Re: Una's age, I decided to just leave it, since nobody seems to mind and I am terribly lazy. If Shirley Blythe can get two years shaved off his age, Una can get eight or so months, right? (I mean, going by the details of the first Anne book alone, Anne should've been the one coming of age during WWI, with Gilbert off to war. But whatever! It's about a hundred years too late to start worrying about it, I guess.) To the anons!

Guest: Oh, Miss Cornelia has Lots of Opinions, though I don't know that there'll be space in the story for her to air them. In the deleted scenes, maybe? :P I'm glad you're starting to like Mary, you mentioned not being a fan in an earlier review so I'm glad you're finding her sympathetic now. Thank you for reviewing!

Marz: Shirley and Rilla make sense in the beginning of the book - he's sixteen and she's fourteen turning fifteen in the summer of 1914*, but then it takes him until January of 1917 to turn eighteen. Oh, well! I'm glad the gossip worked for you, I really didn't want to make it the center of Una's focus/make Una have an existential crisis over a dude, but still wanted to acknowledge it (because! small town full of gossips, it was bound to happen), so I'm glad that came across. Thank you for the review :)

Guest (2): Thank you! :)

* Actually, it's still kind of weird, because Anne was supposedly sick for a while after Shirley's birth, so it's odd that she would get pregnant again so soon. But! I'm just nitpicking now.

Title is from the Firefly episode "War Stories".


war stories

Walter wakes up in a strange sort of fog - not quite sure where he is, or where his thoughts are. He hasn't dreamt - or at least he cannot remember his dreams - for which he is grateful. Sun slants in from the window, making the world go orange-red when he tries to close his eyes against the light, burrowing into the covers.

The sheets smell clean, like the outside air - not musty or old. Nan and Di must have beaten them before he arrived. The thought makes him smile; Nan and Di had never been quite used to doing housework.

He rolls over, covering his eyes with his arm. It must be rather late, if the sun is already up. Pain twinges in his shoulders and at the small of his back; the bed isn't quite as comfortable as his own at Ingleside. His body protests when he pushes himself up, but he's figured out the trick, how to brace himself and force himself to sitting. He stays there for a moment, hunched over in the bed, picking at the quilt - Faith's quilt, he reminds himself, and stops pulling at the threads. Then he shakes his head. He has never been fidgety before - likely he's been spending too much time with Una. The Merediths are always in motion - Jerry and Faith running wild, Carl crawling after every manner of insect - and Una tugging at her sleeves, clicking her knitting needles, tucking her hair behind her ears. He supposes he's picked it up from her. Ah, well.

With a grunt, he swings his legs out of bed - his left landing a bit heavily; he has misjudging the distance from the bed to the floor.

His clothes are stiff and starched; Susan had been so excited about him making the trip that she had washed and ironed his shirts specially. For a moment, he stands there holding them; the smell of fresh, clean clothes is still strikes him as unfamiliar every now and then. Perhaps it's only being here, away from Ingleside - he feels transplanted, somehow. Just starting to let his roots heal, stretch into the earth again, and now they have been ripped out.

It's just for the weekend, he scolds himself, washing his face and flattening his hair. He has seen - unspeakable things, things he cannot repeat to anyone, not even Una or Rilla or Di. He has been away from home for nearly two years. Surely a long weekend will not be the thing that breaks him now. Or breaks him further.

He looks oddly vulnerable, he thinks, in his underclothes. His face is still rather hollow, and - have his eyes always looked like that? His skin - deeply tanned from the year and a half outdoors - is finally returning to the near-pallor it had before the war, but the white is marred by pinks and reds, all over his chest and back, curling up his neck, stretching down his leg. Who ever said that scars were romantic? Walter thinks he'd like to have several words with them.

Well. No matter. He rolls the stiffness out of his shoulders best he can and dresses quickly. He realizes he'd forgotten to ask Nan and Di their schedules. They may not even be here.

