January 15th, 1899

Clara rolled over, groaned, and shoved a pillow over her head to block out the obnoxious jangling of the alarm clock on her bedside. Her hand fumbled in the darkness of the early morning to find the stupid thing and shut it off.

Nearly four months of this job and 4:30 am was still an ungodly hour of the day to wake up. She wouldn't get out of bed for another fifteen minutes of course, but the rude awakening never got old. It was her fault, she mused as she rubbed her eyes. Her mother told her not to drink so much coffee, but she was a night owl by nature, and her best work happened between ten and midnight. Sustaining on four hours of sleep seemed to be her new norm, but if it meant she could do what she wanted – balancing her political work with volunteering at the orphanage and her classes - she would gladly accept it over the alternative of having to give up any of her many activities.

She sighed. If only she didn't have to get out from under the warm covers to go to work.

Clara threw off the covers all at once instead of trying to face the cold little by little, and quickly pulled on warm stockings, her best petticoat, and favorite blue and grey tweed skirt before her feet could freeze on the chilly wooden floor. A white blouse and matching smart-looking light blue blazer finished the look, aside from her bedhead. Clara dragged herself to the basin to splash her face with the frigid water and twist her waist-long blonde hair into a braid before piling it atop her head with a handful of hairpins. She barely kept her eyes open, and her hands moved by muscle memory as she mentally went over her schedule for the day.

And it would be a long day.

Clara grabbed her most recent read, The Jungle Book, off her nightstand as she threw the things she would need for work into her satchel and headed for the kitchen of the small apartment she now shared with Hannah. When she'd finished the last semester at her old high school, her old friend suggested moving in with her so that she wouldn't need to commute to Roosevelt's Manhattan office every day from Brooklyn, and her parents wholeheartedly encouraged the idea. Hannah – either by virtue of being a morning person or having a few extra years to adjust to the early shift sleep schedule - was already bustling around the kitchen preparing lunches for the day. A cup of steaming coffee sat on the table, and Clara took it appreciatively as she sat down and opened her book even if she barely skimmed the pages. She could pretend to be productive.

"You're the best, Hannah."

"I know. Is a tomato sandwich good for lunch?"

Clara nodded and rested her head on her hand. "mmmhmm. I can make dinner tonight."

"Can you pick up some chocolates from the confectioners on the way home too?"

"Why?" Clara muttered. Hannah grinned over her shoulder at the younger girl, who was "resting her eyes." Always a dangerous endeavor. Hannah poked Clara in the shoulder. She stuck her tongue out in response, but roused nonetheless and took a sip of her coffee.

"Because I'm the best, remember?"

This earned a laugh from Clara. "That's right. What time is it?"

"Quarter after. Happy Monday, by the way."

"Already?!" Clara snapped her book shut and threw it in the bag with the rest of her things. She pulled on her winter clothes and rushed out the door with the remainder of her slice of toast, but completely forgetting her lunch.

Clara munched on her breakfast as she made her way out of the apartment and down the now-empty street. As much as she hated waking up early, she enjoyed being up early. The city never really slept, but in the quiet hours in the late hours of the night and the early hours of just before the dawn, there was a peaceful air about it when the world seemed full of possibilities. She did a small twirl in the middle of the pavement to shake the wrinkles out of her skirt and took a few deep breaths of cold morning air helped her to properly wake up.

She made it to the office in good time and greeted the secretary before retreating to her desk to start working on her tasks for the day. The campaign she helped to run went off wonderfully despite the fire from political rivals and the media alike. If she thought this job was busy before, she was in for a surprise: in the last few weeks, since Roosevelt had been inaugurated as the governor of New York, the work only doubled with the new added responsibilities.

But that's why she was here to help. The first task was to sort through any complaints or suggestions they may have received the day before. The secretary put them in a neat pile in the inbox on her desk, so she categorized a list of actionable items that needed to be addressed according to priority before throwing them out one by one. She and the secretary shared the job of responding to these in good time, doing any necessary research, and forwarding only the most important to the governor's desk.

A friendly young man who called himself Niner delivered the mail just before seven with his customary greeting of a smile and tip of his newsboy cap. Right on time. She sorted through those letters from constituents next. By the time Roosevelt arrived, she'd already written responses to a few of the items on her list, as well as assembled a list of other tasks to be accomplished alongside their scheduled meetings for the day and what could be marked off the list in the same errand. Hannah taught her that trick, she mused, reaching for another cup of coffee.

They were out the door again by 7:30, and making their way down Park Row towards City Hall when she heard a commotion from one of the newspaper distributions centers that lined the street. A group of high-spirited newsboys joked with each other and heckled the other workers as they lined up to get their day's papers. She turned around in time to see a shorter boy supporting himself with a crutch gently push away another boy with a cigar dangling out of his mouth.

"I don't need a limp to sell papes!" He shouted, before fixing his friend with a wide grin "I got personality! You see this smile? It's the kind that turns all the ladies' heads!"

Clara whipped her head back around to face forward again, hiding a smile of her own and blushing slightly at getting caught with her head turned. She only caught another few snippets of their conversation as they continued teasing each other before she had to rush to catch up with Roosevelt. She had to admit that the newsie was clever to play to his strengths and their exchange was amusing enough, but she set aside the instance as she turned her attention onto other matters at hand.

