Archive of Our Own ^beta

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  The very first moments of her life were in a white box. Afterall, they said she was high explosive and the first of her kind. The first of her kind, one of a kind. Of course, oil trucks had been a thing for a while, but she was an innovation. The child was the first made by the company and in a new compact and sleek design. She was a prototype on display. 

   It was a while before they let her out of her “room.” Once they did, she found it hard to fit in with the other young trainlings. Everyone knew exactly who they were and who they’d become. She had no clue. Nobody did. There was nobody else  like her yet. 

  The courtyard area was filled with youngings. A cool autumn breeze nipped at the kids as they tiptoed around, the place where their wheels would go only being empty holes at their young age. 01, as they called her, watched the others play. The older ones skated around and whipped each other around while holding hands. The younger ones carefully jogged, giggling as they scampered by, 

  01 had been observing the others for a while now, maybe a few hours between two days. Nobody bothered to come speak to her or ask her to join a game. Though, what did she expect? People, even trainfolk, hated what was different. That being said, she should have known better than to listen to the flitter of hope in her heart that came when one of the older kids skated over. 

  She should have known it would go well, and yet she accepted the hand that was offered. 01 let herself be lifted and led to the group of older kids, smiling slightly as she did so, her tooth gap accidentally on display. The game seemed to continue as a few kids stopped to look at the newcomer. One beaconed to come over. She started to move, but was quick to realize they meant the girl who had brought her over.

  The coach, a pretty purple passanager, skated over. The other figure, a coal freight, whispered something. The two seemed to argue for a moment before the freight turned to 01. “So what’s your name?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “01,” the younger was quick to reply.

  “Um, okay then-“ the freight started before the purple coach stopped her. 

  “We’re playing snake, do you know that game?” She asked. When 01 shook her head, the coach raised an eyebrow, “What? Were you born yesterday?” She asked, cherry tone cutting off. 01 must have made a face before she was quick to laugh. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s just a joke, silly. Anyways, the game is easy as pie,” she said.

   “Mmm pie,” a dinning coach in the back mumbled.

  “Okay, we’ll all you’ve gotta do it’s hold onto my hand. We’re going to all hold hands in a line. Then we’ll skate quickly, making like a slithering shape with our line. Since you’re new, you get to be on the end, cool right?” The coach explained before pausing. 

  01 was quick to nod as to appease her. “But I don’t have my wheels in yet,” she quietly pointed out.

  “That’s like no problem. Don’t worry about it,” the coach cooed as the other eight or ao older kids started to line up. She didn’t think to protest, as she had no reason not to trust the world yet. Either way, the older girl already had her hand in her own, leading her to the end of the line. With a cheer, the game began.

  It was fun at first, or at least that’s what she told herself. In reality, it was hard to quickly step on her tiptoes fast enough to keep up with the skating preteens. But they were so cool, and they wanted to spend time with her. She just had to keep up. It would all be worth it. Besides, she was having fun, or at least she kept telling herself that.

  The snake was becoming faster and the turns sharper. She stumbled but kept her footing as best as she could. It was becoming faster as the sound of wheels on pavement became more intense.  Her palms were sweating and she was trying to keep up. This was fun. She was having fun. 01 felt her feet leave the ground for a second. 

  Whipping her head to look at the coach, she exclaimed, “You're holding my hand too high! You’re pulling me up.” The older girl just giggled as they whipped around, as if she was making the game more fun for 01.

  They were going to crash into a wall. She was sure of it. But of course, like always, the leader of the snake darted out of the way at the exact Igor moment. Every segment followed after them. Except Slick. Her hand slipped from the grip of the coach, and she was sent into the wall, crashing forwards into it and falling backwards.

  The world was spinning. Her body hurt. Her ears were ringing. It was almost as if she heard…laughing. She opened her eyes. They were laughing at her. She lay back against the ground as laughter filled the air. She didn’t want it to hurt anymore. She tried not to care. It was just because she fell. It was because she was a stranger. 

  Her world fractured for the first time when she heard that pretty purple passenger coach giggling and telling another preteen, “I mean, what kind of name is 01 anyways? It probably doesn’t even have feelings.”

  She closed her eyes. Everything hurt. Her back and knees hurt. Her ears hurt. Her legs hurt. Her heart hurt. Maybe if she sat still long enough, they’d get bored and go away. It didn’t seem so, as a new voice seemed to cut through the crowd, though it came from far away.

  “Hey!” A more masculine voice shouted. It grew closer. Great. Another person to giggle at her misfortune. She heard the sound of skates clattering coming closer and closer. Wow. She didn’t even get space to be pathetic. Perfect. 

  “What in the hell is wrong with you idiots?” The voice demanded. “Look at this kid, they’re like, what, four in human years?” The voice condemned. She opened her eyes.

  In front of her stood a new person, one she hadn’t seen before. 01 blinked in confusion. He was wearing a loose red sweater that seemed to barely stay on his body. It would fall over his hands if he didn’t just them out to aggressively point and gesture at the others.  She didn’t register what he was saying, but it seemed to be enough to make the others leave. If not from his words, then just from his presence. She’d learn later how likely the latter was. 

