FIC: "The House of Bedlam" by Alouette Sparra
Sorry this is late... I tried, really I did.
Title: The House of Bedlam
Author: Alouette Sparra
Fandom and characters: Band of Brothers. Sobel, Evans, some Winters and Nixon near the end. Hints of slash. You have been warned.
Rating: PG-13. Maybe a little higher. The sort of PG-13 that stays out late and smokes and drinks and lies about where it's been and what it's been doing.
Prompt (and spoilers, if any): Really, so long as you've seen up to the first five minutes of the second episode (not counting title sequence), and/or have read the first four or five chapters of the book, there ought not be anything too spoiler-y. I do need to add the disclaimer that this is fictional, based on the miniseries and how the characters are portrayed there, and please no one flame me for picking this fandom and all. I'm nervous enough about this as it is.
"This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam."
--Elizabeth Bishop, "Visits to St. Elizabeth's”
This is the soldier home from the war
Home. He is home. Can this be called home anymore? Everyone has said to him “Welcome home, welcome home”. They say they are proud of him. How can they be proud of him? He wonders this. Then again, they only know what the official papers show. Injured in Normandy by machine gun fire, commander of the jump school at Chilton-Foliat, Captain, 101st Airborne, United States Army. A record to be proud of.
They say home is where the heart is. If that is so, then this is not home. Home is in the cold wet dirt of Normandy; twisted metal scorched by flames hot as Hell itself. Home is Uppottery in England, where there is a family who hangs black bunting over framed portraits of two lost sons. Home is Georgia; Benning and Toccoa, Currahee; sweltering, long days and only slightly cooler nights.
This will not be home. He was born here, grew up here, promised Will that at the end of the war, they would move here. He shouldn’t have promised that, should never have tempted fate, tested God. But he had, and it was Will who paid the price, Will who fell like Icarus, flaming from the sky. Every day the knowledge that he should have been on that plane, dying as well, burning as well. Every day as the hour draws late a quiet Texan voice seems to echo in his empty apartment cage that he was where he was supposed to be, and all in God’s time and His will. Every day he curses Will and his patient, constant faith; every night he begs forgiveness from a memory and God above.
At first it seemed odd, feeling the same constant presence that had seen him through so much of the training of Easy in preparation for the invasion, but he grew used to it like he grew used to the constant chill that had settled deep in his bones at Normandy.
He dates now, and listens for approval, for someone Will thinks worthy of him. Rather, he thinks it’s the other way around. Someone worthy of Will, someone who could occupy equal space in his heart and maybe, maybe make this apartment less of a cage and more of a home.
In the end, he breaks up with them, all of them, and not because Will doesn’t approve but because they can’t attain that much of his love and they deserve better. He tells them that, that he can’t love them the way they deserve to be loved, and they all leave him. All except her. She didn’t care, said that if he truly loved her even a little, then it was enough. He had loved her enough to leave her, and when she stayed he loved her more.
And when she found a picture of two young men in pinks, standing only a little too close to be proper, and looking well and truly in love? She put it back where she found it and never asked. He loved her as much as he ever could, and listened to quiet words of approbation.
These are the years and the walls and the door
Two years. Two years of marriage. Two years of biting his lip when they fuck to keep from calling out the wrong name. It should be noted that what they do is not, nor will it ever be, love-making. They know this and accept this.
Two years of that because her family wants grandchildren, she wants children, he doesn’t want them but knows Will does and so he agrees to have them for Will. Of course, he never says that to her. It is bad enough that he does not love her the way she deserves, but it would break her heart if he said he was only having kids because of his (long-dead) lover.
Two years and one month and she’s finally with child. He wants a girl, a daughter he can keep home and safe and find a decent husband for to keep her protected always. She wants a son. It’s odd, but he never really gives much thought to names for girls. Instead they argue over what they would name a son. She likes the name Michael, like the arch-angel. He’d rather a son be named William, and can’t answer her when she asks why. Either way, if it’s a boy, he’ll pray every night that the child does not join the Army, join the parachute infantry, die burning.
Will is quietly amused by this turn of events. If he sits in his study, the one room where he allows himself to have pictures of Will, and listens carefully, he can hear a quiet voice drawl about how “I never thought I’d live to see the day that you would have children,” and if he’s in a good humour, he’ll chuckle and agree, but if the day has been too long, he will see fit to remind Will that he, in fact, did not live to see the day.
The first time Will is upset, and leaves, but he’s back the next day, prescence warm and familiar and soothing to his shattered nerves. The fifth (or was it sixth?) time he says that, he neither sees nor hears nor feels Will again until the day his son is born.
She won that argument, and late that night he sits in his study and makes a promise that he’ll be a good father, the kind of father Will would have been, and nothing like his own. He promises this, and Will witnesses and will hold him to that promise, and says he’ll help as much as he can. His own words are returned to him then, in a tone not bitter, but soft and polite and almost sweet. He regrets them even more sharply now.
Then a cry pierces the silence and he gets up and leaves and shuts the door behind him, and ignores the fact that it does not open again, yet Will still follows.
