Work Text:
“Prawn go dookah…Your horsie go jump dookah…”
“Robin!”
Not yet. Not when they’ve only just started.
“Willy-shape dude go zoom-dookah…You do prawn dookah dookah, take my prawn, you sneaky bitch.” He chuckled to himself. Really should have seen that coming.
How many games has he played today? It’s not really worth keeping count, he always wins, except when the bastard cheats. Part of him likes it when he does that, keeps Robin on his toes, gives him more of a challenge to try to work around him.
“Robin?! C’mon, let me know if you’re here!”
They’re not letting up. Like a bear with his scent, he knows better than to try to hide. It’s not as if he can climb a tree anymore, not that that worked out too well for him the last time.
Can’t he play one more game? Just one?
A sigh. They’re close now, practically on his shadow.
“Guess we’ll just have to watch Interstellar without him!”
“Alison?”
He hadn’t realised it was her. When there’d been no sound of leaves crunching beneath shoes, he’d assumed it was one of the others, one of his fellow ghosts. How deep had he been buried in his game?
The board was starting to fade in front of him. No, no, not yet. Remember the places. Remember what trick he’s likely to use next. Try to distract Robin by pointing out a family of voles nearby, or a skunk.
“There you are!” She said, clearly relieved, but tired. She’s always tired lately.
Not ‘sad tired’. Not ‘you ghosts are driving me insane can you all please fuck off’ tired. Old tired, inevitable tired, his kind of tired. Perhaps not ‘ten thousand years of waiting for the sweet relief of oblivion’ tired, but close. Robin turned his head, seeing her move past the tree to his right, smiling down at where he’s sat by the stream.
He frowned, guilt coiling in his chest. She really shouldn’t be hiking out this far, alone, just for him.
“Been looking everywhere for you.” She crouched down, straining a little, hip probably still fragile after that last surgery; “You sure do pick your moments to do a vanishing act.”
“Sorry. Me not know you were coming to visit.”
It’s partly a lie. Truthfully, he doesn’t remember if the others mentioned it, the fog in his head too thick to recall much with clarity that didn’t involve chess moves and saucy jokes from a disgraced MP.
“Bit of a spur of the moment one.” Alison admitted, trying to seat herself comfortably on the bank.
The long, blue cardigan she wore folded into blanket beneath her backside and Robin wondered if she was bothered about it getting muddy. Not that that was something she had to stress about, the hotel staff more than willing to cater to her every whim during her frequent stays, she could just hand it to them on their return and they’d happily throw it in the washing machine for her.
She never had any worries when she came here, and it had been one of the biggest reassurances for all of them that they’d made the right decision all those years ago. The house had become a place where she was no longer being the caretaker of eight people, but the one being taken care of, leaving her with more than enough free energy to read books with them or watch a movie or walk the grounds while telling them all about what Mia was up to, before she begged to hear more of their endless gossip about the staff and the guests. Seeing that weight lifted off her shoulders, seeing her be nothing but carefree and excited every time she turned up, made all the other adjustments they’d had to get used to more than worth it.
Perhaps that was why he’d chosen to hide away, just this one time, if he had known that she was coming. It was supposed to be a happy time whenever she visited, and they’d already had a few harsh exceptions to that rule recently. He wouldn’t have wanted to bum her out again with his moods. That was Thomas’ job.
“Did I interrupt something? I thought I heard you making chess moves.” She ventured.
As much as he kept trying to focus, the board in front was growing ever more translucent. It became a strain on his eyes to keep it there, so he closed them, letting him go.
It.
“Not matter. Played so many, probably best stop before become addict.” He confessed.
“Any reason you’re not playing in the game room? Or the life size board? All that haggling I had to do with the resort guys to put those in for you and you’re not using them!” She lightly chastised.
He doesn’t tell her that he hasn’t been able to bring himself to set foot near either of those spots in the past couple of months.
“Needed space. Quiet. Not be disturbed.” The only ones who ever set foot in this tiny patch of wood were golfers collecting lost balls or the occasional visit from the groundskeeper.
