Never Shall Be Slaves, part two
May. 22nd, 2007 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolevalanTitle: Never Shall Be Slaves
Co-author Credit:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
abnormal_sea
Fandom(s): Richard Carstone is from Bleak Houseby Charles Dickens. Tom Jones is from the novel of the same name byHenry Fielding. Danny Sloane (Arthur's younger brother) also makes abrief cameo appearance.
Rating: PG-13, overall, for violence and some language.
Richard wasn't dead. What's more, he wasn't substantially hurt, and both these facts were highly improbable. He could hear bombing, probably about a mile off, and as he disentangled himself from his parachute, he looked in that direction. He could see flashes of light, now and then, but mostly it was too dark to rely on anything but sound. At least some of the bombers had made it through, and that was something.
He didn't think of Seward, who he had seen shot down with his own eyes. He didn't think of the fact that he had lost radio contact with half his squad before being hit himself, or the fact they had been all but ambushed. He thought about checking his equipment, keeping hidden, and figuring out what the hell to do now.
Tom was trying and failing to remain calm. He had been shot at. His new friends had been shot at. Jack had died. He had shot at planes. He might have even downed one. He couldn't tell and he didn't care. At the moment all he wanted to do was get out of the tree. His parachute had gotten tangled in it and one of the cords was now wrapped around his neck and he was starting to see spots.
After a struggle, Tom managed to reach the knife in his pocket and cut himself out. Unfortunately, that meant that he plummeted the rest of the way to the ground with an undignified screech.
Richard heard the sound, and began quickly but cautiously moving in that direction. He'd have the element of surprise, if it happened to be a German, and if the man was one of his, he might need help.
Tom lay dazed for a moment before panicking. He was down and alone in...where were they again? Oh god, he was alone in Germany. He tried to be calm and take stock of his position, but all he could think about was Jack, and how he had laughed at his story about the Scotsman and the sheep at lunch, and now he was dead. He rolled over and threw up the remainder of that lunch.
"...Jones?" Richard remained hidden, voice soft. Even if he was an ally, he didn't want to startle Jones into shooting him accidentally.
Tom looked up from being ill and tried to tell where the voice had come from. "Wh--who's there?"
"It's...it's squad commander Carstone." Richard was trying to sound much surer than he was, and mostly succeeding. "Are you hurt at all?"
"A little strangled." He looked down at his hands which were shakily trying to keep him from collapsing. One of them was wet. In fact, the wet was flowing down his arm and he could feel it seeping through his uniform. "I...I think I've been shot," Tom said in utter disbelief.
Richard moved forward quickly. Now that he had stepped out where Tom could see him, it became apparent that his uniform had been burned in a couple places, and soot smudged his hands and face. He tried to wipe the worst of it off on his pants, however, then removing his scarf as he came over. "Let me see."
Tom pointed to his shoulder. The many layers he was wearing had stopped the bullet from getting very far, but the more he thought about it, the more he noticed it. There was a bullet in his shoulder. He started laughing, though it quickly became coughing due to the near strangulation. "Sir?"
"Deep breaths, cadet," Richard said quietly. "I'm going to try and stop the bleeding for now until we can get somewhere safer." His scarf was mercifully easy to tie, and would make a passable tourniquet in the short term, at least. He distantly registered that he was behind enemy lines with a wounded cadet, but that was far away and the need to do one thing at a time took precedence.
Tom looked towards the distant bombing. "What are we going to do, sir?"
"First," he said, tying off the tourniquet, "we're going to get someplace with more cover. Gather any of your equipment you can salvage. How are your legs?" All of which sounded much better than "I have no bloody idea."
"They're good, sir. I can walk." Tom started gathering what he could find that wasn't still in the tree. Quite a few things had fallen from the plane, but he couldn't find the one thing he needed. He searched for it through the undergrowth, making far more noise than he should have.
Richard was about to ask what he was looking for when he tensed. "Jones, freeze," he hissed, drawing his service revolver, eyes trained away from the cadet into the woods. Tom did so instantly.
In the new silence, it was easier to hear - one person, but only one, seemed to be approaching. As quietly as possible, Richard cocked his gun, hand steady. It was all Tom could do to not explode from the tension. He started saying the Our Father in his head.
And then everything happened very fast. A man called out quietly in German, and Richard shot, and the man shot, all on top of one another. Then silence settled and Richard was still just standing there, holding out his gun at the dark woods.
