Chapter Text
“ All this while Sir Percivale had pursued adventures of his own, and came nigh onto losing his life, but he was saved from his enemies by the good Knight, Sir Galahad, whom he did not know, although he was seeking him .”
- Andrew Lang, King Arthur: Tales of the Round Table , page 80
“You’re not actually thinking of going through with this, are you, Perse?”
Percy smiled thinly, not looking up from his packing. He was slowly, deliberately folding a shirt into a small, brown and silver vinyl suitcase.
“Look - you know I love you, but… have you gone out of your mind? You do remember what he did to you, no? I mean, you won’t have forgotten how he… he… conned you away from everything. Everything .” He punctuated his statement with a spread of his open palms. “I mean, it was hard for all of us, being sent away, but… at least I could hate the Germans for it and not my own family."
“You worry too much about me, Gal.” Percy frowned. “I’m not the scared little boy you met on the train anymore. That… was a long time ago.”
“Percy.” Gal frowned and crossed his arms.
Percy turned his eyes to the dresser top, doing what he often liked to do when he and Gal had some petty disagreement; some might call it ignoring but he liked to think of it more as disregarding his partner. His slender fingers were at work undoing a knot in a small velvet bag.
“Percival.” The pitch of Gal’s voice elevated with urgency.
Percy sniffed, irritated. “You know I hate it when you - hate it when you - call me that.”
Gal softened. Percy’s stutter had a habit of coming out when he was annoyed or flustered by something. In the computer lab, when something wasn’t going right, Percy would pace the room and try to look at the problem from all angles. It was rare that he’d get stuck on anything for long, but if he did, Gal would help him talk it out. He remembered one particular time he had been frustrated trying to resolve an error for days, and he could hardly get out a sentence without starting it over several times again. It had melted Gal in the strangest way. However, something told him now was not the time to draw attention to the old speech quirk.
He rested his hand on Percy’s shoulder and caressed it gently. “I’m just worried about you. I don’t want you getting hurt all over again…”
“He can’t.”
“He can't what? Hurt you? And why not?”
“He already has, there’s -” he swallowed, “there’s nothing he could really do anymore." He let out a breath. "Besides, I'm not going there to - to… to reminisce about the old times. I'm coming for one reason alone, and that's to help my brother. And then I'm going home."
"I just can't understand why you'd help someone who hurt you the way he did. You owe him nothing, Perse. You can wipe your hands clean of your little brother and not think of him ever again." Secretly, Gal wondered if somewhere deep down Percy still thought he'd done something wrong to make Arthur betray him the way he did. If he still held out hope of making amends with him, even if he didn't admit it. The thought broke his heart as much as it did the first time he’d heard Percy wonder aloud about his potential transgressions against the accursed Arthur, one sullen, dreary day in a damp bedroom in a German orphanage.
"It's not about whether he deserves it. I couldn't give a bloody damn about that.” Percy closed his eyes with deliberation, trying his best to conjure up the words to express how he was feeling and thinking through the situation. Gal was always so adept at that, himself, and if anyone could convince Percy to be so bothered as to draw out his private thoughts and feelings, it was certainly him. “It's about me wanting to do this. For… myself, Gal. And… and what’s more, there's the lives of all those others bound up in this mess. I can’t stand by and let them suffer if there’s something I can do about it. Think of it. They’re from Wellington Wells, too. Where I came from. Where we came from.”
Gal released a tight, single laugh. “You mean the same people who stood by and did nothing as the Germans took us captive? Who cast us away like we were nothing, made prisoners of war of their own sons and daughters?” They’re not like us, he added, mentally, because it felt too harsh to say aloud, and Percy hated moral absolutes. They’ll never know what it was like , he thought, bitterly.
“Yes.” Percy had a way of simply responding to even the most inflammatory of questions in a way that made the answer seem like it was so obvious, even when Gal didn’t agree. He - probably - didn’t even mean it in a stubborn way.
“Maybe you’re just a far better man than I,” Gal said quietly, lingering for a moment before stepping away and gently shutting the bedroom door behind himself.
