Chapter Text
1934, Ullapool
They should not have left him there alone,
Alone, that is, except for the cat.
1935, Hancock
Jane knew he wasn’t supposed to be in here. He knew it not only at the forefront of his mind where the rules of home were scripted, but also in the way the memorabilia leaned down on him, threatening him with their clear and present this place is not for you. Still. He dragged over a chair, marks in the carpet, sloppy, and scrambled up so he could get a view of the photo mounted on the wall. Pa’s company. All lined up, all filthy; helmets covering their eyes as the faded background dulled to an indistinct sepia, leaving only the men in front as identifiable behind the glass. Jane thought he could make out Pa. There, second from the left.
“Jane,” Elle begged. “Jane please let’s go.”
“Quiet you!” Jane barked. “We are investigating. Do not abandon your post!”
Elle—seven years Jane’s junior and the only reason he’d learned about birds and bees because Peggy kept muttering accident under her breath—squatted over her ankles and whined. But she didn’t leave her lookout by the door, so she was a good enough soldier in that regard.
Jane climbed higher, now on his tiptoes on the back of the chair. What he really wanted to get at was the guns, but they were far too high, so he was left with…here, a medal. Safe in its purple-velvet box, softly held, Jane’s breath fogging the glass.
“Jane,” Elle hissed.
“Not now private,” Jane mumbled, just wanting to get a closer look.
“Jane,” came the pleading reply, but it was too late.
“What the fuck are you two doing?”
Now claiming the doorway was Peggy, eyes furious, shadow huge as her body blocked the light from the hall since Jane hadn’t bothered turn on the single green lamp in the office. Elle shrunk beneath her. Cowardice. She’d had one job.
Peggy stamped forward, grabbed Jane by the arm and pulled him backwards so hard he tripped off his precarious place on the chair. He never hit the ground, though, Peggy’s grip strong enough that he was hanging, suspended as she began to pull him out the office. He tried to kick her, fantasized about hitting the wall so hard that one of the guns would fall off and go bang right in her stupid head.
Peggy got her other hand around Elle’s wrist and dragged them both bodily from the office. “Peggy,” Elle whined, “Peggy stop, you’re hurting me.”
Jane didn’t bother with any of that liver-bellied griping. Instead, his fist landed ineffectually against her side, once again proving that the difference between eleven and thirteen might as well have been centuries for all the damage he could put in his sister. Jane struggled, Peggy dragged, and eventually all three of them were deposited far from the house on the edges of the potato field.
Jane managed to do something at last, because when Peggy finally dropped him, it was with an, “oof! Dammit! You ungrateful little shit, gotta cart your stupid ass outa trouble again. Messing around in Pa’s room! Grade A medical moron.”
“The door was unlocked!” Jane protested. He would know: he had been checking it every day for his entire life. “It was our duty to investigate.”
“Investigating!” Peggy barked. “If I hadn’t found you he woulda, and he woulda killed you. You hear that dumbass? He woulda killed you, and you woulda gotten Eloise killed too you fucking defective.” She shoved him so hard the clay pot he’d been using as a helmet fell off his head. “You’re lucky you got me around.”
“Ha!” he said. “Lucky? I am saddled with your lack of gumption! Henry Leveson says the only thing older sisters are good for is swallowing their gum and covering their own asses, and no truer words have ever been spoken!”
She shoved him again. “Yeah? Well the only thing middle sisters are good for is going mental and licking Pa’s boots.”
Jane wanted her to stop shoving. He wanted her to stop shoving because Peggy was always shoving him around, all too tall and shooting out of her dresses faster than Jane could put them on, growing at a rate he could never catch. He bared his teeth, and socked her one.
That only made her mad. It only ever made her mad these days, because now she was hitting him back, and hitting him hard, slamming them both to the ground with her knee in his stomach. He tried to return the favor but all his rage and his thoughts and the medals so shiny if only he’d got to look a bit longer didn’t mean jack when his opponent was twice his size. A tooth gave way. His nose didn’t feel too great either, and now there was a lot of blood all up and down him.
Her long black ponytail was swinging down into his face. He couldn’t see anything. She picked him up by the front and smashed him into the hard dirt of the potato field.
“Peggy!” Elle was screaming. “Stop it stop it! You’re going to kill her.”