They were going to meet the mayor.

She'd already been briefed on the purpose of the meeting sometime last week. It was hardly the first time that Roosevelt and Mayor strong had met each other as individuals, but it would be the first of many meetings between the mayor and the new governor to discuss plans moving forward. He'd barely been governor for two weeks but already he'd started several projects and Clara couldn't remember a moment when he sat still for more than fifteen minutes at a time.

Even so, Clara completely missed what occurred in the first few minutes of the meeting, because she was too entertained by watching Mayor Strong and Lucas sitting across from them at the table, gaping slightly at Clara sitting proudly at the right hand of the governor with her notebook and pen. She snapped to attention whenever he asked her to take down another important reminder, but spent the remainder of the briefing smiling slightly and feeling quite like the smug cat that ate the canary. Rejecting her for the job was the best thing he could have done for her, and she really ought to write him an overly polite thank you note for his… services. She made a note of that in her list too before forcing her attention back to the discussion.

The rest of her morning was similarly occupied with meetings, letter writing, and other organizational tasks. When it finally came time for her lunch break, Clara reached into her bag, only to realize that she'd forgotten her lunch. She cursed her carelessness for a moment – Hannah would be annoyed with her for neglecting to enjoy the fruits of her labor, and she hoped the meal wouldn't be spoiled by the time she got back to their apartment. Oh well. She needed to eat, and there was no time to waste if she wanted to get to the rest of those letters that afternoon.

Clara snatched up her book and hit the streets. She planned to grab a quick bite to eat at Jacobi's and catch up on her reading in the precious free hour that she did have to herself. She'd scarcely stepped foot outside the office doors before her nose was already buried in the pages.

Mowgli spied on the men in the village hammering out the beat to a song on their drums.

Crash! Crash! Crash!

Came the beat. Women moved in time with the rhythm.

Crash! Crash!

CRASH.

Clara found herself sprawled on the ground; her book dropped whenever she'd collided with someone. She picked it up and looked for the poor soul who had the misfortune of running into her. A boy about her age with sandy blonde hair sticking out from a backward newsie cap, and with a bag full of papers at his side, sat startled on the pavement across her. A crutch lay scattered on the ground, just out of his reach, and she recognized him as the one with the head-turning smile from the circulation floor earlier.

"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed and fetched the crutch. He took it from her and got to his feet, brushed off his pants, and fixed her with that smile.

"Not a problem, Miss," He said with a good-natured tone.

"The fault is mine." Clara held up the book in an embarrassing explanation and felt her cheeks flush again as he tried not to laugh.

"Here." fished in her pockets for a nickel and pressed it into his hand. "I'll buy a paper for your troubles." She didn't even glance at the title as he handed her one and she shoved it in her pocketbook. "I already picked up one for my boss this morning but I'm sure he won't mind the afternoon edition."

"If your boss doesn't like it, then maybe you will," He suggested cheerfully, flipping the coin into the air once and then shoving it into his pocket.

"Yes…" Clara stared at the newsie for a second, trying to place something familiar about him. Of course, she'd seen him that morning at the circulation floor, but she could have sworn they knew each other from something else. No answers came immediately, and the coincidence of meeting him twice in a day combined with some odd nostalgia was too much to process in the split-second that she had, so she just awkwardly apologized again before heading their separate ways.

She'd nearly made it across the street before she heard his voice call her again.

"Hey, Miss! You got a name?"

She turned and smiled at him. "Clara," she answered shortly, before spinning on her heel and rushing off towards Jacobi's. She had work to do back at the office, and she'd tarried long enough.

Clara?

Crutchie absentmindedly sold another paper, but his poor head was spinning at the thought that somehow his long-lost childhood friend might have just casually run into him on the street twice in one day.

It couldn't be that easy. Manhattan was a huge borough as it was, filled to near-overflowing with people and with new folks coming and going nearly every day. Even more so, if you included the outlying boroughs like Long Island and the travel from elsewhere in the state. Running into someone you knew was a slim chance unless you were in the same few blocks of neighborhood, and for her to come from all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge only to encounter him like that? A practically impossible chance.

But it'd been years after all. That was plenty of chances.

No, he thought. There had to be hundreds of gals named Clara around the city too. Unless he learned her last name and history, there would be no way of knowing who she really was. And he'd been gone so long, he didn't know Clara's history since he'd left either. Whatever she was doing nowadays, he certainly didn't have a clue, and so small talk would be unlikely to merit any useful information.

Right. So that was that.

Why was he trying so hard to talk himself out of the idea? There were practical reasons of course. If he tried to befriend every odd customer that caught his attention, he'd never make a sale, and so he pushed the thoughts out of his mind and called a few more headlines. If he was really and truly being honest with himself… he didn't want to be disappointed when inevitably she would turn out to be someone else, or when she never turned up again out of the crowd. He'd already lost his best friend once, and he wasn't about to get his hopes up again from some random careless girl who'd knocked him to the pavement.

But still. There was the resemblance in the sharp movements and inquisitive eyes that stirred something up memories, as blurred by time as they were.

Silly. The only thing he could do was to carry on and wait to see if she would turn up again. He'd take the chance if it were given to him, but today, he had work to do, and he'd tarried long enough.

A/N: We are close my friends! We are very, *very* close. :D

I hope y'all have a great week and thank you for reading!