And he is right, he discovers when he shuffles into the parlor. There is a little note left on the table, pen still lying next to the paper - Gone to class & then to Red Cross. Left extra key for you. Thinking of dining out, if you don't mind. Love, Di (and Nan). The addition in parentheses makes him smile, a bit. He leans down and adds a note of his own: Went around campus. Will be back for supper. Love, Walter.


Redmond is almost the same.

Walter has to admit - foolishly, he feels - that in some ways, the place had struck a kind of childlike fear in him. Fear of being called a coward, of finding white feathers tucked into his books when he isn't looking, of all the taunts of "Sissy Blythe" and "Miss Walter" sneaking out of the Glen St. Mary schoolhouse and finding him here, so many years later.

It is only a place, he reminds himself - the old stone buildings have no power, speak no words. There is nothing to fear. And - he too had followed the Piper's call in the end, hadn't he? There is nothing anyone can say to him now, either. Yet he still feels the old, familiar trepidation when he arrives.

The campus is predictably near vacant; only a handful of students are milling round the green, talking and laughing. They look at him oddly when he passes them by - with his cane and his drawn face, he must look a stranger to these laughing youths. They'd never believe he was one of them, for those scant few months before any man who hadn't joined up was a shirker.

The old 'hallowed halls' are much the same as well. The recruitment posters are mostly gone - for who is there to recruit, now? Still a few remain, albeit defaced with the names of 'slackers' - Ted McKenzie, this means you is scrawled across the top of one. But they have mostly been replaced by urges to ration, to join the Red Cross, to do their part in defeating the Huns. And tacked up against them are the usual advertisements of clubs and parties, rooms for rent. Walter almost marvels at how easily the two worlds seem to mingle for these students.

He finds himself wandering through the halls of the English department - drawn to his old haunt, he supposes. Even with all the worries and fears, he had still thrilled a bit when he had set foot in the hallway covered with poetry from the masters and the as-of-yet unknown students who aspired - like him - to be great.

And how many of those students are in the trenches? he wonders. He tries to shake away the thought. It would be nice, he thinks, to make it through the day without thinking of the war. But then, perhaps that is impossible.

He pauses in front of one of the announcement boards, then blinks in shock. There is his photo - an old photo; it looks like it had been taken at a gathering of literature students, before he had fallen from Dr. Milne's favor - and next to it, a clipping of "The Piper."

"Looking at yourself?" comes a teasing voice.

Walter turns to see Alice there, smiling at him. She's carrying several books in her arms, and he moves to take them.

"Oh, don't worry about these," she says quickly. "I've gotten used to them."

"They're nothing compared to sandbags," he says, tucking as many as he can under his arm. It feels good, too, to carry the books. Purposeful.

"If you say so," she says, her smile falling a bit. "How heavy are sandbags?"

"Rather," he says.

"Don't you remember," she says, "how you couldn't lift the lid to the trunk in the cellar without my help? When we were children?"

Walter allows a short laugh, then sighs. "I am not quite that boy anymore, Alice."

"No, I suppose not," she says. "Not in the least because you were twelve. But - " she tilts her head at him. "I think - you're not so different. I think that boy - even a bit of him - survived."

Walter turns to look at her. People have always talked about him and Alice - and he supposes that he did think about her in that way, on occasion. She is lovely, and Walter has written more than one sonnet - though he'd burned them before he left - that describes her almost exactly. But now - she is just Alice, Alice with her kind smile and eyes and words, Alice who has been his friend since the day she'd smiled at him in the face of Fred Johnson's mockery. That is all.

"I know," he says, for he has already heard those words, from someone else.


They end up eating out at a cafe they had passed many times, when they had first moved to Kingsport. "Isn't it romantic?" Nan had sighed, when they first saw it. "It's quite easy to fall in love in a cafe, isn't it?"

"I don't believe you and Jerry have ever been to a cafe together in your lives!" Di had said, and they had laughed. Well - perhaps Walter hadn't, wound with fear and nerves as he had been.

But they are here now, crowded in amongst several groups of students, chattering over their food, Nan attempting to subtly steal Di's dessert from her plate.