That was what got her to stop. Elle could do that, sometimes, get Peggy to stop if she just whined enough. Jane experienced his sister’s absence by air in his lungs and blood in his mouth, and he rolled to his side to watch her clamber to her feet. Her dress was spotty with Jane’s blood.
“Idiot,” Peggy murmured, but now it was mostly to herself. “Going to get us all killed.”
Jane lay back down, and stared at the sky rolling blue above him. “Jane?” Elle asked him, shaking his side. She had shiny tears at the corner of her eye. “Are you going to be alright Jane?”
“I’ll be fine private,” Jane coughed. His tongue was bitten and the words scorched something fierce along his throat. “We fight another day.” Elle said she didn’t know what that meant, but Jane didn’t feel like explaining.
1936, Rottenburg
When he entered his family’s home one evening’s visit, he found the front door unlocked, and it only took a moment to realize why. In the middle of the sitting room was his uncle, arguing heatedly with Ludwig’s parents, and Ludwig cringed internally at the idea of wading into that mess. Instead he took the long way to the kitchen, winding through the dining room to find with surprised delight that there were a few of mother’s gingersnaps left.
“<Ludwig?>” A voice from the sitting room.
Ludwig swallowed. There is a specific feeling in one’s life at being caught with a face full of crumbs and a hand on a third cookie, a guilt that apparently never goes away no matter how old one gets.
His mother swept in. Her face was pinched in a way he had seen only a few times ever in his life, mouth worried until it was swollen and red. “<You have come to visit. That is good, I was going to write you, to tell you that we must go, your uncle won’t listen.>”
“<Go?>” was all Ludwig said, his face still awkwardly crammed with gingersnap. His mother rushed up to him, gripping him by the forearms.
“<Your father either, they will not listen.>” Her voice was thin with distress.
He managed to tug his sleeves away, putting his hands over hers in an attempt to stop them shaking. “<What won’t he listen to, Mother?>”
Her eyes darted to the kitchen window, the birdbath outside sparkling as a pair of swallows shook themselves in droplets, chirping in the spring air. They had no care for anything, only that it was warm and they were safe, and that the woman of the house left out enough seed to get them through the day.
Mother’s eyes lingered.
“<Mother,>” he prompted her. “<What is going on?>”
She turned with no resolve. “<We must go. Leave Rottenburg. The whole family must, everyone we can convince. I have an aunt in Paris, she will help us, I have been sending her letters…>”
“<Paris!>” Ludwig said aghast. “<Don’t you think that is overreacting? Our family has weathered times like these before, if we all sit and wait for this to blow over…>”
“<Damn you!>” she sizzled, smacking him sharply in the forehead with the heel of her palm. “<You men are all fools! So confident in the world and your position in it, you will not even lift your head when the danger throws rocks at your back! Yes we have weathered, but that only means I know when things have gotten worse than they have ever been. We must leave, before we cannot.>”
Ludwig frowned. He thought of his little apartment by the university, the walks around the park nearby, the associates he had made when first stepping free from his hometown. Maybe things were growing tense elsewhere, but in Stuttgart he’d never been more content.
He tried, “<I can’t mother. Maybe I’ll come stay with you in Paris some time, but I am so close to finishing my studies->”
“<Ludwig listen,>” she pleaded. “<There will be no more studies, they will not let you. Things will only get worse.>” Her eyes became distant. “<They let your father go from the firm.>”
His head whipped to the sitting room where, without his mother’s presence, his father and uncle had fallen to a muttered debate. Father’s hair was mattered, such a wild, ungodly departure from its usual neat part that Ludwig felt his gut sink.
“<They what? But he has worked there for twenty years! They cannot just fire him because some idiots->”
“<Those idiots are many, my child,>” Mother said softly. “<Please, Ludwig.>”
“<I…>” Reality felt like a dark tunnel, slowly narrowing before him. “<I suppose I can get my credits transferred. There are many prestigious medical schools in Paris…>”
The relief was palpable on her lined face. “<Thank you. Thank you my son. We will convince your brother, he can bring his family and we can all find a good place, a safer place.>”
Ludwig frowned. “<Raimund won’t come, not with the baby just born.>”
“<We will convince him,>” Mother repeated. “<It is for his daughter’s safety he must come.>”
The doubts were already sweeping upon him again, but Ludwig did not press. “<And Father? Uncle?>”
She shot a look at the open archway, the two brothers speaking softly. “<Stubborn, stubborn men. Aby will not leave the pharmacy, your father stays to help him.>”
“<…We will convince them.>” It felt like a prayer rather than a promise, but her look of relief almost made it worth it.
