Also say to them, that they suffer hym this day to wynne his spurres,
for if god be pleased, I woll this journey be his,
and the honoure thereof.
Jutland still stung. It stung in actual aches and pains and it stung in several vicious tongue lashings she had received for her performance. Warspite had the decency to be somewhat well-meaning in her critique – "Thank you, but you shouldn't have," – but Valiant had laughed at her embarrassment. She, Barham, and Malaya got all the glory of bravely plunging into the fray without the shame of being the idiot who decided to actually run in there.
A thought came to her mind. Lions and donkeys. She shook her head and tried to banish the idea, to little effect.
Several new lions had joined the pride now, one of them actually being Lion. Ha. Blonde, dashing, tall… somehow, that was one of the worst parts. She was too complete a package. Too perfect of a follow-up.
She and Australia and King George V, as if they were all cast from the same mold. They actually had the maturity and graces that Valiant tried to put on, lack of actual combat experience hidden by the confidence of women grown. Perhaps that crossed the line into too much confidence in Australia's case… There was such a thing as being too much of a showboat.
Ego aside, she was an able student. Excellent, even. She took reams of notes as the Elizabeths stumbled through lectures about damage control and communications. Lion, Royal Sovereign, Iron Duke, and George were equally zealous studies… in contrast, a less forgiving schoolmaster would have hammered a ruler-shaped divot into the back of Indomitable's hand for falling asleep so frequently. They didn't engage in such barbaric tactics in their own teaching, although Ajax would probably run to grab a ruler – or hell, a switch from outside – if Elizabeth asked. That girl was… off.
Their numbers were a little shy of trebled now. Two cubes were sitting around, waiting for Repulse's working up and the Admiralty's choice between New Zealand and Renown. When they weren't going over cringeworthy Jutland retrospectives, that was their favored debate.
"Of course, they'd pick Kiwi!" Australia said.
"When she's the older model?" Royal Sovereign asked.
"Older model?" Australia hissed.
"Yeah." Royal Sovereign shrugged. "Older model. We need cubes on the best ships we have."
"It's still nepotism though, isn't it?" Ajax remarked, grinning into her tea as Sovereign's neck flushed red.
"It's not…!"
Australia guffawed. "Oh, that's how it is! Your almost-sister just happens to be best, then?" She had a wide, photogenic smile – and Australia was champing at the bit to have that smile in the papers – but there was perhaps a bit too much glee in it, Elizabeth thought.
(It was a silly argument anyway. The Admiralty would make the best arrangements to win the war.)
"Yeah, maybe she is!" Sovereign snapped back.
"Do you think she'll be like Oak?" Australia asked, her head quirking. That wasn't her plastered-on for the admirals smile.
"Hardworking?" Sovereign asked. "I certainly hope so."
Australia didn't fire back immediately – for all her talk, she respected how hard Oak went at it, even if she didn't think much of the results – and Elizabeth took the chance to slide in and hopefully defuse the situation.
"We'll get enough cubes for everyone in good time." Elizabeth soothed.
"Is 'in good time' fast enough?" Sovereign asked, a frown crossing her face. "Even if – generously – we say no shipgirl gets sunk, it'll take a few more Jutlands to get everyone kitted out. And…" Sovereign's gaze flicked over to Australia, but she wasn't angry this time around.
Australia squirmed in her seat. At first, it was just because someone was looking at her with such obvious pity, but then the reason for it clicked. Indefatigable, the older sister she'd never get to meet.
"I guess we'll just have to protect our squishy little sisters until they're ready to really fight." Australia grinned.
"Little sisters?" Sovereign asked. "You're the baby of the group if memory serves."
"But haven't I been alive for longer?" Australia grinned. "And you've got Resolution, Ramillies, and Revenge beat for experience, right?"
"Revenge was at Jutland."
"Yeah, as a boat."
"Hmm… well, I suppose neither of us know what it feels like. Ajax?"
"Hmmmm?"
"Do you remember anything of Jutland?"
Ajax laid her tea down delicately and thought for a moment. "Perhaps? I suppose… I suppose I've had dreams."
"Dreams?" Australia asked, beating Elizabeth to the punch.
Elizabeth restrained herself from leaning in, but the smirk spreading across Ajax's face seemed to say she noticed the attention anyway.
"I can't remember anything of substance," Ajax said. She fell silent for a moment, lost in thought. "Well… I do think I know what firing a volley in anger feels like."
"It's different?"
"Quite." Ajax said. It wasn't the same strange look at usual… but it was certainly an odd expression.
