Author: Regency

Title: Loudly, From a Distance

Pairing: Bernie Wolfe/Serena Campbell

Warnings: Mental health issues related to grief/mourning and a variant of caregiver burnout, including discussion of depression, anxiety, and non-graphic suicidal ideation.

Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged that Berenice Wolfe doesn't answer her phone. This wouldn't be a problem if the person she most wants to hear from would email instead. Serena and Bernie pine from opposite corners of the globe. It takes Jason to make the connection.

Author's Notes: I love Berena. Come flail with me on tumblr at sententiousandbellicose.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Holby City. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

Despite what certain uninitiated F1s seem to believe, Bernie Wolfe is good with technology. She embodies the cutting edge of trauma medicine. She loves learning new techniques for treating patients whose very lives are in her hands. There's nothing she won't try once in theater, even if it's risky; knowledge is always worth a risk, in her experienced opinion. The thing is, her grasp of technology only goes so far in the personal realm.

Bernie understands how her stove works, can repair the engine to a standard transmission provided the damage isn't too severe, can even operate a military tank. What Bernie cannot do, does not do as a matter of practice is answer her mobile phone. It's a personality quirk, not a deficit, depending who you ask. Bernie thinks of it as neither, simply a fact of her existence. The way she is. She checks her phone for the odd text message from a familiar number marked Favorite with a star. She doesn't check her voice mail for the same. Years on the front lines have made her mobile something she has to remind herself to use instead of the appendage it is for others. She forgets to charge it often enough for it to become a running joke on AAU. Her pager, on the other hand, she never forgets.

Some things Bernie can be counted on to do, however, little rituals to do with care that have no relation to mobile technology. She props postcards featuring magnificent foreign vistas on picture frames that hold photographs of her children, her cousin Kate, her dear old dad the brigadier general. They don't say much, platitudes, sometimes words of longing, sometimes loneliness. She cherishes them as she might have cherished her wedding ring, had the marriage made her happier.

She pleads with her weary bones to persevere and asks for nothing more. And yet the silence grows between those bones, and it whispers all her insecurities, her doubts. Tells her that it's all ruined before it had a chance to start. Slowly, slowly, the part of her made as weak by the loss of her Serena as Serena was by the death of Elinor begins to believe it. Maybe this is all they'll ever be.

It's been twenty-three days since Serena said goodbye to Bernie and Jason at the train station. She had tried valiantly not to cry as she tried so often these days. It only made her tired and moody trying to be anything but sad. It left her fractious and prickly, constantly on her guard, too hard to hold close. Bernie had come to miss the Serena who cried, yet she still clung just a little too hard to this jagged pastiche of the woman she loved before she went away, and that woman clung in return. Jason had hugged Serena for just long enough and said, We miss the way you were, come home. Serena had been too choked up to speak and Bernie hadn't known what she could say to soften the blow that wouldn't be a lie. Serena had watched them from a window on the train as it pulled from the platform, her countenance that of a soldier going off to war, only the enemy was her grief and it had all the weapons.

Bernie hasn't heard much from her since.

After three weeks of radio silence, Bernie has become quietly convinced Serena has forgotten her. After three weeks of unheard voice mails, Serena is thoroughly convinced Bernie isn't checking her messages or charging her phone. Distance makes the heart ridiculous, though no more than love does. Jason finds the entire affair tedious and with permission from Auntie Serena he seeks to put it right.

Bernie has made peace with some of her sadness by now, is adjusting to a life where Serena, at her best and worst, is not just around the corner when Jason approaches her at the nurses' station at mid-shift.

"I have a message for you from Auntie Serena."

Bernie's stomach twists in a strange combination of longing and dread. Radio silence. It's all she can think about. Maybe Serena has decided she doesn't want to come back at all, that there's nothing left for her here despite Bernie and Jason's continued presence. But no she'd never abandon Jason. Then again, perhaps she thinks Jason has already abandoned her.

"Do you want to hear the message, Bernie? Auntie Serena said I should wait until you were free. Since you aren't in theater now and you're obviously not completing your paperwork, is now a good time?"

Bernie is acutely aware of prying ears on the ward. The tribulations of her relationship with Serena have been fodder for the grapevine for months, something Serena shied from with scars to show for it and Bernie increasingly resents the longer Serena is away. But Serena is gone for now, leaving Bernie with the sole responsibility of representing their relationship. Bernie has learned painfully the damaging power of secrets; her love for Serena is no secret and she won't treat it as one.

"Now is fine, Jason. What did Auntie Serena want you tell me?"

"She said and I quote, 'Berenice Griselda Wolfe, check your bloody voice messages!' The shouting was her. She did sound quite cross."

Bernie blinks rapidly, unaccustomed to hearing Jason raise his voice for anything less pressing than an enormous inconvenience. He mimics his aunt's considerable volume shockingly well.

It's the subject matter rather than the delivery that stops Bernie short. It's a fact universally acknowledged that Bernie Wolfe does not check her voice messages and rarely answers her phone. Anyone who knows her knows this and emails instead, or bleeps her pager if a medical emergency arises. Serena, more than anyone, knows that. But Serena is away (for now), and she has said more than once how soothing she finds Bernie's voice on the phone. Of course she'd rather call Bernie when she's homesick, just to hear a sound of home. Bernie is somehow still regarding Serena's absence as a day off instead of an indefinite furlough; she's struggling to accept how quickly, how completely the rules of engagement have changed. That will take time. In the interim, there's something more important to consider: Serena hasn't forgotten Bernie or willingly maintained chilling radio silence. Bernie simply hasn't had the presence of mind to key in to her frequency.

Face burning, mind awhirl, Bernie thanks Jason for imparting the message and retreats to the office she now shares with Ric Griffin. He's thankfully up on Keller consulting and she has the room to herself. She almost drops her phone a more than once in her rush to tap through to her voicemail. She knows where it is, she's simply become accustomed to ignoring it, a holdover from Marcus' streak of bitter drunken voice messages that came at all hours and left a sour taste in her mouth to hear. She has visual voicemail and it lists all the numbers that have left messages for her. It only goes back two weeks, but among them is a number Bernie recognizes, Serena's mobile no less than a dozen times, sometimes multiple times a day. Bernie swears and claps a hand over her face. She's been so busy waiting for a sign in the stars that she's overlooked the clouds, and they've started to fade away. That's a week of messages gone and I won't get them back.

