His grandfather had always jokingly referred to England as "the septic isle" – or half jokingly at least. "Blaggards, to a man," he used to proclaim sagely, putting the world to rights over a nice Bushmills whisky. "And heathens!"

If asked, honesty would have compelled Tom to admit that he hadn't really found this to be the case - though it was true he didn't pray much himself when he first arrived. He had supposed perhaps he just wasn't particularly religious, in the end of it all.

Certainly, he thought it was high time someone reigned in the beast that was the Church in Ireland, with its tentacles reaching out into every school, every family, every pocket. But the actual "God" element of things he'd never really had a problem with – despite what could, objectively speaking, have been termed rather a sickening dose of piety throughout his teenage years.

Indeed, he had even been an alter boy in his younger days – he'd told her that once, actually, shortly before she'd gone on her nursing training, and she'd laughed her head off.

"I'm sorry!" she'd giggled, a shy hand over her mouth. "It's just…the thought of you in the outfit!"

"Hmmph!" Tom had exhaled in mock indignation, doing something nondescript under the bonnet of the car. They both knew how this worked; she could pop in, for some oh-so-legitimate reason, but the standards of propriety demanded at least some nod to their respective roles.

The only thing was that, as it turned out, he had consequently been required to tinker about with an engine for approximately a five year period. Hey ho. Time well spent, as far as he was concerned.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she'd said, her teasing voice not sounding terribly apologetic. "It's…well, I suppose it's rather adorable actually."

He'd looked up quickly from his task, half-smiled, cast his gaze downwards again.

"I'll have you know it was a very coveted position! All the lads were after a spot, because you'd always get off school to do a funeral, and you'd normally get a couple of shillings as well," he'd grinned. "As a matter a fact I didn't care much about either of those things, but there you go. I suppose my face fitted, so I got it,"

Sybil's soft features contorted in surprise. "Your face fitted?" she'd asked with a smile, deliciously interested. "What does that mean?" she leaned forward from her spot on the other car's running board. "Are you a secret aristocrat, Mr Branson?"

He'd laughed, casting a rueful hand across his face. Wouldn't that solve all his problems?

"Not quite. My father was the headmaster of the primary school, though. And I suppose that means quite a bit in a small village in Ireland." He grinned wickedly. "Impresses the priests, you know?"

Every Easter, he and all the other boys in the village had been shipped off together for three days in Lough Derg. Tom didn't know about the others, but all seventy-two hours of no food, no sleep and no talking gave him was plenty of time to think about what else he'd rather be doing. More or less anything, as it happened.

The funny thing was that, as an adult, he found himself now looking back rather fondly on those pilgrimages. And all the prayers he learned at his mother's knee seemed to come back to him at the strangest of moments.

It was only after he'd arrived back to the house on that awful night, and they'd taken her away from him, swept into the hall with barely a backward glance, that he'd realised the well-worn phrases that had been echoing in his mind the whole way home.

"O Angel of God, her guardian dear, to whom God's love commits her here. Ever this day be at her side, to light and guard, to rule and guide, Amen."

"Please God. Please God. Dear Jesus, don't do this, please God. Not Sybil."

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee…"

Some prayers, some mere pleas – all tripping over one another in a repeated chant, calming his mind, settling in the space around him like something solid, at last, to hold on to.

The journey back from York was a mindless one. He passed Borougbridge without even noticing it, and he was nearly home by the time he really registered anything about his surroundings.

Well, nearly back to Downton Abbey.

The thought of the place without her there made him feel soul-less. The thought of what he'd just said to her made him feel positively sick.

It wasn't the best of combinations.

He rounded the corner past Rippon's village church, and briefly (inexplicably) considered popping in. It was Church of England, but it would probably have done the job in this instance. All he really wanted was a bit of silence before going back to face everyone; the idle gossip of the servants' hall, the hustle and bustle of dinner service, the inevitable depressing news from the Front. He could frankly have lived without all of it at that moment in time.

The thought, however, left him as quickly as it had arrived. He really didn't have time, he was expected back – the Dowager Countess would need to be collected for dinner soon.

Duty called.

It was a pity, he thought wryly; he probably could have used a bit of divine intervention, if there was any going spare.

His mother had always been a great one for the petition prayers – she used to say she'd enough children to keep her in them for a lifetime. The saints seemed to get the lion's share of her devotion. He could remember the day she'd come to see him off on the boat at Dun Laoghaire, little Eimear clutching at her skirts in the crush of people. "Here," she'd said briskly, pressing a tiny St. Christopher's medal into his hand. "That'll keep you safe. Patron Saint of travellers."

