A/N: Bear with me
Arnie's been driving overnight buses for almost twenty years. The first couple years were a hard adjustment. It's grueling, to drive for that long. It wreaks havoc on your internal clock, to drive from 3pm until 8am twice a week. He's pretty sure it's illegal, actually, but he doesn't mind. He's careful; he'd never endanger the lives of his passengers by falling asleep. He gets a lot of overtime. He likes his job. He likes seeing the countryside, he likes getting people where they need to go safely. He mediates while he drives. It was harder when his kids were young: hard on them, harder on his wife. But now he likes it. Each trip he picks a favorite passenger. Sometimes it's hard to choose – the college student frantically cramming for an exam, the young family going to see their grandparents, the tired woman who sleeps the entire way. But today it's any easy choice.
She climbs onto the bus first. She's small, with dyed blonde hair that's showing a lot of dark roots. She's got a backpack slung over one shoulder, and he checks behind her for a parent, but doesn't see one. She politely hands him her ticket.
"Are you traveling by yourself?"
"Yes." Her voice is soft and polite. "I'm going to visit my dad's new place for the first time. My mom, um, couldn't afford the plane ticket."
He nods, understanding, trying to make her feel comfortable. He certainly knows what it's like to have to take the bus.
She continues. "My mom asked me to ask you to maybe keep an eye on me during the trip? Just to like, make sure no one creepy sits next to me?"
His heart melts for her. "Of course I will. What's your name?"
"Sarah."
"Okay, Sarah. Let's get you set up here." He rises from the driver's seat and points to the first row of seats on the opposite side of the bus. "Why don't you sit here. I'll put my bag here, so no one takes the seat next to you. That way I'll be able to see you and no one will be able to talk to you without me knowing about it. Does that sound okay?"
Sarah looks at him for a moment, maybe to judge if he's someone she needs to protect herself from too, so he tries to look as grandfatherly as possible. "I've got three daughters," he adds. "I'd have wanted someone to look after them when they were your age too."
That seems to do it. She nods, thanks him quietly, and sits down.
"How far are you going?" He's expecting her to get off in Pennsylvania, maybe Ohio.
"I'm going to Chicago."
Arnie doesn't get a great sense of her, but he likes her. She does some homework, pulling a slim textbook and one of those huge calculators out of her backpack. She watches a movie on her laptop and naps with earbuds in. He watches her carefully when she goes to the back to use the bathroom, but everyone else on the bus seems well behaved and no one says anything to her.
They left New York around 3:15pm, and they stop for the first time around 7:30 in Pennsylvania at a rest stop with a big food court. He asks if he can show her around the food court, and she thanks him with what he thinks is a little bit of relief.
When they step off the bus together, he realizes that she's smaller than he'd thought. "How old are you, Sarah?"
"I'm fifteen." He raises an eyebrow. She is definitely not fifteen. His daughters were pretty much grown women at fifteen, or at least they looked that way, and this girl is 100% still a child. She must catch the eyebrow, because she gives him a practiced eye roll (which does, actually, make her look older). "I know, I know. I look like I'm twelve. And everyone in my family is tall, so like, adding insult to injury, you know?" She laughs a little, and he laughs along with her. He still doesn't believe fifteen, but fourteen, sure.
He points to the bathrooms and recommends a specific meal for both shortness of line and eatability on the bus. She follows his advice, and, once they're back on the bus, is one of the only people who doesn't spill on themselves when he hits a particularly rough pothole. At the exclamations of dismay coming from the behind her, she meets his eyes in the mirror and grins.
He doesn't have a great sense of her, but he likes her.
She falls asleep against the window around 11pm, right before the Ohio border. At the stop in Cleveland, she shifts so she's lying down across both seats, her legs tucked up and her arms folded under her head.
At the stop in Toledo he lays his jacket over her, and a crease in her forehead relaxes. She looks so impossibly young. She cannot be even fourteen. He wonders, not for the first time, if she's in some kind of trouble.
She wakes up around 6am for a second rest-stop food court in northeastern Indiana. She gets a breakfast sandwich at McDonalds and a hot chocolate. He buys it for her, and she's unfailingly polite in thanking him.
