Ah, I'm so excited to post this! But first, I want to give a brief yet warm thanks to those who have left a review for the first two installments. You are lovely and I do hope you like this one. It's the first to really bring the WWII element to the fore, so I pulled from a lot of research I've done to try and make it as realistic (within reason, this being fanfiction after all) and respectful as possible. I'd be so grateful to hear how well I managed.

content warning: This one-shot contains WWII Nazis and references to anti-semitism.

THE INVASION

May 17th, 1940

His mother had wanted to keep him at home.

That morning, as Tintin dressed in his school uniform, Joi had clung to his doorframe, watching him. "Mon ange, it isn't safe," she said, again.

He knotted his tie around his collar, and tucked it into the neck of his cotton jumper. "I'm only going into the city, Maman."

He shot a glance at his radio sitting atop his desk, and wondered if he ought to check again for any news. He preferred to rely on the official broadcasts rather than the gossip in Neel, but for two days straight his set had picked up nothing but static, in spite of his attempts to boost the receiver.

Joi worried her lip with her teeth. "Perhaps we should have left when the others did. The church was so empty yesterday..."

"How would we have managed that?" Tintin slung his school satchel over one shoulder. "We don't have a car, or even a horse and cart. The twins are too young to walk." He lowered his voice, aware that all five of his half-siblings were still asleep down the hall. "And we have nowhere to go."

Joi dropped her eyes to the floor. "Oui, c'est vrai," she said, soft, distracted. "You're right, darling."

Tintin crossed to the doorway, and stopped. "We don't know when the Germans will arrive. Or if they ever will," he said, with as much conviction as he could muster.

Joi's eyes met his. "In the village, everyone's saying they're close," she whispered.

Tintin swallowed. He couldn't bear it, the uncertainty twining around his gut, tightening with every moment he was stuck there, unable to find out what was happening.

He gave his mother a tight smile. "At the first sign of danger, I'll turn around and come right back."

Joi nodded, hands clasped under her throat. She accepted the kiss which Tintin pressed to her cheek, and didn't raise another word of protest as he flew down the stairs and out the door.

He could not explain, not even to himself, why he had to be in Genk that morning. It was certainly not to go to school, as he doubted any semblance of lessons would be taking place. His uniform served as an excuse, should anyone ask where he was going.

The village lay empty, unreal, like the set of a film. A hollow quiet smothered the main road. Strangely, the bus arrived on time, though without any of its usual morning passengers. The driver, Mr. Coppens, didn't look up as Tintin climbed aboard. The normalcy of it all strained at the edges, a thin veneer stretched over the world.

Halfway to the city, it began to crack.

Tintin saw dots moving in the far distance, people on the road ahead. Details pencilled in as the horde drew nearer, and cleaved the writhing mass into individual figures. Some were running, others couldn't, weighed down with belongings, pushing bicycles or carts piled high with boxes and birdcages. Women clutched babies to their chests. One elderly man tried to lead a panicked horse. Another sobbed like a child, cradling an urn in his arms.

Mr. Coppens jerked the brake, to stop in the middle of the road. "Allemachtig," he muttered. "I'll have to turn around." He turned and looked at Tintin, as if seeing him for the first time. "I'm taking you back to Neel, boy."

"No," Tintin burst, and shot to his feet. 'The first sign of danger' weighed on his tongue. He swallowed it. "No, dank u. I'll get off here."

Mr. Coppens blinked at him. He shrugged. "As you wish."

Tintin didn't give the man, or himself, a chance to think better of it. He stepped off the bus into the bright, sun-soaked morning. The noise struck first, a cacophony of howling, human and animal, warbled shouts and the whine of overloaded carts. Tintin looked into the faces bobbing past. Their terror pricked his skin.

A woman grabbed his arm. Tintin started, turning to face her. As soon as he did, she let go. "I'm sorry," she choked. "My son, I can't find him. You wear the same uniform-" She broke off, and staggered away.

Tintin tried to see past the flow of people fleeing the city, now thinned over the length of the road. But the faint outline of buildings, some three kilometres away, betrayed no sign of what had happened there.