But sometimes he liked to sit close to the border, just in case that whenever someone ‘went up’, they didn’t just go to the stars – but went out there. In case what came next was the ability to wander anywhere, at will, without any restraints. And perhaps they sometimes came to visit, to see him without him seeing them, just as they watched the living without them knowing. It was one of the many possibilities that had come to him over the centuries and by far, one of his favourites. The other being reincarnation, if only it meant he got to be an astronaut in the next life.
“Sorry about this then. My bad.” Alison quipped.
“No, it fine, no leave. Should not have come out this late though, me would have come back, really.” He really was planning to return after one more game. Maybe two.
“We were getting worried. You’ve been out here a while, Robin.”
“Really?” He hadn’t been paying attention to the sun’s movement as he sat beneath the canapé; “How long?”
“Cap said three days.”
“Oh…Shit.” Maybe he was a little far gone then.
“They thought you might just be visiting your mouse family, but Pat said you haven’t been doing so good lately. Not since…” she lost the words in her throat, a wince in her cheeks.
Robin shifted, hugging his knees close to his chest and looking away from her. The board was gone, pieces evaporated, his opponent absconded, probably to the nearest cocktail bar.
“I did say that all any of you needed to do was call me if ever you wanted to talk.” And she’d been looking in particular at him when she’d said those words, after their little memorial service.
Less of a ‘service’, not quite like they’d had for Mary, more of a watered-down booze-up-slash-roast in his honour. The confused hotel staff had put up posters of Samantha Fox around the room as well as old tabloid articles about a long-forgotten political sex scandal at the house. Alison had to join them in imagining getting wasted, as much as she’d expressed her desire for a rum and coke, she couldn’t be drinking alcohol on her medication, not to mention her age as if that mattered to her. They’d spent an entire night sharing their favourite stories about the sordid antics he got up to and affectionately insulting him from beyond-beyond-the-grave. It had been fun. It had been exactly what he’d wanted.
And then Alison left and the reality began to set in. He was gone.
Julian was gone, gone.
He rolled his shoulders; “Not want to be bother. Know you going through hospital stuff and Mia having problem with wife. Anyway, not like me not been through this before.”
“I know, but…Well, it hit me harder than I thought, losing the Tory git, so I knew you’d be going through it.” Alison sighed, heavy with grief and age, “I dunno why but, out of all of you guys I expected to go next, he was at the bottom, for some reason.”
“Because we thought he maybe demon?”
“Yeah, there was always that.” She admitted, “But I did start to notice that change in him, after Rachel came to the hotel and brought his grandkids. He seemed….well, ‘nicer’, might be pushing it, but I guess…Less Bad? Anyway, it reminded me of how Mary seemed to change in those few weeks before she left us, when she became more confident…Still didn’t see it coming, though.”
“Me never do.” He adds, morbidly. After all these years, after all the many who’ve left, one would think he’d be able to get some sort of sense to it now.
But it was always a shock. Just like death.
“You didn’t need to be worrying about bothering me, Robin. I always had time to take a call from you guys, you know that.”
Once it had been solely down to Julian to work the phone, with his ‘magic finger’, for the buttons. But Robin had spent the last forty-eight years learning to manipulate electricity in more than just light bulbs. He worked his way up from distorting baby monitor screens to reworking electrical currents in all sorts of devices, which meant that to everyone’s chagrin, he had the second-best remote privileges. Julian’s mobile had quickly become their mobile, and figuring out how to make his first call to Alison had been incredible, after he’d first tried calling Bill Nye.
And then it was just his mobile, with Julian’s last text to Margot half-way finished in his drafts. Another reminder of what was lost.
“Like me say before. With Mary.” He tried to hide the crack in his voice. The last thing he needed was to layer his grief with thoughts of another long gone; “I deal with pain my own way.”
“Yeah, and no offence, but your way is kinda rubbsh.” Alison said, bluntly; “Shutting down, closing yourself off from the others, not wanting anyone to see you vulnerable, c’mon, Robin, you know that’s not good.”
“Me fine!” He asserted.
“You’re sitting alone in the woods for days playing make-believe chess with yourself.”
Robin frowned; “Yes, but…Me winning!”
