Disclaimer: I am not KM Peyton. If I were, I would not be writing this fic, as will hopefully become obvious. The RFC song is also not mine.
Author Note: I'm not abandoning my ongoing fic 'Flambards in War'- I just haven't updated in a while, due to hideous exams that have been dominating my time lately. Updates should begin again soon.
This short fic is something I have debated writing and putting on fanfiction for a long time. I haven't written it for the reasons I normally write fanfiction- I actually cried whilst writing this. But I have felt, ever since I read the Flambards series for the first time, that William's death deserved some real emphasis and exploration. I know the author wanted to return the focus of the story to Christina and Flambards and horses, but I have always felt that William's character was dropped very quickly.
Other readers might disagree. I'm hopelessly biased, as William Russell is probably my favourite male character of all time.
I hope that if you do read this, you don't hate me for writing something sad. :(
A poor aviator lay dying, at the end of a bright summer's day.
His comrades had gathered about him, to carry his fragments away.
When William Russell landed an aeroplane for the last time, it didn't truly occur to him that he had savoured his last taste of the freedom of the sky; that he had felt his last shattering abandon from the Earth, that never again would his stomach swing with the satisfaction of coaxing some old crate up into the air. Of course these days it wasn't old crates- it was military aeroplanes, death on wings. Death for the Hun whose dugouts could be photographed from the air and then shelled for days on end. Death for the gunners whose monstrous artillery cannons were targets for the simple philosophy 'kill or be killed'. Death for the pilot- Hun or British.
But none of that occurred to William when he landed on that summers afternoon. His mind was far too consumed with other thoughts, as he somehow managed to crawl and tumble out of the cockpit, collapsing onto the grass and immediately looking up, up at the endless blue of the summer sky, wondering how such a thing could continue to look so normal when nothing else did. Nature didn't even bat an eyelid to the continued ferocity of man, didn't shudder or flinch away at the never ending blood lust. But those thoughts were too big, too horrific, too real for William to accept at that moment, lying on the grass under the summer sky.
He felt sick. Dizzy, too; unable to think coherently or to fully register the pain that was tearing his chest apart. The deafening silence in his ears was being slowly pierced by distant sounds- a commotion, voices shouting, his friends yelling his name and their footsteps coming fast and close...gunfire echoing on as it always did in the not so far off distance...they were getting closer now. Running to get him- to carry away the corpse.
He feverishly clutched at his chest, feeling the strange damp of blood soaking through his khaki, wishing only that it could all be over. That he could cease to be sprawled in the grass in the warm summer sun, tainted by gunfire.
He looked at the blue of the sky. So blue, it almost hurt to look- so open he could cry with the need to be up there again, surrounded by the endlessness of it, swooping and soaring in some agile little machine he had mended and brought back to life. He could fix anything, make even the most decrepit old things stuttered with bullets flyable again. The thing was, he wasn't so immortal.
This time it was him who was peppered and he was helpless. Broken for good.
"Oh God, Will, Captain Russell, oh dear God-"
One of the boys had reached him where he was sprawled in the field beside the smouldering wreckage of his plane. The poor lad dithered helplessly, tears pricking his eyes, before falling to his knees beside William and scooping his head into his lap. William appreciated the gesture, even if he couldn't remember the boys name. He was 18- William did know that. He had been like that once, uncorrupted and innocent. Four years felt like a lifetime.
The others made it over and someone slipped a morphine tablet under William's tongue; someone else wiped the blood splatters from his face, another was debating whether they should fetch a stretcher. Leave me, William thought irritably, get on with fixing the machine- she can be mended. Don't waste your time on me.
The boy was talking to him, the words just noise in his muffled ears, but a comfort nonetheless. It made William wish he had been able to do that for Sandy and Mr Dermot; to soothe them, to simply exist beside them until they were gone. He had never been given the chance to say goodbye- just to stand silently in the aftermath and reel with the inability to comprehend that they no longer existed. That they were gone.
The pain in his chest was gone- oh, blessed morphine- but still William could feel the broken parts of him as he breathed. It was just like flying- you always knew when the engine needed an overhaul, or warp wires tightening, or new piston rings. His fingers moved to the tattered remains of his chest and he felt the mess left by the bullets with a shudder, not of revulsion, but of realisation. War was messy. Why did it take dying to realise that?
His eyes were drawn to the sky again, so blue, gazing down upon him and the burning wreckage, nestled in the grass together. I could be at Flambards, or Kingston, or anywhere in England, on a lazy summer day with no cares at all- he stopped mid thought, suddenly realising that for him, there had never been a time with no cares. He had never existed without something to fret over. How pointless that all was now.
As Mr Dermot would say, what wasted potential.
He felt his limbs suddenly fall heavy and detached from his body, as if he were floating- somewhere through the thick fog of confusion, the RFC lad was saying something, urgently-
"Captain? Captain, is there- oh God... is there anything you want me to- to say to your family?"
Mark wouldn't care. Father was dead. Christina... William tried to say her name, but he was already drifting and his lips wouldn't oblige him anymore; he could not say it. He just wanted to lay back against the hot grass and close his eyes, to forget, to lose it all, the regret and the bitterness, to sink back into the darkness and never come back-
"William?"
Out of nowhere her voice was calling to him, and suddenly he could see her standing there in the grass, her smile blossoming onto her face and her eyes soft with love. She held out a hand to him, beckoning him, but something like realisation dawned on her face and she retracted it, instead caressing his cheek softly. He could feel it- the warm, soft skin, so tender with love he could weep. He didn't want to lose her but he knew that she couldn't go with him.
"I love you." he told her, this smiling vision, and she nodded with tears escaping down her cheeks.
"I know. And I love you." she seemed to shine, and glow with warmth.
William no longer saw the sky- he saw her. A twelve year old girl with bewildered eyes...a vision of beauty in a rose pink dress...a whisper of a name and breathless kisses...a laugh and tears and waving as the plane taxied off-
He smiled. There was nothing else- no mess or pain or anger. Just her. Only her.
The RFC lad was not ashamed when tears dripped down his face and onto the face of his Captain, whose eyelids he closed with a gentle tremor in his hands. The older men stood a few metres back from the wreckage, silent- for there was nothing to be said.
Oh, had I the wings of a little dove,far a-way, far a-way would I fly,
Straight to the arms of my true-love,and there would I lay me and die.
So hold all your glasses steady, and let's drink a toast to the sky,
For here's to the dead already, and here's to the next man to die.