Tintin started to run. Against his mother's wishes, against his better judgment.

He ran against the crowd all the way into Genk.

/*/*\*\

The streets were choked and hushed, lined with people as if for a parade. They stood in silence, clutching each other, some still in pyjamas and slippered feet. Heads stuck out of windows and doorways. On an apartment's front stoop, an old woman in a night robe held tight to a young boy's shoulders, shaking her head. Tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks. Tintin passed them by, and didn't slow his pace.

He saw the trucks first, covered in dull green canvas, stopped farther down the main street. It took a moment for his mind to catch up to his eyes, and make sense of what he was seeing. Groups of men in grey-green uniforms, dozens of them, stalked down the centre of the road. They barged through doors and peered in windows. All with rifles in hand, aimed outwards and ready to fire.

From a window of the city hall hung an enormous red and white flag. It bore the black, crooked fingers of the swastika.

Tintin stopped in the middle of the street.

He stood with his mouth struck open, arms slack at his sides. Somewhere within him, so deep he hardly knew it himself, a weak hope flickered out. He had believed, in spite of everything, that Belgian or French or even British troops were somewhere nearby. Surely they wouldn't allow this to happen.

But they had.

It seemed somehow fitting, Tintin reflected, that wherever the Belgian army might be, his stepfather was among them. 'Too little, too late' was the man's specialty.

Tintin blinked away the heat pooling in his eyes. He clenched his jaw, and kept moving.

Going where, he had no idea. But he wasn't about to stand there and gape like a fish on a hook. His mind filled with static, a buzzing sort of warmth. He couldn't hear himself think, perhaps he wasn't thinking at all, nearly tripping over his own feet while his eyes tracked the neat, indifferent tide of uniformed men pouring into the city.

Under the direction of officers in long belted overcoats, a group of soldiers hung their flag in the front window of the mining offices. There's the reason they wanted Genk, Tintin thought, for the coal.

Before he knew why, or where, he was running again. He ran to shake the heaviness trickling down his limbs, the kind of panic known in nightmares. The soldiers didn't pay much attention to the undersized teenager in Catholic school uniform darting past them. Tintin felt the fight rise up his throat anyway. Let them try and stop me.

A block away, he realised where he was going. The place in the back of his mind all along, perhaps since the moment he'd stepped off his front porch.

Tintin slowed as he neared the red-brick façade of the public library, and let out his breath. It looked the same as always. Unmoored from time and space, sparking the memory of all the many hours he'd spent there, breathing in its familiar smell, curled in a corner with books piled around him.

His feet quickened up the marble steps, skidding to a stop before the grand double doors of solid oak. He lifted a hand to the iron handle, and stopped. He pricked his ears. A murmur sent vibrations through the wood, so low and muffled that Tintin felt more than heard it.

His hand fell to his side, and he stepped back. He left the front entrance behind, stealing around to the alley beside the building. The side door led into the librarian's work room, he remembered. From there he could watch, unseen, whatever might be happening in the main area of the library.

The door was locked.

Tintin glanced upward, and his eyes lit on the fire escape. A series of wrought iron platforms punctuated the stairs that clung to the side of the building, the ladder tucked up underneath the lowest level. The black lattice taunted him, beyond his reach.

A dumpster stood against the wall beside him. Tintin shrugged off his satchel, dropping it to the ground. He looked up again at the first platform of the fire escape, then scrambled on top of the dumpster. The lid creaked beneath his weight, but didn't collapse. Tintin gauged the remaining distance, crouching deeper to wind his legs like springs.

He jumped, arms outstretched. His fingers met the metal bar with a painful jolt. After a moment of swinging back and forth, Tintin managed to pull himself up by his arms, and scramble over the rail. The platform protested his arrival with a shriek and a clatter of its brittle frame.

Tintin climbed the first set of stairs as quick and quiet as he could, up to the second platform. There was a window looking into the upper level, the point of exit in the case of fire. Tintin pushed against the glass. It didn't take much to persuade the ancient window latch to give away.

