[fic] Through Mist Or Open Sky, Part 2

[obstinatrix]

Jensen didn't much use the radio if he could help it. He'd been in Flights before where the Loot'd been welded to the goddamn thing, having the whole formation check in every five minutes, but as far as Jensen was concerned, it was more often a distraction than a help, and that wasn't just his misanthropy talking. The pioneers of war flying had done without radios -- same as they'd done without parachutes or jet-propulsion engines -- and they'd conducted themselves well enough with sharp eyes and the occasional hand gesture. Squadron Leader Morgan wouldn't have had recourse to a damned radio check-in when he'd stalked his Fokker triplanes and whatnot, way back when Jensen was still a kid in short pants, and he'd done okay by himself. If they could do without, Jensen could too.

Still, when the French coast hove into view he fumbled for the button, just to be sure. "France, boys. You know the course from here, St Omer's not far. Now, what's the brief?"

Tigerman, off to Jensen's left wing, crackled in. "Watch the Bostons," he put in, prompt, and Jensen nodded, though there was nobody close enough to see.

"Watch the Bostons," he repeated. "They're carrying the eggs; they've gotta lay 'em in the pre-designated nest. That means we gotta get them there at all costs, okay? Can you see 'em?"

A thousand feet below, the party of Boston Bombers moved serenely through the grey cloud like a fleet of stately galleons. One by one, the members of the Flight chimed in. "Got an eye on 'em, Skip." "Got 'em." Again, Jensen nodded.

"Great. Remember, we're gonna see bandits any second, probably. There're meant to be 88s on the prowl around here. Eyes peeled."

The radio clicked off. No sooner had its crackle died than a Junkers 88 flashed up out of the haze, tracer arcing past the wing of the leading Boston, and Jensen set his lips grimly, turned the nose of the Spit downward and fired a warning burst. "Asshole."

The pilot of the Boston remained studiously concentrated on the task of keeping in formation, as was his brief. Seeing off the Junkers parasites wasn't his job; it was Jensen's, and 275's. That was what they were here for. Jensen's thumb triggered the radio. "Bandit, six," he said, just in case anyone had been asleep and missed Jensen's tracer. "Scare 'em off, guys; there's more where he came from."

It was a grey day, but the cloud wasn't thick, which made the bandits less of a problem than they might have been if there'd been flak batteries on the ground to contend with as well. On clear days, the Spits could stick to their ceiling, no goddamn hedge-hopping over the guns. A spat saw to the first load of Junkers, their sallies half-hearted at best and tailing off as the Spits moved out of their airspace. It wasn't until they were lowering, closing in on St Omer, that another lot emerged, strung out across the sky like the spine of some great dragon, and Jensen cursed under his breath.

"Jerries," he muttered into the radio, "More fucking bandits -- the Bostons are heading in, now, boys; I can see the aerodrome. You know what that means."

"Engage," said Sheppard, his tone deliberately sinister, and Jensen laughed.

"You got it. Pick 'em off before they break our eggs, after we carried 'em all this way."

Close in on the aerodrome now, it didn't take long for the resident flight of Messerschmitts to get off the ground in protest, climb into range and start hurling out all they had, which made for a few minutes' turbulent flying. Something whanged into Jensen's fuselage; he whipped up the nose of the machine and cursed under his breath, working the rudder hard.

"Goddammit," he muttered, but the Bostons were up, climbing, their bombs exploding on the ground like a row of tiny supernovas, and Jensen wouldn't have lived long enough to be made Flight Loot if he hadn't known when to stop.

"Okay," he warned, rough over the intercom, "That's the boys done; now, let's get the hell home, all right? First man to die being a hero gets the honour of being killed all over again by me."

There was a low murmur of laughter into the radio, but Jensen had been serious. War flying was a dangerous game, but there was no doubt that some men liked to throw in more thrills where they didn't belong. The idiot in the Messerschmitt by Jensen's tail was one example. They were nearing the channel when he zoomed in for a shot at close range, and he was quick, but Jensen was quicker, pivoting the Spit deftly on her axis to fire a long burst over the attacker's nose, through the windshield. The plane lurched, nose dipping groundwards, and the sound of the engine still purring strongly was enough to tell Jensen it hadn't been the machinery he'd damaged. Another lurch, and the Messerschmitt was in freefall. Jensen sighed, leaned out over the wing to watch for a bail out, but there was none.

"Moron," he muttered, as he struck out across the water. There was some unusual activity, to Jensen's mind, far off up the Channel, some scrapping of the sort he'd rarely seen over open water -- dogfighting, with no apparent bomber squadron being defended. Probably, Intelligence knew all about it, but Jensen made a mental note anyway, to add it to the log. You never knew.

They dropped off the Bostons near Maidenhead. Home at 275, the airfield looked drier than it had done lately, and the mechanics ran out swiftly to pull Jensen's Spit in to land.

"Anything to report, sir?" asked the Flight Sergeant, as Jensen threw open the cover of his cockpit.

"Might be a bullet in the fuselage," Jensen said, climbing down, back a little stiff at the small of it. "Otherwise, all okay, Sarge."

The Flight Sergeant was a middle-aged man of long service, open-faced, and Jensen didn't mind the conspiratorial nature of his smile. "Do all right, did they, sir?"

"Yes," Jensen said, glancing behind him to where the other Spitfires were landing, one by one, on the main strip. "Mission accomplished, no losses, no flak up my ass -- think they did okay, Flight Sergeant."

He hadn't realised until now that he'd been worried, but it was relieving to know that he had no need to be. The men of 275 might be eccentric in their ways, but they were good fliers. They were damn good. And that was all Jensen required.

