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There was something the ghosts wanted to ask her. Alison had gained a sixth sense with that niggling feeling at the back of her neck, even when they were trying so hard to not be obvious about it - she always knew. Currently though, she had no idea what they were working up to actually ask, nor did she know who would be the one to crack.
This question had been brewing for a while, that much she was sure of. It was written in the way Pat stared at her a few moments too long in a passing moment of quiet, the way Fanny would start marching towards her and then abruptly switch directions at the last second, the way Kitty just stood in the doorway hesitating. Humphrey had called her into a room a few times and then pretended that he hadn’t. Thomas wasn’t spinning as much poetry at her and instead was just describing their location after he’d asked her for a moment of her time. Robin and Julian had both tried to speak to her at once and then had avoided her like the plague. Actually, the only people who hadn’t been acting weird were the plague ghosts and the Captain.
“D’you know what’s going on with everyone?” It was worth a shot asking him, though Alison hadn’t been confident he’d know what she was on about.
Just as she’d predicted, the Captain had given her a sideways glance and frowned as they’d walked down the stairs together. “I’m not aware of anything going on. Did we need a new reconnaissance mission? I rather think after the last fiasco with Lucy we might redeem ourselves with a little-”
“Ah, no thanks, Cap. It’s alright, probably nothing. Just had a feeling something was off.” The last thing she needed was an elaborate plan that escalated until everyone was annoyed and she had no new information. “Don’t worry about it.”
The possibility it might be something about the Captain only occurred to her a few days later after Thomas nudged Pat, and the two shared a look during Monday Movie night when they were half-way through The Breakfast Club. Her only clue had been because the Captain had taken up the sofa next to Kitty instead of his usual window nook so it was blatantly obvious who they were looking at. There was no clear reason why though - to her it had been a perfectly normal night and the Captain hadn’t done anything out of his ordinary.
It was time to do some digging.
“Thomas, Pat, can I have a word?” Alison caught them in the kitchen the next morning, and they both froze on the spot.
“Um. Y-yeah. Sure. No probs. No dramas.” Pat said, shuffling awkwardly on the spot. Thomas looked like he was about to bolt but couldn’t quite commit to it.
Alison let the silence hang for a moment. “What’s going on?”
“Ha! Going on, as if there’d be something going on! No-one’s said that. Nothing.” Thomas blurted out instantly, and if she hadn’t been suspicious before she certainly was now.
She knew her best tactic with these two. Folded arms. A cocked eyebrow. Vague look of disappointment.
Pat cracked almost instantly. “It’s not a problem as such, more of a… question? Question. And really, it’s not any business of ours but…”
Thomas piped up. “We thought you might… know? Or aid us in how to find out. It’s driving me insane.”
“What is?” Alison had no idea what it could be. Had it been a question they’d wanted to ask since she got here? Was it about the Captain? Was it going to be horribly rude?
Pat stepped in closer, and Thomas followed, the three of them huddling unnecessarily close. “We’ve just all noticed… well. The Captain. When it hits six o’clock in the evening-”
“Eighteen hundred hours.” Thomas cut in.
Pat gave him an unimpressed look and then continued. “- we’ve just noticed that he… he kisses his stick.”
Thomas huffed. “Hardly a kiss, he just presses it to his lips.”
“Well for the Captain that’s-”
“Hold on.” Alison interrupted Pat, both hands held up to stop them speaking. “The reason you guys are all being weird is because you’ve just noticed he does that?”
Thomas straightened up, offence clear in his gaze. “Come now, like you knew!”
Alison laughed. “Of course I knew! He’s literally always done it.”
“Give over!” Pat dismissed her with a disbelieving laugh. “We’ve known him far longer than you have Alison don’t forget, I think we might have noticed something as specific as that. Not one of us had noticed before!”
The perfectly good reason for that particular comment popped into her head instantly. “Oh yeah? Did you spend a lot of time actually caring about each other before I got here then?”
“Well…”
“That’s besides the point!” Thomas said, his voice getting louder and higher. “We don’t know why he does it and it’s driving us all barmy!”
Alison stared at the pair of them for a few moments, and when neither of them offered the blatant solution she sighed and folded her arms. “Right. And, pray tell, has anyone actually just asked him?”
They shared a sideways glance, and Alison didn’t really need more than that but Pat spoke anyway. “Not… not exactly no. Seems like it’s a bit late now.”
“Should have asked him eighty years ago.” Thomas said idly.
“So you did know he did it before, just didn’t care to ask why back then?” Alison shot back.
Pat's gaze darted to the floor, and Thomas just sort of, froze mid-sentence.
They were lucky she was also dying to know.
“All right. Fine. I’ll ask him.”
Later that evening, they all sat down to watch an episode of Cap’s show (SAS: Rogue Heroes). This was another time where his chosen seat moved from the window nook to a central spot on the sofa, and Alison sat one side of him while Pat and Thomas took up the rest of the sofa. They’d given her a few looks but it seemed no-one else in the room was aware that a Conversation was going to happen, they all settled into the evening like usual.