That shut on a boy who pats the floor
It’s hard to be the sort of father he wants to be to Michael and Stephen (he lost the second argument as well). Sometimes he wonders why he even considered this, but the barest brush of a hand on his shoulder reminds him all too well and makes him more determined to be a good father.
His sons (and he never thought he’d agree to a second child) call him “Daddy” and can be rowdy and undisciplined and insubordinate and he loves them anyways. Loves them more than their mother, sad as it is, but true.
He can’t always make time to just play with them, not with how busy he is since his promotion. He’s in charge of the accounts for the entire district of stores, a very important job, a well paying job. So he’ll sit at home in his study and Stephen will play with blocks or a truck on the floor and Michael will do his “homework”. It’s not distracting at all, not like when the boys are in bed and it’s just him and Will and the walls.
That’s when he gets the least work done, when Will whispers words of support and encouragement and praise, and he can just feel the touch of soft lips against his ear. Sometimes he thinks himself quite mad, because if he turns his head quickly during those moments, he can see a flash of laughing molasses eyes.
Whenever that happens, Will insists he’s not mad, because he is really there, and it’s just taking him a bit to catch on, is all. He doesn’t know which is better, being mad or seeing ghosts (though most would say they are one and the same). If he starts thinking about that, he tends to panic. It’s bad enough that everyone is still so proud of him for his service during what they now call the second world war. If they knew half of what he did, they wouldn’t be so proud.
If they knew he was seeing ghosts, they’d call him insane, say it was pent up shell shock, send him to the hospital, and there would go the part of his military record he could find pride in, because that would come under scrutiny and he blames Will for the ensuing panic attacks that lead him to lay on the floor and press his forehead against the smooth cool wood and drum a gentle, steady rhythym so he can try and slow his breathing and racing heart.
To see if the world is round or flat
When I was little, I thought the world ended at the horizon, that it just dropped off into this void where the sun and the moon and the clouds lived. The idea that there was something outside of that small town and surrounding farms and the oil field just down the road... Incomprehensible. Not possible. That was the world and for a while, I was glad it was.
Then one day the world became this huge thing, a globe in the classroom of a schoolhouse with three rooms.
The idea of a school with three rooms was incomprehensible to him, but he laid there and listened.
I know, I know. How could you have a school with three rooms? Well, everyone lived close enough we went home for lunch. So no cafeteria. Beyond that... first through fifth together, sixth through ninth together, and the rest together. Not like your big city schools where there are three rooms for each grade, and three buildings to separate the grades.
But that’s how it was. And I liked it, especially once my sisters started going to school, because it was easy to keep an eye on them. But that’s besides the point.
Until I went to school the world was small and flat. Then it became incomprehensibly huge and round. And I wanted to see it, but never thought I would. I expected I’d die an old man, in my sleep, and I’d have never even left that town. And then the war started, and I went to Dallas to catch a train to Georgia. That was the first time I ever saw a city, was when I went to take that train.
I thought it was the most amazing thing, the city. So full of life and energy and light. A place where anything could happen, and everything. Simply amazing. I can’t describe it, but I loved it. And to think, there were larger cities out there! Just about broke my mind to think there were bigger, brighter places. But there were.
I loved New York City. I wished we’d stayed longer. But we had to get on that wretched boat.
Another incomprehensible idea, the wonderment of seeing a city for the first time. But then, if he thought carefully, he could understand the source of that awe. To him, it had been unbelievable that people lived anywhere but cities, that there were open fields and just land and trees and the occasional house as far as eye could see. He mentioned this, and Will agreed. The source was the same, even if the experience was different.
Then he thought of the boat. He laughed softly and rolled to lay on his back and look at the ceiling and Will and the ceiling through Will (but he was ignoring that translucence, yes he was) and smirked. “I don’t see what was so wretched about it. It was a rather nice ship, albeit a bit crowded.”
Oh sure. You only say that because you weren’t sea-sick the entire time.
“No, but I was mostly sleepless the entire time, if you recall.”
If you had said the word, I’d have let you have your bed for longer than it took me to eat and sit and force the food back down.
It hadn’t bothered him then, still didn’t now. Besides, anyone who had commented that he had given his bunk up to an enlisted man had been met with a glare and the response that said man was his First Sergeant, and he needed him to be healthy when they got to England. That got most of the other officers to shut up, and those that did not at first quiet did so when Colonel Sink commended him for his dedication to his men.
As such, when Will continued his apologies, he shushed him and resisted the urge to press a finger to those lips, because there were some things he could not ignore just yet. And Will smirked and pressed a kiss against his forehead that only made the chill that had settled in his bones all those years ago worse, made him so cold he ached from it. Then Will whispered that he ought to get to bed, and to sleep well, and he left him lying on the floor, the icy pain fading as quick as it came.
He missed the ache already.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
Another decade, another war. He left the paper declaring this sitting on his desk. This one he hoped would end swifter than the last. It was a joke, calling Korea a police action, calling this new mess in Viet-Nam a police action. He’d done police work, had been in the military police before volunteering for the Parachute Infantry. Police action did not involve M-1s and grenades (he doesn’t know if they use the pineapple grenades, the Mk 2s, but he doesn’t think they do because destructive technology has come a long way since those were new), it was handcuffs and the occasional use of an M1911.