*

Ordinarily, when the Service decided a few new squadrons were in order, they would send along an experienced CO and a couple of six-month Flight Lieutenants and everyone else would be new, right off the production line at Cranwell. In peacetime, this was a perfectly adequate provision. Even in the early stages of the war, it had been manageable, and the new recruits had learned quickly. By the time August rolled around, Jeff was a hundred percent sure that 11 Group and the brasshats at Wing had done the right thing in shifting their practices in accordance with what was forecast. What had begun as a little bit of scrapping in the Channel had built up swiftly into all-out mad Channel warfare, as Richings had suggested might happen, and one thing was for sure: Jeff was better off with a squadron of brilliant lunatics than he'd ever have been with a load of rookies. By the first week of August, after three weeks of flying together, 275 had lost two officers in action and gained one new one. For a squadron defending the southeast coast -- the front line of what looked like building up into a new kind of battle entirely -- this was exceptional, and everybody knew it. Even Bean, who continued to insist on flying out with his men against orders, had lost what amounted to most of a Flight of his far greener officers, and Squadron Leader Bean took great care of his men.

The Dorniers and Stuka bombers, and their Messerschmitt 109 escorts, were the worst of it. The 109s were far faster than the RAF's old two-seater Defiants; only a Spit or a Hurricane had a chance against them, and everyone knew it, but the simple fact of the matter was that the number of 109s was overwhelming, and 11 Group had no choice but to send in everything they had. Intelligence didn't seem to know what Jerry was up to, other than reconnaissance and convoy-bombing. A couple of weeks earlier, the order had been given for convoys only to travel at night, which had alleviated the situation a little, but not enough. Losing precious coal simply was not an option, and Jeff had heard from Wing only two days earlier that the Admiralty had now cancelled all convoys through the Channel. Logically, Jeff understood the sense in this -- knew it was preventative, as much as anything -- but there was still a small, prideful part of him that felt it as a defeat, a suggestion that the 11 Group squadrons weren't quite up to their task.

Things were only going to get worse, Jeff knew. This first, ragged spate of scrappings over the channel, fishtailing around over the slow, dark masses of ships far below, marked only the first stage of something that would take all the energy they had, and then some. The men of 275 were reckless, manic, and at times like this, that helped, but Jeff could still see exhaustion stalking them like a predator, and that wouldn't do. It was time to settle in for the long haul: a relay of sprints was what was needed, here, not a fierce burst of something unsustainable, but not a marathon, either. They were doing well, and that was good, but they'd have to step things up, that was all.

Something big had begun, and the worst was yet to hit. Jeff only hoped Richings' theory -- that lunacy under fire becomes heroism -- would be borne out when it did.

*

The Dowding System, as any Wing brasshat worth his salt would tell you, was the most sophisticated air defence system in the world. As far as Jeff understood it -- nobody but Dowding seemed to actually understand it completely -- its function was to co-ordinate the RAF's Grouped squadrons, on the ground and in the air, through its radar stations and R/T communications. Given that any RAF recruit could have boasted in the local pub about Dowding's efficiency, had the conversation fallen to sufficient levels of dullness, it was no real surprise to Jeff when the Luftwaffe shifted its attacks to the radar stations and coastal squadrons that were the backbone of the system. What was a surprise, to everybody, was the decisiveness with which the goalposts were shifted. Affected radar stations bounced back within hours, but when German command had apparently established that British radar was difficult to knock out, attention had simply been shifted to coastal airfields, and that left 275, in the far south of England, in a world of trouble.

By the middle of August, they'd lost two more officers, one from Padalecki's flight and one from Collins's. As casualties went, this still placed them in advance of many of their neighbouring squadrons; what was worse was that, of the four Spitfires that had been lost in total, still only one had been replaced. The way Jeff's brain had snicked back into its wartime gears, calculating machinery above individual officers, was almost shocking, but the fact of the matter was, the lack of machines did have a human cost, too.

Squadron Farmhouse Mess was newly-established, by the standards of an ordinary person, but the officers of 275 were not ordinary people, and a month of wartime service had been enough to leave it looking as if it had been worn in over a period of years. Above the fireplace, someone had seen fit to tack a list of philosophies labelled The Group 11 Code. Nobody had owned up to this when Jeff had queried who the paper belonged to, but on close inspection, it seemed reasonable enough to Jeff, and so he'd left it there, to give what solace it might. The final lines of the Code ran like this:

If you are injured, one of two things is certain: Either you will recover or you will not recover.

If you recover, there is no need to worry. If you don't recover, you can't worry.

The message was, frankly, irrefutable, but the people it referred to were those officers who, like the four fallen Spit pilots, had gone West with their equipment. What the Code failed to cover was the fate of those who, back at base, were left to function without a full complement of men and machines, particularly now when so many damages were being inflicted all over the Service. Wing had no aeroplanes to spare; Jeff knew this too well to have Roche put in the request again. But with A Flight, Ackles's flight, the only one complete, a disproportionate number of the hard combat had fallen to them. The others, flying at less than full strength, had been relegated to more supporting roles until such time as more machines arrived, and, moreover, while every flight had one or two more pilot officers than it needed, each had only one Flight Lieutenant. A Flight had scrambled into a great many sorties lately, and Ackles had gone up at the head of every one. Already, Jeff could see the signs of fatigue in the dark circles under his eyes, the way his mouth was set more grimly than had been its wont. If he continued to fly as many shows as had fallen to him lately, Ackles was bound to get combat fatigue, fast, and be no use to anybody, but a Flight couldn't be expected to take the air without an experienced leader at the helm.