“<Thank you Ludwig. You are such a good boy. Your mother is lucky to have you.>”
He smiled wanly. Many, many things troubled him, and he did not even know where to begin. Instead, he fell back on the old staple of staring out the kitchen window and watching creatures that had far fewer woes than him.
1937, Ullapool
The damp salt-smell kept his senses sharp as he walked along the beach, necessary when the cliffs could go from troublesome drops to deadly plummets with only a few paces between. Tavish didn’t tempt fate this morning, keeping a respectable distance from where the wet grass turned into crumbling gravel.
However, since he was so keen to his surroundings, he did notice something was missing. He looked around, frowned, put two fingers between his lips and blew.
The whistle rose keen and singing across the moors, and to its answer Pepper came bounding over the nearest hill, ears pricked in eager delight to see why her master had called.
“There you are!” Tavish told the terrier. “Dinnaye tell you not to go wandering off?”
Pepper arfed in reply, as though to say, yes! Here I am!
“Come on then,” he beguiled her as he began to walk again. “We got important work to be doing.”
Important work, but only one of them seemed to be taking this seriously. She made him nervous whenever she strayed too close to the cliff’s edge, threatening to trip over her big puppy-feet, skirting danger and not realizing how close she came to disaster. Tavish felt that danger a lot these day, a lurking thing that no one but him wanted to see. He was the only person in Ullapool with a firsthand experience with magic; to the rest it was all just stories, things to worry about only when tucked in your bed at night. So then, if no one cared to see, he’d have to deal with things himself.
The faery circle crested the opposite hill, approaching swiftly even though he was the one moving, plodding along at his own pace. The mushrooms had sprung up when the hens started dying, when the nets all came back empty, and everyone else in the village could chalk it up to foxes and the bad weather, but Tavish knew better. He sat down his beaten school bag.
“Oi! Don’t go in you daft poodle!”
Pepper, who’d begun to sniff at the cluster with one foot raised, whimpered as if to say I wasn’t, I wasn’t!
Tavish scoffed. You’d think animals would know better than to mess with magic. He wondered if things like deer and rabbits and other creatures too foolish for their own good got whisked off to the greenlands just for wandering inside. Probably not as wicked a kidnapping if the victim in question couldn’t tell the difference between this world and the other.
He set to work. Salt ring, right on top of their heads (probably would smell wonderful if a forest fire started right now.) A few pages read from the Bible (Mum would kill him if she knew he’d borrowed hers, so instead he read aloud some lines from his schoolbook, which were in Latin so it counted.) And, for extra safety, a daughter offered as bride to the King of the Mound (Tavish didn’t have any daughters, but he did have a little dolly that Mum had made for him a long time ago. He hadn’t played with her in years, so he didn’t mind sending her away to be married. He hoped her and the King got along well.)
“There,” Tavish said, after a grueling quarter hour of demystifying. “That should do it!”
Pepper put her paws on his trouser leg and barked, as if to say good job! Those ungrateful numpties will thank you eventually! And if they don’t, well sod them. You can keep protecting this village all day and all night if you have to, whether they appreciate you or not.
Or maybe was just her being hungry and ready for her supper.
As Tavish shouldered his school bag, he made sure not to glance back at the circle. He didn’t care for magic, not a lick, but this was something that had to be done. Everyone else…they were still safe from its clutches; once it touched you, you were forever different, marked. People knew, they would shy away, always able to sense that you weren’t quite right no matter how you tried to fit in.
Better to spare someone else that fate. Better to keep the catch good and the doors locked at night, and if that meant Tavish had to put himself in between dark forces and the rest of the world, then he would do it. Better him than someone not yet twisted up.
Pepper nosed his leg. He hadn’t been moving, just staring out at the sea, and she was whining with impatience. Nervouslike, like she could hear the drowning thoughts storming in his head.
He shook himself and walked the way back home, reminding himself that dogs only thought about dog things and nothing else.
1938, Kez
“<You are too picky,>” he told her as she refused to take the bread for the third time. “<Come Zhanna, it is a long walk.>”
But Zhanna just turned her head as he thrust it at her, lips pursed in a stubborn scowl. He knew where she had learned that stubbornness, the same place Mikhail had, but now he was old enough to listen to others when they knew better than he. Zhanna, in her wet-eyed, jutting lip obduracy, had yet to learn that, and walked mulishly through the snow with her nose held high.
