Chapter 26 The Code That Saved Us #3
Then I thought about Tom's face when he'd told me he loved me. About the life he'd described, waking up beside each other when the nightmare was over. About hope, stubborn and irrational, choosing to believe things could be better than they were.
“We're going to be careful,” I said slowly. “But we're not going to stop. I can't go back to pretending you don't matter, Tom. I've tried that. It doesn't work.”
“Good.” His grip tightened on my hand. “Because I'm rubbish at pretending.”
“I know. You're transparent as glass.”
“Oi. I'm a trained soldier. I'm excellent at hiding things.”
“You're excellent at shooting things. Hiding things, not so much.” I smiled despite everything, despite the pain and exhaustion and the weight of everything we'd survived. “Your face does this thing when you're worried about me. Goes all soft and concerned. Very obvious.”
“It does not.”
“It absolutely does. Ruth noticed weeks ago. She just hasn't said anything because she's kind.”
Tom groaned, dropping his head to rest on the edge of my bed. “Wonderful. The whole estate probably knows.”
“The whole estate definitely knows. They're just choosing to be decent about it.” I freed my hand from his grip and let it rest on his hair, stroking gently. “That's something, isn't it? Being surrounded by people who know and don't care?”
“It's more than I ever expected.” His voice was muffled against the blanket. “More than I thought we'd get.”
“Me too.”
We stayed like that, my hand in his hair, his forehead pressed to my bed, breathing together in the quiet of the infirmary while the world kept turning outside.
The Black Book sat on my chest, returned and unread. My secrets still my own. My heart still beating, despite everything that had tried to stop it.
Tom surged forward, pressing his forehead to mine, careful of my injuries but desperate for the contact. We stayed like that, breathing each other in, until footsteps in the corridor announced that our time was nearly up.
Tom pulled back reluctantly, settling back in his chair just as Dr Hart swept the curtain aside.
“Time's up, Sergeant Hale.” Her tone brooked no argument, but her eyes were softer than her voice. “Mr Pembroke needs rest.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Tom stood, but his hand lingered on mine for one more moment. “I'll come back later. Check on you.”
“I'll be here. Not going anywhere.”
Tom's smile was small and tired and so beautiful it hurt to look at. He squeezed my hand once more, then turned and left, pausing at the door to look back like he needed visual confirmation that I was still breathing.
Dr Hart watched him go, then turned that assessing gaze on me. “You two are good for each other. In a completely inadvisable, regulations-breaking sort of way.”
I felt my face heat. “I don't know what you—”
“Save it, Mr Pembroke. I've been a doctor long enough to recognise love when I see it.” She adjusted my blankets with brisk efficiency. “Now rest. That's an order.”
I rested. Or tried to. But my brain wouldn't settle, kept circling back to the fight, to Tom's terror, to the question of what came next.
The war couldn't last forever. At some point the codes would stop coming, the bombs would stop falling, and Tom and I would be released back into a world that had no place for men like us.
What then?
The answer came the next morning, delivered by a stiff-backed officer I didn't recognise. He carried a folder stamped with official seals and spoke in the clipped tones of someone reading from a prepared statement.
“Mr Arthur Pembroke and Sergeant Thomas Hale are hereby commended for actions during the raid of December twenty-sixth, 1944.
Mr Pembroke's intelligence work directly contributed to the diversion of enemy ordinance, resulting in significantly reduced casualties.
Sergeant Hale's defensive actions and rescue efforts are noted with distinction.”
I stared at him, trying to process the words through the fog of concussion and medication.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means, Mr Pembroke, that your contributions have been formally recognised.
You'll receive written commendations, though the specifics of your work will remain classified.” He consulted his folder.
“Additionally, with the tide of the war turning and operations at this facility scaling down, both you and Sergeant Hale are on the preliminary demobilisation list. You can expect reassignment or discharge within the next three to six months.”
The world tilted. Demobilisation. Discharge. Going home.
“Thank you,” I managed, though I wasn't sure what I was thanking him for.
The officer nodded curtly and left. I lay back against the pillows, mind racing despite Dr Hart's orders to rest.
