[Canon Update, Item Post & Sybbie arrival - August 23rd early hours]

[adifferentlife]

The night had been wonderful, everything that Sybil had hoped for it. They were now wed, and had spent the night celebrating with their friends. Food had been plentiful, wine had flowed, and Sybil couldn't remember a nicer night. When she and Henri had finally fallen into bed, they were both exhausted. They were even more exhausted when they finally fell asleep. Things were as close to perfect as she could have ever imagined.

The cries were what woke her. They pulled her from sleep foggy and confused. Henri started to stir as she slipped from their bed, wrapping a robe about herself to go investigate. There was nothing that should have woken her in their rooms, certainly not what sounded like a baby.

She shook her head, trying to clear the mustiness settled in the crooks and crannies of her brain. There, near the doorway was a basket, and in the basket was an infant dressed as if for a christening. She knelt beside it, hushing the child as she reaches for it.

"Henri?" Sybil calls out to her husband. She picks the baby up and rests her against her shoulder, rocking back on her heels as the child nuzzles against her neck. "Henri, something's wrong."

Something's very very wrong if there's an infant in their rooms who is not supposed to be here. She smiles at the oddity and her way with understatement. There's a piece of paper poking out from the basket, and Sybil snags it, her brief glance turning into a much longer look.

It's a baptismal certificate. A baptismal certificate for her daughter, her daughter with Thomas Branson.

"Well, if I can't stop you I see no point in a quarrel. It'll be a very different life to the one you might have had but if you're sure it's what you want."
"I am."

"Somehow none of that seems to matter when we're in Dublin. Class and all that just fades away. I'm Mrs Branson and we get on with our lives like millions of others."

"We need peace, and safety. Downton can offer us both."


"I do believe in God, but all the rest of it, vicars, feast days, deadly sins, I don't care about that. I don't know if a vicar knows any more about god than I do. And I love Tom, so very very much."

"I love him." The memories flooded in, and were she not sitting she would have fallen. Suddenly it all seems so plain, the life that she'd had. Leaving Downton, trying to elope, finally moving to Ireland with Tom and marrying him. Their life there and how they had loved one another. How frightened she had been for Tom and how they had gone back to Downton. She had convinced him to stay there and it was there that she gave birth to their daughter and there that Sybil is sure that she died.

Which means this little girl is her daughter. Sybil looks up to Henri, tears streaming down her face as she sees the face of the other man that she loves. "I love him, and this is our daughter."

Comments

[jaimemieux]

Almost from the moment the infant is shifted into his arms, she begins to wake restlessly, with snuffling whimpers - as though she knows that Henri is not her father, but a stranger. Henri has held babies before, but none have seemed so fragile, so liable to break, and Sybbie’s clear unhappiness is doing nothing to improve Henri’s confidence.

Henri is not angry. He is frightened, and confused, and damnably tired, but he could never be angry. Still, there is a small part of him that feels robbed: not only of this first, perfect, day with his wife, but of the first few moments he had hoped to someday hold his own child.

Still, he offers Sybil what he hopes is an encouraging smile. “Mm. Though I fear she’s not very happy about it, poor thing."

[adifferentlife]

He is as gentle with the baby as she would expect, and it both warms and breaks her heart to see. Slowly, she crosses the room to him, tugging at his elbow until he joins her on the sofa.

"Here," she says, tilting the bottle so the baby can accept it. She doesn't take her from Henri's arms, not yet. If she'll feed peacefully then Sybil doesn't want to disturb her.

[jaimemieux]

Henri joins her on the sofa, and thankfully for them both, the child is quick to accept the bottle, and seems to settle as she feeds. She was hungry, Combeferre tells himself, and tired. God knows what such a strange journey could do to an infant. It is not you who makes her unhappy. After a few moments, he raises his eyes and offers his wife a tentative smile. “Oh, Sybil,” he murmurs, grasping at hope, at the warmth that encircles them as they sit together, unexpected though the morning’s events might be. What they lack in certainty, they make up for in love. “She is beautiful,” he says. "Nearly as beautiful as her mother.”

[adifferentlife]

Those words of kindness from her husband are what she needs to hear, and yet also push her to tears. The morning has been hard for them both, Sybil knows, and yet he still loves her. It is in that moment that she feels luckier than she can imagine, a small sliver of hope chasing away some of the exhaustion and worry.

"All of this- It isn't what you agreed to yesterday, is it?" It is, in her way, an offer. An opening for him to say he cannot handle this development. "I would understand if-" But she cannot finish that statement.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," she says softly and seriously, wiping her cheek with the palm of her hand.

[jaimemieux]

“Ah, Sybil.” There are many things Henri could say that he will not - about his fears, his worries, the way the child in his arms and the look in Sybil’s eyes frightens him. He knows better; he knows it is not his place to panic, not when his wife’s terror exceeds his own tenfold. Later, perhaps, Henri will allow himself to panic over the strange turn his life has taken, but not now. Not today.

“I did not promise only to love you when life was easy,” he tells her with serious eyes. “We are in this together, my darling. I swear it." A beat. "All three of us together, now."