Nine: Dickensian AU
"Anna, you're a big sister now, so take good care of everyone, would you?" the lady scientist said kindly, her hand resting on the back of the dark-haired girl.
Dark-eyed, they were, and both pale as white marble. Not that awful ash-white that the factory girls turned after two or three years at the looms, but a healthy-looking pale, with roses in their cheeks.
The girl looked the three of them over. Schuyler felt her eyes rest on him, taking in his scruffy, pale hair and the catlike slant of his yellow eyes, the ones that had the others from the orphanage calling him "witch-boy." The dirty scraps of cloth he was trying to pass off as clothing probably didn't help him look any more respectable.
Poor Tansy wasn't any better off. Her shift had once been a froth of white lace, but now it was stained and ripped. Her mossy-green hair was dull with soot, and there was still a brownish-green bruise on her cheek from the last time an older boy had tripped over her and then taken offense at her existence.
Conrad, of course, looked fine—even with his face streaked with dirt and his clothes in shreds, those big ol' brown eyes of his shone bright and puppy-like, and his dirtied black hair seemed pathetic rather than repulsive. If it weren't for the fact that he was all but mute, some nice couple would've whisked him off years back.
Little Miss Anna concluded her inspection, then smiled widely at the three of them.
"You look as though your lives up to this point have been difficult," she said. "But now that you're living here, with me and Mother and Father, you won't have to worry anymore."
Silly naïve know-nothing rich girl, Schuyler thought. But I'd sure like it if she were right.
A/N: In case you didn't realize this yourself, this AU is just set in the time and setting of Dicken's books. I didn't try to write like Dickens—he's really wordy, and it's easy to do incorrectly. The altered-for-location/time-period names are meant to correspond to the meanings and sounds of the original names, or, failing that, to the personalities of the characters carrying them. Ayano, meaning "from color" was renamed Anna, which means "grace"—not the same meaning, but certainly fitting for Ayano (more in the "forgiveness" sense than in the "moves gracefully" sense, but stil…). Shuuya, whose name contains a kanji meaning "study" or "discipline", is Schuyler, meaning "scholar". Tsubomi, meaning "flower bud" is Tansy, a type of flower. Kousuke's name means "blessed help," but I couldn't find a direct English equivalent, so I called him "Conrad," "brave counsel," as a reference to his song, Shounen Brave.