#bbc ghosts babyfic

[ailendolin]

Grace - The Epilogue

Title: Grace [AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - Epilogue

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A/N 1: This was written before series 5 so there are no spoilers in it.

A/N 2: I want to use this opportunity to give a huge thank you to everyone who has been following this story for over a year now! Your support means a lot to me! I hope you enjoy the epilogue!

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Grace

The Epilogue

Grace Katherine Cooper has always known she’s just an ordinary girl living a very special life.

She knows that to an outsider, it looks like it’s just her, her mum and her dad living in an old, run-down house in the middle of nowhere, trying to make ends meet by hosting dinner parties, weddings, birthdays and every other kind of celebration one can imagine. Her whole, she’s heard people saying things like, “Oh that poor girl, growing up so isolated,” or, “That child must be so terribly lonely on her own in that big, empty house.” They think she doesn’t hear what they whisper about her and her family behind her back but she does. It’s never really bothered Grace, though. On the contrary – most of the time, it makes her giggle and she has to bite her lip to hide it. Oh, if only they knew …

She’s not surprised people think her childhood is lonely but considering she’s never felt alone for even a second in her life, she finds the pitying looks on everyone’s faces when her mum and dad take her into town more than a little amusing. She may not have any siblings by blood but she has a ghostly sister who likes singing songs with her in the pantry and more than a dozen crazy aunts and uncles who play games with her whenever she gets bored and are the best at making her smile even when she feels like screaming and throwing something against a wall.

She also has Thomas.

Grace knows she shouldn’t have favourites but he is her godfather so she thinks that makes loving him just a little more than the others okay. Her mum reassures her that it is, and that the other ghosts don’t mind her keeping his doll in her bed while theirs sit on the shelf above it, watching over her; or that a large amount of the paintings lining her bedroom walls feature him.

Her mum made those paintings for her over the years and Grace loves every single one of them dearly. Every time she looks at them, she can see herself growing up more loved than most people will ever be in their entire lives. The fact that the ghosts always stay the same in the pictures has often brought her comfort, especially when nightmares about losing her parents startle her awake in the middle of the night. The ghosts are as much a constant in her life as the sun, moon and stars are, and even though she can’t see them like her mum can, Grace knows they are there. She can see it in the flicker of the lamp on her bedside table when she reads and feel it in the gentle touch of fingers on the tip of her nose when she daydreams instead of doing her homework. She can hear it in the faint echoes of an old nursery rhyme ringing through the hallways and smell it in the smoke hanging invisible in the air. The ghosts are always there, always present, and as long as they are, Grace knows she will never have to be afraid of being alone.

That doesn’t mean her life is always easy, though.

The other children don’t understand. They humoured her at first, back in nursery school when they were still young enough to believe in imaginary friends and find the idea of having a ghost family exciting. With the start of primary school that changed. They stopped believing in ghosts, and Grace suddenly found herself being told to stop being childish and grow up. She refused because she was not being childish – her ghosts were real! – and it broke her young heart when slowly, all her friends turned away from her. Only Julie and Emmett stayed, and she was grateful beyond words they still wanted to come over to play hide and seek with her and Kitty in the garden. A part of her knew even back then that they were the best living friends she’ll probably ever have – possibly the only ones, too – and she swore to herself that she would hold onto them as tightly as she could and for as long as they’d let her.

As she grows older, Grace stops telling people about the ghosts. She’s not embarrassed but she’s so tired of everyone calling her and her mum crazy. It makes her blood boil every time until one day, her anger spills over and she punches Kevin McMillan in his smug, little face for saying she’s a witch and should be burned at the stake. Her parents are not happy about it and neither is Grace if she’s being honest. It doesn’t really make her feel better and it solves nothing so the next time someone says something awful to her, she decides to walk away. She has Julie and Emmett who think it’s so cool when Robin makes the lights flicker and Jemima sings for them, and that’s enough.

No, Grace thinks to herself when she hangs up a photograph of the three of them on her wall in-between the paintings of the ghosts. It’s more than enough. It’s all she needs.

Not only do Julie and Emmett accept that the ghosts are real and a huge part of her life, they’re also almost as desperate to communicate with them as she is. While Julian is able to use the laptop – something that often comes in handy when Grace’s mum is not around to translate what the ghosts are saying – his typing is still so terribly slow after all these years that it’s exhausting to have a lengthy conversation that way. So together with Julie and Emmett, Grace tries to find new ways of talking to the ghosts.

Their first idea is inspired by those programmable buttons for dogs and involves an old Ouija board they find in the basement and a lot of little lamps. Julie, being the technical genius she is, somehow attaches one of them to every letter on the board while Grace and Emmett cheer her on and offer her snacks throughout the process. Once she’s done and sure every single lamp works, they go off to find Robin to give the board its first test run.

Robin takes to it like a fish to water.

It only takes him a few tries to figure out how to turn on the different lamps and Grace is absolutely delighted to have her first conversation with him that doesn’t rely on her mum being in the room and repeating what he says or Robin making the lights flicker in Morse Code to get a message across.

(Her mum once told her how proud Pat and the Captain were that she took their recommendation to heart and spent her first summer holiday learning Morse Code. It made the headaches her efforts gave her more than worth it.)

Being her father’s daughter, there comes a point in her life when Grace looks up ghost-hunting devices on the internet, just on the off-chance that one of them might actually work for one of the ghosts she hasn’t been able to talk to directly yet. So when her twelfth birthday comes around, she asks her parents for ghost-hunting equipment rather than conventional presents.

“Oh honey, we already tried that,” her mum tells her with an apologetic look after she has scanned the list Grace has handed her.

“Yeah, we had a bunch of ghost-hunters with all sorts of tools here once. None of them worked,” her dad adds.

Then they pause and share a look that gives Grace hope. “Although the ghosts were boycotting the whole thing at the time so …”

A few days later, just in time for her birthday, two ghost-hunting devices get delivered to their doorstep. Her mum and dad put little bows on them and Grace almost squeals in delight when she sees them waiting for her when she comes home from school. By the time Julie and Emmett arrive an hour later, she’s read the instructions twice and set up the devices in the drawing room, ready and eager to try them out.

“The ghosts are here,” her mum says and then pauses to look at the empty air behind the chessboard. After a moment, she rolls her eyes and adds, “Yes, I’ll tell her that you’re here too. Grace, the villagers want you to know they’re here as well and very excited about the whole thing.”

It warms Grace’s heart.

“Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work, though,” her dad cautions just as they’re about to try out the first device: an SLS – Structured Light Sensor – camera which is supposed to make the ghosts visible on a screen in the form of stick figures and give them all an idea of where they are in the room. “It’s a long shot.”

Grace smiles up at him. “I know, Dad. I just want to give it a try. Just in case”

With that, she turns on the device. Despite her dad’s warning, she feels a rush of disappointment when no stick figure appears on the screen. She waves the SLS around the room, even turns around in a circle to make sure she doesn’t miss anything, but the result is the same: screen remains woefully empty.

“Yeah, it’s really a shame,” her mum says in reply to something the ghosts must have said. She’s looking at the fireplace and, figuring it’s worth a try, Grace points the camera in that direction.

Nothing happens.

Hating how upset she feels despite having always known this was a long shot, she is about to turn off the SLS when suddenly, something pops up in the corner of the screen. Her eyes widen in disbelief as she looks up at the empty wall next to the door to the library and back down at the device. Next to her, Julie and Emmett start jumping in excitement.

“Oh my god, it’s working!” Julie says breathlessly.

“Is that Humphrey?” Emmett adds with a tilt of his head.

Grace laughs, giddy and full of relief. “It is!”

Her mum turns to them with a look of surprise. “How did you know?”

They grin and point at the stick figure on the screen. “It’s got no head!”  

Apparently, Humphrey’s head doesn’t find that as funny as they do.

They experiment a little. Her mum asks Thomas to place Humphrey’s head on its body and the moment head and body reunite, the stick figure gains a head as well. But when the head is on its own, it doesn’t show up on the SLS at all, no matter how close Grace gets to it with the device.

Meanwhile, Emmett is furiously scribbling down every little detail of what they learn in the little notebook he always carries around with him when he visits. He’s been recording everything ghosts-related for years now and Grace would be lying if she said she doesn’t find that a little endearing. Apparently, the Captain, Pat and Lady Button approve of his meticulous note keeping. Humphrey on the other hand – the head, that is – seems to be a tad annoyed that the record now shows that only his body can be seen on its own.

“He says it’s unfair and – yeah, no, I’m not going to repeat that,” her mum glowers at the piano.

Julie chuckles and sits down near Humphrey.

“Don’t worry,” she tells him with a smile. Grace can’t help but smile as well because she knows what’s coming. Humphrey’s always been Julie’s favourite. “We still love you, Humphrey.”

There is a beat of silence before her mum says, “Humphrey says thank you.”

The second device they try out is an Ovilus – a small tool with a dictionary mode that’s supposed to allow ghosts to talk to the livings. It’s apparently similar to the spirit box but less annoying – Emmett’s words, not Grace’s.

“This better work,” her dad mutters when he hands the Ovilus to Grace. “That thing cost a small fortune.”

Like with the SLS camera, nothing happens at first when she turns it on. But before disappointment can settle in once more, her mum raises her voice and says, “Not all at once, guys! Please! One at a time.”

Grace assumes the ghosts are quieting down because her mum lets out a relieved sigh and starts calling out their names one by one. She starts with Lady Button, then the Captain, and when it’s finally Thomas’s turn, Grace feels her heart swell with hope. She’s been wanting to talk to him her whole life and this could be her chance. Thomas is an orator, after all; a poet. It would make perfect sense for a device like the Ovilus to work for him.

But nothing happens.  

Her mum moves on to Robin, and Grace mentally kicks herself for forgetting about the first ghosts rule – that logic cannot be applied to the ghosts’ existence and abilities. There is no rhyme or reason to what they can or can’t do. It’s completely unpredictable and in moments like this, Grace really, really hates that that’s how it is.

Looking down at the device in her hand, she wonders if Thomas feels as disappointed as she does right now. She would be ecstatic to talk to any of them, of course, but ever since her mum and dad explained to her why she doesn’t have a brother or sister, she’s been desperate to tell Thomas how sorry she is that she caused him so much pain all those years ago. She knows he never blamed her for that but she still wants to tell him personally without her mum having to be there to speak for him.

She’s so lost in her thoughts that she doesn’t notice her mum moving on to Pat until the device in her hand suddenly pipes up with a surprisingly enthusiastic, “Hello!”

Grace almost drops it in shock.

“Pat?” she asks, breathlessly.

“Oh goodness gracious!” the Ovilus says. “Hello Grace!”

There are tears in her eyes when she looks up at her parents.

“It’s working! It’s working!” she chokes out, stuck somewhere between laughing and crying.

She has her first ever conversation with Pat that day. It’s a little stilted – the Ovilus is far from perfect – but it works and that’s all that matters in that moment.

To everyone’s surprise, Pat is not the only ghost it works for. When they go through the rest of them, just to be sure, the device suddenly crackles to life again when it’s Jean’s turn.

“Hello dear,” it says and this time, Grace does cry.

It’s the best day of her life, and she’s so glad her mum and dad bought the tools on the off-chance that they would work and gave her and the ghosts another way to talk to each other. She can’t imagine a better birthday present.

That night, when she gets ready for bed she does so with a huge smile on her face. Her mum is already waiting in her room when she comes out of the bathroom, and even though she can’t see him, Grace knows Thomas is there as well. She may be twelve now but she’ll never be too old for his stories – that much she swore to herself a long time ago. Tonight’s tale is all about birthdays – of course it is – and Grace can’t help but giggle when her mum starts to sing a quirky Happy birthday at you that is so weird it fits perfectly into the universe Thomas has created for her over a decade ago.

When the story ends, she gives her mum a kiss goodnight and asks Thomas to stay a moment longer. Her mum nods at her and gently closes the door on her way out. Taking a deep breath, she addresses the empty air at the foot of her bed where she knows Thomas likes to perch. “I’m sorry none of the devices worked for you. I was hoping at least one would but I suppose it’s a miracle they worked at all.”

She imagines the sound of a soft sigh and sad brown eyes looking down at the bloody cuff of an otherwise pristine white shirt.

“It still sucks, though,” she continues quietly, and the heavy silence in the room seems to agree with her. Still, she wouldn’t be her parents’ daughter if she gave up so easily. “Maybe we just haven’t found the right tool yet. We’ll keep trying, Thomas. I promise.”

Her eyes stray to the painting of him that hangs opposite her bed, the one in which he is smiling a little bashfully. It’s her favourite, along with the regal one her mum made years before she’d been born, and she hopes her words make him smile a little like that right now.

————

In the following months, her parents do their best to help her keep her promise but no matter which ghost-hunting device they try, none of them works for Thomas. Grace has always considered herself an optimist but when a year goes by and her thirteenth birthday comes and goes without her having found a way to talk to Thomas, she begins to lose hope that it’s ever going to happen. She tries to make her peace with that. It’s all she can do at that point – accept that it just isn’t meant to be.

Then, a week into the new year, Julie remarks with a thoughtful look, “Maybe the right tool just hasn’t been invented yet?”

Her brother raises his eyebrow at her. “And I suppose we’ll be the ones who’ll build it?”

Julie snorts. “We? God, no. But I’m going to have a crack at it.”

And she does. Almost every week, she comes up with a new idea that’s both ingenious and insane, and even though none of them end up working in the end, Grace is grateful beyond words that she has friends who are willing to pour their hearts and souls into helping her talk to a ghost. Not to mention a dad who is more than happy to help them tinker around and build crazy things from scratch. It makes her feel a little better in the face of all this disappointment.

“You know,” her mum begins one evening after another failed attempt that involved their toaster and an old radio her dad found in the basement. Grace can already tell from her tone that she’s not going to like what she’s about to say. “Thomas says it’s okay if you want to focus on something else for a while. You and your friends have been trying to build something for over a year now – maybe it’s time to give it a little rest?”

Grace was right: she does not like this at all.

“I promised him I would keep trying,” she says stubbornly.

“I know,” her mum sighs and looks to her left where Thomas is presumably standing. “But he doesn’t want your life to revolve around him. There’s so much more to it, and he’s missing watching you play the piano and compose songs.”

Grace hasn’t even noticed but she knows in her heart that Thomas is right: she has been neglecting her hobbies. Even though she tries, she can’t even remember the last time she sat down and turned her feelings into verses and melodies. Her fingers start to itch for a pen and the smooth texture of old piano keys under her hands, and she suddenly finds herself missing Emmett’s thoughtful suggestions to her lyrics and the peaceful look on Julie’s face when she listens to a particularly goosebump-inducing chord progression.

Knowing Thomas was there for it all and found as much joy in it as she did, makes it a little easier to agree to put a hold on ghost-hunting devices for a while.

“All right,” she says softly before she looks up at where she thinks Thomas is standing. “But I’m not giving up completely.”

She can tell from her mum’s reaction that Thomas is smiling.

————

Julie and Emmett are more than a little surprised when Grace tells them about it the next time they see each other.

“But it’s been so much fun!” Julie whines, her eyes pleading with her not to give it up.

In the end, they compromise: once a week on Saturdays, Julie gets to spend the afternoon tinkering in the shed under the observation of Grace’s dad while Grace and Emmett pour over verses and music notes in front of the fire in the drawing room. Sometimes, when Emmett brings his violin along, they move over to the piano and practise together for an hour or two, and Grace has to admit that it feels good to play music with her best friend again. She can’t know for sure, of course, but she likes to think that Thomas is sitting next to her by the piano on those afternoons, clapping his hands with pride when they finish a song and smiling encouragingly whenever her fingers stumble on the keys. Every now and then, she glances over to her left at the empty air next to her, and there’s always that feeling of regret tugging at her heart in those moments because she knows it’s all just in her head and that she will never get to actually see him smile at her.

Or so she thought.

Winter is in full force by the end of February when she realises something feels different. Grace can’t quite put her finger on what it is exactly until she goes to the bathroom that afternoon and sees the specks of blood on her underwear. It takes her a moment to realise what that means, and when she does, she calls for her mum with barely controlled panic.

She should have known her mum wouldn’t come to her aid alone.

“Mary says, and I quote: Oh, she be a woman now,” her mum tells her with a grin as she hands her a fresh pair of underpants and a pad through the crack of the bathroom door.

Grace shuts the door in her face with a groan.

She doesn’t want to be a woman – she’s not ready to be a grown-up yet and she certainly doesn’t feel like one. It’s weird to think that, theoretically, she could have a baby now. A real, living human child.

Yeah no, definitely not, Grace thinks with a shudder as she washes her hands.

When she has calmed down enough to go downstairs, Robin’s Ouija board is blinking like crazy in the drawing room. She feels a gentle pressure on her shoulders and lets Julian guide her to it. C-O-N-G-R-A-T-U-L-A-T-I-O-N-S Robin spells out. Grace feels her face flush but before she can do more than grow beet red from embarrassment, Julian steers her towards the Ovilus.

“Hello!” Pat says the moment she turns on the device. “Mary told – what happened!”

The tone of the Ovilus changes slightly, indicating that Jean has taken over. “If you have – questions about – we are here for you.”

Grace glances over at her mum, mortified. “Do they all know?”

Her mum nods, unable to hide her amusement. “More or less. Jemima is asking what’s going on.”

No way is Grace going to explain that to her ghostly friend. Judging by the way her mum’s expression slowly turns into one of horror, she doesn’t seem to have to. “Oh no, Julian, don’t you dare–“

In the end, it’s  Lady Button who ends up explaining periods to Jemima Grace honestly doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. What she does know, however, is that this is one of those rare moments when she doesn’t envy her mum her gift at all. The last thing she needs is hearing Lady Button talk about the birds and the bees and the others oversharing their own thoughts on the matter at every opportunity. The day had been traumatising enough already.

When she goes to bed that night, her dad is there to tuck her in. Grace is a little surprised to see him instead of her mum but it feels nice to have him pull up the blankets around her shoulders for once and press a kiss to her forehead.

“How are you holding up, kiddo?” he asks with a gentle smile that iputs her frayed nerves at ease.

“Okay, I guess? It’s just … weird. I don’t feel any different but I am, aren’t I?”

Her dad’s smile softens. “You’re growing up, love. That doesn’t mean you haveto be a grown up right now, or that you have to feel like one. It’s okay to still be a child.” His eyes twinkle when he adds, “And you know you’ll always be my baby girl, no matter what.”

“Even when I’m sixty and my hair is going grey?” Grace asks softly.

“Even then,” her dad reassures her.

His words manage to soothe the tightly coiled thing full of worry and fear that’s been sitting heavily on her chest all day. Chuckling wetly, Grace flings herself into his arms and buries her head in his chest. There’s no safer place in the world than in her dad’s arms, and when he kisses the top of her head, she closes her eyes and smiles against his shirt. “Love you, dad.”

“I love you too, Gracie,” he whispers against her hair and tightens his hold.

When they pull back, Grace can’t help feeling a little embarrassed but her dad knows how to deal with that too: he ruffles her hair, messes up the carefully made braids and Grace squirms out of his arm, all the while laughing.

He grins but lets her go. There’s a moment of quiet as she catches her breath before she asks, rather timidly, “Will Mum and Thomas come to say goodnight?”

Her dad’s face softens. “Of course they will. They wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

But he also tells her that today threw Thomas a little, and that her mum is talking to him about it right now; that change like this is difficult for him, and her growing up feels just a bit too much like she is slipping through his fingers again. Grace would think that’s absurd – after all, nothing’s really changed; she’s still the same person she was when she woke up that morning – if she didn’t know how impossible it is for him and the others to hold onto the people they care about. Life, inevitably, passes them by. What feels like an eternity to her is just a blip in time for them. Seeing her grow older – being reminded of how much time has passed and that she’s not that little baby they all cooed over anymore – must be both heart-breaking and terrifying for them, doomed as they are to watch it happen while they stay the same.

There’s the soft sound of a throat being cleared and when Grace looks over to the door, she finds her mum holding up a hot water bottle. “Ready for your bedtime story?”

Grace smiles and scoots over so her mum can join them on the bed. She wonders what kind of story Thomas will tell her today as she settles down, and is not disappointed when it turns out to be a childhood tale about one of the Elders. It’s full of love, understanding and acceptance, and all about how different one’s life can be after meeting the right person.

Grace knows she already has the right people in her life – her parents, the ghosts and, of course, Julie and Emmett. She was fortunate enough to meet them all very early and can’t imagine ever needing anyone else to be happy.

“I love you,” she says when the story is over and Thomas and her parents say goodnight.

Her mum and dad share a smile. “We love you too, sweetheart.”

“And so does Thomas,” her mum adds with a soft look towards the foot of the bed. “He bids you goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Grace whispers and curls around the hot water bottle. Just before she closes her eyes, she catches a glimpse of warm brown eyes and a soft, melancholic smile. Her dad turns off the light and she shakes her head. She must be more tired than she thought if her mind is playing tricks on her like that.

————

It’s still dark outside when she wakes up the next morning. There’s only the thinnest line of pale blue light on the horizon, heralding the arrival of a wintry sunrise that makes Grace wish spring would hurry up and allow the world to burst back into colour again. She’s so tired of icy skies and snow-covered landscapes.

Since it’s a Sunday, she takes her time getting ready. By the time she heads downstairs for breakfast, the sun is already beginning to tentatively peak over the horizon in the distance, making the fields glitter with frost and snow in the weak light. A deer is grazing in the cold morning air and Grace briefly hopes Uncle Barclay isn’t out and about with his shotgun again. Not because the deer would be in danger – according to her dad, Uncle Barclay has been famously missing his targets for years now – but because she knows the sound would upset Thomas and she doesn’t want that.

“Morning Mum, morning Dad,” she mumbles around a yawn as she enters the kitchen. She plops down onto her chair and reaches for her glass of orange juice.  

Her parents exchange a fond, amused look.

“Sleep well?” her dad asks as he hands her a plate with toast and omelette.

“Like a baby,” Grace tells him truthfully. She looks over at her mum. “Thanks again for the hot water bottle. It really helped.”

Her mum smiles. “You’re welcome, love.”

Before she can say anything else, Kitty bursts through the wall with an excited, “Alison! Have you looked outside yet? It snowed again last night! Can you ask Grace if we can make snow angels together later? Please? It was so much fun last time!”

“Sure we can,” Grace absentmindedly says around a mouthful of toast before she starts digging into her omelette.

She only notices something’s wrong when her dad gives her a very confused look. “Can do what?”

Grace blinks. She looks up from her plate, looks at her dad, then at her mum and finally at the young woman in the pretty pink dress who is staring at her with wide eyes full of wonder. “Kitty?”

“Oh gosh!” Kitty exclaims and promptly turns around to run from the room.

Grace stares after her, not quite convinced she isn’t still lying in her bed, dreaming, when her mum whispers in a tone of wonder, “Did you just … see her?”

Grace is unable to tear her eyes away from the empty space where Kitty just stood. “I think so?”