Percy thought the matter over as he stood over his dresser and stuffed a few pairs of socks into each other. He had never really been able to leave what Arthur had done in the past. And how could he? How could he ever forget how that day made him feel? Arthur - besides their mother - was the only person who really ever made him feel loved. Sure, maybe little Artie didn’t always get or appreciate everything he told him, and maybe that wasn’t his fault - his brother saw things quite differently than him, after all - but his brother had given him some of the few glimpses he’d had at feeling truly accepted. That was, until he’d found Gal, and the mad whirl of the rest of his life began in a train zipping away from the Western coast.
When he heard what the Wellsians had been getting on with after the war - when news of Arthur Hastings, the fabulous runaway Wellie, first reached his television set in his and Gal’s Moscow enclave - he didn’t know what to think. More, it seemed, had happened there than he ever could have dreamed of. Part of him wanted to know all that had happened since he’d been gone, to sit down with his younger brother and hear all about his life. And how he lived with himself. And then again, part of him wanted to sod the whole thing and not listen to another word of the cursory broadcast. The thought that they would smother the memory of what they did to him and Gal in a comfortable blanket of drugs - it was so predictably and yet unsurprisingly horrible almost all he could do was laugh. Still, it was fascinating.
But now his younger brother was in trouble. And despite Gal’s (perhaps, he might admit privately, warranted) warnings, he was going to go anyway.
Percy closed the suitcase and latched it shut with a satisfying click. He checked his short, deep brown hair in the mirror, fixing a few errant strands, and went downstairs.
“Well then. Are we ready to go?” Gal was standing by the coat rack, and Percy’s eyes went to the bag hanging from his left hand as he passed over his winter coat to him.
“You’re coming?”
Gal smiled. “Of course I am.” He put his own coat over his shoulders, slipping into the armholes.
Percy leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on his companion’s nose.
In the pale light of dawn, Arthur carefully made his way to the sink, stepping over sleeping bodies and dodging small, worn bags of personal belongings. He paused as a dark-haired man adjusted his position, pulling a red blanket wrapped around him tighter and hugging it to himself. The man let out a sigh; he couldn’t have been very comfortable, Arthur thought, with just blanket and pillow separating him from the hardwood floor. It wasn’t ideal, Arthur admitted, having to cram folks in without proper beds of their own. He and Sally didn’t quite know what to do with all the Wellsians who showed up in a steady, if still modest, stream, quite beyond the intended capacity of the house, but they hated to send anyone away. He supposed even if means were modest it was better than the alternative they would face without a place to stay, exposed to every danger out there. Plus, with more people came more help, it was true; more hands to find food, cook, and otherwise contribute to the precarious living situation.
But as Arthur looked around himself, looked at everything with a critical eye for the first time in a while - the way the bodies were packed in, six of them he could count sleeping there on the kitchen floor, and the accumulation of clutter and mess accompanying them - he began to wonder if he had gone too far. Maybe I have a problem . Some people hoarded old milk bottles and Uncle Jack records - he hoarded Wellies, apparently.
How am I going to tell them? He wondered. How am I going to tell them that I failed? That I won’t be able to protect them anymore? He sighed as he filled up a water glass, then turned to gaze at the sleeping bodies again. They looked peaceful in their rest, but they held onto a deep weariness in the lines of their face, a troubled, worried look, even when their minds were at rest.
When Sally told him the news, he’d felt numb. It wasn’t a surprise - somehow, it was what he’d expected, a fate that he’d even come to accept as inevitable and that he’d gone forward towards knowing the potential consequences for himself, but that didn’t make it any less of an ordeal. At least he’d been caught out in the course of doing something decent, something that maybe helped some people, rather than burning up in a whirl of alcohol and adulation, as he probably would’ve if he had followed Morgan. He didn’t quite know what to feel, though, about all the people - God knows where they would go and what would happen to them now - that would be affected by it. He didn’t want to see the hope leave their faces. He didn’t want to spoil their tenuous sense of comfort.
But he would have to break it to them somehow. Their time was up. Our time is up.
The courtroom was nice, Arthur observed distantly as he looked up at the high ceiling, the judge’s voice echoing off the mahogany’s reddish sheen and floating in and out of his perception in warm waves of “ although such a situation is highly unusual ” and “ special emergency provision under the law to allow for the prosecution of.. .”
