"One could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon." - 'Peter Pan' by J.M. Barrie
Claire was four years old when he found his mother crying because his father had lied to her and walked out on them. That's when he decided that he hated liars and lies. Not when they did this to his mother. With all the gumption that he could muster, Claire said as much to his mother's face and startled her out of her crying and into watery giggles. He was very proud of himself for achieving such a thing. A few years later, he stared at his mother with awe and wonder in his eyes as she stood her ground with a cast-iron frying pan against some thugs thinking that they could break into their little apartment. She kept them out and got the attention of a neighbor when they tried again.
"You are my world and nothing else matters. You and me, we're the only people who matter in this world of mine. No one can take you away from me and there is nothing that can ever make me leave you."
Those words stayed with him when his mother died two years later from some disease he didn't know the name of and that the doctor didn't know how to treat. He wanted to rage and burn and cry and collapse in on himself but he couldn't. Not when he had things to do; not when he wasn't alone.
"I won't completely die. That's what I believe, so smile and believe in me. I'm your mother and I will never truly die. I'll be right here, in your heart, forever."
The neighbor from two years ago helps him and so do the man's three sons. They don't make him leave the apartment, but rather help him pay the bills instead. Several people had tried to make him leave and promptly stopped when faced with a red haired boy glaring with glowing purple eyes flanked by three other boys, each with their eyes glowing orange and green and indigo. Later he learns that the neighbor is actually the head of the Gandor Family and that they were living in an apartment to make sure his own sons were raised humbly instead of luxury.
It is this same man who takes him aside and explains about the instincts (possessiveprotectiveragedestroyhealfreedom) that seem to war inside him. Old Man Gandor tells him all about the Clouds, Storms, and Suns that lie in his soul and his blood. How the Gandor brothers each have Sky and Lightning and Mists in each of them. That repressing them would be disastrous and that accepting them would make them easier to use. When Claire and the brothers Luck, Berga, and Keith all manifest their Flames, they are given training to control them. They are told about the stereotyping of the Flame types and are encouraged to explore how to use them on their own instead of the "approve" uses alone.
"Your Flames are you, an extension of your soul, of your Will to live. No one can ever take that away from you and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Don't listen when people say that something is impossible. The world is yours for the taking, for you to mold and shape."
Firo, all sandy hair and hazel eyes with the aura of a puppy, is found on the streets using is his own yellow flames to keep himself warm. Its only months after the talk about Flames when they find him and somehow Firo finds himself with four new brothers and a home. He is theirs and they are his. He is their little brother and they teach him everything they know and Old Man Gandor approves, despite the levels of sheer chaos and mischief that follow. These boys, his boys, will be a force to be reckoned with and heaven help anyone who tries to come between them.
The final pieces of Claire came with a sudden bout of restlessness and a need to just go. Old Man Gandor simply gives him a knowing look and points him in the direction of a travelling circus. He's barely sixteen and Old Man Gandor sees him off with a smile and a hug. While Claire doesn't have the best of morals, he does remind his fourth son to not compromise who he is for the whims of somebody else. His brothers remind him to come back and teach them what he learns, to be who he is, to do what he loves, and to remember to visit. Claire is wearing a reddish shirt and dark green pants that day, and Firo thinks is makes his brother look a lot like the Peter Pan he idolizes. In the travelling circus, he finally embraces everything he is and feels and throws himself into the troupe wholeheartedly. He learn everything he possibly can and excels at whatever he puts his mind to. His Flames, all three, finally settle now that he has fully accepted everything he is.
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Vino is born in the circus on the night a man tries to force himself on one of the women in the troupe. He snarls and leaps into action with all the grace of a tiger as he tears the man away from her and destroys the offensive waste of humanity. When he comes out of the protective-rage induced haze, there are red-violet Flames on his hands and in his eyes and red blood splattered everywhere else. The woman just smiles, no fear, and thanks him. He grins back and there is no remorse or regret in him at all. When he escorts her back to the troupe and someone asks about the red on them, she smiles beatifically with mischief and says they may have spilled to get back at an annoying drunk.
She takes him back to her room and shows him her own barely flickering green Flames then explains that she is a hitman whose target was the man that he killed. The woman isn't mad but grateful for his timely intervention because she knows her own abilities but lost herself in her anger when she saw him. The man was a serial rapist and murder and she couldn't allow someone like that to continue to live. He agrees and then asks to learn, asks her to teach him to be neater, to not get covered in blood unless he wants to be, to be a hitman. Claire knows himself, knows that he feels no remorse for scum like that. He heard his own Storm singing in the destruction he caused, his Cloud snarling at the audacity to touch someone that was his without their consent, and his Sun burning to heal her injuries and scorch away the unworthy. Her response is that he needs a name and 'Vino' rolls off of his tongue immediately.
Vino, for Italian wines that Old Man Gandor likes, for the blood spilled everywhere, for the red Storm in his eyes and on his hands. Vino is Claire's Storm Flames incarnate, despite them being his secondary Flame. Under his skin, his Cloud propagates the effectiveness of his Flames, his other abilities, and the amount of blood his targets spill. The Sun augments his body and heals him as he goes. Vino is as bloody as he is red and completely tied into Claire in a way that his other names will never be, until Skull is born.
