Chapter Text
“If I might be so bold to claim a moment of your time, Alison.”
“Actually, Captain, I’m sort of-” busy. That was the next word she had planned to say right up until she saw the man’s expression.
She can’t quite put her finger on what it is, precisely, that makes her pause, but there is something there.
Something that communicates clearly to her that the man has worked himself up to whatever this is going to be and that, if she does not react to this the way he needs her to right now, it will be a while before he does so again.
“-looking for an excuse to get away from this all for a moment anyway,” she finishes instead, gesturing vaguely to the piles of paper all around the kitchen desk. “Perfect timing, really.”
None of this was that urgent, she supposed. It would be fine if she’d deal with it before the end of the week and it was only Tuesday morning, after all.
Plenty of time to get it all done.
“Great!” The Captain responds as he sits down across from Alison. He folds his hands in front of him, almost as if in prayer.
It takes a moment before he continues to speak.
A moment that seems to stretch for an eternity, by her definition at least.
Alison is about to open her mouth to ask what this is all about when The Captain does so himself.
“Do you remember that one time in the garden? The day that you found that, that rather explosive secret buried there?”
“Captain, I do not think I could forget that day if I tried.” She tries to hold back a snort, but it slips out anyway. “After all, there was a bomb invovled. As weird as my life is, this is not a day-to-day type of thing.”
“Right. Yes. Of course.” She can see that she’s thrown him off. “You make an excellent point, Alison.”
“What, specifically, was it about that day that you wanted to talk to me about?”
It’s been a while since that day and since there aren’t currently any plans to dig around in any other part of the garden, Alison figures that there’s a decent chance that this is not about another bomb. She’s got to try to get him back on track. For her own curiosity’s sake, if nothing else.
At this point, he actually looks her in the eyes, rather than somewhere off to the side. “Ah. Yes. You might remember that, during my explanation, I mentioned my second-in-command. Lieutenant Havers.” There’s also a soft smile on his lips as he speaks the name.
“I’m not sure you mentioned his name before.” Alison’s trying to find some sort of memory connected to the name, but no matter how much she searches her brain, it does not sound familiar.
He frowns. “Really? I thought for sure I must have.”
This seems like it’s about to derail this conversation again, so she simply shrugs.
“There’s a chance you did and I forgot that particular part.”
The Captain nods as he responds. “Yes, yes that might be it.” And then he pauses once again. It almost seems as if he’s continuing to gather courage for wherever this situation might be headed.
“The matter I wanted to talk about with you today actually concerns the Lieutenant. You see, he left me- us. Left all of us assigned here at this place behind during the war to go and fight at the front. Quite the feat of bravery, of course, to want to leave the relative safety we had here behind. It was admirable, really.”
He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as her, Alison notes in the exact same moment that she spots Mike coming in through the door. She tries to subtly signal to him that now is a bad time, which was harder than she thought it would be.
It did seem to work, though, since Mike gave her a thumbs up in return and then disappeared while the Captain has shown no sign that he noticed anything had happened at all.
There’s one issue solved, at least.
“It sure sounds like it,” she comments. “By which of course I don’t mean that you weren’t, but y’know, different types of bravery and all.”
It’s only after the words are out of her mouth that she realizes that she’s brought the conversation off topic yet again.
“Yes. Quite.” There’s yet another pause and this time, Alison actually needs to prompt him again before he continues.
“You see, Alison, I have always been… interested to learn what became of him. After the war. A purely professional interest, of course,” he adds after a second, to which she hums in agreement.
Exclusively professional, sure. She can see that in his eyes, but she’s going to let him keep believing he fooled her until he’s ready to share — again, if her theory about that interrupted DIY therapy session she did with the ghosts was correct.
“I was wondering if you might be able to help me to discover this.”
If she was physically able to hug him, she would do so at this moment. “Of course I will, Captain. I can’t make any promises we will find something — I can’t control what people have put on the Internet and all.” She explains as she pulls her laptop towards her and opens a new tab. “But I will see what I can do. Now, what was Lieutenant Havers’ first name?”