Jeff only had one solution to suggest, and it wasn't in accordance with the rules of the Dowding system. But Dowding's very existence was under threat, and as far as Jeff figured it, anything that helped Group 11 – of which 275 Squadron was part – to protect it was fair game. Bean, insubordinate devil that he was, agreed, both in word and in action. It only remained, then, to see what Ackles made of it. Jeff could issue an order, of course, but he always preferred to gain his lieutenants' agreement by more subtle means -- particularly when any order he issued would be technically illegal. Ackles was a proud sort of bloke, stuck to his Flight like glue since the very first sortie, but even now, at ease in the armchair by the mess-room fire, every line in his body gave testament to his bone-deep exhaustion. Jeff's best hope was that his tiredness would make him agreeable -- or desperate.

The armchair sat on its own by the fire, unofficial staked-out property of the Flight Lieutenants, or, if he was present, the CO. Jeff didn't miss the flicker of recognition in Ackles's eyes as he came close, the way one hand left his newspaper to grope for the arm of the chair as if to get up, but he shook his head quickly, indicating that there was no need, and Ackles relaxed. There was, Jeff noted, more than a little obvious relief in it, Ackles's arms and shoulders slumped with tiredness.

Opposite the armchair stood something that had probably been a piano stool in a former life, abandoned in front of the fireguard. Jeff crooked an ankle around one of its legs and hauled it over, settling himself on it before his Flight Lieutenant could make any kind of protest born of duty. Not that Ackles seemed the type, really, not when a perfunctory offer had been made and rejected, but one never knew.

"So," Jeff began, clapping his hands on his knees and meeting Ackles's eyes. They'd spoken before, of course, exchanged pleasantries in the mess and in the hangars, but Ackles was a lot more reserved than his fellow Flight Loots, and Jeff sensed there was a lot more to him than met the eye. He could easily enough be typecast as the hard-bitten American whose matinee idol looks and slightly sullen aspect attested to a troubled past, but Jeff wasn't really the typecasting sort.

From his position in the armchair, Ackles looked back expectantly, eyebrows raised in their perfect arches over moss-green eyes. "So...?" he prompted. "If this is about the flight logs, sir, I know I have one still to do, but I'll get to it before I go to bed, no worries. I was just kind of tired, and --"

"No, no," Jeff cut in, "nothing to do with the flight logs, Loot. Don't worry about that." Jeff, like any good officers, knew an opening when he saw one. "I know you're tired. It's been an exhausting couple of weeks -- for you more than anyone. As a matter of fact, that was what I wanted to talk to you about."

Ackles's face shifted into an expression that was curious, but not closed-off, and Jeff took a moment to congratulate himself on being so evidently smooth as patent leather. "Oh?" Ackles said, and folded his newspaper over. Jeff took the gesture as an invitation.

"I won't beat around the bush with you," he said. "I know you don't like it -- hell, nobody in this squadron likes it. You're straight-talking blokes; that's part of why you're here. So, I'm going to be straight with you. We have three Flight Loots, two flights at half-strength, and one that's okay. That's yours, as I'm sure hasn't escaped your attention. You've been pretty constantly in the air, lately, am I right?"

Ackles was giving him a sceptical look now, as if he wasn't quite sure where this was all going, but his voice was still open enough when he said, "Yes...?"

That was all Jeff needed. He ploughed on: "Well, your flight's got to do all the dirtiest work, we all know that. But your boys can trade in and out for sorties; you can't. Flight can't go up without someone in command. But if you keep flying like this, Ackles, you're going to run yourself in the ground. You're a great flier. We're going to need you. The last thing I want is you to fall asleep in the air and go nose-first into a tree." He laughed shortly. "Part from the obvious, we'd also lose another machine, and I don't need to tell you we can't afford that right now."

Ackles roared back from that on the defensive -- "Well, damn, I know that!" -- but Jeff had been expecting it. When Ackles followed up with, "What do you propose we do about it, sir?" Jeff was ready for it.

"We do have," he pointed out calmly, "a spare senior officer." He spread his hands. "Squadron Leader Bean's been flying with his men for as long as we've been here. It's not like I don't have the experience. It seems to me that if I took over one of your daily sorties -- whichever you like, or we can work up a rota; whatever -- you'd be able to get a little more rest, we'd still be able to get optimum use out of our one full-strength Flight, and we've less chance of losing an aircraft to pilot exhaustion." Jeff shrugged. "Not exactly protocol, but hell -- we're the lunatic squadron, right? If they throw a lot of blokes like us together, they've got to expect some rule-bending in a good cause. Don't you think?"

For a moment, Ackles said nothing. Then a smile, subtle at first, began to curve up one corner of his softly-bowed mouth, enough to tell Jeff that he'd said the right thing. "Guess so," Ackles said, slow.

"Well, then," Jeff coaxed. "Does that sound good?"

Ackles certainly knew how to string a chap along, that was for sure. It was another ten full seconds before he spoke, but when he did, it was with a swift nod of his head, short and decisive. "Sounds sensible to me, S.L. Matter of fact, if you'd take my dawn patrol tomorrow, I'd be mighty grateful. Eight hours of sleep sounds pretty good about now."

It was all Jeff could do to keep his sigh of relief unobtrusive. "Good man," he said. He clapped a hand on Ackles's shoulder, felt the tension immediately in the muscles under his palm. "I'm glad you see it my way. I'll do your skylark patrol tomorrow, and when I get back, we can talk more about scheduling. All right with you, Jensen?" He paused, long enough to let the use of the Christian name register. "Mind if I call you Jensen? It's just, I hate being called S.L., Flight Loot, I really do. Call me Jeff. Please."

That startled a laugh out of Ackles, corners of his eyes crinkling, and, God, Jeff had been absolutely right: there was more to this man than any but a privileged few could know. "Okay, Jeff," Ackles said, and gave Jeff's hip a comradely pat with the edge of his newspaper as Jeff got to his feet. "See you after the sortie. Don't you break my Spit, man, or I'll break you!"

