Work Text:
“Charlie,” Montagu mused as he climbed a rickety ladder into the dusty attic of Chomondeley’s otherwise spotless flat. “I didn’t think you the type to leave such a mess”.
Charles’ attic looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years, and the thick layer of dust coating the various boxes seemed to confirm Montagu’s suspicions. It was a rather small space, but still managed to be entirely empty with the exception of a few small boxes placed right next to the ladder, with the area beyond them entirely undisturbed. Montagu couldn’t resist the urge to draw a small smiley face in the dust.
“I’ve got allergies, Monty. I tried to clean it out before but couldn’t be in there for more than a couple minutes without coughing,” called Charles’ voice from the base of the ladder.
“Worry not, my genius, that is what I’m here for,” Montagu called out enthusiastically, reaching towards the first box. He was quite surprised at its weight, stumbling a bit on the rung he was perched upon. Charles quickly tightened his grip on the ladder as if it would somehow help the situation.
“Monty?” he worriedly exclaimed.
“Everything’s alright! Just… what do you have in here?” Montagu said, clearly straining a bit before lifting the heavy box out of the attic and handing it to Charles.
“Old books from when I was a kid,” he said, peering inside before placing it on the floor next to them. The action caused a small cloud of dust to rise up, making Charles sneeze.
The two continued in this manner until all the boxes had been lowered from the attic onto the spotless carpet that decorated the floor of Charles’ flat. Montagu joined his friend on the ground with a triumphant thump.
Charles had already begun putting away the boxes’ contents, neatly organizing them into piles sorted by the room they would be homed in as well as a pile of things to throw out. On some occasions, he would pause on an item and tell Montagu about how “This book was one of my first introductions to newts,” or “this was the news article from when I discovered a new breed of shrew!” which Montagu earnestly listened to.
Montagu could not be bothered with sorting–he didn’t live there after all, how was he supposed to know where anything went–quite pointedly ignoring Charles’ comments regarding how easily Montagu was able to find whatever he needed on any other occasion. He instead opted to reach into the boxes and see what he could get his hands on. He was utterly delighted to find a family photo containing a very young Charles with his mother and siblings, in which Charles looked rather grumpy. The little Charlie could’ve been no older than seven at the time, and seemed wholly uninterested in the camera, something out of frame clearly grabbing his attention instead.
“I had no idea you had so many siblings, Charlie!” Montagu said, looking at the photo. Charles peeked over his shoulder to see what he was looking at.
“Ah, yes, well they were all much older than me, if you couldn’t tell. Caroline was the closest to me, but she was still born four years before,” he replied, pointing to the girl directly to his left.
What followed was Charles trying to introduce his family to Montagu while constantly being interrupted with questions (“Yes, Hilda is the oldest, and yes, she is different from my mother, they just have the same name. No, that is not my dad, but yes, they were both named Richard. No, that one’s Victoria–I suppose like the crosses. No, that one is me!”) until Montagu was satisfied with his understanding of the Cholmondeley family. With Monty seemingly appeased, Charles turned back to his work of sorting the boxes, as Montagu continued snooping through Charles’ old things.
As he dug through the many, many old journals, he came across a small wooden box with a cute red ribbon. Intrigued, Montagu opened it to find a small model plane with a note that read “Happy 14th birthday Charles, from one pilot to another. -Victoria” in neat cursive. “What’s this?” Montagu said, turning to Charles. He couldn’t help but notice how his eyes lit up from behind his glasses the way they did when he was telling his peers facts about newts.
“This was my birthday present from Victoria! She was the first woman in South Australia to get a pilot’s license, you know. She was one of my biggest inspirations when I was little,” Charles said eagerly, delicately picking up the decades old toy. He lifted the corner of his shirt to carefully wipe off the dust that had settled on its wings after years in storage, and gave the miniature propeller a small spin. “This is a model of the Hawker Hart…” he began, delving into a monologue about how the adoption of the Rolls Royce F.XIB engine reduced the engine weight by around 60 pounds, the plane’s blistering speeds, and even a tale about a local bird of prey managing to take one down during a flight to India. Montagu was content to just listen to the sound of his voice, only speaking up when he heard something he was familiar with. Conversations like this had become a sort of ritual for them, and were some of the rare occasions when Montagu was actually quiet.
“I always forget you wanted to be a pilot, Charlie,” Montagu said, turning his attention to the remaining boxes.
“Right,” Charles responded quietly, still running his fingers over the small fighter plane in his hands. “I do too, sometimes.”
Noticing an uncharacteristic stillness in his coworker, Montagu turned around to go check on him. “Everything alright, my little genius?” he said, placing a hand on his shoulder. He was alarmed to see that everything was not alright, as he quickly noticed a tearful glisten covering Charles’ eyes. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he quickly replied, averting his gaze as he clutched the plane tighter. He took a deep breath, knowing Montagu wouldn’t let it go. “It’s just… it was always my dream to be a pilot. It was such an important part of my life for so long, and now it’s practically irrelevant.”
“Well, Charlie, as I’ve told you before, that life was simply not meant for men like us. We were made to be the brains behind these operations, to be leaders,” Montagu said with flair in an attempt to make the concept as enticing as possible, just as he had the moment before they’d began working on Mincemeat together.