“Huh, that’s interesting.” Sam’s only half aware that she said it out loud until Jay responds to it from the other end of the couch they’re both lying on.
“What is, babe?”
Sam looks up from the iPad in her hand. “I just got an email about my grandfather.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Isaac leaning over to Hetty, the only other ghost currently present. “That’s the modern equivalent of a letter, right?”
“I think so, yes. It does include ‘mail’ in the word, after all.”
“An excellent observation.”
With a soft smile on her face, Sam looks over at her husband. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”
“Ghost stuff?” Jay’s not even offended, which is just one of the things she loves about him.
As she nods and informs Jay of the ghostly presences in the room, the very same protest that they hadn’t even been that distracting — which to be fair, isn’t exactly inaccurate. For once.
“Anyway, I asked if that’s your mom’s or dad’s side.”
“My dad’s. The side not related to you,” she adds towards Hetty who accepted the information with a nod.
Jay, meanwhile, is visibly trying to recall the few times Grandpa Will had come up in conversation. “That’s the Lieutenant one right? Not the professor.” Hetty looks decently pleased to hear this, something that will presumably change once she learns what her Grandpa Frank lectured on.
“You come from soldiers?” Isaac moves around the couch as he says that, so now he is in full view of her. “Why on earth have you not ever mentioned that before?”
Oh, Sam knows exactly why, but she’s not saying a word about it.
“Yeah, he fought in the North African Front during World War Two and then moved over here after he fell in love with my grandmother.”
She can see Isaac opening his mouth to discuss further, but luckily at that precise moment Nigel walks in through the half-closed door and is greeted by everyone — even Jay thanks to context clues.
So instead Isaac simply announces— and without even a second’s debate about what course of action he would prefer — that “we will be talking about this later!” as he leaves for their daily walk.
Right. Where was she?
“The mail’s from a place in England where he apparently worked before he went to Africa. Which I did not previously know about, but they apparently found some documents.”
Jay put his head on his hands. “And they tracked you down just to share them?”
“That does sound like quite a lot of effort for this,” Hetty agrees, which she informs Jay of. Oh, and also about Isaac’s departure, she forgot that bit.
“And no,” Sam returns to the original topic of the conversation, “Their business is doing research into the history of the property for their website and since Grandpa Will was, apparently, second-in-command, they’ve asked me if I have any more info by chance.”
“Do you?” Hetty questions from the seat she’s moved to once Isaac left earlier.
Sam shrugs. “I don’t think so, considering I’ve never heard of it. But if I can find the time, I’ll try and see if I can find his old things and go through them. Might be interesting, at the very least.”
“That sounds like a plan. Also — and I’ve been meaning to ask this — why are you replying to emails on the iPad anyway?”
Ah, yes.
“The laptop’s already taken.”
“It’s amazing how much video games have progressed since the 80s. Back in my day the most popular games for computers were things like Zork, Zork II, and Zork III. And they were only text!” Pete comments with his usual amount of enthusiasm that had grown on Alberta at some point in the decades they have been stuck together.
“A lot has changed since I was a living, too,” Trevor adds from beside her. “Like yeah, we had pictures — Pokémon wouldn’t really work without them, I’d say, and neither do the Mario games. Nothing even close to those graphics though.”
“Trevor, stop looking at the chest of that sim and make my character actually practice singing as she damn well should be!” Alberta orders loudly and Trevor complains but compiles.
At that point, Sassapis enters the room. “Hey, what are you all doing?”
“Sam was playing this game earlier,” Pete informed him. “It’s called The Sims 4 and you can create little people, dress them up, and make little lives for them.”
True, but missing one crucial element. “Best thing about it is that you can mostly just leave it running and watch what the people in the screen do.”
“Okay, first of all, it’s ‘on’ the screen, and secondly, then why did you just make me make your character do something?”
“The version of me that is on the screen cannot be a terrible singer. That is just not an option.”
“Wait, you can create yourself?”
“I mean, the options for clothing are limited, as is Trevor’s patience in letting you test them, but once you get over that, yeah.”
There’s barely a second’s worth of pause, before Sassapis turns to Trevor. “We’re going to create me now. You don’t get a choice about this.”