What are men to rocks and mountains

The library incident

He finds Alison there, behind one of those laptops. She doesn't notice him in the doorway, so he clears his throat politely. She jumps and looks up at him. But then laughs. "Oh, Lieutenant. Havers! You startled me!" She says with a smile, closing her laptop. She'd been researching anything she could on mysterious legends from the second world war, hoping that maybe she'd could find something on the sudden disappearance of a Lieutenant. She hadn't found anything relevant though, just a bunch of ghost hunter pages, which she knew from experience were probably fakes. She saw the Lieutenant shift on his feet, his posture tense.

"Apologies. And please, just call me William."
"Okay William, did you finish your talk with The Captain?" She asked.
"Yes, it was... quite enlightening." He said, trying to not get into specifics yet. He would love to go into detail, but he wanted to go to bed more. He'd probably have more than enough time to tell her everything about it. Even though Alison was dying- no pun intended, to know more about the situation, she bit her tongue.
"You must have had a long day, William. How are you holding up?" She asked. The Lieutenant- William looked tired. She probably would be too, she couldn't imagine how exhausting a day like this must have been for him.

"Well, all things considered. I wanted to thank you Mrs. Cooper." He said.
"I'll admit that it hasn't been my idea of a fun day by any stretch of the imagination, but if you hadn't shown me kindness and been as welcoming as you had, I'm sure it would have been even worse."

"Oh no it's no problem. Besides, you're not the only strange person who has nowhere else to go in this house. What's one more person? And you're a friend of the Captain, so I'm sure you're a great guy. And what did I tell you about calling me Mrs. Cooper?" She said the last part in a faux-stern way, pointing a teasing finger at him, which made him relax a bit. A small smile appeared on his face, his cheeks colouring a bit red against his pale skin at the mention of The Captain.

"Oh God, I totally forgot to show you around!" She gasped suddenly, jumping up from her chair. Havers shook his head.
"No, that's quite all right! The Captain has graciously reacquainted me with the house. He even helped me pick a room. My old room was still unoccupied." He replied with a fond smile.
"Oh, wonderful! Which one did you pick? Not one of the downstairs rooms right? They aren't isolated as well as the other ones I'm afraid, so they get really cold at night."
"No, it's upstairs, at the end of the hallway in the East wing." He replied. Alison knew immediately: Next to Cap's room. She supposed that would make sense, to stick by the person you knew the best. Especially when everything else you knew is gone. It also suddenly made much more sense as to why the Captain had always been so concerned with the room. On the one or two occasions where she and Mike had discussed renovating it, he'd protested it louder than anything else he'd ever protest over. So they'd mostly left it untouched.

"I'll head upstairs then, thank you again, Alison. Truly." He said again.
"It's no trouble William. Rest up, I'll see you tomorrow. And I'll promise we can figure this whole thing out. Even if we can't do anything, we can still maybe find the cause." She replied.
"Thanks Alison, Goodnight." The Captain replied, turning back into the shadows of the hallway. She heard him walk down the hall and disappear up the stairs. She sighed, sitting back down behind her laptop again. There was no way she'd be able to sleep tonight anyway, so she might as well make the most of it by doing some more research. Even if she didn't make any mysterious discoveries, at least she would be a bit more wise on the events of the war. Maybe that would help William feel a bit more at home.

The next morning, William woke up in a soft and familiar bed. For a moment he was incredibly confused- but then he remembered the events of the previous day. He checked his wristwatch, that he hadn't even bothered to take off the night before. He'd shrugged off his coat, shoes and Sam Browne belt before crashing into bed and basically falling into a coma from utter exhaustion. His sleep was dreamless, and when he woke up he felt groggy as he hadn't felt in ages. His watch told him it was almost 2 in the afternoon. He'd slept for nearly 14 hours. He nearly fell over from shock. How had nobody woken him up yet? On the rare occasion he'd overslept the Captain had shown no mercy. He was nothing if not a punctual man. He managed to heave himself out of bed, pausing as his eyes landed onto a mirror at the other side of the room. He looked absolutely horrible. His hair was messy, and despite the many hours of sleep he still had dark circles under his eyes.