My first Downton Abbey fic!
Title: Dusty Old Cup
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Rating/Genre: g/gen
Characters: Sybil, Edith, references to Mary
Summary: Sybil tries to talk to Edith about sisterhood, love and future plans, but Edith is not easy to deal with.
Word count: 955
Spoilers/Warnings: No. (Vaguely set somewhere around ep. 5.)
Notes: For some reason this came out as my first DA fic, when I had expected myself to write Anna/Bates or some kind of femslash. Maybe because I still have very mixed feelings about Edith.
Mary gave Edith a long, hard look and then she got up from her chair, quietly without a word. The silk of her sleeve brushed against Sybil’s shoulder like a sudden cold breeze as she passed, and she walked out of the room.
Edith looked tense and smug, like someone who had won a prize they didn’t really want but had to take anyway just because they could. The imaginary dusty old cup, awarded for the last word in an argument, passed back and forth between the two older sisters in a never-ending tournament.
“I wish we were all boys,” Sybil sighed. “That would have been so much easier. I really hate this thing you do, you know.”
Her older sister raised and eyebrow and said in the same tone of voice she had spoken to Mary earlier,
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She turned a page in the book she was reading - the book which had provoked the argument, Mary teasing her sister about wanting to be able to show off her ‘knowledge’ to Sir Anthony Strallen - and she seemed to be not in the least interested in hearing Sybil’s ideas about anything.
Sybil shared her thoughts anyway.
“If we were boys,” she explained, “we would have grown up fighting and kicking and rolling on the floor… But do you remember what it was like? If Mary as much as pinched you and if you as much as kicked me under the table, Maman scolded us and told us to behave like ‘little ladies.’ We were always told to be ‘ladies’, but what does that mean? You and Mary are constantly at each other’s throats with looks and words that are harder and sharper than what any fists or nails could ever be. I wish you two just could have a good fight and get it over with. Like boys do. They fight and then they’re friends again. But you two… you just never give up, do you?”
Edith had stopped reading.
“Are you finished? Sybil, that’s ridiculous. What do you know about boys anyway? Maybe you get your information from… downstairs? Sybil, what you’ve got to understand about dealing with the servants - “
“Don’t change the subject,” Sybil cut her off, tired of being told how inappropriate her behaviour was. What’s wrong with trying to help people, in a friendly way?
“So you want to talk about boys?” The older sister put the book down beside her and leaned closer to the younger as if to whisper confidentially in her ear. “Let me tell you something: everything would have been easier if just one of us had been a boy but there’s no point in thinking about what you can change. No, the only thing anyone cares about now is to find a suitable young man for Mary to marry, if she can be convinced to do what’s best.”
There was that bitterness in Edith’s voice again. It made Sybil shiver and she most of all wanted to reach out to her sister and tell her that everything was going to be fine, but she didn’t know how to do that.
“I’m going to say what Lizzy Bennett said,” she proclaimed, “’I am determined that nothing but the very deepest love will induce me into matrimony.’ I think Mary agrees with that.”
“Lizzy Bennett?” Edith snorted. “All Jane Austen’s heroines married for love but what makes you think we’ll be so fortunate? What makes you think we will get married at all?”
“If we don’t,” Sybil replied, “maybe we’ll have to work for our living one day. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? If other people can do it -”
“Yes, people who are born to do it. What do you think that you could do?”
Sybil thought it was quite exciting to help Gwen in her efforts to find a position and she could think of a handful of things she could do if she ever had the opportunity to do anything.
“The most obvious first choice would be to become a governess,” she began, but her sister cut her off again.
“Have you been reading Jane Eyre again? Sybil, you’re such a romantic. You read far too many novels, you should read useful books and think less about love.”
“So you don’t care about love?”
“No,” Edith stated, “I care about stable, reasonable things and about keeping my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds.”
Sybil didn’t reply. She thought about all the secret hopes and dreams that had disappeared forever into the deep, cold ocean, she thought about Anthony Strallen and about their cousin Matthew and she decided, not for the first time in her life, that she couldn’t make up her mind about Edith.
“I admit that I don’t know much about life,” she said slowly, “but neither do you. I think you’re wrong. I think that we will all fall in love sooner or later and you will fall harder than anyone because you refuse to get off your high horses.”
Now it was Edith’s turn to shoot a hard, cold glance at a younger sister and she got up quietly without a word and walked out of the room just like Mary had done earlier.
Thinking about what she had said, Sybil wondered if it now was her turn to win the cup in the battle of the sisters.
She didn’t know what she had said about love that angered Edith so, but the words echoed inside her like some kind of prophecy.
I wonder what Edith is so afraid of, she thought, of falling and loosing control… or of never finding a rooftop high enough to fall from?