At the first gunshot Tom had flung himself face first onto the ground. After a moment of not being dead he cracked open an eye. Interestingly enough, he was now staring at what he had been looking for. He snatched it up and clutched it to his chest. "Sir?"
Quietly, Richard said, "I'm going to go make sure he's dead. Stay here and keep your head down." Richard didn't look back at Jones as he took a breath and stepped forward, towards the place he had shot. Tom bit his lip and tried desperately to stop trembling. Where we the medals? Richard disappeared into the forest. After a long couple of moments, there was a solitary gunshot.
A longer several minutes, and Richard reappeared. He said, rather blankly. "Let's move."
Tom had never been so scared in his entire life. When Richard returned he looked at him with a combination of fear and awe. "Yes, sir." He clutched his bundle to his chest and grabbed his gun.
Richard led them off in a new direction, carrying the few supplies of his own he'd salvaged and the fewer he'd stolen from the German. Though he had shot plenty of men out of the sky, he'd never killed at close range, on the ground, before. He felt oddly blank, as if a small part of his mind was guiding his steps and the rest had conveniently decided to go on holiday.
Eventually, he found a small rock overhang, not quite deep enough to be called a cave, that would give them some shelter and some cover. "We should stop here, at least long enough to look at your shoulder."
"Yes, sir." Tom nodded and clung to his bundle for dear life. He collapsed under the overhang and kissed the bundle.
Richard sat down as well, voice the smallest touch weary as the adrenaline wore off. "Let me see the shoulder." Tom carefully started removing his heavy flight jacket and pushed aside his uniform to expose the wound. Richard took a deep breath, nodding. "You're lucky, Jones. This could have been much worse." A slight hesitation, and then, "I'm going to have to get it out before I bandage it."
Tom tried to look brave and nodded. "Sir?" He asked after a moment's hesitation. "I thought that you weren't allowed to shoot a pilot that was bailing out. It said so in one of the guides they gave us."
"I'm afraid, Jones, that you'll find that rules don't always function properly in real-world conditions. Crazy bastards on both sides." His voice was calm, but as he reached for his bundle, Richard was surprised and somewhat distressed to find his hands shaking. He stared at them, almost disapprovingly, as if they belonged to someone else.
"Oh. Thank you sir." Tom didn't notice Richard's hands. He was too busy examining the small bundle of paper that he had found during the shooting.
Richard pulled out the small first aid kit, but bought a little time for his hands to steady by asking, "What do you have there, cadet?"
"Home, sir." He untied the piece of string holding the bundle together and watched the pictures spill out. Most were set on an old manor house, with Tom smiling and making faces as he posed with various people and animals. The only one were his expression was serious was with him and an older man sitting in a well appointed study in rather stuffy dress clothes. There were also several scandalous photos of an attractive girl with 'For Tommy. From Your Molly.' written on the back surrounded by lipstick kisses.
Richard smiled a bit. "Quite a girl you've got there." He tried not to think of Ada, and promptly failed.
"She isn't really mine, sir. I think the whole village had a share of her." Tom reached into one of his shirt pockets and withdrew a folded letter. Inside of it was a photograph of a much more demure looking girl in a debutante's dress. Richard reached to take the photo, if Tom let him. His hands were better, but still shook very slightly. Tom let him. "Miss Sophia Western, sir," he sighed.
"She's lovely," Richard said quietly, after a moment. He handed the photo back to Tom. "We'll get the bullet out, bandage your shoulder, then rest here till we've got some light." Richard didn't share his plan beyond those items, for the simple reason that he didn't yet have one.
"Yes, sir." Tom looked at the first aid kit with dread and then back at Richard. "Did you get hurt, sir?"
"Nothing major, cadet." A few burns and a collection of bruises and scratches that would sting more when he had time to think about them. "You might want something to bite down on." He shouldn't be here, doing this. It was all wrong. But it needed to be done, and there was no one else to do it.
Tom grabbed the sleeve of his leather flight jacket and placed it in his mouth. "I'm ready when you are, sir," he mumbled around it.
Richard swabbed the forceps, then the wound, with iodine and, without further ado, fished out the bullet as quickly and neatly as he could. It was messy work, but at least it wasn't a terribly deep wound and the tourniquet kept it from bleeding as badly as it might have. Tom tried as hard as he could to focus on breathing and not crying out. The threat of discovery also gave him extra incentive to be silent. But, try as he might, he couldn't stop some tears from leaking out of his tightly squeezed shut eyes.