Jeff's only answer was a salute -- not the officially endorsed kind -- as he left the Mess, but he was smiling to himself, and the shout of laughter that burst out of Ackles at the gesture did nothing to kill the pleasant glow spreading in his chest.

*

The satisfied glow had still not dissipated when, thirty minutes later, it occurred to Jeff that he didn't know which machine Jensen usually flew. The logbook would have told him, but Roche could only spread his hands when Jeff went to request it.

"Ackles has got it," Roche told him, face contorted in an exaggerated parody of sympathy. "Came to get it ten minutes ago. I expect he's in the hangar, filling it in."

Jeff frowned. The hangars would all be deserted at this time of night, and dark besides. "The hangar? Why the hell would he be in the hangar?"

Roche shrugged theatrically. "Don't ask me. Queer cove, our man Ackles. He takes a Bevy lamp out there and sits on a chock to write his reports. Says it helps him remember things accurately."

Jeff pursed his lips. "Well, it's not the oddest ritual I've ever seen an airman swear by. We're a superstitious lot, if nothing else. Thanks, RO -- I'll go and see if I can find him."

Beyond the warmth of the farmhouse, the airfield was dark and quiet, but as Jeff approached the hangars, snatches of sound drifted to his ears -- somebody laughing, not Jensen, and some scuffling noises. Jensen hadn't come out here alone, then. Jeff couldn't blame him. There was nothing like an empty aerodrome in the dark to jar a lone airman's nerves at a time of war.

At a distance of ten yards, the fact that Jensen's lantern gave no visible light was not especially remarkable, but when, from ten feet away, Jeff could still see nothing glowing in the dark, his brow furrowed, pensive. Perhaps Jensen had finished his logs already, and was only out here sharing a fag with a mate? Really, that would be ideal: Jeff could just slip in, beg the logbook, and beat a hasty retreat without bothering his Flight Lieutenant further. But the low sounds Jeff could hear now were not sufficient to comprise a conversation -- just the familiar rustlings of cloth against the wood of the chocks; stifled laughter; little, indistinct sounds that never quite achieved the status of words. What was Jensen up to out here?

The clenching of Jeff's stomach said his body had an inkling before his mind would accept it, but Jeff, like a true soldier, ignored it and continued forward soundlessly through the dark. That his mind would go -- there -- was a reflection on himself, surely, the poorly thought-out actions of his youth and his awkward fascination with Jensen's perfect, epicene face. There was no reason to suspect, none but projection: he was projecting.

"I'm projecting," Jeff told himself firmly, under his breath, and stepped under the flapping sheet of tarpaulin that protected the hangar and its inhabitants from view of the night.

What he saw was indistinct, at first, the figures of two airmen only a couple of long, innocuous blurs against the back wall of the hangar. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the shift in the darkness, the blurs resolved themselves into something condemnable, hip to hip and mouth to mouth, Padalecki's thigh between both of Jensen's turning the scene into a moral dilemma.

Jeff's two hands went to his mouth, out of necessity rather than any sense of the dramatic, because the spectacle set a sound rising up in his throat that didn't know what it wanted to be. Shock, certainly, but equally, it was the pain of indecision that held Jeff rooted to the spot, breath quickening. That his lieutenants had not heard him enter the hangar was clear: in the quiet dark like this, Jeff could hear, now, the wet sounds of their mouths as they clung and separated, the slick slide of tongues. The sounds removed any remaining doubts as to what was happening, here, but the fact of the matter was that those were not the only doubts Jeff had been assailed by. Another officer, probably, would have reported them immediately, but Jeff was not any other officer. For one thing, he was short of men already, and dispatching two of his best officers to be court-martialled was hardly in the best interests of the squadron under its current pressures. Moreover, Jeff had the advantage -- or was it a disadvantage? -- of having been in their position, or close to it. Jeff didn't consider himself a homosexual, but he no longer harboured any illusions of being normal, either. He understood the sorts of bonds war could forge, knew the taste of another man's mouth, and, God, the idea of exacting a punishment on another officer for something he felt to be no crime seemed the worst sort of hypocrisy.

Besides, Jensen was so -- ridiculous, everything about him so finely cut and vivid, that Jeff could hardly blame any man for falling for him and never finding the strength to climb back out of the pit of the feeling again. Padalecki, too, with his quick laugh and white teeth and changeable eyes, the broad shoulders now slipping under Jensen's palms, Jeff could appreciate the draw of. To another man, the spectacle now playing out in the hangar might have seemed inexplicable, but Jeff felt none of that incomprehension, nor the fear it so frequently led to in men who saw nothing but foreignness in it, a sort of xenophobia. Jensen's fingers made a rough, scritching noise as they toyed with the hair at the nape of Padalecki's neck, and what Jeff felt most strongly at the sound of it was envy. In 1916, the night before a raid on Amiens, Jeff had whispered dirty things in a 2nd Lieutenant's ear; had felt the slow drag of broad palms down his spine. The following evening, the 2nd Lieutenant had been dead, and Jeff's flame for the fight had burned a little more fiercely for the loss of him. War was easier with someone to fight alongside, to fight for.

Then there was Bean, but Jeff didn't much want to think about that. As far as possible, he tried not to.

This, unfolding now before him -- Jensen's hands working over Jared's shoulders and nape, the slow roll of their hips into each other -- wasn't something Jeff felt capable of putting a stop to, as if they were schoolboys smoking behind the bicycle sheds. If he should see them at it again, he might see fit to caution them about discretion, but he had invaded, after all, and they hadn't been so stupid as to keep a light burning while they went about their business.

No: if at all possible, he would keep out of their affairs. The Flight Sergeant would almost certainly know which was Jensen's machine; the log book's retrieval was not imperative. It could wait.