Three to six months. That was all that remained. And then what? Tom and I had made promises in the heat of the moment, declarations in the middle of chaos, but could those promises survive in the cold light of peacetime?
I thought of Tom's hands, rough and steady. Thought of his smile, rare and crooked. Thought of the way he looked at me like I was worth saving.
Worth fighting for.
Worth building a future with, however uncertain and dangerous that future might be.
By the time Tom returned that evening, I'd made my decision.
He slipped through the door after visiting hours, moving quiet as a ghost, and settled in the chair beside my bed with the ease of someone who'd done this a dozen times already.
“You should be sleeping,” he murmured.
“Can't. Too much to think about.” I shifted, reaching for the bedside table where my belongings had been stashed. My fingers closed round the familiar worn cover of my Black Book, and I pulled it into my lap.
Tom's eyes tracked the movement. “Haven't seen that in a few days.”
“Been busy nearly dying.” I fumbled the book open one-handed, flipped to a blank page near the back. “Tom. The officer who came this morning. He said we're on the demobilisation list.”
“I heard.” Tom's voice was carefully neutral. “Three to six months, depending on how things progress.”
“And then?”
“And then we go home. Back to our lives.” Tom paused, studied my face. “Or we build new ones.”
My heart stuttered. I looked down at the blank page, at the pen I'd managed to extract from the table's drawer, and made myself write in plain English, no cipher, no code:
We saved them. Now we save ourselves.
I turned the book so Tom could read it. Watched his eyes track across the words, once, twice, like he needed to be certain of what he was seeing.
“You mean that?” Tom asked, voice rough.
“Every word. When this is over, when we're free...” I swallowed hard, made myself say it clearly. “I want to find you. Build a life with you. However that looks, wherever we end up. I want us to survive this together.”
Tom's hand came up, fingers tangling with mine on top of the Black Book. “A bona future, then. You and me.”
The Polari felt natural, intimate in a way English never quite managed. I smiled, squeezed his hand. “Yeah. Vada the riah go grey, all of it.”
“Watch the hair go grey,” Tom translated, his smile widening. “You'll be a silver fox in twenty years.”
“Shut up.”
“Never.” Tom lifted our joined hands, pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “So we're doing this. Really doing this.”
“We are.” Fear and hope tangled in my chest, making it hard to breathe. “I don't know how we'll manage it. Where we'll go, what we'll tell people. But I know I want to try.”
“That's enough.” Tom's eyes were bright, fierce with determination. “We'll figure out the rest as we go.”
I thought of the world waiting beyond the estate, hostile and dangerous and utterly indifferent to what men like us wanted. Thought of the risk, the constant need to hide, the knowledge that discovery could mean prison or worse.
But I also thought of Tom's laugh, rare and genuine. Thought of mornings waking beside him, of building something small and safe and ours. Thought of a future where we weren't defined by war and codes and killing, but by the choice to keep choosing each other.
“Tom,” I said softly. “Cod if we're lau together.”
Tom stilled. His throat worked, and when he spoke his voice was wrecked. “Safe if we're together. Yeah, Art. We will be.”
He leaned in, pressed his forehead to mine, and we stayed like that while the ward settled into quiet around us. Ruth's breathing evening out in sleep, the distant murmur of nurses in the corridor, the tick of the clock marking time we'd stolen from the war's grinding maw.
“Bona to vada you,” Tom whispered against my temple. “Good to see you. Always good to see you.”
“Naff off with the sweet talk,” I said, but my voice was thick with emotion. “You'll make me cry in front of Ruth.”
“Can't have that.” Tom pulled back just enough to look at me properly, his smile soft and private. “Rest now. I'll be here when you wake.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I closed my eyes, Tom's hand warm in mine, and for the first time since the bombs fell, I let myself believe we might actually survive this. Not just the war, but everything that came after.
Together.
Whatever that looked like, wherever it took us, we'd face it side by side.
The code that saved us wasn't written in German intercepts or mathematical patterns. It was written in Polari whispered in the dark, in promises made over a battered Black Book, in the choice to keep reaching for each other even when the world said we shouldn't.
We saved them.
Now we'd save ourselves.