Work Text:
i.
Clare Mccall is born in the dead heat of summer under the absent light of a new moon. It’s Rosh Chodesh, as her mother will remind her in the years that come, the beginning of a new month, the birth of a new moment.
In ancient times, fires would be lit on top of hilltops to spread the conformation of the new moon. Clare has one too, in her stomach and her heart and her soul. From her very first moments it’s the muted sound of sirens in her ears, strong and ever present, almost like a call to prayer.
ii.
Her mother is a professor at UIC and her father a nurse, so between the long hours she finds lots of places to hide away. In lecture halls behind her mother, underneath her desk during office hours, and most importantly to Clare: amongst the bookshelves.
She likes to read but what she really wants is to learn . She learns how to tie her shoes before any of her friends, learns to light candles every week like her mother, learns the stories of the city and the fires that keep coming. That’s the one that sticks in her mind.
iii.
Clare doesn’t grow up with siblings. She’s an only child, and her teachers say that they can tell. She does have lots of cousins though, and even at 10 she thinks Winnie’s the coolest. She lives up in New York and wears leather jackets and is in Blittle League .
Clare isn’t allowed to play blaseball because her dad says her legs bend too far, so instead when they’re in town she’ll sit in front row of the bleachers with her book of the week and not even crack it open. It’s worth it just to see how the ball flies.
iv.
The hebrew month of Av is categorized by the need for pause. That is the moon that Clare was born under; one that’s meant for both mourning and rebirth, and she finds herself straddling that line more often than not.
She’s paralyzed by decisions pretty easily. Where to go to school, what to major in– In the end her mom sits her down and reminds her of her first love. So it’s Library Sciences at UIUC, enough out of the city to be fresh, close enough to home that she can find it in herself to breathe.
It’s something new.
v.
She meets Conrad a year into post-grad, when her colleagues drag her to a bar in Halstead. She’s by herself, the conversations too much to follow even with her hearing aid, but ze is suave and charismatic, and brilliant in a way that would scare her if she didn’t know she could match it. Conrad is kind too, picking up her cane when it slips off her chair, and paying for her ubler home. When ze asks for her number, she jots it down on the back of hir hand with a heart and a smile, and well– That’s that.
vi.
“You know, I never saw myself settling down like this until you.”
“Well, don’t be doing it on my account. That’ll only make both of us miserable.”
They’re at the diner across from Clare’s library, knees touching as they share a plate of fries. She knows in her heart of hearts that she’s right, that this can only work if they both commit.
Hir eyes widen. “I want this. I do.”
And she can imagine it too; misplaced wires on every surface, papers strewn over the counter and she really, desperately wants it, for better or worse.
“Let’s do this.”
vii.
She’s just started working for the city when the Great Fire hits. Conrad gets swept up in the evacuation, but Clare stays behind. The archives are one of the most fortified places in the whole city, and the chance to document the most important thing in the past hundred years– she can’t possibly say no.
When the smoke starts to filter in, she leans into the static in her ears. She doesn’t need the city to tell her in words what she already knows; Clare Mccall is a protector of knowledge, proprietor of history. Clare Mcall is a Firefighter.
viii.
Winnie joins the Mills lineup; Clare joins the Firefighters shadows. She knows she’ll never get pulled, but there’s still part of her that’s 10 years old and sees her cousin made of starlight. Conrad joins too, hir robots intriguing enough for the city to take notice. They're holding hands when they enter, the cold and grey overtaking them.
(Decades later, when she hears about Winnie’s incineration from Declan who hears from Charla, it just about breaks her. To know that she had created a career for herself and Clare never once got to see her play hurts, and she can’t even cry.)
ix.
The shadows change her just like the Great Fire did. When she lights shabbat candles, her face is skeletal in the reflection of her kiddush cup. They’re harsh and unforgiving; muted colours and shades of grey, but she revels in it. The constant cold makes her bones ache, but she finally gets to focus on her work, really focus and that’s enough.
It consumes her almost, her research and her works and her thoughts, even as the years stretch on in continued silence. To trade endless time for warmth; well, it’s a compromise she’s willing to make.
x.
It goes on like this for years; monotony informed by melancholy and exhaustion. They’re twenty years into the bone-numbing cold of it all when it all just snaps, one argument too many over something that doesn’t matter. It’s not Conrad and it’s not her; it just is.
Ze lets Clare keep the apartment so she doesn't have to deal with the horror of finding an accessible one again, and leaves with two packed bags and a kiss to her temple. For the first time in almost three decades it’s just her and empty brick walls, and she still can't cry.
xi.
Life continues on, though, because it has to.
So she keeps to her shelves, filling the damp basement corner of the city’s archives with things that filter in: a yellowing note from Tyreek Olive to Landry Violence, a scribbled schedule by Thomas Kirby; every piece carefully filed away in her cabinets. She spends long days and nights there, eats dinner alone in her empty kitchen, does her PT exercises, and carries on. She learns to dial up the space heater to it’s max. She learns what it’s like to feel the rain on her face again. She learns how to breathe.
xii.
Time there is nebulous, but not long after she hears about Winnie, Conrad disappears. That night she lies awake, feverish and clammy. When she gets up, things feel different; she feels different, a little stronger, a little more stable.
At the end of that year, she finds a figure at her door. She only recognizes him from her press archives: Caleb Alvarado, pitcher for the Chicago Firefighters.
“It’s time, Clare.”
She doesn’t need to know what he’s saying to know what he means.
“I was never meant to leave.”
He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Give them hell.”
xiii.
“You left.”
“You stayed.”
Clare and Conrad are sitting by the pitcher’s mound. It’s weird to feel the warmth of sunlight on her face again, even if this one is manufactured.
“Do you regret it?”
“Not for a second. You?”
“How could I? I’ve never regretted staying, Clare, not once.”
“Good.”
It could be so easy, she thinks, to slip back into how it was. She also thinks it would be a mistake.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to live, Conrad. I’m going to step onto that field and be the fire we both know I am.”
And she will.