Work Text:
He was a magician.
He had actually finally made it, the papers to prove it were in his hands. The Book was tucked under his arm, his elbow pressing it against his side. In the train car (A whole train compartment, just for them!) with him was the rest of his circus, each of them involved in their own conversation. He smiled when his assistant, Charlie, looked at him, her eyes bright, her own smile lighting up the room.
They had made it.
Her wage was something he could afford to pay her now, his stomach happily full, his glasses new and suited to him. They had made it.
William Carter had become what he'd always wanted to be.
~
He was a scientist.
He sighed as he pulled his car up to the lot of land he had purchased. The deed sat on the seat beside him, tucked into the same envelope as the receipt for the car he drove. He'd saved up for them for two years, almost desperate to escape his family.
They were family, he loved them, but he needed to live anywhere but with them.
With the talk of institutionalizing those who were...Different, to put it delicately, he could not risk them constantly looking over his shoulder. He sighed, turned the car off and left the key in the ignition as he pulled the envelope of papers into his lap, thumbing through it slowly.
Landowner's deed, car ownership register, birth certificate, various other papers he knew to be important.
This was it, then.
This was the new life of Wilson P. Higgsbury.
~
A screeching noise drew William out of his head, a frown twisting his lips as he looked out the window.
The conversation fell silent as the door to their compartment opened. The conductor, a dour-faced man with a thick chin and round belly, looked at all of them and cleared his throat. "Evenin'," he greeted with a nod of his head. "Apologies, Misters and Missus, I just need to pass through, won't even be a moment."
The strongman nodded back, then returned to his game of cards with the mime.
Charlie laughed, her bell-like voice a high note in the remaining silence. "All fine, sir," she smiled at him, rising from her seat and moving to settle next to William. "How close are we to New York?"
"Just a day or so out, ma'am."
She nodded, still smiling, as she settled into her seat. The moment the man had left the car, however, she dropped her smile and looked around nervously. The windows were rattling in a way they hadn't before, the floor was quaking underneath them.
"Charlie, are you alright?"
The words were barely out of William's mouth when he was answered by a loud shriek from the train. It jolted suddenly, throwing Charlie out of her seat, William lunging forward to catch her. He looked around before settling her on the floor gingerly, nearly slamming his head against the wall as he made for the window, the train jolting his every step.
When he made it there, he threw open the shade.
The damnable thing had been closed the entire time, obscuring their sight of the outside world. Now they could see, however, and they saw a thick plume of black smoke rising from beneath the car of the train.
"William?" Charlie asked uncertainly.
The strongman and the mime had joined her on the floor, the three of them trying to hold still in the train car that was bucking as strongly as any wild horse trying to throw a rider. Their hands were white-knuckled as they held onto each other.
William swallowed his nerves, swallowed his pounding heart and light-headedness until he could speak.
"I think we may be about to crash," he told them quietly. From his vantage point, he was able to see one of the train wheels crack in half, parts of it flying past the window.
~
The house, once built, was a sturdy thing.
Two stories tall, plenty of room for a man with no children or wife and no plans to have either. He would spend his days here, experimenting, living as he pleased. There was talk of war, of danger stirring across the world. If he'd stayed with his family, there may be a draft in his future. Out here, he might be able to dodge it.
He was no great warrior.
His hands were soft, a lifetime of delicate work and late nights spent writing theorems and studying the sciences making that possible. His family had always been amused at his ideas, had outright laughed at some of them. The idea that the stars were anything more than spots of light in the sky, the mere thought of being able to communicate with someone across the world simply by wanting it...They had laughed, not intending to be cruel, but it had felt like the lash of a whip to his heart anyway.
'Perhaps,' he thought as he settled his tea kettle on the stove, 'I can prove some of my theories out here.'
It was, after all, the quietest place he had ever lived. The nearest neighbor was only five miles away, but even that felt too close in the peaceful air of his new home. The woods that surrounded him were vast, an enormous three acres of them his. He owned property, had saved his money until it was within reach and had bought it the moment he could afford it. The house was built with his own money as well. To abandon his family, his father had told him, there would be no income from them.
His mother had promised to help him when she could, talking firmly over his father's voice.
Sometimes he missed them, he imagined he always would, but this was for the better. A man with thoughts about other men should not be findable.
A knock on the door roused him from his thinking, pulled him from his own head and back into the world for a moment.
~
The woods that surrounded him were vast.
Behind him lay the wreckage of the train, smoke rising into the sky as he stumbled from the twisted metal. Charlie had been left back there, the strongman pressing his hands gently to the wound in her side. The mime had been dazed, a hit on the head as the train had rolled over and over once more before sliding to a halt.
They were alive at least.
They had barely seemed to hear him when he'd told them that he would go off to find help, hopefully, there would be a farm nearby, any sign of life that would be useful to help save the others. Somehow he had escaped the crash with little injury, the only sign of injury the pain in his head as he tried to think through his plans.
Find a farm or a house, inform those living there that aid was needed, return to his circus alive and hopefully find them still alive. Charlie had been the worst off, from what he could tell, and hers were the wounds he was worried over. There had been a terribly large amount of blood coming from underneath the torn edges of her dress. Strangely, he hadn't been able to see what had injured her.
A pain in his chest nagged at him for a moment and he put a hand over it.
For half of a second, he thought he saw blood on his palm when he pulled it away, but his hand was clean. There was no wound under his shirt, his bow tie slightly askew and his suit rumpled from sitting for so long, but he was fine.
