Title: Marie

by Spyke

Fandom: The Biggles books by Capt. W.E. Johns, specifically 'Biggles of the Camel Squadron' and 'Biggles of 266'

Pairing: m/m. m/f hinted at.

Disclaimer: They don't belong to me and I wonder if their creator would actually be disappointed by the assumptions I've made.

Notes: This puts the events of Biggles' history as I remember it into a context that I hope will explain 'Sunflowers'. Loose adherence to canon.

Warning: 1) This may make sense even if you have not read the books. 2) If you have, I've appropriated Mulhoney because I like him.

There had been a girl once, who had said her name was Marie. He'd thought he loved her too, at least until she turned out to be a Boche spy, using him to get at the aerodrome. Funny really, it seemed such a long time ago, but it had only been weeks. Days. Too few days.

He pretended to himself that he'd forgotten her name.

Marie. He smiled grimly and slugged back another shot of whisky without toasting her. Marie was the name he'd fallen in love with, the name he had whispered before crushing her lips to his, and now at night alone in his bed, waiting for his batman to wake him up for dawn patrol, he rubbed thumb and forefinger together, resurrecting the memory of ashes and wondering what her name really could be. Certainly not Marie. She'd never told him her name.

Of all betrayals this, the smallest, was the one he could not forgive. She hadn't told him, ever, hadn't even ended the letter he'd burned with an illegible signature. So he'd pressed his lips to the faint impression of a watermark and inhaled the perfume, her perfume for the last time and then he'd burned the paper to ashes. He intended to forget. Instead he could only remember.

Now when he thought about it, he realized of course that she was older than him by at least a couple of years, maybe twenty-three to his almost twenty and at times he thought bitterly of entrapment, of how it was said all was fair in love and war. But then he remembered she'd said, no written that she loved him, and she'd come back to take him away or die with him, the night the Germans were to bomb his aerodrome. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he'd known at the time that she was a spy. He might have had her sent to the gallows as a filthy Hun - and his mind recoiled from the adjectives because they weren't apt, not apt at all. She was beautiful and scented and warm and womanly and she'd loved him despite her patriotism. She'd said she came back to die with him or take him away, written it clearly in his first and last love letter from her, a letter she hadn't even bothered to sign with her real name. He remembered this, always around two a.m., and he always convinced himself that he couldn't pretend to a similar degree of affection. Not for someone he knew to be a German spy.

Around three in the morning he would know he was lying to himself. So when his batman came with hot water for a shave, Biggles would be already dressed and pacing the floor, the level of whisky in the bottle next his bed just that tad lower.

In the days after his tragic affair, Biggles flew high, flew hard, he streaked defiantly into the sun, blinded but dangerous and soon the Boche grew to know and respect him as the lone lunatic Brit who followed them around as if he wanted to be shot at.

He got his wish, as did most of the British planes in the woefully understaffed aerodrome. Biggles' C.O. (commanding officer) occasionally called him into his office and spoke on the wisdom of flying with a partner. Biggles only growled and stopped sleeping so he could continue patrolling the skies. He'd already stopped eating more than a sandwich during refueling time. The mess refused to serve him drink any longer.

Biggles did not die. He wanted to. He was very young, battle-crazy and he had been, for too brief weeks, in love.

Marie. He used to wonder if she was alive, if she was... happy.

She'd written in her letter that she would never stop loving him. And then she hadn't even signed her name.

Wisely his C.O. put him in for a change of scenery. The night his transfer papers came through, Biggles did something he tried very hard to forget. Motored into a village thirty miles north and found a tiny chapel where he lit a taper. Perhaps for himself, perhaps for an unknown soldier on the other side of the lines. As the flame flickered briefly into life, he thought he might one day manage to forgive. Not today, but perhaps someday.

He never actually forgot.

It was easy enough to smile in 266. The squadron was cheerful and full of veterans who didn't give two hoots for Biggles' reputation, but stood him drinks anyway, because he wasn't a piker and bought the rounds when it was his turn. Mulhoney of the swaggering Irish was his best friend because he had a laugh like a hippopotamus roaring and could hold his liquor almost as well as he flew. It was Mulhoney's room Biggles went to the night John Thomas was shot down in flames just fifteen miles over the lines, Mulhoney's whisky he drank and drank till the man leaned forward to gently remove the glass and say, "That's enough" - Mulhoney's nose Biggles attempted to break before he found his arms imprisoned in an effortless, unbreakable grip.