Sally wanted to fight it, and he did, too, but part of him also thought it was no use. Part of him, perhaps the more vocal part, was ready to give in. It felt as though he had been fighting all his life, and he was tired. What was the worst they could do to him? Put him in jail? That couldn’t be all bad. He’d mind his own business, keep to himself, hope nobody bothered him much. Hopefully they’d still let him see Sally and…
His gaze shifted to the sleeping Guinivere held on Sally’s shoulder, picked up to be comforted and just gotten to settle down cuddled up to her mother. She was getting quite big now, healthy too - a blessing, given everything she could’ve been exposed to in Wellington Wells the first months of her life. No, he couldn’t leave Sally and Gwen behind. Not to mention, if Sally went away too, they’d both be separated from Gwen. He’d rather die, he thought in that instant and - surprising even himself, without hesitation - than lose them. No, no, no . He could not, under any circumstances, allow that to happen, come what may. From his sleep-deprived fantasy of imprisonment, he dove sharply back into reality again. There was no telling that would be the outcome of their case, he reminded himself - they hadn’t lost yet. The worry of what would happen if they did, though, was enough to make him straighten in his seat and lift his weary eyes to the podium, jolted into attention.
“That’s where the proceedings are being held?” Percy peered out from the back seat of their hired car at the courthouse, outside of which a handful of people and press cameras had gathered. Some were holding up signs. A variety of opinions seemed to be represented. “ WELLIES ARE BRITISH,” he noticed, then “STOP THE INVASION,” he supposed, for the opposite side, and, more ambiguously, simply “ AGAIN?”
Gal rested his chin in his hand, looking a mix of pensive and detached. He gazed out Percy’s side of the window behind his wire-rimmed sunglasses. “Right this minute. It would seem.”
“Hm.” Percy followed his line of sight with a frown.
Gal sniffed. “It’s the same old song, isn’t it? You don’t belong if you’re different. Same basic reason kids used to trip me at football matches and call me a ‘Yid’... just all grown up.”
“Merely an example of the dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion at its most rudimentary level,” Percy agreed.
Gal’s eyes searched Percy’s famously unreadable face. “Are you nervous?” His fingers tapped the back of his partner’s hand, a measuredly discreet display of affection.
Percy let out a breath and straightened his back. “No.”
One moment they were waiting to see what Arthur had convinced himself was the very probable unraveling of all their hopes for the future; the next moment it was all called to an abrupt halt. The proceedings paused as suddenly as Morgan’s letter had come upon them, and Arthur and Sally got up, dazed and unsure. Having prepared themselves for the worst, the sudden dismissal of the court was a strange relief - a stalling of fate but not, as far as they knew, a sanctuary from it.
Perhaps I have more influence than I thought, Percy thought to himself as they came out through the heavy wooden doors, Gal holding them open for him. It was always strange to see how importantly he was treated when his reputation preceded him, peoples’ voices hushing and bodies clearing to the sides of hallways to make a path for him. In his daily life, going to the market, taking a walk down to the park, he proceeded unrecognised, ordinary. Which he preferred. But Gal - his Gal - well, he had this awful habit of not letting people forget who Percy was. He was sure to announce with pride Percy’s credentials whenever he deemed it necessary. One of the highest ranking aeronautics engineers, with intimate ties to the Russian government. A boy entangled in the most unusual of historical circumstances, who had pulled himself up from nothing. And now he was homecoming, returning to a country he’d not been to for over a decade.
It would be in the papers the next day; there was no going back now. The commitment was made. The main bit left would be the actual advocacy. And he had, of course, a very good lawyer to help with that.
Sally and Arthur wondered who their mysterious benefactor was - who granted their reprieve. Because whatever it was, good or bad, too soon as it was to tell, it had to have been the act of someone .
And then Arthur’s mind tuned in to the chatter of the room around him, and then he froze.
“...said a man’s come, one of the original children who was sent away by the Wellies… yes, really…”
“...a scientist, I think…”
“...we’ve heard so much about the Wellies in Wellington Wells, but I can’t remember ever hearing much about the other side of things… what an occasion…”
“...can you imagine what this means for the case?”