He slipped out of the hangar like a shadow and went back to the farmhouse, jaw clenched as if the gesture could dispel the knot of longing in the pit of his stomach.

*

London was burning. Far below, Jeff could see it glowing in the dark, flames licking a path through the familiar night-time shapes of the East End. It looked nothing like what he'd imagined, when they'd studied the Great Fire at school: the way the fire took root in the basement of the baker's house and moved along the rows of wooden buildings, pushing them to collapse like a set of dominoes in a line. There was nothing so regimented to what lay below A Flight now, the flames running rampant as lions and the houses bombed flat. In the peripheries of his vision, Jeff would occasionally catch sight of little explosions -- munitions factories and aircraft manufacturers being hit, most likely -- and he swerved away from them instinctively, his pilot's brain registering them as bursts of flak, or archie, as they'd called it in the last Show.

But there was no time for that now, no time for swerving and ducking away from the melee. The German 109s who'd done this latest damage had begun their work with an attack on a Kent airfield and then moved North, but not before Jeff's Spits and Bean's Hurricanes had scrambled together after them, two full squadrons, six flights. This many aeroplanes in the air at once would usually be inadvisable, collisions being the airman's greatest fear even in peacetime, but the times were not usual, and the 109s were myriad. Even now, Jeff could see more streaking across the orange sky like dragonflies, and he whipped the nose of his Spit around, coaxing it under his breath as if it were a horse: "Attagirl -- attagirl --"

"Talking to your machine again, sir?"

That was Padalecki's voice. Jeff hadn't meant to leave the radio transmitting, not in this kind of frenzy where it could only distract, but Padalecki was grinning, Jeff could hear it in his voice. Any man who could grin at a time like this, Jeff thought, deserved to be in the RAF, and Padalecki could take that any way he pleased.

"I'll talk to her if I like, beanpole," he shot back, one foot working furiously at the rudder as he spun the machine around and strafed a burst along the fuselage of a Messerschmitt now crossing his path.

"That oughta be his new codename," came Ackles's voice, warm in Jeff's other ear. God knows where he really was -- Jeff couldn't see him in this Bedlam of a dogfight -- but he might have been right here in the cockpit with Jeff, even though Jeff knew well enough that all the warmth in his voice was for Jared alone.

"How's C Flight, Tex?" Jeff asked, jerking up an elbow to pull the joystick back into his stomach as the stricken 109 reared up and threatened to come crashing down on his nose. Collins had been wounded a couple of days ago -- nothing a spell in the hospital wouldn't fix, but enough to put him off active duty for a week, much to his chagrin, and Ackles was commanding his Flight in the interim. As far as Jeff was concerned, this worked well enough. Orders from HQ had long since left off insisting on the non-participation of the Squadron Leader, and A Flight were well used to Jeff now, after three weeks of flying with him.

"Doin' good, sir," Jensen said, sounding cheerful. He always sounded cheerful when he was flying, flak or no flak, 109s or no 109s. It was a blessing, Jeff supposed, or a curse. "Aren't we, boys?"

A low chorus of agreement. Jeff let them all chime in, and then cut over them, "Okay, gentlemen, time to free up the channel now. You know how I feel about distraction in the heat of the fight. Oh, hey -- have you just hit him, Padalecki?"

There was a flamer hurtling earthward in Jeff's left windshield now, fire licking along the leading edges of its wings.

"Sure did," Padalecki confirmed, and Jeff nodded redundantly.

"Good work. I think we got two of their bombers, a third beat it when we hit the scene in the first place, and the Hurries are working on the fourth. So let's concentrate on the escort, blow 'em out of the sky and put this to bed for the night. How's that sound?"

Noises of assent, from which Jeff gathered that his proposal met with general approval.

"Great," he said, his own voice echoing tinnily back to him through the overlarge earpieces in the flaps of his flying helmet. They were uncomfortable, pressing his ears sore into his skull. Damn, but Jeff missed war flying the way it'd been without all this r/t palaver. "Tigerman, watch your seven o'clock. Everyone: get 'em, get out."

That, Jensen had joked last night in the Mess, was Jeff's motto: get 'em, get out. Jeff thought it suited well enough, and had laughed with the rest of them. The point of a dogfight was to knock spots off the other side; there was no benefit, really, in downing a Messerschmitt only to let one of his cronies send you to an early grave, yourself. If you let that happen, it did nothing but keep things even. Most of Jeff's men had been familiar with get 'em when he'd taken them in hand, but for many, the get out part was new. Jeff didn't want to think how many of them would have been dead by now if this insane furore of an air war had started up before they'd learned that vital part of the equation.

The 109s, when they fell, went up like streamers, tail up, nose down, flames flapping wildly behind them like skeins of orange silk. Jeff counted five German losses to two of their own: one Spit -- "Dammit, Speight ," he muttered to himself -- and a Hurricane. The other 109s had the good sense to limp off when Jensen went after them like a rabid dog. Speight had been in C Flight.

It was a good show, all round. One man lost was a good show. The trick of it, as Jeff had learned long ago, was only to look at the numbers.

*

Jensen was, by Jeff's count, on his fourth shot of whisky. Alcohol didn't make him stupid -- the man could hold his liquor, and besides, it took a lot of alcohol to make a man stupid under these conditions -- but it did make him emphatic, voice dropped into this drawling, sandpapery thing that made him sound indignant and right. "The thing is," Jensen was saying, describing vague shapes in the air with the hand that had his glass in it, "The thing is, Skip -- we're doing pretty good here at 275, comparatively, but that's comparatively. When you look at what we're comparing ourselves to, the numbers sure ain't pretty." He shook his head, then threw back the finger of liquor in his glass and held his empty out in Jared's direction. "Fill me up, man?"