There’s a tense moment of silence as it slowly sinks in what that means. Then her dad groans. “And we’re back to me being the only one who can’t see ghosts. Great.”

He says it so dramatically that Grace can’t help but laugh. Even to her own ears it sounds a little hysterical. She wonders if that’s what going into shock feels like.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” her mum says with a meaningful look towards her that Grace doesn’t understand at first. She didn’t fall out of any windows or down any stairs and cracked her head open, didn’t have any near-death experiences in the last 24 hours at all, let alone in the thirteen years before. It just doesn’t make sense. She shouldn’t be able to see the ghosts. Nothing has changed since yesterday except–

Oh, Grace thinks and places a hand over her cramping stomach. “Do you think–?”

“What else could it be?” her mum asks.

Her dad glances between them. “All right, time out. Since when does getting your period mean you can see ghosts?”

“It doesn’t, not normally.” Her mum glances at her with a curious look on her face. “But she’s not a normal kid, is she, Mike? She’s my kid. What if my gift is in her genes?”

“And puberty triggered it?” her dad asks sceptically.

Her mum holds up her hands and shrugs. “Do you have a better explanation?”

Grace can tell by the look on her dad’s face that he has not. She hasn’t either. What her mum says makes sense, in a our lives are so weird already so why shouldn’t this be possible too? kind of way. And it’s that thought, that moment of realisation that nothing is truly impossible in this house that makes the whole thing truly, undeniably sink in. She saw Kitty. She can see ghosts!

Before any excitement has a chance to bubble over, doubts creep into her mind. Because can she, actually? Can she see ghosts, plural, or is it perhaps just Kitty she can see? Not that that would be disappointing – far from it. It would be so much more than she’d ever thought possible but Grace needs to know.

Omelette and toast forgotten, she stands up from the table so abruptly she startles her parents. “We need to find the ghosts. I need to–”

“I know,” her mum says and stands up too. With a sigh that sounds more amused than resigned, her dad follows them out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

They haven’t even reached the drawing room yet when she starts to hear them: a cacophony of voices, all talking over each other, with Kitty’s rising above them all, insisting, “I swear it! She saw me! She looked right at me and she talked to me!”

Grace stops just shy of the door and lets it all wash over her: the Captain’s voice, less stern than she remembers; Pat’s desperate attempts to calm everyone down; Robin’s rough half-sentences as he tells Kitty she must be wrong because he’s been around long enough to know something like this doesn’t happen; Julian’s call for order that sounds just like her mum’s impression of him and makes her smile; Mary’s old way of talking that turns singulars into plurals in the most peculiar ways; Humphrey’s cautious optimism that Jemima tentatively agrees with; Fanny’s sceptical huffs as she joins forces with Robin and tries to be the voice of reason; and finally the villagers’ excited voices that become so entangled Grace has no hope of making out who’s who.

“I can hear them,” she whispers in relief. She looks up at her mum and doesn’t care when a tear drops down her face. “Mum, I can hear all of them.”

It’s the best feeling in the world, and the only thing that could possibly top it would be being able to see them too. So Grace takes a deep breath and slowly opens the door. All the beloved faces she knows from her mum’s paintings turn to look at her at once. The ghosts seem to hold their breaths – unnecessary but so endearing – as she lets her gaze roam over them. She soaks up every little detail, every hesitant and hopeful smile in stunned silence until finally Pat steps forward and gives her a tentative wave. “Hello, Grace.”

The dam breaks. Grace laughs and lets the tears well over. The room blurs around her and so do the ghosts but she can see them stepping closer, surrounding her like they have all her life except now they’re not just pictures on her walls. They’re real – beautifully, undeniably real. Some of them are crying along with her and reaching out their hands as if to comfort her, and it feels like coming home in the most perfect way Grace could have possibly imagined.

“Hi,” she manages to choke out and laughs again when a chorus of hi’s and hello’s greets her in answer.

“See? I told you I didn’t make it up,” Kitty says with a triumphant grin before she turns to Grace and claps her hands excitedly. “Oh, I’m so glad we finally get to talk to each other! I have so much to tell you!”

Her words remind Grace of all the things she’s been dying to tell the ghosts herself, and one ghost in particular. She lets her eyes wander over them, desperate to find brown curls and warm brown eyes among the sea of the familiar faces. Her heart sinks when she realises he’s not there.

“Where is Thomas?” she asks. The question comes out trembling and her worry only grows when the ghosts go silent and look at each other. In that moment, she knows exactly how her mother felt all those years ago when Thomas vanished without trace. The mere thought that he could be gone before she could see him again, that she’s missed her chance, that he’s–

“Didn’t he say he wanted to watch the sunrise this morning?” Nigel pipes up suddenly, and the rush of relief Grace feels at his words makes her knees feel so weak she has to hold onto the nearest chair for a moment. She looks out of the window, sees the warm glow of the sun stretching over the grounds that are as familiar to her as the house, and wonders if he’ll be at the lake or the well.

She doesn’t stop to ask. Without thinking about what she’s doing, she turns around and runs out of the house. Her breath freezes in the cold morning air; she’s only wearing her slippers and didn’t stop to grab her coat but Grace barely notices. She’s running across the lawn as fast as she can, the frozen grass and snow cracking under her feet, and when a look into the walled garden reveals an empty well, she changes course and heads straight for the lake without stopping to catch her breath.

Her heart is pounding in her chest when it finally comes into view. She slows down and blinks against the sun. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust to the glare but suddenly, between one blink and the next, she can make out a dark silhouette against the bright orange glow.

“Thomas,” she breathes and feels a smile tugging at her lips.

Sunlight is shining through the wound that took his life, making him look more ethereal and ghost-like than her mum’s paintings ever managed to convey. He stands perfectly still, his breath turning to mist in the morning air in front of him with every slow exhale, and Grace wishes he would turn around so she could see his face. So she calls out his name, louder this time, and picks up her pace. As she runs across the frozen meadow towards him, she feels as close to a soldier returning from war to her loved one as she probably ever will, and when he finally – finally – turns to look at her, she could have wept with happiness.

Thomas’s eyes widen a fraction before a frown full of worry replaces the surprise on that gentle, loving face she knows so well. “Grace! What are you doing out here? Goodness me, you don’t even have proper shoes on!”

Grace can tell by the helpless look he casts behind her that he hasn’t realised yet that she can see him. He is hoping for her mum to appear and fix whatever is wrong, and that more than anything makes her heart ache. Because despite it all he is still talking to her as if she never lost the ability to see him, as if she can still talk back. Grace had no idea and the realisation that he never gave that up, not even after all these years, makes her steps falter in the snow.

“Alison?” Thomas shouts and begins to scan the field behind her with increasing urgency. “Alison! Damn your eyes, where are you? Alison! Something’s wrong with Grace!”

His fear, worry and love for her come together in a crescendo of emotion that makes his voice hitch and tremble. He is so clearly torn between staying with her and finding her mum that Grace feels more tears well up in her eyes. Thomas looks at her in alarm.

“Gracie, please. I – I don’t know how to help you. I physically can’t.”

He sounds so distraught that she finally manages to swallow around the lump in her throat.

“It’s all right, Thomas. Nothing’s wrong with me. Quite the opposite, actually.” Thomas freezes. He looks as if he’s seen a ghost and the irony of that isn’t lost on Grace. She gives him a shy, little wave. “It’s good to see you.”

His face goes slack. For a heartbeat or two, he’s just staring at her, completely still. Then he whispers brokenly, “Grace?”

Her name hangs in the air between them, as fragile as the frost under her feet. Warmly, Grace smiles up at him. “Hello, Thomas.”

Thomas lets out the softest, “Oh,” she has ever heard, full of wonder, hope and disbelief.

Behind her, Grace can hear her mum and dad running across the field towards them but she doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look away from Thomas who keeps opening and closing his mouth as if he wants to say a thousand things but can’t find the right words. His hands are trembling at his sides and a moment later, his face crumples. Without warning, his shoulders begin to shake and he sinks down into the fresh snow. He hides his face in his hands, unable to stifle his emotions. The sound he makes is so awfully raw that Grace falls to her knees beside him, helplessly. “Thomas.”

There is a blur of movement next to her and then Jean is at Thomas’s side. She wraps an arm around his shoulders, holds him tight and together in a way Grace cannot and never will, not even with her newfound power. Thomas is crying in earnest now, and one by one the other ghosts join him on the ground. They don’t just surround him with their presence; they surround him with their love. It’s both beautiful and heart-breaking to watch, and Grace wonders if that’s how it was when they found him all those years ago too.

Something heavy lands on her shoulder. She glances up at her mum and dad, grateful for the warm winter coat they’re bundling her up in but even more grateful for the hug that follows. Looking back at Thomas, she hears his broken sobs, sees the way he buries his face in Jean’s shoulder and thinks this is the first time she truly understands what losing her did to him all those years ago. Right now, he isn’t the elegant poet from the portrait on her bedroom wall or the silly storyteller from her bedtime ritual. He is a young, broken man who has just gotten back a piece of his heart he’d thought forever lost.

“Thomas,” she says again. “Look at me? Please?”

He sucks in a ragged breath and slowly raises his head, unable to say no to her. His eyes are shining with tears, and his silent, desperate plea of Please let this be real feels as loud as if he had shouted it.

Grace smiles at him through her own tears. “I’m here. I promise, I’m here and I can see you.”

“She really can, mate,” Pat says softly.

“Praise be,” Mary adds with a smile.

Thomas sniffs and wipes his face on the bloody cuff of his shirt. “How is that even possible?”

“Long story,” Grace says. “I’ll explain it all later.”

“Okay,” he whispers and takes another shaking breath. “I never gave up hope – you have to know that, Gracie – but I didn’t think–“ He cuts himself off with a shake of his head. Biting his lip, he does his best to pull himself together before he continues in that soft voice Grace remembers from her earliest memories, “I love you so much. More than words can say. I’ve never stopped, not even when–”

He breaks off again and Grace wishes so badly she could hold him like the ghosts can.

“I know,” she promises him instead. “I’ve always known. And I love you too. I’m just sorry it took me so long to tell you.”

He smiles and shakes his head even as his breath hitches. “You’ve told me in plenty of ways, Grace; every single day.”

That may be true but Grace knows he needed to hear it anyway and probably would again. That is okay, though – they have all the time in the world now.

What an incredible thought.

————

That night, after her mum and dad have tucked her in and kissed her goodnight, they leave her bedroom with matching smiles on their faces. It’s the first time in twelve years that her mum doesn’t stay for Storytime, and Grace is so giddy with excitement she almost feels like a toddler again. She might be thirteen years old now but Storytime with Thomas is one of her earliest and fondest memories and she’s been waiting to hear him – actually, physically hear him – tell her another story for over a decade now. Even though she spent the whole day talking and laughing with the ghosts, it feels a little surreal that the moment is finally here and Grace pinches herself just to make sure she isn’t dreaming.

She’s not.

Reassured, she takes a deep breath and glances towards the foot of her bed. Thomas is sitting exactly where she always imagined he’d be, perched on the very edge of the mattress. He is quiet – a little too quiet, Grace thinks – as he stares down at his hands in his lap. His fingers are restlessly worrying the bloody cuff of his shirt, making him look nervous, as if he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to do now that she can see him.

It’s utterly endearing.

“I’ve been looking forward to this all day,” Grace says quietly, hoping it will put him at ease.

Thomas glances up and the look of surprise on his face makes her heart ache. “Really?”

She nods. “Mum did a good job but your voice … I still remember it from all those years ago. It’s probably the most soothing thing I’ve ever heard.”

He swallows hard and looks back down at his hands. “I feared you were only indulging me all this time.”

“Never,” Grace says fiercely. She patiently waits until he looks at her again, and when he does, she offers him a soft smile. “Will you tell me a bedtime story, Thomas?”

As the stars twinkle in the endless sky outside, Thomas begins to spin a tale of a lonely clown who only ever wanted to make people laugh. There is cake-stealing involved, and a war, and Grace can’t help but giggle when the clown ends up at a children’s birthday party and Thomas acts out all the silly faces and funny noises he makes.

Growing up, she thinks when the story ends and Thomas softly bids her goodnight, isn’t so bad after all.

[chocolatequeennk]

Fanfic Writer Wednesday, 4/19

This is part 2 of my attempt to catch up on my fic rec tag. I might still be catching up in May... but eventually I will have lists for everything I’ve recced this year. 

Doctor x Rose:

Wrap the Night Around Me by Ghost Lisa (link is to AO3, since Tumblr so rudely deleted her blog)

Summary: After Journey’s End, the Doctor begins to see Rose in his dreams. (And it is heart-breaking. And inspired my story Light at the End of Time)

Waiting for the Sun by @perfectlyrose 

Eight/Rose cuddling for warmth. This is a trope and a pairing that I can never get enough of, and Kelsey’s Eight/Rose is always so, so good. 

 It Was Love, When Your Weather’s Shifting, A Young Mountain, And a Strange Girl by @perfectlyrose

Nine/Rose human au, part of the a young mountain and a strange girl series that you need to read if you love Nine/Rose.

Thyroid by @countessselena

Nine/Rose drabble, hilarious. Can’t really describe drabbles without giving away the entire thing. ;)

Untitled by @badwolfgirl01

A fantastic glimpse of the War Doctor meeting Dimension hopping Rose. I loved this.

First Fudgy Kiss by @skyler10fic

Ten/Rose, first kiss while making fudge. As sweet and perfect as it sounds.

Nine/Rose fluffy ficlet by @dryadalis

Ooh, this is lovely. A fantastic bit of Nine being clueless that Rose loves him.

Golden Future by @perfectlyrose

Okay, this was written for my birthday so it has a special place in my heart. But it is also Eight meeting Dimension hopping Rose, which is one of my favourite tropes ever. 

Can’t We All Just Get Oolong? by Ghost Lisa

Tea puns! Ten/Rose human au with tea puns! If you know me, it shouldn’t surprise you that this was also a birthday gift.

 Journeys End in Lovers Meeting @lastbluetardis

Ten x Rose, JE-fixit, reunion fic, glorious, perfect, everything I wanted for my birthday. Adult

The Trace of Pleasure or Regret by @lauraxxtennant

Ten/Rose mutual pining sort of, but more of the sort where they both know they want and Rose is waiting for the Doctor to decide to get over his fears etc. Which Laura writes so, so well. Link is to the final chapter, which has links to all previous chapters. Adult

Beyond His Wildest Dreams by @hanluvr

The first chapter of a Ten/Rose Doomsday reunion babyfic that has me dying to read the rest of the story.

The Universe Next Door by @lastbluetardis

This story gutted me, for the opposite reason that stories usually do. So. there’s something sad that happens in Perfect Match, and this story is the “what if...” version, following another timeline. And it’s beautiful and I love it but it also makes me sadder about what did happen.

Mr. Smith and the Dinner Lady by @lauraxxtennant

Hilarious glimpse of the Doctor’s students in School Reunion teasing him about how he can’t take his eyes off Rose

Providential Contingency by @studio-forty-two

This is the Teninch fic to end all Teninch fics. Dimension Hopping Rose, meeting all the various Tennant characters. DHR falling for a few of them. Choosing one. This fic made me love a pairing we don’t see much of–Peter Carlisle/Rose Tyler. Adult

Permission to Follow Up, Sarge by @dryadalis

Everything you hoped/wished/secretly believe happened during Fear Her, in just 2700 words of role playing. I love this fic. Mature

Chocolate Iced TARDISes by @vampiyaa

Such a great Nine/Rose relationship transition fic. Adult

The Swing of Things by @rudennotgingr

I love fics with mutually unreciprocated love. (Where both of these idiots think the other doesn’t feel the same way.) This one is so fun and sexy. Ten x Rose, adult

Mine? by @rishidiams 

Nine/Rose Doomsday reunion with babyfic. It’s timey-wimey and glorious and I love this fic. 

Handcuffs and Pocket Things by @goingtothetardis

Ten/Rose. Handcuffs. And the contents of the Doctor’s pockets. That’s really all you need to know. 

Miraculous Ladybug:

Shifting Marks by @thisacelovessabriel

One of the cutest soulmates fics I have ever read. Oh man, the happy feels at the end of this one...

RebelCaptain:

Arguing leads to kissing by @youareiron-andyouarestrong

The classic trope of an argument that leads to a kiss, only saying it’s a trope doesn’t give this fic credit. So good.

Other:

In which Professor McGonagall discovers Scabbers is actually Peter, and Sirius is exonerated, and many sad things don’t happen

Interrupted by @thesokovianaccords

MCU, Steve/Peggy. Based on both current events and the video of the BBC dad. Hilarious and cute

[ailendolin]

I've just seen a spoiler for Baby Cooper's name and I can't believe it's the same name I've chosen for one of Grace's best friends in my Ghosts baby fic epilogue. Like, what are the chances of that?

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse that I haven't posted the epilogue yet. I'll probably have to change the name now to avoid confusion but it honestly breaks my heart a little because I've grown quite attached to it over the last few months.

On the other hand I can't deny feeling a bit chuffed that the Idiots and I have thought of the same name (even if I ended up using it for Baby Cooper's friend and not Baby Cooper themselves).

[ailendolin]

Grace - Chapter 9/10

Title: Grace [AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - Epilogue

————

A/N: There is a little song in this chapter which I wrote for this story. If you want to know how it sounds, just click on the lyrics and you will be directed to a post with an audio file and sheet music.

————

Grace

Chapter 9: The Present

In the weeks between Grace’s birthday and Christmas, a new sense of normal slowly creeps into their lives. What used to be their everyday routine gently shifts into something that still feels familiar but is also undeniably different. Alison would like to say she’s getting used to it but every now and then she feels this pang of regret deep in her chest when it hits her just how much has changed and that things won’t ever go back to the way they were before. It’s something she fears she may never quite come to terms with.

The ghosts have started to join her, Mike and Grace for breakfast in the mornings again – all of them except for Thomas, that is. His absence doesn’t exactly feel like a missing puzzle piece because he’s no longer missing, thank god. It’s more like he’s not quite fitting into the space he has carved out for himself over the years anymore. Alison knows he will again one day, has to believe that he’ll be able to find a new place and purpose for himself with time, but right now he is lost and she hates that there is nothing she can do about it.

Her only comfort is that he is not alone in his self-isolation. The villagers from the basement have taken it upon themselves to ensure that he never lacks company when he wants for it. Just before breakfast, they come upstairs to visit him, and every now and then Alison catches one of them, mostly Nigel or Jean, asleep with him in his room when she checks up on Thomas in the mornings. She hasn’t asked any of them about it – she has a feeling they stay with him on the bad days, and she’s glad for it. While her relationship with Thomas has mended somewhat since their last heart-to-heart, she doesn’t want every single conversation they have to be about Grace or grief or loss. So instead of saying something, she does her best to have faith that Nigel and the others will take care of him when it all becomes too much.

She tries to find other ways to be there for Thomas; ways that allow him to forget about Grace for a little while. On the weekends, when life is less hectic at Button House, they meet up to watch the sunrise together now. It’s a new part of Alison’s routine that she wouldn’t want to miss for anything in the world, even if it makes her late for breakfast sometimes. It’s just her and Thomas by the little well on those cold winter mornings. Thomas claims it’s the best spot to watch the sunrise but Alison suspects he chose it for more sentimental reasons. After all, they had shared their first true connection by this well. Back then, Thomas had so rarely dropped the theatrics that she still remembers how surprised she was to find him gazing at the sun instead of her and saying something truly poetic. He had simply talked in that moment – without thinking, without carefully crafting each and every word – and it had been mesmerising to see the beautiful, broken soul he always tried to hide laid bare for once.

He used to talk to Grace like this, back when Storytime was still a thing. Alison has only listened in on them a few times in the beginning when she was still unsure Thomas would be able to manage Grace on his own but she remembers being struck by the honesty in his voice when he spoke of lands far ago.

Thomas isn’t quite that open with her now when they watch the sunrise together but sometimes, when he feels particularly melancholic, he quietly talks about his childhood and the times he would sit by the window in the morning, thinking that the sun was just as unreachable and unapproachable as his parents were. More often he is quiet, though, and then Alison will fill the silence with stories about her own loneliness growing up. It’s a theme that connects them despite the different lives they’ve led, and when Thomas quietly tells her one morning about the time his mother caught him writing with his left hand and how she punished him for it, Alison thinks out of the two of them, she got the better end of the stick. She might have lost her parents but at least she never had to doubt they loved her.

Thomas is not the only one she spends a little extra time with in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Despite everything that’s going on it hasn’t escaped her notice that Julian still looks guilty whenever he interacts with Grace. There is a strain around his eyes when he reaches out to her, and an unhappy frown mars his face every time Grace inevitably giggles and says his name in response. 

“It’s just not fair,” he growls out one day after he abruptly left the room and Alison hurried after him. He said the same thing before, back in the kitchen when she asked him to boop Grace’s nose, and Alison’s chest tightens when she hears the guilt in his voice, disguised as frustration. He looks like a caged tiger as he paces up and down in front of her; like he would give anything not to have his power in that moment.

“Thomas doesn’t begrudge you this – you know that, don’t you?” Alison asks softly.

Julian sighs and stops pacing long enough to turn away from her. He looks out the window and shrugs. “It still doesn’t feel right. He should be able to do this. What he had with her–“

He breaks off with a shake of his head and Alison wishes she could reach out offer physical comfort somehow because he looks like he needs it.

“Don’t underestimate how much you mean to Grace,” she says quietly, willing her words to get through to him. “Every interaction she still gets to have with you guys is precious now. It lets her know you’re still there – that Thomas is still there, even if she can’t see or hear him. You’re helping, Julian. Trust me.”

Julian bows his head. “Doesn’t feel that way.”

“I know,” Alison sighs. She wants to tell him that it will one day but the truth is she has no way of knowing if it’s going to. She has no idea if any of this will ever feel right again; if Julian will come to terms with the gift he has been given or if Thomas will ever be able to smile with genuine happiness around Grace again.

So instead of making promises she may not be able to keep, she steps up next to Julian and says, “For what it’s worth, I’m glad she’s still got you.”

————

She’s talking to Fanny about the specifics of this year’s Christmas tree – something she knows Fanny is very particular about – when Fanny suddenly interrupts her halfway through a ramble about baubles to say, “Alison, I have been thinking about the dilemma with young Grace and discovered a way to help you keep her memories of us alive.”

With a meaningful look, she nods down at the phone, the one Alison has been using to take notes on. It takes her a moment to make the connection but when she does, her eyes widen and she laughs. “Oh my god, of course! How haven’t I thought of this? I can take pictures of you and show them to her!”

“No, my dear,” Fanny says, her voice coloured with fond patience. “You can do better than that – you can take pictures of Grace and me together.”

Alison laughs again because the idea is so simple, so logical that it never crossed her mind. She’s been planning on making painting of Grace’s memorable interactions with the ghosts, thinking it’s the only way to capture those moments, but this – this is so much better. This is proof. This means Grace will never doubt her ghostly childhood friends are real because Fanny will be right there in the pictures with her, pulling silly faces to make her smile or frowning down at her writing over her shoulder once she goes to school. They will give her something tangible to hold onto when her memories fade and start to feel more like murky tales she’d once been told, and that means everything.

