Aaaand I'm late again. It's still Friday here, you guys! :P Again, sorry - traveling and all that. The good news is I'm back home now, so everything should resume as normal from here on out. ^_^
Anon reviews! Thanks to everyone for the reviews, faves, and follows, and everyone who's reading even if they haven't made themselves known. U GUISE R DA BEST.
Guest: Haha, well, I was in Hawaii, so I guess I was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. :P I'm glad you like Bruce, I tried to make him less twee than he is in the books - I think maybe LMM forgot how old he was meant to be by the end. But I still want him to be in-character, so I'm happy he's working for you. The same goes for Nan and Di, they really are non-entities. As for brave Una...I hope this counts as "interesting"!
Marz: Hello, welcome back! :) It is sad, I got the sense that Una thinks she's worse than she is in Rainbow Valley, or at least she's very self-conscious. I'm glad you liked Nan and Di and the last chapter in general. Ty for your reviews!
Title is from "Bones" by MS MR.
dig up the bones
Nan and Di have to leave soon - they aren't really on break at all, and had only come home to see Walter and ask for Dad's permission about "the VAD thing," as it had become known in the Blythe household.
They depart on a gray, pale April morning. Everyone goes to the station to see them off, except Una - "She's teaching the Clow girls piano," Rosemary explains.
Walter takes his turns embracing his sister. Nan lets go without comment, but Di holds him for a second, pulling back to search his eyes with her own.
"Write to me, all right?" she whispers.
"I will," he promises. His voice comes out hoarse.
When the train pulls away and they are gone, Rilla silently links her arm with his, the way he had with hers the night he enlisted.
"We didn't quarrel," he feels the need to say, when they're almost to the house and she still hasn't said a word.
She looks at him oddly. "I didn't think you had."
He doesn't meet her eyes, choosing to stare ahead. "Mother and Dad think we did." He pauses, not willing to say anything bad about one sister to the other. "I didn't want her to go to Europe."
Rilla shrugs. "Did you want Faith to go?"
Walter looks at her, startled. What does she mean by that? "Faith's not my sister."
"She's your friend."
"She didn't tell me until after she had already started training. And I was - " he shrugs, too. "There were so many things we didn't know, still."
Rilla looks like she wants to ask for more, but she sets her mouth and accepts what he will give her.
When they get home, Rilla slips away to give Jims his bath. Apparently the war-baby has been crying for her since she left - "He really has gotten attached to you," Miss Oliver observes.
Walter shifts uncomfortably in the parlor, wondering what to do. He has no studies, no duties or obligations. Only his thoughts. He shivers. Perhaps he would do well to go to Redmond, after all. He goes to his room to fetch his notebook - it's getting easier to walk these days; he's less clumsy with his cane - and slips away to the veranda. Perhaps he can write some more poems and sell them to another magazine. He receives the odd circular every now and then, when his poem is reprinted or used in some propaganda poster. It could give him some sort of purpose until - he'll have to go back to Redmond eventually, although he doesn't know what for. He tries to picture himself as a professor of English - his old dream - and instead sees himself trembling while the students laugh.
But for now. For now, he repeats to himself.
He settles onto the porch, lets his leg stretch. It aches less, or perhaps in a different way. Maybe he's becoming accustomed to being like this, for the rest of his life.
The rest of his life. He hadn't thought about it much in the trenches. He had felt it almost in his bones, that his was a sacrificial going, and he had accepted it. And perhaps his premonitions had been true, that he must die to truly be free. His soul had always felt too old for his body; there were times when he had been quite sure he could see things others couldn't.
But then - life is not a story, and even those who belong to another world must learn to live in this one.
He leans his head against the wall of the house and closes his eyes, lets the cool spring air wisp by his face. For a moment he is at peace, but then he finds his mind wandering, back to the trenches, back to the fighting. He wonders about the men in his regiment - how they are doing, if they are still alive. He wonders if it would be rude to write them - he supposes they didn't really even know each other, anyway, they had simply been thrown together by circumstance, country and city boys, poor and rich, some of them had to develop their calluses painfully and slowly while others came to the camp already scarred -and they must hate him, some of them, hate him for coming home while they remain, may never come back, maybe they don't remember him at all, just another soldier here one day and gone the next, gone to the hospitals or behind the lines or gone west, they're all just nameless and faceless anyway, cannon fodder, not like the officers who sit so safely, losses are only missteps and tactic mistakes to them. And Walter's always thought that there's some kind of balance in the world, that suffering is rewarded in the end, the meek shall inherit the Earth, everything he's ever learned at his mother's knee and in the old white walls of the church - but he knows better now, you can fight and struggle and none of it will mean a damn thing in the end, you'll still end up skittled or a coward, and who can even say which one is worse? Brave men with medals and scared men trembling with shock and fear, they both end up in the same place...
He is not aware that there is someone else present until a hand touches his shoulder. Instinctively, he flinches, and Una Meredith steps back, as though he is an animal and she has spooked him. Perhaps she has.
"I'm sorry," she says, hesitant. "Did I - scare you?"
The idea of quiet little Una scaring anyone is ridiculous, but Walter is ashamed to feel that his heartbeat picked up, that his hands are shaking just a little.
"No," he says. "Only a little startled. I do get - caught up in my thoughts, sometimes."
She gives him an odd, stiff little smile. "I know." She pauses, then steps forward, closer to him. "May I?"
