Work Text:
One at a time, she'd let go of parts of her life. Frank, love of her life, when his lung went bad. Too young. The doctors said it was the smoking. She'd quit then, herself, that day. Then her sons moved out to lives of their own and everything was so quiet when she got home of an evening. She kept at her job as long as she could. Wasn't much, nothing grand, but she'd liked taking care of her customers, seeing them happy when she brought them their food just like they'd ordered, maybe with a little extra something, piece of fruit, chocolate biscuit, and always a smile and a little joke, and back when she young and still pretty enough, just a tiny bit of flirting. Nothing not respectable. She was sorry when she had to give it up. Feet and hands went crooked on her. She couldn't carry the plates, couldn't curl her hands around the glasses. But then her granddaughter came to stay with her. And once Della had grown out of her phase of being angry with the whole wide world (for which she had been thrown out of her parents' house), the girl settled down and was her wonderful sweet self for a couple of years until of course she had to move on, too.
So she got used again to being alone. She took care of things the best she could, still had her little flat with a bit of a garden. Had Georgie, sweetest dog that ever was. But her eyes went bad, and she could hardly get around at all, and she had to move to this flat in the same building as Frank, Jr. and Maureen had moved to. So they could look in on her. She had to give up Georgie. That was so hard, and she starts to sob again, remembering, panicking, struggling to breathe as the memories vanish into the darkness around her, and it feels like all the air has gone too, and what is left is his voice.
His voice is so soft it makes her strain to listen through her crying because, blessed Mary help her now and at the hour of her death what if she misses a word and does something wrong, and he tells her, buck up dearie, we can't be having any more of that now, can we
*****
Later, when they think it is over, because there have been the five bombs, Sherlock coils up in the chair, waiting for John to leave. So it can really be finished. So I can see the one hiding behind it all. What is John on about? Going through post. Bills by the exasperated huffs of breath he always makes over them. Now he's stopped. Finished? Sherlock doesn't let himself turn around. No, slower opening of this envelope. Dead silence. Should have looked the letters over myself. No, more of a distraction, however slight, this way. Why won't he leave? Sarah will be growing impatient no doubt. For her date. Who is just sitting there. Why won't he leave? There is still the last piece to slot into place. Who is it behind the curtain, the games, and yes, John, real human lives. Leave, why don't you, so I can make the last move.
The letter is from the Royal College of Surgeons. Annual appraisal. Revalidation. John holds it in his hand, and the paper trembles.
He finally sets it down on the desk. Yes, well, that's that. Send in relinquishment of certification in emergency surgery. See about gathering all their bits of data so I can be validated in my “current area of practice”. Nothing for it.
And he resists the urge to smash his hand into the wall. The hand that used to bind the shattered places where limbs had been, used to reach into exploded muscles and fascia, find the arteries torn and drowning a soldier's body in his own blood, find the ragged ends and clamp them shut and surgeon begins the arteriotomy closure at the proximal end farthest from the surgeon shuts out the cries of men and the flash of mortars that could blind him to the blood in front of him and the thud of mortars that shake the earth beneath him and could make him lose his balance but they don't because he can shut out all of it, all of it except what his hands are doing. Used to do. Can no longer be trusted to do.
He shuts out all of it and turns to Sherlock, talks about shopping and beans and milk, and leaves for an ordinary evening with Sarah.
*****
After the rescue teams and the evacuations (long procession of the terrified down the stairwells, people shrieking at every new groan from broken concrete and reinforcement steel above them), Della finds her parents, uninjured but for their nerves, and they're given the news together that it was Gran's flat where the bomb was. That there is nothing left.