It was selfish why he wanted the ‘police action’ to end swiftly, he knew. Selfish, and he didn’t care. He’d lost too much to bullets and fire to want to lose any more. But Michael was 17, almost 18, and if things dragged on for too long, there would be a draft, like there had been in 1941, 1950. If it came to that, he didn’t know what he would do. Pray Michael joined before he was forced to, because maybe he would sleep better at night if he thought his son wanted to be there.
Late at night when these fears kept him up, he’d go to his study and sit and think. Leaving was a courtesy to her, because she shouldn’t be disturbed by his restlessness. He loved her enough to give her that kindness, or maybe it was because he respected her for putting up with him for all these years.
It was another one of those nights. He sat and traced an old faded picture, black and white, of a somber face with mischief in his eyes. War was hell, war brought suffering, and hadn’t he suffered enough?
He put the picture down, rested it on top of today’s news, headline announcing the plan to stay in Viet-Nam until the Communists surrender. His hands shook. He rested his face against his hands. When had his entire body started to tremble? It didn’t matter. Tears pricked his eyes but he wasn’t going to cry, wasn’t going to, wasn’t going to...
A cold hand brushed his neck, squeezed his shoulder, and he turned and rested against a frigid embrace and ignored the tears that froze on his cheeks, and thrilled at the now familiar ache deep in his bones, because it meant Will was here, Will was here, and that made things better, always had, always.
He fell asleep like that, frozen, comforted, listening to that sweet dark voice talk about everything and nothing. He woke stiff and tired the next morning, with the sun as he had for no idea how long now, head resting against the desk, which was empty save for the lamp and bins he usually had there, and the old photo he had been looking at last night. No newspaper. He frowned, he hadn’t thrown it away, or at least, doesn’t recall doing that.
I threw it away. You shouldn’t dwell on that, it’s no good to think on things you can’t change. Besides, I doubt you have anything to worry about with Michael.
Will is right, as always. So he goes about his day, and ignores the paper, and when he finds out Michael is going to college and won’t be eligible to be drafted for the next 4 years (if not longer), he smiles like he hasn’t smiled in twenty-odd years, and pats his son on the back and praises him, and ignores the sense that Will is crowing I told you so! behind his congratulatory and genuinely happy smile.
That dances carefully down the ward
He supposes that being in a marriage to someone who doesn’t love you as much as they should can eventually wear a person down. It’s in her eyes, her smile, how she moves. She’s tired, bone weary of this facade of a happy, loving home, because it’s clear to everyone who lives and lived in this house that they do not really love eachother.
It amazes him how normal his sons turned out, even knowing that their parents didn’t really love eachother. Then again, they were loved and perhaps that’s what matters, because they aren’t like he was at 19, at 22. So what if it’s not fair to say his own parents didn’t love him? The truth is not always fair, and looking back having been well and truly loved, he knows the truth for what it is.
Now, now he spends his days in a careful sort of dance with fate. Michael graduates in June, is eligible to go fight in a ‘police action’ that is four years too long to be called that, not that it was ever anything but a war. Stephen is at college, and he fears three years from now, fears the war will still be going. Perhaps worst and best of all, she wants a divorce now that the children are grown and left the nest.
Surprising how many people think he’s taking it well, offering condolences like she’s dead. She isn’t, she’s more alive than he can recall seeing her in a while, and he’s happy, genuinely happy. She deserves it, deserves to live without being chained to him. He tells them that, and ignores the stares.
She let him have the house, most of the furniture, and insisted on only receiving her own money from their joint bank account. Everyone says he got off lucky, especially since his job pays so well, but he knows she only wanted what was hers. So she kept her things, and he kept his, and it’s an amicable sort of agreement, and they’re still good friends.
One day they meet for dinner and he walks her back to her new apartment, and she invites him up for a drink. He accepts and they talk, and he chokes on his tea when she finally asks about the pictures she found all those long years ago. Then he tells her and she squeezes his shoulder, and understands, and he leaves quickly, embarrassed, and doesn’t look back.
Then he enters his home, and is caught up in an ever familiar embrace and I missed you and he wonders when Will stopped being translucent before they kiss and he doesn’t think about anything else beyond Will and the constant, comforting chill.
Walking the plank of a coffin board
He hates her, hates her for marrying him and giving him children that he loves so damn much it hurts even when they’re okay, hates her for not believing him when he swears up and down that Will is right here, hates her for the mournful look Will gave him before suddenly just disappearing.
He all but physically removes her from the house, his house, and tells her that he doesn’t want to see her, hear from her again. She leaves in tears, he’s in tears, hates her, wants Will, but like she said, Will is dead and can’t possibly be here so he isn’t any more, and he just found out this morning that Stephen was hurt, hurt badly, white phosphorus, and is in Germany now and might not make it back to the States and he wants Will to just hold him and make things better but Will is dead, dead.
