Chapter Text
Sometimes Alison took it upon herself to tidy something. Just a tiny section of the house in the grand scheme of things - there was still so much left to be renovated - but completing a job was completing a job, no matter how small, no matter how impulsively done, and she always sat back afterwards in satisfaction.
She was on her hands and knees, tackling a chipped and grimy and peeling stretch of skirting board that had been bothering her for days. At first her plan had been to attack it with some super glue and a wet wipe, but after the first touch the old wood had begun to flake and crumble under her fingers and she’d quickly realised the entire thing would need to come off. It barely took any prying to pull it free, and so she was shuffling systematically along on her knees removing it, occasionally mourning the soon to be bruised state of her kneecaps as they dug into the unforgiving floorboards. With a soft grunt she shifted her weight, one knee then the other; one knee then the other; one knee then the –
She made a strangled noise as she reached out to catch herself from toppling over, her hand smacking against the wall. The floorboard she had just rested her weight on had creaked and dipped dangerously, slipping out of place.
“Oh my God. Jesus.” She put a hand to her chest and glared down at the offending floorboard, removing her knee. “Thanks for the jumpscare,” she said, even though she knew she wouldn’t have fallen further than the subfloor lying just beneath (she and Mike had paid extra attention to the type of flooring each room had after the Toby Nightingale Incident). She dropped the skirting she’d been holding to prod gingerly at the loose floorboard, now lying in the shallow hollow beneath it.
It was then she noticed, amongst the dust and detritus that had slipped through the cracks and become trapped beneath their feet, the envelope.
Alison abandoned her task and moved the loose floorboard out of the way, plucking the letter – for it was a letter, she could feel the thick press of folded paper inside – from where it had laid hidden.
From the hallways behind her she could hear the Captain humming to himself whilst he walked his dutiful rounds around the house. She sat down properly to examine the letter. Aged but not ancient, address-less, stamp-less, with a name written in neat cursive across the front. She tilted it toward the light but it didn’t illuminate anything about the content. She flipped it over and ran her thumb idly over the line of the envelope flap. She didn’t mean to break the seal, but the glue was old and came apart easily.
The letter sprang open.
“Oh fuck.”
“Alison?!”
The Captain’s footsteps grew loud and rapid as he approached, and Alison turned around awkwardly on her heels as his head appeared in the doorway.
“Hey Captain,” she said, trying to smooth the letter back closed to no avail with one hand and waving reassuringly at him with the other, “don’t worry, I’m fine - ”
“Well of course you are. Wasn’t concerned at all,” he said brusquely, but he untensed and lowered his brandished swagger stick, and Alison hid her smile as he came further into the room, clearing his throat and shifting her attention. “What do you have there?”
“What I was swearing at. More accurately I was swearing at myself for damaging it.” She gently held the letter up to indicate the broken seal. “Found it beneath a dodgy floorboard, reckon it must’ve slipped down there,”
The Captain stood next to her “A letter?”
“Yeah. There’s no address or anything though, look.”
She turned the letter around, and the Captain froze.
Alison blinked. She knew it was impossible, but she could’ve sworn he’d gone pale. She looked between him and the name on the paper. “D’you know them?”
The Captain swallowed and ignored her question. “Beneath the floorboards you say?” His voice was quiet and cracked uncharacteristically in the middle.
“Y-yeah. Captain,” she tried again, softly. He was still looking stricken at the letter, “d’you recognise the name?”
The Captain looked a moment longer, then tore his gaze away to the hole in the floor. That was the only way Alison could think to describe the action. “Yes,” he said.
“Oh,” said Alison, “so this is – this is from your time?”
The Captain was wringing his swagger stick round and round in his hands. “Yes.”
Alison suddenly felt silly sitting on the floor, so she got up, careful with the letter, and held it out toward him a little. She knew he couldn’t take it, but it felt like more his than hers. “I can open it, if you want? See what it says?”
The Captain turned to her then, to the letter, and his hands halted their tight turning on his swagger stick. He wavered. Opened his mouth. Closed it again. Almost said something, then with a resolute setting of his shoulders, and an unfathomable edge to his voice, changed his mind.
“Thank you Alison, but no. It should stay unread.”
Alison nodded, cradling the letter close to her chest. “Alright.” The Captain had moved to stare out of the window, so she spoke to his back. “I’ll put it somewhere safe, then. And… if you change your mind - just yell, yeah?”
The Captain made a vague nodding motion, but didn’t turn from the window, and Alison realised she would have to abandon her skirting board task for the day, and leave the Captain to his thoughts. She backed away to tuck the letter somewhere it wouldn’t get damaged, tracing the swooping pen marks of the name written upon it with the edge of her thumb as she walked.
At the edge of the Button House grounds, the ghost of Lieutenant William Havers had gasped awake with the breaking of an envelope seal.