The second floor overlooked the first on all four sides, as a sort of balcony level. Without the usual lighting, shadows draped over the shelves, dense and viscous. Tintin crept towards the balcony's edge, as slow as he could bear. Voices spoke in low tones. Multiple sets of footsteps rang out over the stone floor, echoing upwards.

At the balcony's edge, Tintin dropped to a crouch.

A dozen men in uniforms of various stripes had established themselves in the level below. An older, white-haired man sat at the library's reception desk, his jacket agleam with insignias, the Iron Cross medallion glinting below his throat. Mrs. Speleers' little red lamp, the one she'd tied a blue ribbon on just for the cheery look of it, illuminated the papers spread before him.

Another officer stood in the centre of the lower level, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes followed several soldiers who moved with purpose between the shelves and the centre of the floor, arms full of books. One by one, they added to the pile which already half-covered the stonework at the heart of the building. The books landed belly-up, spines askew.

Tintin's legs wavered beneath him. He lowered his knees to the floor.

How many times had he walked over that stone, stopping to trace the inscription with his foot? The writing had almost vanished beneath the growing mountain of books, but Tintin knew it by heart, as if the words had been carved into his own chest.

Verba volant scripta manent. 'Spoken, words fly; written, they remain.'

Tintin gripped the railing with both hands. He watched the soldiers present the books to their superior officer, sometimes with a low murmur, to elicit the man's nod of approval. At last Tintin made out what they were saying, and only because the German word sounded almost the same in Flemish Dutch: "Jude."

Tintin had heard bits of Hitler's speeches over the radio. It was one thing to listen to the man speak, and another to know that a country full of people had swallowed his words. But it did not make the scene any less unreal, there in the public library of Genk, watching apparently sane and normal men gather armfuls of Jewish-authored books and dump them on the floor. Until they no longer resembled books, but rather tinder.

Tintin stood up. A surge of heat took hold of him, and he moved more quickly than he could think. His hands landed on the nearest object he could lift, a full-size bust of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one he had so often traced with his fingers whenever he passed by. Tintin hurled it over the balcony with all his strength.

The cold stone head left his hands. The air froze around him, stuck like a pin in his throat. He had meant to say something, anything at all, to let the Germans know their desecration of the library had not gone unwitnessed. But the sound of stone cracking stone shattered the quiet, and broke his will.

Shouts echoed up the hollow chamber. "Wer da?"

One older voice tried in Dutch, "Wie is daar?" Who is there?

Tintin's feet had wrenched him backwards, away from the balcony. He stopped, unable to speak, unable to move any further.

Heavy boots slapped the floor. Voices scraped up the walls. The echoes of footsteps multiplied until Tintin felt certain that an entire army was pounding up the stairs towards him.

He turned and ran. Back out the way he'd come, the fire escape shuddering as he rattled back down, and leapt on top of the dumpster. Voices poured down from above, and from around the corner, as the library's front doors burst open.

He couldn't outrun them. His only other option lay under his feet.

The lid of the dumpster slammed shut over him. Tintin's lungs filled with the vapours of decaying paper and used tea leaves, buried up to his waist. He held his breath, hands braced against the metal walls. The name of God had never cut so sweet and sharp through his mind as it did then.

His heart beat so hard it hurt. Please. Oh, God, please.

A long moment passed before he could make out anything over the rush of blood inside his head. But he heard the voices subside, the tempo falling, footsteps dropping off as they walked away.

Tintin sank down among the old newspapers and delivery receipts and check-out slips. He ducked his head against his shoulder, pulled in a breath that scoured his throat, releasing it in a sob. He wrapped his arms around his knees. He had no idea how long he stayed like that, unmoving but for the shake of his shoulders. He cried for the books piled on the floor. He cried for Mrs. Speleers' lamp with the blue ribbon.

At last, he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his uniform jacket, and pulled himself to his feet. He cracked the lid of the dumpster, to check that no one was nearby, before climbing out. His satchel lay where he'd dropped it before. He shrugged it back over his shoulders.

