The old man sat in a wooden rocking chair, the backrest slightly taller than his head. Set at an angle on the balcony, it was placed so that its occupant could see the rays of the dying sun without his eyes being scorched by its diluted but still potent glare. Warm orange light permeated the little cottage, washing its shadow onto the Irish landscape behind it, craggy and fog-drenched.
The old man smiled as he felt sleep overtaking him. It would not catch him, however. Although he was advanced in years, his youth spent on the roiling seas fighting the enemy had served him well, and later on his tenure as a commander of a force stronger and stranger beyond anything man had built for itself had served to strengthen his mind far more than his time on the seas honed his body. He would not fall asleep here; he did not want to.
For catching a cold in the Irish night was bound to be unpleasant.
He would see the sun die, and then he would go in for a cup of coffee. His heart ached momentarily as he thought of its smell, of the white-dressed maid that used to act as his right hand in the oceans, of her wrinkled brow, the only sign that she disapproved of his caffeine-guzzling habits whenever he would down entire pots to keep his body and mind operational.
All of them...I wonder where they've went.
Where they are now.
I wonder if they are happy. I wonder if they have found joy.
All he knew was that one day, the war was over, and he was wrenched away, given a few cursory rewards, spoke a couple of times to naval universities he dimly remembered graduating from. And of course, pulled away from the closest thing he had to a family.
He was happy at the time. Happy he didn't have to send anyone else to be cut up, shot at, disintegrated, or otherwise get hurt in ten thousand different ways. He thought being alone would be a good price to pay for that. For his subordinates' happiness.
But now, selfish as he was, he was beginning to regret it.
He wasn't supposed to be. They were weapons, and when a war is over, the sword is sheathed, the spear returned to the warehouse, and the cannons disassembled. Sympathy over cold steel was prodigally excessive, not a trait of a man that had ruthlessly ground down thousands of enemies.
But still, he missed them.
Missed Enterprise's obsession with military precision and protocol. Missed San Diego's inane singing. Missed Hammann's sharp, disciplined, hardworking exterior, only for it to crack and melt ever so slightly as he ran his hands gently over her head. Missed Belfast's sardonic, unmistakably British sense of humour, totally at odds with her savage efficiency on the high seas. Missed Cleveland's bonsai obsession, which was totally unexpected for an athletic tomboy who could sink a basketball into a hoop from twice the length of the court. Missed hundreds of others, half-weapons and half-human, each with their own quirks and hopes and dreams and fears, so visceral and so real it would be impossible to describe them all. Helena. Long Island. Laffey. So many.
Although those years had been filled with war and hurt and wounds, the commander had slowly come to a realisation that the war had, in some way, given him something he had never had before, and never had again.
Deep down inside, he had wanted those days, those days of gunpowder smoke and laughter and dragging Hornet back from the bar at three in the morning because she had had one too many, never to end.