There had been some debate about their living arrangements when they first came to be. Of course, they each had a ship to be on when it was time to fight, and they could always retreat there, but Elizabeth was quick to push for a place of their own on dry land.
A room for four was one short, and that was simply unacceptable. Two to one room and three to another? Workable, perhaps, but the thought of four and one was insufferable. (Even after Jutland they hadn't come to that.) They wouldn't settle for that, and Elizabeth's dignity wouldn't allow one of her sisters to sleep on some pathetic cot just so they could all be together. If they had to press some sailors into shuffling the furniture around, that was what they had to do!
Elizabeth got the special dignity of not having a bed – or the roof – directly over her face as she slept, but sometimes she wondered if they couldn't have just gotten away with hot-bunking. The Admiralty were tugging her sisters this way and that, hauling them off for nighttime drills or sending them inland for discussions with the small group of people in the know…
(At some point, you began to think that the Admiralty was basically grounding you, complete with reams of math homework.)
Tonight it was just two of them: Elizabeth and Barham, and it seemed like it would be just them all night. Barham spent an hour thumbing through a thick book as her hair dried, but before she could tuck herself in, Elizabeth summoned her: "Barham," she whispered, "Come over here!"
"Wha?" The late hour had stolen away some of her eloquence, it seemed. "Do you need something, Liz?"
"Yes. That's why I'm asking you to come over." Elizabeth responded. Barham hopped off her bed – lower bunk – and after a moment of swaying on pyjama-wrapped legs, she staggered over.
(Pyjamas were new. There was lots of talk and advertisement about them in the piles of women's magazines that the officers would occasionally pass them. Elizabeth and Valiant preferred the old-fashioned nightgown, but their siblings favored the practicality of pyjamas.)
When Barham stood before her, Elizabeth scooted back towards the wall and patted the bed in front of her.
Barham raised an eyebrow. She thought…? Hard to see. "You want to share a bed?"
"... Yes." At the very least, she wasn't Valiant. Elizabeth never would have tried something like this with her.
Silence. Barham turned, but didn't walk away. She laid down on the bed and squirmed her way back towards Elizabeth. "But why?"
Elizabeth swallowed. If only she had someone who could fetch her a glass of water right now… "I've–" it was difficult to put it into words, but if she could trust Warspite, surely… "–been having bad dreams."
Barham didn't respond, which was probably better than what Valiant would have done. There was a reason Elizabeth hadn't asked her yet. (Or ever in the future, probably.) Barham shifted a bit further back, and Elizabeth thought she caught a whiff of spent cordite. Impossible to completely vanquish it, huh? Elizabeth smiled… and then tried to get Barham to flip over.
Look, Elizabeth loved Warspite, but the hair tufts were an unwelcome complication for this sort of thing. Imagine waking up to a mouthful of paintbrush. Not that Warspite had a head full of hog bristles or anything, but Elizabeth could recognize patterns and rather disliked the feeling of hair in her mouth. Even if Barham's was cut short, Elizabeth would find a way.
Again, another reason why she'd never do this with Valiant. Somehow, Elizabeth knew she'd make a big deal of being the person on the 'outside' of the cuddling. If only there was a good word for that… whatever. Barham mumbled a bit, but Elizabeth managed to get between her and the wall.
It was a real turnabout when Elizabeth did this with Warspite. The gallant protector at Jutland becoming the one who needed company for her nightmares? It wasn't impressive, but Warspite didn't mind.
(Malaya was quite sympathetic too, actually.)
Despite the arm that Barham threw over her at some point during the night, the dreams still came. The warmth of Barham behind her vanished into the cold sea. Even during summer, the North Sea was a little chilly, but the thought of the bottom was simply unbearable. No light, no heat, just pressure.
Jutland replayed itself in her dreams. Shells screaming this way and that, smoke and spray and an overwhelming feeling of desperation. Despite all the haranguing she had earned by it, she found herself making the same turn to rescue Warspite every time. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate, not when the examples of Indefatigable and Princess Mary were fresh in her mind.
She knew that was how battles were supposed to go: you didn't get out of them without a little bleeding. Still, her sleeping mind kept on returning to those ships. Was that an actual crewman she remembered, or did her mind generate the officers whole cloth before they were annihilated?
And then there were the girls. They hadn't gotten the chance. Would never get the chance. Strangled in the cradle, dead in the womb… nothing more than some hazy cloud of possibility, formless smoke that rose from the cataclysm to choke her. She'd wake up hyperventilating like she was trying to breathe enough air for three people.
