#duck really said 'momento mori' coz yeah he did

[meanscarletdeceiver]

Traintober Day 6: Favorite Place 🍃🌳🌿

Yeah, I'm barely making the deadline so I have no time to edit or rewrite this. That's Xtober, though.

Consider this the messiest of "sketches," in fic form!

Also, please enjoy some HCs I've sprinkled in here that will hopefully help to ease Rev. Awdry's eternal spinning in his grave. 💚

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1962

The fitters finished their work, and Henry sighed with deep contentment. It was a warm summer’s evening, and he didn’t miss the fire that his crew had dropped upon parking him in the yards. Letting his eyelids get as heavy as they liked, he settled the grooves of his tyres deeply into the tracks.

Sometimes, he thought, there is rest for the weary.

He thought about soaking in the sunset, then leisurely watching the stars come out. It was a real treat to know he did not have to wake the next day in the small hours before dawn. Perhaps predictably, he instead drifted off as soon as he had learned to tune out the fitters, the rolling stock, and the sounds of a distant purple tank engine cracking bad jokes.

He slept soundly and well, and that was lucky, for the following morning he found himself rudely awoken when a certain pannier tank buffered up to his front!

“Wha’the’ll…?” muttered Henry. Before he’d found his bearings, he was coupled up and Duck began to tug him forward.

It was scarcely any lighter than midnight blue, the points were set for them to exit the yard, and—oh, no—his fire was being built up again. Duck eyed him with his own special brand of wary, judgmental sympathy. “Mornin’, Henry…”

The green engine’s immediate response is not recorded for posterity. Suffice it to say, he was full of sleep and swears.

“Where?” was the first spellable word he spluttered.

“Oh,” said Duck innocently, “you know that new wait siding they’re putting in, near Kellsthorpe?”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Hullo, Henry,” said the driver in his cab. He wasn’t Henry’s regular, and only vaguely familiar. “Cowfern here, ol’ Robby Cowfern. I think you’ll remember, we did the Easter trains last year. Up and at ‘em?”

“This is supposed to be my day off!” Henry wailed.

He heard the response he was all too familiar with in his life: unsympathetic laughter.

“The inspector said that you’re in tip-top shape,” said Cowfern, brightly. “Cleared you for work last night, ’n fact.”

“They barely looked me over!”

“They did the usual inspection.”

“Did they notice the clinker in my firebox? The build-up this terrible Polish stuff does to an engine—”

“Ah, actually, Inspector commended your crew for the excellent state of the firebox.”

“—and the squeak in my left cylinder—”

“Inaudible,” put in Duck. He tried with substantial yet limited success to keep a straight face. “Tough luck, Henry, but it seems the permanent way gang is down an engine today. There’s orders for us to send you.”

“You know how these things go, mate,” the driver said, patting the side of his cab. “Needs must and all that.”

“But WHY?”

His crew left Duck to explain that, and Duck needed a moment to wait patiently for the points to be set once more. He was steering Henry through rows of rolling stock that held supplies or that needed repairs of their own; they loomed as odd, threatening shadows in the pre-dawn mist.

Henry knew that the siding to the main line was still a bit away. It was hopeless to try to talk the entire railway out of this cockamamie plan, but then, when had he ever had hope?

As soon as Duck was clear, Henry hastened to make sure his question was not forgotten. “Ugh, idling about that old forest all day? What a waste of my abilities. Why not have Thomas do it! He’s always banging on about how he helped to lay the rails we run on. I can’t help but notice that lovely side of him never finds its way into those storybooks!”

“Thomas has his usual trains to run today, on a line far too light for you,” Duck reminded him. Yes, the Great Western engine was enjoying his upset a bit too much. As usual. “You’re the only engine available.”

“I am not available,” muttered Henry rebelliously, “as it’s my maintenance day.”

He’d scarcely ever had a maintenance day scheduled, just as an ordinary course of events rather than as a concession to some definite fault that required immediate attention. Life had become quite different on the railway, since the acquisition of both Donald and Douglas.

At least, it had seemed that it would become quite different.

He had been promised a day off.

And, he if needs must, surely he could do something better than this! It was both tedious and embarrassing, being stuck on maintenance. Henry had done more than his share of this sort of thing back in the old days, when his weak steaming often left him the member of the fleet who was easiest to spare for permanent way workings. Gordon and James had made plenty of commentary on it back then, and Henry was not looking for a repeat.

Much less to spend a load of time in isolation, stuck listening to other trains whoosh by on the main line.

No, thank you.

“Well, I should fill in for something more strenuous,” argued Henry. “Permanent way duty on the most boring stretch of the line? Sounds like a job for Douglas!”

“Funnily enough,” said Duck evenly, “he opined that it was a job for Donald.”

“Whatever!”

“And Donald,” the pannier continued, “said it seemed more like a job for Edward. And he—”

“Said it seemed like a job for Douglas?” Henry finished, voice dull. He was in no mood for mild ironies.

“No,” said Duck, “he said he thought you would probably enjoy it.”

“Oh, so I would, would I?” Henry’s brows knit as he scoffed.

It seemed to him that Edward must be slyly paying him out for past slights!

“You might,” said Robby Cowfern, piping his head out the cab window hopefully. “Change of pace and all that! You’ve never really seen the forest, have you?”

“Excuse me?” spluttered Henry. “I’ve never really seen the forest? I? I am a main line engine!”

