Accidental Love

As Time Goes By...

Days turned to weeks and weeks to months. Tom and the one remaining member of the crew had now been incarcerated for almost eight months. The drug lord and militia general had known who he was. He'd also realised that in a final gun battle, human shields , famous human shields at that, were not only worth their weight in cocaine and ammunition but freedom.

A get out of jail free card if you will. One to be bargained with in the eleventh hour. Tom, Alistair - the location runner and Colin - the remaining camerman felt by now, more like brothers than brothers.

As a result, they felt the loss of one of their small band even more keenly. Colin fell sick about 4 months into the ordeal. Food wasn't plentiful, even for their captors, and it often depended who was cooking, whether it was even edible. As a result, all three of them had lost huge amounts of weight. When Colin fell sick with a stomach upset, he had little left with which to fight it.

Ten days after becoming sick, dehydration claimed him, and he died in Tom's arms. Medicine was a waste they'd been told. The jungle was no place for the weak. They saw illness as weakness. Colin was , in effect, simply collateral damage.

As he lay, weak and delirious, he'd told Tom that he loved him, not like a brother, but as a man. Coming from a highly religious family, he'd hidden it all his life. Now that his life, he knew, was over it was the time for truth.

Tom had been truly touched and smiled gently, "Thank you, Colin. That's the greatest compliment you could have given me. " As Colin slipped into unconsciousness, Tom had gently kissed his forehead and told him to rest. Colin never opened his eyes again.

Alistair and Tom buried Colin under a beautiful tree. Marking the grave, they made a promise never to forget their brother. Neither man was ashamed to cry.

They were given a modicum of freedom. They - and their captors - knew the jungle was days in all directions if you didn't have either knowledge or a GPS. There was no point in trying to escape. It simply meant an agonising death from any one of a hundred things trying to poison, eat, or just simply kill you.

In the beginning, both men held up relatively well. Positive mental attitude. The hardy Scot - Alistair - and the hardy half-Scot bonding over a mutual desire to get home.

As the months went by though, as they were shoved from one steaming, often stinking hellhole to another, their resolve began to fail. So did a tiny bit of their sanity. They began to wonder if this was some kind of test. Some big experiment being filmed, and at any time, someone would jump out, call cut, and it would all be over.

From time to time, naturally, each man hit extreme highs and devastating lows. Fortunately, never together. It was what, in truth, kept them alive. One such episode saw Tom sinking as low as it was humanly possible to get.

Naturally an optimistic person, he'd kept going in the face of the unrelenting punishments they doled out. The slightest infringement of camp rules, and God knew they changed in mercurial fashion, was dealt with severely. Until one particular night, into their eighth month.

There had been some rumblings in camp that the authorities were on to where they were. Although they moved regularly, helicopter patrols had become more frequent. When they rumbled over, Tom and Alistair were usually bundled up and trudged into the densest part of the jungle nearby. They were held at gunpoint in case they made any kind of movement that would give away their position.

In all the time they'd been held, their captors had never once used their ace in the hole. Never once demanded money or free passage to anywhere. That, they all knew, was a one-time only deal. If it failed, Tom and Alistair died as being useless. If it worked, Tom and Alistair would die because they would have no further use. Either way, it struck Tom. They died.

By his reckoning, it had been Becky's birthday sometime that week. He still managed to just about hang onto a sense of time. In making a small mark with a last precious biro pen, every morning on the tail of his shirt, he tracked the days. Counting up the marks and knowing when he left London, he realised just how long they'd been apart.

Alistair tried to keep his spirits up. Tried all their usual methods from humour to downright bullying. Nothing worked. Tom was almost a broken man. For an entire week, he tried to get himself shot. Every chance he got, he was belligerent and uncooperative, hoping for the release from a single, cold bullet.

All it got him was some of the worst beatings of his life. The General, as they'd come to call him, knew what was going on, he'd seen it all before. He wasn't going to lose his star prize, oh no. Rough it up a little, make it behave, but no way was he giving this soft actor what he saw as an easy way out. And anyway, time was running out. This time, when they came, he would be ready.

Almost exactly eleven months and two weeks to the day from his disappearance, Tom was to finally understand what fear really meant.

As the world, and the jungle around him exploded into a firefight, he threw himself to the ground. Alistair close behind, fell in top of him. The two men lay motionless as Government forces overran their encampment. Automatic fire rattled around them, stun grenades filled their lungs with acrid smoke.

As the firing stopped, Tom whispered to Alistair to move and they would try to surrender to the soldiers now patrolling, looking for survivors.

Alistair didnt move. "Ali, come on man, time to go. This is it!" Tom hissed and nudged him in the ribs. Nothing. Throwing caution to the wind, he pushed Ali hard and sat up.

Alistair Cormack died on the day they got their freedom. As Tom would later tell Ali's proud but grief stricken parents, if he had not lain on Tom that day, Tom would not be here to tell the tale. Even Tom Hiddleston couldn't cheat four bullets in the back.

The government forces had been tracking The General for months. They had no idea it was his group that held Tom and his friends. When the soldiers did their round of the camp after the firing had stopped, they were astonished to find him there. Blood spattered, filthy, thin, but very much alive, crouched by the body of his last comrade.

It took less that 24hours to get him on a plane from Saigon. No-one knew who it was safe to tell he was free. Those that did know, kept it quiet to get him safely out the country.

The British consulate contacted their counterparts in the Uk. Thanks to the delay in getting confirmation to the British Consulate and the subsequent time difference, the message lay unread for almost 14 hours. In that time Tom arrived back in London.
Tom knew that his girl would be waiting. He knew she wouldn't have given up hope.

The Foreign Office tried every number they had for Tom's next of kin. No-one picked up. The officer sighed, closed the file and went for a cup of tea. Another fifteen minutes wouldn't make any difference.

Tom drew up outside his house. It felt like five minutes and yet a lifetime since he'd last been there. Walking up the steps, he paused, taking in the scene. It was about as far removed from the jungles of Vietnam as it was possible to be. Even tje dark here was different. Less oppressive, less deadly.

He stooped and groped around, a smile spread over his face. The spare key, hidden in the lockbox, was still there. Carefully, he slipped the key into the lock. Turning it gingerly, he opened the door and walked into the house.

He could hear some noise coming from the kitchen, walking slowly along the hall, he became aware it was crying. It was Becky, crying. His heart constricted in pain. Opening the kirchen door, he saw her, hysterical in Luke's arms clutching something.

"He's really dead....I can't...he's dead..."

Luke comforted her much as Tom now instantly wanted to do. He spoke and they looked up.

Becky collapsed and Tom went to get his beautiful girl.