A Harmless Swap - An Edward Mini Fic: Part 5: The Culprit
Link to Part 1: Link to Part 2: Link to Part 3: Link to Part 4:
“There you are!”
It had taken almost an hour, but following the trail proved to be a worthwhile quest. The sun had almost set at this point, and they were chasing the night eastward. Edward’s lamp was on, and sharp shadows emphasized the rise of the rails from the sleepers, as he traced the red trail on top of the iron.
And it was there, maybe two hundred feet away from the station, sat the wash down, that the red color had grown faint and finally disappeared some miles back, but still recognizable, and disappeared beneath the end of a familiar blue bunker. “Thomas!”
The culprit hissed.
Edward eased on the breaks. His mouth parted in disbelief.
This brat actually had the gall to hiss
After Edward had stuck his funnel out for him? Shamed himself in front of The Fat Director for him? Risked his crew and everything for HIM?
“Leave me alone!”
“Ohhhh, I don’t believe I will.” He was sick and tired of his kindness being taken for weakness. No more. “You and I are going to have a talk. Turn around so that you're looking at me.”
“I can’t! Driver’s gone to get help! Just—just go away!” He had nowhere to go. No way to avoid this. “You already figured out what happened! There’s nothing to talk about!”
Edward chuffed on closer, undaunted. “Not why you didn’t wait for me to get there? Not what made you think it was a good idea to take the train when I explicitly told you not to? When you haven’t even tried to prove you listen when I’m talking to you?”
Though he was still far away, the shout made Edward’s piston rods wobble. He breathed out hard, hating that he was still startled so easily.
But he wasn’t going to be scared off by his own apprentice.
Since Thomas wasn’t going anywhere, the Seagull backed up all the way to the switch, then inched up on the track to his right until they were buffer and buffer.
What Edward saw shouldn’t have come as a surprise, and yet it did. The implicating leftside wheel hadn’t been the only part of Thomas stained red. The paint covered his face almost completely, splattered over his wheel cover, and clashed with the pastel red of his buffer beam. Drips of water in varying shades of scarlet rolled down his cheeks, and around the bulb of his nose. Dirty rags, meant for soot and dust, sat in two small piles on the ground near the rails, covered in matching splotches.
It looked as if humans had tried to scrub away the paint, and gave up as soon as they realised it was pointless. Aided by the sun, it was already half dried, and it didn’t take a seasoned engine to figure out water and soap alone wouldn’t get it off now.
Thomas looked a disgrace. He looked defeated. He looked sorry.
No. He was sorry. There was an obvious red tinge in his eyes that wasn’t from the paint.
That was all it took. That anger Edward packed away fizzled out effortlessly. “That was your first real crash, wasn’t it?” he asked softly.
A bird tweeted somewhere nearby, probably in a nearby tree.
“Scary, isn’t it?” the older engine pressed.
“I wasn’t scared.” But Thomas sniffed anyway.
“It’s okay to be scared. Accidents are scary.”
“I mean, no one was hurt, but…” Fresh tears welled up in Thomas’s eyes. It was no use hiding it. He dropped the pouty act, and tears ran down his grey and crimson cheeks. “So I don’t know why I feel… like this.”
“No one had to be hurt to be upset. You’re entitled to it. Even the oldest, saltiest engines I’ve ever met get upset when things go wrong.”
“It’s just that I-I didn’t know what I was doing! And the yardsmen were no help. And Driver didn’t know, either!”
Edward asked again: “Why didn’t you wait for me?”
“And admit that I haven’t learned a thing?! I just thought… y’know, if there was a chance I could’ve had it all done when you got there, maybe… ” He kept moving his gaze. To the sky. To the grass. To the non-stained rails ahead. Anywhere but the other engine’s eyes. “Maybe it’s all for the best. I know you hate this. These Sundays, with me.”
“No! You’ll tell me you don’t, and that you really like working with me, but I know you don’t! You’re not an engine to be cross about nothing, and you’ve been cross!”