She spends the last two hours of the trip staring out the window – no book, no music, no computer. If he believes her story, he imagines she's nervous to see her dad after what seems like a long time away, in this city she's never been to. If he doesn't believe it, well. She's heading to something that's making her nervous.
He wonders if he should call the cops. He decides not to – there aren't any amber alerts out for someone like her, and all he has is a niggling feeling that she's younger than fifteen. That's not really 911-worthy, he decides. But he makes sure to remember everything, just in case he needs to.
When he calls out, "Ten minutes, people!" he sees her jolt in her seat. She starts frantically combing her hands through her hair before racing to the back of the bus with her backpack in hand. He smiles to himself. After 15 hours, that bus bathroom is certainly not where he'd want to brush his teeth, but she's certainly not the first person he's seen do it. She comes out a few minutes later in a clean shirt and, if he's not mistaken, maybe a little bit of mascara.
It does make her look older. Maybe she is fourteen.
"Is your dad meeting you at the bus stop?" She doesn't seem to have heard him. "Sarah?" No response. He tries again, louder. "Sarah!" Her head snaps up, belatedly. He wonders if Sarah is her real name. "Is your dad meeting you at the bus stop?"
She blushes a little, but tries to hold it in. "Oh. Uh, no. I'm meeting him at work."
"Where does he work?"
"The University of Chicago."
"Okay, that's not too far. How are you getting there?"
"I have money for a cab."
This doesn't sit well with Arnie. Sure, she made it this far, but he doesn't like the idea of her being one-on-one with some random cab driver for the half hour it'll take to get from the bus stop to campus at this hour. He also doesn't like the idea of setting her loose in the city without knowing for sure if she's okay.
"I think you should call your dad to come get you."
She doesn't seem phased by this. "He's teaching right now. Plus, he's the one who told me to take a cab. It'll be fine. I have the directions and everything." She waves a paper in the air, and he's taken aback by how cute it is that she printed out directions to one of the most easy-to-find places in the city.
He pulls into the bus stop and actually looks at her, rather than seeing her in the mirror. She's got a steely look in her eye that reminds him of his wife. He's never been able to stand up to that look. He sighs. "Okay. Let me help you get a cab though, okay? I know some of the non-creepy drivers."
She smiles at him, and he knows he's been conned. "That's awesome, thanks!"
He puts her in a cab with Patel, a guy he knows from way back. Patel promises to take good care of her, and Arnie knows he'll be honest about the price. He has to stifle his urge to hug her goodbye, because he knows that would be weird, so he just smiles in a way that he hopes doesn't look pained as he holds the cab door open for her. "Have a good visit, okay? And uh…" He shuffles for a moment, and then hands her a piece of paper. "Call if you need anything. I'll be in town for three days before I drive back."
She looks down at where he's scrawled his full name and phone number. She holds her hand out the window for him to shake with a big smile, and forcibly reminds him of a young impish Audrey Hepburn. "Thanks, Arnie!"
He shakes her hand, steps back, and waves as Patel pulls away. He really hopes she's fifteen.
Patel is chatty, so it takes her a couple minutes after she steps out of the cab to collect her thoughts. She checks her watch. It's 9:27am. She looks up at the big sign that announces that she's standing outside of the University of Chicago Medical Building. She sort of can't believe she made it.
Before she loses her confidence, she takes a deep breath, and walks inside.
She's immediately overwhelmed and turned around, and has to ask three people for directions to find the classroom that Dr. Martin's teaching in. They all look a little confused about why a kid is trying to get there, but she tries to look innocuous as possible. She's seen a couple reruns of Doogie Howser on TV, and she makes herself smile thinking about what would happen if she told everyone she was a new medical student, running late for class.
She finally finds the classroom and she hovers outside the door, uncertain. Every second of this trip was planned and scheduled and crafted, except for this one. She could never decide if she should wait outside for the class to end, or if she should slip in and try to sit in the back. She's never been in a college classroom, so she doesn't know what the layout will be like. It worked on Gilmore Girls, she knows that much, when Rory visits Harvard. But what are the odds that's realistic?
