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Well. More accurately, he was shipped halfway around the world to England, to a “Joint Force Training Grounds”. Not what he was expecting, but someone somewhere decided that this particular batch of loud, excitable Aussies would mix well with French, British, and inexplicably, Spanish recruits. 

The first time Oscar goes up, he flies himself and his irate instructor halfway around Somerset after nearly putting them into the ground about fifteen times. In his defence, he was expecting some training, not to be misrecognised as a more experienced recruit and given full control of an aeroplane. 

The second time he goes up, he lands in a field with a rumpled wing. 

The fifth time he goes up, he’s behind the lines at the Western Front, in a Joint Force Squadron, in his very own Sopwith Pup. 

And he’s got Arthur next to him, which is nice. 

He and Arthur—well, they were trained together, sort of, and they got lost in the shipment to France together, and they’ve been assigned to C-Flight together in their new squadron. 

Oscar knows a lot about Arthur, because he won’t stop talking. He was maybe the first to know that Arthur has an older brother who he worships, a pilot with no less than five confirmed kills. Not the last, though. 

He also knows that Arthur and his brother are not French but Monegasque, and that Arthur is willing to laugh it off but his brother would go to war over it.  

Their Flight-Commander is anything but lax with them, and a week in, Oscar’s already aware that his drills and strictures have saved their lives. 

He’s also already met Arthur’s brother.

The thing about Charles Leclerc is that everybody in the squadron calls him Charles, even Major Alonso. It helps because that means Arthur gets to be Arthur, neatly removing most confusion. 

He’s also soft-eyed and serious, like he’s seen it all and done it and all, and when Oscar meets him, he’s landing from his sixth kill, already confirmed by the adjutant. 

Arthur breaks off towards him as soon as he steps from the cockpit, flight overalls stained with oil. Arthur salutes and stands to attention—as he should, as a Flying Officer greeting a Captain—but the formality melts away when Charles clasps Arthur’s hand, laughing. His whole face is transformed into something beautiful. 

From that moment—

Well. It depends on who you ask. Some of the pilots say Charles and Arthur are inseparable, others that Oscar and Arthur are. 

Nobody says anything about Charles and Oscar, but they don’t need to, because they barely even talk. Arthur orbits Charles, and Oscar orbits Arthur because he needs someone cheerful and loud to take his mind off everything else, and because Arthur wants his company nearly as much as he wants Charles’s. 

Oscar’s first kill was really Arthur’s, but Arthur’s first was really Oscar’s, so it evens out. They make mistakes, but they come out of them alive, nothing broken but propellers and wings. 

Oscar has four kills and Arthur three—Charles, leading B-Flight, has thirteen—when they fly out for the pre-dawn patrol and Arthur doesn’t make it back. 

Oscar lands with a bullet through his shoulder and tattered wings. His landing isn’t nearly as smooth as it should be, but it’s the least of his worries, the least of the worries of the mechanics waiting out for a full flight to return. 

“Has anyone else,” Oscar starts, but the answer is written in their faces. 

“Get the M.O.!” Flight-Sergeant Stallard, Oscar’s mechanic, calls, for once ignoring Oscar’s machine in favour of its pilot. Someone, Oscar’s not sure who, takes off at a run. “Just pressing it down, sir, keep the blood in,” he says, and then Oscar’s wincing away from the unyielding hands on his shoulder. 

“Charles?” he asks, because he has to, because he’s the only one left and that means he has to—

The Flight-Sergeant hesitates, searching Oscar’s face, and then, quietly, “Went up ten minutes ago.”

Oscar swallows. He lets himself be taken away and bandaged, draws the line at a sling, and makes his way back to the tarmac. 

It’s a long vigil, and he’s left alone for it. Someone comes to him to tell him that his Flight-Commander was confirmed captured by the Huns. Oscar just nods, neither pleased nor upset. 

He hears the familiar hum of rotary engine, and then slowly, Charles’s Camel comes into view, distinct in its shape and scarlet bars. 

Oscar’s been here before, waiting for Charles to come back. It’s been tense before, uncertain, but—

But he’s never been alone. 

Charles lands smoothly, coming to a stop where Oscar knew he would, leaping out of the cockpit with the jauntiness that only comes to him with a kill. 

Oscar sees him falter. His shoulders set and he steps closer, looking, eyes straying around the aerodrome and then back to Oscar’s. 

Oscar doesn’t know what he’s seeing, what Oscar’s face alone is telling him. He sees Charles swallow, colour draining, and he can’t say anything. 

“You’re hurt,” Charles says, voice light but eyes raw. It’s a distraction for himself.  

Oscar nods, voice gone. 

Charles’s voice changes. “Oscar. Oscar, was he captured?”

“Smith was.” It’s all he can get out. 

The last light falls out of Charles’s eyes. He turns on his heel and walks off, away from his plane and away from the aerodrome. 

Oscar stands frozen. 

He has to follow, he realises. Everyone loves Charles, and a lot of people loved Arthur, but they won’t follow him, not now. 

