Title: Enigma 2/3
Fandom: Card Captor Sakura
Series: Faces of the Moon
Summary: Concerning the adventures of Keroberous and Yue before they met Sakura. WWII, Bletchley Park, there are more mysteries than just the codes.
Characters: J. Glasscastle, J. Glasscastle, Tommy Archer, Tessa Archer
Warnings: Original characters, poor historical research

Enigma (2/3)

Some questions were better left unasked

"He's tired," said Julian distinctly. He unwound Jacinth's arm from his shoulders and unloaded him on Tommy. "Do me a favour, old thing, and get him back to our rooms?"

Tommy scowled, but settled under the rangy Welshman's boneless weight. The older brother was already walking briskly away, only his white-pale hair and shirt keeping him from disappearing into the gloaming.

"Hey! Where are you off to, mate?" Tommy called. Behind them, the Mary Red roared

Julian waved without looking back. "Wine, women, and song? Who knows. TTFN!"

"You're a terrible brother!"

"Am I?" came drifting back.

Tommy had a few choice things to say. Fortunately Jacinth perked up enough to give directions after he was gone and they staggered down the road, a bit less the worse for alcohol than Tommy was used to, but what the hell. A pair of Naval Wrens that worked in the Bombe room passed them by, their hair neatly curled and their patent-leather shoes clacking on the shiny-damp pavement. One looked up from adjusting her scarlet lipstick and smiled at him. He smiled back. She looked down at her watch pointedly and her smile got wider. Tommy rolled his eyes, shrugged, and mimed drinking with his free hand, then glared at the man draped loosely over his shoulder. The Wren smiled again, this time wryly with the corners just crinkling at the edges of her mouth. She nodded in the direction of the Mary Red, gestured vaguely, and lifted her eyebrows. Tommy let his face fall and patted the air about the level of his little sister's head. She nodded understandingly and let her friend pull her away, giggling.

"Huh, whuzza'?" mumbled Jacinth, lifting his head.

"Just having a chat," said Tommy, "in code."

"Codes are fun. The rule is," Jacinth slurred, "no character is itself."

"Eh?"

"Breaking Enigma. 'S the rule."

"Talk about Enigma out of the Park and I may have to break your head," said Tommy pleasantly, looking to see if anyone was in earshot.

"Tha's my soldier boy." The codebreaker's knees were sagging again, and his weight awkward without his (evil!) duplicate on the other side. Tommy swore under his breath, bent down, and hoisted Jacinth over his shoulder in a fireman's lift.

Across the road, one of the other codebreakers stopped to adjust the chain on his bicycle, looking at them with amusement. Tommy fumbled a salute with his free hand, then realised it probably wasn't appropriate for a civvy. Bugger.

"Have you seen Fuzzywinkins?" asked the codebreaker.

"What?"

"Your landlady Mrs Pushkin," he said. "She can't find Fuzzywinkins. I promised I would ask you if I saw you."

"Oh, right." Tommy considered this evening's dinner of 'something like rabbit' with a sinking sensation in his stomach. "I'll... keep an eye out, then." But he wouldn't ask his sister. Some questions were better left unasked, some mysteries best unresolved.

"Hi Dr Turing!" called Jacinth from Tommy's shoulder. "I'm not drunk!"

"I understand completely," said the other codebreaker gravely.

The room the Glasscastle brothers shared was on the highest floor of their boarding house, where the ceiling slanted down sharply over an inset window laid with a white-painted seat. A high, narrow bed stood against one of the short sidewalls, with a low trundle-bed on wheels parked underneath, both neatly made up with matching quilts and faded, ruffled pillow-cases. Other furniture involved two over-stuffed armchairs, a poky pigeonholed desk, and bookshelves lining the three full-height walls. One lightbulb dangled from the ceiling. A framed photograph of a pale boy with owlish glasses hung on the wall over a bundle of dried vervain.

By the time Tommy had gotten Jacinth up there and muscled into an arm-chair, the scars in his back were burning, perhaps not exactly like red-hot pokers being driven into the abused muscles, but certainly something that brought that particular metaphor to mind. He prowled around the room curiously, working the knots out of his shoulders, while the other watched him, curiously.

"I'm really not drunk," said the codebreaker.

"Just tired," Tommy agreed. "So sleep." The other didn't answer.

Tommy ran his hands over the red-leather cover of one of the books, fingered the golden, winged lion embossed on the cover next to the massive clasp. Its shard-of-amber eyes seemed to stare at him, judging. "What's this one about?"

"I'll tell you when I get the lock picked."

"A lockpicker," said Tommy, amused. "Huh. I didn't reckon breaking and entering your style.

