What are men to rocks and mountains

The language of the flowers

In all of his 70-odd years of haunting Button house, The Captain had still had to find his 'power' as the others liked to call it. It seemed most of them had one thing or another that they had some sort of control over. Julian had his finger trick, Robin could do the thing with the lights, Fanny was visible in photographs... But after decades of roaming around the estate he had never had any sort of impact on the world after his death. That was, until a grand total of 6 hours ago when he'd discovered- in quite the wasteful way- that he was able to touch things. He didn't know why, or how he was able to touch stuff all of a sudden, but in the past few hours he hadn't been able to stop. And it wasn't like Julian's power either. The shifty MP had found out he was able to touch things almost immediately after dying, but it always took him insane amounts of effort. The Captain didn't strain himself at all, it just kind of happened, and he definitely hadn't been able to touch anything for over 75 years.

After unceremoniously slapping the coin out of Mike's hand at the lake, he'd immediately run over to Havers and grabbed his shoulder, mouth falling open when it didn't phase through, but settled firmly in a way it hadn't been able to do since 1944. Havers would never forget the look on the Captain's face as they made eye-contact in that moment. He'd never seen him so full of hope and excitement. Then Alison, who'd immediately settled for a giant hug that he was hopelessly unprepared for. He'd stood incredibly still, arms tucked at his sides as Alison had wrapped her arms around him. Havers was having a field day with the entire situation. He'd always secretly enjoyed seeing his Captain out of his depth in social situations. It was just so endearingly him.

But, they'd opted to go inside, and that night none of them got a wink of sleep. Alison and Mike because Mike would not shut up about the coin- Alison could only sigh tiredly- ghosts stuff always ended badly for them it seemed. She was just glad the other ghosts had left them alone today. Captain couldn't sleep because he hadn't been this excited about touching someone since he shook hands with that WW1 veteran that one time, and Havers...

Havers was mulling about all of the events of the day. All the revelations and information had been quite hard to handle. He'd remembered some flashes of his last moments back in 1944, but they hadn't been pretty and they'd given him absolutely no clue as to how he was here yet. And then he thought of the letters. The thing that started this entire debacle, the Captain's letters to him. He'd totally forgotten about them amongst all the chaos of the day, but now he couldn't keep them out of his mind. He wondered if they were still on the side table downstairs... After a few minutes of tossing and turning he decided he was thirsty... and also that it couldn't hurt to check for the letters.

He climbed out of bed, throwing on a robe Mike had given him after dinner and crept out into the hallway. It was dark, but the moon was bright tonight, and he'd know to avoid the table at the end of the hallway this time. He silently crept down the stairs, into the sitting room and squinted his eyes. He stood there for what felt like ages before his eyes landed on the pile of letters. They were still there- Alison must have forgotten to throw them out... He quickly made his way over and carefully took a closer look, they were indeed the same letters that they discovered that afternoon. He stood still for a moment, letters in hand.

What was so important that the Captain felt like he couldn't tell him in person? Why had he never sent the letters? The Captain claimed it was because Havers died but the dates didn't add up. He'd been ambushed on the 25th but as he checked the dates on the envelopes he noted that some of them were written way before that. Some were dated a few days after he left. He curiously thumbed one of the letters, barely catching a glimpse of the words inside.

Before he could make any further moves he heard the sound of footsteps and he panicked, stuffing the letters into his robe and turning around in a hurry to look at the open door behind him to see... a rather dishevelled-looking man. His hair was wild, his face set in what seemed to be a permanent frown, and his lower jaw seemed to be sticking out a little bit in a nasty case of underbite. He stood still to the side of the doorway, watching William with an intensity he had never seen before. Maybe it was just a new custom he hadn't learned about yet, maybe staring wasn't seen as rude anymore in 2019?