Nothing to be done about that. She stiffens her resolve and selects the oldest message from Serena's number with a firm tap. She can handle whatever it is Serena wants to say; she's continued to call, after all, all can't be lost. Nevertheless, she's unprepared for the tidal wave of yearning that assaults her at the first syllable she hears in Serena's lovely voice.

"Day seven of you not checking your messages, I presume? I hope that's it. I hope you haven't just tired of hearing from me. I'd understand if you had. I'd…I was impossible there for a minute. For more than a minute. For months and you just…took it all in stride, loved me and loved me. Did I even tell you I loved you back? I meant to say. I must have at some point. The months are a terrible blur. I miss you.

"Embarrassing, isn't it? Me missing you when I'm the one that's up and gone. If you love me like I love you, I wonder if Kiev was this way for you. I wonder if you still love me. Don't answer that, please. I'm not ready to hear. I'm…I–let's just pretend I never said it. Draw a veil over it, as it were. I just wanted to hear from you, hear you. I suppose you don't have to hear me to have the same effect. I think I'll go to bed early, try again another day." There's a breathy pause that makes Bernie bury her head behind her hands. She knows the sound Serena makes when she's holding back tears. What she wouldn't give to be there to hold her. "Good night, Bernie. I love you."

The message ends and Bernie tries to hit Save but nearly hits Trash instead. She clicks Cancel and tries again, this time much more carefully. There's already a week of Serena lost to the ether, the rest she'll keep. Goose pimples prickle her skin and her breath comes a little short, frantic, like she's more frightened than she is exhilarated. She's both. Because oh god Serena's still out there, and thank god Serena's still out there.

She listens to the next message, the first of three on the following day. It's just a series of abortive sentences, still breathy as though Serena is trying to speak without crying. Half a sob breaks through before the message cuts out. Bernie longingly eyes the bottle of Shiraz Serena left behind. She isn't sure she can do this tonight, be Bernie the Touchstone when all she wants is someone to hold on to herself. But she has to hear this day at least, just a little more. Now that she's had a trickle of Serena's voice in her ear she misses it like a song she loves that she's starting to forget.

The second message is somewhat more composed. She can hear car traffic, car horns, and street vendors shouting in what Bernie thinks is Portuguese, and maybe the odd bird of prey squawking on high. Over all that, she hears Serena. Though she isn't crying this time, her voice is colored with a distinct note of melancholy. She describes the view from her leased flat, the smog of the city, the stifling heat, the bluest water she's ever seen visible from her front room. How she wishes she had thought to invite Bernie along. How damnably essential Bernie has become to her happiness, if not sufficient for it alone. Love underlies every word and Bernie's tense shoulders ease ever so slightly. Somehow she'd thought this was Serena's way of breaking things to her gently and letting her down easy. There's no farewell in her words, only the most steadfast affection tried by circumstance.

They should be together, Bernie thinks, not for the first time. Were AAU not in dire need of at least one of its co-leads Bernie would not have hesitated to go along. Serena hadn't asked. Maybe because she knew that Bernie would abandon near all she had to be with her. Maybe, as Bernie dreads to think, because her presence would be of no help. She swallows back the spark of bitterness as Serena's indifference to her declaration of love. All they had suffered so that Bernie would even speak the words and they'd landed like lead weights between them, too late, too insubstantial to hold back the tide of grief swiftly dragging Serena out to sea. Bernie loves her soul-deep. Her darkness, her daftness, her competitive spirit. That beautiful enormous heart and its Elinor-shaped crack right down the middle. Yet these many lonely days Bernie has wondered if such a crack is survivable and, if it is, if its possessor can ever again manage to love anyone back. She sits in the silence of their office (for it will always be theirs) staring at her idle computer screen, accomplishing nothing, and wondering.

Her listening session is interrupted by Ric's return at the end of shift. The tension between them has eased as they've found their old rhythm from Bernie's halcyon days on Keller. His sympathies are with her and his loyalty with Serena, never mind his ambitions. That's all Bernie needs to know.

She begs off when he invites her out to Albie's for a bite with the others. She can't leave just now, not until Serena's had her say. It would feel like an abandonment. She doesn't question why. Fletch and Raf appear later in their clashing scrubs but thick as thieves besides, the same as ever, and invite her for drinks, too. She passes, says she isn't hungry. She isn't, really, not for anything either of them could provide.

Naturally it's Bernie's complaining stomach that rumbles her and Fletch re-appears like some paternal angel for the lost bearing takeaway. He leaves it at her desk with a pat on the shoulder and without any unnecessary words of sympathy. So word has got round. Bernie can't summon any outrage for it. She hits play on the next entry. This is one of the longer ones by the time stamp.

"I met someone," Serena says, voice hushed and Bernie almost deletes the message outright, the remainder unheard. This is what she'd been afraid of. That's the way, isn't it, finally finding someone she can't see past and them seeing past her almost immediately. Serena had the right of it messages ago, Bernie doesn't want to know. Nevertheless, she takes comfort in Serena's heavenly voice and lets her talk, finger hovering like death over the delete button ready to put an end to this thankless exercise as soon as it suits.

"He's a bit of a prick, which apparently is my type where men are concerned, quelle surprise. But we have chemistry. It's odd. I can feel it there, right in reach whenever he looks at me. Heaven knows I can flirt for England but the impulse is entirely absent with him. In fact, whenever he comes near me I have to fight the urge to make my excuses because I'm always thinking of you. I know we didn't make any promises, know that I in fact went out of my way to avoid making vows I couldn't keep, but I don't think I know how to want anybody but you now. I can't reconcile it, being the perpetual flirt I am with this aching I feel without you. That could explain all the phone calls: you under my skin, in my blood like a cheap red blend–no offense to you, darling. How did I ever do without that before I knew you? How am I supposed to do without it now? Will time diminish it and, if so, is that something I want? Do I want to be without you? Could I bear you without me, with someone else? What a horribly selfish thought to have.