Alison looks up from her phone and feels her whole chest warm with the possibilities. “I honestly can’t believe I never thought of it.”

Fanny gives her a kind look. “You’ve had a lot on your mind these last couple of days.”

A few hours later, after she picks up Grace from Kindergarten Club – something Alison was adamant about the ghosts continuing, even if it’s hard for those like Pat and Kitty who can’t directly interact with Grace anymore – she asks Fanny to join them on their afternoon stroll in the garden. It’s a cold but sunny day, and with Grace all bundled up in her fluffy teddy bear jacket and practising her walking, they slowly make their way past Thomas’s well.

Grace has just found a frozen twig lying on the ground when Alison, phone in hand, catches her attention by pointing to the right and saying, “Fanny says you’ve got a lovely little twig there.”

It’s perfect: Grace looks up at where she is pointing and holds out the twig in her hand with a toothy grin just as Fanny looks down with a warm smile on her face. Alison snaps a picture of the moment and feels her heart nearly burst with happiness when she looks at it. Fanny’s form is faint but the love on her face is as palpable as if she were alive. Grace is more or less looking directly at her, making the illusion perfect.

“Look,” Alison says to her daughter and turns the phone around so she can see the picture. “It’s you and Fanny!”

Grace’s eyes go wide when she sees Fanny in the picture. There’s an adorable look of confusion on her face when she looks up and tries to spot Fanny next to her.

“I’m afraid that won’t work, my child,” Fanny says and leans closer to have a look at the picture herself. After a moment of careful consideration, she nods approvingly. “You might want to get that framed.”

Her tone makes it clear it’s more than a suggestion but Alison doesn’t mind. She already has an idea for a collage in mind, and judging by Grace’s happy babbling as she points between Fanny in the picture and the empty space next to her, she has no doubt that her daughter will love having her beloved ghosts line the walls of her bedroom one day.

“This was a great idea,” she tells Fanny quietly on their way back half an hour later.

Fanny inclines her head gracefully. “It’s one less ghost you’ll have to paint for her in the future.”

Alison gives her a warm smile. “Thank you.”

She has been working on proper portraits of the ghosts – portraits that show them smiling and laughing and glowing with happiness. The ones of Thomas, Fanny and Humphrey that exist are all … nice, as Thomas would say. Grace obviously loves them but they look too stilted and posed for Alison’s liking. She wants Grace to be able to see the ghosts the way they really are: goofy, silly and so full of love for her they often do not know what to do with it.

So one evening when she’s got a moment to herself, she sat down and started the first painting in what she calls the Ghosts Series. It’s just a small one but it shows Pat, crouching down with his arms wide open to encourage a toddling Grace to walk towards him. It makes Alison smile every time she works on it, and she hopes to fill the whole house with dozens of paintings like this one day. The ghosts deserve to leave their footprints in their home for all the world to see, and she already has ideas for the next ones: Julian gently reaching out to touch Grace’s nose, the Captain playing hide and seek with her, Robin grinning like a maniac as he raises his hands to the ceiling to make the lights flicker and Thomas– 

Thomas gazing fondly down at Grace’s crib as he weaves tales of fantastic lands and unlikely heroes just for her, just because he loves her and wants her dreams to be filled with magic and wonder.

There is something else, something secret, that has kept her and Mike busy in the evenings, watching one tutorial after another. It’s meant to be a Christmas present for Grace, and while Alison has no idea if they’ll be able to pull it off in such a short time, she is determined to at least give it a try, no matter how difficult Heather’s old sewing machine is trying to make it.

“I swear that thing is possessed by a demon,” she growls out late one night.

Mike looks up from the fabric in his hand. “Is that actually a thing? Demons?”

Alison gives him a look.

“What?” he asks defensively. “We’ve got a house full of ghosts. Who’s to say demons, werewolves, vampires and all that shit can’t be real too?”

Alison lets out a tired sigh and begins to thread the needle for the twenty-seventh time that evening with a patience that’s slowly but surely running thin. “Well, if you happen to see a unicorn grazing on the lawn shoo it away because Fanny and Kitty will probably want to adopt it and I’m not prepared to build a stable for it.”

In the end, they end up switching roles: Mike takes over the sewing machine while she cuts out the pieces of fabric. Surprisingly, and much to Alison’s relief, it works. Whatever Heather’s sewing machine has against her clearly doesn’t apply to Mike. The thing does everything he wants without tearing or muddling up a thread even once, and while a part of her wants to glare at it in a very childish way, in the end Alison is just glad to see Mike holding up an almost perfect little doll in triumph.

“Not going to lie, holding a tiny Thomas in my hand feels a bit weird but he does look sort of cute, doesn’t he?” he asks, squinting at the doll.

“Yeah,” Alison says as she takes in the brown colour of the waistcoat, the silky fabric of the cravat and the brown button eyes. They have given the doll a smile and after some debate also added the bullet wound. Alison knows Thomas can be quite self-conscious about it but it is a part of him and Grace has only ever known him with it so she argued it should be there. “Do you think Grace will like him?”

Mike gives her a long look before he hands little Thomas over to her. “I think Grace will cuddle the shit out of him.”

His bluntness makes her laugh.

“Well, you better be prepared to make the other ones too,” she tells him with a grin. “Creepy plague girl and all.”

Mike looks down at the mess of fabric, thread and buttons around him and groans.

————

It’s the night before Christmas and Alison is just getting Grace ready for bed upstairs when she hears the soft sound of a throat being cleared behind her. She looks over to the door and finds Jemima standing there with her doll clutched tightly to her chest. The little girl doesn’t usually wander around upstairs – something to do with the attic and her death, Alison has heard the other ghosts whisper – so she’s more than a little surprised to see her. She wonders if it has something to do with Thomas and the moment the thought forms, her mind immediately goes through all the worst case scenarios she tries very hard not to think about every time she realises she hasn’t seen Thomas for a couple of hours.

Taking a deep breath, she firmly tells herself not to draw conclusions based on nothing and manages to offer Jemima a smile. “Good evening, Jemima.”

“Hello,” Jemima says shyly.

Grace, in a fresh nappy but still without her nightclothes, wriggles around to get a look at the door. “’mima?”

“She’s by the door and waving hello to you,” Alison explains and patiently waits until her daughter has waved back before wrangling her into her clothes. To Jemima, she says, “Is there anything I can help you with? Has Robin blown the light bulb in the pantry again?”

She tries not to laugh when Grace races her pudgy hands to the ceiling and makes explosion noises that eventually dissolve into soft giggles of amusement.

“No,” Jemima says. “I’m here because of Thomas.”

So this is about him, Alison thinks as she places Grace in her crib. Worry creeps into her bones and makes her voice tremble a little when she asks, “Is he all right?”

Jemima shrugs. “He is sad a lot. Especially today. He told me he wanted to recite one of his favourite poems for her.”

Alison doesn’t need to ask what poem she is talking about: A Visit from St. Nicholas. She has seen Thomas recite it to Grace a year ago, his face all soft and full of wonder as he smiled down at her, and she knows he’s been looking forward to reciting it to her again this year. It feels like a lifetime ago that they talked about it.

“Are you here to recite it for him?” Alison asks softly.

To her surprise, Jemima shakes her head. “No. Too many words. I came to sing a lullaby.”

“Oh,” Alison says softly and gestures for her to come closer before she looks at Grace. “Jemima is here to sing you a song.”

Grace looks away from Thomas’s portrait and Jemima takes that as her cue to start singing. It only takes a few notes for Alison to realise she has heard this song before, a long time ago when she was so ill and exhausted she fell asleep beside her daughter on an early afternoon in spring. She remembers hearing Thomas’s voice from far away, remembers him telling Grace to be quiet because her mummy needs to rest, but it’s only now that Jemima’s voice rings out across the room that she actually remembers the song Thomas sang that day.

“Good night, sleep tight In the evening light Good night, sleep tight, Till the sun will rise

In the night the stars they glow And the moon it shines Good night, sleep tight In my arms tonight”

It’s a quiet song, a gentle song, and by the time the last note fades there’s a lump in Alison’s throat. She looks down at her daughter and finds her gazing at Thomas’s portrait with a sleepy but content smile on her face. Grace is humming softly to herself and Alison’s heart aches when she realises she is singing along to the best of her abilities. It’s clear this is a song her daughter is familiar with. It must have been a part of her Storytime routine with Thomas, and Alison – Alison had no idea.

“Thomas thought she might like to hear it again,” Jemima says softly, interrupting her thoughts. Quietly, she adds, “His grandmother used to sing it to him, apparently.”

Alison can just imagine it: a young Thomas snuggling up to his grandmother, feeling more loved in her presence than he’d ever felt around his parents. It makes her heart feel heavy, the thought of the man who has been loved so little in his life not only sharing this precious memory with her daughter but now also with Jemima just so Grace won’t ever have to miss hearing this song.

“Thank you,” Alison somehow manages to say just as Grace closes her eyes with a happy little murmur of Jemima and Thomas’s names.

Shyly, Jemima looks down at her doll. “If you’d like, I could sing it to her again sometime? I … I like singing it, and I like to help.”

It takes everything in Alison not to gather the young girl up in her arms and hold her close, impossible as that may be. “You’re more than welcome to, Jemima. Whenever you like.”

Jemima flashes her a smile before she curtsies and turns around with a quiet, “Goodnight, Alison.”

She leaves as quickly and quietly as she appeared, and there’s a part of Alison that wishes she had stayed longer, that they could have talked a little more. Jemima has always been an elusive one, though, and Alison knows it will take time for her to feel comfortable enough in her presence to stay for more than a few moments. It’s something she has to accept, just as she has to accept Thomas keeping his distance right now.

It’s hard, though, she thinks as she places one last loving kiss upon her daughter’s brow. With a soft sight, she activates the baby monitor and gently closes the door behind herself to join Mike down in the kitchen.

————

Later that night, after most of the presents have been wrapped and more or less the whole house is decorated with fairy lights, snowflakes and reindeer, Alison takes the little doll she and Mike made and quietly knocks on Thomas’s door.

He calls for her to enter, and Alison can’t say she’s surprised to find Jemima asleep on his bed and Nigel sitting with him by the window. She flashes them a small smile and joins them with a quiet, “Hi.”

Thomas’s lips twitch in response and Nigel jumps down from the windowsill to make room for her. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“There’s no need,” Thomas hurries to say, and Alison thinks it’s a testament to how awful he must be feeling that he wraps his fingers around Nigel’s wrist to stop him from leaving. There is a moment of silence as they regard each other before Thomas drops his gaze and begs in a small voice, “Please stay.”

Nigel’s face softens.

“Of course,” he whispers and gives Thomas’s hand a squeeze.

Alison doesn’t think she imagines the sigh of relief that comes from Thomas nor the way his shoulders relax when Nigel settles back down, and she tries not to take offense. She knows this has nothing to do with her. It’s about Thomas being afraid of being alone and forgotten on Christmas; about him craving company even though he fears he will ruin the holiday for everyone else. He clearly does not want to be alone with her right now and face whatever Grace-related thing she came to talk to him about on his own. It makes Alison wonder if she is being cruel by showing him the little doll she made of him to ease Grace’s pain, knowing very well that his own heartache won’t be so easily soothed.

Still, the last thing she wants is for Thomas to find out about the doll by accident and think he is being replaced. So once Nigel has tucked himself into the small chair below the window – the one that’s close enough to Thomas that Thomas’s fingers can rest on his shoulders – she gathers up her courage and says, “I wanted to show you something. Mike and I – we have been making something for Grace, something that we hope will help her even more than the portrait does.”

Thomas, thank god, looks intrigued rather than pained. “What is it?”

Bravely, Alison holds out the little doll.

“This is not meant as a replacement,” she says quickly so Thomas doesn’t get the wrong idea. “It’s just – she can hold it and touch it, you know?”

She realises how desperate she sounds but she needs Thomas to know that she does not mean any harm by this; that while she has Grace’s best interests at heart, she wants to make sure they don’t come at the cost of his.

For a moment, all Thomas does is stare at the doll. His face is not giving any of his feelings away and it’s that lack of reaction that prompts her to say, “I won’t give it to her if you don’t want me to.”

Thomas blinks as if waking from a dream. He reaches for the doll with one elegant, long-fingered hand that Alison has always thought was made for playing the piano and stops just shy of making contact. “You poured a lot of love into it. I can tell.”

It’s not quite the reaction she expected, and she exchanges an unsure look with Nigel before she says, “Mike actually did most of the sewing work. Turns out Heather’s sewing machine and I are mortal enemies.”

Her words elicit a wisp of a laugh from Thomas. He looks up from the doll and when his eyes find hers, Alison is relieved to see only warmth in them.

“I am sure Grace will appreciate the war you’ve fought for her.” Then, very softly, he adds, “It’s a lovely present, Alison. Truly.”

Allowing her eyes to close for a moment, Alison breathes out in relief. “I’m so glad you like it. I really think it will do a lot of good.” She pauses. “Mike’s probably going to have to make everyone else at some point as well.”

Behind Thomas, Nigel’s eyes widen for a split second in pleasant surprise before his face falls and he looks down at his plague-riddled hands. It’s glaringly obvious he’s thinking everyone else only means the upstairs ghosts – it’s written all over his face and Alison feels guilt churn in her stomach. She knows the villagers love Grace; has always known that and yet so rarely taken her daughter down to the basement to see them. She regrets that now.

“And by everyone, I mean everyone,” she says softly and smiles when Nigel looks up in surprise. “If we’re doing this, we’re making all of you. No exceptions. Same with the paintings.”

“Really?” Nigel asks, his voice almost painfully hopeful. Alison nods and he smiles at her bashfully for a moment before he looks up at Thomas. “You wouldn’t mind?”

Something breaks in Thomas’s eyes, something that leaves behind a pain that has nothing to do with his own loss and grief. He places his hands on Nigel’s shoulders and gives them a long, meaningful squeeze. “Of course I don’t mind. Grace has lost so much more than me. She needs and loves all of us.”

“But she loves you a little more,” Nigel says softly.

Instead of squeezing his eyes close in heartbreak, Thomas smiles – genuinely, beautifully, tragically. “And it is the greatest gift I have ever been given.”

The words are tinted with sadness but it does not feel as overwhelming as it would have a week ago, Alison thinks. Thomas is getting better, baby step by baby step.

The irony of the phrase isn’t lost on her.

“I know you won’t join us tomorrow but – would you like to have a little Christmas ceremony with me? Just the two of us? Or do you prefer to be alone?”

She can see the battle Thomas is silently fighting in the way his eyes become strained and the corners of his mouth slightly curve downwards. In the end, he shakes his head and says, “No, it’s all right. Christmas is for family.”

“You’re family,” Alison says, her voice shaking just a little.

Thomas smiles. “I meant your living family. You should celebrate with them. I’ll be fine – I mean it.”

Alison is about to voice her doubts when Nigel says, “It’s okay. He won’t be alone. He’s promised Lady Button to visit her pets with her after breakfast and the others and I will be with him later.”

Even though that makes Alison feel a little better, she can’t help but ask Thomas, “Are you sure?”

Thomas nods. “I am. And should I change my mind, I know where to find you.”

He sounds so sure that Alison doesn’t push but she still feels bad that he won’t be there when they open presents, that he’ll have to wait for his own until nightfall when Grace is asleep and most of the Christmas lights have been dimmed. He should be with them, should partake in the quiz Fanny is going to win like she does every year and sit next to her at the piano while she plays her favourite carols.

Next year, Alison thinks hopefully as she bids him and Nigel goodnight and heads back down to the kitchen to wrap up his doll as lovingly and carefully as she can.

[ailendolin]

Grace - Chapter 10/10

Title: Grace [AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - Epilogue

————

A/N: This was written before series 5 so there are no spoilers in it. Also, this is the last regular chapter. Only the epilogue left to go!

————

Grace

Chapter 10: The Story

Christmas morning, despite Thomas’s absence, is a flurry of excitement.

The ghosts are already waiting by the tree when Alison and Mike come downstairs with a sleepy Grace in their arms. Grace makes a confused snuffling noise against Mike’s shoulder when they don’t go straight to the kitchen like they normally would but instead take the main stairs to the drawing room. The change in routine and the fact that they’re all still in their pyjamas is enough for Grace to rub the sleep from her eyes and lift her head to look around. The moment she spots the lit Christmas tree – lovingly decorated with Fanny’s help just a few days ago – and the brightly coloured presents underneath it, her eyes widen and she lets out an excited squeal that makes the ghosts laugh.

It’s exactly the kind of reaction Alison and Mike had been hoping for. Grace obviously still doesn’t quite grasp the concept of presents but it’s clear she absolutely loves tearing off the wrapping paper and that, Alison thinks, is good enough.

The drawing room floor is already a mess by the time half the presents have been opened. When the Captain remarks that it looks like a bomb crater, Alison agrees with a chuckle. Neither she nor Mike mind, though, not when Grace unwraps every single present with a shriek of unrestrained delight that makes her face light up with pure joy, no matter from whom it is. Alison had been a little worried about there not being a present from Thomas under the tree but clearly, Grace is too overwhelmed by the sheer number of presents to unwrap and toys to play with that she doesn’t notice.

Allowing her shoulders to relax, Alison sits back and simply enjoys the moment. Mike is taking as many pictures and videos as he can, and every now and then he’s leaning over to show her one when he manages to catch Fanny’s apparition in it. They will put those photos aside for a special album later, one that no one but Grace and they will ever see.

Eventually, the mountain of presents dwindles until it’s down to the very last one. It’s the little doll they have made for Grace and Alison sets up her phone to film the moment before she joins her daughter and Mike on the floor.

“Now, Grace, this is a very special present Santa made just for you,” she says, trying to sound mysterious.

“Oh yeah,” Mike nods. “It’s one of a kind for a very special young lady.”

Alison is not sure how much Grace understands but she is a little more careful when she takes the present out of Mike’s hands and starts to unwrap it. Her tiny fingers struggle with the paper for a moment before it finally falls away. Grace’s mouth forms a perfect little ‘o’ when her eyes fall on the doll. She blinks in silence for a heartbeat – once, twice – before she gasps out Thomas’s name and hugs him tightly to her chest, beaming like Alison has never seen her before.

“Oh, that’s so sweet,” Alison hears Mick sigh from somewhere behind her.

“Look at her,” Jean gushes fondly. “Oh, Thomas and Nigel will be so sad to have missed this.”

“Do you reckon she’ll make ones for all of us?” Pat wonders aloud.

There’s a beat of silence before the ghosts erupt into excited chatter. Alison smiles to herself, having known this would happen. She glances over at Mike and whispers, “Just so you know: there’s no way you’re getting out of making the rest.”

Mike sighs before he resigns himself to his fate with a shrug. “As long as it makes the ghosts and her happy.”

“It does,” Alison promises and kisses his cheek before she turns her attention back to her daughter. “Do you like your present, Grace?”

Grace nods, her eyes bright and full of joy as she holds up Thomas for her and Mike to see. “’omas!”

“That’s right!” Mike says and sweeps his daughter up into his arms. “Your very own little Thomas.”

The whole room dissolves into a chorus of Aw’s when Grace presses a kiss to doll’s face and holds it close again.

————

That night, after all the wrapping paper has been cleared away and their bellies are filled with cookies, they tuck Grace into bed together. Thomas’s portrait is still standing where Grace can see it but now she has mostly eyes for the doll, just as Alison had hoped she would. Grace keeps babbling at it like she used to babble at Thomas, and it would be adorable if it hadn’t also felt a little bittersweet. Alison promised Thomas that the doll would not replace him – she had intended for it only to be a crutch, not a substitute – but looking at her daughter now she realises it was inevitable that Grace would treat it as if it were real. It’s what children do – it’s what Alison used to do when she was missing her dad and didn’t yet understand why he didn’t come home.

“Sory?” Grace asks after Mike has changed her into her reindeer pyjamas. She holds up little Thomas with a hopeful smile.

“Oh,” Alison says and exchanges a quick, panicked look with Mike before she gentles her voice and tries to explain. “No, sweetheart. This Thomas is just there for cuddling. He can’t tell you a story.”

Grace’s face falls.

“But you could,” Mike suggests. “You’ve heard him tell her stories, haven’t you?”

She has but Alison’s not sure she could actually do him justice. There’s a reason Thomas has always done this: his mind is full of ideas and creativity where hers is just … not. He may not be able to find the right words for his poems most of the time but his stories for Grace were always told in the most beautiful prose born of pure imagination. Thomas used to be able to captivate her with his tales in a way Alison has never quite managed to and knows she never will.

But when she sees the pleading look on her daughter’s face and Mike’s encouraging smile, she decides she will just have to give a try.

It goes … semi-well.

She manages to scrap together what little information she remembers about the magical realm Thomas has created for Grace over the last year and spins a story of her own about wizards and kings and scary monsters in the woods. Grace looks a little sceptical and interrupts her a time or two when she gets a name wrong but she doesn’t start crying so Alison counts it as a win. Still, she’s no Thomas and it’s obviously not the same. She can see it in Grace’s face when she settles down with little Thomas in her arms and a sadness in her eyes that no child her age should know yet.

In that moment, she would have given anything to give her daughter back what she had lost.

“I’d call that a rousing success,” Mike says softly as they turn off the lights and leave the room. They have promised the ghosts to watch Home Alone with them tonight and Alison is looking forward to a few quiet hours of snuggling with Mike on the couch after the whirlwind that was Christmas Day.

“Really?” she asks. “I’d call that a crisis narrowly averted.”

Mike puts his arm around her and pulls her close. “You’re too hard on yourself, Ali. The doll was a brilliant idea and the story was a bit weird but not half-bad, actually.”

Alison snorts. “Not half-bad, huh?”

“You know what I mean,” Mike says and presses an apologetic kiss against her temple. “Grace is asleep, isn’t she? And she didn’t cry. That’s all that matters.”

Alison supposes he’s right. It doesn’t change the fact that it shouldn’t be her telling these stories, though. Thomas has created that world, and no matter how good she may become at reimagining it, she knows it will always feel like she’s taking something else away from him.

She tries her best to push that feeling away when they settle down on the couch with the rest of the ghosts to watch the movie. Young Jemima has joined them for Film Club this time, tentatively standing by the door and clutching her own doll to her chest the whole way through the film. By the time the credits start to roll, that uneasy knot in Alison’s stomach has unravelled almost completely. She wishes the ghosts a merry Christmas and shakes Kitty’s snow globe one last time to make her smile before she heads to bed with Mike.

“I’ll just check in on Thomas very quickly,” she says when they pass by Thomas’s room. The door is closed as it always is these days and she quietly knocks. When there’s no reply she pushes it open – just enough to look into the room in case Thomas is asleep already.

Thomas is not asleep.

He’s not there.

No one is. The room is empty and Alison’s blood runs cold as she feels that old, familiar fear and panic from a few weeks ago creeping up her spine and clawing at her chest.

