Work Text:
--1--
Stag Luft Nord was awfully bare. Stark, almost. Wires and wood bound the perimeter, huts in the centre and the cooler behind more wire.
Blythe's third camp looked as welcoming – as alive – as the ones before.
There were no trees inside the camp. Of course not. There might be a few stumps left for Sedgwick's men to pull apart, but the rest? One of the first things to go, Blythe supposed, when the ground was levelled, the area cleared and emptied of any life but that which the Germans intended to keep there.
A shame, really, that they wouldn't be there long enough to appreciate it. At least he hoped not. Forever wouldn't be long enough.
The flagpole was in the centre of the compound. Far enough inside that the goons on the towers wouldn't be concentrating their attention on him. Not when there was so much more interesting things happening. Blythe could hear shouts, calls – one fight even. He pulled out his binoculars, checked that they weren't cracked and looped them around his neck.
It must be thirty feet from the perimeter to the tree-line. Evergreens mostly, a few pine; of course, it was the wrong time of year for any nesting, but he had a little paper on him. Blythe unfolded the scraps in his pocket and bit the end of his pencil, sketching with both eyes focussed on the lenses.
"I say, you managed to keep your glasses." The faint northern burr broke through Blythe's attention.
"Yes," he said, tucking them inside his jacket. "Hello, Cavendish. You're in here too?"
"They loaded a lot of chaps up," nodded Cavendish, looking out over a bristling moustache. "Hadn't expected to see you here."
"I suppose they must have had their suspiciouns," said Blythe, hoisting his kitbag up to his shoulder. "Although I thought I had been relatively discreet."
Cavendish started walking, a steady pace at Blythe's side, head moving from side to side. "I'd say they were about ten feet from the ground, wouldn't you?"
Blythe turned to look at the hut as they passed, a one-zero-seven scratched out above the dare. "At least that."
"That's what I thought," Cavendish frowned, counting under his breath.
"There you are!" The shout was loud and its caller skidded to a halt in front of them. "Cavendish, Blythe." Willie paused to catch his breath. Danny was a few yards behind shrugging into a battered blue jacket. "We were wondering if you had chance to make a survey yet."
"Not yet," Cavendish said. "I'm working on it."
"You might want to work fast," Danny added; words slow and precise. "It looks like Big X is here."
"Really?"
"We saw him," Willie confirmed.
"He looks a bit battered," Danny finished. "But after that long with the Gestapo, who wouldn't?" A moment of quiet consideration passed.
"This is all getting quite exciting," Blythe said, breaking the silence. "But I really must be going… Things to do." He veered right, between two huts. First he'd need to look out a bunk, then somewhere on the east side of the camp. He was going to need a place with light, plenty of light.
--2--
Hendley had stacked the coffee tins on top of the bar of milk chocolate. They'd go in with the rest of the gift food and Red Cross parcels. He fingered the white and – was that yellow? – socks that they'd been wrapped in. Those he couldn't exactly foist off on anyone else. If his grandmother found out he'd never hear the end of it.
Pen in hand, he went back to his postcard - '…and thank Annie for the socks she sent, even if she's got no more taste now than she had the day you hornswoggled her up the aisle. You know, I always thought that blue was more my colour; not that I look bad in white, but a guy has to make a stand when it comes to the important things.
This would be the part where I tell you all about the lovely weather we're having, but enough Britishness hasn't rubbed off on your older brother just yet. There's a…'
Hendley shook his pen and briefly laid it down. The words on the postcard shrank and faded as they neared the bottom, and he finished with a scrawling signature that smudged the last few words. John would get the message that he was still alive; anything else was just extra words to fill up the spaces.
The door creaked open. "Oh, I'm sorry," said Blythe. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"Well, you see me just getting ready for a night on the town," Hendley answered. He tucked the postcard back inside his jacket, leaning back in his chair, as he watched Blythe pottered with the tea things. "Dinner, dancing and there's this sweet little thing I met in a club in the West End. If you want I can ask if she's got a sister. I only hope I'm not underdressed."
Blythe paused, one hand reaching for the tea strainer, and looked over to Hendley. "I'm sure you'll be fine," he said as he pulled out a battered mug. "Do try and remember your curfew this time. You know how they like to make a fuss."
"They haven't caught me out yet," said Hendley, smiling away Blythe's offer of a drink. He hadn't seen the inside of the new cooler and didn't plan to any time soon.
