Chapter Text
The second daughter was somehow more disappointing than the first. Mary, born the year prior, was met with wonder. Everyone admired her tiny hands and dark curls; the joy of a firstborn wiping away the sin of her gender. But when the house was told of the second girl, all gangly limbed and orange haired with a cry that one servant joked greatly resembled a tea kettle,she was met with open disappointment. A shame, some tutted. Not as hoped, sighed others.
“Unfortunate,” Lady Violet Crawley grumbled, watching as the staff scrambled about to attend to the lady of the house and new little miss Crawley. “A son would have been better, but any addition to the family is a blessing. And you are still young. And having children so quickly. The next will certainly be a boy.”
“Mama,” Robert, seventh earl of Grantham and father of both little girls, snapped.“Any child of Cora’s is not unfortunate.”
“Of course she is. She is not an heir. Until that issue is resolved, any daughter will be seen as unfortunate.”
“By who? You?”
“By the law of inheritance, Robert. My views have nothing to do with it.”
“And how is this different from Mary?”
“I could hardly be so hypocritical to begrudge one daughter, even in the wrong order. But once is happenstance. Twice is a precedent. A precedent no one wants to follow.”
A door slammed, and the baby’s cries still echoed through the house even as the ruckus of maids and footmen died down.
“Still,” the Dowager countess continued, “any precedent can be changed. And, if young Edith is at all like her sister, I’m sure she will be a good addition to the family; heir or not.”
But that was the problem, something the baby in the nursery knew all too well.
The new baby was Lady Edith Violet Crawley; better known as Lady Edith or poor Edith. Poor Edith: jilted, abandoned, and alone. Poor Edith: no beauty, no talent, and no flair that could rival her sisters. Poor Edith: no one’s favorite, no one’s friend, no one’s first choice. Poor Edith, now replaced by another in her skin. Poor Edith: one of the most unfortunate characters of the television drama Downton Abbey. A show she had watched and was now trapped in as the middle, least favored sister.
How had this come to be? She didn’t remember dying or any strange magical happenings, but one moment she was living semi-happily in the beginning of the twenty first century only to be horrifically born in the end of the nineteenth century, killing or at least replacing the original person that should have been. Thus, the screaming.
As a baby, her breakdown wasn’t questioned much except for a couple of visits from the family doctor. The young Doctor Clarkson couldn’t find the source of her cries, grief of murder through transmigration not being a common diagnosis, and simply pronounced her as a fussy child much to Lord and Lady Grantham’s consternation. Soon The servants began to talk. Such an irritable child, they whispered. So loud, so tiring, and not at all like little Lady Mary.
Lady Mary, a girl she disliked almost as much as she disliked her television counterpart. She still remembered when Lady Cora first introduced them, even though the majority of that time remained a blur of fear and denial. Cora held Mary on one hip as she pronounced them as sisters and soon to be “best of friends”.
“It’s your job to look out for your little sister, Mary,” Lady Cora said as she gently pet her one year old daughter’s dark curls. “When Papa and I aren’t around, you will need to be there for her.”
Looking down at the red, wiggling infant Mary said the word she loved best, “No.”
Mary said no quite a lot. It was usually said in a sweet tone that could almost be mistaken for polite playfulness, but the whole house knew that when Lady Mary said no she meant it. Mary only ever changed her mind if her father, mother, grandmother, or the newly promoted butler, Mr. Carson, convinced her otherwise. It was speculated Mr. Carson was promoted for that very reason.
Mary’s stubbornness, when combined with her angelic face and bouncing black curls, made her a cute, precocious child instead of a brat. A brat who happened to dislike the screaming infant she was constantly forced to spend time with.
As the months went by, the screaming became less and less, much to Mary’s, the staff’s, and the rest of the family’s relief. The reality of the situation settled in. The woman in a stolen baby's body couldn’t scream forever. No amount of begging, screaming,or bargaining did anything but make the strange world around her more hostile. So she settled into silence. A numb void filled her heart when the anger and grief had burned the rest away. What was the point of fighting when it did nothing. It was better to settle into that silent fog and watch the strange world around her go on without her. It would be fine. She wasn’t supposed to be here anyway, and Edith was already gone. Everyone would be happier with that. But by her second birthday, no one was pleased with the little redhead’s silence any longer.
“Why isn’t she talking?” Lord Robert demanded, looking worriedly between Doctor Clarkson and his youngest daughter. She just followed the movements of the doctor, following his lead to move as silently instructed. All the while she continued to look down at the ground and barely acknowledged her “parents” in the room.
“It’s hard to say,” Clarkson murmured as he continued to look inside the little girl’s mouth and gently felt up the sides of her throat. “You say she has never made any babbling sounds? Nothing other than crying?”
“No,” Lady Cora said. “Nothing but cries. But that stopped around two years ago.”
“And nothing ever since?”
“No. I don’t understand it!” Robert began to pace the nursery, growing more and more agitated as he had been of late whenever she was brought up in conversation. “Mary was talking at this age! And was babbling a year before that, but, with her, nothing!”
The little girl sighed gently and continued to look at the ground. Of course he would compare her to his real daughter. Everyone did and no one did so favorably. Although, she supposed she couldn’t blame them. Who would favor a detached changeling over a real child?
“One can hardly compare the growth of one child to another. Many develop at different speeds. You said Lady Edith began to walk and do things herself much faster than expected?” Doctor Clarkson questioned.
