rosanicus

No. 13: TEAM AS A FAMILY
Familial Curse | Multiple Whumpees | "Death will do us part." (Set It Off, Partner's In Crime)

This is quite a loose interpretation of the prompt. I will defend it to the death.

620 words, Biggles & Algy, WW1

Algy found Biggles at the edge of the aerodrome. It was late in the morning, a quiet one on account of a stormfront that had only just passed them by.

“Morning, chief,” he said. Biggles glanced at him, then turned away. “Mahoney said I’d best come find you before the next show.”

“He knows where I am,” said Biggles, flatly. “I’ll be back when he needs me.”

“That’s all very well,” replied Algy. “But I need a partner for cribbage.”

Biggles shook his head. His gloved hands clenched around what looked like an official telegram. “Find someone else,” he said. His voice was thick.

Algy hesitated. He hadn’t been in France long; he hadn’t needed to have this conversation before. “Was it someone I would know?” He asked. Biggles would know what he meant, or at least he hoped so.

No response. Algy sighed, then dropped onto the grass beside Biggles, instantly soaking the seat of his uniform trousers. Hopefully the maternity jacket would cover any grass stains. Biggles shifted away, pressing the telegram close to his stomach.

They sat in silence for some time. The clouds above them lightened from storm-grey to cotton wool. A stray sunbeam pierced through for a moment, just long enough to leave Algy blinking sunspots from his eyes.

“Charles is dead,” said Biggles, cutting the silence neatly to ribbons. He covered his eyes with one hand, and held out the telegram with the other.

“Oh.” Algy took the telegram, mechanically, and looked at it. The words passed over his thoughts without making an imprint; the important thing was already there.

Biggles’ father, the redoubtable Bigglesworth Senior, had died of an infection before either Algy or Biggles ever made it to Maranique. It was early in the war when it happened, early enough that Algy’s schoolmasters had still been talking of a Yuletide victory. Algy was called into the headmaster’s office in late November, just after a disappointing Fives match was called off with an injury, to find out that his uncle – ‘uncle’ being a much easier term than ‘second cousin once removed’ – was dead.

He supposed that Biggles must have had a similar conversation with his own headmaster. Charles was already commissioned by then, no chance of a visit with his younger brother, and he had an inkling that he hadn’t made it for the memorial service either. Only Charles remembered their mother.

Now he'd seen enough death in just a few months that he knew the line he’d been fed - painless and quick - was just that. He wondered when Biggles had realised the same. The telegram in his hands would probably say something similar; it was something Biggles himself put in the letters he wrote for dead officers.

Algy didn’t often think of Biggles as an orphan – the word conjured up Dickensian imagery, children begging in the street in rags – but it was accurate enough. All he had was Algy, and he didn't feel like much of a replacement.

“If you’ve anything to say, spit it out,” said Biggles. “There’ll be a show before long.”

“You won’t have to –” Algy began.

“I will,” Biggles interrupted. He looked up, locked his red-rimmed eyes with Algy’s. “I will have to, because there’s nothing else. Charles is dead in some stinking pit forty miles down the line, killed fighting for inches of rotten earth and barbed wire, and we’re here. We’re still here.”

They stared at each other. Biggles looked away first, chest heaving, and covered his face with both hands.

Before Algy could move, a siren cut through the still air. Shit, he thought, as Biggles pushed himself to his feet and ran, full pelt, for the hangar. The war waited for no man.