The morning is grey and gloomy, heavy clouds threatening rain and a distant rumble of thunder over misty mountains. This weather reflects Donald's mood perfectly as he sits simmering at the platform at Arlesburgh station with a rake of coaches. They are Duck's, for the western engine is away for routine maintenance and Donald has been called in to run his trains for the day.
He doesn't particularly like taking passengers. They complain a lot, and on the off chance that they're not, they remind him, painfully, of doubleheading stopping services with his twin brother on their old line.
But Douglas is gone now, cruelly scrapped while Donald was saved and hauled off to a new life he did not want - not without his brother.
Ye would have liked it here, Dougie. . .
He blinks back tears and stares solemnly ahead as the passengers finally begin to gather. He doesn't usually take them and they don't often see him as he tends to stick with goods, so they look and whisper. Sodor is infamous for its brightly painted sentient engines, so they are unused to the silent, dark figure before them. Donald doesn't particularly care though, and let's steam whisper out from his undercarriage as he waits.
Often, he sees the regular passenger engines speak briefly with passengers, friendly and cheerful, when they are addressed. Donald is not addressed and does not speak, instead focusing his attention on the tracks below him. He schools his features, carefully blank, when the stationmaster glances his way. Once, he'd been told that passenger engines should smile, to make their passengers feel welcome, but Donald doesn't smile. Not anymore. Not without Douglas.
Small footsteps sound nearby then, and he looks up to see a small child running towards him. He cringes, inwardly hoping that the kid doesn't try to touch him. He doesn't like to be touched by strangers, it reminds him of things he'd rather not remember and it wouldn't be the first time someone had burned their hand on the scalding surface of a steam engine boiler.
Instead however, the child stops and points, calling back to his mother. "Mummy! Mummy, why is he painted black? Is he in mourning?"
Donald feels his boiler run cold. The fact that the child even knows of such a thing makes him feel sick. The fact, then, that if it's obvious enough for a small child to pick up on, is he really fooling anybody? He's been playing this game, pretending at being whole and 'fine' since the day he arrived here, and he knows he's not very good at it. Duck had seen through it within the first week and Edward, though he's never addressed it directly, knows something is wrong, Donald is sure.
But he doesn't want to just give up and tell them the truth, doesn't want to dredge up that story - his last memories of his twin - because he knows it will only make living without him harder. He doesn't want the other engines' pity, or the looks he knows he'll get when they think he's not looking. But. . .
"Aye." He says, before the child's mother can scold her son. "Ye're verra observant, wee lad." His voice comes out low and strangled, a rumbling accent that might have been calming under other circumstances. "I-I lost mah brother a while back."
The boy looks up at him, curious. "I didn't know engines could have brothers." He says. "I thought that was only a people thing."
"Aye." Donald replies, and he doesn't feel so distant now. "Dougie was mah twin. We worked together everyday. I miss him verra much." A tear blossoms in his eye and runs down his cheek.
"Oh dear, don't cry." The mother says kindly. "I'm sure he wouldn't want that."
"But what happened to him?" The boy asks innocently. "I don't think I ever saw him here."
Donald thinks he might be starting to disassociate again as he replies. "The Fat Controller didnae want him, and the other railway on the mainland didnae want him either. They dinnae like steam engines anamoor." He says, purposely keeping it vague for the child's sake.
The mother catches on quickly though, and her face falls in realization. Donald looks away, holding back heartbroken tears.
"It's awful." The woman says then. "What they're doing, I don't understand it. You steam engines, you've worked so hard for them for so many years, and this is how they repay you? It's disgraceful. They could at least keep the sentient ones."
"Aye." Donald agrees heavily. He thinks depressedly that if they were human, Douglas' death would have been considered murder and someone would have been punished for it. But they're not, and it isn't and that makes everything all the harder.
"One day." The woman continues. "You'll have rights, you'll see."
The guards whistle sounds then and Donald whistles back, a deep, sorrowful sound. The mother and son disappear behind him to get on board and when they're gone, out of the station and down the line, his wheels pound the rails as his tears finally fall.