December posting 8: Comrades in Arms, HL/MCU
ETA: Oh, and yes, I took the 8th off from posting. I was just tired, sorry!
How do I not have a Rachel icon?!? Anyway, you guys know the routine by now: WIP, probably will get finished (so I can find out who the hell is in NYC), please feel free to speculate/comment/etc. Partly for a prompt by
mayireadtoday , partly for a conversation
ymfaery and I had over Small Packages. (Yeah, okay, I'm starting to think that and this may yet be part of the Opportunities-verse. Damn it.) Oh! And available at the AO3 here.
Comrades in Arms
New York City, 1955
Rachel always kept an eye on her surroundings.
Her current father encouraged her to watch, tried to discourage her from worry, at least until there was something specific to worry about. (Rachel added 'foster' to father only if people wanted to know why her last name wasn't Nash, or why Connor never came to synagogue with her.) Rachel knew he worried she had war shock, that she was too alert always and too silent at times. She'd rather be quiet, though, than say the same thing half a dozen times at the same party. She'd rather know who was behind her than risk trouble for being female, being Jewish, being pretty.
Really, she just didn't want to have to call Connor and say, "I'm in jail; I need bail money and a lawyer." Her father knew her; "they started it" would go unsaid.
The problem with watching her surroundings was that sometimes Rachel saw things she might have preferred not to know. She knew which friends smoked or drank. She knew who bought dirty magazines and why Barbara Murray had 'moved' suddenly. For that matter, she was one of the few who knew why Tommy Paget had ended up in the hospital. (Barbara's brothers had put him there and he'd likely father no more children. None of which Rachel was supposed to know, nor how babies were made if you asked the school. Fortunately, Rachel had asked her father.)
Today, Rachel saw a woman just ahead of her who was frighteningly dangerous; the question was whether this stranger was a headhunter in town or something left over from the war. She was a medium-height, medium-build brunette, wearing a hat cocked over her ear that was just a little too stylish for that trim, utilitarian dress in a navy blue that any other woman with her figure would probably have dressed up with a scarf or belt.
The worrying part, to Rachel, wasn’t that a woman in New York might want to be unnoticed. It was that she was succeeding so well. The brunette was managing to move slowly in heavy pedestrian traffic without annoying anyone around her, finding small gaps behind her by sound, or a sense of touch unhindered by fabric, or by some extra sense Rachel didn't have. That or the other New Yorkers could just feel the danger and were inching away out of instinct.
Rachel was going to pass her any minute now and she bent her head to her bag of school books, focusing on the cheer squad yells she'd heard for half an hour of study hall, on the silences of the chess team across the hall, the cheerful arguments and pungent chemicals of the journalism club….
She passed the strange woman wrapped up in being a high school student, her gait gone coltish and her eyes and attention elsewhere. Rachel didn't straighten up until her skin had stopped prickling and her jacket felt thick enough again. Even then, she looked up and focused on the drugstore ahead, already trying to remember if she had enough money for coffee and sandwich or just the coffee. She wanted a better look at this woman so she could give her father a description--
That thought fell out of her mind when she recognized the stride of the woman ahead of her. The hairstyle had changed - Rachel flashed for a minute on a brush too big for her hands, the straw she was trying to get out, Connor's hand reaching over to help - but the hair was the same shade and Rachel would have known that strong, determined stride anywhere. Rachel fell back into the here and now without bobbing a step.
Memories of the war made her check the bowler ahead of her on Miss Lachance's right. It wasn't the person Rachel had thought, but the hunter green fedora pulled her gaze over to the left instead. She rather thought she knew the set and roll of the shoulders under it, even if he wasn't hauling a ridiculously heavy pack of radio supplies, ammunition, and rations.
Rachel had to check herself from an impulse to call out; she'd been very fond of Sergeant Morita as a child. But if he and Miss Lachance were walking together, Rachel thought she might know exactly who was being followed.
The strange woman probably was some problem left over from the war, then, or hatched by the cold war her father was staying out of.
Rachel glanced at her watch and then sped up, walking as quickly as she did when she was late for shul or an afternoon shift at the store. Even with teenage speed and bounce, it took a pause in the crowd at an intersection to let her catch up to them.
Rachel deliberately started to pass her targets, visibly checked and registered surprise, and said, "Miss Lachance?" More softly Rachel went on in French, "There's a brunette following someone, probably you. Could I buy you a coffee so you have time to spot her?"
Rachel was quite sure the sergeant wasn't quite army anymore, but she didn't think he was entirely civilian, either. He stared at Rachel for a moment, his eyes narrowed as they had been when Connor had surprised him with something during the war. She waited for the profanity she remembered too - her father always said she'd learned all the wrong English early, but he laughed when he said it.