She rolled her eyes, then shuffled a bit closer to him. Seriously, that cardigan was going to be ruined if she wasn’t careful, this wasn’t the best spot for a picnic.
“Y’know, when Mike died,” Her throat bobbed a bit, and he felt another ache, only slightly on her behalf; “I spent weeks reorganising all the dvds he’d got mixed up in their cases that he never got around to. Took me ages and Mia kept saying there was no point, no one watches dvds anymore, everything is all in VR, but I did it because…it was something to do other than cry and it meant I didn’t have to speak to anyone. It weren’t until I finally summoned the strength to come here and tell you guys that I let myself…”
He remembered. They’d had some warning, having overheard gossip among the staff, the ‘crazy former owner’s sweet husband’ having passed away. Unfortunately, it had been Kitty who’d been haunting the break room at the time. They’d waited for Alison’s visit that day, but nothing. Then they’d waited for a phone call, still nothing.
Maybe she wasn’t ready to talk? Maybe Mike became a ghost and she needed to stay with him now? Maybe she never wanted to come back because she was mad they were here but Mike wasn’t?
Eventually she’d turned up, wearing that mask, nothing more than her old weary, sick-of-life smile. They’d stood silently before her and let her say the words aloud.
And they’d been there to catch her (metaphorically of course) when she finally broke down in tears.
“Can’t compare losing husband to losing half-naked chess partner.” Robin shrugged, attempting a little levity.
“Oh c’mon…You two were more than that.” She perked up, that know-it-all smirk on her face; “You two were married as much as any couple that visits this place, I was waiting for you both to set a date!”
“Hey, we not…I mean, sure, there was one time at party ‘bout twenty years back but-.”
“Ha! I knew it! Humphrey owes me a tenner.” She grinned.
Crap, he blushed, cursing his big mouth; “Not confirm anything, Cooper! Me not mahogamous and he…well, he Julian Fawcett!”
She kept smirking, throwing her hands up.
“Call it what you want, mate, but you two were ‘something’, that’s all I’m saying. Besties, soul mates, demon mates, it doesn’t matter. What’s important is, losing someone like that is never going to be easy to get over, no matter how desensitised you might like to pretend you are to it. Have you even picked a star for him yet?”
Now it was his turn to grin; “Me think he should get full moonah. Because, y’know, when he bend over, he always give-.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture, don’t need to remind me!” She chuckled, screwing up her slightly lined face.
Somehow, even nearing eighty, with silver hair and a frail hip, she still managed to look younger than him at twenty-three. What an age humans today lived in. So unfair.
“I’m not the only one you could talk to, y’know. The others might not have been as close as you but they’re still missing him. Especially Cap, not that he’ll ever admit it.” Alison continued; “Kinda been trusting you guys to still be supporting each other without me here, rather than being back at each others throats.”
“Kitty try to cheer me up, play chess with me, but she not get rules. Keep trying to play with pieces like dolls, say ‘my little beaded-head men carry their Queen to make peace talk with yours, then live happy ever after, and Kings ride horsey for fun race, not to war’ – You imagine?”
“That does sound like her, yeah.”
“Humphrey try to cheer me up with joke, none of them funny. Pat try to make ‘saucy’ joke like Julian would – even less funny.” He groaned; “Me know they try but…They try too much. Needed to be alone. Know it bad, know me might go insane again, but…” His words cut off as the fog began to fill his head once more.
Rook to E-Seven. Lighthouse go dookah dookah dookah.
Too little defence, he’ll be too exposed. Robin winces as the board begins to materialise before him again, close to the water.
“Robin? C’mon, come back to me.”
He shook his head; “Can’t, need to concentrate, have to keep King protected.”
“But there is something important I have to tell you. Why I came to find you.”
Is someone else gone up? No, no, he can’t deal with it again, not already. There’s usually enough time in between for the scar tissue to mend before it tears anew. Nearly fifty years since Mary, before that a century and a half since Annie, let him forget how much it hurts before he has to go through it all again!
Willy-hat to H Four. Horsey take prawn. Prawn dookah.
