June 6th, 1985

"Clara come on!"

Hannah's high voice rang across the field and Clara glanced over her shoulder as she carried a stack of dishes to the washhouse. "I'll be there in a minute!"

"Your food is getting cold and attracting flies. No one else is in the kitchen washing up. The dishes can wait for a minute while you get something to eat," Hannah insisted. She made her way over to Clara with a few determined strides and plucked the dirty dishes out of her hands before she could protest. "Even you have to rest sometimes."

"Yeah yeah," Clara groaned, but she took up her plate and followed Hannah to their spot among the grove of trees nonetheless. The first community charity dinner of the summer had gone of spectacularly, with more families and more food than ever before – feeding both the children of Graham Windham as well as the poor families in their neighborhood which now mingled and chatted as they picnicked in the sunny Sunday afternoon. Though the credit could hardly go wholly to her, Clara's hard work in preparation for the event had paid off and though she wanted to keep it up and make sure that it finished successfully as well, she did appreciate Hannah's part in bringing her back to the reason she did this: to make a difference and to spend time with her friends.

She took a bite of her meal and looked over the field. A new herd of kids was playing where she did once – so much had changed in the last four years. "I'm gonna miss you," she said quietly.

"I'm not going far," Hannah assured her for the hundredth time that week. "Just across the bridge to Manhattan. I'll still see you on weekends, and you can come to visit whenever."

"I know," she grumbled. "But you've graduated. It's not going to be the same at school without you."

"You'll be fine, Clara."

"I'll be dreadfully bored, you mean."

"You? Bored?" Hannah teased. "The sky would fall first."

Clara rolled her eyes.

"You'll have so much work at the orphanage and with middle school work to do that you won't have time to be bored," Hannah insisted, "And failing that, your classmates get up to more than enough antics to keep you occupied, and you have your running rivalry with Lucas to uphold.

Clara had to laugh at that. The recent schoolyard drama of who had a crush on who consumed all the talk of the year, besides the usual griping about homework and the teachers, and she - being one of the few unaffected parties – was privy to all the gossip, often whether she wanted to or not. Lucas on the other hand, made it the mission of his life to constantly one-up her, in grades, in extra-curricular, in everything, it seemed, and she was eager to return the favor.

"And failing that," Hannah insisted, "If you do find yourself bored for more than thirty seconds, I'm sure you'll make yourself something new to do. I'll come to visit and you'll have started on an embroidering a tapestry, or learning Irish, or…"

"Ok, ok! I won't be bored," Clara conceded, "but it still won't be the same without you. Aren't you nervous about your new job?"

Hannah shrugged and settled back against the tree. "Of course, I'm nervous. The newspaper is a busy, competitive place after all, but I think as a clerk? I'll manage. It's not an ideal job but I'm happy to have a stable financial position now that I've finished my education." She gave Clara a conspiratorial grin. "On the other hand, you have to deal with the headmaster for another… five years? While I go free."

Clara laughed, "Oh I think I'll manage. He's always liked me better."

"Ha. In your dreams."

Cara stuck her tongue out at Hannah. "You'll be glad the adults stop pestering you about 'What do you want to do when you grow up?', now that you're on your way. You were so sick of that question." Hannah only made an annoyed face in response. "I've only started to get that interrogation."

"Enjoy," Hannah deadpanned. "What do you tell them?"

Clara shrugged. "I don't want to be a teacher, or a nurse, which seems to be my other two options. I suppose I'll probably be a secretary, like you, but I want more than that. I want to make a difference."

"I can see you as headmaster of the Graham Windham one day if you keep up your involvement," Hannah suggested, "You could go to Barnard or one of the other women's colleges."

Clara thought about the polite hostility that seemed to be a constant factor between her and some of the cliquish charity ladies and frowned. "Maybe," she lied. As much as she would enjoy running things on a day to day basis, the idea of doing the administrative work, talking to the mayor, and putting up with the snide comments that she knew Mrs. Moore always had to combat sounded exhausting. No, she had something else in mind.

"They wouldn't like my answer if I told them I wanted to go into law or politics, would they?"

Hannah raised an eyebrow. "Depends on who you ask."

"It's doable," Clara insisted, "There are women who have been admitted to the bar. We're making our way slowly. I'll just have to be the next."

Hannah resisted the urge to sigh, both proud of her younger friend's determination and unwilling to dash that hope, but also recognizing the sort of roadblocks and frustration that would be set up for her along the way. She smiled instead, "You know if you wanted to get into politics and law, the first thing to do is get references."

"How am I supposed to do that? I suppose Mrs. Davis would be a good one."

"Be a secretary, but for the mayor," Hannah suggested helpfully, "If you take college classes at night and work to put your way through the program during the day, you'll have a degree, experience, and a good reference in no time."

Clara grinned. "You're a genius Hannah, that's a brilliant plan."

"Well, you know it'll take a lot of work to get there. You'll have to keep your grades high and make up an impressive resume to be accepted to college in the first place," Hannah warned.

Clara scrambled to her feet with her now-empty plate. "Ha ha. Since when have you ever known me to be scared of a little work?" she boasted. "Besides, that's only two things. And speaking of work, I've got to get back to the kitchens now."

Hannah rolled her eyes and laughed, pulling herself to her feet and following her younger friend. "You never stop, do you?"

"Never."

