Author's note: For the purposes of plot, I'm following Railway Series canon with James having arrived on Sodor after Thomas.
Chapter 3: Off The Rails
The journey along the main line was one of the most difficult James had ever endured. The driving rain limited his vision and made the tracks slippery but his mind was elsewhere and he found it hard to focus on his work. As much as he tried to suppress his terror at the awful fate which might await him, he couldn't escape the guilt needling away in his mind. Humans were terribly delicate things and he had no way of knowing whether the young man would survive as his driver had been unable to contact anyone who knew the extent of his injuries. Even if the boy recovered, James felt sure that no one would forgive him for his behaviour.
A few engines passed him travelling in the opposite direction, but he avoided any kind of interaction. The list of those he had managed to turn against him grew longer the more he thought about it. He had caused nothing but trouble for the Fat Controller ever since he arrived on Sodor, managing to crash on his very first day. He had let down his crew badly and he suspected that they might request a transfer to a less challenging engine. The workers in the yards would probably be too concerned for their safety to go near him. He had been intentionally cruel to Duck and callous to Philip, the knock-on effect of which was certain to be Edward's disapproval. Everyone at Tidmouth Sheds was fed up of him, even Henry and Gordon, once his closest allies. There was no one he could count on to speak up for him even if his actions had been defensible.
The trucks, of course, did not help at all. "It's Squeaky Wheels," they had shrieked as the shunter had coupled them behind James. "Save us! He's dangerous!"
James had bashed them for the sake of appearances and instructed them to behave but they had sensed that he was upset and had no intention of giving him an easy time. As the train moved out of the yard and through the town, they began a chorus of squeaks and groans calculated to grate on the nerves of anyone unfortunate enough to be subjected to it for more than a few seconds. James gritted his teeth. His driver swore and made sure no one in earshot had any doubt that he regretted his choice of career.
After a while the leading truck grew bored of the game. "Hey, you lot, do you remember the old nickname we gave him?"
"The Pretentious Pillar Box?" suggested one of the wagons. James grimaced. He hadn't heard that one before.
"Fire Engine?" supplied another.
"No, further back than that! 'Rusty Red Scrap Iron'!"
"Bloody Diesel," growled James as the sniggering trucks took up the refrain. He tried to block out the sound but the sing-song rhythm of the chanting made it virtually impossible to ignore and it wormed its way into his consciousness, amplifying his fear until he was on the point of panic. He despaired at his powerlessness, knowing that his fate lay entirely with the Fat Controller and the other humans who made the important decisions on the NWR. Within days he could be cut open, stripped for spare parts and melted down to be repurposed, his splendid paintwork long forgotten. In desperation, he considered his options, trying to devise a way out of the mess he had created. Eventually a spark of an idea presented itself to him. It wasn't a pleasant alternative and it wouldn't improve the situation but it was one that would allow him some control over his destiny and right now, that was the best he could hope for.
"Shut up!" he commanded the trucks. "Your wailing is giving me a pain in my smokebox. Stop that racket or I'll whack you until your axles snap!"
"Don't speak to us like that, Squeaky Wheels!" shrieked the leading truck. "We won't be threatened!"
"Oh, have I offended you? Tough. I'm an engine and you are mere trucks. I can say what I like to you. You only exist so we can pull you around, you aren't important."
The trucks began to grumble quietly and James felt assured that the intervention would be enough to set his hastily devised scheme in motion. He fell silent again, watching the drenched landscape flash by in bleak apprehension.
As they reached Gordon's Hill, his plan came to fruition. The trucks trundled obediently behind James as he began to ascend slowly, struggling to manage the gradient while combating the weight of the stone and the wet rails. Upon reaching the summit, however, they responded just as he had anticipated and began to bump along the track with increasing speed, pushing the engine forward. James felt his wheels slipping beneath him and closed his eyes as he accelerated, bracing for a catastrophic collision. This is it, he thought grimly.
His downward flight was abruptly checked as the coupling between him and the leading truck suddenly pulled taut. His driver and fireman were flung against the backhead and it was sheer luck which prevented them from sustaining severe burns.
Looking back as best he could, James caught a glimpse of the scruffy brake van coupled behind the trucks, holding the train back with apparently supernatural strength. Limited by the application of his own brakes, James tried to propel himself onward but the van stood firm. "How are you doing that!" he cried in frustration. "What's the guard playing at? Take your brakes off!"
"I'm saving you," the brake van called back.
"I don't need saving," James retorted, but by this point it was too late. His crew had recovered from the impact and, with carefully manoeuvring and the assistance of the guard, his driver gradually brought the train down to the bottom of the hill, halting as soon as it was safe to do so.
"That was an impressively quick reaction." The fireman leaned heavily against James's tender and called out to the guard as the latter strode along the ballast towards James. "Well done, mate, you saved us all."
"He didn't stop the train," said the brake van. "I did it to save James."
The driver snorted. "I'll try not to be offended."
"Well, I did, didn't I?" the brake van addressed James directly. "You didn't go through with it, did you?"
