The air puffed from his lungs in thick white clouds, joining the mist already lingering in the dark, damp corners of the docks. The sun was just breaching the horizon as he ran through crates and barrels, all standing in silent rows like sentinels, heralding the dawn in with silent faces and stony stares.

The docks look the same, he thought vaguely as he ran, his feet slapping the hard floor painfully. The noise was muffled by the fog and the sound of the lapping waves, the creaking of the many ships and the cawing and squalling of seagulls already wheeling and whirling in the lightening navy sky.

I can't have gone that far back.

Work at the docks started early – you had to catch the morning rays if you wanted to catch the morning tide, after all. Every sailor worth his salt knew that. So there were already various silhouettes walking the docks, checking cargo, their shapes outlined by a pale yellow glow. A few turned to watch the young man dash past them as though his life depended on it, with the bright dawn sun shining golden in his hair and a small snow-white dog running close to his heels.

Tintin ran on, pushing his body past its limits, painfully aware that if he wasn't fast enough he would miss it entirely.

One window. One chance. If I don't make it… there's no knowing what will happen.

'Come on, boy,' he gasped to his dog. 'Nearly there now.' Snowy woofed in acknowledgement, and Tintin felt a smile quirk onto his face despite the burning pain in his hamstrings. If he didn't make it, at least he'd still have Snowy. His wonderful dog, his first constant companion.

The docks were a baffling maze of cargo waiting to be crane-lifted onto ships, but Tintin knew that he'd make it to his destination if he kept the sun on his right and the city on his left. In fact, he was so focussed on the horizon that he didn't see the person step from between two piles of crates before he crashed into them.

They both hit the floor from the force of the impact, Tintin rolling with the momentum and rapidly regaining both his balance and his stride. Snowy followed after, using the stranger's back as a springboard while they lay on the floor.

'Sorry,' Tintin called over his shoulder as he continued to run – there was no time for his usual politeness, something he regretted. It wouldn't matter. He wouldn't be here much longer, if all went well.

And it will.

The meeting had been so brief Tintin had not been able to get a proper look of the person he bowled over, instead only getting a the basics – blue jumper, a mop of unruly black hair, a face that looked strangely bare…

The stranger regained his feet with slightly less panache than Tintin, rubbing his hip where it had connected rather painfully with the hard floor. He watched as Tintin's silhouette vanished into the distance, remembering only a face red from both exertion and the sharp sea breeze, orange hair the colour of the sunset and a small white dog bounding after him.

()

'Oh, it's terrible! A disaster!'

Captain Haddock and Tintin looked up from their breakfast of eggs and bacon to see a very distressed Calculus run into the dining room.

'What's the matter, Professor?' Tintin asked, half-standing from his seat.

'He's probably just lost his notes again,' Haddock huffed. 'Six months he's been shut up in that lab of his, and has he told us anything about what he's doing?'

'You're right, Tintin, I am mad as a hatter!' The professor ranted, pulling at his hair and goatee with tormented hands. 'That…. assistant of mine was a spy, this whole time! A Syldavian spy!'

'Who, Jacques?' Captain Haddock said, surprised, also rising from his seat and setting his paper down.

'No, Jacques,' the Professor corrected. 'Honestly, he's been working with me for half a year, you'd think even you'd have learnt his name, Captain,' he admonished.

'I said Jacques!' the Captain bellowed.

'Yes, Jacques, no need to shout, I'm not deaf you know.'

'What about Jacques?' Tintin asked, getting quite frustrated with the circular conversation.

'This morning I finished my machine! And he waited till I left to phone the Institute of Physics before stealing my blueprints and escaping!'

'Escaping? We need to go after him, then,' Tintin said, running to the Professor.

The Captain sat back down heavily, staring into space.

'I liked Jacques,' he said vaguely. 'He had a drop of whisky and a good cigar with me occasionally. Seemed like a nice chap.'

'Where did he go, d'you think?' Tintin asked the Professor, who marked the seriousness of the occasion by pulling out his ear trumpet.

