Fluffy Dee and Virgil interactions
I set this for whatever reason in WWII England. Dante and Virgil are evacuated from their London townhouse to the countryside for safety. This is fairly wordy because… 20th Century English war story I guess woops!
Warnings: WWII setting, evacuation away from family
“Go, hurry!” Dante called, dragging his little brother along with him as they raced to get the train. Well, not raced per se; Dante strode with his gangly thirteen-year-old legs and Virgil stumbled seriously along after him on his much shorter seven-year-old ones, bouncing up and down in his haste. It made for a sweet sight, the little figure so laden with layers and provisions that, with the slightly too large helmet on his head he was mostly just a penguin of a boy, jingling as he went.
At one point he lost his grip on Teddy, yanking against both Dante’s grip and the momentum of the crowd to grab it, but before his brother could stop a bigger boy behind them had scooped Teddy up and placed it firmly in his hand with a big, bright smile that made Virgil smile back. He said something to Dante when Dante turned to tell him off for dawdling, while Virgil was busy hugging Teddy and carefully kissing the top of his no longer fluffy head to reassure the bear it was safe, and then crouched down to pick Virgil up. Dante nodded when Virgil sent him a panicked, confused look, and the other boy helped them get the rest of the way safely onto the train before the whistle blew, elbowing other children and more than a few grown ups out of the way so they could find a seat.
His name, though he went exclusively by Remy, was Thomas Remington, which was a very fancy name Dante said, although Remy pointed out that Dante and Virgil were not much better. He was going to his cousin’s farm in Taunton, he said, until the war was over and he could go back home, or until he was eighteen and able to join his father in France. And then he got off to switch trains, waving them goodbye from the platform, and they settled in for a significantly quieter journey.
Their nanny had packed sandwiches into Virgil’s tuck box, giving them something to snack on while they travelled out of the grey and smog of London into the great green beyond. Virgil napped for some of it, sitting sideways in Dante’s lap, leaning back against the window. For the rest he quietly played with Teddy, and Dante read his favourite book, sometimes aloud when Virgil asked what was going on, or if there was a particularly good bit to share. It was about a boy, called Huckleberry Finn, and Virgil didn’t understand most of the words but Dante said it was about America, where mama and papa were from, so he tried to listen carefully as best he could.
Passengers filtered steadily off the train stop by stop as the time ticked by, until they were near the end and the stragglers, the two brothers included, were looking tired and irritable and starting to wonder if the journey would ever end.
The sun was getting low in the sky when the conductor passed through, announcing the station that finally, blessedly matched their tickets. They weren’t the only children disembarking it seemed, and a portly gentleman with a very unkempt grey beard collected them all together and walked them along the road to the town hall to be sent off to their families.
Virgil held Dante’s hand very tightly.
“We’re going to Mr Thomas Sanders’ home, remember Virgil. We’re to be very polite and helpful, even if he doesn’t do things the way we do. I am not to argue pedantics and you are not to throw tantrums, isn’t that right?” Dante just about managed to pick the flagging and overburdened seven year old up and booped his nose to make him laugh sleepily. Virgil hoped Mr Thomas was nice. He sounded nice, but you sometimes couldn’t tell, Dante had taught him that.
He fell asleep before they got to the hall, so he missed the arrival of Mr Thomas, and the brief kerfuffle over the fact that he was apparently determined to take as many strays as possible to the point of arguing with the clerk sorting the allocation out- loudly claiming on several occasions that the houses they were assigned to were far too small by half to take extra children. This summarily resulted in no less than four other children all with equally stunned and wary expressions being piled into the cart with them, while Virgil slept on in Dante’s arms.
It was the start of an utterly undefinable period in their young lives, for reasons both great and small. But rest assured that through every bit of it the brothers stayed by each other’s side, right where they were meant to.