“She did,” Cora nodded, coming to sit beside her on the bed and stroking her hair. Poor woman. So kind, but she had already lost one child and didn’t even know it. The girl couldn’t bring herself to look at her.
“Well, then it is a possibility, no matter how small, that she is just developing skills in an unusual time frame.”
“And if she isn’t?” Robert asked.
“Then it’s possible her constant screaming led to some form of damage to her vocal cords. However, I cannot feel any obvious abnormality or scaring. So it is possible it could be-“ Doctor Clarkson stopped suddenly and pulled his hands back from her throat.
“Could be what,” Cora asked quietly, squeezing her “daughter” close.
“I- I don’t wish to cause concern where none exists, your ladyship.”
“Just say it, man!” Robert snapped.
“I apologize. It’s just that, I have never had Lady Edith respond to my words in any cognizant way. To sounds yes, even to basic commands, but never to any question in any way. And she often refuses any form of physical contact or to meet anyone’s eyes.” Doctor Clarkson began to shift uncomfortably as he too began to refuse to meet anyone’s eyes. “In most children, I would consider it fear of doctors, but you have told me this behavior persists even in the day to day with her own family. Could it be, well, it could be possible that Lady Edith’s issues are not physical but rather stem from some form of… mental dysfunction.”
“How dare you!” Robert shouted.
“Robert!” Cora cried.
“No! How dare you presume that my daughter- that my daughter is a-“
“I presume nothing, Lord Grantham,” Doctor Clarkson said, trying to regain his calm demeanor. “I don’t say this to cause alarm, but if she remains this way for much longer we must look at other options. Preferably, a specialist’s opinion in London for oral impediments first. But developmental delays, of any kind, cannot be dismissed. I would be failing you as your doctor if I did not at least bring up the possibility.”
“There is nothing wrong with my daughter!” Robert yelled, causing the little girl to flinch before he stormed out of the room. There was something wrong with his daughter of course, and with her besides. Not that it mattered now. Edith was gone and she was here. If not stealing her voice after she stole her life was all she could do, she would let them assume what they liked.
“I am so sorry, Doctor Clarkson.” Cora said.
“No, it was a sensitive topic that I should have approached with more care.”
“I don’t know if there was any way you could have approached it that would have pleased His Lordship.”
“Still, I do apologize for any harm I have done. And I do hope you know that the possibility… it is merely a theory. Nothing more.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Cora softly smiled, still tightly holding her not-daughter’s limp body close.
“Well,” the doctor coughed after a moment of silence, “if that is all you need, Your Ladyship, then-“
“Actually, Doctor Clarkson, I do have one last request. I was wondering if you would mind performing a physical on me.”
“Is there a particular cause for concern?”
“No, nothing like that. I-“ Cora blushed, a surprising reaction for her. “It’s a bit soon, but I have some suspicions that I might be with child again.”
Like a whip, the little girl’s gaze snapped from the floor to stare at Lady Cora. “Sybil,” her voice was hoarse with disuse but light and ringing all the same.
Sybil, Lady Sybil, one of the characters she truly understood and loved. She had cried when she had died in season three. It had broken her heart for her, her daughter, Tom, her whole family. All of them had been devastated by the loss, and to some small degree she felt that pain with them.
“What?” Cora gasped. “What did you say, darling?”
And now that future with those people was real. Now she had taken the place of her older sister. A person who had loved her and, no matter how little, had tried to help her. Now, she wouldn’t have that help. Wouldn’t have that love. Wouldn’t have anyone who could try to save her. But couldn’t she?
“La- Baby Sybil,” the girl stuttered weakly and then more strongly. “Baby Sybil.”
“Oh, my darling! My darling Edith.”
She hadn’t considered it before, stupidly. She had only thought of the happy endings and lighthearted moments. She had pictured the joy they were supposed to have after everything, not the tragedies and losses that lead them there.
She could hardly make it worse could she? A main character was already dead and another person was wearing their skin. The story couldn’t stay the same, not truely, and that would haunt her. Edith, the real Edith, would haunt her forever, but did that mean her life was to be wasted? Could the story, already changed, be changed for the better?
Edith, she had to be Edith to help her didn’t she? To help her or anyone, to change anything. She had to be Lady Edith of Downton Abbey, Sybil’s sister, Cora’s daughter. Looking up into the blue eyes of Lady Cora, now beginning to fill with tears, the little girl took a deep breath. It was now or never. “Mama.”
“Oh darling, oh my darling,” Lady Cora, Mama, began to sob as she threw her arms around her daughter.
“I’ll call His Lordship,” Doctor Clarkson, almost completely forgotten in the moment of bliss stepped out. A moment later, Robert came running in, his eyes scanning his crying wife and stoic daughter.
“Cora, what-“
“P-papa,” Edith said, slightly trembling as she looked into the eyes of her decided father. “Papa.”
In a second, tears filled his eyes as well and both lord and lady came to their knees to hug their little girl. From that moment on, the little girl didn’t consider her birthday to be the night of the thirteen of July, 1892. In truth, Edith Crawley was reborn on an afternoon in December, 1894.
As her new parents held her close and a few servants poked their heads around the corner to see the touching moment, the new Edith prayed a silent plea for forgiveness. She couldn’t save the original Edith. Whatever had been done, she couldn’t change it, but as penitence she was determined to live a good life and save her victim's little sister anyway she could. For the memory of Edith and the future of Sybil, she would be the perfect Lady Edith.