'That is the problem, my dear boy,' Calculus said heavily. 'We need not to be asking 'where', but 'when'.'

()

There is was. He could see it now. He was so close.

It wasn't much to look at really. A simple rectangle in the air, vaguely opaque and rippling from the effects of some ether wind.

'Quick Snowy!' he called, 'it's closing!' And it was – shrinking as though being dried up by the morning sun. When he had first seen it the portal had been around the size of a door, now it was no bigger than a window. And it kept on getting smaller.

It's a bit like reverse perspective.

Snowy picked up the pace, his small legs whirling madly as he raced alongside Tintin. Tintin watched as the portal grew smaller and smaller and smaller…

And he knew there was only one thing to do.

'Snowy, take these to the Professor!' he cried, pulling a sheaf of papers from his inside pocket and thrusting them at his dog, who grabbed them in his mouth and leapt for the portal. His tail passed through just before the portal winked out of existence, and the last thing Tintin heard was a surprised bark and Calculus and the Captain's voices calling his name before all that was left was the sound of the docks.

The air where the portal had been felt the same as everywhere else as Tintin passed through it, slowing to a stop.

Seagulls wheeled and screamed above his head as he stared at the rising sun. A sun twenty-five years younger than his sun.

He was stuck.

()

'I don't like this,' the Captain grumbled, ruffling his hair and glaring mistrustfully at the machine. 'A time machine? Really, Cuthbert? Have you been at my whisky?'

'It is a little risky, of course, but I'm confident in Tintin's capabilities,' the Professor said, as he twiddled various dials and checked various read-outs. Tintin merely stared in amazement.

It was a behemoth of a machine, all silver tubes and wires protruding from the main generator, which was covered in various knobs and switches. There was a large oscilloscope in the centre, the undulating line on the screen a florescent green.

'Let me get this straight,' Haddock said. 'Your good-for-nothing assistant stole the blueprints for this infernal machine and then used it to go back in time to sell the blueprints to the Syldavian Government. And you want to send Tintin after this troglodyte?'

'No, I'm going to send Tintin. The conversion of mass to energy is quite an exhausting process, and so younger cells would travel better than older ones.'

'Blistering barnacles, you mean he could be vaporised?'

'No, but he could be vaporised.'

Tintin blanched slightly.

'But that is, of course, very unlikely,' Calculus hurried to add. 'Jacques made it though, after all.' He pressed a button and the machine began to whirr ominously, emitting little sparks of light because the build up of charge from the surrounding atmosphere. 'It's because of the humidity,' Cuthbert explained.

'Are you sure you want to do this, lad?' Captain Haddock asked Tintin in an undertone as the Professor fussed over his invention.

'No,' Tintin replied grimly, 'but do I really have a choice? If the blueprints fall into the hands of the Syldavian government, it could cause a world war.'

'I've left the coordinates exactly as Jacques set them,' Calculus chipped in suddenly, 'only I've set it so that you arrive a few minutes after him.'

'Why can't you set it so I get there before him?' Tintin asked. Calculus shook his head.

'That would be meddling with the laws of causality, you see. If you get there before him, technically you left before him and therefore we would have known he was a spy before we did, which creates an impossible scenario. No no, it's safer to do this.'

Professor Calculus pulled a lever and turned a dial up towards the maximum setting. There was a sound not unlike a motorbike revving, and then a line appeared in the air before them, between two metal spheres about six foot above the ground and two foot apart.

'It looks like a bar of fog,' Tintin commented.

'It's because the charged particles ionise the surrounding water vapour in the air and then attract them,' Calculus explained. 'Now, when you step through, you may suddenly feel incredibly heavy, but that should pass after a few seconds.'

Calculus moved a dial and the line of fog became a square, a rectangle, stretching downwards until it rested just above the floor.

'Ok, Professor. I'm ready,' Tintin said. He called to Snowy, who had been eying the various machinery in a wary fashion, and the dog jumped into his arms.

'Right, Tintin. Listen carefully,' the Professor said.