“I sometimes wish I wasn’t, though,” Charles said, taking a seat on a nearby couch. He took another deep breath. Montagu joined him.
“Well, Charlie, I think you’re quite good at your job. It suits you very well,” he teased, desperately trying to diffuse the situation with humour.
“That’s not what I mean,” Charlie said, getting frustrated. “That’s part of the problem, if anything. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a… genius… or however you put it. I wish my talents weren’t suited for this. If I was born with a good brain, I could’ve just as easily been born with other qualities that would’ve made me a better soldier, couldn’t I?”
“Quite frankly, I couldn’t picture you as a soldier,” Montagu chuckled to himself.
“That’s exactly the problem!” Charles exclaimed. Montagu immediately realized he had messed up, and a silence fell over the two as he searched for something to say, but came up empty for once.
“I just mean… it was my dream. Sure, I had plenty of other things I liked doing, but I guess it gave me some sort of direction in life. A purpose. I even had a sister who had fought incredibly hard to make it happen for her, and I looked up to her so much. I love my sister; she worked hard for everything she’s done and deserves it more than anyone, but I just wish I could’ve been born like her and done it too. Then, to find out that no matter what I did, no matter how hard I worked, I could never make it happen–where do you even go from there? I was suddenly left with nothing. No idea where my life would take me, so I just focused on the other things I liked. I’m not saying I hate my job or anything–far from it–but every time I look up and have to see a plane in the air, I can’t help but wish I was the one flying it. Why them? Why not me?” Charles softly confessed.
Montagu shifted uncomfortably, not entirely willing to be vulnerable with him, and overall feeling very awkward about the conversation as he wondered whether or not to break the silence.
Luckily, Charles gave him an opening. “Haven’t you ever wondered what your life could’ve been like if you’d been allowed to be a yachtsman like you planned? You didn’t want to end up in MI5 any more than I did.”
“I… I suppose I understand what you mean,” Montagu said, squeezing the words out as if they’d kill him. This was Charlie, though, and Montagu knew he could trust him, and maybe let his guard down for once. “I was pretty angry when I got reassigned. I love being out on the ocean, and I didn’t realise how much I’d miss out on from being away for so long. I felt like a proper fool when we dropped the body off at the docks, you know,” Montagu said with an embarrassed laugh. Charles looked up in surprise, not expecting him to actually open up.
“At least now,” Montagu continued, “I just try to spend as much time sailing on my own as I can. I don’t need to do it all the time to be happy, like I thought I might. And I must say, I do quite enjoy getting to boss people around as a career,” he said, attempting to bring the mood back up. It seemed to backfire spectacularly as Charles went quiet and shifted his gaze back towards the ground.
“I guess that’s where we’re different, Monty. You can just go sailing whenever you miss it, but I’ll never get to fly. It’s something that’s not even my fault, either. I was just born with bad vision, and that’s that. There’s nothing I can ever do to change that,” he said. He set the model plane down and stared at it before feeling Montagu’s fingers wrap around his own.
“Are you happy, Charlie?” Montagu asked.
Charles turned to look at him. “I think so. Happy enough, I mean. But how do you really define happiness? Is it success? Then in that case, how do you define success? Really, there’s so many factors involv–”
“Charlie,” Montagu said, cutting him off. “On a day to day basis. Are you generally content?”
Charles stopped to think about it. Maybe he hadn’t ever achieved his dream, and he never would, but when he thought about the people he was surrounded with that cared for and supported him, he certainly couldn’t say he was unsatisfied. His own hand closed around Montagu’s, and he nodded.
A rare, genuine smile crossed Montagu’s face. “Then, Charlie, it might be that you never achieve your dream. But you are good at what you do, and if we only focus on how our lives could’ve turned out instead of how they did, we’ll never be satisfied. We only get one life, so it’s only natural to feel we’ve wasted some of it, but that uncertainty is part of what makes it so meaningful. After all, if you had been a pilot, we might’ve never crossed paths, and what would you ever do without me?”
Charles couldn’t help but smile a bit. “Well, I can think of a lot of things…”
“No what-ifs!” Montagu scolded. “Remember, live in the present. It’s okay to feel sad that things didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to, but you had to sacrifice that version of yourself to become who you are today. And I, for one, quite like this version of Charlie.”
Charles was silent for a second, letting Montagu’s words sink in. Montagu began to panic ever so slightly, wondering if he’d said something wrong, though his worries were quickly washed away as Charles pulled him into a warm embrace.
“Thank you, Monty,” he whispered.
“It’s what I’m here for, my little genius,” Montagu replied with a smile as the two released each other. “Now, let’s finish organizing these boxes, alright?”
“Alright,” Charles replied.
The two stood up and continued their work, settling back into their comfortable routine from earlier. The flat was soon filled with small giggles and a couple of dust-induced sneezes–even a couple from Montagu–as the pair (but mostly Charles) finished organizing.
The light streaming through the windows began to dim as the sun slowly started to dip below the horizon. The sunset cast beautiful orange and pink hues through the windows onto Montagu’s face as he scoured the boxes for anything of interest to him, and Charles couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face.
Maybe being born to lead isn’t so bad, after all.