Miss Lachance, however, gave Rachel a single crisp look… and smiled suddenly. She used English to say, "Good Lord, look at you. How lovely to see you properly fed. Yes, I'd love coffee. Come along, Jim, and let me introduce you to an old friend of mine."
The sergeant changed plans and pace easily enough. "S
ure. Maybe some place I can get soup or a sandwich?" Rachel just smiled at him. "The drugstore just ahead sells a fair tuna sandwich, if you'd like? Or the tea shop on the next block does a very good English tea, my father tells me."
Miss Lachance nodded. "Your father's advice was always sound. Let's try it."
Miss Lachance didn't try to embroider the meeting while the walked the next block; she also didn't look around for their follower. Perfect. Rachel sighed in relief when she remembered that she did have change for a phone after all.
Good. She'd need it to call and warn her father that there might be trouble.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
New York City, 2014
If the man had passed Rachel in the streets - if she had passed him, rather; he looked like he should be sitting with a cup or bowl and asking for donations - she might not have noticed him. Seen him? Oh, yes. Evaluated him as a threat based on body language, on the reactions of other pedestrians? Yes. Really noticed him, looked under the chin length hair to see the jawline, the set of the eyes?
No. Probably not. She wasn't as young as she used to be and while she still had a superb eye for detail, Rachel Ellenstein was just a little less inquisitive.
None of that mattered. Rachel first noticed the man from the side, her attention caught by his battered, mothball-scented coat and the scuffed combat boots that didn't fit into this part of Manhattan, even two years after the Chitauri attack. She slowed even further to give herself time to evaluate him, nothing unusual in a woman with her white hair and wrinkles.
The man was crouched down, one knee on the pavement, as he and a little girl admired the antique train set in the Nash Antiques shop window. He was sturdily muscled under his out-of-place coat, physically well-balanced although he held his left arm on his thigh stiffly, something wrong with shoulder or elbow, perhaps. Rachel let her gaze track up from boot top to coat hem to his face, held in three-quarter profile to her. Dark hair was recently washed but not cut, ragged where he'd raked it back behind an ear and he looked to be somewhere in his early thirties, oddly clean-shaven in contrast to the hair.
He looked familiar and Rachel would have recognized the lines of cheekbone and jaw eventually, but that wasn't what stopped her. She could hear him talking to the little girl and his quiet voice took her back almost seventy years to that same voice talking to her in a mix of French and Hebrew, both terrible.
His French, at least, had improved since then.
Another woman might have assumed that, at seventy-six, she was living too much in her memories, that the rubble and destruction of first Manhattan two years ago and then D.C. last year were triggering much older memories of war and bombing and carnage.
That other hypothetical septuagenarian hadn't grown up with Connor MacLeod.
Rachel walked over and joined the conversation, her own French a little rusty but still passable. "Good afternoon, Marcelline. Have you come to visit your train again? Sir, it's very cold out. Could I offer you some tea?"
He looked up at her, wary and briefly confused. Rachel doubted he'd recognized her, but… perhaps. He'd been a superb sniper, she'd found out when she was older. Perhaps he did almost remember the set of her eyes. The rest of her face had changed so much since then, blurred by food and life and age, that it would have to be the eyes.
Marcelline beamed up at Rachel. "You're still saving it for me?"
Rachel nodded to her. "I wouldn't dream of selling it to anyone else. Just remember; you still owe me another five hours of French lessons."
"I know, I know," Marcelline sighed. "And then I have to pay attention to another five hours of English, so that Papa will be pleased."
Rachel smiled at her. "Yes, but if help Connor polish the silver while we work on your English, you know he will teach you two words you shouldn't use per hour."
Marcelline perked up. "Oh! Yes." She turned back to the soldier and asked, "Will you come inside? Miss Rachel makes excellent hot chocolate and Maman says her tea is wonderful, too."
He shook his head, his voice husky as he said, "No, I'd teach you a lot more than two words you shouldn't use. And there's no reason Miss Rachel should waste chocolate on me."
Rachel looked at him and said softly in Hebrew, "You gave me your last half bar of chocolate, once, when I was her age. Come in, please, and let me repay you food, and drink, and perhaps a warmer place to sleep than you could offer me in France?"
He stared at her and Rachel shifted to French to say, "Please, I would hate to have someone who properly appreciates antique trains go away hungry or cold when I have tea, and sandwich makings, and lemon cake."
Sergeant Barnes finally smiled, very faintly, and said, "Lemon cake, huh?" and let Marcelline tug him up and into the antiques store.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Original post on Dreamwidth | Leave a comment on DW | Read
comments on DW
Given the new LJ 'design' decisions, please comment on DW if you can.