Prawn take Queen. No, wait, that move illegal! He cheat again. What special ‘Came Bridge’ rules?!
“Robin, look at me.”
He can’t. He’s so close.
No, mate, you’ve lost. Just admit defeat.
Never.
“Please, Robin!” She’s moving onto her knees beside him now. That can’t be comfortable for her.
He took a deep breath, seeing that smile across the board, those fingers steepled together. A rare, warm smile, not smug or victorious. He was one of the few lucky ones to see him smile that way, when no one else was looking.
The caveman hung his head. Prawn take horsey.
“Queen to B-4. Checkmate, pal. Fair and square.”
The voice is so clear in his illusion that it’s somewhat cruel. His lip twitches upward, there had to be a first time for everything.
He sniffs, feeling the treacherous tears leave his eyes.
“This what you want, right? Hope happy now.” He whispered, still unwilling to look at her.
Crying in front of others was never something he’d be comfortable with. His role, his purpose, was to stop everyone from losing their minds as he had. That meant being fun, it meant being annoying, it meant being a joker one minute and a wise consoler the next. It didn’t mean bringing others down by revealing how truly broken he was.
That’s why he preferred to have these secret spots. Far out in the woods, certain nooks in the house, his old one where the kitchen cupboard once stood was now a walk in freezer, not that he felt the cold but preferred not to cry around tasty looking meat.
A palm lay gently on his face, scrunching his beard, turning his head to the side.
He opened his eyes to see the dampness on her cheeks; “Snap.” She smiled.
Logical thoughts failed him as her arms suddenly moved around him, and nothing else seemed worth being concerned about for the next few, fleeting seconds, where he let himself be held, as he held her. It just felt natural, despite the only person having hugged him recently being Kitty’s overly enthusiastic squeezes, and before that Julian’s awkward ‘bro hugs’ when he was in a weirdly sentimental mood.
This was new. This was careful but secure, warm, safe and…
Impossible.
His fingers moved over her cardigan, feeling the pattern, the texture, that felt nothing like Kitty’s dress or Julian’s suit or Pat’s shirt. Pressing harder, he felt her bones through frail skin, fingers moving up to comb through the ends of her short hair. Robin’s breathing increased as the fear and panic sinks in. He was afraid to move away, to lose the contact, wanting to remain in sweet naïve bliss and appreciate nothing but the feeling of solace, just for a little bit longer.
And given the way her hands were clutching onto his furs, he suspected that she felt the same, even if she was already aware of the truth.
“No…”
Alison tensed in his arms; “Robin…”
“No, no, no…” he pushed her back, because he has to, “No, no…Me still ‘lucinate! Me go mad again, haha, tenth time lucky! You not…Me can’t touch…” He moved his hands back as if that will somehow erase what he just felt.
“You just did. We just did.” She said, tears still shining in her eyes; “And, gotta say, that shift is really fluffy, I can see why you’re always touching it!” Her voice shook as she tried to keep things light.
He did so just then, needing his go-to method for comfort, rubbing his knuckles against the fur. It was a struggle to bring himself to look at her, hoping still that she was just another figment, like the chess board, like his opponent. He didn’t want it to be true. Or, rather, a part of him did, but he knew that was selfish and wrong.
Alison reached to touch his hand, her ringed fingers linking through his. That definitely felt real.
Damn it.
“…H-how?” Probably wrong question to ask, but given that he can’t see a wound on her, he needs to know.
She clicked her tongue; “Apparently some idiot left a vase on the staircase and an even bigger, older idiot didn’t see it as she was coming down and tripped on it, then banged her head.” Alison tilted her neck, reaching to part her hair and reveal a red line on her scalp; “I guess one blow makes you see ghosts, the second just turns you into a ghost.”
Robin raised his hand, moving to touch it, before bringing it back.
“You not…?”
“I’m fine, honest. I just remember feeling a bit shocked, then embarrassed, then a little bit of a headache, thinking I’m gonna need another bloody hip job,” she took another breath; “Next thing I know I’m on the floor with Mia and the hotel staff around me. Then I go to stand up and tell them I’m okay…but they’re still looking down at me. On the floor. Didn’t take me long to work out…”
“Where others? Where Kitty?” The girl nearly never left Alison’s side when she visited, practically hanging off her sleeve, if she could grab it.
