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Charlie collected history books. Matt didn't ask about them, even when they started to spill out of the bookcases and into the hall, one of many exceptions to Charlie's firm stance against the collection of material objects, his claim that such things were no longer needed. Charlie lived without possessions, except for when he didn't. Cars, fruit, expensive suits, silk scarves wrapped around the bedposts.
And history books. For those, he was willing to drag Matt out to the edges of the Valley, to tiny shops grimy with decades of school kids and bored housewives wandering the aisles. They hauled home paperbacks with cracked spines and exclamation point titles, bricks of military tactics, sixteen volumes of official government records.
When they first met the choices were scattered, bits of wars and eras, biographies and memoirs that caught Charlie's eye. After a few months, the selections settled into the mid-century, and Charlie took to ordering rare volumes over the computer, pages that Matt flicked through idly while he waited for Charlie in the mornings. More official records, twenty-four volumes, dry retellings of tiny engagements a world and half a century away.
Matt didn't ask about the reasons, but he was a cop, had been a cop for longer than he hadn't, and he eventually got curious. Stacked the books up and put them together like a puzzle. Charlie caught him at it one day. He stood and watched Matt leafing slowly through the schematics of aircraft long since scrap and flames.
Charlie didn't say anything, just leaned on the wall with his head tilted and a tiny grin on his face, watching. Matt waited for him to say something, but when he didn't Matt eventually forgot to wonder, caught in the record of an attack in Normandy, the words stilted and clipped but Matt could have sworn that he smelled cordite, tasted ashes in his throat, caught sparks in the corners of his eyes.
That night he dreamed.
Matt hadn't been there. Had been miles away, had been—had been terrified, unknowing, torn between hope and loss. On a beach, and then on the road full of engines and the muffled thump of guns in the dark, and lost, lost when he never got lost, always knew where Charlie—no, not Charlie, someone else—where he was. Where they were, who they were and why. And then he'd found—chill, cold, want, the name was almost there in his head—had been found, and the dream skipped past the reunion, fizzing over blue eyes and a tired grin and moments stolen in a hayloft, quick slide of hands under clothes and mouths crashing together. He tried to hold onto the progression, but it faded into memories of Charlie up against a fence, headed tilted back and fingers in Matt's hair, themselves again, sneaking away from a barbeque the week before.
A shaking in his thoughts and Matt's hand curled around a rifle, kneeling guard and watching Charlie with his neck stretched back and his mouth wide, gasping as Matt took him into his throat, scratch of canvas against his cheek in the thundering dark, both of them trying to move silently and failing, still wearing their boots. Charlie came apart with bitten off consonants, and the sun on Matt's neck confused him, made him close his fingers around a trigger that suddenly wasn't there.
And then it was gone again, the present tumbling into the past and pulling him along.
Matt-not-Matt had only heard about the battle later, in the dark with the flare of shellfire and a quiet moment slumped in the lee of half a brick wall. Had heard it mumbled while he looked at his fingers, dirt under broken nails and in the dream, in the dream, Matt wanted a drink, could feel the urge in his skull and still held back while he listened. It was too real, the dark and the smell, like death and violence distilled, and the voice in his ear, too quiet, too calm, the awful casual recitation making something in Matt's chest seize up with the need to panic in sympathy.
He thought it was Charlie's voice spinning out the story, adding in details, but somehow it wasn't, the voice was too soft, missing some sharp edge of anger that Charlie couldn't hide even at his most detached.
In the morning, Matt opened his eyes to see Charlie out of bed, arms stretched to grip the edges of the doorframe. Waiting, again. Maybe waiting still, certain in the way Charlie often pretended but rarely managed. Sure that the past would catch up to them eventually.
Matt sat up, thought for a moment. "That isn't how it went. That's not what you—" Charlie shook his head. "No. That's not what he did. We did. Not what—damn, I don't even know how to phrase this."
Charlie grinned. "It doesn't get any easier, really. It never makes any sense. But it is what it is. Gave me something to think about in solitary, which was nice. Well, not nice, exactly. Interesting."
Matt leaned over the edge of the bed and dragged out the book. Paged through it, looking for Brecourt. "Why'd they get it wrong? I mean, I know they did, they left half of it out, but it isn't as if you—he—fuck. It isn't as if there was no one to ask. About the war. About them. About—all of it."
Charlie shrugged. "How should I know? I'm just me, only with—something strange. We could ask."
Matt glared at him. "Yeah, right. Who are we going to ask? I don't even know their names, just the place and the feel of it. I wouldn't know where to start. Dear US Government, I'm trying to find a paratrooper who landed in Normandy sixty-five years ago. I think maybe he was in love with—I don't even know his rank, let alone where he was from. Nothing useful." Matt's hands twitched with the memory of fabric, stiff under his fingers.
Charlie spoke. "Winters." The name uncoiled in Matt's head, but it tasted like a voice in the dark, not like his own. Charlie nodded. "Me, not you. I was a hero, I suppose. The name's all over the books, so people must have been impressed. The world has a lot to say about me. I broke someone's leg in a wrestling match." Charlie grinned, fierce and bright. He let go of the doorframe and crawled back into bed. "There's more, if you want it. Nixon, New Jersey. Currahee."
Matt slid the sheet back over them both. "Later. I think I want to hear this story over a bottle of scotch for some reason. And it's too fucking early for a drink." Charlie laughed. "What? Do we even have any scotch?"
"Yeah. It's just—never mind. Later. I'll explain later."