“Don’t cut me off.” Edward’s voice was firm. Authoritative. But not angry. Not anymore. “Please. And I don’t hate working with you.”
“Yes you do! You’re just too nice to admit it. Anyone else would have shunted me clear out of their yard by now!”
Another silence, as they listened to more little bird chatter. When Thomas spoke again, his voice was hoarser. “Y’know, this is the farthest I’ve been out on the mainline by myself since I took Henry’s train? When I came to the island, I was excited, shunting freight next to the bridge for you to take ‘round the place. Like every day was a big adventure, and I’d never known what was coming next. Sure, the work was harder, back then. But I felt like I was lucky, because I got to be a part of something bigger. Something that was only just starting. I could see each end of the island when we built the main line together, you and me.” A little smile that had momentarily taken to his face vanished. “And then the big engines came, and they put me in the Big Station yards. I didn’t even mind it. Not at first. Driver said it was like a holiday, and he barely had to lift a finger, since I did all the work once he let go of my regulator. But then days went by. Then weeks, and months… and I’ve never even got to pull a train. A real, proper train, that goes for miles and miles. Not until Henry was ill… Have you ever felt like everybody’s out having fun, and you’re all alone?”
“I just want to be a real engine. I want to be treated the same as everybody else here! To be respected. Like you are.”
The ‘gull nearly snorted. “Respect? Me? Thomas… they don’t hold me to any higher respect than they do you!”
“But that’s not true!” Thomas’s voice cracked, and for a second he sounded just like he had the day Edward first met him, with all the optimism and wonder of a toddler that could still be carried in his father’s arms. “You’re the first engine here who’s done it all—shunting, freight, and passenger work. Maybe the others won’t ask for your help, but they’re still looking at you. Watching you, from the side of their eyes.”
Whether or not it was true—and Edward had to doubt it severely—the fact that Thomas said it and believed it, said it with such conviction, was enough to make the older engine’s mouth hang open in realisation.
Thomas wanted to be important. And he was trying to learn how to be important, by watching him.
The mainland castoff. The shy steamer, good for nothing but second-heading when he was new and should have been top-of-the-line. The small fish from the big, big pond. The one who was here, because he fought to prove himself here. Because he spent so long here. Because his home railway didn't want him back after the war!
He never considered himself a leader, never thought he’d ever have a chance to be, even if he wanted to! Now, whether or not he was ready to face it, there was an engine who was looking to him as an example.
Bliiiiiiiiiimey. He wondered if Vicarstown bridge actually turned upside down halfway across, and he never noticed, because all of the sudden the world felt dizzyingly topsy turvy…
“The waters do twinkle, by the way.”
He’d almost not registered what the tank engine had said. “What?”
“Well I mean, you know how in your stories—one of your stories, anyway—that the water in the river twinkles at midday? I thought it was just a figure of speech, or whatever. But back when we swapped jobs, the sun caught the waters as we passed over the viaduct. It’s… nice. And then there’s the flowers, and the different kinds of birds that fly over-funnel. And then there’s the passengers. They can be rude, some of them. And I can be rude to them back, even though I know I’m not supposed to talk back to humans. But most of them are friendly. They talk to me. And they tell me stories about the world off the island, just like you used to tell me stories, before you had to go away to your branch line. One of them, a lady, said she thought I’d be decent on a branch line, too. Think of that!” He paused and gazed out onto the grass. “I think about it all a lot. It was hard, but it was fun… before the trucks took over, and it all went downhill. Just thinking about it now makes me feel a little better.”
Edward thought long and hard about what had just been said. He crawled up next to Thomas so he could study his face a little closer. “This whole thing: wanting to pull trains, this isn’t… really about showing up the big engines, is it?”
“I thought you wanted to be like Gordon.”
“I wanna to be like everybody else!” Thomas repeated. “I wanna see the world, and maybe make some new friends.”