"I've been so selfish in my pain, and you withstood it all. I meant to say thank you so many times and my grief got in the way. Thank you, Bernie, for being my port in the storm. I'm so sorry I couldn't return the favor. I'd like to someday, to be what you need and what you want again. I hope there's still time. I hope you still feel the way you did when I was who I used to be. I hope and hope and hope." Serena emits a wistful sigh. Bernie wishes she could hold her hand, pluck the cigarette she's surely holding from her fingers and smoke it herself. Wishes she could snuff it out someplace nonflammable and kiss Serena till she lost all cause to wonder how Bernie felt, still feels about her.

"It must be morning there, my love. I hope you slept well, better than you do with me, even if you're with somebody else." She chokes on the last, though only just. "I hope you have a wonderful day."

The message ends. Bernie grinds the heels of her palms into her eyes and bites back a noise of sorrow attempting to burrow upwards from her gut and burst out of her mouth. A whimper slips out instead, small and wounded, like something abandoned to die. Bernie knows the aching Serena talked about; it dogs her every moment between patients and procedures, between shifts and lapsed text message conversations. She rests her head down on her desk, folds her arms beneath her to shield her pain from view. That's enough for today, she decides. She's been courageous enough for them both and she's become so tired. This is all too much to bear.

Bernie listens to the next in the car on her way to work the following morning. She took the evening to recover, to dip into Serena's undisturbed wine collection for a dram. She slept all right, too sozzled to grieve much into the eiderdown that no longer smells like Serena's skin. Today she doesn't mean to grieve at all. She can handle this, she will handle this, whatever new revelations Serena's recovered messages bring. It's inadvisable to let a grieving woman of mercurial temperament set the mood for her day, she knows, but she's grown addicted to the re-addition of Serena's voice to her life. There's some self-delusion at work, some survival instinct saying she needs Serena to feel close by when she isn't that compels her to listen again and again despite the sleep it costs her. The same one that makes her spray Serena's perfume in their bedroom (Serena's before, Bernie's now) to keep that little piece of her near. None of it is healthy, not really, but Bernie has never claimed to be the picture of perfect mental health. She accepts this and puts her mobile on speaker. When the light turns green she presses play.

Her first impression of Serena this time is that she is elated.

"My last message was rather maudlin, wasn't it? I'm sorry. I seem to be constantly apologizing to you, but I think that warrants it. It isn't your job to be my counselor, Bernie. You're my…you do enough. More than enough. Have done, always, more than your title required, be it best friend or co-lead or lover, girlfriend, partner…We never did figure out the words to use for us. I like partner, I suppose. But that's not what I called for, not the only reason, anyway.

"I…I've had a day, you see. I was out walking, meandering mostly, and I came upon a rather tragic scene. There was a construction accident in the city center, horrible, loads of casualties, not a few fatalities, and the local ED was swamped. Completely understaffed. I can hear you smirking because you can guess what I did next. Have your laugh, Ms. Wolfe, as you happen to be right. I waded in. Offered my assistance. My Portuguese is decent enough and their English is stellar. They welcomed the help. Would it be strange to say it was like coming home? It was. There was regrettably no you to banter with in theater and no Fletch to giggle inappropriately at the unfortunates, and no trauma bay to speak of. Just myself and my new colleagues, patients in need and my own two hands. No ghosts. A day with no ghosts, it was like being reborn! I wish you could have been there. I'd have kissed you on the ward I was so ecstatic, onlookers be damned. I think I'd kiss you anywhere. I wish I could do that now." There is a faint rustle of fabric. Bedclothes, Bernie thinks. Serena's voice lowers to a more intimate register than she's heard in months. Bernie pulls at the neck of shirt, skin suddenly warm in a flush.

"It's late here and it occurs to me that I chose a gargantuan bed to sleep in at this apartment. I'm a hedonist, you know I'd have chosen it regardless of my relationship status, but I'm especially aware of how much empty space there is without you here to spread your limbs across every inch of available real estate." Bernie laughs softly in reply. She's woken up this way at home every morning since she arrived. Serena's home is home to her, too. Serena's sly, fond tone makes her smile. "The bed's knocked up into a corner; I'd have to crawl over you every time I wanted to get out of bed. Not sure I could resist the urge to kiss you whenever I did. The back of your neck. Your shoulders. Your lower back." Bernie shifts in the driver's seat. Serena knows all too well how sensitive Bernie is there. "That delectable arse in those boxers you sleep in. It's a wonder I ever get any sleep."

Before things had gone awry, sleep had been something of a foreign concept for them both, and gladly so. Anyone would have been shocked to know how many Serena-sized bite marks Bernie sported beneath her scrub bottoms. How many hickeys dotted the soft insides of Bernie's thighs courtesy of her partner's adventuresome nature. Serena might never have kissed a woman in Stepney, but she could do the research and Serena Campbell is a master at putting theory into practice.

"I think about that too much. I don't mention it, I don't want to pressure you, that isn't what this is, but I always thought we'd have time for those little games, didn't you? Time for discreet naughty phone calls when one of us was away from home, and indecent photographs for just us two. I can hear you so very clearly speaking in my head, telling me what you would do to me if you were here, where you might touch me." She moans softly, leaving Bernie little doubt that Serena has more than imagined this scenario. She's living it right now.

Bernie carefully concentrates on the road, ignoring the throb of need Serena's tenderly-spoken ruminations has awoken between her legs. It isn't that Bernie hasn't felt desire since things went wrong, she just dealt with it expediently and privately, and then ignored it as less important than being whatever Serena required, however much she might have to sacrifice to do it. She clutches the steering wheel in desperation as the most exquisite gasp sounds over the line and fills the cabin of her sports car. What she wouldn't give to see the expression accompanying that exhalation. The head thrown back, that regal neck on display and begging to be worshiped, the heaving chest beaded with sweat, her nipples tight and erect from Bernie's teasing mouth, the languid practiced twist of Serena's generous hips as she grinds down onto Bernie's fingers in search of more pleasure, a deeper release. The angle of her thighs hugging either side of Bernie's waist. The sensation of being inside of Serena as she falls apart, her hands clutching at any part of Bernie she can reach as she comes.

