Chapter Eleven
All I Want For Christmas...

December 23rd

The Captain had wanted, more than anything, to take Tintin home. But something about Tintin's face as Haddock drove him back towards Moulinsart screamed Concussion at the Captain. So he'd turned around and sped straight to Brussels, where he knew one of the best hospitals in the country was. Tintin had been sped to the ICU, though the Captain thought that was a bit overkill. It turned out that the boy not only had a grade 3 concussion and major lacerations all over his body, but his arm was literally snapped near the shoulder and he'd dislocated two vertebrae. If Haddock hadn't gotten Tintin to the hospital, it would have been possible that Tintin would have suffered serious nerve damage.

When he'd heard the news, Haddock had sunk slowly to a chair, staring blankly ahead of him, suddenly quite glad he'd decided to take Tintin to the hospital.

"He's lucky he didn't break his spine," the Captain had said, laughing shakily.

"He's not lucky," the doctor had replied, scoffing. "He's Tintin."

And the Captain had begun to understand what Tintin had been saying, on the morning of the 21st.

Three surgeries and twenty-five stitches later, Tintin was in his own room, deep asleep. The Captain was there, too. It was a nice room Tintin had—the managers at the hospital had long since learned that money was no object to the Captain, when it came to Tintin's comfort—and there was a big couch that the Captain could sleep on. He'd tried to stay away from drinks for Tintin's sake, in case he did anything stupid like pulling out the boy's IV, but, well, when he went for a walk and saw that cute little café, it had been a little hard to resist. Besides: he was almost completely positive that even if he was as lit up as humanly possible, he would never lift a finger against Tintin. He just wouldn't. Even his drunken brain could never send those orders to his body.

He sat, elbows on knees, rough hands twisting nervously in front of him. He kept his gaze on Tintin, watching his breaths with what would have been worry if he hadn't been watching for 3 hours now and was fairly assured that they weren't going to suddenly stop.

Tintin moved. He twisted his head a little, looking towards Haddock, and tensed his body, stretching.

His eyes drifted open.

The Captain fought every instinct to rush towards him. Give him space. Let him breathe.

Tintin's eyes searched the room for a moment, wondering where he was; they lit up when he realised that the Captain was there.

They were happy. The Captain knew they were. But neither of them were able to speak, to display any emotion other than what their smiles showed. Instead, they sat, silent for a while, curiously shy.

"You stubborn old drunk," Tintin murmured at last, shaking his head.

"Me?" the Captain replied, pretending to sound wounded. "Me, a stubborn old drunk? Coming from the moron who crashed his bike."

"Coming from the moron who followed me into that stupid ditch."

They grinned at each other, not sure what to say, but not caring, either; they were together and safe, and that was all that mattered.

"How did you find me?" Tintin asked, at last. "You must've left only minutes after I did."

"I…" How do I say this? "Well, I was looking for you in the Hall…I wanted to apologise."

"There was no need," Tintin cut in quietly. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Maybe," the Captain admitted, shrugging. "But I knew you'd been hurt, and I felt responsible."

"Oh, Captain…" Tintin's brow furrowed, and he closed his eyes tight, wincing as if he was in pain. For a second Haddock thought that his wounds must've flared up, but then Tintin continued— "You didn't do anything… please, don't apologise… I'm so sorry for everything I did. I… it was stupid, I'm sorry."

Feeling his heart rising to his throat, the Captain stood up and made his way to Tintin's bed, resting on the edge. He took Tintin's arm and held it tight. "Tintin, I don't care where you were going, or what you were trying to do. Okay? You can just forget about it."

Tintin smiled shakily at Haddock, but then swallowed and looked away, pain obvious in his eyes. "Forget," he repeated. "People say it like it's so easy."

"Tintin, what happened to you?" he asked quietly.

Tintin didn't say anything.

"I want to help."

"I know. It was a long time ago, Captain… I'm okay…"

"No. No you're not." He knew he wasn't being sensitive right now, but he didn't care. "You lock up your memories like that, and they'll only hurt you more. What happened to you, Tintin? What did they do?" But the boy didn't answer, and Haddock was forced to cast about for ideas of what people would possibly do to their children. "Starve you?"

Tintin shook his head.

"Call you… names?"

A hint of bitter amusement drifted through his voice. "Don't you think that I could handle that by now?"

There were only so many options left. Options that the Captain desperately didn't want to consider. "Tintin, if…" he began falteringly, "if they laid a finger on you, I swear I'll—"

But he stopped when his saw Tintin's expression. Because that expression answered his question for him.

"I—I can't forget—" Tintin began to choke, but couldn't continue.

"Tintin, I…" When he reached out and touched Tintin's arms, holding the boy at arm's length, the boy shrunk back a little, but didn't try to make Haddock let go. "It's okay. It's okay, Tintin."

Biting his lip, Tintin turned his face away, but his chest heaved with tiny, shaking sobs, and the Captain knew he was crying.

