herself down in the nursery of Downton Abbey. She probably frequented the room more than was appropriate for an upper class woman to do, but then again, she reminded herself, she was not a lady; only a girl borne of one.

'I've never been a Crawley.' she thought absentmindedly. 'I've only ever been a Branson, and I'm not even that anymore.'

Smiling at the thought, Sybil cast her eye down at her ring finger, where her wedding band rested, as always. It was a little tarnished by age, not as perfect as it once had been, but she preferred it that way. Each time the ring became a little more tarnished, she thought of it as a little more time she had spent married to the most wonderful man she had met in her life.

At the age of just twenty, the young woman had met David Farwell at a hospital in London. She had been helping there as a nurse, and once war had broken out once again between Great Britain and Germany, she had been determined to help more than ever. One day, there had been a large number of injured soldiers shipped in after a major battle in France, and David had been among them. She had worked with him every day, helping him to learn to walk again after a piece of shrapnel lodged in his leg had been removed. He had scarcely recovered from his injuries when he asked her to walk out with him, and just a couple of months later than that, they became engaged.

It had been half a decade now since their wedding, and she still loved the man just as much as she had done the day he asked her to marry him. He did not have much money, and he was not the most handsome man in all the world, but he was hers. Besides, he had given her something that no money could ever buy.

She looked down at the two children, fast asleep in their beds just across the room from where she sat, and smiled brightly at how peacefully they slept. It always amazed her how her son and daughter could sleep so well in beds that were not their own, and she often thought that they perhaps slept better at Downton than they did in their own home.

She had not lived at Downton for many years now, instead moving to a village just a few miles away, just far enough that she could come and visit them easily without their influence in society making a difference to her. Her father had raised her with a value that if you wanted something in life, you ought to earn it, and so she had always tried to make her way through life without mention of the fact that she was granddaughter of the old Earl of Grantham.

Her grandfather had died a few years ago, of a heart attack the doctors suspected had been caused by the shock of the war taking a fair few of his friends and his sister, Rosamund. It had been awful for Cora to deal with, having to pick up the pieces, especially so soon after Matthew had died as well, but she had remained strong, and allowed her granddaughter to live her life however she saw fit. George, her younger cousin by only a year, was now the Earl of Grantham, married to a lovely young girl from the village. 'It seems that the Crawleys are becoming more and more linked to the working class community.' she often thought with a smirk, which would quickly die as she remembered the woman who had started it all.

Her namesake mother had died so soon after her birth; she had never had a chance to know her herself. But after the first wave of grief and pain had passed, people began to speak of the lovely Sybil Crawley they had known, and through those at Downton, she had found herself knowing quite a great deal about the woman. After a time, she had even begun to speak of her to her own children, telling them numerous tales of the youngest daughter of Robert Crawley.

Her children had always loved hearing stories about their grandmother, and any time she was mentioned when they were tucked up into their beds, they would sit up a little more and their ears would prick up as they listened intently. Sybil Crawley was a role model for them, especially for her young daughter, Maire, who heralded her grandmother as a heroine on a par with the princesses from the fairytales she was learning to read, and neither she nor young Tom ever tired of hearing about her.

However, there was one tale they asked for, again and again, a tale of magic and adventure and friendship so incredible that she doubted either believed it was the truth. But it was; she knew it was.

Long ago, she had uncovered her mother's diary, a locked journal hidden beneath the bed in her childhood room, where Sybil had discovered the woman wrote down the most secret things, things which she could never tell another soul, and so she shared them with the pages of the book instead. There were little silly things, secrets which only a child would keep so guarded, like tiny crushes and hopes for the result of an election. There was also an interesting entry about the chauffeur at the great house, a wonderful man with an Irish brogue and the ideals that all people should have a chance to make their way in life, not just wealthy men born into the right families. But the entry that had interested Sybil the most was the very final one, written in great detail in the final pages of the book, and this was the one that her children so loved to hear.

It had all started with an eerie noise, sounding through the hallways on Christmas Eve night, and a curious little girl who went in search of it. She didn't find a ghost, as she had probably expected to, but rather a confused looking man, and behind him, a police telephone box, that appeared to have come from nowhere, and disappeared from sight just as quickly, sending a gentle breeze fluttering through the halls as it vanished.

For a long time, as the girl grew into a woman, she wondered whether the man and the box had been real, or just a figment of her childhood imagination, as everyone else she had told the story believed it to be. But there had always been a part of her that had known the man was real, and that he would come back for her one day.

The doubt in her mind eventually disappeared, when a strange man appeared in the hallways of Downton Abbey, and once again the noise rang through the air. She had not believed it at first, but the moment she had seen him, she had known, although he did not recognise her for a long while after. However, once he realised who she was, it became as if they had never been separate at all.

She had only made one trip with him, a trip onto the R.M.S. Titanic, a little piece of history that she had been a part of. She had seen horrific things on that ship as it sank, but of course, Sybil made no mention of those in the bedtime stories she told her little children. Instead, she told them of the brilliant times they had had together, and the magical machine in which they had travelled, and would have continued to have done forever if they could.

For years, Sybil told this story to her children, and they in turn told it to theirs, and them to theirs, until it came to a time where, at the grand age of eighty three, she listened to her great-granddaughter tell the story to the baby in the same crib where generations of the family had heard the tale. Down through the generations, true and unchanging, the story was told by one child to the next, and in that way, it was never forgotten. And in the past, the present and all the years to come, the story would be there, to link them to two people who should have had a brilliant future, but who fate separated long before their time. The story of the madman and the rebel.

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who has supported this story in its run, I'm so grateful to you all! Hope you enjoyed the last chapter, and please review for one last time!