"Well done, Jones," Richard said quietly as he began bandaging the wound. "That was the difficult part. It may scar a bit, but I imagine that will just give Miss Western something to fuss over when you return."
"We're getting back, sir?"
"That is the general intention." The 'how' was the tricky part.
Tom liked unintentionally asking tough questions. "How, sir?"
Richard leaned back against the rock. "We'll keep a low profile, as best we can, and move West. There are pockets of resistance all over, especially once we make it to France; when we find them, they can help with food and supplies. We'll find a way." He sounded confident.
Tom hoped he would pick up some of Richard's apparent confidence. "Alright, sir. Thank you."
"There's no need to thank me, Jones. I haven't done anything."
"You found me when I came down, sir. You also fixed my shoulder. And if you hadn't...hadn't shot that kraut I would have been a goner by now. That's certainly something, sir, if you don't mind my saying so."
"I would be a pretty sorry excuse for a commander if I just left you. Besides..." Richard sounded a bit more like a man Tom's own age, though he usually sounded older. "I know you'd do the same in my position, if you could." Richard didn't want to think about the man he shot, though that was becoming more and more difficult.
"I certainly hope I would, sir." Tom had seen enough of death tonight as well. He had never seen anyone die in battle at all and it was scaring him. He had to bring it up. "Nightingale, sir. Jack. He...he...and the others. Is it always like that?"
Quietly, "Always awful, you mean? Yes, I'm afraid it mostly is." Richard decided to risk lighting a cigarette.
Tom fell silent, hugging his knees to his chest and gazing out at the darkness.
After a long stretch of silence, Richard said quietly, "Seward and I flew our very first mission together. He got me out of more scrapes..." He trailed off. Seward should have been promoted, not Richard. Richard was likeable and capable, but Seward had possessed true charisma, and courage. Seward should have been alive. He would have known what to do.
It probably wasn't noticeable in the dark that Tom had some tears falling down his face. "I'm sorry, sir."
"It's alright." Of course, it wasn't, but saying so wouldn't accomplish anything. Richard took a last, long drag on his cigarette and put it out. "...you should try to get some rest."
Tom nodded and tried to do so. He continued staring off in the distance for quite some time , his thoughts whirling like mad, before his head slumped forward and he fitfully slept. Richard dozed lightly for short periods, but mostly kept watch and tried to piece together some sort of workable plan.
Co-author Credit:
abnormal_seaFandom(s): Richard Carstone is from Bleak Houseby Charles Dickens. Tom Jones is from the novel of the same name byHenry Fielding. Danny Sloane (Arthur's younger brother) also makes abrief cameo appearance.
Rating: PG-13, overall, for violence and some language.
Richard wasn't dead. What's more, he wasn't substantially hurt, and both these facts were highly improbable. He could hear bombing, probably about a mile off, and as he disentangled himself from his parachute, he looked in that direction. He could see flashes of light, now and then, but mostly it was too dark to rely on anything but sound. At least some of the bombers had made it through, and that was something.
He didn't think of Seward, who he had seen shot down with his own eyes. He didn't think of the fact that he had lost radio contact with half his squad before being hit himself, or the fact they had been all but ambushed. He thought about checking his equipment, keeping hidden, and figuring out what the hell to do now.
Tom was trying and failing to remain calm. He had been shot at. His new friends had been shot at. Jack had died. He had shot at planes. He might have even downed one. He couldn't tell and he didn't care. At the moment all he wanted to do was get out of the tree. His parachute had gotten tangled in it and one of the cords was now wrapped around his neck and he was starting to see spots.
After a struggle, Tom managed to reach the knife in his pocket and cut himself out. Unfortunately, that meant that he plummeted the rest of the way to the ground with an undignified screech.
Richard heard the sound, and began quickly but cautiously moving in that direction. He'd have the element of surprise, if it happened to be a German, and if the man was one of his, he might need help.
Tom lay dazed for a moment before panicking. He was down and alone in...where were they again? Oh god, he was alone in Germany. He tried to be calm and take stock of his position, but all he could think about was Jack, and how he had laughed at his story about the Scotsman and the sheep at lunch, and now he was dead. He rolled over and threw up the remainder of that lunch.
"...Jones?" Richard remained hidden, voice soft. Even if he was an ally, he didn't want to startle Jones into shooting him accidentally.
Tom looked up from being ill and tried to tell where the voice had come from. "Wh--who's there?"
"It's...it's squad commander Carstone." Richard was trying to sound much surer than he was, and mostly succeeding. "Are you hurt at all?"