“Mike,” she says. Her voice comes out shaky and faint. “Thomas, he’s – he’s is gone.”

She sees her own fears reflected on his face for a moment before Mike forces them away with a smile and gently takes her hand. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe he went downstairs to enjoy the Christmas tree now that all the ruckus is over?”

They left the lights on for that exact reason – just on the off-chance that Thomas would want to sit quietly by the tree tonight.

“But what if he didn’t?” Alison can’t help but ask. “We knew today was going to be hard for him. God, I should have checked in on him earlier. Why didn’t I check in on him earlier, Mike? I–“

Mike stops her with a quick but heartfelt hug. “Let’s check downstairs first before we panic, okay?”

When they reach the drawing room with it’s beautifully lit up tree and toys strewn all across the floor, they find it just as empty as Thomas’s room.

“Still no need to panic,” Mike reassures her before Alison can so much as open her mouth to give voice to her anxiety. “I’m sure he hasn’t run off again. Didn’t you say the plague people are with him?”

“Yes, but – maybe he managed to slip away,” Alison says, knowing how ridiculous that was. Nigel and the others would have found her immediately if something like that had happened.

Mike gives her a look that says exactly the same. “And maybe there’s a perfectly rational explanation for everything. Come on, let’s look in on Grace and then we’ll go look for him.”

Despite the feeling of terror swirling in her gut, Alison lets herself be led back upstairs. She can’t bear to look into Thomas’s room when they pass it, can’t bear to think about losing him again just when things are finally looking up a little, can’t bear to imagine a life without–

She stops in her tracks when they round the corner and nearly run into the villagers quietly talking among themselves in front of their bedroom. Mike gives her a quizzical look. “What is it?”

Instead of answering, Alison chokes out, “Have you seen Thomas?”

A dozen pairs of eyes turn to stare at her. Jean’s are the first to widen in realisation. She turns away from Mick and steps forward with an apologetic look on her face. “Oh Alison, we are so sorry. We did not mean to worry you. Thomas, he – he just wanted to see Grace.”

The anxiety leaves Alison in one relieved breath. “He wanted to see her?”

The villagers nod while Nigel gestures towards the door. “If you come closer, you can hear him talking.”

The villagers part for her and Mike and smile encouragingly when she leans her ear against the door. For a moment, there is nothing and then–

“–apologise that it took me so long to come and see you. You must think I have abandoned you but I promise you I have not. I would never do that because I know what it feels like. My father, you see – he was barely around when I grew up. I missed him terribly even though he seldom had a kind word to say when he was home.”

He took a deep breath.

“I know you are not my daughter. I know I will never be able to hold you in my arms or smile at you again or make you laugh. But I will still be here, Grace. I’ll always be here.”

Alison puts a hand to her mouth and turns away from the door. She looks up at Mike, knows there are tears in her eyes and does not care. “He’s pouring out his heart to her.”

The smile that lights up Mike’s face is beautiful. His arms pull her close and Alison can’t quite stifle a sob when he says warmly, “Told you he wouldn’t run.”

Alison laughs against his chest. Behind her, the villagers mumble soft reassurances that make her heart feel both too big and too small for her chest.

“I’m sure Thomas wouldn’t mind you going in,” Walter’s wife suggests gently when she pulls back from Mike. “It is quite late.”

The others nod in agreement but Alison shakes her head. “No, we’ll wait here. If Thomas wants to spend time with Grace, we can wait.”

Mike nods and they settle down on the floor with their backs to the wall. The villagers join them and every now and then, Alison can make out some of the words Thomas murmurs to Grace in the dark behind the door.

“–like the sun–“

“I wish I could–“

“–love you, never doubt that.”

“I won’t leave–”

The tremor in Thomas’s voice is heart-breaking but his devotion to Grace is as unwavering as the sunrise in the morning and the sunset at dusk, and it gives Alison hope. She listens to the promises he whispers into the night, listens to the regrets and the love that come pouring out of him in tidal waves after weeks of having had no outlet until he finally takes a deep breath and begins to sing a now achingly familiar song.

“Good night, sleep tight In the evening light…”

When the last word fades, there is silence on the other side of the door for a moment. Alison can just imagine him bending down to press a ghostly kiss against Grace’s brow as she saw him do a hundred times since they’ve brought Grace home.

“Sleep well, Gracie. Your little Thomas will keep you safe in your dreams.”

Smiling softly to herself, Alison closes her eyes for a second. Other parents tell their children that angels are watching over them to reassure them that they will never be alone but she knows her daughter has something better: she has ghosts – a whole family of them. Thomas might have been referring to the doll of him but the sentiment is still true: he will always look out for her – they all will. As long as Grace lives in Button House, she won’t ever be truly alone.

Alison can’t think of anything more comforting or reassuring than that.

When Thomas finally fades through the door, he looks exhausted and rejuvenated at the same time. The pain and grief of the last few weeks are still etched into his face and will probably remain there for the rest of his afterlife but there is a spark in his eyes again and a lightness to his movements that hasn’t been there for weeks; as if a huge weight has finally been lifted off his shoulders.

He looks surprised to see them all sitting in the hallway, smiling up at him. A light blush rises to his cheeks and he glances down at his feet in embarrassment. “Apologies. I ... I did not mean to keep you from retiring.”

“You didn’t,” Alison says warmly even as Mike snores softly on her shoulder. “We did not mind waiting.”

Thomas lifts his eyes to look at her. Still a little bashful, he says, “I just wanted to wish her a happy Christmas.”

Alison’s smile softens. “Happy Christmas to you too, Thomas.”

————

She half-expects him to be there for breakfast the next morning but he is not. Alison tries not to feel too disappointed. She knows Thomas made a huge step forward the night before but that doesn’t mean everything will be magically okay. Life and death don’t work like that. She has found her new normal but Thomas is still in the process of finding his, and until he does, all she can do is hope that in time he will smile and laugh with them again and grate on their nerves with his awful, awful poetry. She’d never thought she’d say this but after everything that happened she would love nothing more than to hear another rendition of Hermione and Roger.

When New Year’s Eve comes around and Mike convinces her to have fireworks this year, she goes in search of Thomas to make sure he won’t mind. She knows he gets easily started by loud noises, especially unexpected ones, and even she has to admit that fireworks can sound an awful lot like gunshots. The last thing she wants is for him to start the new year with a panic attack.

If she’s completely honest, Alison couldn’t care less about fireworks. Mike’s always loved them, though, and she can tell he’s desperate to show them to Grace. Since neither of them is keen on upsetting Grace’s new routine now that she’s finally sleeping through the night again, they settle on having them in the morning, just before sunrise when it’s still dark, rather than at midnight. It’s a good compromise, she thinks; one that will allow ghosts like Thomas and Mary who aren’t fond of the spectacle a good night’s sleep.

So that evening she stops by Thomas’s room on her way to get Grace ready for bed and knocks on his door, completely forgetting for a moment that she has Grace in her arms. She only realises when she sees Thomas’s surprised face and the way Pat places a comforting hand on his elbow, and immediately feels awful about it. “Oh sorry, I didn’t think–“

“It’s all right,” Thomas says softly. For a brief moment, his eyes flick to Grace and the doll tightly clasped in her hands. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about her, actually.”

His words take Alison by surprise. “You have?”

Thomas nods and visibly steels himself for what he’s about to ask. “Jemima told me you’ve taken over Storytime?”

Alison grimaces. She’s been meaning to tell him about it for days but with Mike catching a cold just after Christmas and the dinners they were hosting the days afterwards she simply hasn’t found the time.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she says, hoping he can hear her genuine regret in her voice. “I know it’s your thing but she missed the stories and I–“

“Oh no, no, no,” Thomas interrupts her. His hands are restless and nervously fiddling with the cuff of his sleeves. “I did not mean to imply – that is, I meant to ask if you’d, you know, like some … further inspiration for them, perhaps?”

His dark eyes are wide and hopeful but there is a fear lurking in their corners that reveals just how afraid he is that he’s no longer wanted or needed in that role. It breaks Alison’s heart.

His offer, though – that makes her close her eyes and let out a sigh of bone-deep relief. “Oh, thank god. I honestly don’t know how you can come up with a new story every night, Thomas. It’s so hard!”

“’omas?” Grace asks sleepily. “Sory?”

Alison smiles down at her daughter and boops her lovingly on the nose. “Yes, sweetheart. Thomas is here and will tell you a story tonight.”

Grace’s whole face lights up, and when Alison looks back at Thomas, she sees tears welling up in his eyes. “So you … wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course not!” Alison laughs, wishing she could pull him close and show him just how grateful she is for his offer. “This has always been your thing and I’ll happily relegate myself to being your voice if it means I no longer have to come up with another adventures for the Elders or Wizard Bradley.”

“And his Mojo,” Thomas whispers, letting out a shuddering breath.

Pat gently pats his arm. “See? I told you it’d be okay.”

Thomas gives him a watery smile before he follows Alison to the master bedroom. He’s not as confident as he used to be. His steps are hesitant, and when he takes up position at the foot of Grace’s crib, he does so with a tentative glance around the room.

“Relax,” Alison smiles at him over her shoulder as she changes Grace into her pyjamas, unable to bear to see him so unsure of himself. She watches Thomas unclasp his hands out of the corner of her eyes only to clasp them again behind his back. When he realises what he’s doing, he lets them fall to his sides and holds them there, tense and trembling.

Oh Thomas, she thinks and picks up Grace. “Hey. There’s no need to be nervous. You’ve done this a hundred times before.”

“Not like this,” Thomas mumbles.

He’s scared that Grace will cry, that it won’t be enough – that he won’t be enough. And yet he’s still here, still willing to give this a try both for his and Grace’s sakes. It makes Alison’s chest tighten with a love so overwhelming that she wishes she could take his hand and squeeze it until the worry lines around his eyes smooth out and fade away.

Instead she sits down on the bed and gently pats the empty space beside her. When Thomas joins her, she gives him an encouraging nod and smiles. He swallows hard and closes his eyes for a moment before he begins to tell a story for the first time in weeks.

It works better than Alison could have hoped for. His hesitance slowly turns into confidence as he spins a tale more magical than any of the stories Alison has come up with in the days and weeks before combined. His eyes light up with enthusiasm and joy when Alison repeats his words and the sceptical look on Grace’s face transforms into one of wonder when she recognises Thomas’s words in Alison’s voice.

“’omas!” she says happily and cuddles her doll with a smile.

Alison kisses the dark curls on her head. “Yeah, your Thomas is right here.”

She points to her left and Grace’s eyes follow her. For one beautiful moment, she’s looking directly at Thomas and he at her. Thomas’s words falter and in the silence that follows, Alison looks at him to make sure he is all right. There is a smile tugging at his lips, soft in the way it has only ever been for Grace. He doesn’t just look happy – he looks at peace – and when he picks up his story again, the words flow more freely than they had before.

Afterwards, when the day has been saved and the magical realm can rest peacefully again, he takes a breath and begins to sing softly. After hearing Jemima sing it so often now, Alison knows the words by heart and joins in without hesitation. Their voices meet in the night, harmonising just as beautifully as they had on that very first Christmas they sang together by the piano, and she knows she will remember this moment forever – knows that right here, right now, Thomas is healing and coming back to her. It’s the first sunlight after a terrible storm, a glimpse at the stars after hours of darkness, the sound of seagulls after weeks lost at sea. It’s a heart gathering up its broken pieces and duct-taping them together, and a lost soul finding a lighthouse on the shore that helps it guide its way back home.

When the song fades and only Grace’s quiet breaths fill the silence of the last night of the year, Thomas looks down at Grace’s sleeping face and whispers even though he doesn’t have to, “I wanted this year to end on a happy note.”

He looks up at Alison, then, and smiles. They sit together in the dark for a while and watch Grace sleep before they head downstairs to the kitchen, together. For the first in weeks, Thomas spends the evening with her and the others, and when the clock strikes midnight, she turns to him and places the ghost of a kiss on his cheek. “Happy new year, Thomas.”

His eyes crinkle with happiness.

[ailendolin]

Grace - Chapter 8/10

Title: Grace [AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8

————

Grace

Chapter 8: The Birthday

Alison wakes up the next morning to a gentle tap on her shoulder. She swats at the hand and turns onto her side, intent on going back to sleep. Quiet laughter rings out behind her before Mike presses a kiss onto the tip of her ear and whispers, “Come on, Ali. We need to get the kitchen ready.”

Alison groans but forces her eyes open. They had actually planned to decorate the kitchen the night before but since Grace refused to settle down once again, they’d ultimately decided to just do it in the morning. Alison regrets that now. She squints up at Mike and is pretty sure he does so too despite the amusement twinkling in his eyes. They share a tired smile before they roll out of bed and, still in their pyjamas, quietly tip-toe past the still sleeping birthday girl.

Once downstairs, Mike gets started on the balloons while Alison goes to grab the presents. She arranges them together with the cake and lots of paper streamers on the kitchen table before they join forces to hang up the Happy Birthday banner and decorate it with the balloons. Alison can’t help but laugh when Mike tries to turn one of the elongated ones into a dog and ends up with something that looks more like an octopus than man’s best friend.

“Maybe you should have watched a YouTube tutorial first,” she can’t help but tease.

Mike frowns at her. “I have – two, actually! This looked a lot easier in the videos.”

Alison bites her lip but doesn’t say anything when he tries again and somehow manages to create a dinosaur this time.

Once everything is ready and hung up, octopus and dinosaur included, they take a step back and admire their work.

“Not bad for a first birthday, eh?” Mike says and pulls her close.

Alison nods and wraps her arms around him. “If only she could still see the ghosts.”

Mike drops a kiss onto her hair. “Yeah, I know. But we’ll make the most of it. We’ll make her happy.”

He sounds so confident that Alison can’t help but look up at him and smile. “Of course we will. I just wish we could do the same for the ghosts, you know?”

Mike contemplates that for a moment before he says with the same confidence, “We’ll think of something.”

He has never met these people, has not talked to them or laughed with them and yet Alison knows Mike means every word he said: he will think of something because he cares, and because he knows their ghostly housemates mean the world to both her and their daughter. Nothing she could say could possibly hope to convey how much that means to her, so Alison simply leans up to kiss him, long and gentle and lingering.

“What was that for?” Mike asks with a besotted grin after they pull apart.

Alison shrugs and kisses him again; a quick peck on the lips this time. “Nothing. I’m just glad to have you in my life.”

He looks a little confused but also pleased. “Right back at you.”

They meet for another kiss when the clock chimes, Fanny screams and Grace begins to cry. It’s not the desperate, grieving crying they’ve gotten used to over the last few days but her old, grumpy Why am I awake? crying, and it makes Alison smile.

“I can’t believe she’s a year old already,” she says with a shake of her head as she steps out of Mike’s arms.

“Remember how tiny she was when we brought her home?” Mike asks, holding out his hands to indicate Grace’s size back then. He errs a little on the small side but Alison doesn’t correct him.

“She’ll be grown before we know it,” she says instead, her tone just a little wistful.

Mike hushes her. “Don’t remind me. She’ll be bringing boys home in no time.” He pauses, thinks. “Or girls, I suppose. God, can you imagine? Our little girl, all grown up?”

Alison takes his hand and gently pulls him out of the kitchen. “Let’s celebrate her first birthday first before we start panicking about her kissing someone behind the barn.”

They ascend the stairs together and Alison’s heart melts when they enter their bedroom and find Grace standing up in her crib with her tiny fists wrapped around the railing and hiccupping as she looks up at them.

“Where’s my birthday girl?” Mike asks with the biggest grin Alison has ever seen. He reaches down and swoops Grace up into his arms, turning the hiccups into giggles. “There she is!”

He hands her over and Alison hugs her daughter close for a moment. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

While Mike dresses Grace in a pretty light green dress for the occasion, Alison gets dressed herself. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Mike holding up one of his fingers while patiently explaining to their daughter that she is one year old today. Alison is not sure Grace is able to grasp the concept of birthdays yet but she does mimic Mike by holding up her own finger just like he does. Mike, proud as any father would be, beams down at her, his heart overflowing with love. “Yes, that’s right! One!”

Grace repeats the word and happily claps her hands when Mike praises her.

“Well done, Grace!” Alison cuts in, taking over so Mike can get dressed as well. She holds up her own finger to show Grace how old she is. “You’re one year old!”

Outside the bedroom, she can hear the ghosts excitedly making their way downstairs to the kitchen. It’s the happiest she has heard them since Grace has started walking and everything went to hell. Their hushed whispers – completely unnecessary now that Grace can no longer see or hear them –make her smile. Grace, clever girl that she is, picks up on it immediately and covers her eyes with her hands. “Boo?”

Alison briefly wonders if moments like this will ever not feel bittersweet.

“The ghosts have just gone downstairs to the kitchen,” she tells Grace, willing her smile not to wobble. “And you know what? I think they have some presents for you!”

Grace’s eyes grow wide even though she understands the concept of presents about as much as she understands birthdays. It’s quite adorable how easily excitable she is, though, and Alison fiercely hopes she’ll never lose that, no matter how many candles sit on top of her birthday cake.

With that thought, she picks Grace up and reaches for Mike’s hand. “Let’s get this party started.”

Grace happily waves at Humphrey’s portrait as they pass it on their way downstairs, and Alison absentmindedly wonders if Thomas, true to his word, will be there when they enter the kitchen. She hopes he will be but at the same time would never hold it against him if he chose not to. She knows she asked a lot of him yesterday when she brought up Grace’s birthday; asked, perhaps, too much.

Before her thoughts can spiral, they reach the kitchen and Mike, along with the ghosts, shouts, “Surprise!”

Grace’s eyes widen in awe as she takes in the colourful balloons, paper streamers, presents and, finally, the cake Mike made for her the day before. She’s clearly delighted by all the colours and glitter – and so are Robin and Kitty, Alison notices as her eyes stray to the ghosts. They’re all there, every single one of them, even young Jemima. And there, standing by the stove with Humphrey’s head in his hands, is Thomas, flanked by Lady Button and Julian. The moment his eyes fall on Grace – the first time since that fateful evening – his tense smile begins to waver. Longing like Alison has never seen before washes over his face for a brief second before he visibly reins it in to keep smiling even though Grace can’t see him.

It breaks Alison’s heart, and when Mike lights the single candle on the cake and begins to sing Happy Birthday, she knows deep down in her heart that it was wrong of her to ask Thomas to be here today. Guilt churns in her stomach but since there’s nothing she can do about it now, she pushes it down as far as it will go and joins in on the song. It doesn’t take long for Mick’s unmistakable voice to rise above everyone else’s, much to Lady Button’s chagrin, and if she listens closely, Alison thinks she can also make out Thomas’s voice. It’s so quiet it’s barely noticeable; small and fragile like a wind chime made of glass. He always had a lovely voice but today he sounds brittle, like he’s been stretched too thin or tasked to carry a burden he can’t bear. If Grace could see him right now, Alison is sure her daughter would stretch out her tiny hands towards him in an attempt to comfort him. She’s always done that whenever Thomas got that far away look in his eyes around her, and it has never failed to put a smile on his face.

“You make it so easy to forget my worries, Lady Cooper,” he used to tell her before he stuck out his tongue and made silly noises to make her laugh.

As they sing the chorus one last time, it suddenly hits Alison that Grace will probably not remember this day; that she’ll forget the ghosts who have doted on her and watched over her for the first year of her life. She will forget Thomas’s stories, playing peek-a-boo with Kitty and the Captain, and the funny faces Lady Button liked to pull for her (and still firmly denies ever doing). The ghosts will quite literally become just that for her – ghosts. Faint memories she will never be able to fully grasp and which will grow ever fainter as time goes on. Alison will do her best to keep them alive for her – of course she will – but no amount of stories or paintings or retellings will be able to capture the soft look in Thomas’s eyes when he made her smile or the spring in Mary’s step when Grace said her name for the first time.

None of it will let Grace ever hear them sing Happy Birthday to her.

The song fades into silence, and as Alison blinks hard against the sudden tears in her eyes, Grace claps her hands excitedly and points at the corner where Jemima is standing, hugging her beloved doll close to her chest. “’mima!”

And just like that Alison feels like laughing rather than crying.

Of course, she thinks as Jemima’s lips twitch into a small but happy smile and mentally slaps her forehead. Of course she can hear her sing!

And so can Mike.

“I swear, this will never not be creepy,” he mutters under his breath.

Alison flashes him an admonishing look before she tells Grace that Jemima is waving at her. Grace giggles and waves back at the corner. It’s moments like these that remind her that not all is lost and that the ghosts can still be a part of their daughter’s life.

Just not all of them.

“All right, time to blow out the candle!” Mike declares and together with him, Alison leans forward so they can help Grace should she struggle. In the end, after three tries (and a slightly disgusting amount of spit splattering all over the cake) Grace manages to blow the candle out all on her own and the room erupts into cheers – along with a sad, “Aw,” from Robin who is mourning the loss of the flame.

“Well done,” Alison says proudly and presses a kiss to Grace’s cheek that makes her squeal in delight. She shares a look with Mike. “Cake first or presents?”

“Presents, of course,” Mike says.

He’s looking deeply affronted, and so does Pat. “You can’t keep her waiting, Alison! She’s just a child!”

Alison holds up her hands in defeat. “Pat says you’re right so presents it is.”

“Pa?” Grace asks curiously, looking around.

Alison bites her lip, silently hoping she hasn’t just ruined the birthday morning by mentioning one of the ghosts Grace can no longer interact with. “Yeah, Pat’s right there. And so are the others! They’re wishing you a very happy birthday!”

Grace blinks at the empty air around her for a moment.

“Pa,” she declares happily. Then she looks up at Alison, her young face way too serious for her age. “’omas?”

She sounds so hopeful that Alison is glad that this time, she can actually tell her, “Yeah, Thomas is here, too. He’s right there.”

She points at the stove where Thomas is standing and Grace, bless her, shrieks and waves her tiny hands excitedly in its direction. “’omas!”

Happy to see her daughter not bursting into tears for once at the mere mention of Thomas’s name, Alison looks up and smiles at Thomas, expecting to see him smiling too. He isn’t, though. His eyes are full of heartbreak and even though he’s biting his lip so hard he would probably draw blood if he were still alive, the next ragged breath he sucks in catches in his throat and turns into a broken sob.

Oh no, Alison thinks, feeling the smile slip from her face. Thomas ducks his head when the others turn towards him and seems to shrink under the unwanted attention.

“I’m sorry,” he manages to choke out before he turns and presses Humphrey’s head into the Captain’s hands. “I thought I could do this but I can’t.”

With that, he pushes past the Captain and runs from the room.

Alison wants to follow him, wants to fix this mess she made, but Grace is still happily babbling away next to her and hasn’t even opened any of her presents yet. She can’t go after Thomas, not now. Her daughter has to come first, no matter how much it breaks her heart right now.

“I will go after him,” the Captain suddenly states, and Alison has never been more grateful that he’s a man of action than in that moment. Knowing that Thomas won’t be alone – won’t vanish without trace again – make the guilt she feels a little easier to bear. 