Alcohol doesn’t make him forget that, doesn’t bring Will back, doesn’t make Stephen healthy, doesn’t chase back the fire and it’s destruction. He’s never been more desperate, needs Will here, needs to be with him, but Will is dead and can’t come to him. Perhaps the only reason he gets far enough to where he’s standing in the kitchen and staring at his own blood is because of the alcohol, but Will is back and he’s alright now, everything’s just fine now, even if his vision is fading around the edges.
Herbert! Please... no, not like this, please not like this...
He doesn’t understand why Will is so upset, can’t understand, so he smiles and whispers comforting words until his voice fails him, and finds it odd that he’s doing the comforting because isn’t he the one dying? But there was no one to hold Will when he died, and maybe Will needs the soft words, needs to hear that everything will be fine as much as he does, so it doesn’t matter who says them, and it’s good because Will isn’t cold anymore, or is it that he’s just as cold as Will is so he doesn’t feel the cold and the last thing he sees is crying molasses eyes.
With the crazy sailor
He sits in the waiting room of the V.A. hospital, waiting for his appointment with some psychiatrist, self-consciously adjusting sleeves too long for the weather down over his wrists, just to make sure the bandages are hidden. The only other person here is a guy back from Viet-Nam, a Navy man, a medic who saw too many men broken and bleeding and burning and finally snapped. There’s a fancy name for what they have. Post-traumatic stress disorder, they call it. Say that the human mind can only handle so much violent death before it snaps.
That makes him laugh. That’s not his problem, no matter what the person at the hospital says. It’s the same lady that he’s going to talk to today. There’s no point to it, if you ask him. He’s feeling better, Will is back and won’t be going anywhere, and still hates himself for leaving when she said that about him. Yes, he’s dead, but he’s still here, will be here.
Oh, the psychiatrist was horrified when he told her why he’d done it, told her he hated her for returning and calling for an ambulance, because he was going to be with Will and everything was better. That’s why he has to see her today, she thinks he’ll try again.
It’s with detached amusement that he watches the hospital’s security guards remove the sailor from the building, tranquilised but still raving. The same odd humour makes him laugh as he rattles the woman even more when he says she doesn’t need to worry, he won’t try again because Will came back, Will’s staying, and she writes scrips for drugs that will supposedly make him sane and happy, and he tears them up and lets the scraps flutter to her carpeted floor.
“I’m happy as I am, and if it’s because I’m insane... I can live with that.”
That shows his watch
He never thought he could live with being insane, because so much of his youth had been spent being the best, being noticed, being as normal as he could hope to be. But Will is important, too important to give up for something as silly as a normalcy that can never be acheived, because there’s no such thing as normal. He’s glad he learned that, even if it took him so long, too long, to do so.
He doesn’t go back to see her again, doesn’t see her again either. But that’s alright. He just goes about his days, living comfortably off his severance pay, and eventually his retirement pay, and Will is right there beside him, alive and dead, like Schrodinger’s Cat (which he read about in a scientific journal he subscribed to once out of boredom).
It’s strangely appropriate, comparing Will to that cat, he thinks as he lays in his cold, not-empty bed, listening to ghost purrs that echo in his head, heart, soul.
That tells the time
The last thing he hears is that purr, becoming more real. His vision fades, then is all at once clear, sharp, like it was when he was young and healthy and could run a mountain named because it stood alone, three miles up, three miles down, in less than half an hour.
Currahee, “Stand Alone”, that was their motto. Then he approved, but now he knows better as he looks at it. He’s not standing by himself. Next to him is a small, wiry man, pale and blond and perfect, and then he’s running and laughing and nothing matters beyond the wind against his face and Will, who is there and alive.
He says something about that to Will then, words short between breaths, and Will grins and laughs and somehow he feels like the past forty years were just a nightmare, and he’s content to leave it as that, and let this be real.
Of the wretched man
“Can’t believe you dragged me to this. There’s no one else here to see the bastard. Can’t imagine why...”
Winters rolls his eyes and snorts, plucking the cigarette from the fingers of his longtime friend. “No smoking inside. And don’t speak ill of the dead. Besides, you didn’t have to come.”
“Yeah, well. I couldn’t let you brave that man’s family alone, now could I?” Nixon smirks and they sit.
“Thanks.” Winters is glad for Nix’s presence, because they are the only non-relatives at the small funeral. Well, aside from the honour guard, there because for all his faults, Sobel still was honourably discharged at the rank of captain. “He looked rather at peace.”
That draws a derisive snort from Nix. “Figures a man like that gets a peaceful death. Deserved to be shot, if you ask me.”
He knows what Nix thinks of Sobel, he knows what he thinks of Sobel, and he also knows, deep down, that more than anyone he can think of still alive, that Sobel deserved to die how he did. Perhaps the only men more deserving would be the ones who died in war, who had yet to die in war, but it was not, would not be, for them. The good died young, and the wretched lived long, and perhaps all a soul needed was to find peace before death, and that was why it was the good who got to go early. Winters didn’t know, didn’t really want to know or think on it longer, so instead of dwelling on things he couldn’t change, he simply shushed Nix and reminded him not to speak ill of the dead for the hundredth time.
That lies in the house of Bedlam.
Some author's notes: Pinks is slang for the Class As the Army wore during World War Two, mainly because the khaki/tan looked pink next to the brown. That's about it, unless someone can point out anything I missed that needs a little more explanation.