The whimper that wrenches free from Bernie's throat this time isn't despair though longing has its part. She hasn't felt this alive in ages. Her skin prickles with arousal. Her fitted clothes hug her most aching places yet offer no relief. All she has is the pressure of the seat beneath her and Serena's sated, sex-rough voice to offer succor. It's not enough.

Bernie pulls over somewhere private before she reaches the hospital and plays Serena's message again from the start. She's going to need a minute.

For the sake of propriety Bernie doesn't listen to any more of Serena's messages at work for a while. She feels like a light bulb left burning too long as it is, her skin glowing bright enough to invite multiple comments from colleagues and patients alike. Even Jason asks if she's spoken to Serena because she only smiles the way she is when she has. She hasn't, obviously. Bernie hasn't been engaging with the Serena of today, week four, rather the evolving woman she was previously. The woman of week four still wants a word.

Bernie leaves the ringer on for her.

She gets a call from that number when her shift is almost at an end and it's down to paperwork and procrastination to carry the hour. Ric is working diligently across from her, a sight she's slowly beginning to accept as normal and not intrusive and fine. Still, when she brings her mobile to her ear and hears Serena's dulcet tones, she suffers a real moment of dissonance. Serena should be here.

"Hello, you," she hears and has to spin her desk chair away from Ric to hide how suddenly her expression crumples. A message is one thing, it's something else entirely to hear Serena in real time, to know that four hours and six thousand miles away the woman she loves is standing on the roof of another hospital listening to her, too.

"Hey. How's São Paulo?"

"Beautiful and busy but disappointingly lacking in Wolfes. I'm afraid I woke with a terrible craving and there's nothing for it."

"That's unfortunate as we have plenty of them here, and I'd say we know something about cravings."

"Speaking from experience?"

"Only the most frustrating kind."

"I'm glad you're finally answering your phone. I was starting to develop a complex." Serena quietens a moment, the only sound a practiced inhale, hold, and exhale known to all smokers. Bernie's going to bury all her cigarettes when she gets home, if Serena will allow, and all her own. They'll be each other's vices from now on, each other's necessary and sufficient forbidden thing.

"I didn't realize I was ignoring you. I haven't paid much attention to my messages since Marcus…I don't know about you, but I tend to lose a taste for hearing daily recordings of my moral failings very quickly. You think I'd have broken the habit when I missed Charlotte's first call, only…"

"It's fine." It feels anything but.

"I thought you didn't want to talk. That it would just be texting and the odd postcard."

"I don't think I could have pulled it off without a word from you. I enjoy hearing you. I'd miss your laugh–I miss it now. I tried to measure how long it's been since you laughed in front of me and I couldn't come up with a date. That's always been one of the best things about our relationship, how easily we laugh together. Losing that is losing us and I don't want to lose us, if there's still anything to salvage."

"You're not getting rid of me that easily, Campbell. I'm tough."

"You shouldn't have to be so bloody tough with me. I don't want to be something you endure, Bernie. I was in a marriage that was all grinning and bearing it, whereas falling in love with you, even the worst parts were a dream because I got to do it with you. I knew what you were worth, as a friend, as a surgeon, as a person, a mother. I knew you would do right by me and you have. I love you for it. I just want to deserve it again, that faith and loyalty, your patience."

Bernie cracks the biro she hadn't realized she was still holding for dear life. Ignores it. Ink washes off easier than blood.

"I don't know what's waiting for me on the other side of all this, but I'd like to meet you there. See if there's something to build on."

"You love me, right?"

"Yes." Serena doesn't hesitate, nor does she ask the reverse. There's no opening for Bernie to say she loves Serena more than her next deep breath. She changes tacks.

"I've got all these messages of yours left over. I've only heard a few."

"I dread to think."

"Some of them got deleted before I realized who they were from. The very earliest ones. I wanted to listen to them all and I was thinking Jason might be able to recover them if I asked."

"They're probably better lost. I was a horror show with an unlimited long distance calling plan and a stomach full of Shiraz mixed with bile. Maybe this is what saves your view of me. I'd rather you loved me than not."

"I'll always love you." As confessions go, that one comes easily.

"Let's not test that, shall we? Let's look to the future. Tell me, how's our ward holding up? Paperwork up to date?"

Bernie shoots Ric a guilty look only to find he's vacated the premises for the nurses' station without complaint. Ric has his moments and the two of them are quick to clash from time to time, but he's all right with her just now.

"It's being handled," Bernie replies in lieu of complete honestly.

"Drafted a ringer to get it done, have you? I wondered if Hanssen would take my suggestion."

"Have you been managing me from Brazil, Ms. Campbell?"

"It was the least I could do after leaving you in the lurch. I'll probably owe Ric Griffin an expensive dinner when I get back, but c'est la vie. It's worth it to keep the CEO off your back on top of everything else. How are the kids?" she asks casually. Nearly too casually. Serena's trying and for her Bernie can keep trying, too.

"Growing. Cam's excelling. Charlotte's terrifyingly brilliant, as you'd expect.. Jason misses you."

"Uh uh, I talk to him much more frequently than I hear from you. Regularly scheduled phone calls to keep me up to date on World's Strongest Man and all the hospital gossip. Has Jac Naylor got her claws into the Italian Stallion yet?"

"Not that I've heard. Seems they're still working out the nuts and bolts of whatever's holding them back." Bernie has only the most passing interest in goings-on on Darwin outside aspiring surgeons like Mo Effanga, but she's more than willing to put her ear to the ground if it makes Serena's day.

"I'll see your Holby drama and raise you melodrama of the Brazilian variety. You won't believe what head surgeon Emeraude is getting up to with head nurse Genesis in the on-call room."

"I'm dying to hear it. Tell me everything."

Bernie doesn't know if they've come up before in the messages she hasn't heard but Serena sounds happy and eager to share, so she reclines in her chair to listen to Serena natter on. She could listen to her talk for days after all the quiet. Unrealistic as it is, she's pretty much planning to do just that.