Presumably, Jared thought he was being subtle with the way his mouth tugged, the way his eyes flashed on Jensen's. Maybe he was, comparatively. Jeff was uncomfortably aware that he'd been paying both Flight Lieutenants more attention lately than was perhaps warranted. He was only watching their backs, he told himself, but the strange, hot rush that pooled in his belly at the memory of the two of them, biting at each other's mouths in the shadows of the hangar, said there was more to it than that.

"Get you another, Uncle?"

Jared's voice startled Jeff out of his reverie. He jerked his head up, hoped the blush he felt didn't show on the outside, and searched for his voice. "Oh -- sure, kid. 'nother whisky?" He held out his empty glass, and Jared took it with a smile that did nothing to dispel Jeff's sudden, ludicrous sense that the lid had been blown off his mind, leaving his thoughts spooling openly for everyone to see.

"Right you are," Jared said, heading across the room to the makeshift bar with his motley collection of glasses. The phrase sounded more than a little odd in his peculiar Warsaw-Texan accent, and Jeff was smiling to himself when he looked up and caught Jensen watching him.

The look on Jensen's face wasn't smiling at all, and Jeff remembered himself abruptly, pulling his mind back to the conversation at hand. It was all well and good to lose oneself to the temptation to just get drunk and forget everything, the night after a big show and the loss of a comrade, but forgetting never helped anyone. Not when the CO was the one indulging in the forgetting, anyway.

"You're right," Jeff acknowledged gruffly. "Fact of the matter is, we've got an enormous advantage over every other squadron in 11 Group. There are some local squadrons who've been flying together longer than we have, certainly, but none of them have been handpicked the way 275 was -- bunch of tried-and-tested lunatic Aces. And then there's the rest of the new squadrons, which --" Jeff glanced sidelong at Bean, now straddling a backward dining chair with his elbows propped on the back of it -- "which are mostly full of officers so green, even the best S/L can't keep them out of trouble completely."

"I take it," Bean said, kicking out one leg to bump his foot against Jeff's, "that by 'the best S/L' you mean me."

"Naturally," Jeff replied immediately, and was rewarded with a sidelong grin and another kick in the ankle.

"Damn right," Bean said, but the jovial edge quickly fell out of his voice, leaving it uncharacteristically grim. "Some of my lads were hardly out of Cranwell when this party started, and we've had even newer ones since the first lot started to go for a Burton. Me and the Flights are keeping things running as smooth as we can, but God help the rookies in squadrons where the Skippers actually do what they're told and stay on the ground."

"There's some Polish squadrons supposedly on their way," Jared observed, coming back with an armful of drinks, which he set down on the low table around which their chairs were clustered. "Some of those boys have years of experience." He snorted. "Even if they don't speak English. As long as there's a Pole there to give the R/T instructions to all the other Poles, I don't see what bloody difference that makes. I'd volunteer to translate myself, if I thought anyone would listen. We need all the help we can get."

"True," Bean conceded, nodding, "and the Poles never stick to the bloody stupid rules, either." The tone of his voice left the gathered company in no doubt as to the fact that Bean saw this as a distinct point in the Poles' favour. "Angry, angry people, you Poles. It makes for straight shooting, from what I've seen."

"Is that what makes you Northerners so good?" Jeff teased, smiling a little. "All that anger?"

"Us and you Narn bastards," Bean declared, nodding firmly. "Oppressed folk make the best soldiers."

"So the question is," Jensen put in, picking up his newly full glass from the side table with a grin of thanks for Jared, "how do we make the kids in all the decimated Group 11 squadrons feel oppressed enough to grind Jerry into the ground with a little more force?"

Jeff shrugged. "They've dropped bombs on Biggin Hill; I would have thought that should have been enough to make the whole damn body of RAF servicemen feel oppressed enough. But it only goes so far if there are more of them than there are of us, and they're mostly more experienced, and better trained, and better armed."

"They kicked the shit out of them on the North coast," Jared pointed out, and Jeff nodded.

"Thank Christ. If we'd actually had to contend with an attack on two fronts, this would've been over long before now." He sighed heavily. "God, this is a depressing conversation, isn't it?"

Bean laughed. "That's war, me old mate, or had you forgotten?" His mouth twisted wryly. "Look, we can only do what we can do. But it's not as if it's a lost cause just yet, all right? The moment you start thinking that is the moment it really does all go West. Hell, you ought to know that as well as anybody."

It was the middle of August. When Jeff had arrived in early July, there had been rumblings in the hills of something big, certainly, but he'd never dreamed that it could escalate so quickly into this, a full-on pitched battle in the air, Junkers and Messerschmitts bombing all the major cities they could find in the south of England when they failed to hit the airfields that seemed to be their primary targets. Nobody had expected this sort of threat to raise its head again after Dunkirk, but now it was on again, the integrity of mainland Britain being actively threatened by so many foreign birds in the sky, and it would be easy -- so, so easy -- to become dispirited, to give up entirely.

Thank Christ for Bean and his optimism, its boundlessness matched only by his loyalty. Leaning across, Jeff took him by the shoulder and shook him firmly. "You're right," he said, nodding heavily. "Look, would it help if we briefed the lads together? We should be joining our forces, really -- flight of mine, flight of yours, and everybody's safer?"

"That's an idea," Ackles said, and Bean nodded slowly, lips pursed.

"From what I hear," he said, "We might be going on a long bloody flight before too long. We should probably get used to sending up fighters in bigger formations."

"Long flight?" Jared prodded, and Bean tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. The gesture was, apparently, an empty one, however, because he then said, "Berlin."

"Berlin?" Jeff retorted, incredulous. "That is a bloody long flight. And isn't it supposed to be un-bombable?"