"We used to hold Red Cross meetings here, before the group got too big," Di says, stabbing a berry that has fallen off of her slice of pie. "The pie isn't quite as good as Susan's, but…"

Walter is distracted by shouting from outside. "What's going on?"

"Probably a fight," Nan sighs. "There's always someone rowdy hanging round - because it's so close to the university, you know."

"Oh, it's just Arthur Baker," Di says, peering out. "People are always yelling at him. He could probably make a lovely coat out of all the white feathers he's received in the last three years."

Something flashes up in Walter - at first a slight irritation, then something deeper, something he knows well - the odd fury that coils in his muscles, winding him till he tackles Dan Reese in the schoolyard, till he goes over the top at dawn. He grips his fork till his knuckles turn white.

Then just as suddenly it dissipates, leaving behind only a horrid exhaustion, and a wondering why people must be this way.

"Walter?" Di asks, peering at him.

"Hm? Nothing," he says, taking another bite of his pudding. "Only - thinking."

They leave shortly afterward - soon enough that Arthur Baker is still picking himself up from the ground, pale-faced, dusting himself off. He turns his head as they hurry past, and for a second he seems to recognize Walter - then he turns away and they walk off, in separate directions.


Night has fallen, a hush over the little house. Not as silent as Ingleside, true - there is still the rumble of automobile engines, the bursts of laughter from students walking him - for many of them rent on this street, he has learned.

Nan and Di have already retired to bed; they had gone casting worried looks over their shoulders as he assured them that he wasn't tired yet.

He isn't tired - or rather, he isn't ready to fall asleep and dream.

The kettle begins to whistle and he hurries to turn off the gas before it wakes his sisters up. There's something comforting in brewing tea, in steeping the leaves and watching their color swirl into the water.

"Walter?"

Di shuffles in, looking rather like a ghost in her white nightdress. Well, perhaps not a ghost - she is too vibrant, with her freckles and red hair. Una Meredith, though, she would look like a ghost, sometimes looks like one even in the daytime - but why is he thinking about her?

"Di." He blinks, surprised - Di and Nan usually sleep through the night. Then again, he used to, as well. "Did I wake you?"

"No," she says. "I couldn't sleep. Is there enough for two?" she asks, peering at the kettle.

"Mm."

When Di is done brewing her own cup, they settle at the table, facing each other, teacups clasped between their hands.

"So," Di says, softly.

"So."

"Oh, Walter," Di says. "I'm so - tired. Won't you talk to me?"

Walter stares down into his cup, at the dark circle of leaves that have settled on the bottom. "About the war?" He knows he doesn't really have to ask.

"Yes." Her voice trembles, a little.

"It's not so simple." His voice trembles too. "Life was quite good to us, wasn't it? I don't think - if I hadn't gone myself, I wouldn't have been able to understand." He tilts the cup, watches the leaves fall over each other. "We're growing up, aren't we, Di? We don't - we can't - share everything, anymore."

Di sips her tea, peering at him over the rim of the cup. "No," she admits. "I suppose not. But Walter, we'll always be siblings - and chums. Even if I can't understand - I still want to know."

Walter can't help but smile a little. Always practical, Di is.

"Do you remember when I fought Dan Reese?" he asks quietly.

"Who could forget?" Di says.

"It was like something came over me," he admits. "I wanted to fight him. I wanted to hurt him. It was horrible."

Di's eyes widen but she nods, indicating he should go on.

"That's how I felt at the front," he says. "I wasn't afraid anymore - I was so sure of myself, sure there was nothing to fear. But Di - the way things are, 'somewhere in France.' And the things I did - " he shrugs, not knowing how to continue that line of thought. "There's so much to tell and - so much of it is unpleasant - and it doesn't always make sense." The thoughts, too, are so tangled - he spills them out this way to Una, leaves it to her to unravel them, but Di needs coherency, logic.

Di hesitates, then reaches over to grasp his hands. "It's all right, Walter."

He inhales, and then he begins.