"You listening, Bernie? I'm not keeping you from anything important, am I?"

Bernie checks the clock. Her shift is well past done. "Never. Now tell me more about this Brazilian Sapphic Angst Fest. It's got to be funnier when it's happening to somebody else."

"Tell me about it. Get comfortable, darling. It's practically a saga."

It very much is and Bernie will admit she can't keep track of all the names of those involved, but that isn't what she's in it for anyway. It's Serena's breathless giggling at catching the named duo entangled in a laundry cart under the staunch hospital administrator's eye and her sympathetic clucking at them being forcibly outed by a jilted ex-husband. It's Serena's ease that's been missing for months and months coming over loud and clear. It's the Serena she fell in love with who emotionally, though not physically, is as close as hands and feet.

She'd call it the finest day of her Holby life, only she's sure the best one yet lies ahead.

The months that follow go this way: Serena begins sending emails to Bernie's personal account, the contents of which should never appear on a Holby server. She sends links to pieces of lingerie online and asks for Bernie's professional lesbian opinion on their quality and style. She sends pictures–Bernie's days routinely grind to a halt of over perfectly artistic images of shapely thighs in suspenders or a bare shoulder whose silk vermilion bra strip is just slipping off. She takes to reading her personal emails on her mobile to avoid getting flagged in the Holby intranet system and becomes awfully quick on the draw at shutting down her screen when someone enters the office unannounced. She'd recognize Serena's luscious figure anyplace; she saves every photograph.

Serena also keeps her abreast the lesbian medical saga and introduces the B-plot love triangle of veteran porter Tomas, visiting professor Mauricio, and his barrister life partner Ibrahim. It's a right shambles and Bernie is starting to root for these distant strangers by osmosis. It must be love.

Outside her seductive unwinding of Bernie's sanity, Serena begins to send more postcards, these crammed to the edges with thoughts and feelings, Serena-isms galore, each one readable in Serena's distinctive voice. Serena ships her delicate trinkets that litter Bernie's desk and her bedside table, that hang from their office walls by stickpins and silken ribbon at odd angles. Sandy seashells from the coast and linen scarves awash in Serena's scent take up such space in Bernie's car she has to pack them off into the boot when Cameron and Charlotte invite her to lunch. Her children share a look and ask after the mysterious woman who fills so much space a world away. Well, Lottie asks, Cameron smirks. He smirks less when Bernie mentions Morven and how she asks after him often. Lottie pretends to gag at all the romance in the air. When a rather extraordinary lunch with her children is done and she drives them home, her daughter leaves her with a crushing embrace, says she's happy to see her mum in love, now that she knows what it looks like.

It's Bernie that babbles to Serena that night, overflowing with delirious happiness that feels too good to last. She just wants somebody to understand who would recognize the feeling. Dom is still struggling to dig himself out of his post-Isaac fugue and Ric doesn't know enough about her personal history to commiserate completely; it's Serena who knows all, thus it's Serena she tells. That's the first night they use Skype to chat so that Bernie can gesticulate and pace as much as she likes while Serena listens.

And Serena does no end of listening. For all that Serena is notorious for talking, her ears work impeccably.

"Didn't I tell you it would all come together in the end?" Her expression, slightly fuzzy over their internet connection, is bright and smug.

"You did."

"Perhaps, and this is just an idea, you should listen to me more."

Winking, Bernie salutes with the glass of Shiraz she liberated from the wine cooler. "I can't argue with results."

Serena toasts her with a frosty glass of Caipirinha, sweet and bitter, complete with a lime twist. Bernie can't remember the last time Serena had wine. She hasn't asked about the omission yet. Serena will tell in her own time. Tonight, Bernie is thrilled.

One day when the Emergency Department at Santa Benedita, Serena's adopted teaching hospital, is once more in chaos, she misses their regularly scheduled call. She begs off with a hasty text signed x, with a kiss, leaving Bernie to find some other way to occupy herself for a change. She tries paperwork (the doldrums), then clearing her work space (a futile effort), and then she takes to perusing her mobile, mostly to keep an eye on the hour. She loves her job, but she is less motivated than ever to keep at it longer than required. Inevitably she ends up on Dropbox where she's downloaded all of Serena's messages lest they be accidentally erased–Jason's assistance in this was key.

She picks an old recording from the list at random to fill the silence and takes another whack at patient discharge forms.

"You weren't wrong, you know, to worry about me that night. You caught me at rock bottom, but I could have fallen farther. I think I might have fallen all the way if I hadn't found that bottle of Shiraz you stowed on the roof. I felt lower than ever in my life on that roof. My career in shambles, my family–what remained of it–lost to me, you becoming ever more distant as your helplessness grew. You told me that you could take any cruelty I could dish out because you were strong and you'd put up with me to protect everyone who couldn't. You meant it. I was the monster that you loved. I was a monster, and you would just keep falling on your sword to keep me standing, even as I kept throwing it back in your face. And I wondered how long could you have taken that? I was killing you and us, and that was not a casualty I could take after all the others. I couldn't be what took you down, and that's where we were headed. I was on a collision course with myself and you were more than prepared to throw yourself right into the fray, damn the consequences. I was never going to let that happen, Bernie. I never will."

Bernie stops the recording there. She doesn't want to know what she missed the night Serena went away. Her instincts had shouted down her better sense like klaxons before the Blitz. She had seen Serena too fascinated with heights and spirits and scalpels and pills. She had seen the signs and made circumventing them her duty when they should have been a warning. Bernie had busted an industrial-strength access door and half-dislocated a shoulder, but she hadn't saved Serena. Serena had saved Serena, and then Serena had saved her, too.

The thought festers for the rest of Bernie's shift. She's snappish with the F1s, short with Ric, and her sometimes problematic bedside manner takes a real nosedive. To her credit, everyone lives; on the other hand, there's nothing to keep her from answering when Serena calls after she gets home.

Serena picks up on her unrest within five minutes of answering her call. Bernie never calls. Serena calls. She decides when they get in touch, when they flirt. She decides when they take a break. Serena has made all the decisions since Kiev and it's taken Bernie this long to see how radically that's tilted the balance between them. Serena has all the power; Bernie merely dances when she sings.

