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04:59:58.
04:59:59.
05:00:00.
“Alison.” The Captain stood at attention, stiff-backed and stern. “Alison. Alison.”
The sleeping woman did not wake. Damn it all. “Alison,” he continued, voice growing louder. 05:00:10. “Alison, wake up. It’s time to wake up. Wake up!”
His last exclamation did the trick. Alison startled upward with an undignified whuh!. Her hair was still pressed against one side of her face, stuck with drool. Next to her, Mike slept on without stirring.
Not exactly the refined regiment he’d been used to, once upon a time. When he’d woken his unit in a similar fashion (to test their reflexes, of course, no telling when the enemy would besiege them), they’d jumped to their feet proper quick.
Now, Alison rummaged around her bedding for her phone. The dim blue light shone across her face as she activated it, and she practically squeaked. “5 AM!” Squinting up at the Captain, she accused, “Are you mental?”
05:00:25. The Captain swallowed back the instinctual urge to say that he was not, actually, that he was – in fact – the only person left sane. Waking up at 0500 hours was perfectly reasonable. Had the entire day ahead, and nothing like going for a jog in the cool morning air.
Not the time, though.
“I need a favour from you.”
Alison shot him a poisonous look, reached for her pillow, and pulled it over her head. “Can’t it wait until morning?”
“It is morning, actually, by any reasonable metric –” No. No, for the first time in a very long while, he was not in charge here. The Captain took a pause, inhaled deeply, and crouched near the edge of the bed. “It’s important,” he murmured unwillingly. The next word stuck in his throat. Hadn’t polished that one in a while. “P-please.”
Alison rolled over. A pair of beady, suspicious eyes squinted at him from underneath the pillow. How odd it was, to be a ghost and still feel his face grow hot. Sounded like the faff Thomas would go on about. He averted his eyes and swallowed.
“What’s going on?”
“Julian mentioned the other day about using the …” Hm. No, the word wasn’t coming to him. “Device to look up information about his daughter.”
“The computer, yeah.”
And here was the big ask.
“I was wondering if you could do the same. For me.”
Alison’s eyes narrowed at him.
“And not tell anyone?” If he didn’t mind the others finding out, then he would have just asked Julian and stiff-upper-lipped the mocking. That being said, he had to spend eternity with those people. Perhaps Alison, too, or even Michael, but that was a ways off.
At least he’d gotten her attention. She propped herself up on her elbow and blinked, trying to rouse herself. “What’s this all about?”
God. What a question to ask, wasn’t it? The Captain couldn’t put a finger on it, himself, nor could he say whether this was the right decision. Did he want to know? What was he even hoping for? No matter the answer on that little lightscreen, wouldn’t it make things worse?
“Someone who used to be stationed here, with me.” No, that was scarcely the point, Alison was looking at him like he’d lost his head. “A friend of mine.”
“A friend?”
“Yes. A friend.” Ah, no good. Too clipped, too terse. The Captain didn’t know how to go about those things. If he had had any friends at all, then Havers had been one. That was the only matter he was truly confident on.
“Alright, well.” Alison looked over her shoulder at Mike, who’d taken to clutching a pillow to his chest. He mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep. Better than the sleep-singing he’d taken to doing. “Let’s go check on your ‘friend’, then?”
Quotation marks or not, the Captain sagged in relief. “And you won’t tell anyone?”
She went to the door and opened it; The Captain followed right after her. “Are you kidding? This is the first time I’ve ever heard you bring up your past, like, willingly.”
As indebted as he was, he wouldn’t stand for falsehoods. “I talk about my past all the time.”
“Yeah, but not war stuff.”
“This counts as war stuff.” The Captain jerked his chin into the air as they crossed the hallway. During this time, right before the sun rose, most of the other inhabitants were either sleeping or absorbed in their own personal matters. “I knew him during the war.”
She gave a sleepy roll of her eyes at him as she shuffled down the doorway. In comparison, the Captain’s movements were sharp. “Yeah, but fun war stuff, not boring or depressing war stuff.”
He took offense at boring. Depressing, though? Well, that was the nature of it. The Captain didn’t complain as they entered the sitting room. Allison reached for her computer and curled up on the couch, not managing to stifle a yawn.