"Jay and I used to, hmmm, wander astray, in our younger days."

"You were a bad boy!" said Tommy.

"Wicked beyond imagining," Jacinth agreed solemnly. Then, "It's lonely without him."

Tommy turned the book over and traced the form of the stern silver angel on the back cover, its white wings curved about an emptiness, describing but never explaining.

"Stay. He will not be back tonight."

*

"The trouble with older brothers," said Tessa Archer as she buttered her scone, "is that they think they know all there is to know about food until it actually comes to cooking it."

"Fortunately," said Jacinth Glasscastle, opening a jar of rosehip jam, "I am a younger brother. How are they?"

Tessa took a careful bite and considered her mouthful. "Delicious!" she said at last. They both beamed.

On the other side of the picnic mat the victims of the diatribe shared a packet of cigarettes and pretended to ignore the denunciation of their familial roles. They were watching a game of Rounders on the lawn outside the slightly shabby mansion. As they watched, a middle-aged woman with bobbed hair and a sensible cardigan over her tweeds threw an under-arm ball to a tall thin teenager with sticking out ears. He missed, dropped the bat, and ran wildly for a base.

"I'm telling you," said Tommy, "if Miss Feversham went professional she'd go far. She's got the eye, the Look of Eagles, the-"

"Truly a great loss to the world of competitive Rounders," drawled Julian. "But I think young Eric has potential. A bob he scores at least two runs in the next innings."

"You're on."

They were interrrupted when two plates of food were passed over their shoulders. "Is that going to be enough?" said Tommy, looking askance at the enormous platter that Julian took from his brother.

"Oh yes, I had a bite before I came," said Julian, very seriously.

"Where are you getting the ration stamps?" asked Tessa.

"Jay's tapeworm has its own book," said Jacinth lightly but she didn't giggle. Instead the pair leant in and had a quiet, very serious discussion about procuring food supplies in the area. Tommy tried not to listen to the more dubious details.

It wasn't that he didn't trust his sister. But... there'd been a good six months from the time he woke up in a field hospital with shrapnel in his back and a desperate dream that his family needed him, and actually wangling a post Home. When he finally pulled his little sister out of the orphanage they'd stuffed her when the rest of the family kicked the bucket in the Blitz, his beloved little sister who liked hair ribbons and dolls with lacy dresses had gone a bit... feral.

For all the girl twinkled and made herself cute, she never trusted where her next meal was coming from, for one thing, not until it was two thirds down her gullet and she took a perverse pride in keeping Tommy's own belly full. He knew damn well there was at least one knife secreted about her person, and that as far as his pretty little sister was concerned it only counted as 'wrong' if you got caught. The only two people he knew other than himself that she didn't sidle around so they were always in view were the daft Welshmen sharing his blanket, for which he would put up with a great deal more nonsense from the both of them, thank you very much. He didn't, anymore, doubt that his sister would survive the war, physically at least. He was working on the sane part.

"You're broooooodiiiiiing," said Julian next to him, and tweaked his nose. Tommy stole the last cigarette from the packet.

"It's all decided," said Tessa, cracking the lid on a thermos so the steam rose up in the air. "Jay is going to marry me when I grow up. You can be the disreputable uncle."

"Ta."

"Thank you for the chocolate, O Future Wife," said Jacinth, accepting a cup. Then, "Do you remember, Jay, in Dresden, we could get marvellous hot chocolate in this little Schokoladengeschäft on the main street with the tiled walls with flowers painted on them. And all the little hausfraus would come in in the afternoon and try to set us up with their daughters. It was... right next to that new munitions plant they just built. They'll have bombed it to nothing by now..." The liquid in his cup spilled over as his hands started to shake, scalding them.

His brother turned suddenly, and took the cup away. "Here," he said, tapping Jacinth on the forehead and staring at him intently, "We're here, and with a job to do, and some things can't be helped so there's no use thinking on them. Forget."

"If you like," said Jacinth cheerfully and ate another scone. He beamed and looked up at the sky. "What a beautiful day!"

"So which uncle am I?"

"The Remittance Man in the Colonies that we never talk about."

NOTES:

TTFN "Ta ta for now!" Tagline from a popular radio show of the time, ITMA

Its shard-of-amber eyes seemed to stare... By the way, 'to stare' in Japanese is jirojiromiru. It's such a cool word that I needed to share. Sorry for the floridity of the language (but not very).

I bagged the rules for Rounders from the Great Wiki, which is never wrong except when it is. If I got a detail incorrect, please forgive me. The Code Book (Singh, 1999) tells me that Rounders was a daily after-lunch sport with the codebreakers.

"A bob he scores at least two runs" A bob is one shilling.