"What's happening in that disheveled head of yours, Major? Talk to me."

"I don't want to talk about it." Her voice is chilly even by her conservative standards. "Leave it alone, Serena." Bernie carefully modulates her tone. She doesn't want to fight. They haven't fought since they got in touch and she doesn't want to now. Only she can't stop thinking about what she heard.

"Okay," Serena says, carefully. "For what it's worth, silence never solves anything."

"Worked for you." Bernie pinches the bridge of her nose where an incipient tension headache dully throbs. She leans over Serena's side of the bed to turn out the lights and tries to drown herself int the ensuing dark.

"That's the path you want to take? Let's see, I'm six thousand miles from my family, in a country where I only know the takeout delivery people and the surgeons on my temporary ward; my bed is too big and I've just about forgotten the color of my late daughter's eyes because I burned every picture of her I brought along. I'd say silence is far from golden, not that you should take my word for it. Go on like this, push me away, Berenice; I've earned that. You haven't. Suffering for its own sake is pants, it's not a keepsake to hoard for your collection. Pick something else."

"Like what?"

"Like peace, for instance. That doesn't come without giving something up; the refuge of fury, to name an example. You've been holding everything inside for me, for months. Stop. Stop, Berenice. Do that for you."

Pathetic as it is, Bernie isn't sure she remembers how.

"I have to go," she rasps, fingers pressed into her aching temples till pinpricks of light flash in front of her eyes.

Serena doesn't protest. She doesn't call back. This is Bernie's choice.

The balance shifts.

This time it's Serena that does the pacing and the waiting and the worrying that haunted Bernie's early weeks without her. It's Serena who texts and emails till Bernie answers her just to get her to stop. Like old times, Bernie thinks bitterly and is instantly filled with contrition that she's put Serena on the offense a second time. Serena can't be blamed for Bernie's prior tendency to run from emotional confrontation any more than Bernie can hold herself accountable for Serena's unwitting sins of omission. They're separate entities who share a bond, but they're ultimately only responsible for themselves. That's how she likes them, individual yet together, singular and deliciously entwined, bound.

It's the pull of that connection which forces her to stop burying her head in the sand, and in drinking games at Albie's after shift's end, and in five-mile runs at all hours, and in irately poring over all the hints she overlooked for months while waking up next to Serena almost every day. Is it the not knowing or the confirmation that I could have done more that galls? She doesn't know and it's that uncertainty which sends her back to the recording late one night.

She listens to it once in its entirety before deleting it from existence:

"I stood there on the ledge and I thought about ending it. At least it won't hurt anymore, I thought. At least I don't have to live with this anymore. At least I can stop hurting everyone who loves me like some out-of-control monster. At least I don't have to see that devastation in your eyes again or count the minutes till you leave after a fight and don't return.

"You know what stopped me? I'd like to say it was you or Jason or anything so romantic as the power of love, but it wasn't. It was the idea that Elinor would have laughed at me for this. She would have found it ridiculous, me the fearsome doctor, the harrowing administrator, the consummate professional, standing on a ledge like some disgusting cliche. And for what? Under the fantastical assumption that I might see her again after death? She'd have told me it was nothing to do with her, I was just being dramatic. So says the former stage performer." Serena laughs; Bernie hears the weeping it hides. "Or she would have. I think she would have. She would have been right.

"I would have given anything to hold my little girl again. To keep her heart beating in another chest, at minimum. I couldn't do either. I can't do either. And when it came down it, I couldn't bear what it would do to Jason to lose me. Even the pathetically little that's left of me. I'm still a new addition to his life, his new stability, and I've mucked it up beyond recognition, maybe beyond repair. But my death would leave a wound on him he doesn't deserve. He's the only child I have left, I couldn't leave him.

"Then there was you. I thought about you left to do the hard bits, again: To find me and identify me. To tell the others. To explain to the Board how a surgeon so obviously on the edge was permitted to continue treating patients. To box up the house and parse out my belongings. To settle my affairs because who else could I trust to handle it? And the guilt you would carry, I couldn't stand it. You carry guilt like it's an Olympic sport and you're going for gold. I would never do it to you. That's when I found the wine and then blankets. Remember when we used to huddle on the roof at the end of shift to decompress? How many times were we almost caught with our pants quite literally down around our ankles? Seemed a shame to sully all those glorious memories when we've had so few.

"So, yes, I thought about it, Bernie. Yes, you were right to worry. I thought about it and I said no. It will never ever happen, but you deserve to know it might have. Otherwise, there's no chance for us, and I hope there is."

Bernie dumps out the glass of Shiraz she's been clasping as a talisman and dials Serena despite the hour (0200, São Paulo time). Serena picks up before the second ring.

They talk until it's time for Bernie to ready herself for work and then that night they talk again. Bernie doesn't contribute much of substance; she only wants to hear Serena breathe.

She wakes the morning after to a text from Serena: I'm not alive for you, I'm alive for me, but you are part of the reason.

Weeks later, it's Serena who recommends Bernie talk to a professional, any professional of her choice, of any specialty she decides, because she knows that she is not outlet enough for all the things Bernie feels she cannot say, and certainly not for the thoughts that pertain to her.

"I would do anything for you, but what I won't do is stand idly by while you become as bitter and poisonous as me. I love you too much."

Bernie is hugging her legs, wishing Serena were here to rest her head on. She doesn't put up a fight. She's tired of waging this one-woman war. "I'll go."

Bernie Wolfe is not a model patient. She is truculent and difficult. She is standoffish and mulish. Her therapist is patient. Bernie is not. She is resentful.

Resentful of being questioned and found wanting. Resentful of having her wounds prodded. Her children. Her marriage. Alex. Her injuries. The Army. Resentful of anyone intruding on the relationship she loves and has waited her lengthy adult life to find. Resentful of Serena being called an "emotional burden" when she's Serena to Bernie and nothing of the kind.

She is resentful when her therapist questions her impudent anger and she finds she has no reply.

