Title: A Train Crashes Ignoring the Unspoken Protestations of Two Children
Characters/Pairings: Rachel, Claire Stanfield, halfhearted Rachel/Claire
Rating: T for descriptions of gore
Summary: A train accident takes both Rachel's father's job and the lives of Claire Stanfield's parents. While the adults work out the details, Rachel and Claire discuss the uncertain future.
The sight of the crumpled engine is horrible; tipped over train cars and smoke litter the ground, but they are merely a backdrop to the engine. Formerly beautiful, the front is crushed, the gleaming paint scraped off the sides to reveal dented metal. Men work quickly, shifting the wreckage and pulling out the crumpled bodies.
Rachel is young, only ten years old, but the fleeting glimpse she catches of the wreckage is burned into her retinas for years to come. Her father orders her to cover her eyes, and she does so, turning her back on the crash for good measure.
She drops her hands when her father starts to speak with the station master. The man looks angry, his tone is accusing, and it doesn't take long before she realizes that he's being blamed for this.
"Daddy didn't do anything!" she wails, running to his side. He hushes her, and her wails subside, but she cries quietly as her father pleads with the other man.
She starts to sob again when the threats start, and flees from his side when she can't hold in the whimpers. It is then, perhaps by chance, that she turns back towards the ruins of the train as someone shouts, "This one's alive!" Transfixed, she bunches her skirt in her fist and runs to the barrier, peering at the scene.
It takes three more men, but they lift the beam and haul out a corpse, a lovely young woman with red hair and a white dress now torn and covered in dark reddish stains. The body of a man is pulled out after, and lastly a child, drenched in blood, with brilliant red hair.
His eyes lock on hers, and he lifts his head, awake, alive, barely harmed despite the death and destruction that surround him.
He looks even younger than she is.
The argument stops abruptly, because suddenly they have to do something with the child standing before them. An emergency worker on site checks him over and declares him completely healthy, and Rachel might agree if he wasn't covered in blood. As it is, his clothes are caked with drying reddish-brown liquid, his face is smeared with it, and his hands are drenched in scarlet.
It is another image that will haunt her nightmares in the coming decade.
Someone has the idea to get the blood off him. He ends up wearing an oversized spare conductor's uniform, watching the red swirl away down the drain. He seems almost reluctant to clean it from his skin, but he doesn't protest.
The station master clears his throat, and Rachel's father addresses the boy. "Do you know anyone we can call?" he asks kindly. "Any family?"
The boy shakes his head.
"Your parents have any friends who might be able to look after you?" Her dad looks worried
"Maybe the Gandors," he speaks for the first time. He has a pronounced New York accent. "They live next door to us."
There is a brief discussion about what to do with him while they track down a caretaker, and Rachel pipes up. "He can play with me!"
"Yes," her father agrees. "Why not?"
And the adults are gone and they are alone. The redhead is perched on the windowsill, hair damp from the water it took to remove the blood, enveloped in oversized clothes.
"I've never met an orphan before," she informs him.
"I've never been an orphan before." He kicks his heels against the wall. "Say, what's your name?"
"Rachel," she does a little half-curtsy. "What's yours?"
"Claire."
"Claire's a girl's name!" she objects.
"Claire ain't a girl!"
"Doesn't your mother tell you not to say ain't?"
"She can't anymore," he reminds her.
Rachel abruptly sobers. She can't tease a kid who's just lost his mother and father.
He doesn't seem overly bothered, though. "So what are you doing here?"
"My dad works here," she announces proudly. "I'm supposed to look after you."
Claire took exception to that. "I can look after myself."
"Says who?" Rachel demands, wounded.
"Says me. I'm going to join the circus," he crosses his arms and scowls.
"As what, a clown?" she shoots, cruelly.
"An acrobat, obviously," he says it as though it is indeed the most obvious thing in the world.
"You couldn't be," she says immediately. "They can walk on their hands and stuff."
"That's easy!" He pushes himself off the windowsill and flips onto his hands, walking forward half the length of the room before completing the flip and landing back on his feet.
"Whoa!" Rachel yelps as he topples off the shelf and stares in disbelief as he completes the trick.
"See, easy!" He grins at her, self-satisfied and confident.
"No, it's not!" She stands up and tries to flip onto her hands. Several false starts later, she manages to hold her feet up in the air for a few seconds before toppling over.
He shrugs. "Maybe if you practice."
"Why the circus?" she wants to know.
"It seems fun. But hey," he throws his hands up, "Maybe I'll be a conductor!"
"My dad's an engineer," she tells him.
"I know," he says, slightly impatient but not unkind. "So what are you going to do?"
"I might be an engineer too." She bounces up and down.
He has evidently gotten bored in the last bit of conversation, and is walking on his hands again, across the entire length of the room. "You know, you're sort of pretty."
"Thanks," she responds after an uncertain pause. He does a somersault and sits with his back against the wall.
"I'm going to marry the prettiest girl I meet," he announces.
Rachel flushes, because she has the feeling it's never going to be her. "That's shallow." It's a word her father has used before, to describe the society ladies who snub her mother.
"No, it ain't." She doesn't bother correcting his grammar this time. "Because if I love her, she'll look the prettiest to me even if she isn't really."
Rachel thinks about it. "Am I the prettiest?"
"Maybe," he tilts his head. "I'm not old enough to get married yet, so I'll get back to you."
"Okay." She takes this in stride.
The door opens then, and it's the station master. "Uh, kid..."
"Claire," a voice supplies, and it's Berga from next door. Keith is quiet as ever, and Luck is peeking around the doorframe, shy in front of strangers.
"Hey!" he lights up. "Berga, Luck, Keith, this is Rachel. I might marry her."
The station master looks bemused as Rachel blushes. Luck examines her from a safe distance, Berga says "Huh?", and Keith says nothing as always.
"You're staying with us now," Luck pipes up. Their father is speaking to the station master.
"I figured. Bye, Rach!" No one's called her 'Rach' before and just as she's considering that he is gone.
It is the first sort-of marriage proposal she has ever received, and the last time anyone mentions love to her until a man in red comments he "coulda fallen for her" in a train car more than ten years later.