And every November, when it seemed one among them was inevitably sitting the grammar school entrance test, she would pull out a particular candle from the kitchen cupboard, so burned down that only half its design remained visible. "We'll all say a prayer for you Michael, you'll be grand!" he could remember her shouting on the last year before he left home, ushering his youngest brother out the door. "St Joseph of Cupertino," she'd told the rest of them with a nod to the candle, by way of unnecessary explanation. "Patron saint of exams."

St. Anthony was another popular candidate - for it seemed things were always being misplaced in their house. "Jesus was lost, Jesus was found. Jesus was lost, Jesus was found," his mother would mutter over and over, lifting cushions and children's feet. "Say a prayer to St. Anthony, won't you Tom, there's a good boy. I've lost that nice shawl your father got me. Unless your sister's pilfered it again."

Tom had never had any particular favourite himself. He'd taken "Patrick" as a Confirmation name, but more through lack of imagination than anything else.

Now though, approaching the grand driveway of a house which seemed suddenly so much uglier, he considered putting in a word with St. Jude.

Patron Saint of lost causes.

It seemed an age before he made that journey again, back to York. The days had been stretching out endlessly, the evenings worse. She was just everywhere, all the time.

When he saw her, though, it felt like no time at all since their last meeting. He certainly remembered it with all too vivid a clarity.

"Milady," he said stiffly, offering his hand to help her into the car, avoiding eye contact. The sole benefit of time had been the ample opportunity it afforded him to form a plan of action, of self-preservation; polite but detached, that was the name of the game now.

Sybil seemed to be willing him to look at her though, and something in him couldn't bear to disappoint her. Their eyes met as she grasped his hand, and he could tell she was anxious.

"Nobody's called me that in a while," she joked weakly.

He said nothing, just averted his gaze, got into the car, and drove. That was what they paid him to do.

"It's funny to be away from the college," she commented when they'd been driving for what seemed a silent eternity, her tone just a little bit too bright. "I hardly know what to do with myself without three people shouting my name at once."

Tom smiled, his eyes unwaveringly on road ahead. "I can imagine, Milady."

Not cold, exactly – but then, not quite like them either. Sybil frowned slightly, biting the inside of her lower lip. She had anticipated that this drive might be a little awkward; she hadn't expected to be quite so…painful. What a fool she was sometimes.

"Branson…" she began uncertainly, worrying her cuticles. "I… that is….could you…" she exhaled, exasperated by her own ineptitude.

"Oh, Tom," she began again desperately, and it felt like such a risk, such a relief. "Could you stop the car for a moment? Could you…could you just look at me?"

His face betraying no hint of his shock, he pulled the car into the side of the road, coming to a gentle halt. He felt as though he could hear his heart pounding in his own ears as he leaned round awkwardly to face her. God, she had beautiful eyes. They were the kind of eyes that could make a person do anything.

The silence strung brittly between them, and Sybil remembered all of a sudden what it was to feel the pressure of his gaze. He always seemed to just see too much of her, more than her common sense would have ever allowed – if she'd had any say in the matter whatsoever. It was almost frightening.

"I, um…" she stumbled over her words. "I'm not sure exactly how to –"

"Sybil," Tom cut her off quickly, then seemed to realise his own mistake. "Milady. Sorry. You don't have to say anything. Honestly you don't. The last thing I want is for you to feel uncomfortable in your own house." He cracked a small smile. "Or car, as the case may be."

"No," she replied agitatedly, clearly at loss as to how to express herself. "That's not…I mean… You have to understand. When you dropped me off that day in York…the things you said to me…no-one's ever said things like that to me."

Tom cast a rueful hand across his chin. "Well, I don't really make a habit of saying them myself," he countered quietly.

"No." she looked down at her hands. "I know. And I just…I didn't want you to think…" she sighed. Why was this so difficult?

"When I was younger," she started again, by way of explanation, "Maybe thirteen or so, Mary had a beau. I can't even remember what his name was now. But anyway, she used to write him letters and invite him to stay with us, go hunting with papa, you know, all the usual. And then when he'd arrive, she'd be so frightfully rude to him – you've honestly never seen anything like it. When I asked her why she was doing it, she told me that I wouldn't understand. That she was "playing hard to get,"" Sybil's nose crinkled in distaste. ""Treating him mean, keeping him keen," apparently."

Her voice softened, her eyes wide and beseeching. "I hope…you didn't think that that's what I…"

"I don't," he intervened quickly. "I don't. You weren't playing hard to get, Lady Sybil, I know that. You just are hard to get. As well you should be. And impossible for me to get," he continued, trying for a laugh but almost choking on it, swallowing thickly. "I should have realised that."

