.Part Five.

Armistice

When it finally, inevitably comes, there is no time to celebrate. By all rights, there should be cheering, hats thrown into the air and people dancing to rejoice at the end of a war that has lasted four years and a hundred days, has been waged across three continents, has hurried so many millions of people to shallow graves marked only by wooden crosses.

But when the time arrives, there is a short announcement by Matron, a two minute silence, and then back to work tending the influenza patients who mutter restlessly, held helpless under the spell of the delirium. The men on Kitty's ward are recovering from the disease, and the news spreads through them like wildfire, kindling hope that they'll never have to see the inside of a trench again, that they can go home to their families as soon as they are better. But some are silent, staring into space. She knows a little how they feel. The war has shaped their lives for so long, it's hard to imagine that it's all come to an end.

Slowly, ever so slowly, like the high tide creeping its way back down the beach, the hospital begins to recede. Convoys to the ports leave to return empty with the wind whistling through the canvas-topped trucks, and ward tents on the edges are dismantled into piles of canvas and planks. With every passing day, the hospital inches in on itself, and Kitty thinks of what will happen when Thomas comes. What she'll say. What they'll do, when they're both discharged from service. They've talked about it so much in their letters, turned it over and over, but now their dreams are becoming reality and it makes Kitty as giddy as she was when she was a young girl with stars in her eyes and a head full of clouds.

The tents disappear, the time turns over like the pages of a book. But still, he doesn't come. She wonders whether he's already gone back to England, whether he's waiting for her there, but he would have written, wouldn't he?

During the day, when she's not loading men onto trucks, or tending to those who are still too weak to be moved, she paces restlessly up and down the wards, wishing with all her might that she could squeeze the space between them into nothingness. When she's off-duty, she sits by Elizabeth's bedside – she's slowly becoming stronger, recovering the colour in her cheeks – or talks to Flora and Rosalie. Flora's quieter now, ever since Gladys died, and she spends a lot of her time writing to her beau or sitting by the little grave in the cemetery. The war's forced them all to grow up and to close the lid on their histories, and it's affecting everyone.

When December is setting in on the few tents that remain in glittering crystals of frost and loving fingers of icy air that delight in bringing a frozen, apple-red flush to their cheeks, she is loading blanket-wrapped convalescents into the truck to Boulogne, almost the last of them.

Then, behind her, there is the sound of someone clearing their throat.

She looks over her shoulder, and her heart leaps into her mouth. He's thinner, greyer, than he was before, but she would know him anywhere by the blue of his eyes that is the blue of the waves of the sea, crashing against the shore.

"Thomas?" she manages, her voice trembling like the wings of a butterfly.

He smiles, and then she's closing the space between them, wrapping her arms tightly around him and, to her utter mortification, beginning to cry. His arms fall around her, holding her so tightly that she can barely breath, but she doesn't care because he's here and the war's over, and he's still alive and oh thank God for this moment that she wants to stop and live in forever.

"I missed you so much," he says into her hair, and she takes a deep, shaking breath.

"I know."

He pulls away, holding her wrists and looking deep into her as though he's looking at her soul. "Kitty Trevelyan, will you marry me?"

Her breath catches in her throat, and fresh tears spring to her eyes. "Yes," she says. "Yes, I will."

By the middle of January, all that remains is the sleeping tents, and the offices belonging to Colonel Brett and Matron. People too have been trickling off with the supplies – Rosalie and Flora left a few days ago for London with many tears and embraces, Flora to go her to her parents and out to the country, Rosalie to her aunt's house. Soon, it is only Kitty and Elizabeth left out of the nine of them that had haunted this hospital for so long, and finally, the day comes when a truck is idling in the remnants of the main quad, and Kitty is bidding goodbye to Matron, trying to keep her composure in a tidal wave of emotion that threatens to drown her.

"I hope that life treats you well, Miss Trevelyan," Matron says, clasping her hand.

"Thank you," Kitty says, her voice thick with restrained sobs. "It was an honour to work under you."

Matron nods, and smiles for the first time in three long years. "Thank you. Now, you must go. The ship will not wait forever."

Kitty nods and turns towards the truck. Miles and Elizabeth are already sitting up in the truck bed, and Thomas helps Kitty in beside him. She shivers and pulls her coat around her shoulders as the cold, playful breeze nips at the nape of her neck. The gate is slammed and bolted, and the engine roars beneath them like a monster, and then they're jolting away towards the fence.

Kitty's not the only one crying as they leave behind years of their lives, buried in the French soil.

A/N This is a really short, filler chapter, I'm afraid, but it had to end where it did! Thank you to anon for reviewing! I'm in the zone of posting a few little oneshots at the moment, the first of which is called 'Angels With Their Rolling Pins' and if any of you have any ideas for more oneshots, please drop a review with them! N xxx