Hannah did her very best not to gawk as she was hurried through one of the many floors of offices within the recently built Pulitzer Building. Desks lined up one upon another was filled with reporters tapping away their typewriters and swapping stories. People bustled through the rows to drop off and pick up and drop off reports and articles. Soon enough she would be one of them, but first… to meet the man behind it all.

Her guide led her and a few of the other recruits to a large office with a cloudy glass door bearing the famous Pulitzer name and knocked. A bored voice from inside beckoned them in, and they were instructed to line up before him like peasants seeking an audience with their monarch.

Whether he would be a just and righteous king or a despotic tyrant remained to be seen.

"Mr. Pulitzer, these are the new recruits, right on time for their scheduled briefing to receive their assignments," the guide said quickly, handing over a clipboard of their names and information. Pulitzer inspected it, then looked each new employee up and down as if assessing some unknown trait. An intimidation game, she was sure. Hannah met his gaze with a steely smile of her own. He made a barely perceptible nod before moving on and returning to his place behind his desk.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the World," he addressed them, "I trust you're familiar with the scope of this newspaper operation, and coming through here you've only seen a small part of the work that it takes to keep our circulation running – to keep it growing. Mr. Hartman assures me you are all hardworking and ambitious young people ready and eager to take on the responsibility alongside your older peers, and I trust you will live up to that expectation."

He gave them a wolfish grin, "You should know I suffer no fools, but I am also not an unreasonable man. Know your place, do your work, and you will succeed."

It sounded more like an order than any sort of encouragement, and with that last admonition, he finished his speech and turned rather to giving out their assignments. Hannah took hers without complaint and followed the guide back out of the offices to begin her day. First, she was shown her desk space where she was allowed to store her things for the day but she barely stayed there for long. Within minutes she was swept off on a tour of the building which left her head spinning as she tried to commit to memory which floor stored what functions of the business. Then, she was left on her own to tackle her first days of assignments. And so, began a morning of rushing around the building and retracing her steps several times as she attempted to mark the items off of her list, though it seemed like every time she completed one, three more were added.

She realized eventually that it would be easier to batch the assignments by floor, rather than the chronological order in which she found them and figured that what delay she might cause in rearranging them might be made up in the benefit of marking off several at once. Equipped with this new strategy, she steeled herself to start again on her list (two more tasks having been added in the time she rewrote it) and went to work. It proved to work much more efficiently, and between her new quicker pace and the eventual slowing of added tasks as the workday wound to an end, she was finally able to get through the entire list. Hannah couldn't find any of the other recruits to commiserate with as she headed back to her desk at the end of the night to collect her things – she expected that they might have gone home already. This office floor looked rather empty compared to its state that morning and she allowed herself a moment to just rest now that there was no fear of being caught doing such a treasonous thing as sitting.

Hannah flopped down into her chair, but her attempts at a quiet moment were interrupted by a quiet cry from below her desk. She frowned and looked down at what she had accidentally kicked. A small girl with curly brown hair and big brown eyes sat hunched up on the floor, holding a copy of the New York Sun.

"What are-"

"Shhhhhh!"

Hannah rolled her eyes at the unwanted interruption. "What are you doing here?" she hissed. "Children don't belong in the office!"

"Of course! That's why I'm hiding," the girl whispered. "Pretend I'm not here."

"Shan't," Hannah whispered, nonetheless, she made a show of organizing things on her desk so no one would be suspicious of her newfound charge. "What's your name? Shouldn't you be in school? How did you even get in here?"

"I'm Katherine, and I've already finished with my tutors for the day," she answered, "My father lets me in but I'm not supposed to pester him."

Tutors? Her father? Hannah looked up as the elevator door at the other end of the room clattered open, and none other than Pulitzer himself entered, flanked by a few aides giving him the daily sales reports. She suddenly connected the lead of the newspaper itself with the stowaway and nodded in understanding as she tried to figure out what she would do with Katherine. She could lose her job if she made the wrong step and she had no way of knowing what the right step might be, and so she resolved to get away from the situation as soon as possible. She pushed out from the chair and finished gathering her things with a subtle wink to Katherine, and then attempted to exit as quietly as possible so as not to disturb or draw the attention of Pulitzer.

"Excuse me, Marah?"

Hannah stopped and looked around the room. There were no other women around, and Pulitzer was looking at her, which eliminated the possibility that he was talking to someone else. She turned around with a professional smile to answer him, "Hannah. Can I help you, sir?"

"You're one of the new recruits, aren't you?"

"Yes sir."

"What did you think of your first day?" He asked. It was an innocuous enough question, but to Hannah, it sounded probing, as if he was testing her and she needed to supply the right answer to land in his good graces.

"You have an impressive operation running here," She answered cautiously, though her tone was cheerful, "I was happy to finish all my tasks for the day, but I'm still learning my way around, so I'm sure I'll be faster within the week."

He raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly in satisfaction. "Well done, have a good night," he said shortly, before moving on with his aides. Hannah let out a small sigh of relief as she seemed to have passed his test, and moved to the elevator. She hesitated for a second to watch as Pulitzer made his way past her desk. Katherine scrambled up to surprise her father – the traitorous other newspaper hidden safely in her pocket. Hannah smiled, and while they were sufficiently distracted, she made her exit.

This would be an interesting job indeed.

A/N: Hannah gets her chance in the spotlight! I really enjoyed watching her in the musical and she's such an underrated character, so I'm having fun developing a backstory for her alongside Clara's story. I don't know if any graduates are reading this with the school year ending recently, but if you are, I wish you luck with whatever it is you're doing! Thanks for reading! :)