Hi guys! Yeah, I'm updating like fourteen or fifteen hours late, buuuuut, hey, Happy New Year! Hopefully 2018 will be better than 2017...
Anyway, I don't own Hamilton. :(
Enjoy!
"Ridley."
No reply.
"Heya, Ridley."
More silence.
"Ridleeeeeey." When he refused to respond for the third time, I rolled over and poked him in the back. Physical contact with another person was a surefire way to irritate him out of his silence.
He rolled off of his musty-smelling pallet and angrily turned to face me, clutching something in his hands. "What do you want?"
"Whatcha doing?" I asked.
He turned around again. "Go away."
Curiosity piqued, I inched closer to him. Something reeked from him—a smell that reminded me vaguely of the alley with the dumpster behind my apartment building, but one that I could not quite place.
It was a dead rat.
Let me repeat that for you: It. Was. A. Dead. Rat.
I heard him crooning softly to it, and nearly fainted. Abort mission, abort mission! I fell over backwards, my ragged fingernails scrambling for purchase on the cracked stone floor. He turned around, puzzled.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
I nodded mutely. At his expectant stare, I further elaborated. "Y-yeah. I'm okay, I guess."
The boy shrugged it off and rolled his eyes, muttering about crazy girls who invade his nice empty cell. I shrank against the wall, hoping to God Almighty that he wasn't in jail for murder or anything like that.
I leaned against the wall. It had been a few days, but I was still unsure of how my time in this era translated to time back at home. I got up. Hopefully I hadn't missed anything important like New Year's. God, please no. I began to pace, agitated. What about Christmas? I mean, it's not like there was much to celebrate at Christmas...My parents still had yet to grasp the concept ("I give you life, food, shelter, clothing. Why do you need more?" demanded my mother at the very request). I sat down. Then a thought occurred to me. What if my brother took my stuff? It wasn't like he hadn't done something like that before. I got up.
"Stop moving," snapped Ridley from his corner.
I sat down.
Outside, a parade of soldiers marched past, the music echoing into the small stone cell. I envied them in their warm-looking red coats. The snow glittered on the rooftops of London, the streets a dirty grey. I shivered under the thin blanket. Earlier, I had compiled everything I owned in to a pile (a small pile, mind you), and I dove in, grateful for the small comfort they provided.
I suppose I had fallen asleep and then jumped to sometime or something, because when Ridley shook me awake, we were not in our cramped cell. His eyes were open huge as he pulled me to my feet as he stammered out an explanation. "You—you were asleep! And then you kinda just started glowing, and so I tried to wake you up, and—and—"
I cut him off. "Wait, so I was glowing? Dude, I didn't know I could do that! That's awesome!" I glanced around. "Where, uh, where are we?" We appeared to be in between two buildings in good ol' New York City. As far as I could tell, we were in the modern age. A car honked angrily.
Ridley let out the tiniest of whimpers (though he would never, ever admit it). "I don't know."
I took one look at his sad, confused face, and figured he had a right to the truth. After all, no on else had ever traveled with me. "Hey, remember what I said about being from the future? Yeah, uh, I wasn't lying about that."
His eye twitched. "I'm in the future." He took a breath. "I'm in the future."
I watched him cautiously. "Uh, yes." I wracked my mind. What to do, what to do? What could I do? I was a lonely fifth-grader with no friends in the midst of a very modern city with a very unmodern boy. This was going to take a lot of thought.
"Here," I said, offering Ridley an armful of blankets and towels. "You make yourself comfortable here. I know the fire escape isn't the best guest room, but,"— I glanced up at the sky—"hopefully it won't snow too much tonight."
The boy nodded mutely. I noticed he had been characteristically untalkative, and hoped that was just Ridley being Ridley, and not some form of strange culture-shock. A loud clanging accompanied by cussing in Mandarin erupted from the kitchen window, a few feet to the left of the fire escape.
"I'm going in now," I said awkwardly, at a complete loss as to what to say. Thankfully, my room's single window allowed me a generous view of the dumpster and alley, and it opened over the fire escape. I climbed back into my room.
Now for the hard part. "Mama? I'm ho-ome!" I called, opening my bedroom door.
My mother appeared in a flurry, a goddess in her blue striped apron. Despite being less than five feet, she effortlessly swept me up in a hug. "Why you don't leave a note?" She demanded, smacking my arm hard. I winced. "We thought you joined a gang!"
"Wait, what?" I blinked. "You thought I joined a gang?" I wasn't even in Middle School, for crying out loud! These people.
She ignored my question. "Have you eaten yet?"
Five smuggled pieces of bread, and ten dumplings later, I edged towards my room, my contraband items folded into a napkin. My mother reappeared out of freaking nowhere, as mothers are wont to do. I nearly dropped my napkin in shock.
"What are you hiding, Lian?" demanded my mother. "Let me see." She seized my wrist, and my bread came tumbling out. "Aha! So this is what they teach you on the streets! Stealing, eh?"
I grinned at her. "Uh, yeah! The gang just asked me to bring some food for them...Uh, one of the women had a baby and she wanted good home cooking!" Flattery was my only option.
My mom brightened considerably. "I have many leftover! Stay here!"
She bustled back with a tray of dumplings. My jaw dropped. Seeing my greedy stare, she warned, "Don't touch these, Lian! This is for childbirth only!" I wondered what she would say if she saw Ridley eating them.
"Yes, ma'am!" I chirped, eager to appease my mother's wrath.
She nodded. "Now go. Rob some tourists."
"Uh, okay Mom!"
I hurried out to Ridley with the food. "Eat these," I ordered, dropping the tray into his lap.
As he reached out, our hands touched, and then the most peculiar feeling came. Oh, no... I thought.
I shut my eyes, and all of a sudden, Ridley was on the ground puking up his guts beside a building in New York of the 1770's. The tray of dumplings lay there, quite undamaged.
I looked up. The building was on fire. As I scanned the world outside the little alleyway, I came to a conclusion: New York City was aflame.
Dun, dun, DUN! Kinda cliffhanger-y, I guess. I hope you enjoyed reading! So one of my lovely reviewers and I had struck up a correspondence, and their advice helped revamp my story a bit. As of today, I will respond to reviewers through PM or A/N.
To be completely honest, I wasn't planning on having Ridley in the story for so long...I really play this story by ear. Sooooo...If you have any ideas for the story, just PM me or review! I will respond to every reader. :)
To Flutteringlively: Thanks! Lian is around that age (10 to 11); I have edited that accordingly. Thanks for catching that! As for inspiration, It's kinda been multiple influences. I'm heavily influenced by The Skipper, a Lord of the Rings fanfiction (it's under my favorite stories; it's amazing), wherein the main character skips around from Middle Earth to our Earth, and I thought that would be kind of interesting for a time travel fic, especially because the reader can just get a couple of vignettes of that time period. Thanks for reviewing!
Thanks to everyone for reading!
- Rain
