Work Text:
He’s on a train, that much he’s sure of.
He’s in what must be the dining car, sitting at one of the tables. He sighs deep, feeling something old and half forgotten settle in him. He hasn’t been on a train like this since he came back from the war. His eyes dart across the table to the other person sitting with him. It’s Snafu, dressed in his uniform and looking just the way he did the last time Eugene saw him. Snafu’s turned away from the window, looking off at something in the distance and fixing his tie, like he’s getting ready for some special occasion. The way the sunlight hits him, lighting up only half of him and leaving the rest in darkness, is mesmerizing.
Snafu cuts an eye across at him, and smirks. “Can’t believe they wanted to put me in my dress blues,” he says. He looks back at his invisible mirror and undoes his tie, then redoes it. “Think this the only time I ever wore ‘em.” When he finally gets the tie situated the way he wants it, he smooths it down and gives himself a final look-over. His shoulders slump a bit. There’s a wistfulness in his eyes, and Eugene wants to say, what are you looking like that for, you’re the one who left. Instead, he stays quiet.
“If I said I was sorry, would you even believe me?” Snafu asks. He still doesn’t face Eugene.
The train’s whistle blows loud but indistinct, like the sound’s traveling through water. Snafu turns then, to look out the window. “Well, you’ll have to yell at me later. Your stop’s coming up.”
Eugene peers out the window, but all he can see is blurry, dark shapes whirring by against a sea of blinding white. He turns back to Snafu, only to find the man staring right at him.
“Guess you’re the one who’ll be leavin’ this time,” Snafu says. “Only fair, right?” Eugene doesn’t think he’s ever seen Snafu smile so brightly before, but just as he’s about to say so, everything ends.
He’s in his bedroom, that much he’s mostly sure about. He’ll have to wake up a little more to be certain.
He wonders what’s clutched in his hand, why he went to sleep holding a flyer, until he gets a better look at it. In the dimness of his room, he’s met with a portrait of Snafu, not in his dress blues, but the uniform he’d been wearing when they all came home. He remembers going to the funeral earlier in the day, remembers taking the obituary from the kind woman passing them out at the church entrance. He remembers little else of the day.
The clock on his night-table reads 5:30 AM. He needs to be up for work by 7, and he can’t find it in himself to go back to sleep.