Time Doors part 2

[did_good]

She’s not in sight of Owen and Jack when the air raid siren goes off. It’s a familiar sound now, they’ve heard it each night and always decided to stay in the house that they’ve taken over. It’s not safe but there’s less of a chance of being caught out if they don’t spend time in large groups. Especially for Tosh, who recognises the sound from another time in her life as well, that time Jack and she found themselves in wartime Cardiff.

The similarities have been bothering her ever since their arrival. She’s taken to wearing scarves to hide her hair in the hope no one will look too closely at her face. At least Japan hasn’t officially joined the war yet, she has that relief, but there’s not a lot of goodwill about toward people of her race.

It’s early for the sirens to start, she thinks, pulling her notebook close to her chest and trying to head back toward their house. That isn’t the way the crowd is heading, though, and soon enough she’s swept up on the way to an air raid shelter. Down the dozens and dozens of steps to tunnels of the London Underground, Tosh is trapped exactly where she doesn’t want to be.

Things seem fine at first. It’s not the first time a lone person has found themselves out of their neighbourhood and in an unusual shelter. Tosh tries to keep to herself, tries to see if Jack or Owen are here as well, if being out at the market meant they’ve all been swept down here. It’s exactly that behaviour that raises the hackles of some of the women in the shelter. Busybodies, Tosh would call them another time, but today they have the bored and agitated masses at their disposal. It’s not long before they’ve made a wall of people she can’t pass, surrounding her and calling her every epithet they can think of.

“It’s not like that. I’m from London too.” It’s not a lie, she is from London. She wants to mention her grandfather at Bletchley Park but she can’t do that and even if she did they wouldn’t know it. That’s the point of a secret facility. “I’m not a spy, I’m from London.”

She flinches when a woman hefts an empty bottle as if to throw it, wondering how it’s all come down to this and if perhaps down the tracks is her best method of escape.

Comments

[beat_death]

Owen is completely sick of this. It was one thing to be sent to an island, or to some isolated shit-hole of a city, but being stuck where they are now is beyond the pale. There's a lot of technology that Owen doesn't miss much-- he's never been a big fan of television, for starters-- but the prospect of being stuck on rations for years, of having to perpetually work at blending in seems exhausting.

Christ, he'll be lucky if he even makes it to the next millennium. He'll be in his eighties when that comes around, if they're stuck where they are that long.

Owen's trying to find a way to get a ration of meat without a ration book when the siren goes off. It's become a normal thing now, the sirens, and before he knows it, he's with the rest of the crowd, being herded down to a shelter. He's lost sight of Tosh and Jack. That is, until he hears the slur, sees the woman with the bottle.

"You might want to rethink that, sweetheart," Owen says, and he grabs her arm, fingers wrapping around her wrist as he stops her from doing whatever it was she had her mind set on doing.