"Aye, and I don't think they were keen on testing that, up at Wing," Bean said, "but I've been hearing things. Much more of this, and the defensive's going to have to become an offensive if it wants to keep afloat at all. Obvious target, then, Berlin. Risky, but --" Bean spread his hands. "If we pulled it off, it would be a breakthrough."

"And if we didn't?" Jensen put in cynically.

"Huge losses," Jeff said, sighing, "but we're feeling those anyway. All right: what say we brief the lads all together in the morning, Sean? Start 'em off on the double act business. We're expecting a scramble in the wee hours, if the pattern continues. Provided it's not this airfield they decide to lay their eggs on tomorrow, we could get some practice in."

"Sounds good to me. You start and I'll make a witty remark at the end: how's that?"

"Perfect," Jeff said, and Bean laughed.

"That's my boy."

*

The following week, a party of German bombers, with a Messerschmitt escort, succeeded in bombing Portsmouth, to devastating effect. 275 lost two men in the defence of the city, and a number of other Group 11 squadrons fared far worse, but the after-effects of the bombing were graver still.

Jeff stared down at the slip of paper in his hand, blinking at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, and then looked up at Bean. "We're going to bomb Berlin?"

"Told you, didn't I?" Bean took the slip back and squinted at it himself. "I've had it decoded twice. No mistake. Berlin, and we're in on it." He smiled ruefully. "Lucky we started that little practice thingy up the other week, isn't it?"

"You could look at it that way," Jeff said weakly. "Who are we escorting?"

Bean shrugged. "That'll be in a separate wire, I suppose. They'll not want to take any chances on a show like this. Aw, Jeff --" he nudged Jeff in the ribs and grinned, and Jeff couldn't say for sure that it was much forced -- "it's going to be like old times! You -- me -- ton of explosives --"

"...ton of casualties," Jeff put in, but Bean threw an arm around his shoulders and shook his head firmly.

"They'll have us," he pointed out. "We can handle it, can't we? Can handle anything. Bomb those bastards into the ground, and maybe that'll teach 'em. We get this right, and maybe we'll stand a chance of winning this thing."

"The newspapers," Jeff said, "are calling it the Battle for Britain. Have things really got that bad?"

"Yes," Bean said flatly. "But we're always battling for Britain, Jeff, aren't we? We've none of us got wives or bairns to fight for instead, so Britain it is. Everything we've ever done's been a Battle for Britain and it's never made us nervous before.

"Not much," Jeff put in, poker-faced, but he understood the sentiment Bean was trying to convey, and appreciated it, even if it didn't make him feel very much better. "I know. I know, but we're not going to get out of this unscathed, Sean. We've been improbably lucky so far. For years."

Bean's optimism, it transpired, would not be defeated. "So what's another day?" he needled, but the smile he threw Jeff afterwards was soft, and his hand came down warm on the nape of Jeff's neck. Jeff felt cold to his bones, gut twisting, and he couldn't help but close his eyes and lean into that warmth a little, the broad palm, the familiarity of it. He breathed out, and the exhalation shook.

His eyes were still closed when he felt it -- the damp heat of Sean's breath grazing his cheekbone, the soft patch of skin below his ear, and the firm press of bone to bone as his forehead touched Jeff's temple and rested there a second. "Just you make sure," he said, so close that Jeff felt the shape of each word tripping down the length of his spine -- "Just you make bloody sure you come back with me, you hear me?" The voice was low, soft, a palpable contrast to the fierce grip of fingers on the trembling back of Jeff's neck. "Don't you go anywhere but home, and we'll all be dandy."

Jeff's heart was a thunder in his chest, a swelling fury that tripped over itself and broke out in a stuttered, gasping breath. He felt as if he'd thrown back fourteen coffees on the trot, or shot heroin, or gone insane. It wasn't anything resembling a comfortable feeling, but suddenly he found that he wasn't thinking about Berlin any more, and that was something. His hand came up slowly, found Sean's forearm. Gripped it hard enough that there'd be bruises there after the sortie, when they were both back in the Mess with their beer.

"Won't go anywhere but home," he said, low and rough and certain. "I promise you, I'm coming back."

*

Jeff's engine had suffered from an awful prang somewhere in the vicinity of Paris, on the way home, when something struck the fuselage just when the coast had seemingly begun to clear. It was making a hell of a racket, now, he knew, but he barely heard it. Behind him, the bedraggled remains of two Flights limped in, but Jeff felt barely aware of them -- barely aware of anything but the Channel, and then the ground, spread out before him, the world like a patchwork quilt washed accidentally with the darks. Ruined. It was raining, the sound of it a melancholy rumble on the windshield of the Spit, and Jeff couldn't breathe. The oxygen didn't help.

If he was honest, he felt rather as if nothing would ever help again.

Even now, he could almost hear Bean's voice in his ear, chiding him for his melodrama, warmly mocking. "Oh, take your braying and shove it, Morgan. It's not the end of the world."

Except Bean wasn't here to say it, and something deep in Jeff couldn't see how the world could go on without him in it. The flak had been madness enough over Berlin, the anti-aircraft batteries all pumping out lead from their positions around the perimeter of the city, and that had been before what felt like half the Luftflotte rose up to tip their hats in greeting. The bombs had hit their marks fair and square, and that meant the mission had been, according to Wing's specifications, a success, but it had quickly become too hot for Jeff to pay much attention to anything beyond the nose of his own aeroplane and the reach of his own tracer. When he saw the Hurricane go hurtling down, it had taken him a moment to register exactly whose machine it was, the formations all scattered to pieces as they were in the dogfight.

"Sean?" There had been two 109s on his tail, but he fumbled for the r/t anyway, skipping the codeword nonsense and going straight for Bean's name, his voice breaking insistently. "Sean, you okay?"