It's the hallway that decides her. It's more populated than she'd expected, and she's worried one of the people walking past will stop her and ask her what she's doing lurking outside a classroom that she clearly doesn't belong in. She sort of can't believe the bus driver thought she was fifteen – she's the smallest person in the 7th grade – but even he wouldn't think she was medical student.
Sending up a silent prayer that no one will notice her coming in, and that this door leads into the back of the classroom, she eases it open, peaks through the crack, and congratulates herself when she sees back of heads. Score. She sees an open seat right in front of the door and, without any more hesitation, slips through the door and into the chair. The guy nearest looks over at her, but she puts on her best impression of Nevaeh, the meanest girl at her school, and he quickly looks away. Good to know that even works on college guys.
The room is dark. She'd expected a lecture, but it looks like they're watching a film. It's really gross. It's definitely a movie of an autopsy, something she thinks she's too young to even know exists, not to mention see done on a gigantic screen. When the guy on screen reaches in and pulls out handfuls of intestines, she's done. She gets her math book out of her backpack and stares resolutely at it. Might as well get started on next week's homework – it's less likely to make her gag.
She's working her way through finding the volume of a cylinder when the film ends. A voice from the front of the room makes her head snap up. "That's all for today. See you next week." The lights click on, and everyone around her pours into the aisles and out the doors.
She shoves her math back into her bag and hopes she doesn't pass out or wet herself or something. She doesn't remember ever being this nervous. She can't believe she's actually doing this.
She, slowly, and deliberately, walks down to the front of the room. There are a couple people waiting to talk to the professor, and she lurks on the side when she reaches the bottom, hoping no one really notices her. She wishes she weren't so short – both so she wouldn't be so recognizable as a kid and so that she could see what's happening around her.
Finally two huge dudes leave, and she has a clear line of sight to the professor.
She must make some sound out loud, because Dr. Martin looks over at her too. They look at each other for a long moment. She wonders if everyone can hear how loud her heart is, and a small part of her brain is grateful that they all have some sort of medical training just in case she needs an urgent transplant or something.
Dr. Martin is, in a word, beautiful. She looks young for 40, with smooth skin and the kind of swishy hair she's only seen before in magazines. She's wearing a blazer and a blue dress that makes it very clear what puberty can do for a person (if they ever go through it), and a pair of heels that raise her up over what is already an intimidating height. It's definitely her. She looks just like the pictures.
Dr. Martin walks over to her, and she gets more sure about needing that transplant because now her heart isn't beating at all. This is happening. The professor has a look on her face as she approaches: her head is cocked to the side a little bit, and her eyebrows are pulled together.
Dr. Martin opens her mouth, and, like in a dream, actually says words right to her. "Can I help you? Are you looking for someone?"
If this were one of the Disney channel shows that her friend Peyton likes, she'd fall in a dead faint. Instead, and much worse, she hears herself idiotically say the first thing that pops into her brain. "I didn't expect you to be so beautiful." Classy move, kid.
Dr. Martin's look of polite confusion deepens. "Excuse me?"
She clears her throat and tries again. "I mean…are you…Maura Isles?"
The professor starts backwards, hard and fast. Her mouth opens and closes and her forehead wrinkles as her eyes widen in anger and surprise. She stands there for a long beat, shocked and ready to lash out. And then, in an instant, her entire face melts. She brings her hands up in slow motion, one to her heart and one pressing, hard, just below her ribs. Her eyes water. She opens her mouth, and she makes a sound that rips all of the organs out of both of them, just like in that film. She takes a quick hiccupping breath, and tries again. "Kylie?"
Kylie nods once, hard and fast, before she loses it.
Maura sways and Kylie reaches out to her on instinct. Maura locks eyes with her, and suddenly Kylie is pulled into the tightest hug she can imagine.
Something in how Maura smells clicks open a box in the back of Kylie's brain, and suddenly this is real in a way that the buses and googling and planning weren't. She doesn't even try to keep herself from crying.
The couple of students who were still waiting for their turn to ask a question slowly back away, giving each other confused panicked eyes, utterly flabbergasted by the sight of the hardest and coldest professor in the school crying all over some tween and saying, over and over, what sounds like "Tiny girl."