For the former things are passed away.

— Revelation 21:4

It was strange, Molly thought, the things a person accumulated while they were in hospital for a long time.

It was the fifteenth of February, John's last day as an inmate of Chelsea and Westminster. They'd received a joint lecture from his treating doctor on the do's and don'ts of his recovery period at home—very few of the former, a depressing amount of the latter—and follow up physiotherapy and care appointments before he'd been able to sign his discharge papers. Then he'd wandered off to the bathroom—finally able to walk on his own—leaving Molly to sort through the last of the various items around his bedside stand and in the flimsy little metal drawers below it. The cards were being taken home. The only person who had sent flowers was Mrs Hudson, regularly every week; the irises she'd last sent were five days old and being discarded. Molly had finally got everything sorted, and was about to give in to the temptation to make the bed as well, when John returned.

"Ready?" she asked him, trying to be bright.

"Sure." He sounded brisk these days. "All in order. Get me out of here."

He reached out to where his jacket was hung on the back of a chair, wincing as he pulled it over his shoulders; he'd been advised by his physiotherapist to put it on one arm at a time to avoid pulling on his injury, but so far had refused to do it.

"Oh, let me help—" She reached out and touched his sleeve.

He pulled away from her. "It's fine, Molly," he said. Still brisk. A tone she couldn't yet decide was hostile or merely efficient. "Let me do it."

"Are you sure?" she asked, hesitating.

"Yes. I'm not three."

"I'm just trying to help you," she protested quietly.

John had by then managed to struggle into the jacket. He paused, then reached out and squeezed her hand. "I know," he said. "Sorry. Didn't mean to snap."

She made herself not point out that he had meant to snap. "Is everything okay?"

"It's great." He smiled—too broadly—and squeezed her hand again, this time so hard it was uncomfortable. "Great. I can't wait to get out of here. And hopefully, I'll never set foot inside another hospital ever again." He paused and looked rueful. "Except on, or around, the fourth of August. I'll make an exception there."

She smiled back weakly, deciding not to ask the question that had preoccupied her, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade for two weeks: What about your job? After all, he was currently a hospital employee, though on indefinite medical leave. With most of his spleen removed, his immune system was compromised, and it was up in the air about how much of it he would ever recover and whether he'd ever be in any state to be surrounded by seriously ill people whose illnesses, if he contracted them, could kill him. She'd brought up the subject several times. He'd always changed the subject.

He hadn't called her Lolly since the day it had happened. Once, he'd absent-mindedly called her Sherlock. He'd brushed it off, but it had hurt. And sometimes, when his guard was down, she'd seen something in his eyes that startled her. It hadn't been there… before.

There were mercies to be counted. John was alive.

But he was not the man she had married. She would never see that man again.

A/N : This is a new rewrite of an old fic, a season 3 AU sequel to "After the Fall". The next in the series is "The Parson's Son", which is available from my profile. Thank you for reading xx