“Yeah, the one time she goes ahead of me to the room so she can prepare some new dance routine she’s been preparing to show me!”
“Oh, to be fair, me seen that, is good, is S Club meets ABBA – she and Cap made up.” He waved his hands, realising they were getting off topic; “But you mean…none of ‘us’ there when you…?”
She shook her head; “Nope. Trust your dead mates to be there for you when you finally get to join them in purgatory!” She scoffed, sounding as if she was only faking being upset, but Robin felt the shame anyway.
The plan had always been that they would be there, together. The plan was that she would go like Heather, except this time the lady in bed would see them all there, she would know she wasn’t dying alone, far from it in fact. And whether she would move on straight away or stay, they would take the chance to reach out, to touch her, just for a moment, in case it was all they had. Kitty had practically made them rehearse that too, as it seemed ever more likely the day would come, and they would count themselves ‘fortunate’ if Alison died on the grounds, not outside like Mike did.
Instead, she’d been alone. Well, she’d had Mia, but for all that Mia had grown up with a gaggle of ghost aunts and uncles, she wouldn’t have been able to see her mum, or know that she was still there. Robin clenched his fists.
“When?!”
“Two days ago.”
“TWO DAYS?”
Alison raised her hands; “I did say you’d been gone a while! I’m surprised you didn’t hear any of the chaos, or the others calling for you. Humphrey had been at the front desk, he’d heard it all happen, though he hadn’t seen it. Managed to give him a bit of a fright when I went to pick him up.”
That would have been something to see, it wasn’t much that startled the little lord head these days.
“It honestly wasn’t that bad. I mean, it was a shock, yeah…But I didn’t feel anything, I didn’t suffer, Mia and her kids didn’t have to watch me slowly deteriorate like I had to with my mum.” Alison tried to soften it, more so for her own sake than Robin’s; “Poor Humphrey though, I was in a bit of a state and was crushing him to me like a squashmallow. Then Cap heard the commotion and ran down, freaked out when he saw me and then saw ‘me’, with Humphrey…Then he hugged me. Always imagined he gave good hugs, glad I was right on that one. The others came down shortly after and then more hugging and crying…Honestly, I soon started to feel what you were talking about with just wanting to run and be alone, just for a moment…”
Robin grunted, they could definitely be a lot, even if he could imagine it being an emotional moment. He pictured Kitty being torn between distress that Alison had died and overjoyed that she could finally hug her ‘sister’. He could hear Pat attempting to talk her through it only to make her more frustrated with his babbling and overly complicated attempts to calm her down. He dreaded to imagine what Thomas had been like the first time he realised he could now hold her hand. And as for Fanny, she was probably criticising Alison for ‘uncouth’ ghost behaviour before her body was even cold.
Yeah, he would have wanted to run for the hills too.
“It all settled down quickly, it was just hard watching my daughter cry and not be able to give her a hug.”
“Me understand that one.”
She looked at him, doubtful; “Really?”
“Me was dad! Everyone always forget. Dunno why, me so wise and mature.” He said before scratching at the flea on his ear.
Alison blinked; “Yeah, it’s a mystery. Anyway, she came up to the room after they took my body away, and she just…sat and talked to me. Spoke to me like how she speaks to the rest of you. It was so weird, just having to…sit there, wanting to hold her hand…I wanted to give her a sign by flickering the lights to show I was there but…The one person I needed to help me with that wasn’t around.”
Shit.
“Me sorry, me so sorry.” Now he felt doubly ashamed. The one time that she’d needed him most, after all she’d done for him from the crossword puzzles to the chess board to making his afterlife feel worthwhile. Not only her, but Mia, his niece, she’d needed a sign in her darkest moment and where the fuck had he been for either of them?!
Alison reached out to grip his fuzzy sleeve.
“Don’t be sorry. Just come home.” She pleaded with him; “She said she’s gonna come back next weekend so we can try again then. You two are both fluent in morse code after all this time, now I’ve got all the time in the world to learn as well. Ugh, Pat and Cap are gonna be thrilled.”