"No!" she replied quickly, leaning forwards in her seat as much as she could. He was twisted around at a rather awkward angle, forearms resting on the panel dividing them. There was hardly any space between them really, but it all seemed so unnecessary.

"No, that's…that's the other thing, you see," she said, looking plain terrified. "I should never have said that I was flattered, that day. Because that made it sound like…like I didn't care."

The words were all coming out in a hurry now, almost unbidden, so desperate was Sybil to just get them out and be rid of them.

"But it just so sudden, and …well, I don't have to tell you that my family wouldn't exactly be thrilled, and with the war and everything, and my new job now… and you…you had two years to say something and you never said a word, and -"

"Lady Sybil," he interjected, urgent and intense. "Sybil. Are you saying…that you do care?"

"I'm saying that there are a lot of good reasons why I can't."

"But you do?" he persisted.

She looked at him for a silent moment, eyes brimming with emotion, and when she did speak, each syllable was slow and deliberate. "I do."

It took her breath away to admit it. It terrified her.

"What does this mean?" he asked eagerly, wishing they were anywhere but the awkward confines of this car. "I mean, where do we go from here?"

She half shrugged, and all of a sudden he was struck by how young she looked in her nurse's uniform, out of the pearls and chiffon; the lily, un-gilded at last.

"I don't know. Everything's been turned so upside down, sometimes I think I don't know what I want anymore. I only know what I don't want. But I…I do think about you. I missed you, when I was away."

"I missed you," he replied quietly. "Did you enjoy the training all the same, though?"

"Oh, Tom!" she exclaimed girlishly, smiling like her old self again. "It was wonderful! I mean," she blanched a little; "there were parts of it that weren't wonderful, of course. But just the feeling of doing something; I've never felt like that in my life. I can't imagine how I filled my time before this."

Her eyes were shining, and he found himself grinning unconsciously in response.

"Well, you always seemed to get changed a fair few times a day," he teased slyly.

"Noticed, did you, Mr Branson?" she fired back without missing a beat, a mischievous eyebrow raised.

"Might have."

And as they sat unromantically in the Renault on a country road, laughs fading to shy smiles, it dawned upon Sybil that this was what flirting felt like. It was so unlike her -she'd never gone in for that kind of thing much, despite encouragement from her mother that had bordered on the unseemly at times. But then, she hadn't expected it to feel so much like good fun, like something warm and fizzy starting in the pit of her stomach and spreading to every part of her. On the many occasions she'd watched Mary do it (or Edith try), it had always seemed to be laced with something hard and self-serving.

"I can't promise you anything," she said seriously, when their smiles had subsided and all that was left between them was silence. It really didn't take much to remember the realities of their situation.

"It wouldn't be right. I… I don't want to hold you back. I hear things are kind of… heating up over in Ireland. If you wanted to go back…" she swallowed, but looked him straight in the eye, "you should. I mean…I don't want you to go. I want to be able to see you and talk to you. I….I want you to stay. But I'm not asking you to. I don't have the right to do that."

Tom exhaled silently. There was a part of him that did yearn for his home in Greystones; he missed seeing the sea on the way into Dublin, he missed the craic and the ceili dancing in Malone's on a Friday. He even missed the cacophony of his siblings, which had always seemed to reach new heights just as he went to sit down with a book. The papers these days were full of the rise of the Sinn Fein party after last April's events – and Tom often felt a restlessness, a powerlessness, as he sat in the servant's hall getting the news second or third hand.

But then, something about the woman in front of him seemed to just…quietly, inexplicably, (rather undesirably,) trump all that. It was a close run thing, he wouldn't deny it – but Lady Sybil Crawley certainly had the edge somehow. Looking at her now, her cheeks flushed with the exertion of her little speech, he could tell that it had taken all she had to give it. He recognised the feeling.

And Tom knew then, in the pit of his stomach, that he would never be leaving Downton unless he was taking her with him. The decision was gloriously, blessedly uncomplicated.

As he made the rest of the drive back to the house, with the new Nurse Crawley, he couldn't stop the smile creeping to his lips; like hope, rising.

Silently, he thanked God.

Not sure how great this is, just wanted to see if i could get their voices in my head a little bit before i attempted anything more ambitious. Any comments/ criticism most welcome. In my previous forays into the world of fanfiction (the results of which have now for the most part disappeared from the internet) i used to enjoy recommending other authors for readers to check out. In the case of anyone seeking some quality Sybil/ Branson stories, would strongly suggest you check out "thelastcountess" (who has a ff account) and "mysticbread" (who i believe does not, but is on tumblr). They have some great stuff!