First, THANK YOU for all your reviews and PMs (especially TammyTeresa). It's the reason I am here today… I started this story when the show was in S2 (so innocent, sigh) and my life was a lot less busy than it is now. The story in my mind has always been several chapters ahead of where it was in print... I have known the rest of the story for some time, I just haven't been able to write it; but those of you who have asked, who have read all 350k words thus far, deserve to know how it ends.

So.

Here is my OUTLINE for the rest of LT. I should have posted this awhile ago, but better late than never. I have most of these scenes drafted- half are complete, half need to be cleaned up and none of it is stitched together. I'd like to finish it properly; I hope I can. But in the meantime…

Here is the SUMMARY of the end of Lost Time.

(*** SPOILERS! ***)

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT…

Tom and Sybil never did return to Ireland.

It was their plan for three years- to go back- but circumstances prevented it. The first time was June 1920, their first anniversary and the month the baby was due. Under the auspices of an anniversary picnic, they planed to take the car, ditch it in Plymouth, and sail to France. The historic network of Irish rebels in France would help them sneak back into Ireland, via a trawler and a treacherous route into Kerry.

But Sybil's labor pains started before they were scheduled to leave. However, since Dr. Clarkson said the birth could be as much as a week away, that made they more determined to leave as soon as possible. Sybil still had a fantasy that she could deliver in a Dublin maternity hospital. Cora, who had a hunch that Sybil might not be done running away, visited her alone in the bath that night and warned her that if something happened to the baby she would never forgive herself and that burden would be hers alone; as Cora noted, she spoke from experience.

That night, Sybil took Tom back to the cottage (unused, the spare key still under the rock) she couldn't travel at least until the baby was born because it wasn't her life to risk. But she told him she couldn't choose for him. Being back in the cottage gave Tom, who had been angry and dejected about their current situation, perspective; he had most of the life that he had dreamed of and he could wait a few weeks, or months, to have Ireland. They vowed to leave as soon as the baby was able to travel, and to be a united front until them.

The house was happily surprised by the complete change in Tom, who put on tails and joined the family for dinners and cards; the Crawley women were charmed by his good humor and obvious devotion to Sybil. Robert was happy because he had convinced himself that the minute she became a mother, Sybil would "wake up" and that Tom had nothing to offer and she would want the baby to be a Crawley. It was under this delusion that Robert made plans- he hired Dr. Tapsell for the delivery and retained a former nanny to the royal family to care for the baby. He told a skeptical Violet that he expected Tom would be back in Ireland within the month- and perhaps the situation 'would resolve itself' and a divorce would not be necessary.

As Sybil's preeclampsia set in, she hallucinated she was on the ferry the morning she left Ireland after her night on the run in Phoenix Park with Liam and the Brigadier— who she knew was dead— was stalking her on the boat. It was clear to Dr. Clarkson and Tom that her distress was much more than routine labor pain. Matthew called Isobel, who arrived at the house just as Sybil's seizures started. Dr. Clarkson and Isobel tried a Hail Mary treatment to save her- a new procedure, developed on WW1 battlefields, called a medical coma. Sybil was stabilized and her life saved, but the brain was not well understood and Dr. Clarkson warned she could be paralyzed or feeble from the seizures when she was awakened.

It would be several weeks before that happened and Tom, wrecked by what had happened, Sybil's medical needs and a new baby, was forced to stay in the house. But he was helped by the radical shift in house dynamics. Cora, Mary, Edith, Matthew, even Violet had witnessed the catastrophic consequences of Robert's decision. To Cora, Tom became a son and Robert a threat to her children. She made it her mission to look after all the Bransons. She finally saw what Sybil saw in Tom and wrote to Mrs. Branson about what a wonderful father he was showing himself to be. Mary and Edith stood by their mother.

Robert was also deeply shaken by what happened, but he did not know how to make amends. Cora tells him he needs to make amends to Sybil and Tom. Robert breaks down to an unconscious Sybil, part of which Tom overhears; later, when Robert peeks into the nursery, Tom allows him to hold Sybbie for the first time.

Sybil was awakened from her medical coma in August with no permanent disabilities, but furious over Tapsell's malpractice. Dr. Clarkson and Isobel tell her she needs to recover and rest which complicates his plan to leave as soon as possible. Cora enlists Mary to help convince Tom and Sybil to stay for awhile- which leads Mary tell her sister she is pregnant, due in the new year.

Cora makes an offer to Sybil- if they stay, Robert will pay for a private tutor so Sybil can finish her education and apply to university. Tom, as much as he hates the idea for himself, tells her to accept. Sybil tells her father that she will accept- with the condition that he finally and fully accept Tom as her husband and his son-in-law.

Robert agrees. At the end of their conversation, he asks her what happened in Ireland with the Brigadier and the 11th visit that was not listed in her file. Sybil says she won't tell him and that whenever he reads about English brutality in Ireland, he will wonder if that is what happened to her.

Sybil threw herself into her studies, but Tom struggled to find a purpose at the house. One night at a Ripon pub, where Tom sometimes went while Sybil was studying, he struck up a conversation with a man who happened to be the retiring editor of the local Ripon Vindicator. Impressed by Tom's big-city credentials, he offered him the position. Tom turned it down, telling Sybil he could not and would not write editorials aligning with the county's conservative politics. But Sybil reminded him of his own story, and that there were bound to be drivers and maids and liberal daughters who yearned for a voice. Tom agreed to serve as the interim editor. It's a small paper concerned with local affairs, but Tom encouraged new reporters- including Edith Crawley, whom he hired to cover the beat of local women workers who were sent back home after the War. It wasn't his dream job, but it gave Tom much-need purpose and some money in the years at Downton.