Edward rocked back against his own breaks. “Listen, I’m sorry I was cross. As a matter of fact, I think I’m the one who owes you an apology. Yes, you were driving me mad, but it’s my fault. What happened today was going to happen to you eventually. You’re never going to learn if I keep picking up your work. I was afraid to see you mess up again, so I overcorrected your mistakes. I stuck myself on your trains because I was afraid you’d lose control of them again and get hurt. The truth is… and I’m ashamed to admit it… but I didn’t think you were taking any of this seriously. I thought I understood why you wanted trains. Now I see that I was pretty wrong.”
Thomas’s eyes flicked towards him. “Yeah?”
“When I look at you, I don’t see a jealous, immature newbuild anymore. I see someone pained and misunderstood. Someone who gets smoked out wherever they go, no matter what they say or do. I see… well… something familiar.”
Another pause, and Thomas rested his drying eyes to the soiled rags. “I’m sorry about the mess.”
“Nevermind that. Messes can be cleaned up. But I’m afraid you’ll be out of work for at least a day or two. They’ll have to send you to get it repainted, or the Worksmen will mistake you for a bus on rails! Heh.”
Thomas didn’t even chuckle. “I know I’m in a whole coal-hopper of trouble, as soon as the Fat Director finds out. I didn’t mean for you to be too.”
“When I took you as my charge, I understood that whatever happens to you falls on my bufferbeam.”
“But what if they get more engines, like Mr. Hatt wants to?” His rising voice caused two more beads of water to drip from his nose at once. “Edward, what if—?”
“I am not afraid to be locked away again. I know my worth, and I think you do, too! As far as I can see, that’s half the battle, Thomas.”
The tank engine casted his gaze to the darkening horizon. “I’ll remember that you did this for me, when I go back home.”
“What makes you think you’re going home?”
“I’ve got to go back. Tomorrow’s Monday.”
Thomas looked confused. “They need a shunter. The Express—”
“—will run, as soon as they get their own coaches.” And then a wry smile turned up either end of Edward’s mouth. “Ohhh, no. You really think I’m letting you off the crane hook that easily? You’re not going anywhere until you help me clean up the mess you made of my yard. We won’t finish until late, so you’ll stay with me in my shed, and tomorrow, I’ll properly introduce you to the coaches. You’ll take down to Brendam, by yourself.”
“Coaches?” Thomas’s eyes widened. In the last of the day’s light, the tears had begun to glow. “Does that mean…?”
“I’m not letting you go back to the Big Station, just to be miserable for the rest of your life. I made a promise to you, as well as myself, and I’m seeing it through to the end. Besides, the Fat Director said that you could be passenger-ready, too. I don’t see why we can’t practice your coach skills at the same time. What’s say you, Driver?”
“I think a change in the lessons would be a great place to go from here,” said Mr. Sand, smiling at Thomas from the doorway. “Do you think you could handle flying solo, Thomas?”
The tank engine’s face took on a look of awe, only achievable after a compliment extended a place of true reverence. “You-you both trust me with your passengers?”
“I can’t speak on behalf of my driver...”
Thomas’s crewmen finally returned, and Edward made his second, and most important, pitch to the younger engine. “... but I know that I do, because I know, now, that you care very much. So, what do you say? Would you rather sit in the back of the shed and keep asking ‘why me?’ Or would you rather let it slide off and keep going?”
“Just one question.” Thomas said after a moment of consideration. “What’s a… crane?”
***
This part is named what it is because I first wrote this fic around this scene, chasing the energy of the green hair scene with Marilla and Anne from Anne of Green Gables.
I kinda hesitated to post the rest of this story, but I got some really nice feedback and decided to let it go anyway. I hope it's enjoyable. I was, and still am, utterly obsessed with Thom and Edward's relationship. Bill and Ben may have been a challenge but BOY, was the Seagull ready for them after having to take this brat under his wing. ^.^
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