"That's enough laddie." Mulhoney's eyes he stared into, noticing their wise green and not noticing when he opened his own mouth and said,

"He wasn't even here long enough for me to memorize his name."

"Halliday," Mulhoney said, and Biggles remembered Mulhoney was acting C.O. till a new man came down. "John Thomas Halliday."

"Halliday," Biggles said and shook his head slightly to make the traitorous prick of tears disappear. Mulhoney understood and released his arm.

"I'll be having a look at my kite then," and he went to the door, pausing only to take the bottle with him.

When Mulhoney returned Biggles was still there, his coat neatly folded on his lap, and looked up as his friend entered.

"Will you?" he asked quietly.

"Ah laddie," Mulhoney started and as Biggles continued to look at him, shook his head. After a moment, his friend nodded.

They slept in the same bed that night, clothed and side-by-side, at least they pretended to sleep. Biggles lay wide-awake and unconscious of the bulk beside him. Occasionally he rubbed his fingers together.

They flew together at dawn, hunting for a certain Boche plane with green markings on the side. They found it, and at evening, when John Thomas Halliday was laid to his rest, a charred fragment of steel that might have been a wing strut stood side-by-side with the white cross. The chaplain didn't say anything. He was used to odd items like these cropping up at funerals.

Biggles no longer flew alone, and Mulhoney could be counted on to ensure he stayed at least part sober before getting into a plane.

"The problem, laddie," his friend told Biggles, "is that where ordinary mortals like me fall dead asleep on their feet after a drink or twenty, you just seem more alert."

"If that's the case, why don't I buy another round."

"I said 'seems', laddie, not 'are more alert."

"Go stick your head down the privy hole," Biggles said. But he didn't take another drink that day.

Only once did Mulhoney ask Biggles what the lass' name was. "Take a leap out the window," his friend invited, and as they were flying fifteen hundred feet in a two-seater at the time, Mulhoney desisted, not wanting to leave Biggles without a gunner. Later, on the ground, Biggles told him he might as well have for all the use he'd been. Mulhoney looked at the bullet-ridden wing with a tinge of remorse.

"I'm sorry boy, but how should I have known the guns were going to jam?"

"We might have been killed!"

"But your flying got us out of there, didn't it?"

"I'd suggest," Biggles said firmly, "that you drive next time, except you'd probably forget to brake and go crashing into a circus full of Huns."

Except next time Biggles went up in the air, it was in a single-seater, shepherding his young cousin Algernon Lacey around. Later that night, Mulhoney heard the rest of the story. How it had been the two of them, fifty miles over the lines, running into five Huns. How Lacey's guns had jammed and he'd saved Biggles' life and incidentally his own by ramming his plane into the Hun who'd had Biggles in sight.

Mulhoney shook his head sadly. "It's you then, lad. You're a jinx and a menace to us all. You come this close to a gun and it jam-" he ducked to avoid a well-aimed pillow.

"Not funny," Biggles said and there was that in the tone of his voice that made Mulhoney look at him just the slightest bit warily.

Biggles was staring at the shadows on the far wall, thumb and forefinger of his right hand rubbing together mercilessly.

"He could have died," Biggles said softly and the hairs on the back of Mulhoney's neck stood up. He continued to look at Biggles, who continued to stare at the wall, rubbing two fingers restlessly as though reaching after some unknown texture. For some unknown reason Mulhoney thought of the soft blond hair on young Lacey's head and shivered again. Biggles looked at him. It should have broken the spell.

After a moment, it could have been three, Mulhoney said, "Ah laddie," not knowing why except that he was losing something he'd never had, possibly would never have wanted except that he knew, irrevocably, that tonight he was losing it. But Biggles shook his head and after a minute, smiled.

Mulhoney cleared his throat and snorted, happy to find the atmosphere breaking. "Drink?" half-rising. But Biggles shook his head again. Rose and held out his hand. "Thank you." He pressed Mulhoney's hand firmly before leaving the room.

Seconds later, he popped his head back and said, "Her name was Marie."

Mulhoney looked at him and understood. "Pretty name."

"She was. Beautiful." Biggles thought a while and said, very softly, "Her hair smelled of lilies."

"Funereal kind of perfume," Mulhoney said without thinking, but Biggles laughed.

"It was." He said. "It was."

Mulhoney nodded again. He understood.

~ End.

If you don't, then talk to me. *g*