Below, the machine fell straight for a thousand feet, and then went into a spin. The radio snowed in Jeff's ear. Frantic, Jeff leaned down to watch for a bail out, for anything -- perhaps the r/t had been hit; perhaps there was still a chance of escape -- but there had been nothing until the Hurry hit the ground. Then one of the 109s had shot something off some part of Jeff's tail, pulling him reluctantly back into the fray, and he'd lost track of the Hurricane after that; hadn't seen whether it went up in flames.

All the way home, he clung to that thought: he never saw flames, but he knew it was a forlorn hope, really. No bail out, and a fall like that? If Sean hadn't been dead before the Hurricane began to plummet, he had certainly been killed when it hit the ground. If any prisoners had been taken today, Sean had not been one of them.

Jeff knew this, but the knowledge still rang hollow and unreal in his head as he pulled the machine in to land and climbed out stiffly, feeling as if he had aged ten years in the course of one mission.

"All right, sir?" called one of the mechanics, and Jeff waved a hand weakly as he pushed up his goggles, pulled off his gloves.

"Something -- the engine." He was being unhelpfully vague, but he couldn't seem to do any better. The words didn't want to come. "Something, uh. Something hit the engine, maybe the tail?"

The Flight Sergeant approached as if out of nowhere, bypassing the mechanic to take Jeff by the shoulder and pull him gently away from the plane. "That's fine, sir. We'll take it from here. You go on over to the Mess and get yourself a drink." The hand on his shoulder squeezed, and Jeff was hit by a sense-memory of Sean's hand earlier, the warmth of his palm and the strength in his blunt fingers.

Behind him, other machines were coming in like wounded soldiers from some foreign war, holes in their fuselage and pock-marks from bullets in their windshields. Jeff sighed and turned away, shaking the Flight Sergeant gently off. Let the others explain, do the counting up, the reckoning; or Jeff would do it tomorrow, if he had to. Tomorrow, next week, any time but right now, when what he wanted wasn't so much a drink as a whole town of criminals to shoot up, just to make himself feel better.

"Thank you, Flight," he said. Again, the faintness of his own voice surprised him, and he struck out toward Squadron Farmhouse. "I'll -- thanks."

He went to the Mess. Not because he thought it would help, really, but simply because he had been told to, and Jeff's brain wasn't running particularly well under its own steam just at the moment, and any order sounded like a good one. Except that, when he reached it, the room was empty, the debris of their last round of tea and biscuits still strewn across the tables. Sean's chair was still kicked back from the table, exactly the way he'd left it. His teacup still sat in its saucer, the dregs of his tea and the stub of his cigarette still in it.

His last cigarette. His last cup of tea. It was easy -- so easy -- to attach morbid significances to these things. Jeff stared dumbly at the cup and remembered the way Sean had waved it around earlier as they went over the route a final time.

"Dammit," he breathed.

On the table, the cup didn't move. It was Sean's cup, after all, and Sean wasn't here any longer to move it. Suddenly, a rush of fury rose up in Jeff's throat like bile. If the cup wouldn't move on its own, then dammit, Jeff could rectify that easily enough. He stepped forward roughly, swept it up in one hand. Tea sloshed over the chipped porcelain rim, but Jeff paid it no heed. He wound his arm back like a cricketer before he could pause to think through the sudden haze of red; flung his hand forward and released the cup at the crest of his pitch. When it shattered against the fireplace, he immediately felt like a fool, but there was something satisfying about it, too, and he reached for the saucer, blindly, raised it up.

" -- sir?" A brief pause, and then, "Jeff."

The way Jeff froze in place might have been comical, had it not been for the way his stomach plummeted weakly into his boots at the sight of Jensen in the doorway, the perfect arches of his brows drawn together in concern. He looked half-wrecked, himself, one cheek black with smoke or oil, as if something had been hit in his cockpit. Probably, he had been on his way to bathe and then sleep, but he was paused now with one foot inside the Mess, watching Jeff with quiet, assessing eyes.

"Jeff," Jensen repeated, when Jeff didn't move, "What are you doing, man?"

All at once, Jeff felt himself go slack, like a suit of old clothes fallen from a peg. The hand with the saucer in it wavered, and then lowered. He set the saucer down shakily on the table and shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know, I --" He broke off. He could hear himself, feel himself getting more and more highly strung, voice going up in pitch, and the last thing he needed was to let himself surrender to hysteria. He rubbed the back of a hand across his mouth and drew a deep, slow breath. "Where's the rest of your Flight?"

"Lost one," Jensen said, still sounding wary, "lost a few, I think. I didn't see. Jared's back okay, Misha's back." Collins had returned to the Squadron two days before, his minor injury healed. "As for the rest, we'll find out. But, Jeff --"

He was moving into the room, now. Jeff felt himself tense up in anticipation, wanting comfort and feeling undeserving of it, every nerve in his body torn between a movement either towards or away from any touch that Jensen might offer. As if to forestall a decision, he opened his mouth, brain running too slowly to give the rest of him any warning before what came out was simply, "Sean --"

"You guys were -- were friends a long time, weren't you?"

Jensen's voice was soft, too soft. If Jeff had to stand here another goddamn second and listen to that soft voice, the sympathy in it when Jensen had his own best friend, whatever, back safe and sound, he was going to lose it. He clenched a fist and shook his head, making to go, brushing past Jensen in search of the door. "Yeah, we were. I -- God. Excuse me."

He didn't pause to see the look on Jensen's face as he shouldered past him and out of the Mess, groping like a blind man for his room. He didn't think it was something he much wanted to see.

*

part three

Comments

[chartruscan.livejournal.com]

Man, Sean Bean dies in everything, even RPF.

[oschun.livejournal.com]

I was feeling so sad, saw this comment and had to laugh. So true.