Bernie Wolfe has been angry for a long time, about countless things. Guilt hid the bulk of it. Shame some of it. Old-fashioned British reserve camouflaged the rest. She almost lost herself, she did for a time lose her family, and Serena is only just in arm's reach. Bernie is angry, still, low and simmering, about how helpless recent events have left her. She can't repair all broken hearts, can't undo death. She's useless in all the ways that count, isn't she? She is so tired of being angry and helpless and useless. She fears what that anger could cost her, who'll pay dearly for all the miracles she fails to perform next.

The diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress is expected. The depression less so, and the anxiety not at all. Major Wolfe thrives under stressful situations. She couldn't be the surgeon she is if she didn't.

When she tells Serena this over the course of several phone calls, when she can manage the words, Serena doesn't sound very surprised, just supportive.

"We've all got some oddity, we all struggle. It's all right, Bernie. We'll get through. We'll get by."

It's all we and us and no end date in sight. 'I hope so,' Serena had said once on a dark, cold roof. Now she says, 'we will.'

At last, Bernie can breathe.

When Serena makes it known she intends to return to Holby, several things occur at once: Celebrating by her supporters. Groaning from her detractors. And smiling but implacable silence from her partner. For someone who had been vocally proud and defensive of the brilliant if occasionally cantankerous woman she loves, her silence is baffling and the gossip mongers draw their own conclusions, leaving Bernie decidedly oblivious.

Once Bernie finally hears all the messages Serena left her, it occurs to her that she can leave Serena messages in return. Communication goes both ways in the best relationships, after all. This one is a fait accompli, and the best there is; Bernie only wants the best for it. So she begins to leave Serena messages for the days when there isn't time enough for them to speak. Never much of a talker compared to Serena, hers tend to run short and sweet:

- "Don't drink too much caipirinha. You won't be able to keep the details straight on our favorite telenovela if you're soused."

- "We'll have to go out for fried plantains when you get home so you can tell me how they compare to native fare."

- "You've been to Paris, but we've never been together. We should go sometime. La France est très, très belle en été."

- "Met a striking brunette today. Very mouthy and that attitude, reminded me of you. A shame about her being 78; I bet she could have given you a run for your money in her day."

- "I miss you. That's all I wanted to say. Talk to you soon."

Bernie finds out much, much later that Jason helps Serena save those, too.

By mutual agreement, Bernie doesn't pick Serena up from the airport. They talk as usual and text more than ever, but no face to face contact, not yet. Serena has damage control to do. Bernie can and will wait her turn.

Serena spends her first days in Holby City seeing an area therapist, this one private and unaffiliated with the hospital to avoid the inevitable spread of new chatter about Crazy Campbell or the girl she has almost constantly left in tatters. She does it for her own sake (to Bernie's relief) and Bernie's (to her frustration) to establish a safeguard that isn't the woman she makes love to, who can call her to the carpet without risking heartbreak. She does it to honor the faith Henrik Hanssen placed in her, and as a small olive branch to Jasmine Burrows. She is being her very best self to make amends for the worst she's put on show.

As reward, she gets an inbox of husky plaudits from Bernie and an exhaustive list of what Bernie means to do to her when she finds her way back home. Huzzah for positive reinforcement. Serena excels at playing the bad girl for pleasure but for what the future promises she can be good enough.

The air on AAU on the day of Serena's official return is a miasma of anxiety and anticipation for everyone save Bernie. Among the others, even those who know Serena well enough to love her, there is the question of whether they as a unit can come back from this. Four and a half months suddenly don't seem quite sufficient, if any length of time could do the trick. There's trust to rebuild and a decided willingness to rebuild it. Serena will set the tone and they'll follow her, just as before.

Bernie knows this and takes comfort in the certainty the thought brings. She tries to bolster flagging spirits in Morven and discomfiture in Jason when certain busybody porters pass on word that Serena has entered the building. She pats Ric's shoulder in solidarity when Hanssen makes it known he'll be welcoming her back personally. She pointedly ignores money changing hands between Fletch and those who wrongly called for the fall of AAU's resident part-time ice queen.

When Serena finally, physically appears Bernie likely makes a poor showing of stoicism. Her breath quickens when she spies Serena's silhouette through the entry door windows. It's the shapely neck that captures her attention. Next, the slope of her shoulders. The angle of her jaw. The inviting, too long absent warmth in her eyes when first she sees them. Bernie's abruptly chock full of eagerness to immerse herself in Serena's arms, to learn this new, buffed and polished Serena with the thorough intimacy that she had known the old. It doesn't frighten her, it excites her. She's suffused with tension of the most sensual variety while Hanssen attempts to wrangle the staff's attention. As though any of them has eyes for anybody but the sorely missed consultant at his side.

He manages it eventually only to instantly cede the floor to a visibly nervy Serena. Bernie tries to convey with her eyes alone the depth of her support so she'll know, if she has any doubts, that Bernie's with her already. Always. Serena's frank nod is a touching affirmation.

"Speeches aren't much my forte these days so I'll keep this brief. I made a lot of mistakes in my grief for Elinor and you stood by me. In trying to re-earn your trust I'll likely make more, but if you'll have my back I'll have yours, not the same as before but better. I am sorry for the disruptions and the tension I caused, for my own ghastly behavior. I hope in time to regain your faith in my abilities as mine in yours has never faltered. Thank you."

Bernie barely restrains herself from embracing Serena during the miniature applause the erupts following her rather rousing speech, this one led by Fletch and Raf, who's returned especially for the occasion, and Hanssen who has only wanted to see Serena home again.

It isn't easy or instant but Serena is very swiftly and completely brought back into the fold. They have all of them just been awaiting their cue.

No less than half an hour elapses before Bernie manages to smuggle Serena away from her welcome home party into their office for a moment to themselves.

They share a long look. Campbell and Wolfe together again.

Bernie clears her throat. She could look at Serena forever. "What did Hanssen say when you met up?" He would have wanted assurances about Serena's recovery, her readiness to interact with other staff, up to and including Jasmine and Jac Naylor. Bernie doesn't envy Serena her future consults on Darwin.

"Probation. Ninety days."

Bernie crosses her arms, her hackles rising on her partner's behalf. "What for?"

