manwithaplan | Don't let anybody know that it's hard to live in the city.

Steve had never lacked for purpose before. It was a luxury few young men ever saw back in his day, so great was the need for soldiers. He knew that he wasn't alone; readjusting to civilian life was always a challenge, and there were some who never quite managed, but he had never imagined that he would be one of them. It made a twisted sort of sense, though: he had been just a kid, then, so determined to prove himself that he'd never spared a moment to consider what might follow once he'd achieved that goal.

Well, there was time to spare for that now. In fact, he found himself wandering the city often these days, either in the name of reconnoissance or in search of something (he wasn't entirely sure what). Today, it was both, but he stopped at the café when he recognized the woman from the park.

"Excuse me, miss," he greeted her, stopping near the edge of her table. "I'm not sure if you'll remember me, we met in the park a while ago? I'm sorry for not introducing myself then; my name is Steve."

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For once Sybil is not studying at the cafe, but simply enjoying a cup of tea in a bid to relax and try to simply enjoy her spare time. It's been a hard thing for her as of late. Ever since her time in that other Darrow she's worked hard to fill each moment; afraid of what might happen should she stop moving and working.

"Oh," Sybil stands when he greets her as is only polite, especially with a near stranger. She does remember him, and what he'd been doing that day which seems nearly a lifetime ago. "The artist? You were sketching I believe?"

The artist. Steve had to smile. It felt like a lifetime since he'd last been described as such, which was just about right. Bucky used to introduce him as, "My friend Steve, the artist," on the many occasions when Steve failed to talk himself out of ill-fated double dates. It had annoyed him then, sometimes only mildly, more so when he was feeling particularly self-pitying. The last thing he needed, he had complained, was to seem more sensitive. Now, he'd give anything to have Bucky set him up with some sweet gal with whom he'd have nothing in common.

"That's right. That I was sketching, that is," he amended, "not necessarily the first half. I wouldn't call myself much of an artist, really, it's just something to pass the time."

"Sketching is somewhere to start. I'm afraid my own drawing skills are not lauded. I tried, when I was younger, and my parents would guess that a dog was supposed to be a flower." There's no shame or reproach in her words, rather a contented memory that makes her miss her family all the more.

"I'm Sybil," she puts out a hand as is common now and not thought over-familiar for near strangers as it would have been in her own life. "Would you care to sit?"

"Thank you," said Steve, shaking her hand even as he sat. He still wondered about her and if he had been right in assuming that she had been displaced in time like himself. The best way to learn about others was to offer something of himself, so he believed. It felt hypocritical to hoard information without giving anything in turn. So he gave her this: "I had plans to become a cartoonist, once. Even went to art school for a while. I still wonder how much success, if any, I might have had, had I stayed on that path. But life had other plans."

“Life often does. I never imagined-“ she pauses briefly, thinking of the many losses that had affected her family. First the Titanic, then the onset of the great war. So many people she knew gone. It was what had driven her into nursing and now she couldn’t imagine a life without it. “I became a nurse, because of the war. I’d never had any interest in such a thing before, and now… Now it’s such a part of my life. So I suppose it is strange sometimes, the turns we take in life. What did you end up doing instead of becoming a cartoonist?”

Steve nods as if he were expecting it, but in reality, he's surprised to hear it. He'd known, somewhere deep down, that her life must have been affected by the war; there wasn't a single life that wasn't, in those days. But it's one thing to be relatively certain and another thing to have one's suspicions confirmed. "I enlisted," he tells her, wondering if she already knew that, too. Looking at him now, one would never guess the trouble it took to get the Army to accept him. "I served with some remarkable British agents, as a matter of fact." He decides to play it safe and say no more, though the SSR records must have been declassified by now.

“I’m glad you made it through in one piece,” she says sincerely. So many didn’t, whether it be in spirit or in body. Often it was both, the wounds of the soul so much harder to heal. She thinks of the death, of the awful things that happened and how one dear man had been driven to taking his own life. “I worked with so many men – boys really – who didn’t. Those trenches did awful things to so many of them. They always made it seem like war was filled with glory in the posters, but it isn’t really.”

Sybil pauses, realising that she’s talking of her war and all that she’s learned since, and that Steve may not be from the same time that she is – so few are. “I should say the Great War. I know there are others, after. It was 1917 when I arrived here.”

There are things he doesn't say now, even though the more he learns about her, the more he can believe that Sybil may one of the only people he's spoken to since waking up in 2012 who might understand something about the shock and confusion. She may well be the only person. But he doesn't tell her that for seventy years, he was presumed dead, one of the many men who didn't make it out alive. He doesn't say that it's impossible to judge whether he's still whole in spirit, that living with the psychological scars, with the loss, and the constant sense of unease hasn't gotten any easier for all the time he's had to adjust. Part of him doesn't even want to reveal that there was another great war after hers, but by the way that she paused to specify, he suspects he already knows something of it.

His face burns with anger, and resentment, and shame when she mentions the posters, but he doesn't say that he started off as another form of propaganda himself, either. "1917," he repeats, surprised; he'd thought her from a time a little closer to his own, but he ought to have asked rather than assumed. "I was born the following year. My father served in that war, and my mother was a nurse herself." That neither survived is yet another thing that he doesn't share, leaving it to Sybil whether to ask him to elaborate or not. If not, he'd like to believe that he's doing her a favor by allowing her to believe the best, if she would. "The Second World War came at the tail end of the 1930s," he reveals ruefully.

"Who knows, in another life I might have served with her. Though it is unlikely if she was American. I worked in a small hospital not far from Downton itself, though I trained in Yorkshire. Men from the region would come there from Holland or France." Her hospital was one for recovery, not one where she was treating the wounded on the front lines. That never would have been allowed, not for a woman of her station.

"I'm sorry," she mistakes his look for one of regret, the grief and anger she's seen from those who've fought and survived. "That any of us had to go through such things."

"I'm sorry too," says Steve, and this time his look is one of regret, but only because the conversation has taken such a melancholy turn. Then he remembers, just as quickly, that Sybil isn't someone he needs to shield from the horrors of war, having witnessed them herself. He is grateful that today's generation seems so uncomfortable when discussing war, if only because it means that they are far less familiar with it than Steve's own generation. There remain war ravaged regions of the world, and his own country is presently waging a war on questionable principles, but small victories matter in the face of such great horrors. There hasn't yet been another world war, and for that he can rest easier, knowing that something came of his sacrifices.

"I think the people here so lucky some times. To not have experienced that." To not feel as if most boys she had known had all gone to die for something that to Sybil seemed largely fruitless. "I know it changed everyone. But I can't help but feel I am a better person now. I never would have found nursing, for one. Likely would have lived the rest of my days planning parties and riding horses, living in our own little world."

Don't let anybody know that it's hard to live in the city.

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