Chapter Six
"Trust in our national security has been shattered completely…"
Tipping back his head, Jack gulped down another mouthful of ale, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and slammed the pint back down on the countertop. He half listened to the radio, droning on in the background, talking about the psychological effects the attack was having on America.
It was 10 o'clock pm, and the bar was mostly empty. A few stragglers lingered at the back, finishing up their drinks, but the inside of the bar was almost as lonely and hollow as the world outside of it. Nobody was speaking. They were just sitting there, listening to the radio, drinking to try to kill their fear and forget about what just happened.
Why does it have to be like this?
It wasn't as if Jack was upset because he had been such wonderful friends with Harry. That wasn't it at all. It was the fact that Harry had died regardless of their friendship, and that he had died so close to Jack. In his arms, practically.
He could still see their faces. They had been screaming for help. But he had been helpless. Completely helpless. Unable to help anything or anyone. There was nothing that he could have done.
Jack had been listening to the drunken singing long before he was actually paying attention to it. Now, it caught his attention. Iit drifted near and nearer, the sound of slurred and hideously off-key music, until the singer was right outside the pub door. "For tonight we'll merry merry be, we'll merry merry be…"
Jack knew who it was out there, instinctively. He got to his feet, shoved the bar stool back towards the counter, and walked towards the door, feeling each step drag. He caught a glimpse of shaggy brown hair, falling over a tattered blue overcoat, and knew for sure.
"Hey!" he shouted, taking a step outside the door. "Hey, stop!"
Tintin turned to face him for just a second. He looked at him with bleary eyes—a look of brief recognition, perhaps—and then he dropped his gaze and continued stumbling onward.
"Right," Jack said grimly, grabbing Tintin's shoulders and slamming him backwards against the wall. Tintin flinched, but didn't try to resist. "You're going to stop this."
Tintin made a futile effort to get away, but Jack pressed his hands harder into his shoulders and pinned him even closer to the wall.
"You're going to stop this, now."
He tried to meet Tintin's gaze, but even with the older man drunk, he still found it hard to look angrily into his eyes. He lowered his gaze, and that was when noticed the thing in Tintin's hand. A bottle of Loch Lomond. Suddenly angry, he wrenched it from his hand and threw it onto the cobblestones, sending whisky and glass flying. "First of all," Jack stated, through gritted teeth, "you're going to stop drinking."
Tintin stared at him, clearly unfazed. "Laissez… m—moi… tranquille…"1 He swayed forward, almost falling on top of Jack, and fell flat to the ground.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Jack muttered. "This isn't happening. All right: you're coming with me." He didn't wait for a reply; he reached forward, grabbed Tintin's overcoat and heaved the reporter upward with strength he didn't know he had. Sighing, he raised his hand to call a taxi.
/
Jack was surprised to see that it was pouring rain and overcast when he walked into the street. People walked down the city blocks, shoulders hunched and shrouded in black umbrellas. It was at least eleven o'clock at night, and it was so wet and foggy that he could barely see the dim glow of the streetlamps. How long had he been at the bar?
Getting Tintin into the taxi proved hard, especially with the rain soaking Jack's clothes and face. Getting him through the front door was even harder. But taking off the man's coat and dragging him to the bathroom? That wasn't just hard. That was downright awkward.
Tintin had been muttering in French for the past ten minutes, but now he was finally unconscious. At first, it had been a relief; now, it was a pain. Jack really didn't want Tintin on his couch; the man was filthy. Jack had planned on making him take a bath, but if he was unconscious, that wasn't going to happen. He toyed with the idea of just stripping the man and washing him himself, but he didn't want Tintin to wake up in the middle of that. Jack would never be able to look at him again.
"Okay," he said, dusting off his hands. Unsure what to do, he leaned against the bathroom wall, looking over the room. "Okay," he said again.
Well, he could just leave Tintin there. Hopefully he would wake up sooner or later and do something about himself.
Deciding that was the best plan, Jack filled up the bathtub with scalding hot water, laid out shampoo, a razor, and a pair of pyjamas, and exited the bathroom.
/
Tintin stared at his reflection.