Oscar won’t let him be alone. Arthur wouldn’t have wanted him to be. 

He finds Charles tearing at a hedge, trying to get through a gate that can’t have been opened for years. 

“Charles,” Oscar says, and Charles’s shoulders stiffen. He doesn’t turn. “Charles?”

“What,” Charles snarls, whirling around. Oscar takes a step back, taken by surprise by Charles’s appearance. “What, Oscar? You know how I feel?” 

Oscar swallows, taking in Charles’s scratched, bleeding hands, his helmet-ruffled hair, the sidcot undone at the throat and newly bloody. “No,” he says softly, because that much is clear, “no, I don’t. But I loved him.”

“Did you? You let him die!” 

Charles’s grief-stricken shout rips open the sickening chasm of guilt that Oscar’s been trying to ignore. He takes a blind step forward. “I—”

He doesn’t get to finish. Charles’s fist connects with his face with an awful crunch. Oscar feels the hot gushing of blood, and when he blinks away the tears Charles is gone, back towards the aerodrome. 

The pain eats away at him, gnawing like the pain in his shoulder, both what he deserves. The least he can do is take it with grace.

Oscar's nose has mostly stopped bleeding when he steps back onto the tarmac. Flight-Sergeant Stallard seems to have been waiting for him, staring at him in abject horror. “What the deuce happened to your face, sir?” he demands, the sir clearly tacked onto the end out of sheer routine rather than respect. 

Oscar startles out of the haze that envelopes him. If the brass find out—

“I landed like this,” he says, voice as firm as he can make it. “You saw me land like this, right? Banged it on the control column when the shooting started.”

The Flight-Sergeant glances, damningly, towards the C.O.’s office. At least Oscar knows where to find Charles. His face is creased into a frown, but he nods, sharp. “Yes, sir," he says, and then, with just a hint of a smile, “Made a right mess of the cockpit, too.”

Thank God, Oscar thinks, and tries to convey his gratitude by clapping the Flight-Sergeant’s shoulder. “How’s my bus?” he asks, and the Flight-Sergeant coughs. 

“Not looking too good,” he says apologetically. “We’ll have her back in shape sometime tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow morning,” Oscar says firmly. “I’m taking her up at first light.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer.

He puts his report in, belatedly, and ignores Alonso telling him that he’s had two more kills confirmed. Arthur got one, and look where that got him. 

Arthur, he thinks, would be dragging him to the mess right about now, out of his bed if he had to, but Arthur isn’t here to do it. Oscar’s lost all appetite. 

He gets himself clean, or something approaching it, changing into an unbloodied uniform, and then just tosses himself backwards on the bed and stares unseeing at the ceiling. 

There’s a knock, and Oscar hears Arthur’s voice calling his name. 

He doesn’t reply. Either he’s imagining things, or he’s being haunted, or Charles is outside. He think Charles will probably come in whether Oscar acknowledges him or not. Charles does.

“Oscar,” he says again, and his eyes are red and face cracked open with grief, but like Oscar, he’s in clean uniform. “Oscar, I am. I have seen the reports, okay? So it was not your fault, and I have not heard from the C.O. that I am being court-martialled, so I think maybe you are not telling him, so thank you.”

Oscar sits up then, and Charles promptly sits down in the free space on the bed. How many times had Oscar and Arthur sat here together? 

“Not telling him what?” he asks, summoning up his first smile in hours, and slowly, Charles matches it. 

“I saw, the reports,” he says abruptly, “was it really the Albatros with the green elevators?” 

Oscar doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that Albatros. He nods firmly, looking away, and is startled to hear Charles laugh.

“This is going to sound crazy,” he says, drawing Oscar’s attention, “but—I shot him down.”

“You shot him down,” Oscar repeats, voice not his own.

“Yes, over the east woods, just before I turned back—it was him, you are sure?” 

“Yes,” Oscar breathes, and then, disbelieving, “you shot him down?”

Charles inhales, shuddering. “Yes,” he says, and grips Oscar’s hand so tightly his bones ache.

“Your arm, you need a sling,” Charles says, apropos of nothing.

“Can’t fly with a sling.”

“You will not fly without one,” Charles says seriously, and there’s a trace of Captain in his voice. “I have spoken to the C.O. The flights will be re-arranged anyway, and you are coming to mine.”

“What?”

“I could not have you before because of Arthur. Maybe really you should have C-Flight for yourself, but I think that is a bad idea right now.”

His eyes are boring into Oscar’s. Oscar looks away first. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s Charles who needs someone who gets it in his flight. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

B-Flight, Charles’s flight, have Camels. Oscar’s been dying to get up in one, and now it’s being handed to him.

Arthur would have loved—Arthur did love flying Charles's Camel that one time. He'd be jealous, Oscar thinks, or maybe happy for Oscar, or both.

“You are going to wear that sling, and take it off only for flying,” Charles says, steely, “and we are going to make them regret that they ever touched Arthur. Yes?”