"A little strangled." He looked down at his hands which were shakily trying to keep him from collapsing. One of them was wet. In fact, the wet was flowing down his arm and he could feel it seeping through his uniform. "I...I think I've been shot," Tom said in utter disbelief.
Richard moved forward quickly. Now that he had stepped out where Tom could see him, it became apparent that his uniform had been burned in a couple places, and soot smudged his hands and face. He tried to wipe the worst of it off on his pants, however, then removing his scarf as he came over. "Let me see."
Tom pointed to his shoulder. The many layers he was wearing had stopped the bullet from getting very far, but the more he thought about it, the more he noticed it. There was a bullet in his shoulder. He started laughing, though it quickly became coughing due to the near strangulation. "Sir?"
"Deep breaths, cadet," Richard said quietly. "I'm going to try and stop the bleeding for now until we can get somewhere safer." His scarf was mercifully easy to tie, and would make a passable tourniquet in the short term, at least. He distantly registered that he was behind enemy lines with a wounded cadet, but that was far away and the need to do one thing at a time took precedence.
Tom looked towards the distant bombing. "What are we going to do, sir?"
"First," he said, tying off the tourniquet, "we're going to get someplace with more cover. Gather any of your equipment you can salvage. How are your legs?" All of which sounded much better than "I have no bloody idea."
"They're good, sir. I can walk." Tom started gathering what he could find that wasn't still in the tree. Quite a few things had fallen from the plane, but he couldn't find the one thing he needed. He searched for it through the undergrowth, making far more noise than he should have.
Richard was about to ask what he was looking for when he tensed. "Jones, freeze," he hissed, drawing his service revolver, eyes trained away from the cadet into the woods. Tom did so instantly.
In the new silence, it was easier to hear - one person, but only one, seemed to be approaching. As quietly as possible, Richard cocked his gun, hand steady. It was all Tom could do to not explode from the tension. He started saying the Our Father in his head.
And then everything happened very fast. A man called out quietly in German, and Richard shot, and the man shot, all on top of one another. Then silence settled and Richard was still just standing there, holding out his gun at the dark woods.
At the first gunshot Tom had flung himself face first onto the ground. After a moment of not being dead he cracked open an eye. Interestingly enough, he was now staring at what he had been looking for. He snatched it up and clutched it to his chest. "Sir?"
Quietly, Richard said, "I'm going to go make sure he's dead. Stay here and keep your head down." Richard didn't look back at Jones as he took a breath and stepped forward, towards the place he had shot. Tom bit his lip and tried desperately to stop trembling. Where we the medals? Richard disappeared into the forest. After a long couple of moments, there was a solitary gunshot.
A longer several minutes, and Richard reappeared. He said, rather blankly. "Let's move."
Tom had never been so scared in his entire life. When Richard returned he looked at him with a combination of fear and awe. "Yes, sir." He clutched his bundle to his chest and grabbed his gun.
Richard led them off in a new direction, carrying the few supplies of his own he'd salvaged and the fewer he'd stolen from the German. Though he had shot plenty of men out of the sky, he'd never killed at close range, on the ground, before. He felt oddly blank, as if a small part of his mind was guiding his steps and the rest had conveniently decided to go on holiday.
Eventually, he found a small rock overhang, not quite deep enough to be called a cave, that would give them some shelter and some cover. "We should stop here, at least long enough to look at your shoulder."
"Yes, sir." Tom nodded and clung to his bundle for dear life. He collapsed under the overhang and kissed the bundle.
Richard sat down as well, voice the smallest touch weary as the adrenaline wore off. "Let me see the shoulder." Tom carefully started removing his heavy flight jacket and pushed aside his uniform to expose the wound. Richard took a deep breath, nodding. "You're lucky, Jones. This could have been much worse." A slight hesitation, and then, "I'm going to have to get it out before I bandage it."
Tom tried to look brave and nodded. "Sir?" He asked after a moment's hesitation. "I thought that you weren't allowed to shoot a pilot that was bailing out. It said so in one of the guides they gave us."
"I'm afraid, Jones, that you'll find that rules don't always function properly in real-world conditions. Crazy bastards on both sides." His voice was calm, but as he reached for his bundle, Richard was surprised and somewhat distressed to find his hands shaking. He stared at them, almost disapprovingly, as if they belonged to someone else.
"Oh. Thank you sir." Tom didn't notice Richard's hands. He was too busy examining the small bundle of paper that he had found during the shooting.