"No," Blythe agreed, sitting down on his bunk, fingers flexing gently around his mug. The boards creaked underneath him, and there was an answering bang of distant window shutters. "There's always a first time."
"I guess I'll be staying in tonight then," Hendley said, hoisting himself up to the top bunk. His elbow hit the book he'd wedged under the side when he'd been collecting wood. "We could always play I-spy; I lent my cards to Clausen in one-oh-six."
"I- I think an early night," Blythe started. "We-" The wail of sirens split open the room, breaking up his answer as the electric lights cut out.
"Huh," interrupted Hendley. "I didn't know we were flying out this far."
"There'll be other chances," Blythe's voice wound upward. "Once we're all out of here, you can take me out for that drink. Brandy, I think."
"The sooner the better," Hendley propped his cap up over his eyes. "Or all that'll be left there is a cup of tea."
--3--
"But I don't know anything about the game," Hendley said as he was manhandled onto what had been and would be the south side of the exercise circuit, but was now the field for the colonies to declare their… something against the mother country. Actually, that part had never quite been explained as Haynes had pulled him onto one team for an impromptu rugby match.
"No problem, mate," Sedgwick, called back. "Just catch the ball and run that way." He swung his arm back over his shoulder. "You can run, can't you?"
"I think I just remember how." Hendley pulled off his cap and bundled it up in his coat. "Here, Blythe, catch!"
The bundle landed at Blythe's feet. He'd come out for a walk – the ferrets were poking about again, and operations had been cut down while Sorren and Nimmo put their heads together. Blythe pulled out a scrap of paper – too small and fragile to use – and started noting down the scores.
A whistle blew out and one stream of men ran headlong into another, chasing after a patched shapeless leather ball. Blythe thought he saw a familiar shape in the scrum, "If Macintyre breaks his hand I'll have him sorting ink for weeks."
"I'm sure he knows not to do that," replied the clipped tones of the Group-Captain, weight resting on his cane as he came to a halt at Blythe's side.
"He'd better," said Roger. "We're perilously short on left-handers, not to mention..." He tracked movement in the lee of one of the huts and cut his sentence short. "I must go – Colin, sir."
"A busy man," Ramsey commented, before turning his attention back to the game. Ashworth had got the ball but was being dragged backwards by anyone who could reach. "How are you finding the American?"
"Captain Hilts isn't usually near the cooler, sir?" Blythe asked.
Ramsey didn't bother to reply to that, save for a prompting, not quite disappointed "Hmm?"
"He's a very good scrounger," Blythe answered.
"Yes," Ramsey wasn't looking at Blythe, yet he seemed able to hold a man under complete scrutiny out of the corner of his eye. The sort of look under which a man stood up straighter and tried his best not to disappoint. "You knew Bristol well."
"We both did. There's still no word on the poor fellow's fate?"
"It seems not," Ramey said, "I'm afraid we must resign ourselves to the talents we already have in place."
"I know it's terribly early," Blythe said after a few minutes. The game had continued down the far end of the 'pitch' and someone – Johnny Addison? - had been hauled up onto someone's shoulders and spun until they both fell – the group wobbling like precarious dominoes. "But I'd really like to go – out this time."
"You know that's hardly my decision," Ramsey said calmly. "Roger will have the final say, and I'm sure every man in the camp wants to be out of here. Perhaps you should see about training up some of your men. Those of us left behind will hardly want to start from scratch."
The Group-Captain braced himself, glanced up at the game breaking up and began moving slowly to the shade of one-oh-four.
"There you are," called Hendley, ducking to scoop up his bundled up things. "Next time, remind me not to take Louis face value. That man has a keen right hook."
"I'll remember it," Blythe told him. "Who won?" he asked, scrunching up the attempt he made at scoring the match.
"There was supposed to be a winner?" Hendley asked obtusely. "Like there's supposed to be rules?"
"There are rules," corrected Blythe. "I'll show you. We can't have you letting our hut's side down. Now, the teams are each made up of…"
--4--
One of the guards had a weakness for chocolate. Two ferrets could be relied on take cigarettes in exchange for a little extra material – 'for blankets, you know how cold it gets'. Another was trying to woo one of the stenographers in the commandant's office and would spill just about anything to a sympathetic ear and some helpful advice.