Title: The House of Bedlam
Author: Alouette Sparra
Fandom and characters: Band of Brothers. Sobel, Evans, some Winters and Nixon near the end. Hints of slash. You have been warned.
Rating: PG-13. Maybe a little higher. The sort of PG-13 that stays out late and smokes and drinks and lies about where it's been and what it's been doing.
Prompt (and spoilers, if any): Really, so long as you've seen up to the first five minutes of the second episode (not counting title sequence), and/or have read the first four or five chapters of the book, there ought not be anything too spoiler-y. I do need to add the disclaimer that this is fictional, based on the miniseries and how the characters are portrayed there, and please no one flame me for picking this fandom and all. I'm nervous enough about this as it is.
"This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam."
--Elizabeth Bishop, "Visits to St. Elizabeth's”
This is the soldier home from the war
Home. He is home. Can this be called home anymore? Everyone has said to him “Welcome home, welcome home”. They say they are proud of him. How can they be proud of him? He wonders this. Then again, they only know what the official papers show. Injured in Normandy by machine gun fire, commander of the jump school at Chilton-Foliat, Captain, 101st Airborne, United States Army. A record to be proud of.
They say home is where the heart is. If that is so, then this is not home. Home is in the cold wet dirt of Normandy; twisted metal scorched by flames hot as Hell itself. Home is Uppottery in England, where there is a family who hangs black bunting over framed portraits of two lost sons. Home is Georgia; Benning and Toccoa, Currahee; sweltering, long days and only slightly cooler nights.
This will not be home. He was born here, grew up here, promised Will that at the end of the war, they would move here. He shouldn’t have promised that, should never have tempted fate, tested God. But he had, and it was Will who paid the price, Will who fell like Icarus, flaming from the sky. Every day the knowledge that he should have been on that plane, dying as well, burning as well. Every day as the hour draws late a quiet Texan voice seems to echo in his empty apartment cage that he was where he was supposed to be, and all in God’s time and His will. Every day he curses Will and his patient, constant faith; every night he begs forgiveness from a memory and God above.
At first it seemed odd, feeling the same constant presence that had seen him through so much of the training of Easy in preparation for the invasion, but he grew used to it like he grew used to the constant chill that had settled deep in his bones at Normandy.
He dates now, and listens for approval, for someone Will thinks worthy of him. Rather, he thinks it’s the other way around. Someone worthy of Will, someone who could occupy equal space in his heart and maybe, maybe make this apartment less of a cage and more of a home.
In the end, he breaks up with them, all of them, and not because Will doesn’t approve but because they can’t attain that much of his love and they deserve better. He tells them that, that he can’t love them the way they deserve to be loved, and they all leave him. All except her. She didn’t care, said that if he truly loved her even a little, then it was enough. He had loved her enough to leave her, and when she stayed he loved her more.
And when she found a picture of two young men in pinks, standing only a little too close to be proper, and looking well and truly in love? She put it back where she found it and never asked. He loved her as much as he ever could, and listened to quiet words of approbation.
These are the years and the walls and the door
Two years. Two years of marriage. Two years of biting his lip when they fuck to keep from calling out the wrong name. It should be noted that what they do is not, nor will it ever be, love-making. They know this and accept this.
Two years of that because her family wants grandchildren, she wants children, he doesn’t want them but knows Will does and so he agrees to have them for Will. Of course, he never says that to her. It is bad enough that he does not love her the way she deserves, but it would break her heart if he said he was only having kids because of his (long-dead) lover.
Two years and one month and she’s finally with child. He wants a girl, a daughter he can keep home and safe and find a decent husband for to keep her protected always. She wants a son. It’s odd, but he never really gives much thought to names for girls. Instead they argue over what they would name a son. She likes the name Michael, like the arch-angel. He’d rather a son be named William, and can’t answer her when she asks why. Either way, if it’s a boy, he’ll pray every night that the child does not join the Army, join the parachute infantry, die burning.
Will is quietly amused by this turn of events. If he sits in his study, the one room where he allows himself to have pictures of Will, and listens carefully, he can hear a quiet voice drawl about how “I never thought I’d live to see the day that you would have children,” and if he’s in a good humour, he’ll chuckle and agree, but if the day has been too long, he will see fit to remind Will that he, in fact, did not live to see the day.
The first time Will is upset, and leaves, but he’s back the next day, prescence warm and familiar and soothing to his shattered nerves. The fifth (or was it sixth?) time he says that, he neither sees nor hears nor feels Will again until the day his son is born.
She won that argument, and late that night he sits in his study and makes a promise that he’ll be a good father, the kind of father Will would have been, and nothing like his own. He promises this, and Will witnesses and will hold him to that promise, and says he’ll help as much as he can. His own words are returned to him then, in a tone not bitter, but soft and polite and almost sweet. He regrets them even more sharply now.
Then a cry pierces the silence and he gets up and leaves and shuts the door behind him, and ignores the fact that it does not open again, yet Will still follows.
