Title: Last Chance
Author: LM Simpson (Kady the Red Panda)
Pairing(s): Tintin/Haddock, implied OC/OC
Rating: M
Warning(s): slash, drug use, character death, terminal illness, language
Disclaimer: I am not associated with Moulinsart. The only characters I own are the ones I made up, particularly Martin, Reggie, and Colleen.
Other tidbits: I'll update this more sporadically than "Fishes." There will be an older Colleen here, but reading "Fishes Out of Water (which is still ongoing anyway)" will not be required. She's more so a minor character in this anyway. I just thought that since this is "next gen" why not keep things tidy and include her?

Chapter One

1111

I hate seeing Grandpa like this.

When I was a kid he was always so happy and optimistic. I always beamed when he was around. Even if you were having a super cruddy day you were guaranteed to smile at least once because he was always there bringing the sunshine in. You may not have seen it, but Grandpa Tintin could find it under all that gray and blue and tug it out from the sky and into the room. He was gifted like that.

But right now, the sky is overcast. Ever since we got the diagnosis—advanced stage pancreatic cancer—ten months ago all he wants to do is stare out the same bedroom window all day, sitting on a rickety maple rocking chair with his bald wrinkled scalp facing me. Occasionally he mumbles about something, low enough so even I can't hear. Or he whimpers or asks for a drink—concerning because he never drinks—but he never does much else.

He does not even want to hold and pet his favorite wire fox terrier, a spunky lil fellow dubbed Snowy the Seventh, anymore. Oh, that dog tries. He will claw and whine at a suspended brown pant leg, but Grandpa doesn't respond. Only on those days that he's too sick to get out of bed will he allow me to place him on his lap. The dog, even then, never gets hugged or petted. Grandpa just sits listlessly under the buttercup printed comforter and the dog and stares his clear bluish green eyes towards a ceiling corner.

I've tried and done everything to be there for him. Much to my mother's objection I've temporarily withdrawn out of Vanderbilt and flew back to New York to nurse him the best I could at his home. I've solved and assembled puzzles, especially ones of the ocean and world maps. I've played old favorite records of his. I've read to him old newspaper clippings from his reporting days. When I have nothing else brainstormed I try telling him my favorite adventures of his, the ones that he loved accounting to me as a child. Only the latter seem to ever get a response from him. Or rather, a positive one. More than anything I just want him to smile as much as he can while he can.

I decide to try that tactic. I enter his mint and dark green striped bedroom and notice him slowly rocking. His back faces me, as usual. The window is ajar; the off-white linen curtains sway away with the breeze. I find a slinky black blanket in the trunk in front of his twin bed and wrap it around him. With his yellow polo shirt I'm reminded of a bee's bands and gently smile. The mild amusement should make it easier for me to speak.

"Thank you, Martin," he speaks with an accent that betrays his Belgian origins. His voice cracks in a way to let me know he needs water.

"Sure thing, Grandpa," I say before going into the bathroom next door and returning with a little blue Dixie cup. He does not even move his arms as I direct the water to his lips and adjust his coke-bottle glasses higher up his nose.

"Hmm," he says in a clearer voice, "It appears I needed that after all."

I crunch the empty Dixie cup in my hand and place it in my left jean pocket. "You need lots of things, Grandpa. You deserve them."

Grandpa Tintin shakes his head. "No. I don't need lots of things."

It appears I won't be recounting his encounter with the Yeti after all. Not that that bothers me. He's already talked more than he did the last three weeks. "Is there anything you really want, then?"

"Just one thing… But I can't have it."

I knead a cramped wrinkly hand. He sighs in relief. "I can get it for you. Where can you buy it?"

He sadly smiles. "I'm sorry Martin. You can't buy what I want. What I want is a person… A certain person, to come visit me before this cancer finally kills me." A smile begins… only to sink back into a frown. "But it's just a silly daydream."

"Who?" I meet my green eyes with his. "Who do you want to see, Grandpa?"

"It's nothing important to you, my child. Besides, it's impossible for him to see me. I accepted that ages ago."

This frightened me. This cancer was affecting him worse than I thought. Before he was diagnosed he would stubbornly reach his goals in the most honest way possible. Even in his lowest periods that optimism and motive was still present. But now… He appeared to have completely given up on everything.

"Is it… Captain Haddock?" That broad bearded man was in so many old pictures and stories. It seemed logical.

He nods.

"I doubt he's dead. Maybe we can go back to Belgium and visit him. Or at least video call if you're too weak…"

"I have not seen him for forty-six—almost fifty—years, Martin. I miss him dearly. He was my… best friend in this world. I've wanted to see him again since we went out of touch… Even if he was alive, I have no idea where he is. Fire consumed his old home twenty years ago. But I guess my best chance for that reunion is in Heaven… And if that's the case then I hope I die very soon…"

He covers his red face with a hand and fights the urge to cry.

I place a hand on his shoulder. "Go ahead. Cry. It's alright."

Tears are wiped from his and my eyes with a finger. The drops that drip into my red shirt don't bother me.

"Did you know, Martin, that when I was younger everyone joked that I was immortal? This was before I had bags under my eyes of course…" He does not chuckle. Instead he still glassily looks to a ceiling corner once again. "It seemed that nothing could kill me: trains, bombs, hit in the heads. I was always back on my fee within days of an injury. Oh, if only those people could see me now at this age, with a terminal illness… And I was always in better medical condition than him. The captain would possibly be in his late nineties, early hundreds by now… If he was still alive for that matter. He was a hard smoker and an even harder drinker. If his lungs or liver did not give out first then his large heart certainly has…"

I run my fingers through my short sandy blond hair before looking him square in the eye. "But Grandpa, you told me to never give up. I just know that this man is alive. I can feel it in my heart. God has to be keeping you alive for some reason. I think it's so you can see the Captain one last time. I'll find him! I won't let you down—Grandpa?"

Light snoring fills the room. The clock radio reveals in neon blue numbers that it's his daily naptime. Four o' clock on the dot he always sleeps. Between snores I hear muttering about the captain as I place him back on his bed and shut the window.

I was not lying when I said that I believed Captain Haddock was still alive. I truly have this nagging feeling he is around somewhere.

My laptop fan whirrs when I boot that little black machine up on my paper and candy wrapper littered desk. My homepage's front line heading announces that Bianca Castafiore—another figure from my grandfather's travels—succumbed from a stroke she suffered seven months ago. I do not bother checking her age (I know it's old anyway) and promptly type "Captain Archibald Haddock" in my search engine. Thousands of pages come up, but most are from old articles talking mainly about Grandpa or information about the great Marlinspike Hall fire. Down and down the scroll bar goes, up and up the page number goes. Finally on page seventeen I find something. I whisk a pen from my front shirt pocket and write down an address in shiny slick black ink.

I have my first lead.