Work Text:
“Hello William,” the Captain said to the open air.
For many people, the two dates that defined a life were the date of birth and that of death. Though the Captain remembered what both of his were with the same calculated accuracy with which he had remembered every piece of artillery in Button House under his command, his life was defined by two very different dates. The day Lieutenant William Havers stepped foot in Button House, and the day he left. Today was the 76th anniversary of the latter.
His fellow ghosts knew to leave him alone on this particular May day, assuming that it was his own death day and that, like Patrick, he was somewhat emotional about it. They weren’t entirely wrong - this was the day most of him had died. The rest followed some time after, but during his last years alive, he hadn’t been much more than a shell of himself for most of the time.
Today, of all days, was still special to him. It was the one time a year he allowed himself to utter William’s name aloud, afraid that if he did it more often, the taste of those syllables in his mouth would wear off together with his memories. It was the only time a year he allowed himself to be vulnerable, his coat abandoned next to him, shirt sleeves haphazardly rolled up, his arms and heart bared to the sky.
“A lot of things have happened this year, Havers. Allison and Mike have moved in, and it’s shaken things up quite a bit.” He chuckled to himself. “They’ve been trying to make money by letting the house for events and such and-” he swallowed here, looking up at the slowly setting sun to try to bite back his traitorous tears. “There was a wedding, William.” He sighed, stared again at the soil between his feet, underneath which his letter had once been. “Two women married each other. Good lord, William, what if-” he pushed his fist into his mouth now, unable to stop a tear from escaping but fighting, desperately fighting to hold back the sob threatening to break free from his chest, because once that came loose then so would he, he’d unravel until there was nothing left of him but a broken mess, an empty husk of a man, and he just couldn’t, wouldn’t go through that again. So he closed his eyes and let the tears fall until he felt like he could breathe again, as if that was something he still had to do.
“If you had let me, I would have loved you like a husband would. I would have cooked for you, I would have - well, let’s be honest, you probably would have cooked for me.” A soft smile made its way onto the Captain’s lips. “I always was rubbish at that sort of thing.”
The Captain stared ahead of himself again, at the rose-tinted sky behind the trees, and tried to picture William’s face again. His brown hair, his chocolate eyes, the crinkles around his eyes when he smiled that half-smile of his, the timbre of his voice. As a ghost, you didn’t think a lot of things would fade. After all, your age and look stayed the same, as well as your fears - and your love, so it seemed. It felt the same today as it had 76 years ago to the Captain, his heart torn to shreds as if hit by a grenade. He’d learned to wear the scarred remains of it with him - to bury his yearning and pain under layers and layers of afterlife-memories, to repress his infatuation as he always had when alive. His regret was buried with it. But his memories - God, he was afraid that one day they’d disappear, whizz away from him like a bullet from the service weapon he never ended up receiving or creep away slowly in the night like a deserting soldier. What if one day, he couldn’t remember William’s smell, that combination of the musty uniform with something like smoke, rationed chocolate and cologne, that sweet pang that floated around in a room for a few moments still after he left it?
“I still miss you dreadfully, you know,” he whispered to the almost-dark sky. “And I still love you. Even if you never knew.”
He waits a moment longer, until the last of the sunlight has truly disappeared, before he takes his swagger stick and uniform jacket, stands up again until his knees pop, and walks back inside.
He doesn’t look back.