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Rating/Genre: g/gen
Characters: Sybil, Edith, references to Mary
Summary: Sybil tries to talk to Edith about sisterhood, love and future plans, but Edith is not easy to deal with.
Word count: 955
Spoilers/Warnings: No. (Vaguely set somewhere around ep. 5.)
Notes: For some reason this came out as my first DA fic, when I had expected myself to write Anna/Bates or some kind of femslash. Maybe because I still have very mixed feelings about Edith.
Mary gave Edith a long, hard look and then she got up from her chair, quietly without a word. The silk of her sleeve brushed against Sybil’s shoulder like a sudden cold breeze as she passed, and she walked out of the room.
Edith looked tense and smug, like someone who had won a prize they didn’t really want but had to take anyway just because they could. The imaginary dusty old cup, awarded for the last word in an argument, passed back and forth between the two older sisters in a never-ending tournament.
“I wish we were all boys,” Sybil sighed. “That would have been so much easier. I really hate this thing you do, you know.”
Her older sister raised and eyebrow and said in the same tone of voice she had spoken to Mary earlier,
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She turned a page in the book she was reading - the book which had provoked the argument, Mary teasing her sister about wanting to be able to show off her ‘knowledge’ to Sir Anthony Strallen - and she seemed to be not in the least interested in hearing Sybil’s ideas about anything.
Sybil shared her thoughts anyway.
“If we were boys,” she explained, “we would have grown up fighting and kicking and rolling on the floor… But do you remember what it was like? If Mary as much as pinched you and if you as much as kicked me under the table, Maman scolded us and told us to behave like ‘little ladies.’ We were always told to be ‘ladies’, but what does that mean? You and Mary are constantly at each other’s throats with looks and words that are harder and sharper than what any fists or nails could ever be. I wish you two just could have a good fight and get it over with. Like boys do. They fight and then they’re friends again. But you two… you just never give up, do you?”
Edith had stopped reading.
“Are you finished? Sybil, that’s ridiculous. What do you know about boys anyway? Maybe you get your information from… downstairs? Sybil, what you’ve got to understand about dealing with the servants - “
“Don’t change the subject,” Sybil cut her off, tired of being told how inappropriate her behaviour was. What’s wrong with trying to help people, in a friendly way?
“So you want to talk about boys?” The older sister put the book down beside her and leaned closer to the younger as if to whisper confidentially in her ear. “Let me tell you something: everything would have been easier if just one of us had been a boy but there’s no point in thinking about what you can change. No, the only thing anyone cares about now is to find a suitable young man for Mary to marry, if she can be convinced to do what’s best.”
There was that bitterness in Edith’s voice again. It made Sybil shiver and she most of all wanted to reach out to her sister and tell her that everything was going to be fine, but she didn’t know how to do that.
“I’m going to say what Lizzy Bennett said,” she proclaimed, “’I am determined that nothing but the very deepest love will induce me into matrimony.’ I think Mary agrees with that.”
“Lizzy Bennett?” Edith snorted. “All Jane Austen’s heroines married for love but what makes you think we’ll be so fortunate? What makes you think we will get married at all?”
“If we don’t,” Sybil replied, “maybe we’ll have to work for our living one day. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? If other people can do it -”
“Yes, people who are born to do it. What do you think that you could do?”
Sybil thought it was quite exciting to help Gwen in her efforts to find a position and she could think of a handful of things she could do if she ever had the opportunity to do anything.
“The most obvious first choice would be to become a governess,” she began, but her sister cut her off again.
“Have you been reading Jane Eyre again? Sybil, you’re such a romantic. You read far too many novels, you should read useful books and think less about love.”
“So you don’t care about love?”
“No,” Edith stated, “I care about stable, reasonable things and about keeping my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds.”
Sybil didn’t reply. She thought about all the secret hopes and dreams that had disappeared forever into the deep, cold ocean, she thought about Anthony Strallen and about their cousin Matthew and she decided, not for the first time in her life, that she couldn’t make up her mind about Edith.
“I admit that I don’t know much about life,” she said slowly, “but neither do you. I think you’re wrong. I think that we will all fall in love sooner or later and you will fall harder than anyone because you refuse to get off your high horses.”
Now it was Edith’s turn to shoot a hard, cold glance at a younger sister and she got up quietly without a word and walked out of the room just like Mary had done earlier.
Thinking about what she had said, Sybil wondered if it now was her turn to win the cup in the battle of the sisters.
She didn’t know what she had said about love that angered Edith so, but the words echoed inside her like some kind of prophecy.
I wonder what Edith is so afraid of, she thought, of falling and loosing control… or of never finding a rooftop high enough to fall from?