How do I not have a Rachel icon?!? Anyway, you guys know the routine by now: WIP, probably will get finished (so I can find out who the hell is in NYC), please feel free to speculate/comment/etc. Partly for a prompt by
mayireadtoday , partly for a conversation
ymfaery and I had over Small Packages. (Yeah, okay, I'm starting to think that and this may yet be part of the Opportunities-verse. Damn it.) Oh! And available at the AO3 here.
Comrades in Arms
New York City, 1955
Rachel always kept an eye on her surroundings.
Her current father encouraged her to watch, tried to discourage her from worry, at least until there was something specific to worry about. (Rachel added 'foster' to father only if people wanted to know why her last name wasn't Nash, or why Connor never came to synagogue with her.) Rachel knew he worried she had war shock, that she was too alert always and too silent at times. She'd rather be quiet, though, than say the same thing half a dozen times at the same party. She'd rather know who was behind her than risk trouble for being female, being Jewish, being pretty.
Really, she just didn't want to have to call Connor and say, "I'm in jail; I need bail money and a lawyer." Her father knew her; "they started it" would go unsaid.
The problem with watching her surroundings was that sometimes Rachel saw things she might have preferred not to know. She knew which friends smoked or drank. She knew who bought dirty magazines and why Barbara Murray had 'moved' suddenly. For that matter, she was one of the few who knew why Tommy Paget had ended up in the hospital. (Barbara's brothers had put him there and he'd likely father no more children. None of which Rachel was supposed to know, nor how babies were made if you asked the school. Fortunately, Rachel had asked her father.)
Today, Rachel saw a woman just ahead of her who was frighteningly dangerous; the question was whether this stranger was a headhunter in town or something left over from the war. She was a medium-height, medium-build brunette, wearing a hat cocked over her ear that was just a little too stylish for that trim, utilitarian dress in a navy blue that any other woman with her figure would probably have dressed up with a scarf or belt.
The worrying part, to Rachel, wasn’t that a woman in New York might want to be unnoticed. It was that she was succeeding so well. The brunette was managing to move slowly in heavy pedestrian traffic without annoying anyone around her, finding small gaps behind her by sound, or a sense of touch unhindered by fabric, or by some extra sense Rachel didn't have. That or the other New Yorkers could just feel the danger and were inching away out of instinct.
Rachel was going to pass her any minute now and she bent her head to her bag of school books, focusing on the cheer squad yells she'd heard for half an hour of study hall, on the silences of the chess team across the hall, the cheerful arguments and pungent chemicals of the journalism club….
She passed the strange woman wrapped up in being a high school student, her gait gone coltish and her eyes and attention elsewhere. Rachel didn't straighten up until her skin had stopped prickling and her jacket felt thick enough again. Even then, she looked up and focused on the drugstore ahead, already trying to remember if she had enough money for coffee and sandwich or just the coffee. She wanted a better look at this woman so she could give her father a description--
That thought fell out of her mind when she recognized the stride of the woman ahead of her. The hairstyle had changed - Rachel flashed for a minute on a brush too big for her hands, the straw she was trying to get out, Connor's hand reaching over to help - but the hair was the same shade and Rachel would have known that strong, determined stride anywhere. Rachel fell back into the here and now without bobbing a step.
Memories of the war made her check the bowler ahead of her on Miss Lachance's right. It wasn't the person Rachel had thought, but the hunter green fedora pulled her gaze over to the left instead. She rather thought she knew the set and roll of the shoulders under it, even if he wasn't hauling a ridiculously heavy pack of radio supplies, ammunition, and rations.
Rachel had to check herself from an impulse to call out; she'd been very fond of Sergeant Morita as a child. But if he and Miss Lachance were walking together, Rachel thought she might know exactly who was being followed.
The strange woman probably was some problem left over from the war, then, or hatched by the cold war her father was staying out of.
Rachel glanced at her watch and then sped up, walking as quickly as she did when she was late for shul or an afternoon shift at the store. Even with teenage speed and bounce, it took a pause in the crowd at an intersection to let her catch up to them.
Rachel deliberately started to pass her targets, visibly checked and registered surprise, and said, "Miss Lachance?" More softly Rachel went on in French, "There's a brunette following someone, probably you. Could I buy you a coffee so you have time to spot her?"
Rachel was quite sure the sergeant wasn't quite army anymore, but she didn't think he was entirely civilian, either. He stared at Rachel for a moment, his eyes narrowed as they had been when Connor had surprised him with something during the war. She waited for the profanity she remembered too - her father always said she'd learned all the wrong English early, but he laughed when he said it.