That shut on a boy who pats the floor
It’s hard to be the sort of father he wants to be to Michael and Stephen (he lost the second argument as well). Sometimes he wonders why he even considered this, but the barest brush of a hand on his shoulder reminds him all too well and makes him more determined to be a good father.
His sons (and he never thought he’d agree to a second child) call him “Daddy” and can be rowdy and undisciplined and insubordinate and he loves them anyways. Loves them more than their mother, sad as it is, but true.
He can’t always make time to just play with them, not with how busy he is since his promotion. He’s in charge of the accounts for the entire district of stores, a very important job, a well paying job. So he’ll sit at home in his study and Stephen will play with blocks or a truck on the floor and Michael will do his “homework”. It’s not distracting at all, not like when the boys are in bed and it’s just him and Will and the walls.
That’s when he gets the least work done, when Will whispers words of support and encouragement and praise, and he can just feel the touch of soft lips against his ear. Sometimes he thinks himself quite mad, because if he turns his head quickly during those moments, he can see a flash of laughing molasses eyes.
Whenever that happens, Will insists he’s not mad, because he is really there, and it’s just taking him a bit to catch on, is all. He doesn’t know which is better, being mad or seeing ghosts (though most would say they are one and the same). If he starts thinking about that, he tends to panic. It’s bad enough that everyone is still so proud of him for his service during what they now call the second world war. If they knew half of what he did, they wouldn’t be so proud.
If they knew he was seeing ghosts, they’d call him insane, say it was pent up shell shock, send him to the hospital, and there would go the part of his military record he could find pride in, because that would come under scrutiny and he blames Will for the ensuing panic attacks that lead him to lay on the floor and press his forehead against the smooth cool wood and drum a gentle, steady rhythym so he can try and slow his breathing and racing heart.
To see if the world is round or flat
When I was little, I thought the world ended at the horizon, that it just dropped off into this void where the sun and the moon and the clouds lived. The idea that there was something outside of that small town and surrounding farms and the oil field just down the road... Incomprehensible. Not possible. That was the world and for a while, I was glad it was.
Then one day the world became this huge thing, a globe in the classroom of a schoolhouse with three rooms.
The idea of a school with three rooms was incomprehensible to him, but he laid there and listened.
I know, I know. How could you have a school with three rooms? Well, everyone lived close enough we went home for lunch. So no cafeteria. Beyond that... first through fifth together, sixth through ninth together, and the rest together. Not like your big city schools where there are three rooms for each grade, and three buildings to separate the grades.
But that’s how it was. And I liked it, especially once my sisters started going to school, because it was easy to keep an eye on them. But that’s besides the point.
Until I went to school the world was small and flat. Then it became incomprehensibly huge and round. And I wanted to see it, but never thought I would. I expected I’d die an old man, in my sleep, and I’d have never even left that town. And then the war started, and I went to Dallas to catch a train to Georgia. That was the first time I ever saw a city, was when I went to take that train.
I thought it was the most amazing thing, the city. So full of life and energy and light. A place where anything could happen, and everything. Simply amazing. I can’t describe it, but I loved it. And to think, there were larger cities out there! Just about broke my mind to think there were bigger, brighter places. But there were.
I loved New York City. I wished we’d stayed longer. But we had to get on that wretched boat.
Another incomprehensible idea, the wonderment of seeing a city for the first time. But then, if he thought carefully, he could understand the source of that awe. To him, it had been unbelievable that people lived anywhere but cities, that there were open fields and just land and trees and the occasional house as far as eye could see. He mentioned this, and Will agreed. The source was the same, even if the experience was different.
Then he thought of the boat. He laughed softly and rolled to lay on his back and look at the ceiling and Will and the ceiling through Will (but he was ignoring that translucence, yes he was) and smirked. “I don’t see what was so wretched about it. It was a rather nice ship, albeit a bit crowded.”
Oh sure. You only say that because you weren’t sea-sick the entire time.
“No, but I was mostly sleepless the entire time, if you recall.”
If you had said the word, I’d have let you have your bed for longer than it took me to eat and sit and force the food back down.
It hadn’t bothered him then, still didn’t now. Besides, anyone who had commented that he had given his bunk up to an enlisted man had been met with a glare and the response that said man was his First Sergeant, and he needed him to be healthy when they got to England. That got most of the other officers to shut up, and those that did not at first quiet did so when Colonel Sink commended him for his dedication to his men.
As such, when Will continued his apologies, he shushed him and resisted the urge to press a finger to those lips, because there were some things he could not ignore just yet. And Will smirked and pressed a kiss against his forehead that only made the chill that had settled in his bones all those years ago worse, made him so cold he ached from it. Then Will whispered that he ought to get to bed, and to sleep well, and he left him lying on the floor, the icy pain fading as quick as it came.
He missed the ache already.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
Another decade, another war. He left the paper declaring this sitting on his desk. This one he hoped would end swifter than the last. It was a joke, calling Korea a police action, calling this new mess in Viet-Nam a police action. He’d done police work, had been in the military police before volunteering for the Parachute Infantry. Police action did not involve M-1s and grenades (he doesn’t know if they use the pineapple grenades, the Mk 2s, but he doesn’t think they do because destructive technology has come a long way since those were new), it was handcuffs and the occasional use of an M1911.