He wanted to run. But he didn't dare. He slipped ghost-like through the streets of Genk, eyes dry yet burning, open but unseeing, and walked all the way back to Neel.

/*/*\*\

Sibyla and Alice were on the front porch when he returned, quietly arranging their pebble collection, as they always did whenever the tension inside the house grew too thick to bear. At once Tintin wanted to sink down on the porch beside them, and do nothing but make endless rings of pebbles with his little sisters.

As soon as she heard him on the drive, Sibbie sprang upright. She tumbled down the front steps in a flurry of petticoat skirts and stocking feet.

"Tintin, Tintin." She crashed into him, and tugged on his jacket with all her four-year-old strength, to pull him up onto the porch. "Maman! Tintin's back!"

The front door opened, and his mother burst through. She took in his appearance with wide, shining eyes, then pulled him into her arms.

"Oh. Oh, mon ange," she breathed, voice feather-light and tenuous. "You're covered in dust. What on earth were you doing?" She pulled back, brushing off his shoulders, and went on before he could answer. "Mrs. Coppens came to tell us that they've taken Genk. She said Mr. Coppens took you halfway there, but you didn't come back with him, and I've been-" she broke off, unable to finish.

"I'm sorry, Maman," said Tintin hoarsely. He looked up, into her eyes. "I had to see for myself. I had to."

She shook her head at him. "I shouldn't have let you go." Her mouth pinched tight. "You're not going back there again. I don't want you leaving the village, until all this is over."

When will that be? Before Tintin could say anything, Mel popped out from behind Joi's skirts. She towed along a bleary-eyed Ciel by the hand, having just woken up from his morning nap. Corben toddled after, not far behind. Joi scooped him up into her arms, to hug him close.

Mel's eyes fixed on Tintin, bright and intense. "Did you see the Germans? Were they shooting people?"

"Emmeline," Joi scolded, sharp at the edges but weak underneath. "What kind of horrible talk is that?"

Tintin dropped into a crouch, to level his eyes with Mel's. "They weren't shooting anyone," he told her. "There weren't any other soldiers there to shoot. They've taken over the city."

His sisters considered this, silent. The gravity was lost on Ciel, who wandered over to look at the pebbles. Sibbie had to stop him from putting one in his mouth.

Alice came up beside Tintin. She tugged at his wrist until he offered his palm. Without a word, she pressed a stone into it, a translucent blue, the most treasured of her collection. Tintin managed a smile in thanks, closing his fingers around it.

"Are the Germans going to come take over our house, too?" Mel asked, knitting her fine, dark brow.

"No, ma petite." Tintin brushed a curl from her cheek. "They might come to Neel, but not here. Don't worry."

Mel squared her shoulders. "If they come, we'll give them tea and biscuits so they'll be nice and they won't hurt us."

Tintin heard a choked breath from his mother, a sob muffled into Corben's curls.

He fashioned his voice out of stronger material than he knew he truly had. "They're not going to come here. We're safe." He swallowed, and added, "It's going to be all right. Our soldiers are still fighting. We have to pray for their victory, together."

"And Papa," Sibbie put in. "We'll pray for Papa."

"Yes." Tintin smiled at her. "We'll be all right," he said with a nod, as he stood back up. He rested a hand on his mother's shoulder. She had been staring miles away, face stretched with worry. She turned glassy eyes to Tintin.

"We'll be all right," he gave her his word.

This is the last I plan to post of these, but I'm far from finished with Tintin and his origins. I don't want to speak with too much certainty yet, but I have a full-fledged multi-chapter story in the works, one that will offer an explanation of how Tintin goes from village life in rural occupied Belgium, to becoming a reporter. With plenty of mystery, secrets, underground movements and daring feats of bravery thrown in.

Until then, I really hope you enjoyed these little one-shots as much as I enjoyed writing them. If so, please let me know in a review! I'd be thrilled to hear any thoughts or criticisms you may have. But above all, thank you for reading, and I hope to see you around!