Title: Enigma 3/3
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, inappropriately florid language, shallow character development, insipid plotting, egregrious ambiguity... and sheer badness.

Enigma (3/3)

"And then a flower-pot fell on my head," said Tommy.

Julian laughed like a donkey, great braying raucous laughs that echoed around the street of black-curtained houses, drowning out the crickets that chirped in the summer night.

"Yeah, funny. I was out of it for a week and seeing double for three days after I woke up, and all the old ladies in woolly coats were, 'Bon jour, M'sieur Pot-de-fleur, you will carry my groceries for me, n'est ce pas?' The guys in my company reckoned it was hilarious, the bastards."

Julian set his own basket down and leaned against the rough stone wall of a church, doubled over, clutching his sides. "You were such a good boy," he choked out.

Tommy flicked his eyes sideways at his towy-haired friend. "Well, the young ladies said 'Bon soir.' Swings and roundabouts." He switched the large cake tin he was carrying to a different arm. "Do we have everything?"

*

"Z Y G O T E," said Jacinth, putting down the letter tiles. "And look," he said beaming, "a Triple Word Score."

"That is not a real word," said Tessa, wrinkling her nose.

"It is a real word," said Jacinth, "You may look it up if you wish." In the low yellow light of the lamp they were using to save electricity, he'd put on his silver-rimmed reading glasses. He pushed them further up his nose so the light glinted off the glass panes and patted an enormous, dusty dictionary of onion-skin pages printed in 7-point type. "In here."

The little girl snarled amiably and put down U N in front of S T O P used a P to link to A B L E and put down N E S S on the end. She smiled, revealing a missing tooth.

"That is... actually a word." He riposted with X A N A T H O S. Then Tessa put seven more letters on the end of her last word, to make U N S T O P P A B L E N E S S A B I L I T Y trail off the edge of the board and grinned like a shark. "Ahhh..." said Jacinth.

"Do you want to discuss it with my Big Brother?" she asked.

"Hey, unfair," he said. "He's so adorable I keep forgetting what to say."

"Well, sic your brother on him. He's good at being spiky."

Tessa glanced at the clock.

"They'll be back soon," said Jacinth. "They always are."

Her level eyebrows wrinkled together but she didn't say anything.

Jacinth patted her hand. "And I'm here anyway, yes? Do you want to open a present early?"

*

Julian looked up at the clear sky, bright with a round clear moon and sprinkled stars. "Bomber's Moon," he said.

"I didn't reckon they come in this far," said Tommy.

"Not often." Julian picked up his basket. "Shall we go?" They turned the corner around the little church in silence, stepping past the sand-buckets on either side of the ornamental doorway. Scrawled in chalk over the heavy iron lock was a cartoon of a long-nosed man peering over a wall, and the words Wot, no salvation? Funny. Then Julian asked, "Say, you like Jay, right?"

Tommy sighed and sat down on the church steps. He set the cake tin beside the galvanised bucket of gritty, pale sand, lit a cigarette, sighed and started telling stories.

He told Julian about the three barmaids of St Jean le Peu, the one who was pregnant, the one who liked green apples, and the one who was going to die. He talked about the mates from his street gone in one falling squib, and how most of the neighbourhood was gone too, so who was going to know they'd ever been if Tommy didn't remember them, eh? He talked about tracking down a nasty little orphange in south Bristol, and what he'd really felt when he saw his little sister again. He talked about the five minutes on a field of rubble he realised how very beautiful a single battered daisy was. At the end of his second cigarette he talked about how his best mate had smiled sweetly one day, and patted him on the cheek, and then shot him in the back and left him under a pile of rubble.

"Why are you telling me this?" asked Julian.

Tommy shrugged. "I get the feeling this is my last chance, somehow." He stubbed out his cigarette on the stone step and went on. "To this day, y'know, I can't tell if my mate shooting me cracked my world open or if I'd been waiting for it." He stubbed out his cigarette on the steps, and promised himself a donation to the poorbox. "But I could never stop looking at people after. Trying to read what they were up to. Get me?"

Julian nodded silently.

"I got a rep for it, in my company, even with those crusty sons of b- Well you know. Started getting sent on the 'special' jobs."

"So? You haven't answered my question."

Tommy snorted air through his nose. "J. Glasscastle has travelled extensively through Europe, and in particular Germany."

"A useful background for a codebreaker." Julian sat very still on the steps.

"J. Glasscastle has links with several German esoteric societies."