It was selfish why he wanted the ‘police action’ to end swiftly, he knew. Selfish, and he didn’t care. He’d lost too much to bullets and fire to want to lose any more. But Michael was 17, almost 18, and if things dragged on for too long, there would be a draft, like there had been in 1941, 1950. If it came to that, he didn’t know what he would do. Pray Michael joined before he was forced to, because maybe he would sleep better at night if he thought his son wanted to be there.
Late at night when these fears kept him up, he’d go to his study and sit and think. Leaving was a courtesy to her, because she shouldn’t be disturbed by his restlessness. He loved her enough to give her that kindness, or maybe it was because he respected her for putting up with him for all these years.
It was another one of those nights. He sat and traced an old faded picture, black and white, of a somber face with mischief in his eyes. War was hell, war brought suffering, and hadn’t he suffered enough?
He put the picture down, rested it on top of today’s news, headline announcing the plan to stay in Viet-Nam until the Communists surrender. His hands shook. He rested his face against his hands. When had his entire body started to tremble? It didn’t matter. Tears pricked his eyes but he wasn’t going to cry, wasn’t going to, wasn’t going to...
A cold hand brushed his neck, squeezed his shoulder, and he turned and rested against a frigid embrace and ignored the tears that froze on his cheeks, and thrilled at the now familiar ache deep in his bones, because it meant Will was here, Will was here, and that made things better, always had, always.
He fell asleep like that, frozen, comforted, listening to that sweet dark voice talk about everything and nothing. He woke stiff and tired the next morning, with the sun as he had for no idea how long now, head resting against the desk, which was empty save for the lamp and bins he usually had there, and the old photo he had been looking at last night. No newspaper. He frowned, he hadn’t thrown it away, or at least, doesn’t recall doing that.
I threw it away. You shouldn’t dwell on that, it’s no good to think on things you can’t change. Besides, I doubt you have anything to worry about with Michael.
Will is right, as always. So he goes about his day, and ignores the paper, and when he finds out Michael is going to college and won’t be eligible to be drafted for the next 4 years (if not longer), he smiles like he hasn’t smiled in twenty-odd years, and pats his son on the back and praises him, and ignores the sense that Will is crowing I told you so! behind his congratulatory and genuinely happy smile.
That dances carefully down the ward
He supposes that being in a marriage to someone who doesn’t love you as much as they should can eventually wear a person down. It’s in her eyes, her smile, how she moves. She’s tired, bone weary of this facade of a happy, loving home, because it’s clear to everyone who lives and lived in this house that they do not really love eachother.
It amazes him how normal his sons turned out, even knowing that their parents didn’t really love eachother. Then again, they were loved and perhaps that’s what matters, because they aren’t like he was at 19, at 22. So what if it’s not fair to say his own parents didn’t love him? The truth is not always fair, and looking back having been well and truly loved, he knows the truth for what it is.
Now, now he spends his days in a careful sort of dance with fate. Michael graduates in June, is eligible to go fight in a ‘police action’ that is four years too long to be called that, not that it was ever anything but a war. Stephen is at college, and he fears three years from now, fears the war will still be going. Perhaps worst and best of all, she wants a divorce now that the children are grown and left the nest.
Surprising how many people think he’s taking it well, offering condolences like she’s dead. She isn’t, she’s more alive than he can recall seeing her in a while, and he’s happy, genuinely happy. She deserves it, deserves to live without being chained to him. He tells them that, and ignores the stares.
She let him have the house, most of the furniture, and insisted on only receiving her own money from their joint bank account. Everyone says he got off lucky, especially since his job pays so well, but he knows she only wanted what was hers. So she kept her things, and he kept his, and it’s an amicable sort of agreement, and they’re still good friends.
One day they meet for dinner and he walks her back to her new apartment, and she invites him up for a drink. He accepts and they talk, and he chokes on his tea when she finally asks about the pictures she found all those long years ago. Then he tells her and she squeezes his shoulder, and understands, and he leaves quickly, embarrassed, and doesn’t look back.
Then he enters his home, and is caught up in an ever familiar embrace and I missed you and he wonders when Will stopped being translucent before they kiss and he doesn’t think about anything else beyond Will and the constant, comforting chill.
Walking the plank of a coffin board
He hates her, hates her for marrying him and giving him children that he loves so damn much it hurts even when they’re okay, hates her for not believing him when he swears up and down that Will is right here, hates her for the mournful look Will gave him before suddenly just disappearing.
He all but physically removes her from the house, his house, and tells her that he doesn’t want to see her, hear from her again. She leaves in tears, he’s in tears, hates her, wants Will, but like she said, Will is dead and can’t possibly be here so he isn’t any more, and he just found out this morning that Stephen was hurt, hurt badly, white phosphorus, and is in Germany now and might not make it back to the States and he wants Will to just hold him and make things better but Will is dead, dead.
Alcohol doesn’t make him forget that, doesn’t bring Will back, doesn’t make Stephen healthy, doesn’t chase back the fire and it’s destruction. He’s never been more desperate, needs Will here, needs to be with him, but Will is dead and can’t come to him. Perhaps the only reason he gets far enough to where he’s standing in the kitchen and staring at his own blood is because of the alcohol, but Will is back and he’s alright now, everything’s just fine now, even if his vision is fading around the edges.
