Chapter Text
“I was an American, or I suppose I still am.” The Sky Captain leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs so that one ankle rested on his other knee as he looked over the prospective engineer in the dim light of the bar. Stories of the skies were in abundance, but he found the best crew joined him for his tales of the Surface. The engineer, a person of ambiguous gender presentation and an equally ambiguous name, had the prettiest green eyes the Captain had seen in ages. They were too young for him, but he could appreciate their beauty without any lecherous desire.
“I was born in a mountain town in the United States. The woods were verdant and green like this here Reach, but they weren’t as menacingly large. The leaves on the trees were no larger than your head in the undergrowth, and it rained every evening in the summer, and it snowed gently in the winter. The most fearsome creatures were mountain lions. They were the size of the Tigers, but as intelligent as a dog. The Surface is full of stupid creatures.”
“How did you get to London, then?” The engineer, a test driver really, wasn’t entirely ignorant of the Surface. They’d been born in the Reach, but they’d had their education. They knew an ocean at least as large as a small worldlet separated London from the americas.
“I’m getting there.” The Captain grumbled. His favorite tale to tell was the time his dogs had found a blackbear cub and instead of attacking it like they might a raccoon, they tried to take it in as a lost puppy. Something about how it didn’t run away triggered a pack instinct, he guessed. The story ended with him grabbing his dogs and running before Mama Bear could come for them. His dogs were stupid. He wasn’t.
“I worked on a steamer running trade on the Mississippi-- a long river that ran down the country, and I saw the worst of my homeland. I saw some of the best of my homeland too, but it inspired a wanderlust.” He reached out and pointed at the Driver’s chest, barely avoiding poking them. “I think you know it. Well. After London fell, I joined an ocean faring vessel to the Mediterranean. I sailed that sea for a year or two, then I heard of how London had changed. There was a port, a series of locks, that would let a captain sail his steamer down into the under zee. But it wasn’t wanderlust that called to me this time. It was… personal.”
He sighed. Lines dug into his forehead and around the corners of his lips like cracks in a foundation. “My name wasn’t always Emory McArthur. I was always a McArthur, but not an Emory. Course, that’s Captain McArthur to you. It’s so different here that I can’t imagine you’d understand. Here, it doesn’t matter who you love or who you came from. It doesn’t matter who you are. The color of your skin. The body you were born with. That doesn’t matter here, and it stopped mattering after the fall in London. Mostly. In London, I didn’t have to hide any more. There were people who could help me be the real me. I could love any one I wanted provided they loved me back.”
“What’s the name of your ship, Captain?” The Driver had been taken in. All that was really left was to negotiate the paperwork.
The Captain grumbled under his breath about youth these days, then responded, “We call it the Oh No, Not Again. ”
“Alright, Captain!” They bounced to their feet, a furious excitement taking hold of them. “Where to?”
“Easy, kid!” The Captain leaned to the side to lift a thin case, set it on the table, and pulled out two forms. Contracts with blank spaces for names, duties, and anything else to be negotiated. “I’m keen to take you on, but I don’t let my crew be reckless. My officers less so.” He Looked at them like his captain had once looked at him. A stern look befitting a teacher wrangling a herd of children. “So we’re going to go over all of this. First, this is what I expect of you--”
The kid barely skimmed the contract before shrugging and reaching to sign their name. The Captain grabbed their wrist before they could put the pen to paper. The engineer’s eyes flashed a bright green. They waited, then, for the sky captain to explain his expectations.
“I expect you to adhere to the schedule. Right now I have two engineers on shifts and a third lookin’ for retirement. The old bastard came with the locomotive, but it’s time for him to settle down. Shifts are eight hours long, or a third of a day. You will work a shift every day. That leaves sixteen hours for yourself.” The Driver swayed from side to side, seemingly bored with the Captain’s words. “Maintenance and upkeep costs are deducted before wages allotted, and everyone has to wear really itchy underwear and kiss the engine’s hatch as they--”
The Driver shook their head, taken aback. “Captain, if you thought I wasn’t listening, I was. Give me some credit.”
The Captain grinned and scratched at some stubble on the side of his jaw. “Yeah, alright kid. You know, you remind me of an old friend… Someone back in the Neath. They barreled headlong into things without thinking too hard on it. Don’t give me that look with your wide puppy-dog eyes. That wasn’t always a good thing. Or even often a good thing. Now let’s finish this. I got a delivery of seeds waiting on the Not Again , and I want to get them to Avon before they start rooting.”
The new engineer sparked a mix of grief and nostalgia in the captain that manifested as an affectionate melancholy. Bright-eyed and careless, they brought him back to his days in the Neath. On the Zee. Of Wolfstack Docks and a clueless revolutionary scholar. He left that friend in the Iron Republic. Lost them to lawlessness and revolution. They were still there, but they were lost to him.
His affection for them didn’t blind him to their flaws, and when they returned to the locomotive, he took the engineer on duty aside.
“They’re a spitfire. I’m trusting you to help me keep them in line. And,” he added thoughtfully. “Tell me if they start doing anything particularly weird. Any oddball habits. Fixations. Beyond the normal star-sickness.”
A scholarly driver was the least of the Captain’s concerns, as the Incautious Driver began putting the engine through its paces before they’d even left port. An antacid, however, would soon become a top priority.