"Don't hold it in," the Captain said, quietly. "Just let it all out."

There was a moment of indecision. Only a moment. Then his mind was made up. And the Captain's arms were open when Tintin came into them.

Hiding his face in the older man's chest, Tintin began to sob. And with each shaking breath he took in, he kept attempting to force words out. "He— he wouldn't— let—let go," he choked, wrapping his arms around the Captain's torso and burying his face into the soft blue fabric of the jumper. "He said—he— he said—"

"Shh," the Captain whispered. "Shh."

"I—just want—just—forget—" he gasped, red eyes tightly shut, shaking hands tightly fisted in the man's coat.

"You don't have to forget," he murmured, feeling pain and emotion stinging at his own eyes, but holding back the tears. Being strong for Tintin. "Forget about a wound, and it'll just fester, eh?" Pulling back a little, he looked at the lad, sympathy and concern in his eyes and voice as he cupped the boy's cheek in his palm. "I don't know everything that happened," he said quietly. "But I know you're hurting yourself. Don't lock everything inside. You have to let it go."

Tintin looked at him for a long moment, tears glimmering in his eyes, and then he felt back against the Captain's chest, taking a deep, shivering breath. "I know." His whole body was shaking, but he could feel the Captain's arms around him once more, the large hands gently running down his back, and could feel his tears begin to dry.

The Captain thought it was strange that he wasn't angry. It was wrong, he knew, that whatever happened had happened, but that didn't seem to matter right now—it wasn't half as important as comforting Tintin. Holding the boy as close as he could, hushing him, rubbing his hands soothingly down his trembling back, he could feel the boy's pulse, fluttering beneath his chest. It felt fragile. Too fragile to have been the only thing keeping him alive. Could that delicate beat sustain life in the boy's body? A boy who was shot at, knocked out, gagged and bound and dropped into the sea? A boy who should, be all rights, be dead?

It couldn't. Not for long. Because luck didn't last forever.

And the Captain would swing before Tintin's luck ran out on his watch.

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, focusing on the timed thump of Tintin's heart, the timid beat he could feel in his own body.

I will be your heart for you, he silently promised. When bullets fly towards you, I will be there first and they will rip through me before they even touch you. When my heart stops beating, it will be to protect yours. And when your heart stops beating, it will be my last beat, too.

"I don't know everything that happened," he repeated, "But I will never, ever do that. I'm going to protect you, Tintin. I'm going to protect you forever. Until my last breath." His voice was soft, but he enunciated each and every syllable. "Until my very – last – breath."

Tintin nodded. He was crying too hard to respond, but he smiled through his tears.

And that was enough.

A few minutes later, Tintin's tears had dried completely. He lay there, his head against the Captain's chest, his breathing finally back to a slow, steady pattern.

"Captain?" he asked, quietly.

"Yes, lad?"

"I… I want to go home…"

The words seemed to bring the Captain back to reality, and with it, gave him a strange, subtle feeling of disappointment—almost the words had woken up from a beautiful daydream.

"Oh course," he said quickly. "As soon as the doctor says you can go, I'll drive you straight there… your flat is only a couple minutes away."

"No, I…" He closed his eyes, and his head fell against the Captain's chest. "I mean, with you. Your home…"

The Captain stared at Tintin for a moment, his world slightly tilting, his heart twisting inside of him.

With me. My home.

He couldn't believe it.

He wants to go back to Moulinsart.

"Alright," he said, ruffling Tintin's hair and placing a soft kiss on his forehead. "Let's get you home, Tintin. Let's go home."

/

The doctor had said that Tintin had to stay for the next few days and recuperate. For once, Tintin tried reasoning with him, instead of simply pulling out his IV and walking out of the room. But it was the Captain who had finally convinced the man.

"It's Christmas Eve tomorrow," he had pleaded, trying to make his expression as winningly pathetic as possible. "I'll make sure he doesn't get too much excitement. He'll stay in bed, or on the couch. And I'll get a wheelchair for wherever he needs to go." To Haddock, this seemed like overkill, because he knew that there was no possible way that he was carting Tintin around in a wheelchair—it wasn't as if Tintin had broken his leg, blistering barnacles, and besides, Tintin wouldn't allow himself to be wheeled about like that—but it had been that proposition that had finally seemed to convince the doctor.

The Captain just barely remembered to buy a wheelchair, right before Tintin signed out and they were about to get into the parking garage. And Tintin had barely remembered to sit in it as they entered the parking garage and got into the car.

"We don't need this, right?" the Captain asked, pointing at the wheelchair as Tintin climbed into the passenger seat.

"No, but if we leave it in the parking lot, they might be unhappy."

"True," the Captain said. He opened up the back hatch, fought for two minutes to collapse the chair, and then ending up just kicking it into the back. "Right," he said, dusting off his hands and getting into the driver's seat. "Back to the Hall, then?"