Herbert! Please... no, not like this, please not like this...
He doesn’t understand why Will is so upset, can’t understand, so he smiles and whispers comforting words until his voice fails him, and finds it odd that he’s doing the comforting because isn’t he the one dying? But there was no one to hold Will when he died, and maybe Will needs the soft words, needs to hear that everything will be fine as much as he does, so it doesn’t matter who says them, and it’s good because Will isn’t cold anymore, or is it that he’s just as cold as Will is so he doesn’t feel the cold and the last thing he sees is crying molasses eyes.
With the crazy sailor
He sits in the waiting room of the V.A. hospital, waiting for his appointment with some psychiatrist, self-consciously adjusting sleeves too long for the weather down over his wrists, just to make sure the bandages are hidden. The only other person here is a guy back from Viet-Nam, a Navy man, a medic who saw too many men broken and bleeding and burning and finally snapped. There’s a fancy name for what they have. Post-traumatic stress disorder, they call it. Say that the human mind can only handle so much violent death before it snaps.
That makes him laugh. That’s not his problem, no matter what the person at the hospital says. It’s the same lady that he’s going to talk to today. There’s no point to it, if you ask him. He’s feeling better, Will is back and won’t be going anywhere, and still hates himself for leaving when she said that about him. Yes, he’s dead, but he’s still here, will be here.
Oh, the psychiatrist was horrified when he told her why he’d done it, told her he hated her for returning and calling for an ambulance, because he was going to be with Will and everything was better. That’s why he has to see her today, she thinks he’ll try again.
It’s with detached amusement that he watches the hospital’s security guards remove the sailor from the building, tranquilised but still raving. The same odd humour makes him laugh as he rattles the woman even more when he says she doesn’t need to worry, he won’t try again because Will came back, Will’s staying, and she writes scrips for drugs that will supposedly make him sane and happy, and he tears them up and lets the scraps flutter to her carpeted floor.
“I’m happy as I am, and if it’s because I’m insane... I can live with that.”
That shows his watch
He never thought he could live with being insane, because so much of his youth had been spent being the best, being noticed, being as normal as he could hope to be. But Will is important, too important to give up for something as silly as a normalcy that can never be acheived, because there’s no such thing as normal. He’s glad he learned that, even if it took him so long, too long, to do so.
He doesn’t go back to see her again, doesn’t see her again either. But that’s alright. He just goes about his days, living comfortably off his severance pay, and eventually his retirement pay, and Will is right there beside him, alive and dead, like Schrodinger’s Cat (which he read about in a scientific journal he subscribed to once out of boredom).
It’s strangely appropriate, comparing Will to that cat, he thinks as he lays in his cold, not-empty bed, listening to ghost purrs that echo in his head, heart, soul.
That tells the time
The last thing he hears is that purr, becoming more real. His vision fades, then is all at once clear, sharp, like it was when he was young and healthy and could run a mountain named because it stood alone, three miles up, three miles down, in less than half an hour.
Currahee, “Stand Alone”, that was their motto. Then he approved, but now he knows better as he looks at it. He’s not standing by himself. Next to him is a small, wiry man, pale and blond and perfect, and then he’s running and laughing and nothing matters beyond the wind against his face and Will, who is there and alive.
He says something about that to Will then, words short between breaths, and Will grins and laughs and somehow he feels like the past forty years were just a nightmare, and he’s content to leave it as that, and let this be real.
Of the wretched man
“Can’t believe you dragged me to this. There’s no one else here to see the bastard. Can’t imagine why...”
Winters rolls his eyes and snorts, plucking the cigarette from the fingers of his longtime friend. “No smoking inside. And don’t speak ill of the dead. Besides, you didn’t have to come.”
“Yeah, well. I couldn’t let you brave that man’s family alone, now could I?” Nixon smirks and they sit.
“Thanks.” Winters is glad for Nix’s presence, because they are the only non-relatives at the small funeral. Well, aside from the honour guard, there because for all his faults, Sobel still was honourably discharged at the rank of captain. “He looked rather at peace.”
That draws a derisive snort from Nix. “Figures a man like that gets a peaceful death. Deserved to be shot, if you ask me.”
He knows what Nix thinks of Sobel, he knows what he thinks of Sobel, and he also knows, deep down, that more than anyone he can think of still alive, that Sobel deserved to die how he did. Perhaps the only men more deserving would be the ones who died in war, who had yet to die in war, but it was not, would not be, for them. The good died young, and the wretched lived long, and perhaps all a soul needed was to find peace before death, and that was why it was the good who got to go early. Winters didn’t know, didn’t really want to know or think on it longer, so instead of dwelling on things he couldn’t change, he simply shushed Nix and reminded him not to speak ill of the dead for the hundredth time.
That lies in the house of Bedlam.
Some author's notes: Pinks is slang for the Class As the Army wore during World War Two, mainly because the khaki/tan looked pink next to the brown. That's about it, unless someone can point out anything I missed that needs a little more explanation.