Bonding by the Railways
Rated K
Peter Kirkland / Arthur Kirkland; Father-son fic.
Word Count: 1400 +
Don't wait to make your son a great man – make him a great boy.
-Unknown
Things should be better by now. Even as London was still in shambles, even as the country struggled to pay it's debts and even as mothers called longingly for sons and husbands that would not return, things should be okay, at least for them.
Arthur Kirkland had come home from the battlefront; the war was over and he had his son back. Little Peter was only a babe when the war began - barely two years old when his father had been called to serve their country. He had left him in a neighbor's care - an old, kindly woman who smiled and smelt like hard candies - along with his older boys, from his wife's first marriage. Alfred and Matthew, both thirteen when Arthur had married their mother at twenty four, fourteen by the time that their mother died, and fifteen by the time he had left for the battlefield, had both been left to her care as well.
Arthur had thought that they would be safe. He thought that he would come home, and they could at least be a family again.
But after tireless years, when he finally had the chance to come home at the war's end, he came to find that only Peter remained - that his two boys, even if they weren't his boys, had gone off in his footsteps and joined the war as well.
What was left of them was two letters of condolences, addressed to Arthur and his deceased wife. Arthur held them in his hands, crumpling them and streaking them with wetness that came off his cheeks, as he sank to his feet and cried. Little Peter - who could barely remember his father as it was - simply stared up at him with wide, blue eyes, before reaching out and trying his best to hold around the Englishman.
Arthur gripped him tight and buried his face against the child, muffling his cries into that sandy blond hair, holding tight to the last line of anything he had in that moment, that connected him to the real world.
They had gotten a new home after that. Their old home, all three stories of beauty and architecture that had belonged to Arthur's father, and his grandfather, and as far as Arthur Kirkland himself could remember - it was gone, rubble and shambles in the ground.
That was all that was left. Arthur laughed bitterly as he stared up at his childhood home, fingers holding around Peter's tiny hand, and Peter staring up airly at the space of nothingness.
Arthur had started to rent a flat. It was small, cramped - but it was just enough room for the two of them. There were only two of them. It was near a train station, near the grocer's, and that was all that they needed.
He began to search for a new job. It was difficult to find, but eventually he found something that payed a little more than minimum wage. He left for long hours, though, and more often than not he was too tired to really do anything at all when he got home except give Peter something from the neighbor's for dinner (because they all pitied the poor family, they pitied that they couldn't seem to get their lives together, and Arthur abhorred that), but it was better than nothing.
Something he had noticed, however, was that every night, he wound up with a little Peter curled up at his side.
Arthur always had a hard time falling asleep - somehow, he was always kept awake, just beyond being awake but not quite at sleeping just yet - and so he would notice it. He would always notice it, no matter how quiet or how still Peter tried to be.
It would wind up happening around two or three in the morning, every night. Arthur would be listening quietly to the trains going by - and the flat shook as the cars rumbled past, the lingerings of it apparent even after the caboose had long gone -when the little boy, so tiny even at six years old, would be curled up against his side, sometimes shaking, sometimes holding it in - pretending he was asleep, pretending that nothing was wrong and he wasn't terrified.
And Arthur could only imagine - he could hardly begin to imagine the things Peter was thinking, he could only try to understand the terrors of memories, of dark bomb shelters and terrifying sights overhead, watching as your home was threatened to be bombed, to be smashed... he could only imagine experiencing those things at such a tender age.
If only Peter hadn't been born into such a conflict - if only Arthur could have stayed, and raised him like a proper parent would, instead of leaving his care to two brothers that had left him and a neighbor who was sympathetic, but could not care for a child like a father could.
Such a brave young lad. Such a restless little soldier.
Arthur always wound up wrapping an arm around him and pressing his nose against Peter's hair, rocking him as he murmured lullabies that his mother used to sing for him, so long ago. And eventually, Peter's tremblings would stop. And in the morning, he wouldn't address it - he would pretend that it never happened. That he hadn't seen Peter crying, that Peter had been in such a state - and he could only imagine, that Peter was just a bit grateful for it.
Pretend that it never happened, and perhaps, it never did.
But as the days turned weeks, the weeks trickled into months - Peter's nightly climbs into Arthur's embrace did not cease. Not that Arthur minded it - because someone, that little connection to his son reminded him that he was indeed alive, and loved, and needed - but it made him feel horrible for letting it continue like this. Knowing that Peter was still frightened, still suffering even with his father at his side - it didn't seem right.
It started to become worse, if Arthur was to be honest with himself.
More often, the man would come home to find that the trains were already rumbling by, and Peter was curled up under the blankets, piled high, knees huddled against his chest as he tried to keep his cries quiet - hands clamped over his ears, tears quietly building and soaking his shirt and knees. And when Arthur would try to approach him, his mind went blank - he went still, only able to kneel down and offer his arms to Peter as a comfort that was barely there.
And those tears were so honest - so honestly frightened, so worried and swamped with memories of the bombs and the aeroplanes - that it frightened the Englishman. To know that his boy, his boy, was suffering. All Arthur could do was kneel down, quiet, before lifting the blankets ever so slightly, so he could peer at his boy's face.
".. Peter?"
There was a pause, every day, as Peter tried to sort that out. Tried to sort the memories out from the reality, the now.
But Peter would eventually focus in on the now instead, and look up at Arthur, and smile back.
"Hi, daddy."
That smile hurt more than the tears. It hurt to watch Peter try to collect himself like that. So Arthur did all that he could do - he began to be a little more adamant in allowing Peter to be less afraid. He would try to show up earlier in the evening - before Peter would start nodding off listening to the radio, sometimes even before dark.
And he started to make sure to hold the boy more often. He would gather Peter up in his lap, no matter how stiff Peter became, unsure how to respond - and he would just rock him there, hand on Peter's hair, fingers running through the coarse strands as he whispered that he was proud of Peter, that he was a good boy, the best little boy, and daddy loved him very much.
The weeks still continued to dribble by. Peter continued to nestle at his father's side during the nights, but now - now, they went to bed together. And even though Peter still trembled as the trains went by in the early hours, Arthur was always there - he was there. And the trembling soon decreased, until it stopped altogether.
And perhaps, that was the most important part. They were slowly - ever so slowly - getting there. No matter what.
Arthur would always be there, to provide a place for Peter to call home, and a person to call father.