“...wonder what he’ll say? Might get rather ugly. What? No, I mean that… surely you’d feel a little bit sore if you got sacrificed by your neighbours, wouldn’t you?”
“What was the last name again?”
“Hastings.”
“Are you really certain this is a good idea?” Gal asked with a frown. “I mean, providing, er. legal help is one thing, but this …” He shook his head anxiously, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his seat. Then his face got softer. “But you’re going to go through with it, aren’t you?”
Percy’s thumb brushed over his lower lip pensively. In the seat beside Gal but miles away, shadows crept over his face as the gradually darkening scenery slowly scrolled by. “Yeah.”
The car pulled into the long, lonely drive of the country estate; a stone cottage that was bigger and more handsome than Gal had expected. The house was surrounded generously with fields that were beginning to grow verdant, with a barn and stable down a further path a short ways away, and bordered on one side by woods. On the edge of the woods, two men in threadbare sweaters were chopping logs from a fallen tree.
“Coming?” Percy opened the door on his side, stepping out onto the stone path.
“Of course.” He got out, shut the door behind himself, and followed behind Percy up to the door. He knocked unceremoniously on the deep brown wood.
There was a while before there came an answer, but he was patient. Eventually, the door swung open, and his brother was standing there before him, looking a bit pale.
“Percy.”
Time slowed and Arthur was suddenly aware of each breath he drew, each movement of his eyes as he took in the image of his brother for the first time - aside from the grainy newspaper photo in Sir Lymington’s collection - all grown up. His older brother was almost taller than him now, with deep, unyielding eyes, a solid jaw, prominent ears that he had grown into more now, a slightly rumpled dress shirt pocket holding a single pen. His mind was trying and failing to process it all. Part of him wanted nothing more than to take his brother into his arms and hug him tight. He realized, distantly, that his cheeks had become wet.
The Wellsian refugees, though inwardly quite curious about the two well-dressed strangers that had been invited in, retreated to the other rooms when it became apparent that privacy was desired. And thus the group of four - Arthur, Percy, Gal, and Sally - stood in the kitchen. Arthur felt painfully awkward and useless as Sally engaged the pair in some polite, if stiff, pleasantries.
“Well, Percy, as I said, it certainly is a surprise to see you again. From what we’ve heard, it seems you’ve been quite busy in the past months,” Sally was attempting, casting a worried glance towards Arthur, who had been remarkably silent.
Arthur was miles away. “It was you that intervened. In court. Today.” He said, finally putting voice to his thoughts. “Why… Why did you help me?” He blurted.
Percy blinked and turned his head to him slowly. “I suppose you’ll like to think I’ve forgiven you.” He observed languidly, sounding tired.
Gal hewed close to Percy’s side, a protective hand on his arm, and untrusting eyes on his younger brother. He knew this was Percy’s battle to fight, but he wanted to make it clear to Arthur how he felt about him. He narrowed his eyes as he stared through him, and Arthur nearly felt a chill run up his back.
“You are… Gal, aren’t you? Gal Kaplan, Percy’s assistant?” Sally asked, again trying to break the uncomfortable silence. “We, er… read a story, in the newspaper, that mentions you.”
Gal’s face softened a little. “Who knew my name preceded me? I must be the most famous lab assistant in Russia.” He joked, if a bit stalely, with a flat affect.
well, i only know the name cos Arthur’s read it about a hundred times since he found it…
“Yes. He’s my closest friend.” Percy said matter-of-factly.
Sally passed a knowing glance over him. ah… so Gal wasn’t, well, a gal, after all.
“Arthur,” Percy continued, taking a few steps closer to him, “I may not forgive you for what you’ve done. I may not ever.” He stared not at Arthur but at the wall as he spoke. “You’ve probably something to say for yourself. But you can save it. What you’re going to do is, you’re going to sit down, and you’re going to listen.”
“Yes, of course,” Arthur breathed. Hands shaking, he pulled up a chair at the kitchen table. And Percy, Gal, and Sally followed suit.