“Take me with you, will you?” Humphrey asks before the Captain gets the chance to pass on his head to Julian. “You’ll probably need reinforcements.”

“Very well,” the Captain says before he clears his throat and, with a nod to Alison, marches out of the room.

For a brief moment, Alison allows herself to close her eyes. A tug on her shirt makes her look up into Mike’s concerned face.

“What happened?” he whispers so as not to alert Grace who is currently trying her best to reach the cake with her short arms.

Alison shakes her head and mouths, “Later,” before she takes a deep breath, puts on a smile and ignores the heavy silence from the ghosts around her. “All right, Grace, are you ready to open your presents?”

The fake excitement in her voice is enough to make Grace giggle but not enough to stop the ghosts from glancing at the door Thomas has vanished through. Still, they shuffle forward a little to watch the unwrapping. After all, most of the presents are from them.

Weeks ago, Alison had gone around and asked each of them if they wanted to get Grace something for her birthday. They’d all said yes – of course they had – so now the majority of the presents on the table are from them. Alison had been forced to intervene with some of the suggestions – because no matter what Julian says, Baywatch Barbie is not a suitable present for a one-year-old – but overall, her and Mike’s idea to include the ghosts had been a huge success.

Grace for her part seems to be enjoying tearing off the brightly coloured wrapping paper immensely. In the end, three of the presents capture her attention the most. There’s the little doll that’s made of fabric rather than plastic and was Jemima’s idea (“It will always make her feel safe.”). Then there’s the plush moon Robin chose (“Moonah always watching over her.”) and last but not least, the musical book Thomas selected after carefully browsing through the options in the online shop for an hour – which had felt more like two at the time, Alison has to admit. It plays different melodies, depending on which symbols get pushed, and it delights Grace to no end. Alison isn’t really surprised by it – the book is from Thomas, after all. That alone makes it special, especially now.

And speaking of special – when Mike hands Grace the painting and helps her unwrap it, Alison gets out her phone and starts filming. She wants to capture this moment – not just for Grace but for Thomas as well. The portrait is as much a present from him as it is from her and Mike, and she wants Thomas to be able to see how happy it made Grace, whenever he is ready. So she does her best to hold her phone steady while her daughter’s tiny fingers struggle adorably with the wrapping paper. With Mike’s help and gentle encouragement, Grace eventually manages to unwrap one corner of her present.

“Oh?” she makes, clearly intrigued, before she proceeds to tear the rest of the paper away with little finesse but boundless enthusiasm. Alison swears she can hear Grace’s breath catch in her throat when she finally unveils Thomas’s waistcoat and cravat. “’omas!”

She giggles excitedly and then, more carefully than before, pushes away the remaining wrapping paper to reveal Thomas’s face. A smile so bright and beautiful Alison feels her throat close up lights up Grace’s eyes and she touches the contours of Thomas’s face even more reverently than she’s touched the Ghost Chart the day before.

Alison looks up and catches Nigel’s gaze. He nods at her with soft eyes, approvingly.

“Well done,” he mouths. The others murmur in agreement and watch, bemused, as Grace stretches out her little arms, clearly wanting to hold the painting.

“I think that’s a bit too big for you to hold, sweetheart,” Mike says but holds it out for her anyway. Grace presses her face against it and closes her eyes, causing everyone’s hearts to melt instantly. “Aw.”

She looks like she wants to crawl into the picture and it gives Alison an idea. She files it away for later and stops recording to press a kiss on the top of her daughter’s head. “Happy birthday, Grace. Do you like your presents from the ghosts?”

Grace smiles toothily up at her and nods.

It takes a bit of convincing to get her to let go of the painting but in the end, Mike’s persuasive arguments – the promise of cake, mainly – win out and Grace relinquishes her hold. Alison props it up on the cupboard along with all the other presents so Grace can see it while she eats, and as she passes behind Mike she whispers, “I’m going to check up on Thomas, all right?”

He gives her a worried look. “Too much too soon?”

“Yeah,” Alison sighs guiltily.

Mike nods. “Go. I’ve got breakfast handled.”

“You’re the best.”

She slips out of the kitchen without Grace noticing and doesn’t have to go far to find Thomas. He’s sitting on the lowest step of the grand staircase with his head in his hands while Humphrey’s head is propped up against the step above him. The Captain is sitting on his other side, and one of his hands is resting on his shoulder in comfort.

“I let her down,” Alison hears Thomas murmur against his palms, and her heart goes out to him. She has no idea if he’s talking about Grace or her – perhaps both of them – but she knows she’s the reason he’s blaming himself right now. She added this guilt to his pain and made an already difficult situation even worse for him – all because she wanted to celebrate Grace’s first birthday with all the ghosts and pretend for five minutes that everything is normal.

It’s not an unreasonable thing to want, Alison knows, but it’s a terribly selfish one.

“You didn’t let anyone down,” she says softly as she approaches the staircase, guilt weighing down every one of her steps. “I did.”

Thomas drops his hands and looks up at her. His eyes are dry but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been crying. Alison gives him a sad smile and sits down next to him. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come today.”

“Oh,” Thomas says. He sounds small, and he looks that way too when he glances down at his hands. “My deepest apologies for ruining the party.”

His voice breaks on the last word and something inside Alison breaks with it.

“Oh Thomas, no, that’s not– that’s not what I meant at all. You didn’t ruin anything,” she says softly and desperately wishes she could reach out to him and take his hand in hers to emphasise her words. “I wanted you to be part of Grace’s birthday so much that I didn’t stop to think what you wanted, what you needed, and I’m sorry about that. I should have given you more time.”

The Captain gives her a curt nod of approval before he glances over at Thomas who is still staring down at his hands. His fingers are restlessly fiddling with the cuff of his sleeves, a nervous habit that’s as much a part of him as his dimples or poetry are.

“A week ago,” he begins quietly, “I was so excited for today. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world. Now I can barely look at her without feeling my heart break.” He takes a shuddering breath and finally meets Alison’s eyes. “But I don’t regret being there. It … it was good to see her happy.”

He offers her a wobbly smile that Alison knows is meant to put her at ease but has the opposite effect. It only lasts a few seconds. Then it fades away like sunlight on a winter afternoon and Thomas lets out a very long sigh. “I just wish love didn’t always have to be mingled with grief.”

He wraps his arms around himself and looks away again. The Captain regards him quietly for a moment. There is an old pain in his eyes that death has not yet managed to soften. Alison has often wondered what had caused it and certainly had her suspicions but she’s never asked him, knowing the Captain isn’t ready to talk about it yet. If only she had extended that same kind of patience towards Thomas yesterday. “Sometimes, that’s just how it is and all we can do is make the best of it.”

“Or fade away,” Thomas murmurs.

Alison’s heart misses a beat. She exchanges an alarmed look with Humphrey and the Captain before she scoots closer to Thomas, as close as she can without touching him, and says in a low voice, “Don’t you dare, Thomas Thorne. Don’t you dare put us through that again. We searched for you for three days, day and night. And do you know why?” Thomas sniffs and shakes his head. “Because we love you. You’re family, Thomas, and I … I can’t lose you again. I just can’t.”

She’s breathing hard by the time she’s finished and her eyes are burning with tears she thought herself no longer capable of crying. But at the same time it feels good to finally let it all out; cathartic.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas whispers miserably. He looks like a kicked puppy with his hunched shoulders and cast down eyes. “I did not think–”

“That we’d miss you?” Humphrey asks softly. “Of course we would, mate. We’ve already lost Grace. We don’t want to lose you too.”

The Captain nods. “Who’d bore us with terrible poetry if you weren’t around, hm?”

Alison winces at the Captain’s clumsy attempt at a light-hearted joke but, surprisingly, it seems to work. Thomas lets out a soft laugh and in a moment of rare vulnerability and trust, rests his head on the Captain’s shoulder and lets him bear his weight for a moment. “I’ll have you know my poetry is not terrible. You’re just not sophisticated enough to understand it.”

“Sure. Whatever you say,” the Captain says fondly and reaches around him to pat his arm.

Thomas sighs and closes his eyes. “Grace lovedmy poems and stories.”

“She sure did, mate,” Humphrey says.

“Do you think she’ll remember them? Remember us?” Thomas asks, very softly.

Oh Thomas, Alison thinks.

“Of course she will,” she says, leaving no room for doubt. “I’ll make sure of that.”

Thomas opens his eyes and looks over at her. “Even if it will cause her pain?”

Behind them, Humphrey chuckles. “Trust me: the look on her face when she unwrapped your painting was as far from pain as it gets.”

“Young Grace is more resilient than you give her credit for,” the Captain adds. “She’s already finding new ways to hold onto us. Granted, it won’t be like before but – well, we’ll still be a part of her life, and she of ours, so to speak. So no more talk of getting sucked off, all right?”

Alison mentally cringes at the expression the ghosts insist on using despite her many attempts to get them to call it moving on. The Captain has a point, though and Thomas – Thomas slowly nods.

“All right,” he whispers. “I’ll … I’ll try.”

“That’s the spirit,” the Captain smiles and gives his arm another pat. “Now, are you ready to re-join the celebrations or would you rather retire to your room?”

Thomas sits up and flashes Alison an apologetic look.

“My room – but there’s no need to accompany me,” he hurriedly adds when the Captain reaches for Humphrey’s head and starts to get up. “Really, I’ll be fine on my own.”

Feeling an irrational fear claw its way up her throat, Alison exchanges a pleading look with Humphrey and the Captain. Please go with him.

“I’d be happy to stay with you,” Humphrey says easily, answering her silent prayers.

“And miss Grace’s birthday?” Thomas shakes his head. “No, she needs you more than I do.”

Alison’s stomach plummets. “Thomas–“

“I won’t run again,” he says quietly, earnestly, and holds her eyes as he places his hand, the one that has bloodstains all over the cuff, over his heart.

It feels like they’re having a whole conversation without saying a single word and in the end, Alison swallows around her fear and gives in. “Promise?”

Thomas bows his head. “Promise.”

“Okay,” Alison whispers. “See you later.”

With a last, grateful nod to her, Humphrey and the Captain, Thomas pushes himself to his feet and ascends the stairs. There is no spring in his step, not like there used to be, but he holds his head up high as he goes. Alison desperately hopes it’s not just for show. She can’t bear the thought of him hiding from them again.

“Don’t worry,” the Captain says, pushing himself to his feet. His knees crack. “He won’t go MIA under my watch – not again.”

“Thanks, Captain,” Alison smiles and tears her eyes away from the upper landing. “I hope you’re right.”

“Thomas is many things,” Humphrey says as they walk back to the kitchen. “But a liar is not one of them. If he’s saying he won’t run, he won’t run.”

The certainty in his tone puts Alison’s frayed nerves at ease, at least a little. She knows she’s overreacting but after the week she’s had, she doesn’t think anyone can blame her for that. Letting go of her worry is hard but when she sees Mike and Grace covered in bits and pieces of cake, she feels a laugh bubbling up her throat and leans down to kiss their sugary sweet cheeks. 

————

Thomas, just like Humphrey said, keeps his promise.

He’s in his room when Alison looks in on him after lunch, and to her surprise he’s not alone: Jemima is with him. She’s sitting next to him with her legs dangling from the bed, and before Alison can make her presence known she hears her say in that quiet, subdued voice of hers, “I’ve been thinking – if you’d like, I could sing one of your poems to Grace. I know it’s not the same but … she’d still get to hear it that way.”

Jemima’s dark eyes are full of anticipation and hope when she looks up at Thomas, and Alison holds her breath as they wait for his reaction.

“You’d do that for me?” Thomas asks, very quietly. He sounds surprised, and deeply moved.

Jemima shrugs one of her shoulders. “I like singing to her, and I like your poetry.”

Thomas blinks. “You do?”

“I don’t really understand it,” Jemima admits, nervously looking down at her doll. “But it sounds nice.”

Something shifts in Thomas’s face, gentles the laugh lines around his eyes. “Maybe we could select a poem and compose a melody together?”

He sounds a little unsure but when Jemima nods with the barest smile on her face and earnestly says, “I’d like that,” he relaxes.

“Yeah, me too.”

Alison decides to leave them be. Thomas is okay – well, as okay as he can be – and most importantly, in very good hands. He doesn’t need her right now and knowing that makes it a little easier for her to enjoy the rest of the day without that constant feeling of worry nagging at her.

She returns to his room later, though, after Grace has been put to bed for the night. Thomas is alone this time so Alison pokes her head around the door and gives him a little wave. “Hey. Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Thomas says, offering her a place on the bed.

Alison smiles and closes the door behind her before she joins him. After a moment of silently debating what to say, she finally settles on, “Grace is asleep.”

Thomas frowns. “But – I didn’t hear her cry.”

Alison allows herself to smile. “That’s because she didn’t. We placed your portrait on the dresser where she could see it and she fell asleep gazing at it. No fussing, no crying.”

“Oh,” Thomas breathes. He glances down at his hands. “That’s … that’s good. Really good.”

“Yeah,” Alison agrees. “It honestly never even crossed my mind that the painting might help her sleep but it worked like a charm.”

“To be as easily soothed as a child,” Thomas muses sadly.

They are both quiet for a moment, revelling in the silence that has settled over the house after days of distress. It almost feels normal, Alison thinks, and even as the thought fills her with hope for the future, she knows that Thomas, out of all of them, will find it the hardest to embrace.

“Is there anything I can do to make things a little easier for you?” she asks softly.

Thomas opens his mouth only to close it again. He shakes his head.

“No, I – I think I just need time.” He pauses to look at her. “Is that okay?”

Alison’s face softens. “Of course it is. Take as long as you need. We’ll be here when you’re ready, and I promise: no more pushing.”

“Thank you,” Thomas says, heartfelt.

He sounds as if a huge weight has just been lifted off his chest and there’s a hint of a spark in his eyes again, a glimmer of optimism that hasn’t been there since the day Grace started walking. It’s that spark that prompts Alison to ask, “Want to watch the sunrise with me tomorrow?”

She knows she’s probably going to regret this when her alarm goes off the next morning but seeing the surprise in Thomas’s eyes, followed by a shy but genuine smile – the first one in days – makes losing an hour of sleep more than worth it. “I’d love that very much.”

Alison smiles. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

With that, she leans over to kiss his cheek, just like she’d done that first Christmas she and Mike had celebrated in Button House, so many years ago, when neither of them had any idea yet what life and death would hold in store for them.

“Goodnight, Thomas,” she says softly.

Thomas, startled by the ghost of her touch, raises his hand to his cheek. His eyes soften. “Goodnight, Alison.”

[ailendolin]

Grace - Chapter 7/10

Title: Grace [AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7

————

Grace

Chapter 7: The Portrait

Alison still feels half asleep when she picks up Grace the next morning and makes her way to the kitchen. It’s still dark outside and judging by the silence, no one but her and Grace is awake yet which means it must be early. Alison makes it a point not to look at the clock. 

She begins to prepare Grace’s breakfast, her movements led by muscle memory rather than conscious decisions, when Grace suddenly starts to squirm in her arms. “What’s wrong, love?”

“’Omas,” Grace says, pointing at something over Alison’s shoulder.

For one hopeful second Alison thinks Thomas is there and that Grace can see him like she always could but then she turns around and finds the kitchen just as empty as it had been a moment ago. Her face falls and all she can think is, God, I’m so stupid.

Except Grace starts squirming again and keeps repeating Thomas’s name, and then Kitty’s and Fanny’s and Julian’s, all the while pointing at something with her tiny finger and suddenly Alison gets it. “Oh, you mean the Ghost Chart!”

She readjusts her hold on Grace and walks closer to the chart she created what feels like a lifetime ago. Grace’s face lights up and she reaches out to touch the crude drawing of Thomas with her tiny hand to clumsily trace the crude lines with her fingertips. She looks so happy in that moment that Alison feels her throat close up, especially when Grace repeats Thomas’s name with a wistfulness no almost-one-year-old should have to express.  

“I know you miss him, love,” she whispers against Grace’s hair. “I miss him too.”

Grace makes a soft sound Alison chooses to interpret as confirmation. She presses a kiss to her daughter’s temple and makes to turn away from the Ghost Chart. Grace’s face scrunches up in distress immediately.

“We can’t stand here forever, Grace,” Alison tells her softly.

Her daughter gives her a look that seems to say, Try me. 

Alison chuckles. “Alright. I guess breakfast can wait a little longer.”

When a little longer turns into long enough, Alison decides to be pragmatic about it: she takes down the Ghost Chart and brings it over to the table with them so Grace can see it from her high seat while she eats.

“Happy now?”

The grin her daughter gives her would be adorable if there wasn’t also a disgusting amount of mashed up fruits dribbling down her chin and onto her onesie. Alison laughs anyway.

“What are my two beautiful girls up to this morning?” Mike asks around a yawn as he steps into the kitchen. Grace offers him the same lovely grin and eagerly points at the Ghost Chart.

“’Omas!” she says around a mouthful of banana.

Mike drops a kiss onto the top of her head. “That’s right, that’s Thomas. And look, Robin’s there, right next to him!”

Grace peers at the Ghost Chart for a moment before she declares, “Dooka dooka!”

“Yeah,” Alison says quietly. “Dooka dooka.”

Perhaps she should revise it, she muses as she looks at the rather pitiful drawings of Thomas, Mary and Robin.

And I really should add Humphrey as well, she thinks guiltily. Poor guy always gets left out.

As Mike takes over feeding Grace the remains of her breakfast, an idea slowly begins to take shape in Alison’s mind: what if she’d make Grace her own Ghost Chart? She could paint proper portraits of all the ghosts and adorn them with colourful, child-friendly borders. Grace would love that, she’s sure, and the portraits would be so much better than that newspaper clipping of Pat’s death or the tiny group shot of the Captain’s army unit, no matter what Thomas had said all those years ago about her drawing skills when she gifted him his portrait.

Alison freezes.

Of course, she thinks. Thomas’s portrait!

Mike squints at her, his spoon full of baby food hovering precariously in the air. “Something’s just happened. Ghosts stuff?”

“Yes and no,” Alison says, barely able to contain her excitement. “Remember that Christmas when Nick was here and I did that portrait?”

“Of Thomas?” Mike mouths, careful to keep Grace distracted with her breakfast.

Alison nods and pointedly looks between the Ghost Chart and their daughter back and forth. It takes Mike a second to catch on but when he does his eyes grow wide and a grin lights up his face.

“Do you have some wrapping paper left?”

Alison huffs out a laugh and leans over their daughter to give him a kiss.

————

An hour later she’s down in the basement, looking for Thomas’s portrait. She’s not quite sure how it ended up in the darkest corner–

“Mike moved it there,” Mick explains with a happy smile.

“About a year ago, perhaps?” Nigel adds.

–or why it is covered with one of the old drapes she thought they’d thrown away–

“That was Mike as well,” Geoff’s wife sighs wistfully, earning herself a reproachful look from her husband in the process.

–but Alison is relieved to find it completely undamaged. She looks at it, takes in the many hours of work and countless brush strokes that make up the gentle lines of Thomas’s face, and remembers the day Thomas posed for her. He had chosen the most extravagant pose – of course he had – and she finds herself smiling a little as she thinks of him trying (and failing) to hide how difficult it was to hold it.

She misses that Thomas, misses his silliness, his penchant to burst into terrible poetry at the most inopportune times and the wonder in his eyes when he sees something truly beautiful that anyone else would deem common or mundane. She misses him so much she doesn’t know how she’ll go another day without seeing him or talking to him, even if it’s just for one second. A simple, “Hello,” would be enough, she thinks, as long as she gets to hear his voice. She misses that, too.

“Why were you looking for the portrait?” Jean asks softly, bringing her back to the present.

Alison quickly wipes her eyes and tries to ignore the small, understanding smiles the villagers offer her. “Grace discovered Mike’s Ghost Chart earlier so we thought we’d give her this–“ She points at the portrait. “–for her birthday tomorrow. We’re hoping it will make things a little easier for her.”

Most of the villagers nod in understanding. Nigel is the only one who crosses his arms in front of his chest and frowns at her. “It belongs to Thomas.”

Alison gives him a confused look. “Well yes, but he probably doesn’t even remember it exists.”

“He does,” Nigel says. The others shuffle a bit to the side to allow him to step forward. “Thomas used to come down here at least once a week to look at it before Mike covered it up.”

“That’s true,” Walter confirms.

Alison glances between them, feeling as if her worldview has just been shaken a little bit. Nigel’s face softens. “He never told you, did he?”

All Alison can do is mutely shake her head.

Nigel sighs. “Damn his stubbornness.”

“He told us what happened, the first time he came down here,” Geoff explains.

Mick nods. “We told him he should talk to you but–“

“That fool obviously chose not to,” Walter says with a shake of his head. “Sometimes I wonder why we ever put up with him.”

His wife turns to him and levels him with a glare Alison is glad not to be on the receiving end of. “Because he happens to be a kind young man unlike you, you bloody sod.”

“Now come on, dear,” Walter says but stops when Mick clears his throat and raises his arm. “Yes?”

“She’s right – Thomas has always been kind. At least he was to me,” he says quietly. “He taught me how to read, remember?”

The basement falls silent.

“He did?” Alison asks softly. She hadn’t known that. There are a lot of things she doesn’t know, it seems.

Mick nods his head, his eyes wide and earnest, but it is Nigel who explains, “Thomas spent a lot of time down here with us after he died. He couldn’t stomach being upstairs and watching the lady of the house live her life without him.”

Oh, Alison thinks. She’s never really given it much thought – that time after Thomas’s death when his cousin wooed and eventually married Isabelle. It must have been awful to see her every day and have no hope of her ever realising he was still there and had not forgotten about her. And even worse, to watch her fall in love and grow old with someone else.

In hindsight, Alison doesn’t find it so surprising that Thomas had reached a point where he couldn’t take it anymore and sought refuge somewhere quiet and rarely frequented by the living, especially those from the upper class. She just wouldn’t have thought he had found it with the plague ghosts. Suddenly, them joining the search and staying by his side even after he’d been found made a lot more sense.

“It sounds like you’re quite close,” she says quietly.

The villagers nod in unison.

“He’s our friend,” Mick smiles. Then his face falls and he adds in a more subdued voice, “I don’t like seeing him sad.”

Yeah, Alison thinks. Me neither. 

“None of us do,” Nigel says quietly and gives Mick’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze before he turns back to Alison. “I know we can’t really stop you but – please don’t give his painting away. At least not without asking him first.”

Alison glances down at the portrait with a heavy heart.

“He still hasn’t talked to me, Nigel,” she whispers.

Nigel’s face softens. “How about I come with you, then? I could talk to him first, see if he’s up to seeing you.”

Hope sparks in Alison’s chest, warm and bright and terrible. “You would do that?”

“Of course,” Nigel smiles. “I wanted to look in on him anyway. Now I have an excuse to do that.”