Hendley had plenty of both.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Strycek," he said, ushering the man out of the door. "I've never heard of it doing that before. Have you tried seeing a doctor?"
"No," Strycek looked more worried than he had before Hendley had started reassuring him.
"You should," Hendley nodded earnestly. "I mean, I don't think it's anything serious, but it's not exactly something you want to be unsure of."
"I'll think about it." Strycek said, as they reached the open door.
"You do that." A brisk nod and Hendley headed toward recreation room, fingers tracing the bottles of green and black ink resting in his jacket pocket.
Mac fell into step with him as he passed the water tanks, mouth shut and almost, but not quite looking at him. Hendley raised an eyebrow, but said nothing more than, "Andy."
Scrounger and intelligence have some overlap, and what Hendley thought Mac - and therefore Roger - needed to know he passed on. But there'd been nothing new in the past week. With frost still on the ground and the weather still just too cold for escapees the ferrets were keeping quiet. Maybe that was the problem.
"How's Harry coming along?" he asked, nudging the conversation Mac was apparently intent on having but seemed unable to start.
"We've stopped digging for a few days," Mac said, "Dispersal's slowing us down, so we're looking for other opportunities."
"I'm not sure I can help you with that."
Mac straightened his shoulders, "That's not what I needed to ask you about."
"And what's that?" Hendley casually adjusted his cap, nodding at Sorenson, playing tic-tac-toe against himself outside of one-two-one, and losing. Sorenson ignored him, taking a stone from the centre as he moved it to leftmost square. They were clear.
"I need to talk to you about Colin," Mac's gaze was fixed on barbed wire fence. "I was running questions on the first twenty today."
"His German seems fine to me," Hendley stopped, leant against the side of one-two-two.
"It's a little rusty-" Mac stopped himself. "But that's no' it and you know that." He overrode Hendley's protest and continued. "He passed me his travel permit – back-to-front - when I asked for his Ausweis and mistook the contents of two of his letters."
"You can't read anything into that," Hendley said, pieces fitting together in a picture he'd hoped they wouldn't make. "I wouldn't know half of these passes from another."
"Blythe has been working on these documents for months," dismissed Mac. "And he was very careful of his footing in one-oh-seven. I can't not read anything into it."
"Well, I'm telling you you're wrong."
"You know, I'll have to tell Roger about this." Mac looked awkward, fingers twisting as if to reach to a cigarette. "I just thought I ought to- warn you first."
Warn him? What good would that do? If Roger believed him, believed Colin was losing his sight; he was gone - out of the escape. Ramsey wouldn't push and the good squadron leader wouldn't be swayed by even him once he'd made that final call.
Not that it mattered because Colin was fine. Just fine. And Hendley was going to make sure he stayed that way.
He clapped Mac on the shoulder. "Thanks, Macdonald," and pushed off the wall. Hendley had some thinking to do. And, maybe, some favours that needed calling in.
--5(1)--
Blythe wasn't sure how far they'd made in the aircraft. Even under the best of circumstances he wasn't a pilot and these were hardly those. He wasn't sure whether it was better or worse than the first time around. Better, he decided, they'd both walked away from this one.
No.Worse, because he hadn't been able to see what was happening, just felt the aircraft veering downward, the smell of petrol coating his tongue and the acrid smoke making his eyes water. Strange that it was still doing that now he was on the ground.
He couldn't see them, but the pursuit couldn't be far off; the flames and smoke would have been enough even if it had been his task to chase them.
Still he stood there a moment. Hendley shoved him away from the burning craft and Blythe staggered under the impact. The ground under his feet, grass - not pounded earth or wooden boards, tilted upwards slightly. He'd have to speak to someone about that. Shoddy workmanship, he'd have never have let that pass in his workshop, beautiful shoddy workmanship.
The sounds of engines and machinery echoed in the valley and Blythe ran towards it. They weren't caught yet and if Hendley ran perhaps one of them would make it, would get over the border, would…
His heart raced as hot darts lanced through him. Being shot hurt. He'd always wondered if it felt different to shrapnel, fewer sharper edges.
He gasped out something, falling, but everything seemed so far away. Anchored here by bloody bullets and – Hendley? Blythe tried to struggle up; to tell the stupid man to run, to tell him he was silly and stubborn not to, to tell him he was selfishly grateful he hadn't, to tell him it was worth it, to try and cram all of that into one last sentence.
Racing into darkness Blythe hoped it had worked.