In the fall of 1811, Caraway's Coffeehouse bustled with pre-dawn energy, the last place in Somerset where aristocrats mingled amiably with the middle class, newspapers could be read for free, and one could expect a proper, ball-grabbing brew at the start of the day. All three would be bygones before the end of the decade, but Five was glad they were still around when he'd fallen into 1807, or he wouldn't have gotten as far as he had in this foreign place and time.
The haberdasher and the mercer were at it again, practicing theatrics by loudly proclaiming the morning gossip from pamphlets strewn about the tables. Two coachmakers sat by the windows, discussing the merits of stackable leaf springs and their joint venture of assembling six new phaetons for the lower county. The baker, white powder dusting his forearms from the early knead, took his coffee standing before he ran back to stoke the ovens. Small copper pots, steaming with fresh brew, sat on the side bar where the amateur painter was explaining to his footman how he was "determined this day" to capture the beauty of the morning dew over Allen's Park.
Five always occupied the table in the back, watching these people that he knew by proxy (most of them not knowing him from Adam). He preferred the secluded corner in the back for his own business, facing the front and within a few strides to the back entrance for a strategic exit if the need arose. And also for discretion, because the man sitting in front of him kept shifting uncomfortably in his seat and hadn't said a word in the last ten minutes. Nervousness made Five nervous, and that was something he couldn't afford to show. Stay calm and collected, he reminded himself. Forgettable.
After a few beats of watching him re-read the second page of the contract, Five took notice of the boy outside who had been leaning against the pillar. His dark skin matched his dark, cropped hair, under a cap that looked twice the size of his head. His shirt and trousers hung oddly loose around his thin frame, reminding Five of his own clothes before he'd grown fully into them. When he met the boy's gaze full on through the window, the kid tore his eyes away, scuffing a strangely un-street-worthy shoe in the dirt.
Five tamped down the alarm bells that went off inside his head. No one should be staring at him through windows, or even noticing him in any way. He silently urged the man in front of him to finish reading so he could finish the deal, and then perhaps double back to see what that kid was about. He had no idea what loitering was called in this time - hell, he didn't even want to know what business that boy was up to, but he'd been very careful to keep a respectable distance from everyone in this town and had to make certain that his low profile was still low… and unprofiled. Otherwise, he would have a very serious problem. Who he was and where he came from was as unfathomable to these people as setting foot on the moon.
The people who knew him at all only knew him as "Five".
Not because there were four others like him, but because that was all they needed to know.
The only thing useful to people in the Caraway were business dealings, and that was one (of many) areas in which he excelled. For a man of sixty-two years, it was expected to demonstrate a certain savvy at striking a deal. As the young, scrappy chap he appeared to be, any display of business finesse was always met with a mix of raised eyebrows and distrust.
"Are there any points of question or clarification?" he asked the man, who had been staring at the same paragraph on the third page for the last five minutes. Five could never tell if his clients were thoughtfully deliberating or struggling with the verbiage. "My employer has versed me well in all aspects of the agreement," he continued. "And I'm sure that his reference spoke volumes about his results."
His client peered up from beneath the brim of his felted beaver, a full-grown man's scowl to Five's youthful, impatient gaze, and then he slowly nodded. "The Coach Robber has made an unpleasant appearance near Devizes. If they call out the yeomanry, we can't afford improvements on the… gate. If we don't reclaim our investments, everything goes upside down. This says that your employer's results are guaranteed?"
Five nodded once. Wait it out. Give him time.
The man gave the contract another once-over and slapped it down on the table. "I'll do it."
"My employer will be pleased," Five said smugly. He pushed the hand-folded envelope across the table to the client, who grudgingly took it. "When the initial funds are deposited, the work will begin."
"Two weeks," the man gruffed. "And then things will be… fixed?"
"Good as new," Five assured him. "You won't have trouble with your gate anymore."
The man opened the envelope and his brows met in a big bunch above his nose. He sputtered. "Fifteen percent of the profits for a term of six months? Are you daft?"
"My employer," Five said very carefully, "is very good at what he does. You will earn at least twice that, and if your… gate… ever needs servicing again, we can revisit the terms in a year's time."
And in a year's time, he might even look the part of an upstart entrepreneur, instead of a young whipper snapper… greenhorn… or whatever the hell they called children attempting to act like grownups in this place they called Bath, England. Five sniffed the air around him and wished these people would take more of them for their town's namesake.
"And what if it doesn't? What if the gate…" the man sitting stopped himself from raising his voice and looked around as if anyone else in the coffeehouse might have overheard. Five had to cover his impatience with a cough. The baker had just made a deal with the coachmaker that involved shillings and stockings and the new moon, and Five doubted that the stockings were for either the baker or the coachmaker. No one here would give half a care about broken gates. This early in the morning, they all had shops to get back to, clients to soothe, buns to proof…
"What if the gate ceases to operate after the… operation?" the man asked nervously.
Clearly, this man had a limited vocabulary, but Five wasn't here to judge. He was here for the deal, and it was time to drop names. "Look, did Sir Newman complain about reduced effectiveness once the terms were reached?"
"I… err… no. He's bought himself two new horses and joined the fencing club in London. Goes weekly, lucky bastard."
Actually, Five's last client had practically doubled his income because, due to Five's involvement in "fixing his gate", he had acquired funds necessary to provide the smoothest roads within fifteen miles of Bath. Smoother roads meant more traffic and more tolls, which meant more residual income for Five. That was his top priority: making a new life for himself, preferably one with a comfortable retirement plan.
His ability to jump through time and space at will was gone, and the curious machine that had thrown him into this world from that one had been left behind. So he was making the best that he could out of his current circumstances. Not that he had any choice in the matter.