He was fine.
Hopefully, once he returned to the train wreck, Charlie would be the same.
His thoughts came to a halt as he spied a house up ahead, the windows somewhat dark but signs of life present. Within the house, he could see a fire and he nearly cried in relief as he sped up his steps towards it. It was a practical house, seemingly new, and he praised his luck for once.
Help would be found.
The door was in front of him before he knew it and he knocked quite urgently on the wood. From behind the door, he could hear footsteps, hesitant ones as if the owner had been surprised and wary at the idea of company. He could not blame them, living out in these woods must have been a bid for solitude, however, he did need help and the house owner may well be the one to help him. He would leave them to their peace once lives had been spared.
The door opened.
~
There was no one there.
Wilson huffed out a small laugh as he stuck his head out the door, looking in all the directions he could see from his front porch. The sun was in the sky, not quite at the highest point, but bright enough certainly to see whomever had knocked. In every direction he looked there was no man, not a single footprint to suggest that there had ever been.
Closing the door, he laughed again.
Perhaps a bird had picked up a stone and sent it knocking against his door. There certainly was no person on the other side of it. He was as alone in his woods as he had been before, surrounded by trees and animals and nothing else.
When he went to return to the kitchen, turned on his heel to return to his tea, he nearly had a heart attack at the sight of a man standing in his house. "Pardon me," the man said, a strange lilt to his voice, "But I seem to require aid in this moment."
His eyes were almost blank, staring somewhere over Wilson's shoulder as he said the words. His form was unsteady, rocking on his feet as if exhausted, and he seemed ready to collapse at any moment. How he had gotten in Wilson did not know. He wore a suit with tails, a bow tie at his throat and glasses perched upon his beak of a nose. His long hands were covered in gloves and he was a stunning man.
Wilson swallowed nervously.
"Is," he started, "Is something wrong?"
"There was a train wreck," the man answered slowly, still struggling to stay on his feet. "My companions are back at the site of the wreckage, I struck out to find help for them. Perhaps you can be our aid in this time of need," he wobbled again, put a hand to his head. "We would be most grateful."
"Oh!" Wilson stood up straight, nodding. "I can certainly help. Are there any wounded? I may not know the most about medicine, but I will help as much as I am able."
"Charlie, my assistant," the man swallowed, his eyes falling closed for a second. "There was a wound to her side. I cannot say what damaged her for I did not see it, but she requires a hospital."
With a nod, Wilson gathered a few things, pulled the roll of bandages from beside his stove and tucked it into the bag he was putting together. A train wreck in the woods surrounding his home. Something about it sounded familiar but he brushed the feeling off as he returned to his new companion. "My name is Wilson Higgsbury," he finally introduced himself to the man. "Can you tell me your name?"
"William," came the slow reply, the taller man reaching for his chest and pulling his hand back to inspect it. As far as could be seen, William had no injuries. Perhaps he was a bit dazed, likely a hit to the head as the train had crashed.
Still, he thought as they went through the door, he ought to have heard something.
A dark thought occurred to him: What if he had been so involved in his own thoughts that he had simply ignored any surrounding noises? William must have slipped in through the door when he was looking outside, most of his body hanging out the entrance. He was fairly small, when pressed against a doorway there would definitely be room for even a bigger man to slip through.
Not that William was big, his lanky frame simply tall and broad shouldered.
He was the sort of man that Wilson would have liked to-
No.
William had said he had an assistant, a female assistant. While it was not out of the realm of possibility that their relationship was merely that, a man usually only had a female assistant when there was romance between them. Besides which, there were injured people in the woods and they needed help.
The trees loomed overhead, casting menacing shadows that seemed to reach for both of them.
"How far out is the crash from my home? I would hate to think that you were forced to drag yourself through the trees while so shaken up."
"It-" William stopped dead, frozen in his tracks.
They had finally cleared the trees, found the empty space where there had once been train tracks. Wilson remembered now, there had been a mention of an old railway line through the area. The man who'd sold the land to him had seemed quite relieved to be rid of that part of it.
Another strange thought occurred to him.
"William," he asked gently, watched the man study the ground as if he could see something Wilson could not. "What's your full name?"
The man turned to look at him, his eyes dark and wide as he trembled.
~
There was a story told to Wilson when he bought the land he currently lived on.
It was a news story, a terrible accident that had luckily only killed one person. A train traveling from California to New York, several days of travel with a circus contained inside the cars. Due for some maintenance, the train had stopped for a few hours.
Unbeknownst to the driver, the conductor, and the engineer, the repairs had been done shoddily.
There was a wheel on the train that had needed replacing, the mechanic looking it over deciding to weld a patch over it. Less than a day from their final destination, the wheel had cracked in half completely. The complete break had caused the driver to lose control of the locomotive, the entire length of it careening off the tracks. A few of the animals of the circus had died, but there had only been one casualty of the human variety.
The magician, an aspiring star of the stage, rightfully proud of himself for getting that far on his own merit.
~
"William Carter," he said, his bottom lip trembling out of some gut-wrenching combination of fear and acceptance. "I do apologize," he bowed his head as he looked at the stone slab on the ground before them. "I fear I have called you out here for no reason at all."
The wind picked up as he looked away again.
In between moments, the blink of Wilson's eyes, he disappeared.
~
"You like living in Carter Valley, son? Land here is good, plenty of room to grow whatever you need."