'You're one to talk,' the Captain muttered.

'Due to time travel being such an imprecise and unexplored science, you have only twenty-four hours to retrieve the blueprints and return through this portal. I can only keep it open for so long, and while it is open, it links the two times together and they move in tandem. Once it closes, finding you would be like fishing for a single sardine in the Mariana Trench. Exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.'

'So make sure you get back before it closes, lad,' Haddock said gruffly, patting Tintin's back in a manly show of affection. Tintin nodded.

'Back in less than twenty-four hours. Right. See you in a day's time, then,' he said, waving at the Professor and the Captain before taking a deep breath and walking through the misty window, Snowy trembling slightly in his arms.

()

The sun was almost fully over the horizon as Tintin slumped onto a crate, staring at his shoes, his mind numb.

He'd missed it. The portal had closed and left him stuck in the past, a few miles and twenty-five years away from his home, his friends, his dog, his life.

Snowy…

For the first time in a long, long while, Tintin was completely, utterly alone.

'Excuse me, but I need to move that… oh. It's you.'

Tintin stared up into a face that looked strangely bare without a beard and fatigue lines. The blue jumper and the mop of hair marked the stranger as the one Tintin had bowled over just a few minutes before, but his eyes showed him to be someone very familiar. Tintin stared up into the face of a young Captain Haddock, and he found himself quite unable to speak.

'I was the one you knocked over earlier,' young Haddock prompted. Tintin nodded.

'Yes, I, err, I remember,' he said, hurriedly standing up. 'I'm sorry about that. I was in a bit of a rush for a … train.'

Young Haddock quirked an eyebrow.

'I'm guessing you didn't catch it,' he said. 'And didn't you have a dog with you? Used me as a trampoline.'

'Yes. I did. Not anymore.'

Haddock peered inquisitively at Tintin. Tintin stuck out his hand.

'I'm Tintin, by the way. Reporter.'

'Archibald Haddock,' Haddock said, grinning, shaking Tintin's proffered hand. 'Sailor.'

Yes. I know.

'My friends call me Archie.'

In the future they call you Captain.

Tintin nodded, and swallowed forcefully. He needed to get a grip, and work out what to do next. He wouldn't be able to do that here, staring at a painfully familiar yet oh-so-foreign face.

'Anyway, I should probably go and… catch the next train,' he said lamely, before walking listlessly off in the direction of Brussels city centre. Or at least, what would be the city centre in twenty-five years time. Tintin could only guess at how much had changed, and how much would be the same.

()

There had been a moment when he'd felt like he was being pulled down to the ground, the force almost crushing in its strength. A groan escaped his lips and a whine emanated from Snow, but that's to the Professor's warning he dealt with it with relative ease.

The worst part was the feeling of unravelling, as though he was going to float away and never come back.

It started as a tingling sensation at the tips of his fingers and toes, a strange pins-and-needles sensation that tickled more than it itched. The feeling spread and left behind a sense of weightlessness, as though he were made of one giant ribbon that was slowly uncoiling, unwinding.

If he had to put the feeling into an image, he thought as the sensation crept unpleasantly up his chest, it was like watching a jumped being unravelled. He panicked but soon the feeling had spread to his head and then he had no way to feel panicked.

There was a moment of blissful, blinding white nothing…

And then he landed on solid ground, his knees buckling at the impact. He hit the ground with an ungainly thud and lay there for a while, trying to reorient himself. Snowy recovered fast, and was sniffing around when Tintin finally climbed to his feet. He knew immediately where he was.

The Port of Brussels, by the river Senne. The docks.

The sun had just climbed over the horizon.

()

Finally got round to writing a Tintin fic.

Hope it doesn't disappoint.

My young Haddock is going to be a lot less mood-swingy than the older one. In my opinion he hasn't hit the gloomy clouds of middle age yet, and would be very different to the Haddock we all know and love. But then, not that different…

Next chapter there's more of Archie and the appearance of Tintin's old friend cholorform.

Meg