He was in a clean white bathroom that smelled like shampoo and aftershave. There was a small window blowing cool, albeit wet, night air into the humid room, curtains billowing slightly. Behind him was the tub, filled to the brim with lukewarm water, dirt, and frothy bubbles. After emerging, dripping, from the tub, he'd wrapped a soft blue towel around his waist and wondered exactly where he was and why. He had vague recollections of getting drunk at a pub (that was nothing new, of course) and being thrust into a car (that was nothing new either, but it certainly hadn't happened for a while) and driven off to—well, here. Tintin was fairly sure that Jack Davenport, who may or may not have been a friend, had something to do with it, but he had no absolutely idea whether he was a guest or prisoner.
He sighed and shook his head, surveying the mirror before him. In front of him was a stranger. Or maybe not a stranger exactly; but somebody he hadn't seen for a while. The man before him had clean ginger hair, a round, pale face, a faint scattering of freckles, and clear grey eyes. If he squinted a bit, he could almost imagine that he was still seventeen. The old Tintin, the one that everybody knew and loved. The Tintin that the comics and newspaper stories were about.
But there were differences. Obvious ones, he noted, running a calloused hand over his freshly washed face. Those sunken cheeks. They hadn't been there before. And where had those lines on his forehead come from?
Tintin found this hard to take in. It had only been… what… two years ago that he had left Belgium? He had only been twenty then. He was twenty two now, but he didn't look it. No, he looked old; old and haggard.
And then of course, there were other differences—psychological and emotional differences; less obvious ones, but far more significant.
It didn't take long for him to realise that he didn't care. It didn't really matter who he was; he was content to stay nameless and faceless in the streets. Anybody who said differently was a fool—Monsieur Davenport included.
Shaking his head again, he looked over the clothes laid out on the side of the bath for him. Jack Davenport's clothes. Part of him told him to put back on his pants—his overcoat and shirt were gone—and escape through that window. But the same part of him that told him to take the bath and not escape, now told him to get dressed in the pyjamas and forget about trying to run away. He obeyed it. He didn't have enough willpower left to resist.
The feeling of clean, soft clothes against his skin was wonderful, but felt strangely alien. How long had it been since he wore pyjamas? Five years, at least. Ever since he had been dragged through the doors of—
No.
Don't think about that. Just forget it. It was years ago. Forget.
He found that his heart was pounding. Who was he kidding? There was no way he could forget then— the cold walls, the scornful voices, the pain, the thudding guilt—
Fingers gripping the marble vanity, he braced his arms and closed his eyes, breathing deeply, letting his head fall between his shoulders.
Just… just forget.
/
Jack stared at the pancake on the floor.
"Drat you," he finally said, reaching down and scooping it up with the spatula. He flipped it into the litterbin and stood there, hands on his hips, surveying his kitchen. Why had he thought he was capable of flipping a pancake in mid-air? Ugh, he really needed a wife.
"Not married?" came a voice from right behind Jack. He jumped and turned around.
"Uh— not exactly," replied Jack hurriedly, flustered by the sudden intrusion. He pulled down the back of his shirt self-consciously.
Tintin raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. "Not… exactly?" he queried drily.
"No," admitted Jack, sounding defeated. Then he looked up to meet Tintin's gaze, and was immediately struck with the feeling of seeing a ghost. He dropped the spatula and stood there, staring blankly for a few seconds. "You're Tintin," he said weakly. Then he realising how strange this sounded, he blurted out, "I mean, I mean, you look like— you're actually—I mean…" He gave up fumbling for the right words and bent down to pick up the spatula, trying to hide the colour rushing to his cheeks.
"Why are you doing this?"
Jack frowned, pausing as he straightened up. "Doing what?"
"Why am I here? Why are you helping me?"
"When did you start drinking?" he asked suddenly, turning to face Tintin.
A brief look of pain flickered over Tintin's otherwise impassive features, but he held Jack's gaze steadily. "Two years ago."
"Why?"
"Why does anybody drink?"
Jack couldn't think of anything to say. He shrugged and pulled out a cigarette for himself; he handed one to Tintin. "Here."
"Merci beaucoup."2
They lit up and stood there for a while, not saying anything.
Jack could tell a lot of things from Tintin's face right now. For one, he could tell that Tintin had been through a lot over the past four or five years, however long he'd been gone. And he could also tell Tintin a lot of things. He could tell him about how he had been his hero for over half his life. He could tell him about how it was his fault that Harry Nieuport was dead. He could tell him about how much he wanted to learn from him, as one reporter to another. He could tell him about how angry he was that Tintin was hiding from the world. But, in the end, he didn't say anything. It was almost a minute before he smelled smoke that didn't smell much like tobacco, and suddenly remembered that there were pancakes on the griddle.