After his last unfortunate and unintentional miscalculation, Five had feared that he'd be perpetually frozen in the body of a thirteen-year-old, but the gradual shift in height and the steady transformation from awkward lankiness into lean muscle with a greater amount of precision had almost caught him up to the age of maturity. He no longer folded over his slop cuffs and rolled his sleeves. It wouldn't be much longer before his youth would fade entirely, and then he'd look the part of a proper businessman. He might even visit Sheppard and Trinder's and spring for one of those fancy beaver hats. Still, the fact that he had no family tree, no pedigree, no proof of status, had limited his prospects for making a living.
For the last five years, his young appearance had served him with a slight advantage, providing a natural disguise to learn the streets and the ins and outs of pre-modern England. Any social blunders had been attributed to his apparent youth, and he could get away with snatching bread and taking from the poor box, and a few years later, sitting exams for the posh boys' school which had boasted 'free tuition for local residents'.
Rules and regulations had been drilled into him before - mostly involving who to save and who to stop at all costs. And he'd had his share of freedom too, alone in a veritable post-apocalyptic wasteland, surviving on nothing but the promise of another sunrise and the determination to reverse how the world had screwed itself over so badly. Not to sound unnecessarily nostalgic about his previous situation, but he'd always carried within him a keen sense of determination - saving his family had driven him onwards against impossible odds, kept him going for decades of isolation until he had finally achieved as close to closure as he could get.
It had been a long time since he'd been forced to rely on anyone for anything. If he had to be brutally honest with himself, the hardest part about literally dropping out of the sky (if one could grasp the impossibility of it) was that this life, this world of backwards technology and stifling social expectations, involved an unfathomable amount of codependency.
He was adjusting.
His client, however, was still mulling over the details of the down payment, so Five sat quietly, trying not to rush him. The boy from outside had moved inside the coffeehouse, likely waiting for someone to give a message to. He appeared no older than Five looked, but Five of all people knew that looks could be deceiving.
He kept telling himself that he was done with being a hero. (Actually, in some strange twist of fate at the end of time, he had literally told himself to stop saving the world.) After stumbling into this time and place, he had finally managed some semblance of normalcy, or at least the world wasn't trying to end itself every four days. Perhaps that was only because he wasn't aware of it, but still. If he played his cards right, retirement would finally be well within his reach, and the quiet of the universe had begun to suit him just fine.
The haberdasher suddenly leapt up onto a table, delivering a rousing soliloquy on the merits of Bandy's Lavender Bath Soap from a rumpled pamphlet. Cups rattled as his associate attempted to pull him down without success. It took both carriage makers and the baker to get him sat back down, and a serving lady scooted by to mop the spill. Murmurs arose around the room about "adding too much flavor" to his morning drink.
Okay, so maybe "quiet" wasn't an accurate description.
Five lost sight of the boy weaving through tables and patrons in heated conversations. When he looked back to his client, an envelope sat on the table in front of him. He couldn't decide whether the man looked bored or affronted by Five's inattention.
"I… I mean, my employer and I thank you for your business," Five said, pocketing the envelope. The payment was a justifiable agreement to the terms of the contract, even more binding than an inked signature, which he wouldn't get, nor ask for. This whole deal was as anonymous as he could make it. Posing as a messenger, meeting potential clients who had been referred by previous clients in public places and using code words in place of the job description were all part of the package. Five and his team were very good at what they did. This man didn't need to know about the team, or that Five was a stand-in for himself as his own employer. His new client would get shifty and suspicious, and the man was already enough of both.
The man left, an expression of bamboozlement pulling at his features. Five guessed that in any time or place, the difficulty in knowing who to trust was symptomatic of the human race. But if he was going to get what he wanted, he'd have to play whatever game they dealt here.
The British people of 1811 had a strict code of acceptable behavior, and at first, it had been a struggle for him to fit in and create the life he wanted. If they had guessed anything about his past, firstly, they wouldn't believe a stitch of it, and more importantly, they would lock him up in prison, or worse, the madhouse, which was as far from comfortable retirement as he could imagine.
Someone brushed up against him, and a jolt of electricity ran through his arm. He turned to see the boy standing right there, wide-eyed. They stared at each other, unmoving, and then the boy broke into a run out of the coffeehouse. Five, stunned, just let him go.
Through the window, he watched as the boy almost ran straight into the back of Five's client, who turned around and gave him a solid scolding. Afterwards, the boy slunk off, looking back at Five through the coffeehouse window. His haunted eyes mirrored Five's expression as he rounded the corner and out of view.
Five had come to believe that there were no superpowered people here, no aliens. No magic except for the fact that he'd survived all this time with little but his own ingenuity and a bit of luck. And the help of Daniel, who was as close to a friend as he'd ever had.
There was nothing in this time or place that could explain the literal jolt that had run up his arm and down his spine. His fingertips still buzzed with whatever had passed between him and the boy. That's it, Five thought. It was time to see what the staring contest had been all about. The kid couldn't have gone far. But before Five's chair scraped away from the table, a gruff hand yanked him backwards and out of his seat by his collar.
"Hey!" he yelped in surprise.
"You!"
Five staggered back and caught his feet under him as his chair hit the floor. He pivoted on a heel to meet the face of his "friend", his "previous employer", his mentor in everything between 1806 and 1811, when he'd fallen out of the sky just outside of London into a hedge full of thorns, wearing a private school uniform from the twenty-first century.
Yeah, Daniel knew a few more things about Five than the average coffeehouse patron.
Daniel stared back at him, a man in his mid-twenties with a mission, having not even let go of Five's collar. "You're the only one I know who can fix this!"