The Train To Glasgow

Author: LJ

Spoilers: entire canon, especially "Fool for Love"/"Darla".

A/N: So I go to the library to do homework and some research, and I walk away with a fic...Please forgive any historical inaccuracies.

"There have been cases of illiterate people gathering to hear novels read -part of Dickens's audience was of this sort - and during the Victorian period the habit of reading aloud within the family was much more widespread than it is today."

-- Jeremy Hawthorn, Studying the Novel: An Introduction (1985)

England, 1905

Elizabeth is an old woman now at forty-five years of age, her body worn and tired from work and childbirth. Her steps are uncertain, shaky as she finds her seat on the train. She settles into her seat like a genteel old dame, or the best she can do to approximate one in a worn shawl and much-darned stockings.

Two rows behind her sits a young married couple in clothing that was probably very fine a month or two ago, but is now worn with travel or wear. They are a handsome couple, a man with noble posture holding a book and a slim girl with long, raven-colored hair. The girl is fidgety, as if she is tired of traveling, but the young man is distracted from boredom by gazing at his young bride.

The train lurches into movement and for a little while the girl is occupied with gazing out the window. Elizabeth wonders what she sees; it is early evening, but it is already deep, dark night. After that short while, the girl becomes listless again. "I'm hungry," she says to her husband. "Can't we get something to eat?"

Elizabeth can barely hear their conversation over the noise of the train moving along its iron tracks. "No, Dru," replies the young man. "We have to wait a while. It isn't safe yet."

"Read me a story, then?"

The young man chuckles and takes the book from his lap. Opening it to a place marked with a red ribbon, he begins to read. Elizabeth can hear only a few words at a time, but she recognizes the story as one of the Grimm fairy-tales. She remembers her youth, when she was a maid in a small house in London. In the evenings, the son of the family would take a book and read a chapter aloud to his mother and sister by lamplight. The women would embroider or knit fine things for the girl's trousseau, or crochet fine lace like that which had edged the bedding now belonging to Elizabeth's eldest daughter - a gift from her employer when they had been forced to let her go after the death of the son one night twenty-some years hence. Some nights he would read poetry, or he and his sister would take turns at Shakespeare, giving their mother an impromptu theatrical performance. This was how Elizabeth learned by heart scenes from The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing, although she still cannot read.

"When will we see Angelus again?" asks the raven-haired girl suddenly. Her voice is louder than before, breaking Elizabeth from her memories, and at once she is struck by the childlike tone of the girl's voice. Elizabeth had been an old maid of twenty-two when she married; this girl was surely younger than that.

The young man is slow to answer. "Drusilla..." he begins. "Dru, I don't think we'll see Angelus again. Ever."

"Never?" she replies. "But he found us in China. Surely he'll find us again."

"Dru, he wasn't exactly himself in China. Do you really want to see him like that again?"

The girl hums. "We will, we will!"

"Huh. Perhaps he'll be in Glasgow with Darla again. He crawled all the way to China for her after all - mayhap he'll try it again."

"Ooh," sighs the girl at this remark. "No, no, no, the fairies tell me otherwise. It's warm, it's burning."

Elizabeth is unsettled by their conversation. Most every other passenger is asleep, but the sound of the young man's voice has kept her awake. It seems familiar, sending a chill down her spine.

"What is it, love," asks the young man, "what have you seen?"

"Angelus will return, but you will be unhappy. Why are you unhappy, my Spike? You'll wear the mark of a second Slayer on your shoulders..." The girl moans again. "Oh, I see it now. I see it. A third daughter of man. She will hunt you, enslave you, thrust her spear into your heart and your brain. I see your unhappiness now. How dreadful, the fairies tell me, so terrible. A lady in a red dress will cut open your chest and search for your soul and innards."

With that, the young man pushes himself out of his seat and marches forward in the car. Elizabeth watches him until his form disappears into the next car, presumably to disappear into the third and the fourth as well, until he hits the dining car and the smoking room, where gentlemen of larger fortunes than she will ever be wife to smoke fine cigars and sip at brandy while playing  poker.

A moment later, the girl is standing in front of her, eyes an unearthly yellow hue. "You know my Spike," says the girl, "know him you do, you do!" The girl takes her finger and runs it down Elizabeth's cheek. When she was done, she stuck it in her mouth like a piece of hard candy. "You taste like fear," she says. "Like fear and lace, sisters, mothers, babies." She pauses, giving Elizabeth a sly look. "Like Shakespeare and beautiful poetry! Oh, you've heard my Spike read!"

Elizabeth nods, too frightened to disagree.

The girl - Drusilla, Elizabeth suddenly remembers the young man calling her that - the girl laughs and quietly claps her hands together. "He is rather good at it, isn't he, with the voices of angels and devils. Monsters and men," she says. "He's both monster and man, my Spike is, just like me. But you knew him when he was just a man, didn't you?"

Again, Elizabeth nods in self-preservation.

The girl frowns. "Spike has made me promise so many things. Sometimes I forget what he's said, but then the fairies remind me. You heard him, too. I'm not to eat yet. And he doesn't want me to eat people he knows." The girl leans in -

And presses a dainty kiss against Elizabeth's forehead. "Scurry away, little mouse, scurry away. If you come back, the cat with play with you until your little neck snaps." She snaps her own fingers at that.

Taking the girl's - the monster's - words to heart, Elizabeth quickly grabs her bags and her coat and runs down to the exit door at the far end of the car. As the train lurches to a stop at the next station, the young man returns. He begins to scold the girl-monster, his face changing the same way the girl's had, yellow eyes and all. The girl says something to him and he looks up in surprise, reverting to his human face. Elizabeth looks away in shock and lets the stationmaster help her out of the train.

Thoughts speed through her mind - of the man in the first station, reading Dracula aloud to a captivated audience, women covering their children's ears at the horrors; of how she would find a church to sleep overnight in, for surely such ungodly creatures wouldn't dare enter the Lord's house; of how she would count her money and see if she had enough to spare to send a telegram in the morning to her sister in Glasgow, to say she would take another train - all this and more speeds through her mind in that instant.

But one thought that repeats itself over and over is how very different young William has become without his spectacles - and how very much he is the same.

[finis]

Background and designs from Opulant Designs.

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