Unexpected Correspondence
Letters for Kitty were a rarity. Since she had started working at the hospital she could count on one hand the number of letters she had received. There was the disparaging letter from her mother, now torn and lost to the wind, and a few apologetic letters from Francis who wished he had done more to help her, not that she could blame him for not coming forward with the truth about the supposed affair.
It would have been easier for Kitty to remain absorbed in her work and ignore her own lack of letters if she hadn't been constantly exposed to the love everyone else seemed to receive. Most commonly she would see Rosalie and Flora receiving packages and warm letters from home. Rosalie mostly received packages from her parents, which was no real surprise since her somewhat preachy attitude had no doubt affected her chances of making friends in the past. If any good came from this war it would be that Rosalie had learnt how to get on better with others.
Flora also received the occasional package of sweets but mostly she received piles of letters, a few from parents but the vast majority seemed to be from friends back in England. Late at night, when Kitty was struggling to sleep due to nightmares, occasionally she would see light in the corner and hear a few muffled giggles as Flora read amusing anecdotes.
Miles was less than subtle about his letters, he would often read them in public and if anyone questioned him about the contents he would loudly announce that the letters were from his many female admirers at home. During one of these episodes she had been standing near Thomas, feeling a little despondent. Noticing her mood, Thomas had whispered to her that the only female admirer sending Miles letters was his mother, who affectionately called him 'Millie' in her letters. The words had the desired effect and she felt a little cheerier for the rest of the day, particularly so due to the incident that occurred when Miles found out that Thomas had told her about his nickname.
Kitty had thought that if anyone was receiving the same number of letters as her it would have been Thomas, considering she had never seen him receive any letters or read any. That was until she started spending more time with him and realised that he received letters rarely but in bulk, often around ten letters at a time from various family members. Upon receiving them he would stuff them in a pocket to read later, usually accompanied with an annoyed mutter about how much pointless gossip his two younger sisters would have written. Despite the annoyance she would usually catch a small affectionate smile when he mentioned his siblings.
Suffice it to say, Kitty was more than a little surprised to receive a letter of her own out of the blue one day. The handwriting on the envelope was neat and unfamiliar, nothing like her mother's overly formal style nor Francis's near illegible scrawl. Curious as she was to the contents she did not want to open it in public considering her past cases of reactions to letters.
Later that night, when both Flora and Rosalie were fast asleep, she pulled the letter out and swiftly opened it, feeling two slips of paper within the envelope. She lifted one out and unfolded it, the writing was completely different from that on the envelope, messy and uneven and familiar enough to illicit a chocked sob from Kitty. The heading of "Mummy" effectively eliminated any doubt as to the sender of her letter.
Sylvie's letter was both heart-breaking and relieving for Kitty. Her youthful innocence was all over the letter, from her confusion as to why she wasn't staying with Mummy anymore, to her dislike of a woman called Vera who apparently treated her like a baby. Kitty did not know any women called Vera, but considering Elliott had told her he was remarrying she could assume that Vera would be Sylvie's stepmother. The letter went on to describe events at school that would be incredibly mundane to an adult but to a child seemed monumentally important. Kitty slowly absorbed each story and wiped the tears away before they could hit the letter and dilute the ink that the precious words were written in.
One read-through was not enough, Kitty read the letter over and over again until the words were almost committed to memory. At one point she turned the letter over and found a note in handwriting that matched that on the envelope. The note was from Sylvie's teacher who had helped Sylvie with the letter after Sylvie had found the address at home. Kitty guessed that Elliot must have written down her hospital address when he had managed to track her down, although she doubted that Elliot had intended for Sylvie to find it and use it.
The second page within the envelope was not a letter but a drawing, if it were not for the helpful annotations Kitty would probably have struggled to understand who each of the figures was meant to represent. Clearly Sylvie had inherited her lack of talent in the artistic department. The figure labelled 'Mummy' was wearing a blue uniform and smiling somewhat sinisterly next to an also smiling soldier who seemed to be missing a leg. Kitty couldn't tell if that was drawn intentionally to suggest an injury or if Sylvie was just really bad at drawing. Next to Kitty was a smaller figure labelled 'Sylvie'. Conspicuous by its absence was the 'Daddy' figure. Back when Kitty had still been with Elliott she could remember that Sylvie's drawings, no matter the subject matter, always included Sylvie, Elliot and herself. Kitty could not guess what had caused the change.
Kitty checked the envelope again to double check that there was no other sheets of paper. She carefully refolded the letter and drawing and placed them into her apron pocket before going to sleep and sleeping better than she had since she had arrived. No nightmares plagued her that night, only dreams of her smiling happy daughter.
AN: So I started writing this before episode 6 (yes I know that was ages ago) and was going to write it as Kitty gets a letter from her daughter and tells Thomas about it and that's how he finds out about her past etc, because I figured the best way for Kitty to tell him her past without a long exposition dump would be to talk about her daughter …. which ended up happening in episode 6.
As you can see, Thomas is not in this chapter. This is partly because I ended up writing a lot more about Kitty's reaction to the letter than I thought but also because I'm not sure which idea I want to use in the second chapter. So if you want this to continue can you please vote on an idea listed below. The scenario for the second chapter will be the same for either idea but obviously the reactions and context will be different depending on the choice below.
1. Kitty tells Thomas about the letter and that's how he finds out she has a daughter (i.e. alternate version of episode 6).
2. Kitty tells Thomas about the letter and he already knows about Sylvie (i.e. set post episode 6).