Alison doesn’t think he really needs an excuse, not with what she just learned about Thomas’s relationship with him and the others, but she’s too grateful for his help to say anything. Maybe, just maybe, Nigel will be the key to bridging that awful gap between her and Thomas that seems to be growing with every passing day. Hope, she knows, is a dangerous thing but it’s all she has right now, and if there’s just the tiniest chance that Nigel will be able to convince Thomas to talk to her, who can blame her for holding onto it with everything she has?

So she leaves the painting behind for the time being and silently follows Nigel up the stairs. Grace and Mike’s voices filter into the hallway from the kitchen. She’s babbling happily about the Ghost Chart, Alison assumes, while Mike is telling her what a good girl she is when she almost pronounces Thomas’s name correctly. Nigel’s steps falter for a moment, and a shadow passes over his face before he clears his throat. “It’s good to hear her laugh again.”

“It is,” Alison quietly agrees.

“Children are remarkable, aren’t they?” he muses softly. “They go through something traumatic and still manage to find joy where all we see is sorrow.”

He takes a deep breath and walks on, leaving Alison to wonder if he’s talking about his own experience as a child or if, perhaps, he once had children of his own. She realises she doesn’t know and at the same time thinks, Thomas probably does.

They reach the hallway that leads to Thomas’s room and Alison stops, still several feet away from Thomas’s door.

“I’ll wait here,” she says, not wanting it to look like she’ll be eavesdropping.

Nigel nods in understanding. “I’ll call for you when he’s ready.”

When, not if, Alison notes and holds onto the little words like a lifeline. It’s as if Nigel is sure Thomas will talk to her and that spark of hope inside her chest flares up and burns as brightly as the North Star while she waits.

She doesn’t know what’s going on inside the room, doesn’t know that Thomas and Lady Button are sitting together on the windowsill when Nigel enters. She doesn’t see Thomas lift his head or his tired, red-rimmed eyes soften a little when they land on Nigel, and she isn’t privy to the quiet conversation that follows.

“Alison is here to talk to you,” Nigel says as he sits down on Thomas’s other side. “There is something she wants to ask you.”

Thomas is quiet for so long that Lady Button feels the need to say, “You don’t have to talk to her if you’re not ready, Thomas. Alison will understand.”

“Is she … alone?” Thomas finally asks. His voice is hoarse and brittle from disuse and nearly breaks on the last word.

Nigel nods. “She is. But–“

“Her request concerns Grace,” Thomas whispers and this time his voice does break. He tries to mask it with a trembling smile that has no hope of reaching his eyes. “Tell her to come in.”

“Thomas,” Lady Button begins but Thomas reaches for her hand before she can truly protest.

“It’s okay,” he says, as if saying it aloud will somehow make it true. “Will you – will you stay?”

Lady Button gives his hand a squeeze. “Of course.”

“And so will I,” Nigel says with a smile before Thomas can ask.

Thomas takes a deep breath and, after giving them both a heartbreakingly grateful look, stands up. He straightens his waistcoat, brushes a trembling hand through his hair and nods.

Alison almost jumps when she hears Nigel calling for her after anxiously waiting for what felt like hours but has probably only been five minutes at most. She closes her eyes and takes a moment to gather herself before she walks up to Thomas’s door and gently knocks on the wood, giving Thomas one last chance to change his mind.

“Come in.”

They’re the first words she has heard Thomas say in days and even though he sounds differently – subdued, sad, worn down – every cell in Alison’s body aches with sheer relief when he hears that beloved voice again. She slowly pushes the door open and there he is, standing by the window, flanked by both Lady Button and Nigel. The warm glow of the morning sun lights up his face and Alison suddenly remembers another morning from years ago when she stood outside with Thomas and watched the sun rise over Button House. A lot has happened since then. Too much perhaps, she thinks as she takes in the paleness of his skin not even the sunlight can hide and the pain in his eyes she knows will never go away no matter how much time passes. It’s not fair.  

She swallows hard and offers Thomas a small but heartfelt smile. “Hi.”

“Hello, Alison.”

He sounds almost normal, and Alison doesn’t know what to do with that. She searches for the right thing to say, her hands sweating nearly as badly as they did the day she asked Mike out for drinks for the first time. How are you? seems inadequate and inappropriate – she knows Thomas is not well. It’s glaringly obvious. But cutting straight to the chase feels wrong too. She didn’t come here just for Grace, and she needs Thomas to know that. And yet she has no idea how to start, how to say anything without somehow mentioning the elephant in the room.

Her mouth opens and closes for several seconds without making a sound and something in Thomas’s eyes shifts, making them look softer, and sadder.

“How is Grace?” he asks at last. His voice is shaking and he’s squeezing his hands so tightly his knuckles are turning white. His gaze doesn’t falter, though, and despite how fragile he looks in that moment he’s radiating a strength Alison can only marvel at.

She has to clear her throat before she can answer him. “She’s … she’s trying to make sense of the situation in her own way. To her, it’s all a big game of hide and seek at the moment and I think that comforts her. But – she misses you, Thomas. She misses you very much.”

And so do I, she thinks but doesn’t add.

“I know,” Thomas whispers. He swallows hard. “I hear her crying at night.”

Both Fanny and Nigel look at him in surprise, and Alison’s chest suddenly feels too tight. She thought they had managed to shield Thomas from that.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Lady Button asks softly, placing a gentle hand on his arm.

Thomas turns to look at her. “What would it have changed?”

Lady Button doesn’t have an answer to that. She looks as stricken as Alison feels and Thomas gives her hand, still on his arm, a brief squeeze before he turns back to Alison. “Nigel said you wanted to ask me something?”

There’s a lot Alison wants to ask him in that moment: Where have you been? Why did you run away? Why do you keep so many things close to your heart and never talk about them?

But now isn’t the time for any of those question. This conversation isn’t about her, it’s about Grace and Thomas, and Alison doesn’t want to make this any more painful than it has to be. So she clasps her restless hands in front of her body and tells Thomas about Grace’s reaction to the Ghost Chart. “It brings her so much joy and seeing as it’s her birthday tomorrow, I was wondering if you would mind if I gave her the portrait I did of you as a present.”

For a moment, Thomas doesn’t say anything. He stares at Alison unblinkingly, his gaze far away, lost in some memory Alison isn’t privy too.

“I think it would help her, Thomas,” she adds desperately. “I really, really do.”

Thomas visibly shakes himself out of whatever place and time his mind had taken him to and offers her a smile that is so obviously fake Alison feels a shiver run down her spine.

“That old thing?” he asks with a nonchalant flick of his wrist. “Of course she may have it. Was that all?”

Instead of feeling relieved that she’s gained Thomas’s permission Alison’s heart begins to ache. Thomas is downplaying his attachment to his portrait for her sake, for Grace’s sake, and as if that’s not bad enough Alison is fairly sure she wouldn’t even have noticed if Nigel hadn’t told her about Thomas’s visits to the basement earlier. It hurts even more to realise that Thomas, someone who has always worn his heart so unfailingly on his sleeve, has taken to hiding his feelings behind a smile and forced calmness. He’s no longer an open book to read, neither for her nor for anyone else, and Alison has no idea how she’s supposed to react to that. She loves her daughter with every fibre of her being and wants to see her happy, but she doesn’t want that happiness to come at the price of Thomas’s own. The portrait clearly means a lot to him, more than Alison has ever thought possible, and for that reason alone she needs to be certain he’s really okay with Grace having it. “Are you sure? Because if you’d rather have it in your room, it’d be no problem to hang it up here.”

Thomas is visibly surprised by her offer but recovers quickly.

“No, it’s alright,” he says, and when he goes on, his voice is softer, more sincere, than before. “If it makes her happy, I want her to have it.”

Behind him, both Fanny and Nigel nod, silently telling Alison it’s okay, that she can and should believe Thomas. The last thing either of them needs right now is a disagreement over this, so Alison sighs and drops her hands to her side.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she says. She takes a step forward and stops abruptly when she realises what she was about to do. “God, I wish I could hug you.”

The frail smile on Thomas’s lips trembles. “I’d like that very much.”

“Maybe one day,” Alison murmurs. She looks down at her shoes and, not knowing what else to say, points behind herself and says, “Well, I better go and wrap up the painting, then. Thank you, Thomas. It really means a lot, and I know Grace will be delighted when she sees it tomorrow.” She pauses, hesitating. “Will you be there? When we celebrate her birthday?”

Thomas freezes. Alison can see he’s getting lost in what-ifs and would-have-beens and starts to apologise when he suddenly nods. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

His devotion to Grace, even now – especially now – is overwhelming. No matter what words she might choose Alison knows they will have no hope of even coming close to what she feels in that moment, so she simply says, “Thank you,” again, hoping Thomas will hear all the things she doesn’t know how to express underneath the words.

They exchange one last look and then Alison leaves, making sure to close the door behind her. It may not help much to shield Thomas from Grace’s cries but it’s the least she can do. As she retraces her steps down to the basement, she’s unaware of Thomas’s carefully constructed façade breaking just seconds after she closes the door. His legs give out and he drops to the floor, gasping for breath as if he had just run a mile.

“Easy now,” Nigel murmurs, gently rubbing Thomas’s back. “It’s over.”

“That was very brave of you, Thomas,” Lady Button adds, a hint of admiration in her voice. “And very kind.” 

Thomas’s shoulders begin to shake under her hand.

“I just don’t want her to feel like I do,” he says around a sob before he buries his head in his hands.

Lady Button and Nigel share a look over his head before they join him on the floor and hold him through the storm.

[ailendolin]

Grace - Chapter 5

Title: Grace [AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

————

Grace

Chapter 5: The Search

Thomas is gone for three days.

Alison is out of her mind with worry, and she isn’t the only one.

“He was very clearly upset,” Fanny says when Alison finally finds the strength to leave her still crying daughter in Mike’s care and come downstairs the evening everything changed.

All the ghosts are there, even Humphrey’s head, and they turn to her the moment the stairs creak under her feet and alert them to her presence.

“He was crying,” Kitty says, her voice uncharacteristically subdued as she glances at the door Alison assumes Thomas has vanished through. The others nod, wearing matching miserable expressions. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cry before. Not like this.”

“What happened, Alison?” the Captain asks, always straight to the point. But not even he can hide his worry behind the strict tone.

Alison takes a deep breath so she won’t start crying again when she explains, “Grace – she can’t see you guys anymore.”

Most of the ghosts’ faces fall – all except for Mary’s. Her eyes light up with sudden, heart-breaking understanding. “Oh! Because she be walking now.”

“Oh no,” Pat murmurs, looking up the stairs from where Grace’s cries still could be heard, though faintly.

“Yeah,” Alison sighs in agreement and falls silent. She doesn’t know what else to say. Her heart feels broken and she wants nothing more than to wrap her family – all of them, alive and dead – into her arms and grieve with them a loss she can’t even begin to fathom. She tries to imagine her life without the ghosts and comes up empty. The mere thought of waking up one morning and not hearing Fanny scream or the Captain call for her to mark his time hurts.

And now her daughter is going through that very pain Alison’s mind instinctively shies away from, and so are the ghosts.

In the end, it’s Julian who finally breaks the silence.

“Well, it was nice while it lasted,” he says softly. The others murmur in agreement.

“We shall miss spending time with young Grace,” the Captain says. His eyes drop to his swagger stick and he sounds more than a little choked up when he adds, “It was an honour to make her smile.”

Alison feels her own throat close up as one by one, the ghosts share their favourite memories of Grace. Her daughter is so very, very loved, and Alison wants nothing more than to turn back the clock for just a few hours so they can all experience that love together one last time and cherish it as they should have from the beginning on.

She doesn’t even realise she is crying until Fanny steps forward and offers her a sad but understanding smile. “You should probably go and get a handkerchief, my dear.”

“I don’t think one will do,” Alison mumbles and wipes her face on her sleeve instead. Upstairs, Grace’s cries reach new levels in volume. There’s one word she wails over and over: Thomas’s name. Helplessly, Alison looks at the ghosts. “How am I going to explain to her that she’ll never see him again?”

The ghosts are as much at a loss as she is.

“You go be with her,” Robin finally says. “And we go be with Thomas. That all we can do.”

Alison sniffs. “That sucks.”

Robin nods solemnly. “Me know. But it all we can do.”  

With a heavy heart, Alison watches them leave the house before she goes back upstairs to re-join the small, living part of her family. Mike is still holding Grace in his arms, rocking her gently as she hiccups against his shoulder. Her little face is red with exhaustion and as tear-stained as Alison’s is, and Alison’s heart breaks anew when the first thing her daughter asks upon seeing her is, “’Omas?”

“No, baby,” Alison whispers and lets Mike pull her into the hug. “Thomas isn’t here.”

Grace’s lower lip begins to tremble and then her cries resonate through the old house once more. Mike holds her close, holds them both close, and together they move to the bed and settle down for a long night.

————

It takes hours until Grace finally cries herself to sleep. Midnight has come and gone by the time Alison extricates herself from Mike’s arms and tiptoes down to the kitchen to make herself a much needed cup of tea. The house is eerily quiet this time of night, and when she goes back upstairs, warm cup in her hands, and glances through the open door into the Captain’s empty room she realises why.

The ghosts are still not back.

Her heart starts hammering in her chest as she turns to the window, hoping to see their familiar figures out on the lawn. It is a moonless night, though, and the grounds of Button House are shrouded in darkness so impenetrable Alison can’t even make out the fountain, much less anything beyond that.

“They’ll be fine,” she whispers to herself. “There is nothing out there that can hurt them.”

And yet her chest tightens at the thought of all of them out there in the dark searching for one of their own, and even more so at the thought of Thomas hiding himself and his grief away so desperately that he cannot be found.

Alison doesn’t know how long she stands by the window and keeps watch, hoping to see her family come home – all of them. When Mike’s gentle footsteps come up behind her, the tea in her hand has long gone cold.

“Why are you not in bed?” he murmurs against her neck.

“The ghosts are still looking for Thomas,” Alison whispers. She turns around in Mike’s arms and looks up at him. “What are we going to do, Mike?”

She sees her own helplessness reflected in his eyes when he shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know, Ali. I don’t know.”

————

“We looked everywhere,” Kitty tells her the next morning, her eyes wide with exhaustion and worry. Next to her, Mary nods and stifles a yawn.

“Perhaps he gots sucked off,” she says.

Alison drops the spoon into Grace’s breakfast bowl as the room falls deadly silent around her.

No, she thinks desperately. Please god, no. She couldn’t bear it if Thomas–

“It not work like that,” Robin says. He is bouncing on the balls of his feet, restless, his eyes straying to the kitchen door every few seconds. He’s itching to leave. “Thomas is sad. You don’t leave when you’re sad.”

“Then where is he?” Julian asks in frustration. “It’s not like he could have hitched a ride into the city, you know?”

Robin shrugs. “He good at hiding.”

“Oh, me too!” Kitty announces excitedly before her eyes glaze over for a moment and her face falls. She looks down at the floor and asks, very quietly, “Do you think he’s scared?”

Like I was. The words go unsaid and yet Kitty might as well have shouted them. A heavy silence fills the kitchen and Alison feels a lump form in her throat.

Of course he’s scared, she thinks. He’s alone and hurt and–

She firmly puts a stop to those thoughts before they can spiral. It won’t help any of them if she lets her worry and frustration get the better of her now, least of all Grace who is finally allowing her to feed her after being fussy about it all morning.

On the other side of the table, the Captain clears his throat. “Well, seeing as Thomas is still MIA I suggest we organise another search.”

Pat nods in agreement. “Yes, let’s split up in pairs. Kitty, you can come with me and–“

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Fanny interrupts him. All eyes turn to her. A little flustered, she continues, “We’ll cover more ground if each of us searches alone and thus double our chances of finding him.”

While the ghosts mull that over, Alison gives her a grateful smile. “Sounds like a good plan to me. Wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”

The Captain’s hold on his swagger stick tightens as he straightens up. “Of course, yes.”

“And we should search the house too,” Fanny adds. “Maybe Thomas has come back last night and we didn’t notice.”

“We could also ask the folks down in the basement for help,” Humphrey suggests from where his head is resting sideways on the table.

Julian makes a face. “Aw no, not that lot.”

Robin elbows him in the side. “Is for Thomas.”

“All right, all right,” Julian grumbles, then pointedly gestures at his ribs and says, “Ow.”

They file out of the kitchen with the Captain deciding on the move who should search where, and Alison watches them go with a heavy heart. She wishes she could help but with Mike already at work and Grace having more of her breakfast on her face and clothes than in her stomach, she knows it will have to wait. She can’t help but glance out the windows when she takes Grace upstairs for a change of clothes, though, or when they come back down. Her eyes seize every opportunity to roam over the forest and every time she gets her hopes up, thinking Thomas will walk out of the trees.

He never does.

Alison eventually joins the search once Mike gets off work and takes Grace off her hands but by the time darkness falls and forces her to trudge back to the house, there is still no sign of Thomas. The others had no luck finding him either and she quietly begins to worry that Mary might have been right, that Thomas had moved on.

The thought is unbearable.

Dinner is a quiet affair that evening and Alison is glad Mike manages to feed Grace at least half of what’s on her plate before the clock chimes nine and she begins to look around the room with teary eyes, clearly waiting for Thomas to appear. Alison heaves a heavy sigh. “Let’s get you to bed.”

She’s about to stand up, only halfway through her own meal, when Mike puts a hand on her shoulder. “Eat up. I’ll go get her changed.”

Alison feels her lips tug up into a tired but grateful smile. She’s not feeling particularly hungry but she manages to eat the full plate anyway. The ghosts watch her silently and Alison knows they expect her to say something, to find a way to make this all okay but she has no idea how she’s supposed to do that. So she keeps her eyes on her plate and only looks up when Grace’s cries for Thomas start to echo down the stairs once more.

“I better go,” Alison murmurs.

“Right,” the Captain says. “Back to work, people.”

Alison stops and turns around. “Wait, you’re going back outside?”

“Well, we haven’t found him yet, have we?” Fanny points out. The others all nod in agreement and suddenly Alison’s chest feels too tight. She looks into the tired faces of her family, at the way Kitty keeps blinking to keep herself awake and Robin fidgets with nervous energy, and her heart aches with more love than she knows what to do with.

“Don’t forget to take care of yourselves, too,” she finally manages to choke out.

The Captain gives her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll just do another sweep along the borders. The ghosts from the basement have offered to take over the night search.” He clears his throat before he adds in a conspiratorial whisper, “They might not be soldiers but they seem to have the heart for the job.”

“I’m sure they do,” Alison whispers. It’s almost too much, seeing all the ghosts of Button House rally together despite their differences to find one of their own and make sure he is okay. She wonders if Thomas knows how loved he truly is, how empty the house feels without him. Alison misses him and she can tell the others do too even if they’re not as vocal about it as Grace is.

Her daughter is still crying her heart out when Alison enters the bedroom and just like the night before, she and Mike curl up on the bed and wait out the storm with soothing words and gentle touches that seem to be no help at all.

When Alison finally falls asleep that night, she dreams of roses weeping in the woods.

————

The next morning bring neither news nor change. The sun rises in the East, Grace is crying and refusing her breakfast and Thomas is still missing. It’s been two days now and even Pat who tried his best to stay positive the whole time can’t hide his growing worry anymore when the plague ghosts shuffle into the kitchen and shake their heads.

“Sorry,” Nigel says in a small voice and looks at his feet. “We haven’t found him.”

Alison’s heart sinks but she manages to give him a trembling smile. “Thank you for trying.”

Nigel and the others nod. “We’ll help you look again after we got some rest.”

Alison watches them go before she turns back to her cereal. She doesn’t feel hungry anymore. In fact, she doesn’t feel much of anything apart from that horrible emptiness inside her that aches for Thomas’s smile and ridiculously flowery words. Grace squirms in her lap, turning her head this way and that as if she’s sensing the ghosts’ presence and trying to find them. For a moment she looks right at Julian – no, right through Julian – making Julian swallow hard and look away. When Robin’s eyes flick to him, he mutters, “I’m fine.”

But he’s not. None of them are. They’re all hurting and have no idea how to stop.

“Well,” the Captain begins, clearing his throat. His fingers are once again wrapped tightly around his swagger stick. “No sense in dawdling. We still have a man missing.”

One by one, they file out of the kitchen but where yesterday they had been eager to start the search, this morning their shoulders are drooping and their heads hanging low. No one is saying it but Alison knows they’re all feeling it: an increasing hopelessness fuelled by the horrible notion of what if. She doesn’t want Thomas or anyone else to move on, selfish as that may be, but even more so she doesn’t want him to move on like this: hurt and alone. Just like he died.

When was the last time she had told him and the others how much she loves them? That they make her life so much better with their noise and chaos and are the best family anyone could ask for? Alison doesn’t know. She looks down at her daughter and holds her close, presses her lips against her dark hair and tries to breathe through the pain that keeps mounting within her.

“I love you, Grace,” she whispers. “Daddy and I love you so much, and so do the ghosts.”

Grace looks up at her, her eyes wide and sad. “’Omas?”

Alison swallows hard. “Thomas loves you too.”

“Then where is he?” Grace’s dark eyes seem to say.

————

By the time dinner rolls around that day Alison has resigned herself to the fact that Thomas will stay missing for another night. The ghosts are still out searching for him, have been the whole day, but Alison can’t get her hopes up anymore. She just can’t, not with Grace demanding her whole attention right now. It’s clear Thomas doesn’t want to be found – if he indeed still can be found, a treacherous voice whispers in the back of her mind. She has to accept that he will come back to them when he’s ready, even if it breaks her heart to know he’s alone.

Mike is in the process of trying to get Grace to eat her mashed potatoes when the sound of running footsteps makes Alison look up from her own dinner. A second later Kitty bursts through the kitchen and breathlessly declares, “We have found him!”

Alison almost topples over her chair in her hurry to get up.

“It’s Thomas!” she explains, already halfway out of the room, when Mike stares at her in confusion. “They found him!”

She rushes after Kitty to the front door and pulls it open. Her heart leaps – because there they are, all of them. Finally. It feels like a puzzle piece quietly slipping into place when she catches sight of Thomas in the middle of the group. Her world, so off-kilter these past few days, rights itself in an instant and she beams at them, feeling almost giddy with relief.

It doesn’t last long.

As the ghosts come closer, Alison starts to notice little things that are off. They have all rallied around Thomas, as if they are trying to shield him from the world, and keep stealing worried glances at him every few seconds. One of Fanny’s arm is linked with his and her hand is gently resting just above the crook of his elbow as she whispers something in his ear Alison can’t make out. It’s Thomas’s lack of response that ultimately makes her smile falter.

Thomas, for lack of a better word, looks like a ghost. Alison knows how ridiculous that thought is but it’s the first thing that comes to her mind when she finally catches sight of his face. There’s an almost deathly pallor to his skin despite the warmth of the setting sun behind him and his eyes are hollow and red from crying. He looks frail in a way none of the ghosts ever had, as if a gust of wind could carry him away.

You stay how you die.