Miss Lachance, however, gave Rachel a single crisp look… and smiled suddenly. She used English to say, "Good Lord, look at you. How lovely to see you properly fed. Yes, I'd love coffee. Come along, Jim, and let me introduce you to an old friend of mine."
The sergeant changed plans and pace easily enough. "S
ure. Maybe some place I can get soup or a sandwich?" Rachel just smiled at him. "The drugstore just ahead sells a fair tuna sandwich, if you'd like? Or the tea shop on the next block does a very good English tea, my father tells me."
Miss Lachance nodded. "Your father's advice was always sound. Let's try it."
Miss Lachance didn't try to embroider the meeting while the walked the next block; she also didn't look around for their follower. Perfect. Rachel sighed in relief when she remembered that she did have change for a phone after all.
Good. She'd need it to call and warn her father that there might be trouble.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
New York City, 2014
If the man had passed Rachel in the streets - if she had passed him, rather; he looked like he should be sitting with a cup or bowl and asking for donations - she might not have noticed him. Seen him? Oh, yes. Evaluated him as a threat based on body language, on the reactions of other pedestrians? Yes. Really noticed him, looked under the chin length hair to see the jawline, the set of the eyes?
No. Probably not. She wasn't as young as she used to be and while she still had a superb eye for detail, Rachel Ellenstein was just a little less inquisitive.
None of that mattered. Rachel first noticed the man from the side, her attention caught by his battered, mothball-scented coat and the scuffed combat boots that didn't fit into this part of Manhattan, even two years after the Chitauri attack. She slowed even further to give herself time to evaluate him, nothing unusual in a woman with her white hair and wrinkles.
The man was crouched down, one knee on the pavement, as he and a little girl admired the antique train set in the Nash Antiques shop window. He was sturdily muscled under his out-of-place coat, physically well-balanced although he held his left arm on his thigh stiffly, something wrong with shoulder or elbow, perhaps. Rachel let her gaze track up from boot top to coat hem to his face, held in three-quarter profile to her. Dark hair was recently washed but not cut, ragged where he'd raked it back behind an ear and he looked to be somewhere in his early thirties, oddly clean-shaven in contrast to the hair.
He looked familiar and Rachel would have recognized the lines of cheekbone and jaw eventually, but that wasn't what stopped her. She could hear him talking to the little girl and his quiet voice took her back almost seventy years to that same voice talking to her in a mix of French and Hebrew, both terrible.
His French, at least, had improved since then.
Another woman might have assumed that, at seventy-six, she was living too much in her memories, that the rubble and destruction of first Manhattan two years ago and then D.C. last year were triggering much older memories of war and bombing and carnage.
That other hypothetical septuagenarian hadn't grown up with Connor MacLeod.
Rachel walked over and joined the conversation, her own French a little rusty but still passable. "Good afternoon, Marcelline. Have you come to visit your train again? Sir, it's very cold out. Could I offer you some tea?"
He looked up at her, wary and briefly confused. Rachel doubted he'd recognized her, but… perhaps. He'd been a superb sniper, she'd found out when she was older. Perhaps he did almost remember the set of her eyes. The rest of her face had changed so much since then, blurred by food and life and age, that it would have to be the eyes.
Marcelline beamed up at Rachel. "You're still saving it for me?"
Rachel nodded to her. "I wouldn't dream of selling it to anyone else. Just remember; you still owe me another five hours of French lessons."
"I know, I know," Marcelline sighed. "And then I have to pay attention to another five hours of English, so that Papa will be pleased."
Rachel smiled at her. "Yes, but if help Connor polish the silver while we work on your English, you know he will teach you two words you shouldn't use per hour."
Marcelline perked up. "Oh! Yes." She turned back to the soldier and asked, "Will you come inside? Miss Rachel makes excellent hot chocolate and Maman says her tea is wonderful, too."
He shook his head, his voice husky as he said, "No, I'd teach you a lot more than two words you shouldn't use. And there's no reason Miss Rachel should waste chocolate on me."
Rachel looked at him and said softly in Hebrew, "You gave me your last half bar of chocolate, once, when I was her age. Come in, please, and let me repay you food, and drink, and perhaps a warmer place to sleep than you could offer me in France?"
He stared at her and Rachel shifted to French to say, "Please, I would hate to have someone who properly appreciates antique trains go away hungry or cold when I have tea, and sandwich makings, and lemon cake."
Sergeant Barnes finally smiled, very faintly, and said, "Lemon cake, huh?" and let Marcelline tug him up and into the antiques store.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Original post on Dreamwidth | Leave a comment on DW | Read
comments on DW
Given the new LJ 'design' decisions, please comment on DW if you can.