Sybil created another scandal for the family in the winter of 1921, when she spoke at a York convention in support of birth control. She took the stage holding her infant daughter. Edith reported on Lady Sybil's cause for the Vindicator and also that the Countess of Gratham was in attendance.

The Bransons stayed at Downtown for two years. Mary and Matthew's son was born; Edith planned to move to London and pursue a life outside the conventional. Liam continued to fight the war in Ireland. That summer, a truce was proposed. Afterward, Tom and Sybil and Cora drove to Holyhead to meet Mrs. Branson who came over to see the baby for the first time.

Sybil attended an adult education school in York twice a week and with the help of her tutor, was on track to finish by the summer of 1922. After the truce, Tom was free to return to the new Irish Free State and the Bransons planned to try to resume their lives in Dublin.

But in the summer of 1922, the Civil War broke out- Clare telephoned the day the Battle of Dublin started, terrified that the whole city would be destroyed. Tom was rocked by the turn of events and that Ireland was tearing itself apart. At the height of the Battle, Michael Collins, the leader of the Free State government, fired on Republicans who had taken over a government complex in opposition to the peace treaty. Tom and Sybil traveled to Liverpool for a vigil at the Irish Catholic cathedral there. They stayed in the room where they first made love and Tom told Sybil that his dream of Ireland was dead.

The Civil War raged for another year. Michael Collins was assassinated and a hit was put out on Liam. The Republican rebel sent to kill him was John with one arm, whom Liam worked with at 6 Harcourt in the early days of Sinn Fein. John let Liam live, but advised him to leave the country for his own safety. Liam went directly to Clare at the boarding house and asked her to marry him and come with him to Spain. While Clare packed, Liam went to say goodbye to Aileen. Moira asked Liam to take Aileen with them, which they did. They settled near Mallorca, where Clare found work in a posh hotel and Liam made money writing short spy stories for magazines based on his Squad experiences.

In 1923, Tom and Sybil left for America with an acceptance letter for Mills College for women in Northern California. They stopped for a few weeks to visit Martha in New York, where Tom and Sybbie discovered pizza. The Bransons then went to Washington to see the White House, and Tom saw his father. Michael Branson was living in Baltimore and had seen Tom's byline in a paper at an Irish pub; he had sent a letter to him, via the newspaper, which belatedly reached him. They met alone for a brief and pained conversation, which Tom knew would be their last.

With the last of the past reckoned with, the Branson family boarded the TransPacific railroad for San Francisco to start their new life.

AND THEN…

Tom and Sybil bought a bungalow in Half Moon Bay, on a cul-de-sac which backed up to the coast where they lived out the rest of their lives.

Sybil went to university and then medical school and Cora came to the States for her graduation. She faced all the barriers that career women of that time did when she started to practice- men didn't want (and didn't want to pay for) a woman doctor, discrimination… but she persisted and became a cardiologist and a pioneer at the hospital where she worked.

Tom worked as a newspaper reporter and editor at the Chronicle and found his new passion-subject in the nascent civil rights movement. Because Sybil worked odd hours at the hospital, he worked part-time so he could pick Sybbie up at school. In the afternoons, he volunteered teaching English to immigrants. Tom discovered greater satisfaction in learning and teaching than he did in reporting. He told Sybil that countries and leaders and movements almost always disappointed, but individual people almost never did. He went on to teach some journalism courses at Berkeley- though he himself never went to college- about reporting the revolution in Ireland; and was very proud to have taught some of the star reporters who won prizes for covering Birmingham and the Vietnam War.

They never had another child, although Sybbie wondered if they tried for a time. But they were happy, the three of them. Sybbie and her mother rode horses in the northern California mountains on weekends off. They cheered the election of FDR and the New Deal. Sybil took Sybbie faithfully back to Downton each year. He saw Mary, Matthew, Edith and Cora in London or New York. After his daughter's birth, Tom vowed never to return to the house under his rule, except when Lord Grantham died. Robert requested Tom come- he did not apologize, but he did thank Tom for being a good husband to Sybil. Tom used the visit to show Sybbie the other side of Downton, and that's how she found out that her father had been the chauffeur- she had always known there was a rift with her mother's family but never knew exactly what or why.

In the 1940s, Sybbie went to a co-ed university at her mother's insistence. She married and had five children, with whom Tom and Sybil were very involved.

In 1962, Sybil was diagnosed with cancer. She died in the hospital where she worked, with Tom and Sybbie at her side. Outside her hospital room, after she passed, Tom told Sybbie the unedited story of her birth and why he was at peace now: Sybil had died an old woman, a doctor, an American, surrounded by the family she made and loved: "You know the expression 'found money'? This was found time."

In 1968, Tom and Sybil's youngest granddaughter came to the house with her boyfriend. His draft number was up and they planned to go to Canada. Tom gave them his car and money. After they left, Tom laid down to sleep, and thought about all he'd seen in his lifetime and how much the world had (and hadn't) changed, and his mind drifted back to the earliest days with Sybil…

I don't suppose… you'd like to spend some time with me some time. We could take a walk and talk, and you could tell me about the plans you have for your life.

The end.