The words echo in Alison’s head as Thomas walks past her without lifting his eyes from the ground, without acknowledging either her presence or Fanny’s still ongoing litany of whispered words, without doing much of anything, really, except setting one foot in front of the other. This is not the Thomas she knows, Alison thinks; the one who can wax poetic for hours but only manages to create something truly beautiful in those rare moments when he isn’t trying to compose anything. The one who loves to listen to music and dances every morning despite constantly being made fun of for it by Julian. The one who patiently sat with her daughter every evening for almost a year and told her a story just so she would fall asleep with a smile on her face.

All of that is gone. The person vanishing through her front door is not the Thomas Alison has known for years and come to love, and it scares her. He’s finally back and yet he isn’t, and somehow that feels even worse than the uncertainty and worry of the last few days.

“He need time.”

Alison jumps and clutches at her chest. Robin gives her an apologizing look.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“No, it’s … it’s fine,” Alison says. She looks back at the door. “What happened to him, Robin?”

Robin shrugs his shoulders.

“Thomas is hurt. In here.” He points at his chest, right where his heart used to beat. Then he looks up with so much sadness Alison feels her breath catch in her throat and repeats, a little helplessly, “He need time.”

“I think we all do,” Alison whispers.

Robin nods solemnly. “We take care of him. You take care of Grace. When Thomas is ready, he come to you.”

Alison still isn’t happy with that plan but she knows in her heart that Robin is right. She can’t pressure Thomas now, can’t expect him to act like nothing happened just so things can finally go back to a semblance of normalcy. Thomas won’t be joining her for breakfast anymore, won’t sit with her at dinner, won’t be anywhere near Grace, and Robin is asking her to accept that and give Thomas the time he needs to come to terms with his grief.

Alison would be a shitty friend if she couldn’t do that for him.

“Just … let him know he is loved, all right?” she asks, her voice breaking on the last word.

“Will do,” Robin reassures her quietly. His eyes dart to the door.

“Go,” Alison tells him. “I’ll be fine.”

Robin’s lips twitch into a ghost of a smile before he dashes away, leaving her alone in the cold evening air. The first stars are twinkling up in the sky, heralding the beginning of the night, and as Alison looks up and sees the dying light of a shooting star fade away in the glow of the evening sun, she thinks of Thomas and Grace and wishes with all her heart that one day, they’ll be able to see each other again – preferably without her daughter dying in the process.  

It is a silly wish but she closes her eyes and makes it anyway. She knows it won’t come true – miracles only happen in stories – but for Grace and Thomas she’s willing to give it a try. She’s willing to give anything a try just to see them both smile again.

————

That night she finds the ghosts in Thomas’s room.

Grace has finally fallen asleep and Alison is on her way to the kitchen to make herself another late night cup of tea when she walks past Thomas’s door and finds it slightly ajar. Normally, she wouldn’t intrude on his or anyone else’s privacy like this but the last few days have been a far cry from normal and Alison just needs to reassure herself that he is safe and really back with them.

So she pokes her head through the door and the sight that greets her makes her breath catch. They are all there – every single one of them, even the plague ghosts from the basement and little Jemima with her doll clutched tightly to her chest. They sit on the floor, on the windowsill, on the bed, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs or little groups of three and four. The room is crowded with ghosts and right in the middle of it Thomas lies curled up on his bed with his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling rhythmically in sleep. Fanny is sitting next to him, holding his hand, and Robin has pressed himself against his back. One of his hands is covering Thomas’s ear and Alison has to blink hard against the sudden burn of tears when she realises that Robin is trying to shield him from Grace’s cries.

She’s never seen the ghosts like this, so united in their love and support for one of them. Even though they must be exhausted after spending the last few days searching for Thomas non-stop, none of them are sleeping. Their eyes are all resting on Thomas, watching over him, and when she sees his eyebrows draw together in muted distress, Alison realises why. Thomas’s hand starts twitching in Fanny’s gentle grasp and a moment later, he lets out a soft whimper that draws everyone’s attention and makes Alison’s heart hurt.

“Easy,” Nigel murmurs from where he’s sitting by the foot of the bed. He reaches up with his hand and lets his fingers rest on top of Thomas’s ankle in quiet reassurance.

A visible shiver runs through Thomas but he settles again. Almost in unison, the ghosts breathe a sigh of relief.

“You should get some rest, dear,” Jean whispers. Alison looks down and sees her gazing up at her with a sad smile on her lips. “It’s too late to be up and about.”

“Yeah,” Alison says hoarsely but she finds it difficult to move. She can’t seem to pull her eyes away from Thomas’s face, from the dark circles beneath his eyes that by any rights shouldn’t be there.

“Come,” Jean says quietly. “I will walk you to your room.”

It’s not necessary, Alison wants to say but when she feels Jean’s ghostly hand hovering above the small of her back, gently steering her away from Thomas’s room, she’s suddenly, stupidly, immensely grateful for her presence. Before she knows what’s happening she feels her breath catch in her throat again and has to stop in the middle of the hallway to press her hand against her mouth to stifle the sounds she can no longer swallow.

“That’s it,” Jean whispers when Alison blindly reaches for the wall behind her and sinks to the floor. “Just let it all out.”

The clock chimes two in the morning downstairs as Alison sits in the cold, dark hallway and sobs her heart out as quietly as she can so neither the ghosts nor Mike or Grace will hear her. She wants to scream and shout and rage against the injustice of it all, wants to tear something apart with her bare hands and challenge Fate herself to a duel to regain what they all lost.

But she knows it won’t do any good. This is something she can’t fix.

“It’s not fair,” she sniffs.

Jean sighs in solemn agreement. “No, it isn’t.”

By the time Alison crawls back into bed, her hands and feet are cold but her mind, at least, is blissfully numb and empty. She closes her eyes and wraps her arms around Mike, holding him close how she wishes she could hold Thomas to comfort him.

“I love you,” she whispers against the soft, sensitive skin behind Mike’s ear.

Mike stirs and murmurs something unintelligible before he relaxes back against his pillow and continues snoring. Alison presses her face into his neck and finally lets the darkness carry her away.

————

She gets two hours of sleep before Grace starts crying again.

[ailendolin]

Title: Grace [1/10 on AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper's arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first.

Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

A/N: I've been writing this fic for almost a year now and I'm very excited to finally share it. It may sound like your common baby fic but at its heart, it's a story about loss and grief. We know that babies can see ghosts and we also know they stop seeing them at some point, and I wanted to explore the idea of the ghosts growing attached to Baby Cooper and then dealing with the inevitable loss when the child can't see them anymore. Even though the story will focus mainly on Thomas I promise everyone will get their moment to shine, and I hope you will all enjoy it!

————

Grace

Chapter 1: The Announcement

When Alison first breaks the news to the ghosts, she’s pretty sure it’s going to be a complete disaster. She knows better than anyone that her dead housemates are not fond of change, least of all the kind that interrupts their precious routine, and what she is about to tell them is the very definition of that. Her news is going to turn all their lives – or afterlives – completely upside down, and Alison dreads their reactions to it.

Well, she thinks bravely to herself as she looks at them all perched on or behind the sofa in front of her with expressions ranging from curious to mildly annoyed that Food Club is being delayed. No time like the present.

She squares her shoulders, takes a deep breath and braces herself for the worst. “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

For a stunned moment, the room is completely silent. Alison feels several pairs of eyes on her, some of them wide with shock, others blinking rapidly in an attempt to process her words. Then Kitty – of course it would be Kitty, Alison thinks fondly – breaks the spell with a happy, high-pitched squeal. “Oh, how wonderful! I’m going to be an aunt!”

After that, the room erupts into pure chaos. It’s not the kind of chaos Alison had expected, though. She thought the ghosts would be indifferent to the news at best and upset at it at worst but to her surprise their faces are all alight with wonder and pure, genuine joy as they turn to each other breathlessly and start talking over each other in their excitement.

“All right, all right,” Alison finally says and holds up her hands to quiet them. “One at a time. Captain, go.”

“When will the newest recruit arrive?” the Captain asks promptly.

Alison isn’t sure whether or not she should feel offended that her unborn child has apparently already been recruited into the army but in the end she knows it’s just the Captain being the Captain so she lets it go. There will be enough time in the coming months to dissuade him from the idea of a military upbringing and education for her baby.

“Well, I’m about ten weeks along so …” She does a quick calculation in her head. “Around Christmas? Maybe a bit before that.”

Kitty claps her hands enthusiastically. “How exciting! A little Christmas miracle!”

“Be it a boy or a girl?” Mary asks. Her gaze drops to Alison’s stomach. “I coulds always feel it.”

Alison highly doubts that. “We don’t know yet. Not quite sure we want to actually, to be honest.”

Fanny’s eyes widen. “You can find out before the child is born now?”

“Oh yeah,” Alison says. “There’s something they do nowadays called an ultrasound where you can see the baby and also take a picture of it. I have one right here.”

She reaches into her purse and the ghosts immediately crowd around her. They make appreciative noises when she shows the picture around but their faces tell quite a different story. It’s obvious they have no idea what they’re looking at and Alison has to stifle a laugh as she watches them squint at the grainy black and white image, trying to make out a baby in it.

Robin finally puts into words what everyone – with the exception of Julian and Pat, perhaps, Alison wagers – is clearly thinking. “Doesn’t look like much.”

This time, Alison does laugh. She looks down at the tiny grey blob in the picture. “Yeah, looks a bit like a gummy bear, doesn’t it?”

That’s what Mike said at the doctor’s office. They had a laugh about it in the car but Alison can’t really unsee it now. She rests her hand on her stomach and smiles. Our little gummy bear.

It doesn’t escape her notice that some of the ghosts, those who have or had children of their own, look at her hand a little wistfully. Alison’s face softens in sympathy when she realises how hard this must be for them. She lets her hand drop to her side as subtly as she can and asks, “Any more question?”

“Yes, me,” Humphrey’s head says from where he’s lying on the table. “Have you thought of names yet?”

Alison shakes her head. “Not really. We figured we’d know once the baby is born.”

The Captain clears his throat. “Might I suggest Elizabeth for a girl and George for a boy?”

Alison gives him a look. “I’m not naming my kid after a British monarch, Captain. Or any military generals for that matter,” she adds before he can open his mouth and offer more suggestions.

The Captain, to his credit, has the grace to look abashed.

“I think they’re very respectable names,” he mutters. “Charles might be a good choice as well, for a boy.”

Alison grimaces. “Yeah, definitely not. Anyone else?”

To her surprise, Fanny steps forward, her face unusually open and soft in the warm afternoon sunlight.

“We are very happy for you and Mike, Alison,” she says quietly. “I hope you know that.”

“Thank you, Fanny,” Alison smiles and feels warmth spreads through her. A little apologetically she adds, “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

Fanny shakes her head. “Not at all, my dear. It will be wonderful to hear the sound of children’s laughter in this house again.”

“Yeah,” Alison whispers, thinking of tiny feet running up and down the stairs and little hands pressing against the windows and smudging them up. She swallows around the sudden lump in her throat and says, “Listen, I’m feeling a little tired so I’m going upstairs to get some rest. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, you can ask me later at dinner, all right?”

The ghosts nod, already turning away from her and towards each other to discuss the exciting news in more detail. Alison smiles fondly to herself and leaves them be. She’s barely upstairs and sitting down on her bed when Thomas appears in the doorway.

“Knock knock,” he says softly.

Alison inwardly groans. If anyone was going to take her pregnancy hard, it would be him. It hadn’t escaped her notice how quiet he was during the announcement and she mentally braces herself for what is surely going to be an hour-long tirade about his broken heart and hurt feelings, delivered in the most flowery language and dramatic way possible.

Instead, Thomas asks in a quiet, almost subdued voice, “May I come in?”

Taken aback by the lack of drama, Alison finds herself nodding. “Of course.”

She’s surprised to see him hunching in on himself as he steps into the room and sits down on the chair in front of her dressing table. His hands begin to nervously fiddle with the hem of his shirt, then his sleeves, and his eyes are so firmly fixed on his restless fingers that they must be the most fascinating thing in the world. It’s weird, Alison thinks, to see him like this: completely at a loss for words and hesitant around her in a way he so rarely is.

“Apologies for keeping you from your rest, Alison,” he says at last, his voice terribly soft. “I … I must admit I feared the worst when you told us you were going to the doctor. I thought you might be gravely ill but a baby –” His eyes crinkle with genuine happiness and wonder as he shakes his head in stunned disbelieve. “A baby is wonderful news, Alison.”

Alison feels a huge weight lift off her chest.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she says, genuinely touched by his words. “I’m really glad you think so.”

Thomas’s smile flickers as he glances down at his shoes. “I must also apologise for my previous behaviour. You are a happily married woman – I can see that now and will of course cease my attempts at courtship immediately, no matter what feelings may still reside in my heart for you.”

There he is, Alison thinks; the Thomas she knows so well. She pulls her legs up onto the bed to get more comfortable. “Do you actually know what they are? Those feelings you are talking about?”

Thomas looks up at her and frowns.

“Of course I do!” he says, sounding affronted. “They are feelings of love.”

Alison sighs, not surprised at all.

“There are many ways of loving someone, Thomas,” she says patiently.

The furrow between his eyebrows deepens. “Well, yes. There’s parental love, of course, but I dare say that’s not what defines our relationship.”

“Not quite,” Alison agrees, a little amused. “But there’s something called platonic love as well – the kind of love you feel for your friends.”

She stresses the last word.

“Platonic love,” Thomas repeats quietly. He looks down at his hands again, now resting in his lap, tightly clasped. “I … I must admit I do not have much experience with it. You see, I didn’t have many friends when I was alive – acquaintances, yes, but no one I felt particularly close to. Apart from my cousin, that is, but well, we both know how that ended.”

He covers his wound with his left hand, the gesture instinctive und unconscious. It tugs at Alison’s heart.

“Things are different now, though, aren’t they?” Alison says, offering him a smile. “You have the other ghosts, and Mike and me as well. Well, mostly me since Mike can’t see you but the point still stands. You have friendsnow, Thomas.”

Thomas swallows. “And you … you think you could love me as such? As a friend?”

His voice is terribly small when he says that and he hunches in on himself again, almost as if he expects her to reject him again. Alison’s heart aches for him, aches because Thomas exudes a loneliness no one should ever feel.

“Oh Thomas,” she says, wishing she could hug him. “I already do.” 

He lifts his head and stares at her, his eyes with awe and desperate hope. They shine wetly in the warm light of the fairy lights hanging above the bed when he whispers, “Really?”

Alison smiles at him and nods. “Really. Always have, always will.”

Thomas sucks in a shaky breath and then another. He blinks harshly, visibly battling with his emotions, and lets his gaze drop to her hands where they’re resting on her stomach once more, almost as if to cradle her unborn child.

“You will be an extraordinary mother, Alison,” he manages to choke out with a trembling smile. “Your child is so lucky to have you. He or she will be so loved.”

And not just by her and Mike, Alison suddenly realises. She’s seen it in everyone’s eyes earlier, and she can see it now in Thomas’s – a love that goes beyond blood, that comes with the unspoken promise that her child will never be lonely as long as he or she lives within these walls. Her baby will grow up with a real family and the best support system he or she could ask for, and the thought fills her with so much gratitude that an idea forms in her head, wild and spontaneous and just a little bit crazy. It might be her hormones acting up but when she sees the way Thomas is looking at her – no, not at her; at the new life growing inside of her – Alison stands no chance against the wave of emotions rising up within her in the face of so much unconditional love.

For all his own doubts about his place in this unconventional family of theirs, Thomas has clearly no such reservations regarding her child’s place in it. Alison just knows that he will do anything in his power to ensure that her baby will never feel the sharp pain of loneliness that is so familiar to him, and it is for that reason that she asks him, “Would you like to be the baby’s godfather?”

Thomas’s eyes widen in surprise. “Me? Are – are you sure? Because I’d understand if you –”

“Thomas,” Alison says gently. His mouth immediately snaps shut. “I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t sure.”

This time, he loses the fight against his emotions. His face crumbles – not with despair, but with beautiful, unabashed joy. He furiously wipes his eyes on his sleeves even as he smiles at her, happier than Alison has ever seen him.

“It would be my honour to aid and guard your child through life, Alison,” he says and finishes with an elegant bow.

“Thank you, Thomas,” Alison smiles. “That means a lot.” She gently pats the empty space on the bed next to her. It’s not quite a hug but it’s the best she can do. “Want to watch some telly with me? I could put on Call the Midwife. Might teach us both some things for what’s to come.”

Thomas pushes himself up from the chair, still smiling brighter than the sun, and joins her on the bed. “I’d love that.”

[ailendolin]

Title: Grace [3/10 on AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary:

“Mike and I are going to have a baby.” Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Warning: mention of child death (not Grace)

A/N: This will be the last chapter for this year since I've got my hands full with the WW fics and the 12 Days of Thanktival event. Enjoy the fluff until we veer off into angst territory in the new year!

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3

————

Grace

Chapter 3: The Arrival

To say Alison is excited to go home would be the understatement of the year. While it was certainly nice to have a few quiet days in the hospital to get used to being a mum, she’s more than ready to leave the place behind and go back home and see her family again.

Her bag is packed and little Grace all bundled up against the winter chill and ready to go by the time Mike knocks on the door – fifteen minutes early, just like she expected. She’s not the only one who’s been looking forward to this moment judging by the huge smile on Mike’s face as sticks his head around the door and asks, “How are my two beautiful girls on this fine December morning?”

Alison can’t help but smile as she greets him with a kiss. “One has been grumpy all night and not slept a wink. As a consequence, the other hasn’t gotten any sleep either and feels like a zombie.”

Mike makes a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat and presses a lingering kiss to her temple. “I’ll take her off your hands when we get home so you can get some rest, okay?”

Alison’s heart warms and her smile widens as she looks up at him, tired but unbelievably fond. “You’re the best. Love you.”

“Love you more,” Mike winks.

She watches silently as he puts Grace into the baby carrier. Their daughter looks so small in his hands and he handles her with such gentle care that Alison finds herself unable to tear her gaze away. It’s only when Grace is finally secured that she manages to take one final look around the room to make sure she hasn’t forgotten anything. She gives Mike a nod. “Let’s go.”

On their way out, she first waves goodbye to the nurses and then to the pale woman in the surgical gown who is standing at the end of the hallway and holding a tiny baby in her arms.

“Thank you for talking to me,” the woman whispers so quietly Alison can barely hear her. The smile tugging at her lips is small and frail, just like her little boy. “I wish you and your family all the best.”

Not knowing what to say, Alison gives her a grateful nod and mouths, “It was nice to meet you.”

She feels a pang of regret when she leaves the two of them behind – a thing that happens more and more often lately when she encounters ghosts outside of Button House. They don’t frighten her anymore or make her nervous. These days, they mostly make her sad.

“Was that the lady with the kid again?” Mike asks, seeing the faraway look in her eyes.

Alison nods. “Yeah. I just feel bad for her. Imagine being stuck in this place.”

Mike tightens his hold on her hand. “At least she has her baby with her.”

They both look down at little Grace, peacefully asleep in her carrier and so full of life. “Yeah.”

The drive back to Button House is uneventful but the closer they get the more restless and impatient Alison begins to feel. She’s missed the ghosts, missed stopping the time for the Captain and putting on music for Thomas in the morning, turning the pages in the books for Kitty and Humphrey and eating breakfast with Pat and Mary. The hospital was too quiet and too … orderly for her comfort. She can’t wait for the world to erupt into ghostly chaos around her again.

When they pull up in front of the house, her eyes almost instantly well up with tears. All the ghosts are waiting in a neat row outside the door – no doubt organised by Pat and the Captain – with the biggest smiles on their faces. Alison gives them a little wave through the windshield and Kitty and Robin enthusiastically wave back while the Captain offers her salute.

“They all here, then?” Mike asks as he’s shutting off the car.

“Yeah,” Alison says. “They even remembered to bring Humphrey.” The head in question was currently tucked under Mary’s arm and grinning just as brightly as everyone else. Alison shakes her head and smiles. “It’s really good to be home, Mike.”

The ghosts cheer loudly when they finally get out of the car and Alison laughs like she hasn’t in a very long time. In that one moment, surrounded by her whole family, her life feels perfect and complete in a way it never had before. She doesn’t think it can get any better until Grace opens her eyes at the noise and curiously gazes around her. Her little hands reach for the ghosts and Mike’s eyes follow them, a knowing look on his face. “Ah, so there they are.”

Alison loves how he’s just rolling with it, completely unperturbed by the fact that not only his wife has the ability to see ghosts but that his daughter can see them as well. He walks to the door, holds Grace up to eye level and proudly says to the air around him, “Everyone, meet our little girl, Grace.”

A chorus of, “Aw,” and “Welcome home, Grace!” rings out that he can’t hear. The ghosts crowd around him, each of them eager to get the first look at the baby.

“Don’t move, Mike,” Alison warns jokingly. “Grace is being haunted.”

In the end, Fanny is the first one in line to get a glimpse into the baby carrier. Her normally so serious façade instantly melts at the sight of Grace’s chubby face. “Welcome to Button House, young lady. It is good to finally have you here with us.”

Grace makes a gurgling sound that Alison chooses to interpret as her agreeing with Fanny.

Kitty is next, all bright eyes and huge smile. “Hello, Grace! I’m your Aunt Kitty! We’re going to have so much fun!”

Alison makes a mental note to take her aside over the next few days and explain that babies really don’t do much in their first few weeks of life. Better to minimise the disappointment before it has the chance to well and truly set in.

After Kitty, the next ones to welcome the baby home are Humphrey, Mary, Pat and Julian followed by Robin who ends his greeting with, “I will show you trick how to make lights go boom.”

“Oh no, you will not,” Alison tells him sternly, even going so far as to point a threatening finger at him.

Mike turns to her with a look of confusion. His curious, “What?” makes her miss Robin’s muttered, “When you older and she not looking.”

The Captain, next in line, clears his throat. He looks down at Grace for a long moment and just before he speaks, Alison sees his moustache twitching with the beginnings of a smile. “A fine young lady. I’m sure you’ll do our country proud.”

Alison dearly prays her daughter will never get it into her head to join the military. Not that she is against that per se. She just knows the Captain would be irritatingly smug about it and she’d never hear the end of it – something she can definitely do without, thank you very much.

The last one in line is Thomas. He seems almost shy when he finally steps forward. His eyes widen with tentative wonder when Grace gazes up at him. For one perfect moment, the world seems to be holding its breath as the two of them gaze at each other. Then Grace makes a sound that’s almost like giggle and Thomas huffs out a surprised laugh.

“Never have my eyes and ears perceived such beauty!” he exclaims and presses his hands over his heart. “Oh, what a blessed day!”

Grace’s tiny face scrunches up and for a second Alison thinks she’s going to cry. Instead, Grace suddenly starts wriggling around in her carrier, obviously beside herself with delight and not knowing how to express herself in any other way. Her arms reach up towards Thomas, her intention very clear.