"Go through with what?" demanded his driver suspiciously.
"Suicide," the van said, wide-eyed, as though it was obvious what had occurred.
James closed his eyes as horrified exclamations erupted from his cab. He opened them again to find the two crewmen standing before him and averted his gaze, too ashamed to look directly at them.
"How could you?" his driver yelled. "Of all the selfish…. You've done some stupid things in your time but I never believed you meant to put us in danger. You would have killed us, James!" Shock caught up with him and he wobbled as his legs threatened to give way.
The fireman caught his shoulders as he swayed and held him upright. "Watch yourself, Laurence. Shouting at him isn't going to make things any better." He turned to James. "I think you'd better explain yourself."
James gave a heavy sigh, horribly alert to the fact that the trucks had fallen silent and would be listening eagerly to every word. "I didn't want you to be hurt," he whispered apologetically. "I thought… you'd jump out of the cab when you realised what was happening, like you did at the sheds. You're good at getting out of the way when things go wrong."
"Aren't they just?" remarked the brake van brightly.
Shaking his head, the fireman supported his colleague to walk over to the edge of the ballast where they joined the guard and began discussing what to do next. Once he was confident that their attention was no longer on him, James switched his focus to the brake van.
"You knew what I was going to do. What are you, a mind reader or something?"
"Oh no," the van replied cheerfully.
"Well, who are you then?" James tried to recall if he had encountered the van before. If he had worked with him previously, most likely he would have complained about having to pull such a battered old thing. There were probably several other vans on Sodor who would have shoved him off the rails themselves had they been given the opportunity.
"Clarence. LNER 20 ton brake van, A-S-2."
"What's that?" James frowned. "A-S-2 isn't a type of brake van."
"Angel, Second Class."
James paused, trying to process what he had just heard. Eventually he managed to construct a response. "Second Class?"
"I haven't won my wings yet," Clarence explained. "That's why I'm an Angel Second Class."
"Sounds about right," said James dejectedly. "You'd think I might get a First Class…" he trailed off, as the rest of his mind caught up. "Angel?"
"I'm your guardian angel," Clarence supplied helpfully.
James was starting to wonder if he was hallucinating. Maybe he had crashed and damaged himself in such a way that it caused him to experience things that weren't real? At a loss for what else to do, he sought more information. "How can you be an angel?"
"Haven't you ever wondered why some brake vans have faces and others don't?"
"Humans," said James flatly. Humans did a lot of things that seemed strange to the engines and he'd decided long ago that there was little to be gained in trying to fathom their motives.
"Not quite," Clarence said gently. "You see, those of us with faces haven't won our wings yet. When we do, we leave our physical forms. They remain on the railway but without the soul which gave them life."
"Oh." This was a lot to take in, especially given that engines didn't often think about spiritual matters. Knowing exactly who had created them and for what purpose took a lot of the mystery out of life and left relatively little to speculate on. "So… Toad is an angel?"
Clarence smiled fondly. "Dear Toad. Gained his wings years ago, of course, but he's completely gone native and refuses to be parted from Oliver."
"Bradford is an angel?"
Clarence's smile faded. "Yes. He focuses on the physical safety of his charges a bit more than most of us."
"The Spiteful Brake Van that Douglas-"
"Look, James," the van cut him off, apparently keen to move the conversation forward. "It's effectively a job title. Angels don't have to be, well, angelic in personality."
"You're telling me that Douglas killed an angel?" James said in disbelief. He would never see the Caledonian engine in the same light again.
"Don't you worry yourself about Douglas," Clarence instructed him. "I've been sent to help you."
"I don't know whether I like it very much, running along the mainline with an angel without any wings. You look really quite shabby, can't you magic yourself some new paint or something?"
"I've got to earn my wings," said Clarence placidly. "You'll help me, won't you?"
James raised an eyebrow. "How?"
"By letting me help you."
"I don't think you can help me," the red engine said quietly. "It's too late for me now. I've done so much damage that I'm probably worth more as scrap than I am alive."
"Now look, you mustn't talk like that," Clarence scolded. "I won't get my wings with that attitude. You just don't know all that you've done. If it hadn't been for you –"
"Yeah, if it hadn't been for me, everybody would be a lot better off," James interrupted. "The Fat Controller, my crew, the other engines. Go off and haunt someone else, will you?"
Clarence sighed. "This isn't going to be as easy as I expected." He gazed thoughtfully into the rain before speaking to James again. "So, you still think wrecking yourself would make everyone feel happier, eh?"
"I don't know," said James dismally. "Maybe you're right. I suppose it would have been better if I'd never come to Sodor at all."
Clarence frowned. "What did you say?"
"I wish," said James slowly, as if weighing up the words as he uttered them, "that I had never been built."
"Hmm…" The brake van appeared to be considering something. "That's an idea. Yes, that'll do it. All right, James, you've got your wish."
A sudden strong gust of wind buffeted James, forcing him to squint as it stung his eyes. When it passed, he was surprised to discover that the rain had stopped.
Clarence grinned. "You've never been built."