The Captain lingered in the doorway, feeling rather like his heart had just plummeted to his feet. Stupid idea, he berated himself. What’s it going to do? Going to fix anything? No, you’ll just find out that he got blown to bits or stabbed in his sleep or –
“Alright!” Allison remarked, cheerful. She looked at him over the glow of her laptop, offering an exhausted smile. “Who am I looking up, Cap?”
No backing out now.
God, he’d much rather stare an enemy soldier right in the face than Allison’s, right then. Felt about the same internally.
“...Cap?”
“Yes,” he stated firmly, moving until he was standing behind the sofa. Though Julian spent a fair bit of time at it, he never could understand the appeal. Give him a good wireless any day, where he could still keep an eye on the perimeter.
“William Havers.” No, it was eighty years gone. Certainly there were plenty of William Havers who’d made themselves renowned enough to show up on the tiny picture-show. “Lieutenant William Havers.” Unless – “No, he may have been promoted in the meanwhile, perhaps try …”
Something itched in the back of his mind. Good lord. He couldn’t remember Havers’ middle name anymore. Had he ever known it? Somewhere amidst the forms or the like, one would think he’d once put down his middle name. And yet …
It didn’t come to him.
“Don’t worry, I’ve played detective on the Internet enough in my day.” Allison cracked her knuckles and settled in on the arm of the sofa. The Captain lingered behind her. Anxiety started to creep in. Damn it, weeks of getting up the nerve to do this, and he hadn’t even considered that it might not work. What the hell was this thing good for, otherwise?
He didn’t much understand what Allison was doing. Of course he understood the point of the – the typewriter business, except it was built into the little device. Frankly, the Captain had never been very dextrous at that, hunting and searching for keys and nearly tossing the whole thing out the window when there was a typo.
William Havers WWII
William Havers WWII -CALL OF DUTY
William Havers World War II
William Havers World War II English
William Havers World War II veteran -CALL OF DUTY
William Havers World War II Button House
All of it flashed before his eyes in a blinding blue blur. He looked down at Allison to try and get some measure of how it was going. Her face was screwed tight in determination. No, he would never tell her this, but her tenacity was really quite admirable. Most people he knew would have run out of the house screaming far more times than she had.
He didn’t think he would’ve taken very well to finding out there were ghosts in the house, personally. There was a war on. Couldn’t have anything else on the plate.
“Ah!” Allison grinned and whipped the screen around to face him. “Is this him? The ages match up.”
On the screen was a photo. In the heat of the moment, the Captain didn’t put together that the photo had to be many decades old. All he could see was an image of William Havers, perhaps ten years older than what he remembered, beaming at the camera in full uniform. He held himself on crutches at a severe angle. One leg ended in metal. A series of new military decorations dotted his breast. Hell, he didn’t recognize some – most – of them.
That told him something more important, though. Havers had survived to see the end.
One heard reports, of course. News of deaths on the front lines and the like. To the detriment of his actual duties, he’d spent a very long time pouring over their names. Havers had never come up, but there had been very many names, nor had he ever been able to find him afterwards.
“By Jove …” The Captain murmured, hand going to cover his mouth.
“Looks like he made Captain, himself!” The photo went away. He didn’t like the photo going away, but it appeared that the young Ms. Allison had procured a news article. About Havers? He leaned further over her shoulder, but he couldn’t make out the screen.
Captain, did he? That would’ve been rather confusing, if …
Momentarily losing himself, the Captain put a hand on her shoulder. It passed right through. “W-what else happened to him? What did he do, after?”
“Let’s see …”
He didn’t know what he’d expected, what he’d thought. Whenever he found himself being too fanciful, the Captain preferred to launch into pessimistic worst-case scenarios. Of course, thinking of Havers being dead was – not good.
“Let’s see. Looks like he got back from the war, settled in England, hmm …” She scrolled downward. “There’s not a lot in between, I’m afraid.”
“A family? He had a brother, he talked –”
“Sorry, no. Wait, hang on. Oh, here we go, he got married.”
Married! Lord, the concept. The Captain found himself blinking. Married, no, yes, of course. Many did that, even most in his unit had their attachments one way or another. Havers hadn’t. That would’ve come up, he was certain, with everything else they’d shared. “W-when? To whom?”
“Only a few years ago. One of the first gay couples to get married when it got legalized, have a look.”
He made a choked noise in the back of his throat.