“When you left me, Arthur…” Percy swallowed, reliving the memory. “I couldn’t accept the reality of the situation, not at first. Panicking, I pled that they stop the train, because I thought for sure you’d come back for me after all.” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “Gal, you can add if you’d like. I’m… not the best at - at, er, this sort of… thing,” he qualified, feeling quite out of his depth and as though words were quite inadequate. “And you like to tell stories. Besides, the story of what happened to me is the story of what happened to us both. They’re intertwined.”
Gal placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He knew it was difficult to revisit the experience, even all these years later. It was painful even for him to remember that time, although he thought himself far luckier than his partner. He still thought laying these emotions bare to Percy’s brother wouldn’t help anyone, but he would support him in any way he could. A little reluctant at first, he started. “Percy was causing so much of a fuss, the adults physically held him down and put a rag in his mouth to get him to stop. It was… Hard to watch.” Gal grimaced.
“Gal was sitting right across from me on the train. I didn’t have a seatmate… I suppose because I was too unruly.”
“I think him panicking only scared the rest of us on that train coach even more. Especially the younger ones, who really didn’t know what was going on but had been reassured that everything was alright. Only then to be confronted with what they already feared, down inside: that something was wrong,” Gal dramatised. “Eventually, Percy seemed to have tired himself out and I watched him fall asleep, with tears still streaming down his face. The next morning they took the rag away - not that a boy of his age couldn’t have taken it out himself, I think it was more to make a point than anything else. Well, it must have worked, because after it was gone he was silent, just sullenly looking out the window. I couldn’t help but feel awful for the boy across from me, so I discreetly moved over to sit with him. I didn’t know him - I… Didn’t really know anyone, and besides, as I soon found out, I was in a lower year than him. I was eleven to his thirteen - which, of course, is when I started to realise what had happened to him. ‘You’re not supposed to be on here,’ I realised aloud, and he had admitted how he and his brother had planned to go together, him lying about his age by a few months to meet the cutoff. And though I could hardly get a word out of him at first, I found that he was still denying that he had been tricked, and insisting that his brother was going to find his way to him. Although as he said it I wondered if he really believed it at all, or if he was just clinging onto it - he looked and sounded so dejected.
For my part, I was also finding it hard to believe what was happening to us. Part of me suspected that I was being taken away because of who I was, or who my family was, that is. You know - that I was being deported. I thought they were sending me back to Palestine, even though I for one had never even been there… My parents called it home until the riots in 1929, when they became convinced they weren’t safe... The way most other children bullied me for the language my family spoke, the holidays we celebrated, or the food I brought to school made me think that perhaps I didn’t belong. And maybe they were right in a sense - I mean, how many Jewish boys from the Middle East do you usually find on an isolated English island? I never did find why they chose Wellington Wells specifically as their new home… but I suppose life finds a way. My parents were so sad when they took me to the train that somehow I thought my time had come, that I had been found out and was being sent away. Only, frighteningly, without them…”
Arthur realised now that he thought he remembered Gal, or his family, vaguely. He never did get included in neighbourhood matches of football, and he was only a year younger than Arthur. He felt a pang of regret that he hadn’t done anything about it.
Gal laughed mirthlessly before continuing. “Well, I thought maybe we could help each other. So over the course of the few days of travel - train, ferry, and then train again, and no one answering our questions of where exactly in Germany we were going - I tried to help him come to terms with his situation. And when he did - I do not exaggerate when I say that he was devastated. He was totally crushed. He wasn’t eating, he spoke to me even less than he had been… I tried to tell him everything would be okay, but… those words felt terribly meaningless, even then. Mostly I felt anger towards this Arthur fellow. The pain in Percy’s voice, how worthless he felt when he realised he’d been disposed of by someone he cared for so much… It was hard even for me just to hear it. But I had already made up my mind at that point: I had attached myself to the older boy beside me, and I was going to stick by him and help him through this no matter what.”
“For my part,” Percy added with a faint smile, “I wasn’t quite sure of my new friend yet. I didn’t really have friends besides you, Arthur, and wasn’t used to thinking of anyone that way. But, I suppose, he grew on me eventually.”
