Dalek Week: Obsession 2012

"Don't you ever wish Deryn would write?" Janet asked Sarah Sharp, who jumped a bit, having been staring into space. The rest of the company paused what they were doing to listen.

Sarah smiled at her elder sister. "You know Deryn." She rolled her eyes. "She's not going to risk anything on her expedition."

"And she does have such atrocious handwriting," Maud said, renewing her stabbing efforts at embroidery, which Ruth was patiently overseeing. "Maybe the address couldn't be read."

"Did you see what was in the paper today?" Jenny interrupted, leaning forward, ready to share an exciting story. "That Austrian archduke was killed!"

"By whom?" Ruth asked politely.

"That's the thing," Jenny said. "No one knows! Well," she amended, "they *think* it was a group called the Black Hand, but there are rumors….that his own family conspired with the Kaiser to kill him!"

"Jenny!" Heather hissed.

"One shouldn't believe everything they read in the papers," Janet stated, rubbing her extraordinarily fat cat with firm conviction.

Sarah returned to her own work, a new shawl for Deryn when she returned. She'd lost the last one….doing who knows what mischief. Sarah could no longer remember all of her daughter's misadventures.

"Of course," Jenny sighed, "now it seems Austria's going to declare war on Serbia, just because. I heard the archduke's family didn't even like him that much." She shrugged.

"War?" Sarah looked up from her knitting, dropping a stitch.

Janet reached out and touched her sister's shoulder. "I doubt that Britain would ever deal in Clanker issues like that."

"But Jaspert—" Sarah began.

"He'll be fine," Ruth assured with a soothing smile. "He's a smart lad."

"Except for that bit about helping our Deryn to join the Service," Heather joked, trying to lighten the tension.

"She's not really going to join," Maud said. "She's a girl. She just needs to take her head out of the clouds." Then she sighed. "Although, she did spend the last of her inheritance on the trip to London. Dangerous obsession, flying."

The others made a collective 'mmm' of agreement.

----

Two months later, Deryn had still not returned.

"I'm sure she's alright," Ruth said with her arms about Sarah. "She's a smart lass."

"No, she's stubborn, and opinionated, and entirely too headstrong for her own good!" Heather declared, then returned her sobs to her handkerchief.

Sarah sat still, unable to really think. Maud took a pair of scissors and rhythmically sheared apart her current embroidery effort. It was the closest she would get to ever losing control. Janet made some tea.

Jenny grabbed the day's paper. "Look! The Herald published an article from the New York World!"

It was meant to distract, but fell on deaf ears.

These sessions of tears had begun to happen almost daily now, one of the six breaking down and the others left to deal with it. Today it was Heather, but Sarah was always the one to be comforted. Deryn and Japert were her children, after all.

Britain was now at war with Austria-Hungary and Germany, and Jaspert's letters had grown less frequent. Deryn never wrote, not since she'd left after her fifteenth birthday, three months before. And one of Jaspert's letters said that she'd floated away in a Huxley in the middle of a storm! All of them thought this very improper (though Jenny also found it rather exciting) and they'd worried for Deryn's life. But Jaspert also said that she'd been found, and was now serving aboard the Leviathan.

Deryn, not just Jaspert, was now at the center of the war.

----

"Who's the letter from, Sarah?" Janet asked in her most calm and unworried voice.

"It's from Jaspert," Sarah replied blankly. "He says he thinks Deryn is perfectly alright by the looks of things."

"The looks of what?" Heather asked, then pricked a finger while quilting.

"He's sent something else…." Sarah reached into the envelope to withdraw a newspaper article, hurriedly cut and folded. Sarah unfolded it with careful movements, afraid of what she might see. Her friends and sisters moved from their seats to peer over her shoulder.

"That's our Deryn!" Jenny exclaimed.

"What is she wearing?" Maud gasped.

"What is she *doing*?" Ruth's sweet face pinched in worry.

"She saved the Dauntless," Janet said, reading the article.

"It must have been dangerous," Ruth fretted.

"Look, this happened weeks ago," said Janet, pointing to the specified date in the article.

"How exciting," breathed Jenny, then added a belated, "and completely improper. I can't believe she's getting into such trouble."

"You don't think….You don't think she was in Constantinople when the revolution occurred?" Heather gasped.

"No, of course not," Janet decided. "Surely Darwinist airships in Constantinople would have drawn some headlines if they'd stayed after the Sultan's ride in the Leviathan. After that, there was just more about the Austrian prince."

Jenny had told them all in great detail about the articles the Glasgow Herald was publishing from the New York World about the runaway prince. She'd even shown them a picture. Everyone knew Jenny just read the articles for mentions of Midshipman Dylan Sharp, but none ever came. She kept trying, though.  No one else had had the heart to read it.

Momentarily assured that Deryn had been well out of harm's way during the Young Turks revolution, the six went back to the pressing matter of Deryn's trousers.

Later that night, when Sarah was alone, she looked at the article again. She let herself feel a squick of pride.

----

Several months later, another letter arrived. By this time, everyone was nearly beside themselves with worry, Maud, Jenny, and Ruth almost living in the Sharps' house nowadays. So when Heather read the letter, she practically screamed.

"She's not in the Service!"

Everyone catapulted to their feet. "What in blazes are you talking about?" Sarah yelled, forgetting herself for a moment. No one paid any mind.

"This letter—" Heather gasped—"is to tell us that 'Mrs. Artemis Sharp's nephew, Dylan Sharp, has been honorably discharged from the British Air Service—"

"Give me that!" Sarah snatched the letter away, reading it to herself. It was a standard issue letter, but Sarah found herself crying as she read.

"So she's come to her senses?" Maud asked.

Sarah shrugged. "I'm just happy she's out of the war."

"But why would they discharge her?" Ruth wanted to know.

The six of them froze and looked around at each other. All number of bloody possibilities filled their minds and suddenly 'honorable discharge' did not have the same golden glow to it anymore.

----

A few months afterwards, there was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Janet asked, petting her cat. She'd been petting it so much in the past weeks that its fur was now in patches.

For a moment, Sarah couldn't speak. When she did, her voice was a croak. "You came back."

"Hello, ma." Deryn shifted and smiled a bit.

Sarah grabbed her, too relieved at the moment to even bother with her daughter's trousers. "Deryn Sharp!" she scolded, or rather, attempted to. It came out more as a sob. "You had me worried to blazes and back, you daft mad girl!"

The word spread like wildfire to Janet and Heather, who were in the other room.

"Deryn?" Janet asked in disbelief.

"Deryn?" Heather shouted. There was the sound of running feet.

"Jaspert sent me that article about you and the Dauntless,"Sarah said. "At least you weren't in Constantinople when the revolution came!"

"Ma—" Deryn struggled in her mother's embrace.

"Don't tell me you were!" Sarah held her daughter away, staring at her.

"Ma—"

"Deryn!"

"It *is* you!"

With cries of delight, Janet and Heather threw themselves at Deryn. After several moments of prolonged hugging, Deryn broke away from them.

"Ma," she gasped. "Auntie Janet, Auntie Heather." Deryn was grinning now. "There's someone I want you to meet." She turned and gestured at someone waiting in the doorway. "Alek, get in here, you dafty."