The picture on-screen was of a man approaching his nineties, if he hadn’t gotten there already. He sat in a rickety aluminium chair, regarding the camera with the same faint little smile that the Captain remembered. He looked like he was sitting in his back garden, though the Captain couldn’t make out many details of the background. His prosthetic leg was fully visible, then, the piece going straight up to his thigh. On his shoulder another gnarled hand rested. The Captain half-expected to recognize his husband standing behind him, but the wiry-haired beaming gentleman was a mystery to him. The hand bore a gold wedding ring, its twin was on Havers’ own.
They looked happy together. Havers looked happy. His head tilted to the side, fondly resting against his husband’s forearm.
He hadn’t known.
He had suspected, of course. Havers had told him stories of his childhood, of the friends he grew up with, of how he felt about them. The Captain had remembered thinking now, that all sounds a bit queer, and he’d suspected, and he’d just as immediately thought that he’d sooner be torn to bits by wild dogs than tell anyone.
If anything, it’d drawn him towards Havers more, and he couldn’t quite put a finger on why. Havers just seemed to see the world in a similar way that the Captain did.
A lump started to form in his throat, seeing him there, seeing him happy.
The Captain was a man of many regrets. He wished he’d talked to Havers about those suspicions more – he wished he’d talked to Havers more, period. He wished he’d managed to track Havers down after the war. Maybe things would have been easier, then. If he were to face the great bad world that he didn’t much understand, best to do it with a man who understood him.
“Where …” Oh, that wouldn’t do. Hoarse. He swallowed. “Where is he now?”
Allison brought her finger to the part of the device that made the screen move. He watched the words scroll up the page with scarcely concealed anxiety, clutching his baton between his hands, and …
Her face fell. “Oh, Captain, I’m sorry. Article here says he died last year. Made it to 96, though.”
Something inside of him snapped; sirens sounded deep within his head. Feeling one’s heart stop as a ghost was a funny thing.
When Alison turned around a few seconds later, she would see that the Captain had disappeared utterly.
***
The Captain faced the sunrise on the back steps of Button House, but he didn’t much notice it. His face was in his hands as he wept. Not like anyone was around to see him, of course, the Captain had chosen this spot for that purpose. Still. Perhaps he didn’t want to feel the tears falling down his face. That was all perfectly reasonable.
Up until he heard his own quiet sobs mirrored by much larger ones.
Startled (moreso by the presence of another person than their crying, all told), the Captain looked up to see Kitty sat on the stairs next to him. Blast, the woman could really be quiet sometimes. Her face was also in her hands as she cried, her shoulders shaking with the effort of it.
“Kitty,” he mumbled. Right. Had to pull himself together. Not out of any act of altruism or caring friendship, but he rather didn’t want anyone to see him crying.
He quickly swiped his thumbs on the underside of his eyes, rubbed his nose on the back of his hand, and thought of requisition orders – filled out in triplicate, black ink, exact wording …
That would do.
“Why are you crying?” The Captain asked. When he shifted, the outside of their legs brushed together. Seemed enough for physical comfort, in the Captain’s opinion.
He was fond enough of Kitty. When he’d first woken as a ghost (and been deeply startled), his welcoming party hadn’t exactly been friendly. Then again, the Captain had taken his baton to Robin upon first seeing him, so perhaps he could understand all that. He’d gotten off to similarly wrong foots with Lady Button and Thomas. Humphrey had initially scared the living daylights out of him and Mary, well, it’d been initially quite difficult to even talk to the woman.
Kitty, though? Kitty had insisted upon a ‘proper tour’, like he hadn’t been on the estate for many years. She seemed keen to hear about the war, though her questions often bordered on fantastical. Many people, the Captain considered, treated war like a game of chess – and while Kitty had no interest in winning, she had plenty of interest in having fun during the game.
It was an insight he was familiar with. His men had also been interested in daring heroics and flights of fancy. The Captain tried to stomp that out, because such lines of thinking were liable to get them killed, but it seemed a fruitless attempt with Kitty. Not only was she dead, the woman was spectacularly stubborn.
“I don’t – I don’t know!” Kitty sobbed into her hands, and then brought her head up to look at the Captain. Gosh, he wished he had a handkerchief or some sort to offer her. “Why are you crying?”
Hm. No good. Thought he might’ve escaped scrutiny, but he supposed not. He cleared his throat, looked down at the steps, and then off towards the horizon. The sun had already started to clear it, though the morning fog had not yet dissipated.