Richard pulled out the small first aid kit, but bought a little time for his hands to steady by asking, "What do you have there, cadet?"
"Home, sir." He untied the piece of string holding the bundle together and watched the pictures spill out. Most were set on an old manor house, with Tom smiling and making faces as he posed with various people and animals. The only one were his expression was serious was with him and an older man sitting in a well appointed study in rather stuffy dress clothes. There were also several scandalous photos of an attractive girl with 'For Tommy. From Your Molly.' written on the back surrounded by lipstick kisses.
Richard smiled a bit. "Quite a girl you've got there." He tried not to think of Ada, and promptly failed.
"She isn't really mine, sir. I think the whole village had a share of her." Tom reached into one of his shirt pockets and withdrew a folded letter. Inside of it was a photograph of a much more demure looking girl in a debutante's dress. Richard reached to take the photo, if Tom let him. His hands were better, but still shook very slightly. Tom let him. "Miss Sophia Western, sir," he sighed.
"She's lovely," Richard said quietly, after a moment. He handed the photo back to Tom. "We'll get the bullet out, bandage your shoulder, then rest here till we've got some light." Richard didn't share his plan beyond those items, for the simple reason that he didn't yet have one.
"Yes, sir." Tom looked at the first aid kit with dread and then back at Richard. "Did you get hurt, sir?"
"Nothing major, cadet." A few burns and a collection of bruises and scratches that would sting more when he had time to think about them. "You might want something to bite down on." He shouldn't be here, doing this. It was all wrong. But it needed to be done, and there was no one else to do it.
Tom grabbed the sleeve of his leather flight jacket and placed it in his mouth. "I'm ready when you are, sir," he mumbled around it.
Richard swabbed the forceps, then the wound, with iodine and, without further ado, fished out the bullet as quickly and neatly as he could. It was messy work, but at least it wasn't a terribly deep wound and the tourniquet kept it from bleeding as badly as it might have. Tom tried as hard as he could to focus on breathing and not crying out. The threat of discovery also gave him extra incentive to be silent. But, try as he might, he couldn't stop some tears from leaking out of his tightly squeezed shut eyes.
"Well done, Jones," Richard said quietly as he began bandaging the wound. "That was the difficult part. It may scar a bit, but I imagine that will just give Miss Western something to fuss over when you return."
"We're getting back, sir?"
"That is the general intention." The 'how' was the tricky part.
Tom liked unintentionally asking tough questions. "How, sir?"
Richard leaned back against the rock. "We'll keep a low profile, as best we can, and move West. There are pockets of resistance all over, especially once we make it to France; when we find them, they can help with food and supplies. We'll find a way." He sounded confident.
Tom hoped he would pick up some of Richard's apparent confidence. "Alright, sir. Thank you."
"There's no need to thank me, Jones. I haven't done anything."
"You found me when I came down, sir. You also fixed my shoulder. And if you hadn't...hadn't shot that kraut I would have been a goner by now. That's certainly something, sir, if you don't mind my saying so."
"I would be a pretty sorry excuse for a commander if I just left you. Besides..." Richard sounded a bit more like a man Tom's own age, though he usually sounded older. "I know you'd do the same in my position, if you could." Richard didn't want to think about the man he shot, though that was becoming more and more difficult.
"I certainly hope I would, sir." Tom had seen enough of death tonight as well. He had never seen anyone die in battle at all and it was scaring him. He had to bring it up. "Nightingale, sir. Jack. He...he...and the others. Is it always like that?"
Quietly, "Always awful, you mean? Yes, I'm afraid it mostly is." Richard decided to risk lighting a cigarette.
Tom fell silent, hugging his knees to his chest and gazing out at the darkness.
After a long stretch of silence, Richard said quietly, "Seward and I flew our very first mission together. He got me out of more scrapes..." He trailed off. Seward should have been promoted, not Richard. Richard was likeable and capable, but Seward had possessed true charisma, and courage. Seward should have been alive. He would have known what to do.
It probably wasn't noticeable in the dark that Tom had some tears falling down his face. "I'm sorry, sir."
"It's alright." Of course, it wasn't, but saying so wouldn't accomplish anything. Richard took a last, long drag on his cigarette and put it out. "...you should try to get some rest."
Tom nodded and tried to do so. He continued staring off in the distance for quite some time , his thoughts whirling like mad, before his head slumped forward and he fitfully slept. Richard dozed lightly for short periods, but mostly kept watch and tried to piece together some sort of workable plan.