“Or wore you down,” Gal joked. “But, our worries about what we were leaving behind soon faded into the concerns of where we were headed. We realised that we were en route to a land we understood little about. Percy had taught himself an impressive amount of German, but I knew none. And I was worried about things I’d heard: that they were a bit hostile towards people like me. That there were some people who didn’t like Jews. In any case, if they didn’t like me in Wellington Wells, I wasn’t very sure they would in this unknown land. Percy and I made an agreement: I would take on a new, thoroughly British identity. For me he picked the name James, and if anyone asked, I was his little brother. I felt as if we had matured several years just in that journey alone - one day I was an eleven year old boy, innocent enough and still rather dependent on my family, and the next I was realising that my situation could maybe be one of life and death. Fortunately I found that those, er, prejudiced people were only a minority. Some bloke named Hitler - I think it was? - amassed a small group of extremists, but never really managed to gain much momentum. The F ü hrer, Erwin Rommel, didn’t look so kindly upon Antisemitism… fortunately. But there was another problem that troubled us… I found that Percy was, in short, a genius. I recognised it rather quickly as soon as I heard him reciting linguistic theories that were far beyond what either of us should have understood.”
“I didn’t believe him at first,” Percy inserted. “I’d grown up hearing that I was just ‘slow’...”
“Well, it did puzzle me how at the same time, with such expertise, you had such a hard time expressing yourself. The two of us would stick out like a sore thumb in Germany, surely, I thought; me, a foreigner, and you, a genius with little understanding of social conventions.”
“I had to get used to acting in a certain way to fit in,” Percy added. “It was exhausting. Still is, sometimes. But like Gal I was afraid - afraid of, er, being on our own in a new place, and of… standing out. I never much cared about that before, but before, for the most part, I had… felt safe, I suppose. Then I didn’t.”
“It put us into an unusual position though - Percy knew German quite well already, but struggled to make conversation - and I could talk to people well enough but knew no German. So… bit by bit, he taught me some German, and I taught him how to and not to act. The German gave us an advantage, as most of the others only knew English, and had to start from scratch once they placed us into the orphanages, but lesson times were easier for us… And yes, they dropped us into orphanages. It felt such an indignity, being placed into such places for those without a family, when in reality we had parents of our own that were perfectly capable of caring for us. The place where Percy and I ended up, it wasn’t so bad. It was clean enough, and we had food, and a couple personal items to add to whatever our families had sent us with. The caretakers were responsible, if distant and a bit strict, and they made an effort to communicate with us in English, too, which was a kindness.”
“We started to get more comfortable, but barely,” added Percy. “We had no idea what would happen next. For months and months, many held onto hopes that they would be reunited with their families. But we were also afraid that… well, that at any moment our world would be again ripped away from under our feet.” He scratched the back of his head. “No illusions of stability any longer. If it could happen once, surely it could happen again,” he observed with a cynical weariness that Arthur realised he didn’t recognize in his brother. “Maybe transferred to another one of those places with no warning. Or certainly worse possibilities filtered through our minds. We often wondered what our purpose was there, if we were being held to ultimately become child labor for the war effort, cold and tactical as the Germans were when it came to victory. We were fed propaganda about that. Germany’s righteousness… I suppose. I think some of them began to really believe it.” He sighed. “Why would they just hold us there? I never really had that answered for myself, but I think that whatever it was, they soon abandoned it… As they forgot about us.”
Percy went quiet again, staring at his hands on the table, and Gal took over once more. “As you know, the war ended in 1949, when the Americans and the Russians finally pushed things over the edge. When the news broke over the radio, a lot of us jumped for joy, and there was a great fuss in the boy’s dormitory, throwing up our pillows and laughing. Which the caretakers didn’t like much, ha. But the more cautious few who sat seriously and abstained from the celebration proved the more realistic among us. For, of course, we would not be returning home. Without knowing it, we had passed that point of return long ago. Many of us were heartbroken, really, when days stretched onto months with little to no word and we began to realise they weren’t going to come get us back. Had they forgotten us? Maybe our families had really gone on without missing us. The English government had an inquisition and tried to get us back eventually, but it was too little, too late. Though some were reluctant, soon many of us were starting to see ourselves as more German than British, particularly the younger ones. It was those younger ones, mostly, that got adopted into German families and began new lives after years in the orphanage. And for the older boys, well, we couldn’t stay in the orphanage forever - many of them started to shut down as boys were sorted into more permanent homes, you see - and so we had to move on and find work.”