When the clock downstairs gave its gentle chime at eighteen hundred hours, the Captain pressed his swagger stick lightly against his lips without taking his gaze off the TV. It only ever lasted a second - just a brief contact to the stick seemed to be enough, and he rubbed it with his thumb carefully before it settled back into his lap. It was a small and subtle movement, casual in a way the Captain often wasn’t. If you weren’t looking for it it was hardly an action to call any attention to because it was hardly an action at all.
“Why do you do that?” Alison asked quietly as the adverts started to play. She knew better than to try and start a conversation while the show was playing.
Around them, the other ghosts tried to not show that they were listening.
The Captain glanced at her and made a vague quizzical sound. “Hm?”
She pointed to the swagger stick and then looked back at him. “With the stick.”
His reaction didn’t seem to quite fit with the simple habit. He snapped his head back round to stare at the TV, and where he had been slouching his back was now rigid and tension ebbed from his whole body. Alison kept her silence, shooting a glare at where Julian was looking like he might give them an opinion.
An odd wheezing sound came out of the Captain, and he spun the swagger stick through his hands as he decided how he was going to answer Alison’s question.
“I- um. It’s just a habit.” He said slowly and quietly.
Alison nodded her encouragement. “Yeah, I know that. It’s alright, I just…” The discomfort in his posture was enough to make her choice, and she dropped the line of questioning. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to tell me, I was just being nosy.” She turned away from him, settling back into the sofa and ignoring every look of despair being silently sent her way from the others.
A few moments of quiet passed, and then Cap spoke softly. “No.” As he relaxed back into the sofa, he slowly presented the swagger stick, letting her look at it between them. “I… this used to be um. It wasn’t mine.”
She could hazard a guess as to who gave it to him. “You hold it like it’s something special sometimes.”
He glanced at her, and a wistfully fond smile pulled at his moustache. “Yes. Yes, well. It belonged to someone who was.”
“Was it your Anthony?” Kitty whispered, leaning around Alison to inspect the swagger stick too.
The Captain took the question with a surprising lack of reaction, given that once one ghost let it slip they were listening to a relatively private conversation it wasn’t long before the rest of them did too. He didn’t seem to be put off by the fact everyone in the room was now listening to what he had to say. “It was, yes.”
“I suppose he couldn’t give you much else, what with your audience.” Pat said with a sad and sympathetic look at the Captain.
He nodded quickly, swallowing before he spoke again and having to clear his throat. “Precisely. It was, er, quite a public exit. But when he left me for the front… that wasn’t.” Not a single person moved as the Captain started on his explanation for fear of putting him off. It was incredibly rare that he ever offered up personal information, and the whole room was listening with rapt attention. “Havers-... Anthony. He came up to my office to tell me personally that he was leaving, and I had the chance to… express my feelings. But I didn’t. Then there was the second chance when he was at the gate at eighteen hundred hours, ready to walk down to the road and into war… and I didn’t go then either.”
Not one of them moved as what the Captain was saying settled over the room, and Alison wished she could just pat his leg or something, give him some kind of physical comfort for the heartbreak he’d endured.
The Captain sighed, rubbing his thumb over the swagger stick. “I wish I had.”
Fanny reached over from where she was perched at the edge of the sofa, and in a surprisingly gentle move she rubbed her hand across the Captain’s shoulders and gave his back a comforting pat.
It seemed to throw him off for a moment, and he just looked up at her until she nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”
He cleared his throat. “Y-yes. I, um. Well, it’s all a bit futile and redundant. Silly, really, but I-... I just combine the two. I couldn’t- couldn’t kiss him when I died, and I was too afraid to go to him when he left. So at eighteen hundred hours, every day, I kiss the only thing I have left of him and I hope that wherever he is… that he knows I still think of him.”
It was very easy to forget that the Captain was arguably more romantic than even Thomas, and he just didn’t express it because of who he loved and the time he came from. Alison was always moved by his admission of emotional feelings, not only because it was always presented so beautifully but because despite the fact it was difficult for him… he did it anyway.
“I’m sure he knows.” Thomas said, both his voice and his bottom lip wobbling. “That is… lovely, Captain.”
The Captain made a few Captain noises, a mix between an uncomfortable huffed laugh, a dismissive grumble, and an appreciative exhale. “Mhm, yes, well. Like I say it’s silly really…”
“It’s nothing of the sort.” Pat told him, a seriousness to his tone. “There’s nowt wrong with needing a little connection to what we love. I mean, Fanny visits all her pets still-” Fanny nodded behind him “- and Robin watches the stars, and Julian checks in on his daughter on the interwebs.” Pat nudged his shoulder with the Captain. “It’s alright to want to remember.”
The Captain nodded, the tiniest show of agreement as he held tight to the swagger stick in his lap.
Knowing when enough was enough wasn’t a skill the ghosts could usually master, but today they seemed to have a sense of where the line was. No-one pushed for anything more, and nothing was said for the rest of the evening about how the Captain was cradling the swagger stick. It seemed their curiosity had been satisfied, and everyone understood why it was so important to the Captain.
Elsewhere, at eighteen hundred hours every day, Anthony pressed a hand to his chest and allowed the longing love to take hold of his heart as he waited for the day he would see his Captain again.