And then there’s the phone. He can try to see if he can manipulate it to write words, maybe text like Julian could. He can be useful. He can make it up to them.
The caveman looked down at the elderly fingers wrapped around his sleeve. It still felt so wrong to think that’s Alison’s hand.
“It weren’t just for Mia, y’know, why I came looking for you.” She told him, “All of them were there, with me, except you…And I never thought I’d miss that filthy looking mane of hair so fucking much!”
He managed a laugh, looking at her; “Tribe not have L’Oréal, we not learn to be worth it yet. Also lightning not help.”
“Fair enough. I still kept waiting for my Robin to show up, even if just to scare the shit out of me. I know you get sick of us joking about you being the family dog, but that’s only because of how much I can rely on you to be there for us all. It’s hard not to miss you when you’re not there. I started to worry you’d left us too.”
“Ha. Fat chance of that.”
As he said the words aloud, he realised he meant them less than if he had ten minutes ago. Once again, he’d been begging to Moonah and gods he didn’t believe in, to finally be free of this beautiful prison, to be reunited at last with everyone he’d lost. Pointless as it was, he’d felt so tired, so bored of everything, the world having lost another hue without his best friend to spice everything up. As much as he loved and cared for the others, he’d struggled to think that any of them really needed him to stick around anymore, that they wouldn’t be fine without him. Even Kitty, who’d he watched grow from a newly adopted toddler, now looked to Captain mostly for her guidance and protection. Would anyone have really noticed if he just…faded away?
It turned out, to his surprise, someone had. Someone had needed him, wanted him.
He still wasn’t done.
“How you feel now?” He asked her, beginning to feel the Earth solidify around him, when he focused less on his own pain and more on easing hers.
“Like the same tired old widow recovering from hip surgery. Stiff and a bit slow, but…” She shrugged; “There’s no pain. Could’ve been in worse states, I guess.”
“You mean Humphrey?”
“I wasn’t gonna say it out loud.” She smirked, him mirroring her. “And you? Still feel like you’re about to go mad?”
“Who say me not already?”
“Oh, good. I was already known as the ‘mad hotel lady’. We can be two mad ghosts together now.” She bumped her shoulder against his.
Robin chuckled. Yes, that didn’t sound too bad after all.
“And I know I’m not as good a chess player as Julian, but at least I know the rules better than Kitty. Just so long as we can play in the Suite or the game room…Don’t worry, Mia knows to make sure nothing in the hotel changes now I’m dead. If they try, well…You’re gonna have to help me find my ghost power to mess with them, because no way am I not getting one.”
“We can try.” Julian had mastered his through sheer practice over many, many years. Robin had never seen anyone be so determined before, not even himself, and the bastard had managed it.
So anything was possible.
She touched his cheek again. The contact alone made him tremble with emotion. Leaning in close, he felt her forehead press against his, and could tell she was revelling in this ability to finally touch her friends as much as they were.
“Until then, I still got a lot of crying in me to do. Still some for Julian and Mike, as well as all…this,” she confessed, her voice strained, “You okay to be my mad crying buddy with me when I need one? Because otherwise I’m just left with Thomas and-.”
“Say no more. Me save you.”
They laughed together, and she offered him her hands. He took them and helped her to stand, her legs creaking as bad as the Captain’s.
He offered her his arm; “You need help walk?”
“I ain’t that decrepit!” She protested, then smiled, taking it all the same; “But go on then.”
He held onto her tight as they left the forest, walking across the golf course, deserted aside from a couple of caretakers. It still felt like a dream, their Alison, now one of them, her body leaning against his as they walked back to the hotel. His heart stung as he imagined how thrilled Julian would have been, how often they’d talked about getting her in on their pranks and haunting antics, once she became their official third amigo. Now just two, unless another mischievous ghost joined them soon. All things were possible, he could at least admit that.
In his mind’s eye, he could see the trouserless MP winking at the two of them from the giant chess board as they walked by.
Keep her in trouble for me.
Me will, he smiled, squeezing her hand. He will.
.