"Uh…"

" 'Uh' what?" the Captain asked suspiciously, glancing over at Tintin as they pulled out of the garage and into the open air of Brussels. "I know that expression," he said warningly. "It means, 'I need you to drive me somewhere, Captain, where you don't want to go and where I'll probably get shot, but I'm such a nosy idiot—'"

"No, no, nothing like that. It's in Belgium, don't worry. Do you know the way to Ostend?"

"Well… yes, of course, but…"

"Great."

"Uh, right." Shrugging, the Captain consulted his internal map and began heading out the other end of Brussels. "I guess."

He scrunched up his face, trying to remember, and then slowly gave the Captain the address to an apartment complex near Ostend's somewhat diminutive Red Light District. Once they entered the seaside city, a mere thirty minutes away from Brussels, the apartment was only a fifteen minute drive from there.

The Captain loved Ostend. He loved the thick, foggy air, the heavy scent of salt, the rumbling of foghorns, the screeching of seagulls. Ostend was one of the few cities in Belgium that hadn't been obliterated in the War, so it still retained its gorgeous halls and cathedrals and towers. And there were so many ships! But, like every city, even Ostend had its slums. And he and Tintin were driving straight into them.

They rolled slowly down crooked cobblestone roads, past houses rotting and falling apart, past people sleeping on top of newspapers—or Hoover blankets, as they were called in the States. Everything here was cold, wet, and fifthly. The decaying piers were coated in a layer of thick mould; every other cobblestone was punctuated with shreds of rotting garbage, barely covered by the thin blanket of tire-polluted snow. Empty litterbins rolled arbitrarily across the streets. Traces of people's livelihoods laid scattered on the ground— a torn fishing net, a tattered newspaper, a gristly hunk of meat worried apart by dogs. Freighters rocked, moaning, back and forth over the slippery waves.

"Stop," Tintin said quickly, and Haddock applied the brakes. "This is it."

They were in front of a stone apartment building. Half the windows were missing panes. The roof was sagging. A coil of barbed wire was strung around the perimeter of the building.

"Here?" the Captain asked nervously.

"Here," Tintin replied, an almost imperceptible sigh to his voice. He pushed open the car door and hopped outside. "There's…something I need to do."

"Want me to come in, lad?"

"No thanks." His gaze searched the Captain's for a moment, and then he said, more softly, "They—he— wouldn't understand."

"Alright." The Captain didn't know what exactly he was saying was alright, but it didn't really matter. It was, after all, all right.

Tintin rapped on the front door—the sound echoed through the stone streets—and after a moment, it creaked open, and he stepped inside.

Time passed. Perhaps it was ten minutes, maybe fifteen. From what Haddock could tell, it certainly didn't sound as if Tintin's life was in danger. He heard no bullets, no screams—there were raised voices, but he didn't hear Tintin's—and for some reason, he had just gotten the feeling that this wasn't a dangerous place. Tintin hadn't looked as if he'd been planning to walk into danger. He'd looked rather as if he was going to go call on a friend.

When Tintin walked out of the front door, Haddock waved and twisted the key into the ignition.

"I think I did the right thing," Tintin murmured, closing the car door and relaxing into the leather seat.

The Captain didn't respond. He pulled away from the curb and began the drive out of the city.

"I'm sorry for being an idiot," Tintin said, more quietly.

The Captain almost responded with 'How could you be an idiot? You're Tintin!' but quickly thought better of it. Instead he just said, as casually as possible, "Ah, well, we all have our days."

Tintin cracked a smile. "Even me?"

"Oh, definitely you."

They grinned at each other, and then Tintin looked down, playing nervously with the hem of his jacket. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Er… Captain… thanks. Thank you, Captain." He looked out of the window, unable to meet Haddock's gaze.

"For what?" The Captain frowned.

Tintin cleared his throat again. "For understanding."

"Oh." He paused, swerving the car across a turn, and then looked at Tintin again. His forehead was furrowed with a slight frown, but there was a smile on his lips. "Don't think about it. Look, I'm not a very, er, motivated sort of person, but when it comes to you, sure, I do my best. And just you remember, that's all you can ever do."

"I know," said Tintin quietly, and then smiled. "Thanks for that, too."

/

"So glad to see you home and well, Master Tintin," Nestor said, smiling in his weary way. "May I say, we were all quite concerned for you."

"Thank you, Nestor," replied Tintin, and totally impromptu, reached out and gave the butler a hug. "Happy Christmas, Nestor."

"Happy… Christmas," Nestor replied dumbly, feeling dazed. He blankly stared at Tintin as the young boy tripped off, walking arm-in-arm with Master Haddock, chatting and laughing happily as they stepped through the open doors of the Hall.

And felt a smile rise to his face.

It was a happy Christmas, indeed.

Author's Note: Christmas Eve is tomorrow! I can't believe it!

So, if you thought this chapter was good, leave a review! That would be so awesome! :D