“<Do not waste breakfast,>” he warned her. “<Mama made this just for you, you won’t last until lunch otherwise.>” And lunch at school was always thin, watery porridge or unidentifiable stew. It was best to take what you could when you could.
“<I want kulich,>” she huffed.
He sighed, but didn’t blame her. The borodinsky he handed her was dark and sour, made from whatever Mama could purchase at the time, and it felt like a rock in your stomach when compared to sweet, fluffy kulich. But now even the borodinsky was becoming sparse, and Mama had to find ways to make the same amount of bread with less and less flour, (and soon Yana would be walking to school with them as well, and Mama would need to stretch it out to even more food, and the lines in Papa’s face grew deeper and deeper as he stared out the window-)
He tried not to think about what Papa might do, not to think about the people he met and spoke with in hushed voices. He tried not to think about how hungry he was, that maybe he could let Zhanna win just this one time, take her loaf that smelled so good despite its bitterness. His own breakfast had been gone in seconds, scarfed down as his boots made the first tracks from their front door. No, he shook his head, no that was a selfish thing to even consider. You do not take food from family.
“<Two more weeks,>” he told her, a plea. “<Two more weeks, then Mama will make kulich for Easter.>” When she only pouted, he added, “<and two weeks is a long time, maybe you will grow taller by then.>”
At that, Zhanna ice crusted eyes grew wide. “<Taller than you?>”
Mikhail chuckled. “<Hm, maybe even bigger than your Misha. But you have to keep eating if you want to keep growing, right?>” He handed the bread to her.
This time she took it, though it was cautious, sensing that she had somehow been tricked. Still, it was a good thing to watch her nibble at it, and Mikail felt a swell of relief. Not a crumb would go to waste. They could all get through this if they took care to.
1939, Vittel
The boy shrieked as his arm was twisted, dropping the bag into the muck beneath his feet.
“<That does not belong to you,>” the man holding him said, plainly, easily, as though dangling the struggling child was no more a nuisance to him than strangling a writhing snake. And why would it be? The boy was not very old, nor very strong for his age even when he hadn’t been starving.
The boy was dropped. Abruptly. He got to his feet and rubbed his bruised tailbone, but didn’t try to run as the man collected the bag that had been his prize a moment ago. What would be the point? The stranger with the jacket too heavy for the spring heat had already proven that his reflexes were faster, that he could catch a boy that tried to run out the thin alleyway.
Taking a leave of all his senses, the boy bit back, “<it doesn’t belong to you either.>”
The man blinked down at him. A cigarette appeared in his fingers where there hadn’t been one a moment ago, and stared until the boy well and truly regretted his decision to say anything.
“<I suppose it doen’t,>” the man said eventually. His eyes caught along the silken tendril of white rising from his cigarette, watching it twist like a monkey’s tail. “<You’re quite talented with that knife.>”
The boy breathed heavy, glaring. He was good with the knife because he had to be—cutting open pockets or purse straps before their owner noticed—because it was the only way to stay alive. There were other uses for the knife, he knew, but he had never thought to employ them. Not until today.
Whatever this stranger wanted from him, he would have to say it. If was going to hand him over to the local Ortskommandanturen then he could just go ahead and do it already.
“<…I suppose I should be embarrassed,>” the man went on eventually. “<Usurped from my contract by a mere boy. Still, fair is fair, and it is only right I pay you for your work.>”
The hand inside the jacket moved, and the boy caught what was thrown at him before he fully processed that he was being rewarded. It was some sort of patty, meat and bits of green smashed into a flat shape, and it was just recognizable enough to register as food. Logical thinking after that realization ceased. It could be poison, you look like an animal, don’t trust this man, all of it sucked downward like bathwater out a drain as the child tore ravenously into the paper wrapping and swallowed the patty in great guzzling bites. It was old and grody but he didn’t care, letting the cold grease run down his chin.
It was only when he was sucking at his fingers that he glanced at the man again. He now leaned against the alley’s wall, still smoking, still studying the shapes he made in the air. The boy felt a small pebble of shame thinking about his display, tearing at a piece of meat like a wild dog, but the shame was nothing to the unclenching of the muscles in this stomach.