The feeling of loss almost felt doubled by not getting to know their personalities. The bridge was burned, the opportunity was gone forever. Elizabeth sympathized with Australia's point quite a bit: it was easy to start feeling protective of their vulnerable, non-cubed sisters. They were like babies.
(She couldn't exactly provide good leadership to inert hunks of metal, now could she?)
But then there was the other shadow.
The one that had form, even if it bled like watercolor at the edges. The features almost-human, possibly charming if not for… something missing. Elizabeth couldn't say what. Was it something off in the big, delicate eyes? She'd look and they'd be fine, the strangeness migrating over to the nose or the lips. When she focused on them, Elizabeth would say they were as fine a pair of lips as any, certainly better than the blue, chapped ones belonging to the nightmare's corpses.
These lips were pink. Pink as the hair. Wasn't that odd? Pink hair. It had been especially strange before Ajax showed up, when the strangest shipgirl hair got was Valiant's almost supernatural platinum blonde.
The pink hair was attached to a head, which was in turn attached to a body. Elizabeth's nightmares weren't that gruesome, although she thought she saw a bit of blood near the top of her vest, where the shirt first peeked out.
Elizabeth wasn't sure why this one had been blessed with a defined form or how her mind had generated it, but she clung to Elizabeth like the other two shades, yammering away in a voice Elizabeth couldn't hear.
She woke up to a pair of pink eyes, started, and nearly pushed Barham off the bed. "Liz?!" Barham's squawked.
Elizabeth was distracted, in her defense. There was a face in front of her, not buried in the wall as much as peeking through. Pink hair, pink eyes, big grin. A sort of bow on top of her head pierced the wall, and Elizabeth could pick out mismatched gloves on her lower arms. One black, one white. Why? Wait, why was that her biggest concern? Why was she here?
"Liz?" Barham asked, gentler. When she was met with no response, she frowned and wrapped her arm around Elizabeth again before scooching in a little closer. (Somehow, her elder sister had managed to acquire perfume.)
Barham's presence was reassuring, certainly, but it didn't remove the spectre poking through the wall in front of Elizabeth. The ghost grinned and waved hello. When Elizabeth reached out for a hesitant poke, she met nothing but air… and the wall behind it, a moment later.
A long, slow sigh. "Thank you, Barham."
"I- I…" Barham sighed too.
Barham rose from bed first, and Elizabeth followed behind. If Barham thought that her sister's lucidity and willingness to get out of bed at this hour was unusual, she didn't say anything. Both stretched a bit before changing into their clothes.
Elizabeth ended up taking a bit longer, considering… distractions. Barham certainly couldn't see her, although that wasn't for lack of trying on the ghost's part. She went as far as sticking through Barham in an attempt to catch her attention.
"Is there some lint on my coat?" Barham asked.
"You're fine." Elizabeth said.
The ghost didn't seem to be restrained by such paltry things as gravity, turning and twisting in the air. It was hard to compare heights when they were perpendicular (and when the ghost's abdomen was sitting squarely in Barham's midsection) but she seemed taller. Bigger… Even the ghosts! Well, they weren't real, anyway. No hormone-addled idiot with grabby hands could actually take a hold of them –
Elizabeth shook her head. Barham gave her a strange look, but didn't say anything before she left. The ghost frowned, disappointed that she hadn't managed to get anything out of Barham, and zipped away to look around the room as Elizabeth got her own clothes on. It would be nice to have someone doing these sorts of things for her, wouldn't it? But the ghost couldn't do much…
A thump behind her made her jump, and she nearly tripped over herself as she spun around to see the source. One of Malaya's books was open to the back. The index?
The ghost checked the index – she could read, she could utilize indices – before straining to turn the pages. It seemed a Herculean effort, the ghost throwing her whole body weight behind turning the pages. It was a thick book, sure, but not that heavy.
After overshooting the page in question twice, the ghost grinned and gestured towards the book. It was a history – Malaya loved her histories – and the subject was…
Edward of Woodstock. The victor at Crécy, the heir to the throne who died before his father, the ravager of the Aquitaine.
The Black Prince.
For a moment I wondered if it was possible to make this a standalone one shot, but Lizzie wasn't at Jutland… the tone's less realistic than normal KL stuff but inspiration struck. Been meaning to write some Black Prince and the muse blessed this instead of some vague idea of her and Gascogne. (Because the Black Prince was made the King's lieutenant in Gascony.)
Anyway, ghosts in December and Christmas chapters all the other times. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. My resolution next year is to intensify the rot.