"He was sponsored into the Golden Dawn by that mad irishman Bill Yeats, also." Julian looked straight out into the night, his wide mouth curling at the edges. A trick of the moonlight on his side-on eyes made them glow pale and nacreous. "We daily perform acts of black sorcery and commune with spirits in our chores here at sweet old Bletchley so what's a little magick between friends, eh?"

"I wouldn't know," said Tommy. "Except that all of those links have lapsed well and truly. It took a lot of digging to make sure, but the line is dead, the birdie in the cage is not chirping, J. Glasscastle is a British hound for the duration of the conflict. You get my point."

Julian stretched easily, shutting his eyes and leaning into it. "No, I can't say I do," he said sighing. "So?"

"So J. Glasscastle is only one person and who the hell are you?"

*

"They're late," said Tessa. Jacinth dealt a black seven on a black eight with a new set of playing cards. "Huff!" she said, and took the rest of his turn, piling five cards from the spread of Huff Patience into Jacinth's decks. "We could go look for them."

"We could," said Jacinth. "But it's late and, well, something may have come up." He glanced at the little ticking clock. "They may be having a... long talk or something."

"This is not a good time," she said, scowling.

"Your mask is slipping." The girl put both hands to her mouth.

Jacinth went on, very gently, "I think you're scared that your brother won't come back at all, aren't you, Tessa?" She didn't say anything.

"There's only one thing for it," he said, slapping his thighs. "Time to blacken their names and open presents without them!"

"You're not going to yell at them for... whatever it is they're up to, are you," said Tessa glumly. "It isn't fair."

"Jay's been all I ever wanted in a brother, no complaints there," Jacinth said quietly. "I don't like to think what my life would have been without him. If he wants to... take his time fetching the groceries I." He stopped. "I was about to say, 'wouldn't like to be a bother' but that would be a lie. It hurts being left, it truly does, whatever their reasons. Tell you what," he said, shuffling one of his card decks with long, nervous fingers, "I'll shout at your brother, and you shout at mine, and all will be well."

"You're not supposed to shuffle! Huff! Huff! Huff!"

"Oops."

*

Tommy saw the shoulders of the man beside him shaking, trembling. Then Julian turned his face to him twisted in a diabolical grin, and Tommy realised the man was choking back laughter. He was up on his feet before he knew it, hands twisted in the collar of the other man's shirt and slamming him back against the church door.

"But really it is hilarious," protested Julian. "All these years moving among magicians and spiritualist, fakirs and fortune-tellers, and the only one to spot little Jay's imaginary friend is you, a monkey reaching for the moon in water - what, enough Sight to call a coin-toss two times out of three? Oh, my sides hurt."

Tommy twisted harder. "What are you?"

Julian smiled beautifically and melted away, like a reflection in a pond that had been scattered by wind. He called down from the roof: "An airy spirit, my friend. A thing of darkness acknowledged by... no-one."

The grin fell from his face suddenly, and he walked down the narrow ridgepole of the church, gravel and dirt from the ridges in his boots skittering down the shingles. "My current existence is... tenuous. I needed a mind to reflect in and Jay was convenient. Compliant."

"Kind."

Julian's mouth twisted. "I was about to say lonely but that too. He's been so very easy to use, the dear, but alas, all good things must end. It's not that I dislike him, truly, but the well it runs dry.

"I'll take my wardenship elsewhere. Perhaps a man who doesn't shatter his heart in pieces all the time like little Jay will find more favour with the Selector someday."

"With who?"

"It's not something you have the strength to deal with, Tommy-bach," said Julian gently, his face changing again as the shadows of moonlight made it haggard.

"Let this one go. Go back to your little sister and your little war, tend to your duties until they break you, and I, I shall stay awake in the night and dance on all your ashes!" And filled with sudden glee he danced on the roof, cracking shingles with his heavy clacking boots.

He paused and looked at Tommy with suspicion. "Why are you laughing?"

"You," said Tommy, half-choking. "Your presence hurts your brother but you're worried what will happen when you leave, and you miss him desperately already. And here you are like a kid with a grazed knee, telling the world you're big and bad and don't care about anything. It's adorable."

Julian skidded down the steep roof and crouched like a gargoyle on the guttering. "Like I said, a monkey reaching for the moon in water. I don't care for mortals overmuch. And my true brother hasn't spoken to me in years."

"So start the conversation. People screw up. It happens."

"Oh, like leaving Tessa alone for half a year? That kind of screw up?"

"I had duties on the front... It took time getting back without deserting."