“It was about this time that we realised…” Percy began, then hesitated. “That we saw each other as more than friends. It was difficult to understand, because we had really no frame of reference for such a thing. Boys were supposed to like girls, and vice versa - and I… had begun to wonder if I would ever like anyone in such a way. Not that we had much time to think of romance.”
“It took us a very long time to accept it, and even then we had to be very, very careful not to be caught. Well, what was one more thing to hide from the world, anyways?” Gal mused. “Er… Love is a strange thing, I suppose. But perhaps it was bound to happen, some way or another, when two people go through all the things we did together. We were each others’ life raft. So.. We agreed we might as well stick together,” he understated, smiling faintly. “As I said, we needed to find someplace to work, and we were in luck, because there was an employer interested in selecting some boys from the orphanage for apprenticeships. When the war was ended, I should add that our orphanage was technically ‘liberated’ by Russian forces. I say technically because it wasn’t a dramatic change as the word suggests. Like I said, not everyone was able to leave immediately. In any case, it was the Russians that got to us first - I suppose they are a bit closer than the Americans, after all. It was a complicated situation for them to handle, I imagine. Prisoners of war can usually go back to their families, but what do you do when their families don’t want them? An employer in Leningrad offered jobs to the older of us boys, and we, not knowing what else to do, jumped at the opportunity. So for the second time in our short lives we made a big move, from Germany to Russia. A language that both of us had to start afresh on - of course, Percy picked it up quickly. We were trained as welders, working on parts for commercial passenger aeroplanes. We were… worked hard. But we did well enough, I suppose, and we got help with housing. The aircraft company was soon enlisted in the government’s rocket program. And meanwhile, our supervisor was coming to understand how special Percy is. Percy - being, well, Percy - won’t hold himself back if he overhears you discussing a problem in front of him. He saw solutions that I still don’t understand how he got to them, and he’d walk up to superiors like he owned the place and just tell them what to do, while they stood there flabbergasted. He was too good to keep where he started, and I, well, haha, I was permitted to follow, I suppose, because he insisted. I’ll spare the details of every promotion, but we ended up quite far from where we started. We spent most our time in the computer rooms, using punch cards to communicate with the machines. After many hard years of work, Percy succeeded as head of system control for the first orbital satellite. We’ve worked on the other satellites since. And…” He stretched his arms, cleared his throat, and pondered whether it was worth adding anything more. There was much more to the story, but… “I suppose that’s the short version of things.”
Arthur sat with the information for a while. It was a lot to think about. He was unsure what to say, and every option in his mind sounded, well, just a bit daft, considering the circumstances. He smiled weakly. “Sally and I used to dream about flying away in a rocket. Heh. But you actually… made that happen. Er, that sort of thing.”
The range of experiences that Gal and Percy had had, the changes and wonders they had seen, and the struggles and misery - it was overwhelming to imagine the sheer difference from what he had gone through, insane as that all was. He was struck with the need, then, to tell Percy all about it - all the unimaginable things that had happened in the place they called home, all the things that nobody knew, not even the media, at least not quite yet - in spite of his interviews with Morgan. There was so much that Percy didn’t know - he didn’t even know the fate of their mother, he realised with a twinge. But he held back the tumult of emotion. It was still much too hard to say what would happen. How long was his brother going to stay?
There was an uncomfortable silence as they sat around the table, Gal and Percy apparently indeed done telling their story, for now.
“Percy, I am so… proud of you. And… I’m sorry. I hope you might… well, that you might give me a chance someday to… Well, I don’t know if it’s really possible to heal those wounds. But another chance, maybe, to try again and not be such a shit brother to you this time around.”
Percy placed one hand over his other, picking at his fingernails, evaluating.
“He’s not obligated to make you feel better,” Gal simmered.
“Of course not. Of course. I know that what I did, well, disqualifies me from being entitled to anything, really… There’s nothing really that could stop me from my own self-punishment, anyways.”