“I don’t know.” The tears had come upon him so quickly that he hadn’t had time to convince himself out of them. “I shouldn’t be, I don’t think. I’ve just received some news …” Oh, to hell with it. Kitty was looking at him with such keen eyes. He doubted he’d be able to escape. “A friend of mine lived to a ripe old age with someone he loved, and then he died. And I’m weeping over it.” The Captain snorted at himself and shook his head. “What more could I possibly have asked for him? It’s good news.”
“Maybe you’re crying because you’re happy?” Kitty suggested. Already, the tears were drying on her face. She dabbed at her own cheeks with the sleeve of her dress.
If this was what happiness felt like, then the Captain had spontaneously developed a very grim outlook on life. He nevertheless bubbled out a laugh. “I hope it’s not that.”
Well, he wouldn’t expect any residents of Button House to have a wonderfully healthy grasp on emotions. Best to move onto the important bits. “Don’t tell anyone you found me out here, Kitty? The last thing this place needs is another excuse for gossip and dramatics.”
“You don’t want anyone to know you were crying.”
Hmph.
“Why?” Kitty asked. “Crying isn’t so bad. I cry all the time.” She paused to think. “At sunrises, at nice music, at jokes. I think crying is a good way to show that you’re having a feeling.”
Yes, the Captain realized. Perhaps that was all this was. Just … having a feeling. Quite a big one. That could evidently only escape through his tear ducts. He found that he could no longer think of Havers’ face without wanting to bawl again, and he quite hoped the feeling would pass soon.
A long, happy life. Couldn’t ask more for anyone else, and if ever a man deserved it.
“Maybe. But for the time being, I’d rather not anyone to know that I’m …” He straightened the fabric about his knees, suddenly itching for something to do with his hands. “Feeling things.”
When Kitty didn’t respond, he looked up into her face. She had drawn her face together to think, lips almost forming a pout.
“Hm?”
“It’s just that I don’t want to leave you out here alone when you’re having a feeling,” Kitty complained.
Exceptionally odd. Though there were moments of camaraderie among his unit, they scarcely had to do with emotional vulnerability. The Captain was quite pleased his unit didn’t much talk about their feelings. Made it much easier on him. Their commanding officer or not, the idea of one of them coming out to comfort if they found him crying somewhere? Bizarre.
Kitty was scarcely a soldier, though, even if the Captain was still the commanding officer at Button House. Just a rather incorporeal one.
He smiled at her, a little sadly. “I’ll be fine, Kitty, I promise you.”
“Can I at least sit here until the feeling is over?”
Oh, to hell with it. Lady Button would be preparing her morning rituals soon, and that was always a good sign the others were awake or would be. Though he was loathe to miss his own morning rituals … well, perhaps he could think of it as tribute for dear William Havers.
“Of course, Kitty.” She seemed to make herself comfortable with his assent, relaxing on the stairs. How odd it was. He hated having been caught out with his tears, but he didn’t much mind her presence now.
Kitty wouldn’t understand the specifics. Nobody in Button House would. Still, all of the ghosts understood what it was like to be there. To have regrets, to have one’s life cut short, to exist on this strange medium forever. To see what no living person could: how the world went on after their death. How reassuring it was, and how depressing it could be.
The Captain reflexively twitched when he felt a weight brush against his back. Kitty had raised her arm to give him a light hug.
That was …
Fine, actually. That was fine.
“I saw Michael crying once,” Kitty remarked. “He was watching a video where a goat and a kitten became friends.”
He turned to look at her, confused.
“And Julian cries in the bathtub sometimes.”
His eyebrows knit together.
“And everyone else, too. So if anyone finds out about you, then I’ll tell them all about their own crying,” Kitty cheered, and everything clicked into place. Oh, that was really very touching, even if the last thing the Captain wanted to do was for everyone to come to terms with their own tears.
He smiled back at her and rose his arm to wrap around her middle. “Thank you, Kitty. Good to know that I have you at my back.”
She giggled in response. The Captain looked back towards the sky. He was still experiencing what could be called A Feeling, to be certain, but the reminder about the others –
Scarcely an ideal situation, all this. Eternity with a group of people that he wouldn’t typically associate with, temporal impossibilities notwithstanding. Still, they were there, and the Captain wasn’t alone. William Havers was a dear figure in his life, and always would be, but he had lived his own life and had died happy and old.
As ever, he had his orders to follow. Maintain stability. Keep Button House standing. And, above all, carrying on.
Leaning against his friend, the Captain watched the sunrise until a scream pierced the morning air.