"It was my idea. I could use some structure as I'm finding my feet again. You lead and I'll follow."

"That'll be the day." She scoffs. Serena Campbell is made for management, following doesn't suit.

Serena squeezes her arm and it gives Bernie a jolt. This is the first time they've touched in a century it feels like. "I mean it. You've put in the time, you know what's current with regard to staffing and procedural matters. I'm playing catch-up and I can't do that and take the lead. Not yet."

Bernie blinks in astonishment. "Are you for real?"

Serena grimaces. "I'm not going to say it again, you heard me."

Bernie laughs and covers Serena's lingering hand with hers. "There's the Serena I know."

She smiles wistfully. "It's been a while."

Bernie nods. She's counted the days. "It has."

As Bernie permits herself to take Serena in she has a number of competing thoughts: Her hair! chief among them and her fingers itch to scrape through the shorn silver locks till Serena purrs. She notes how much slimmer Serena is and wordlessly frets that she should have been there to keep after her and put food in her hands when she was too grief-stricken to eat, but Serena is alive and looks healthy enough despite the change; Serena did as she said they would, Serena got by.

A touch-starved voice in back of her brain opines that at least Serena will be easier to lift onto the kitchen island when they get home. To spread across the dining room table. To carry up the stairs. Any amount of Serena is enough for Bernie, whatever her size. That is, if the hotel where she's been staying will let her check out so soon. If that's what Serena wants.

Serena reads into her silence. "I hope you're not too disappointed."

"Disappointment isn't in the top 50 emotions I'm experiencing at the moment." Joy is uppermost among them. "Trying to remember all the reasons I shouldn't kiss you right now."

Serena's hand tightens around hers. Her grip remains strong and true. She's here and whole. She's home. She came back.

"The blinds are open," she offers, stepping closer. Bernie inhales her scent, pulls her just a little bit closer.

"That's one." She counts on her fingers. One.

"Our colleagues are watching," remarks Serena skeptically.

Two. Bernie shrugs and loses interest in keeping count. She fits her other hand along the column of Serena's throat to feel her gulp at Bernie's touch. Bernie's skin hums at Serena's nearness. How did I get on without this? "Nothing they haven't seen before."

"Might scare the F1s?" Serena's eyes are dark and wide. Fearless in a new way.

"They'll need to develop a thicker skin if two women in love puts them off."

Serena snickers, a sound more incredible to the naked ear than Skype or phone or audio recording could ever hope to convey. "I missed you," she says when it passes.

"Good," quips Bernie, trying and failing not to stare in naked adoration. "Next time you'd better take me with you."

"Next time we'll go together and make it a real holiday instead of a working vacation. Speaking of, we're going to be hosting some visiting Brazilian surgeons in the year to come. Hope you're quick on the uptake with languages."

"Tres magnifique!"

"Actually, I think you'll find they speak Portuguese."

"Cheeky!" Bernie draws Serena over by the nape of her neck and kisses the smirk off her gorgeous face. This the woman she adores, all self-satisfaction and sarcasm. Serena is brilliant and she knows it. Beautiful and she knows it. Neither of those are facts Bernie can resist, another thing Serena knows. Bernie Wolfe loves Serena Campbell beyond sense but not beyond hope. Hope is everything.

Bernie clutches Serena close to her as they stumble backward, eyes shut, into a concealed nook of the office–their office, again–still attached at the lips. Serena tastes like spearmint gum and her hair feels like feathers. Her hips are just right under Bernie's eager hands, and Serena sighs at her touch. There is nothing about Serena that Bernie doesn't want anymore. Nothing fundamental has changed despite the time gone by. She's fully convinced that nothing will.

Bernie divests Serena of her heavy coat and bag, steadying her before she can trip over either. Free of their burdens, Serena's hands rove over Bernie's body and under the hem of her scrub top. She scrapes her nails down Bernie's back as Bernie teases her lips apart. Bernie squeezes her bum to bring them impossibly closer, as if she can make them one person if she tries, just because.

Serena pulls back from kissing Bernie into an endorphin-fueled coma to squint at a gap in the blinds. "What on Earth is he doing?"

Bernie drops her head back against the glass and sighs. Ah, déjà vu. She doesn't have to ask who. "My guess, he's playing cupid."

Serena's favorite eyebrow rises of its own volition. "Again? How do you think he's doing so far?"

Bernie locks her arms around Serena's waist to keep their bodies flush together at breasts and stomachs and hips. They still fit. "I think he's left it a bit late, if I'm honest, and three is very much a crowd."

"We'll make it up to him," Serena prompts, fingers already hovering over the chord to the blinds.

"Definitely. Fish and chips, lemonade, the works."

"Oh, thank god." Serena wiggles her fingers at Jason and promptly shuts the blinds. "Now, Ms. Wolfe, I believe you were bringing me up to speed."

"Uh huh." She tugs Serena's blouse from her shoulders and picks one at random to kiss. "Let me direct you to Section D of the Holby Hospital Employee Handbook."

Serena tilts her head to make room for Bernie to blaze a reverent trail of kisses down her neck. She frowns. "The section on Interpersonal Communication?"

Bernie halts momentarily. "You've memorized it?"

"Of course I've memorized it. I wrote the bulk of the bastard thing."

Drawbacks of dating the former Deputy CEO. Really the worst one. Bernie doesn't let it stop her, traces the slope of Serena's collarbone with her tongue. "That's the one."

"You've got complaints, let's hear them."

"Not a complaint, more of a suggestion." She nuzzles Serena's nose hello, echoes her answering smile with one of her own. "If you need me, bleep me."

"Is this some very unwieldy innuendo or–"

Bernie brings Serena's hand to her pager in the pocket of her scrub trousers. "If you need me, bleep me. I can't promise I'll always answer my phone. I can't promise I'll remember to check my messages now you're back, but if you bleep me, I'll answer. Wherever you are."

Serena produces her own pager. "That goes double for me. Now can we please go back to making up for lost time?"

"With pleasure."

Bernie and Serena might have started this journey a world apart, but their reunion was inevitable. And together is how they intend to stay.