“<Interesting,>” the man mused. “<Not a drop of dignity to be had.>”
“<I take it you’ve never gone hungry,>” the boy retorted. He did not know where this dangerous tongue had slithered up from today, but the feeling of fullness had only emboldened him.
The man shrugged. “<Maybe. But I have known pain, and I know that even the sharpest knife can be weathered if one remembers to hold onto his pride.>” His eyes, glittered and shaded by his hat, slid over to his former captive once again. “<It is a skill one can learn, if he is willing.>”
A warning, piercing like the bombs sirens, cawed in the back of his mind—but there was still a bit of grease coating his tongue, reminding him that there could be more where that come from. “<That so?>”
“<Indeed. Your outer face is the most important thing about you, more so even than the weapons you keep tucked away. For instance, I stated that I was being contracted for this bag’s collection—presumably for much more money than a single meat-cake is worth—yet you didn’t ask for more in payment.>”
“<Not exactly in a position to haggle, am I?>”
“<True,>” the man allowed. There was something off about his voice, his consonants curling in odd ways, but for as long as he had been speaking the boy couldn’t quite place it. “<It is wise to know one’s limits. Still, instead of taking your prize and running, you ate it immediately. Both these things tell me you are desperate.>”
“<I think anyone can tell I’m desperate.>”
“<That is the point, boy,>” the man insisted. “<One mustn’t let their outer face slip, no matter the circumstances. But that can be taught. Fast legs, innate skill with a blade, these are all things that one must have to begin with.>”
The boy was tired of being talked at. “<What exactly do you want from me?>”
It was only a moment’s pause, where the stranger’s face flickered every so subtly in its provided shadow, but then it was gone once again. “<I need a message delivered, beyond German lines. It will be small, inconspicuous, and I will show you how to sew pockets inside of your sleeves. If you do so, the recipients will feed you a good meal as thanks. Additionally, if you make it there, return here with their response, and find me again all without losing your life, I will consider training you for other jobs like this one.>”
A job for a meal. It was so tempting a thing the boy almost chose to ignore the risk to his own life that came nailed to its back. But… “<What does it even matter to you?>” he asked. “<Shouldn’t a Spaniard be on their side?>”
He pointed off down the alleyway, back to where the German he’d shanked was probably still wailing about in the street, missing what the boy now knew to be a very important bag. A bag that many people must want, to send this stranger with the odd thing in his voice the boy had finally identified.
The Spaniard smiled. It was unnerving: intrigued rather than defensive. “<I believe you are mistaken, my friend. I am a Frenchman, through and through.>”
The boy balked. Not only had the accent disappeared, but the Spaniard’s voice was warped anew, as though it belonged to a completely different man.
The Spaniard chuckled, and his voice slid back into its true register. “<A simple trick.>” It switched again. “Wie ist dein Deutsch?” The boy shook his head at the jumble of words now spewing from his mouth. “Hm. Italiano?” When his student still didn’t react, the Spaniard waved a hand. “<No matter, we will teach you.>”
“<Hold on now,>” the boy said. “<I still haven’t agreed to this.>”
“<Haven’t you? You are not running, screaming for the hills as many fairer souls in your place would.>”
He grit his teeth. The man was right; he’d already seen how desperate he was, hadn’t he? The boy had nothing left to barter with. “<Alright. Say I do this…>”
“<A promising start, boy.>”
“<My name is not boy, it is->”
The Spaniard held up a hand. “<I do not want to hear it. Names are dangerous things, and we will call you what is useful for the moment. For today, you will be Vance.>”
Vance wrinkled his nose, but did not protest. He hadn’t wanted the man to know his name anyway, the one his mother had given him, who’d called him from her rocking chair and never would again.
He would not think about his mother anymore. Instead he asked, “<and you?>”
“<Raul will do. For now.>” Raul’s cigarette had finally burned down, and he stamped it in the street, shouldering the bag he had mostly cleared of mud. “<Come boy, we’ve lingered near the scene of the crime for long enough. Let us get you fitted for travel.>”
The possibility that there might be a chance to sleep in a bed, or that he might be able to change his clothes, pulled Vance along like a tether. He was so hopeful, caught on the strings of promises and forgetting, that he didn’t realize Raul hadn’t answered his question.
1940, Paris
A dog would have been a different thing,
But what they did was leave him with a cat.