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The Railtracer both is and is not a permanent identity, unlike Claire the primary and Vino the bloody. He begins as a scary story, a monster that picks off passengers on trains in the night and the only way to live is to avoid him till dawn. The troupe children love scary stories, especially this one that Claire creates. When Claire leaves the circus to travel the rails as a conductor, he brings the story with him and tells it to every other conductor he meets. Sometimes, he's beaten to the punch and the story has new embellishments. However, the Railtracer doesn't come to life until the night he's on a train from Chicago to New York on the most unfortunately named train to date. It's christened The Flying Pussyfoot and he wonders if the guy who named it was drunk.
The other conductors aren't true conductors and all hell breaks loose. He starts as Vino, killing both men who say their targets are the other passengers on the train. But Vino turns into the Railtracer as he crawls along the sides and undercarriage of the train, targeting the Russos and the Lemures on his train. There are several he deliberately spares, like Czeslaw the Immortal kid that he spent some minutes torturing in the name of attempting to kill. But the kid didn't die and quite honestly, if his morals weren't so skewed, he would probably feel regret instead of curiosity over what he did to the kid. He'd never met someone who was immortal but without Flames involved somehow. Ladd was fun but turned annoying and Lua was odd but he left them for the police instead of killing them like the others that were tossed off the train.
Chane, though. Chane Laforet, who left a small cut on his face. The Railtracer slides back into Vino who admires her grace and her ability with her weapon. Claire admires her and is intrigued by the one person outside of his brothers who has ever physically left some kind of mark on him. She was something else, a type of person he'd never met before. No one had intrigued both Claire and Vino and it was incredible. He was drenched in blood, his white suit turned red, hair dripping with blood, his hands leaving blood marks and his face painted with the blood of the first kills of the night. She didn't scream or run, but sank into a fighting stance with a determined look in her eye. He told her he wanted to know her, to find her again, and proposed to her on the train roof top. In the chaotic aftermath, she vanished but he found her message telling him to find her in New York.
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Alas, to hide his involvement in the bloody affair, he had to kill off his identity as Claire Stanfield. At least in the public records. In the backstreets of New York, be purchases a new name and Felix Walken breathes. Felix is Claire and Claire is Felix. He hasn't told anyone yet and takes the opportunity to mess with his brothers before meeting up with them. Of course, they have their own surprises as well. Somehow they are Immortal like the kid from the train. He grins and says nothing of the relief that burn through him because now they can't be separated. Then Firo pipes up about his promotion with the Martillo Family, who are now allies with the Gandors. It all results in the four of them tackling the youngest in congratulations.
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The Handyman comes into being not too much later. Claire/Felix finds Chane and almost immediately rescinds the proposal after getting advice from Luck and Keith. Apparently, proposing to someone you just met wasn't something that you did. Chane does find something agreeable about him and he courts her before they eventually tie the knot. That's when The Handyman arrives in the Underworld to take the more lucrative jobs that call for a 'natural death'.
The Handyman is very different from Vino. He's meticulous, quiet, and is known for his use of Sun Flames. Of course, there are Cloud flames in the background increasing the potency of his Sun Flames and he uses the Storm to burn away any Flame signatures or evidence of his involvement. When asked by Luck, he openly admits that he wants to give Chane the world. After all, Claire might have been infatuated with her, but Felix married her, Vino admires her, and The Handyman helps provide for her.
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By the time they have to change their names again, because people notice when you don't age, their children look more like their siblings. (The night of their wedding, Firo gave Chane the Elixir of Immortality at her request.) Considering that he and his wife, to a lesser extent, enjoy causing bits of chaos, the family rolls with it. So he sells the name Felix and picks up the new identity of Jakob Henderson, with his wife Chanel for the next couple decades.
When they change their names again, they are Wilhelm and Chantal Martin and it is Wilhelm that is dubbed Red Man, then Red Skull and finally becomes the Immortal Skull of his newest circus troupe. He's not ye sure where his wife or kids are but he's not completely worried. He and their daughter Claudia decided to come up with what he thinks is a fantastic game of Continental Hide-and-Seek. Charon and Chantal just rolled their eyes but grinned so he knows they've got chaos of their own planned. The longer he stays with the circus troupe, the more Claire (not Felix or Jakob or Wilhelm) slowly bleeds into Skull with pieces of Vino. He supposes that soon, it will only be Claire, Vino, The Handyman and Skull left since Claudia had taken on the Railtracer for herself. Like the other civilian identities, he knows that Skull will have to "die" but he's new enough that he's got a while yet before that happens so he's going to throw himself completely into this troupe before moving on to the next one. Long enough to leave a hint for Charon and Claudia and Chantal but not long enough for them to catch him yet.
They're an immortal family (they let Charon and Claudia decide for themselves) and they've got all the time in the world.
(However, Skull will not be dying, at least not in the Underworld. If anything, Skull will become a permanent fixture and a well-known name, even more than Vino or The Handyman. All because of the Man in the Iron Hat)
Well this is definitely the longest chapter I've ever written. Honestly, I kind of surprised myself. I thought about splitting it up but since this was a bit of background and foundation laying, I decided against it. This chapter covers a lot of time, even though I don't actually specify it. Here's the number though: 60-65 years have passed in this one chapter alone.
If you guys want to see the timeline, I'll add it to the next chapter considering how long this one is.
On Claire/Skull's immortality: it's a mix of Cloud, Storm and Sun Flames.
About the Peter Pan thing: the book came out in 1902, Claire was born in 1904, and the first stage production was 1906. Peter's first ever depiction was on stage with a reddish tunic and dark green leggings.