"Ah, I see," said Julian politely. "Which is why we are talking so long and making her wait for her party."

Tommy's fists clenched. Julian offered a hand. "Would you like to come up?"

"What will you tell him."

"Nothing. He'll forget I was ever here and be happy."

"No!"

Julian's face appeared over the edge of the roof, amused. "You'd have him remember being abandoned?"

"Whatever was between you, it was real! At least a little. You're not a cruel man."

"I'm not one of those things. And here I was going to take out six months of Tessa's memory too, as a parting gift to the pair of you," Julian said lightly. "You'd get along easier without it. She might trust you, then."

"Keep your hands off Tessa," Tommy said tightly, "or so help me I will find a way to break your scrawny neck."

Julian didn't move, but his eyes glittered. Behind him the shape of night formed around him, somehow suggesting the shape of dark brooding wings, like a predatory bird about to strike, and thunder sounded distant in the sky.

Tommy refused to flinch. "Let him remember you were there, a brother, and that you liked him."

Julian leaned over the edge, closer. "And what will you trade me for it?"

"I'll remember that you were here, a friend. And that I liked you."

Julian's eyes opened painfully wide. "Go home," he said, and disappeared.

*

Tessa cradled the brightly painted music box in her hands. "I made the mechanism inside," said Jacinth proudly. "Jay painted the box, it used to hold cigars and the smell hasn't gone away yet. Sorry."

She wound the silver clockwork key carefully and set the tune going. "It's Ach du Lieber... She looked up and saw Jacinth lying forward on the table, unconsious, so pale she could almost see through him. Through the thin walls of the boarding house, she heard the air siren begin to wail.

*

They came in low through the still night air, fat-bellied bombers from the Luftwaffe pregnant with fire. The air-raid sirens whined through the night. Tommy almost thought he could his little sister's cries, high and shrill and clear, cut off suddenly. Tommy ran.

The boarding house where they lived had half the roof gone. Tommy ran through the back doors, up the stairs. Along the hall, lined with yellow striped wallpaper and Mrs Pushkin's second best sidetable. Through the cardboard-frail door.

The room was a wreck. Dull crepe paper streamers stirred fitfully in the breeze coming through the gaping hole in the wall, half covered with the shattered rubble and stains of something that looked dark in the moonlight. On the floor a little music box still played: Ach, du lieber Augustin, all is lost, all is lost... There were no people.

"Tessa!" Tommy shouted. "Jay!" Nobody answered. All is lost, all is lost. He went through the rooms, as methodically as if he were checking for snipers, as the air raid siren wailed and the drone of the bombers went over head. No-one was caught in the rubble.

Finally, he went outside, and opened the door to the bomb shelter. Jacinth was inside, his shirt all bloody, curled over a small form in a cotton-print dress. Tommy's breath caught, then he saw Jacinth look up and Tessa clutch the other man tighter, head buried in his shoulder. For a moment Tommy felt pure, irrational jealousy that someone else was looking after his little sister. Then Jacinth shook pale hair out of his eyes and all Tommy felt was warm relief.

Jacinth looked at Tommy over the girl's bowed head. "He's gone, then," said the codebreaker.

Tommy nodded.

"But you're here."

Tommy nodded again, throat dry.

"It's decided," said Tessa from a creaky-dry throat, "we yell at you in the morning."

And somehow, right now, everything was alright. He could live with that.

NOTES:

Bon jour Good day.

n'est-ce pas I think it means something like, "not so?"

Bon soir Good evening

Swings and roundabouts "What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts."

Blighty Town where a lot of recuperating soldiers were sent.

Huff Patience is a two-player form of the game. There's a game objective, to get all the cards stacked from Ace to King like normal Patience/Solitaire, and a player objective, to get rid of all your cards. If you ever miss the game objective, the opposing player can Huff you and take your turn. Jacinth is just exceptionally bad at it, messing up simple game mechanics.

Every time I worry that I'm writing Yue as too nasty, I remember the scene where he complains about having to be "that loser" Yukito, and my qualms about characterisation cease.

...a monkey reaching for the moon in water... It's a Zen proverb, that is to say, an idiot reaching for the unreal. Not actually as insulting as Julian is making it out to be – illogic is a strong element of Zen, and illusions have their own reality, ne? At the least, the perception of them has a real effect on the observer.

airy spirit... thing of darkness From Shakespeare's The Tempest - Ariel and Caliban respectively.

Tommy-bach - '-bach' is Welsh, added to a name it's something like 'dear'.