Throwing his cigarette onto the tile floor, he dove for the spatula in a frantic attempt to save the pancakes, and then remembered that he had put said spatula in the sink, and it was now submerged in almost a foot of soapy, scalding water. He reached in anyway, but yelped and pull out his hand, swearing and grunting with pain.
He turned around, to see Tintin calmly lifting up the griddle, flipping it over, and neatly catching the falling pancakes on a dinner plate.
Why didn't I think of that?
"Very, um, quick thinking."
"Actually," he said, sliding half the pancakes onto a separate plate, "it took me fifteen years to think of it."
"Oh." Jack blinked. "Really? Um, fifteen years?"
"Well, I thought of it one night when Nestor—our butler—was out, and the Captain said we—" But his voice broke off.
There was a long silence.
"Oh. Captain Haddock?"
Tintin nodded, calm as ever, but that look of pain was there again, far more obvious this time. He blinked and looked away.
"How is he?" Jack asked quietly. He only got a shrug for a reply. "You mean you haven't seen him? Even heard from him?"
"Not for five years."
"Not for fi— oh, wow." It seemed like an understatement, but for the life of him he couldn't think of anything else, so he said it again. "Wow. Where have you been?"
Tintin was silent.
"So… so you just… you just left Belgium?"
He shrugged.
"You've been letting the world fall to pieces, just so you can, what, hide? Almost a hundred people just died, Tintin. They just died. I tried calling you, but you didn't do a thing. A hundred people died."
He barely even looked up. "And what do you want me to do about it?"
"Nothing. Believe me, it's too late for that. But maybe, just maybe, if you had been out there, fighting for what's right, instead of getting drunk, you might've—"
"Stop it."
"And you don't care," Jack hissed, taking a threatening step forward. "You don't care at all. All you care about is wallowing in self-pity, isn't it? And you call yourself Tintin."
"No I don't. You call me Tintin. I stopped pretending to be Tintin five years ago."
"And look where it's gotten you!" Jack shouted, getting to his feet. "Do you feel any better about whatever happened? No! No, you don't! Maybe it's time you stopped running from your past, and faced it like a man!" Taking a step towards Tintin, he gripped the man by his shoulder, his brow furrowed with concentration. "Think about what you were, Tintin. Think about what you were."
Tintin stood there, staring with the most penetrating gaze that Jack's had ever met. His lips moved, with unspoken words, and for a moment, Jack thought that he was going to speak; that he was going to agree. But then his head turned away, and yet another look of grief flickered transiently over his piercing grey eyes.
"I don't live in the past," he muttered, turning on his heel and striding out of the kitchen.
"Don't run away again."
"Where are my clothes?" he demanded, his voice echoing from the hallway.
"I took them to the cleaner's."
Silence.
"Why?"
"And if you'll fetch me your pants, I'll get those washed, too."
There was a long pause, and then Tintin slowly walked back into the kitchen, his eyes shooting daggers at Jack. "What do you want me to do, Davenport?"
Jack felt like he was wilting, but gripped the countertop and forced himself to look and stand calm. How must it have been for criminals to get that glare? When Tintin had a gun in his hand? "I want you to—"
"Open up!"
They froze.
Somebody was knocking on the door, fast and hard, faster and harder with each knock. "Open up, now!"
Jack heart began pounding, a fluttering, off-beat rhythm. But there's nothing to be afraid of; Tintin can take them on.
"Here, I'll give you my gun—" Jack began, but just as he reached for the drawer, Tintin's hand grabbed his arm.
"I'm not shooting."
"You're not what?"
They could hear somebody kicking now; a heavy kick, bashing against the front door. "Open up!"
Jack muttered something and dashed towards the front door, his hands raised into fists.
The door fell over with a crash. The sound of gunfire accompanied the pounding of feet as a crowd of black shapes dashed into the house, knocking Jack over, running for Tintin, raising a cosh—
And then everything went black.
Author's Note: Ugh, it's been awful not writing from Tintin's POV for the last five chapters. I'm updating this story fairly quickly, for two reasons: one, it's not as cool as Silent Night, so I'm getting it over with. Two, it's more fun to write then Silent Night, so I'm being a bit more prolific.
Translations:
1 Leave me alone
2 Thank you very much