“Oh, how I wish I could pick you up,” Thomas tells her wistfully. He leans a little closer and offers her one of his fingers. Grace’s tiny hand tries to close around it and, predictably, passes right through. Thomas shudders at the sensation but even in discomfort the smile never leaves his face. “Alas, I am unable to as you can see. We will have to make do with gazes and words, my dearest one.”

“Poor girl,” Julian mutters quietly.

Alison shoots him a glare but luckily, Thomas doesn’t seem to have heard him. He keeps on looking at Grace, completely besotted, and alternately pulls funny faces for her or makes soft cooing noises. Grace takes it all in with as much rapt attention and glee as a newborn can.

“Are they done yet?” Mike eventually asks. When Alison looks at him, he gives her an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. It’s just, she’s getting rather heavy. Who could have known a small person could way so much?”

Alison raises one of her eyebrows. “You’re talking to the woman who carried her for forty weeks, Mike. Without having the luxury of setting her down anywhere.”

“Right,” Mike says. By way of apology, he presses a quick kiss to her cheek. “Still, can we head inside now?”

Alison laughs. “Yeah. The ghosts can crowd her bed just as well as they can crowd you.”

“Thank god,” Mike mutters, shifting the baby carrier from one arm to the other as they head inside. The ghosts are right behind them, talking excitedly among themselves – or in Thomas’s case gazing dreamily after Grace.

The novelty will wear off soon enough, Alison thinks to herself as she takes Grace out of the baby carrier and pulls off her little jacket.

The cheesy Christmas romper Grace is wearing underneath promptly sends the ghosts into another round of fond exclamations.

[ailendolin]

Title: Grace [2/10 on AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first.

Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

A/N: Baby Cooper finally arrives! Thank you to everyone who's read and liked/reblogged this fic so far! Have some more fluff with this chapter and I hope you enjoy it as much as the first one!

Chapters: 1 - 2

————

Grace

Chapter 2: The Birth

“Mike!”

It’s the middle of the night. Of course it’s the middle of the night, Alison thinks as she blinks against the harsh light of the bathroom lamp that highlights the dark shadows under her tired eyes in an unflattering way.

There’s no reaction from the bedroom.

“Mike, get up!” she shouts again, a hint of urgency creeping into her tone. “My water broke!”

She hears a choked off sound followed by a dull thud that makes her wince. A second later, Mike pokes his head around the bathroom door, panic written all over his face. “You’re what did what now?”

Alison gives him an unimpressed look. “Did you just fall out of bed?”

Mike blinks at her for a moment, thrown off guard. “Uh … maybe?”

With a fond roll of her eyes, Alison turns back to washing her hands. “My water broke. Get the bag. We need to go to the hospital.”

As Mike scrambles to get dressed, she takes a moment to herself and lets the situation sink in. In just a few hours, she will hold a baby in her arms – her baby. She will be the mother of a tiny, perfect human being. Alison shakes her head, feeling a little stunned. After all these months of waiting it seems surreal that the moment is finally here.

It definitely is, though, Alison thinks to herself as she feels another contraction starting and grips the sink in front of her to steady herself. She can’t be sure but it feels like the intervals between the contraction are getting shorter – not short enough to make her panic but short enough for her to know that it’s time to get going.

She dresses in something warm and comfortable that she set aside for this exact moment and sneaks a glance out of the window when Mike hands her her coat. The grounds are shrouded in thick darkness but as far as she can tell the heavy snowfall the weather forecast predicted last night hasn’t set in yet.

Thank god, Alison thinks in relief. The last thing they need right now is inaccessible roads.

She follows Mike to the stairs but stops halfway down when she spots the ghosts, all of them, even Humphrey, standing at the bottom, silently gazing up at her with wide-eyed, nervous worry. Kitty is the only one who doesn’t seem to be anxious. The smile on her face is as bright as ever and she’s bouncing on the balls of her feet with barely concealed excitement when she asks, “Is the baby coming?”

“Not right now I hope,” Alison mutters and continues down the stairs. Feeling another contraction coming, she stops again to support herself on the wall and breathes in and out just as the midwife taught her. Mike hovers helplessly by her side as if he, just like Kitty, expects her to give birth right then and there on their staircase. Alison would laugh at the absurdity of it all if she wasn’t so busy breathing through the pain.

When the contraction finally passes, she closes her eyes in relief.

“I’m fine,” she says before Mike or the ghosts can ask her if she’s all right. She lets Mike help her down the last few steps of the stairs and gestures for him to wait a moment so she can address the ghosts. “Alright guys, we’re going to the hospital now. Mike will give you an update once the baby is born.”

The Captain stands to attention before her, his back straight and his face more serious than she’s ever seen it.

“Do not worry about a thing, Alison. We will hold down the fort while you two are away.” He clears his throat before he adds, a little more softly, “And we will eagerly await your return.”

Touched, Alison smiles at him before she gives them all a little wave goodbye. She isn’t surprised at all when Thomas follows her and Mike out to the car. They’ve grown closer these last few months, ever since she asked him to become her baby’s godfather, and she knows he’s been fretting about this moment for weeks now. He tried to be subtle about it but well, he’s still Thomas and can’t really help but wear his heart on his sleeve – something Alison doesn’t mind at all now that it’s no longer beating for her.

He waits until she’s buckled in before he sticks his head through the window and says, “I know childbirth is not as dangerous as it was 200 years ago but – please be safe, Alison. Come back to us.” He glances down at her belly and bites his lip. “Both of you.”

“We will,” Alison promises him softly even though she knows that there’s always a chance of something going wrong. “See you in a few days, Thomas.”

Thomas nods and, taking a deep breath, steps away from the car and lets her go. “Goodbye, Alison.”

He watches the car until the night swallows its lights.

Roughly ten hours of labour later, Alison is holding a beautiful baby girl in her arms, all wrinkly and scrunched up and a little bit bloody but perfect in every way as she cries her heart out for the first time in her very young life. She looks up at Mike, exhausted but happier than she’s ever been, and finds herself smiling through her tears when she sees him gazing down at their daughter with a look of utter wonder and disbelief on his face.

The only thing missing from this perfect moment are the ghosts.

The next few hours are filled with medical tests for both her and the baby, taking a thousand pictures, baby’s first meal and a dozen phone calls to friends and family Alison gladly lets Mike take charge of. They fly by so fast that by the time she’s finally transferred to a room it’s already noon and she’s so tired she could sleep for a week. Mike doesn’t fare much better. He tries his best to hide his exhaustion and stay awake so he won’t miss a single second with his daughter but when Alison catches him nodding off, still with that dazed smile on his face she knows won’t wear off for days, she decides to shoo him out of the room. He still has to drive home, after all, and she really doesn’t want him to end up in a ditch somewhere.

“We’ll still be here tomorrow,” she says with a soft smile. “Go home, get some sleep and–“

“–don’t forget to let the ghosts call,” he finishes around a yawn, giving her the thumbs up. “Yeah, I know.”

Alison doesn’t think she’s ever loved him more than in that moment.

He bends down to kiss first her and then their little girl on the forehead before he leaves with the happiest and goofiest grin on his face that Alison has ever seen. Heart overflowing with love, she leans down to whisper to her sleeping daughter, “Your daddy is the best.”

She gets about an hour of blissful rest before her phone lights up with an incoming video call.

“I’m back home,” Mike says as if Alison can’t tell by the crackling fireplace in the background and the ghosts hovering behind him, trying to get a look at her on the small screen. “And I already told the ghosts everything went well – at least I think I did. Are they here?”

Alison looks at the dearly beloved faces he can’t see and feels her eyes well up. “Yeah, they are. Can you put the phone on the table so they can all see it?”

Mike does as instructed and steps back to give the ghosts a little more room. They gather on the sofa, each of them eager to see the newest addition to their unconventional family.

“Is it truly a girl?” Kitty asks, leaning forward. “Because Mike said it was a girl and I would love to have a little niece!”

“It is,” Alison confirms with a smile. She readjusts her phone so they can see her daughter resting peacefully in her arm. “Everyone, meet Grace Katherine Cooper.”

Kitty’s eyes grow wide.

“Oh my, she has my name!” she breathes, looking close to tears.

Alison nods, unable to contain her grin. “Surprise!”

“Look at her fingers,” Robin says softly, pointing at the phone before he turns to Julian. “So tiny.”

Grace gives a little yawn and scrunches up her nose. Alison laughs as everyone positively melts at the sight, Mike included.

“She is adorable, Alison,” Pat smiles. “Well done.”

“Thanks, Pat,” Alison says, gazing down at her daughter with endless love. “I can’t wait to bring her home.”

“And we can’t wait to meet her,” Fanny says. “She will bring much joy to this old and noble house.”

Thomas nods softly, already completely enamoured. “Indeed she will.”

Grace opens her eyes at that and blinks up at the phone, looking surprisingly alert. Alison laughs. “I think she likes the sound of your voice, Thomas.”

She realises what she just said at the same moment that Mary says knowingly, “Ah yes, she be seeing us.”

“Oh,” Alison whispers a little dumbstruck as she stares down at her daughter.

Mike’s face appears back on the screen. “Oh? What oh? Did something happen?”

Alison shakes her head. “No. I just … I think Grace can see the ghosts. I totally forgot that babies can do that sometimes.”

“Oh,” Mike echoes faintly as the room around him erupts into excited chatter as the ghosts start waving at the camera, all of them eager to personally welcome little Grace Cooper to the family.

[ailendolin]

Grace - Chapter 6/10

Title: Grace [AO3]

Characters: Thomas, Alison, Mike, Baby Cooper, the Ghosts, the Plague Ghosts

Summary: “Mike and I are going to have a baby.”

Baby Cooper’s arrival at Button Houses changes many things, and all for the better - at least at first. Or as Mary once said: babies can see ghosts sometimes but usually only up until they can walk.

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

————

Grace

Chapter 6: The Change

The next morning, Alison trudges bleary-eyed after Mike into the kitchen. Her head is pounding from lack of sleep and the small breakdown she had in the hallway the night before, so when Mike hands her glass of cool water and gently pushes a painkiller in her direction she gives him a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

It’s Saturday and they have a ton of things to do around the house, like finally putting up the Christmas decorations, but all Alison wants to do is crawl back into bed, pull the blanket over her head and pretend her life doesn’t feel so horribly wrong right now. On any other day, she would probably welcome the lack of ghosts in the kitchen that causes the silence around her. Today, she misses the chaotic morning chatter she so often tries to ignore with every fibre of her being.

Mike lightly touches her arm. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Alison chokes out but before she can say more, Pat and Julian phase through the wall.

Her face lights up immediately and Mike follows her gaze to where to him is nothing but empty air. “They here?”

Alison nods, still smiling. “Yes. Well, two of them are. The rest is–”

“–still with Thomas,” Pat finishes with a glance at his shoes.

“Yeah,” Alison sighs.

She tells Mike as much and doesn’t think about what she’s saying until Grace’s eyes grow wide with hope at the mention of Thomas’s name.

“Oh no,” Alison whispers, feeling awful. “Thomas – Thomas is not here, sweetheart. Pat and Julian are.”

She expects Grace’s eyes to well up with tears as they always seem to do these days when she is reminded of who she’s missing but to her surprise her daughter eagerly looks around the room. “Where?”

Alison thought her heart couldn’t break any more than it already had but in that moment she feels it shatter completely. She’d been so worried about Thomas that she somehow forgot – or perhaps pushed away – the fact that he isn’t the only one Grace has lost nor the only one who has lost her. This grief is felt by all of them, and nowhere is it more obvious than right here, right now as she looks at Pat and Julian and sees their eyes cloud with pain when Grace’s gaze passes through them without any recognition whatsoever. Pat’s shoulders drop and Julian’s fingers twitch as if he’s itching to reach out to Grace and make contact in the only way he can now.

Wait a minute, Alison thinks.

“Touch her.” Julian stares at her as if she’s lost her mind but Alison doesn’t let that deter her. “Boop her on the nose. Show her you’re here.”

“Alison,” Julian begins with a painful grimace. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Perhaps not, Allison concedes. Perhaps it’s an awful idea that will make this terrible situation even worse. But they have to try, don’t they? For Grace, and for the off-chance that it’ll help them all regain a semblance of normalcy.

“Please, Julian,” she begs.

“Go on, mate,” Pat encourages him quietly. “Make her laugh like you did before.”

Julian still looks torn and Alison’s beginning to think he’s not going to do it. But then Grace holds out her little arms to the empty air in front of her and calls his name, and Julian’s resolve crumbles. He slowly steps up to the high seat and reaches out with one shaking finger. Alison holds her breath as he touches Grace’s nose. There’s a brief moment of confusion before her daughter’s face lights up in the most beautiful way and she breaks out into a huge, happy grin. For the first time in days, her laughter fills the house as she claps her hands excitedly and babbles Julian’s name.

“Oh,” Mike whispers, enraptured by the sight. He looks up at the air next to Grace. “Do it again.”

Julian complies, causing Grace to shriek in delight. His face melts and he has to clear his throat before he says softly, “There’s that beautiful smile, little one.”

Something eases in Alison’s chest, then, because not everything is lost, not completely. Grace may no longer be able to see the ghosts but she can still feel Julian’s touch, can still smell the smoke Mary leaves in her wake and see the lights flicker when Robin messes with them. It’s not the same, and not nearly enough, but it’s something and Alison is beyond grateful for that.

“Well done, mate,” Pat says quietly, a note of wistfulness colouring his words as he smiles at Grace.

Julian freezes, and when he glances over his shoulder at Pat he looks stricken.

“It’s not fair though, is it?” he asks, staring down at his hands. “That I can still interact with her while you can’t. While Thomas can’t. It’s not fair.”

He pulls away from Grace, blinking harshly. Pat offers him a sad smile. “Nothing in life has ever been fair, Julian, or in death, for that matter. I obviously can’t speak for the others but I for one am glad Grace has still got you.”

Alison nods softly. “Yeah, me too. I mean, look at her! This is the first time she’s smiled since she stopped seeing you all.” She briefly looks over at her daughter who is trying to boop Mike’s nose with her own fingers now before she meet Julian’s eyes once more. “Thank you for that, Julian. Thank you so much.”

Julian is quiet for a very long moment. He watches Grace giggle when her fingers finally meet their target and then laugh when Mike pretends to steal her nose. His lips are twitching with the beginning of a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I … I think I’ll go sit with Thomas for a while,” he says softly and leaves the room without another word.

Alison’s face falls. She turns to Pat, suddenly worried. “Was I wrong to ask him to do that?”

Pat shakes his head. “No. Thomas just isn’t the only one who needs time.”

“Yeah,” Alison sighs. “How is he, by the way?”

Pat shrugs, a helpless, defeated gesture. “Quiet. Hasn’t said a word at all since – well, you know. Robin’s with him right now, keeping him company.” He takes off his glasses and wipes a tired hand over his eyes. Then, without warning, his face crumbles. “I find myself wishing he would launch into one of his terrible poems, you know? Or just start screaming or raging or – or crying. Anything but this blasted silence! I hate seeing him like this, Alison.”

He hangs his head and Alison makes an aborted movement towards him before she remembers she can’t touch him.

“We need to be patient and give him time,” she says, remembering what Robin told her. “Is there anything I can do for you and the others in the meantime?”

Pat sniffs and puts his glasses back on his nose. “Maybe put on some Friends? I don’t think we have the stomach for Food Club today.”

Alison smiles at him. “I’ll be up after breakfast.”

“Thank you, Alison.”

He leaves through the nearest wall and Alison turns back to her family to find Grace’s breakfast bowl almost half empty. Mike is doing the plane move with the spoon and she keeps giggling between bites like she hasn’t done in days but not even her laughter can fill the unnatural silence that has settled over the rest of the house once more.

————

Grace is noticeably happier for the rest of the day. It’s almost as if her interaction with Julian that morning has opened her eyes and made her realise that the ghosts haven’t actually gone away and left her. At least that’s what Mike’s saying when they eat lunch.

“She’s not even one, Mike,” Alison feels the need to point out.

Mike shrugs. “So? She will be in two days.”

Alison takes a deep, calming breath before she mutters, “So not the point I was making.”

The point in question is that Grace is still a toddler. She may be able to connect the nose booping that morning to Julian but there’s no way she can understand the concept of ghosts – or so Alison thinks. It only takes Grace a few hours to proof her wrong.

They’re in the living room, sitting on the floor and playing with a set of brightly coloured blocks when the Captain walks in with a serious look on his face.

“Alison,” he addresses her formally, standing to attention. “If you would please be so kind as to change the disc for us.”

Alison looks up at him and gives him a smile. “Sure Cap, one sec.”

She means to help Grace finish her little tower first but Grace isn’t looking at the blocks anymore. Instead, she’s staring at the empty air, just a little to the left of where the Captain is standing and cocks her head to the side, the gears in her young head quite obviously turning.

“What’s she doing?” Mike whispers.

Alison shakes her head. “I have no idea.”

The Captain clears his throat and shifts on the spot when suddenly, Grace covers her eyes with her hands, waits a second and then removes her hands with a giggly, “Boo!”

“Good lord,” the Captain chokes out just as Mike breathes, “Is she playing peek-a-boo? With … the Captain?”

Completely stunned, Alison nods. “Yeah, I … I think so.”

Grace does it again, only this time she points a finger at the spot where she thinks the Captain is standing and says his name. She is telling them, in her own toddler way, that she knows the Captain is there even if she can’t see him. To her, he’s simply hiding.

Alison has to admit she has seriously misjudged her daughter. She shares a meaningful look with Mike before she smiles at Grace and says, “That’s right, Grace! The Captain is invisible!”

She makes it sound like the most incredible thing in the world and it works because a moment later Grace’s face lights up and she starts nodding in-between her giggles.

“Isn’t that cool?” Mike asks with a huge grin on his face. Grace claps her hands and he and Alison join in at once, trying to make this moment as positive as possible for her.

The Captain, however, stands frozen to the spot. His fingers are so tightly wrapped around his swagger stick that his knuckles are beginning to turn white. “What … what is going on?”

Alison looks up at him, still smiling. “She’s happy you’re here, Cap.”

“But – she can’t see me,” he says.

“No,” Alison agrees and looks down at Grace who’s once again pointing a finger in the vague direction of the Captain. “But I can and Grace knows that. She just saw me talking to you and for her that means you must be here, even if she can’t see you. And that’s enough.”

The Captain hums in understanding. He crouches down in front of Grace, winces as his knees crack and says, “We will never abandon you, Grace Cooper. You have my word on that.”

Alison’s heart warms and she gently taps Grace’s shoulder to get her attention. “Cap wants you to know that he’ll always be here for you. Isn’t that great?”

Grace’s face breaks out into a smile and she starts babbling happily, her unintelligible attempts at speech intersected with the Captain’s title. There’s a look of pure adoration on the Captain’s face as he stares at her, mingled with what Alison can only describe as peacefulness. She has no illusions that this little moment will fix everything but it’s clear it has fixed something, for both Grace and the Captain, just like this morning has made a difference for Julian. It’s a first glimpse into what their new normalcy could be like, and even though Alison knows it will never make up for what they’ve all lost, it still gives her hope for the future.

————

It’s that thought Alison clings to later when it’s time for Storytime again and Grace refuses to let herself be consoled. She struggles first in Alison’s arms and then in Mike’s when they try to get her to settle down, using all the force her tiny body can muster to push them away. Alison tries to tell her Thomas is still there by doing peek-a-boo, but hearing Thomas’s name only makes Grace cry harder.

In the end, Alison and Mike admit defeat and simply hold her as she cries.

“I thought this would go better tonight,” Alison murmurs once Grace has finally hiccupped herself to sleep. “She was doing so well earlier.”

Mike nudges her with his shoulder, careful not to wake up their sleeping daughter in the process.

“She was,” he says, “but Thomas is different. We’ve always known that.”

“Yeah,” Alison sighs. “I just wish–“

“Hey,” Mike says softly. “It will get better. She just needs a little more time.”

Alison nods even though she’s tired of hearing that. She leans her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes. “I know.”

“Is he still in his room?” Mike asks after a moment.

“As far as I know,” Alison says. “You should have seen them yesterday, Mike. They were all there, watching over him while he slept. I think they took turns today as well so he wouldn’t be alone.”

She feels his lips against her hair. “Do you want to go check up on him?”

Alison hesitates. She wants to, so badly, but at the same time she doesn’t want to intrude. If Thomas is not ready to see her yet …

“Robin said I should wait until Thomas comes to me.”

Mike ponders that. “You want to see him, though?”

“Yes,” Alison whispers, almost shamefully. “I do.”

“Then go,” Mike encourages her. “It’s late. He’s probably asleep and won’t even know you’re there. No harm done.”

Alison considers it. On the one hand, she really doesn’t want to invade Thomas’s privacy but on the other she knows she won’t get any rest until she’s at least seen him and reassured herself he hasn’t disappeared again. And Mike’s right: he probably won’t even notice her.

“I’ll be right back,” she murmurs and carefully extracts herself from Mike’s arm. Grace, bless her, sniffs in her sleep but doesn’t wake up.

As quietly as she can, Alison makes her way to Thomas’s room. The house is silent around her – it usually is this time of night but it still feels different, almost as if its very foundations are holding their breath. When she reaches Thomas’s room, she’s not surprised to find him not alone. Julian is leaning against the headboard, sitting in the same place Fanny had the night before. His eyes are closed and his chest rises and falls in an even rhythm. Thomas is lying next to him with his fingers entangled in Julian’s shirt tails, every now and then twitching in his sleep. When one of the floorboards quietly creaks under Alison’s feet, Robin pokes up his head from behind him.

“Sorry,” Alison whispers guiltily.

Thomas, thank god, remains asleep – perhaps because one of Robin’s hands is once again gently covering his ear. Robin squints at him in the darkness and only relaxes once he’s sure Thomas’s sleep remains untroubled. He looks up at Alison. “Can’t sleep?”

Alison bites her lip and shrugs. “Just needed to see him.”

Robin nods. “Is okay. I get it.”

He glances back down at Thomas and so does Alison. Lying there between Robin and Julian, he looks awfully small, and Alison has to resist the urge to walk into the room and pull the blanket over his thin frame even though she knows how useless that would be. His face is smoothed out in sleep, making him look younger than he truly is but not even his ghostly powers can hide the spots of colour high on his cheeks or the redness around his eyes.

He’s cried himself to sleep, Alison thinks. Just like Grace.

And just like her, he’s not alone.

It’s that thought that allows Alison to take a deep, steadying breath and offer Robin a small smile. “Thank you.”

She sees his eyes soften in the dark. “He in good hands.”

“Yeah,” Alison whispers. “The very best.”

Robin lowers his head and shifts around a little to get comfortable. Alison takes that as her cue to go and make her way back to Mike and Grace. Not long after she leaves, Thomas starts to frown in his sleep. When soft sounds of distress begin to fill the nightly quiet, Julian places one of his hands on his head and gently pets the dark curls until Thomas settles down again.

“Good,” Robin mumbles without opening his eyes.

Julian scoffs fondly. “Just don’t tell the others.”

He keeps up the gentle touches well into the night, and a few doors away, Alison finally manages to get some rest.