He blinks then nods, and she carefully sits down next to him, tucking her skirt around her knees.
"How are you?" she asks. She's oddly fidgety, playing with the loose fabric around her knees, tugging the sleeves of her sweater tighter around herself. Or maybe she's always been this way and he's never noticed.
"All right," he says. "And yourself?"
"Fine."
There is a pause, awkward and heavy between them. Walter wonders if he should ask how her piano lessons are going - as though he knows the first thing about music - but then Una inhales deeply, audible even to him.
"I wanted to talk to you about something," she says. Her voice trembles, just a bit, near the end. Walter blinks. What on Earth could Una Meredith want to talk to him about? And she looks so strange, mouth set in a little line, so firmly that her lips turn white.
"Go ahead," he says. An odd sense of trepidation has started in his stomach. Perhaps she has bad news. Something her father wanted her to pass on. Perhaps they've figured out what Walter has done, and have sent Una here to tell him that he is damned alive.
Oh, don't be dramatic.
"We're worried about you," Una says, the words fairly bursting from her. She pauses, ducks her head, and lifts a slightly more composed face back to Walter. "Di and Nan and Rilla. And I'm sure - everyone else."
Now Walter is vaguely annoyed. Does she think he doesn't know that?
"I don't - I know you have your reasons," she rushes on when he opens his mouth. "I only meant to ask - what's upsetting you - is it about the war?"
He is thrown by how bluntly she puts it, but he doesn't say anything. He can't tell her - his silence is a dam, and breaking it even for the slightest confession would bring forth the flood of all the others, all that he left behind in Europe and desperately wishes would stay there.
"Are you ever going to talk about it?" The question is not harsh or impatient, only vaguely curious. Has Una ever been harsh with anyone? Walter used to admire that about her, he thinks, but now he finds it unnatural - horrible. He knows, now, everything that humans are capable of. Una, must be, too. Perhaps she only hides it better. Perhaps she's a liar, has been lying since they were children. He is suddenly stupidly, irrationally angry with her.
"It's nothing you want to hear."
Una tilts her head at him. "You don't know that."
"Don't I?" he says. "Your concerts and your speeches - the white feathers - your posters - that damn poem I wrote. Everyone wants to think - "
He's said too much, let the dam burst. He tries to bite back the flow, but Una does not look upset, or even shocked. Her face is as neutral as ever. Walter suddenly recalls their days together in Rainbow Valley, where she used to cry at the slightest provocation, lips set to trembling every time Mary Vance said a bad word. What has happened?
"It doesn't - " Una starts, presses her lips together. "It doesn't matter what I want to think. We want to help. Whatever - whatever it is - we'll listen. I'll listen."
She's not giving up, clearly. Walter remembers the odd resilience he'd glimpsed under all her sweet wistfulness, and wonders why she had to choose now to use it. He cannot tell her anything that won't hurt her, won't hurt all of them. Their lives here - his life, before - are so innocent, so untouched. He can't ruin this for them. They could never understand, anyway.
"People died," he says, finally, not looking at her. "I didn't try to stop it." I killed him horribly and I was glad. That is it, that is all, under everything. Oh, he has a medal for saving a man, but how many had he killed? It's odd, he thinks, the compromises people are willing to make in their search for sense.
Una is still studying him, but her face - there's something odd there, something Walter cannot decipher. His words should have frightened her away from the topic, but they haven't. "You think we can't understand that." Her tone is strange, almost as though Walter has confirmed something for her.
"It's not just - that," he says slowly. "The things I've seen - Una, I don't want you - or anyone - to be able to understand. No one - should be - " He can't finish.
Una looks away, out at Rainbow Valley. She is silent for a while. "I haven't told anyone this before," she says, softly. "Not even Faith."
Walter looks at her - he and Una have shared confidences over the years, but never anything they hadn't told to someone else. But her eyes are serious, moreso than they usually are - there is nothing soft or wistful about them right now. He nods for her to go on.
"My mother was holding me when she died, you know," Una begins. She does not look at him. "Her last words were to my father, but she was holding me." She stops for a moment, tugging at a thread on her sleeve, pulling it loose.
"And I felt her - when it happened. I remember how I couldn't feel her breathing or the beat of her heart. Everything just stopped, and one moment she was there, and then she wasn't - Aunt Martha had to take me out of her arms because - she couldn't - let me go - herself - " Una's eyes are wide now, brimming with tears that she will not allow to spill over. She takes a deep breath before looking Walter in the eye.
"So you see," she says, "Death and I are rather old friends."
For once in his life, words have deserted Walter. He suddenly remembers Una the day he had met her - what had she looked like? He shakes his head. As though people carried tragedy etched on their faces or their skin. It is within, isn't that one of the things he's been trying to make them all understand?
He'd always known about the Merediths' mother; Jerry and Faith had shared the story the day they had all met. But somehow he'd forgotten, thought the Merediths' lives to have been just as idyllic and innocent as that of him and his siblings. And all this time, they had known what he had had to learn.
"I'm sorry," he says.
Una merely shakes her head. "I only mean to say that - I've never been to war - but I do know. Not exactly - not everything - but a bit, at least."
Walter inhales, exhales. There is too much - where can he start? What can he tell her? Some of the horrors would be too much, even for her.
"The other day," he begins. "When Rilla broke that plate. It was - I was hearing the shells."