“Yes,” grinned the driver, “but, see, those long patches of green rushing by? Well, when you actually stop, you’ll soon see that they are actually trees—”

“Thank you, I KNOW what a tree is!”

Henry’s anger had the effect of setting his fire to a sudden roar. Ironically, he was now by far readier to make the journey to the forest construction site than before.

“Yes, Henry, of course you do,” said Duck briskly… very briskly. Presumably, had he been less so, his lips might have twisted into the same laughter that the substitute crew had succumbed to, high within his cab.  “Well, Douglas has morning milk and then midnight goods, Donald is delivering coal to all branches, and Edward has his usual timetables. But they did say that they would swap, if you wanted.” Duck eyed him, as if to say Because they’re far too nice to you, really.

Still snorting smoke and indignation, Henry considered. He didn’t care to be out that late, not when he had the Flying Kipper the next morning. Coal deliveries were deadly dull. And branch line passengers were all dyed-in-the-wool Sudrians, and they were loony. Henry often felt the level of mayhem in his coaches lessen every time he let off passengers at a junction.

The fireman who had once scolded Henry about cocoa while Henry was lying on his side, off the rails, in multiple pieces—he lived and commuted from Brendam.

Enough said.

“Don’t the Works have a utility diesel?” the big engine demanded, a distinct whine in his sometimes commanding voice. “Why don’t they send it.”

Driver Cowfern took that one. “Ah, I hear that was their request—’no diesels’. Something about it being too loud, scaring the birds and wildlife and fings.”

“Oh, yes,” retorted Henry. “You know what they say, if you want peace and quiet, bring in a steam engine!”

Duck was compelled to crack a smile here, however disapproving of the cheek. The driver only laughed.

“You were inna bit better of a mood last time, mate. Y’know how loud their engines grind even when they’re idling. The conservationists they brought in reckon, anyway, the animals there have had decades to grow used to steam engines. The Pack—”

Henry groaned. Duck grinned, this time in full solidarity.

All the engines found the construction vehicles of the Packard Company rather tough to take.

“—is only sending a couple of their crew. They’re using as few machines as they can, and the least disruptive—“

“I’m disruptive!” Henry chimed in, hopefully.

“You’re to take a flatbed with Terence!”

Henry eyed the pannier tank skeptically. “Who?”

“Terence. The tractor. He’s based on a farm in Hackenback! I’ve met him before when I covered Thomas’s line. Very fine, hard-working machine. You’ll like him.” Duck’s enthusiasm died slightly towards the end, as he considered Henry with a dour look that seemed to imply Or else. “Trevor the traction engine is on this job, too!”

Henry knew Trevor mostly by sight and their acquaintance thus far extended to Henry’s learning one fact about traction engines.

They were the only thing in the world as slow as… well…

As slow as a permanent way train.

“How long is this job going to take?!” Henry’s whistle went off involuntarily.

“Relax.” Duck wasn’t smiling now. Clearly, he assumed Henry knew nothing about manners and was bracing himself for the start of an oily new feud that day at the job site. “At least a fortnight, but you’re only to be there for a couple of days.”

“Couple as in ‘two’ or couple as in ‘indefinitely’?!”

“Dunno. Ask the Fat Controller? C’mon, Henry. Do you expect to argue your way out of an assignment? Surely you’ve already found by experience that doesn’t work…”

Henry glared at Duck with his best imitation of Gordon’s thunder. (Duck did not appear abashed.) “I am not skivving out of anything,” he retorted, suddenly finding his sense of pride. “Believe me! If I wasn’t willing to go, you’d not be able to move me. It’s just,” he added, a plaintive note immediately destroying the dignity he had briefly managed to achieve, “it’s just the unfairness of the thing! I haven’t had a day’s rest in ages,” he added, pitifully.

And, surprisingly enough, for a moment Duck indeed showed a flash of pity. “You lot here are run a bit harder than most of British Railways,” he agreed, and then added briskly: “But buck up, Henry—it’s well worth it. There’s nothing like this place anywhere, and we’re well taken care of, for our trouble.”

“Our trouble as in you and me, perhaps,” said Henry, darkly. “I notice Gordon never gets stuck on these sorts of jobs… oh, he runs into ditches at the height of the season with a rush order to wheel, and then gets given royal trains to make him feel better about himself… but do you ever see him doing his share of—”

“Goodness gracious, Henry. That was before I even came here! When are you going to let it go?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Duck. When is he going to stop boasting about it?”

Duck had to crack another smile. “Not until you’re both grouchy, rusty, tender-less engines in the scrapyard—and pro'lly not even then!”

Henry groaned. “And thank you, Montague, for that image. Really cheers an engine up before a long day’s work, that does.”

But, ironically, it did. Duck whistled briskly at him as they were uncoupled, and Henry noticed how much the world had already lightened into a thoughtful silver-grey. There was a bit of a chill, but it seemed to promise that the day would be clear yet not too hot, and Henry was struck by the realization that it might in fact be a very beautiful one.

Terence turned out to be a polite yet sleepy tractor, as quite suited the ungodly early hour, and try though he might Henry could not take an instant disliking to him even after Duck shunted Terence’s flatbed in place.

Whoever this fireman was, too, he knew how to rekindle the dying spots and make a nice even flame. Henry sighed contented steam from his cylinders as they waited for the guard to finish inspecting their train—and then he caught himself.

He forced a lordly scowl, and then, finding his voice, made sure that everyone in earshot understood how ill-treated and put-upon he was, all the way to the construction site.