There was a delay before Percy responded. “That’s the problem, Arthur. You weren’t a shit brother. You had your faults, sure, but… You were never a bad brother. Until you were, in a very big way.” He sighed. “It made me question everything I knew. It hurt , is what I mean. It hurt in a way I don’t think I could ever really heal. I thought it would feel better for me and Gal to tell you what happened, but I don’t think it’s possible to undo that pain…” He trailed off. “And maybe that’s alright,” he realised quietly.
Arthur’s mouth twisted and he gazed at the table. “I know there’s no going back. I can’t change the past. Some things… Perhaps can’t be forgiven.”
Sally’s hand grazed Arthur’s arm as a comforting gesture. The secret of Arthur’s betrayal had been a heavy one - everyone else believing that Percy’s abandonment had been an awful but faultless mix up at the train station, one that he had doubtless tried to rectify, and her having been told the awful truth. It was hard to imagine he had been capable of something so destructively selfish - and yet she had to admit, somewhere deep down, she understood it. Fear could make you do terrible things. The impulse of self-preservation was a hard one to conquer.
“He was only twelve years old,” Sally defended, gently. “Still just a kid, and terrified. The choice he made, and the pain that that caused you… Those consequences are very real. He made a decision he’d regret for the rest of his life - a selfish, ugly decision… but we were put under this tremendous pressure by the adults, who wouldn’t do anything. It was more than any kid should have to face, and under that level of fear I’m not surprised some of us acted uncharacteristically.”
“Twelve may be a child, but he was old enough to know what he was doing,” countered Gal.
“He’s right,’ Arthur admitted. “I certainly didn’t like it - but I had planned to do it. No one was forcing my hand. Maybe I didn’t think far ahead - didn’t think about how it would feel, you know, hearing my brother… scream out for me, or the damage this would inflict on both of us, but I suppose I was thinking. I was looking out for number one,” he observed bitterly. “It scared me to know I was capable of it. And ever since that… I haven’t ever been entirely sure of who I am.”
“I suppose that depends. On what you want to be.” Percy now held Arthur’s gaze unwaveringly. “We haven’t figured out time travel yet, I’m afraid, but I find… I still miss having a little brother,’ Percy admitted. “I miss laying in the grass with our books and gazing at the ocean. I miss taking the piss out of you for mistaking rowan berries for blue currants. I didn’t think I would at the time, but I guess I had never had to think that my life would ever be any different. And.. for that, perhaps I should like to thank you. It may have come at a cost, but in my life I’ve seen and done more than I ever could have imagined. And… I was spared… whatever mess happened back home.” He smiled faintly. “You may not have meant to do me a favour, but I turned out alright without you.” He traced the grain of the wood tabletop with his finger. “I just wish I hadn’t had to.”
“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “I wish you hadn’t had to, either.” He shifted in his seat, feeling heavy-hearted. He couldn’t help but think that somehow he blew things with this unexpected meeting, even though he didn’t know what success was even supposed to look like.
“I might not be able to give you forgiveness,” Percy reasoned, “but I suppose I can try to understand you. I am… curious about the man you’ve become.”
Arthur’s eyes widened. “I think I could say the same about you. I mean, you and Gal have told us what happened, but there must be so many stories…”
Gwen cried in another room, and Sally got up from the table.
“Well. Not all of them are interesting, if that’s what you mean. Some are sad.”
“Of course… But I want to hear all of them. The good, and the bad.”
“We’d never have enough time for that today,” Percy laughed softly, leaning on his arm, elbow on the table.
“No, suppose not.” Arthur’s eyes lowered.
Sally came back to the kitchen, a now-soothed but alert Gwen in her arms looking around the room as she rocked her gently. She came up to stand beside Arthur, and Arthur looked up at the two of them, a soft, weary smile brought to his face - Percy may not have been an expert on this sort of thing, but perhaps the only true smile he had seen since he’d got there.
Percy’s eyes moved curiously from the baby, to Sally, to Arthur, the process of deduction working in his head. “So I’m an uncle now, am I?”
Arthur blinked. Surprised, he had started out with a “Well…” but stopped when he felt Sally’s free hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see the warm, slightly bemused look she gave him. She nodded as if to give him permission.
“Suppose you are, Percy,” he affirmed quietly. Again a bare smile appeared on his lips.
“Suppose I am.”