  “Scram! Before I rub off on you and nobody buys ya,” he shouted after them. That’s when he turned and she finally got to see his face. It was round, youthful. His hair was tucked up in some kind of cap, but she could tell it was a peachy blonde that curled delightfully. She wanted to reach out and gently pull one down just to watch it bounce back up. But of course, she didn’t, as she could hardly move at all out of awe.

  He bent down and offered her a hand. She took it, inhaling shapely as he pulled her to her feet. 01 was surprised as he dusted her off lightly. “Are you okay?” He asked. She nodded and he turned to leave. 

  “Wait,” she suddenly said, her voice returning randomly. The other stopped. Before he could say angering, she held up her hand, which had a scrape on it. It wasn’t bad, but it was definitely bleeding a bit. “Can you help?” She asked quietly. 

  The older kid paused. “Don't ya have a sibling to help you with that?” He asked. Most of the trains had siblings; trains of the same make, model, and brand as each other. Older siblings would take care of younger ones out of obligation. When they were old enough to go to a yard, the next oldest group would take their caretaker role. 01 didn’t have any of that. She shook her head. 

  The boy paused, seemingly a bit surprise. He then sighed, realizing the jeering was at least somewhat accurate. He hated when assholes had their facts right.  “Alright then, let’s get you cleaned up before you go back to your room,” he finally said. The boy started to slowly skate in one direction. 01 was quick to follow.

  As they walked, she slowly moved to try and take hold of his hand. “You aren’t slick,” the elder teased lighty. 

  “Yes I am!” She replied with a slight defiant pout.

  “Yeah yeah, the only way you could be slick is if it was your name.”

  01 paused. She remembered how the others had reacted when she said her name before. She didn’t want to lose whoever this person was. They were nice, but the coach had been too. Maybe it was her name that scared them off? Or maybe it was just strike one. Either way, she didn’t want to risk it. Besides, a number wasn’t really a good name anyways. “It is,” she declared after a moment.

  The kid chuckled and took her hand in his. “Nice to meet ya Slick, I’m Cb.”

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  The two had been traveling for about five minutes before Cb stopped in front of a wall. That’s when he stopped and looked back down at her. Getting onto one knee, he locked his fingers together and looked at her expectantly.  “What?” Slick asked, tilting her head to the side.

 “I’m gonna lift you,” he said as if it was a normal occurrence. “Just step on my hands and I’ll get you up to that window there,” he said, jerking his head upwards towards an empty window.

  “Don’t you have a door?” Slick asked.

  “I lost the key-now come on before someone sees us,” Cb was quick to say. Without another word, she cautiously climbed up onto his hand. For a moment, she was flying, or it felt like it at least. “See the window?” He asked, snapping her back to reality. “Grab onto the ledge,” he instructed, heels digging into the old dusty dirt.

  Slick jumped up slightly, causing him to groan, before grabbing onto the ledge. “Got it! Woah-“ she said, feeling the hand beneath her foot raising to help push her upwards.

  “Just pull yourself up and in. Don’t worry about falling!”

  She did so and immediately fell. However, the landing wasn’t as harsh as she expected. They was a noise of effort and the boy landed next to her. “Nice isn’t it?” he asked, parting the old mattress they landed on. “Welcome to my mansion,” he joked.

  The room was small, almost like a horse’s stall. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but it was definitely smaller than the ones Slick had walked by. What was unusual was the state of the place. There wasn’t any tile on the floor, instead it had cement. Dust clung to the corners of yellowed painted walls. There wasn’t any chairs or things of the sort. It was missing things.

  Slick hadn’t noticed Cb get up. Though, he certainly wasn’t next to her anymore. The other, who seemed maybe ten in human years, was across the room at the old water spigot. Well, it was sort of a sink, as it had an old rusted basin below it. He was wetting a rag, humming while doing so.

  “Bb?” She asked. He paused for a moment before coming over, rag in hand.

  “Cb,” he gently corrected. “What’s up?” He asked, kneeling down. He held out a hand. She gently moved to put her injured hand on top of his. 

  “Why’d you smile while you yelled at the others?” She asked. “Do you like to yell? I think some of the people like to yell,” Slick asked, remembering how some of the engineers would shout at each other over things that didn’t seem like a big deal to her. Her name, her old name, seemed to always come up.

  “No, I don’t like to shout,” he said after a moment. Cb was cleaning off her arm, gently scrubbing at the injuried areas. Slick hissed slightly and pulled back. She went to apologize, but he stopped her. “You don’t need to apologize. It hurts,” he told her. Carefully, he pulled her arm back and continued to work. The older’s work weren’t on in silence for a while.

  When the boy reached under his bed, Slick spoke up again, “So why did you smile then?” She asked. He just smiled and shrugged. “Trade secret,” he joked with a snicker. Cb pulled out an old dusty bag and rummaged through it. He dug around, pulling out a random assortment of things. Slick silently tried to find a way for the objects to belong together, but she couldn’t figure out a way that a hairbrush, half used pencil, broken cd, and an earring went together. But Cb seemed to have some sort of system, as he found what he wanted.

  “Sorry they aren’t really…cool,” he said, almost sheepishly. Small bandaids were put over her scrape. Slicks eyes widened as she saw the bandaids and gasped. “What? Too ugly?” He asked, trying to chuckle and play it off as a joke.

  “How’d you know?” She asked. If Slick recognized his look of confusion, she didn’t act like it. “My favorite color,” she cheered, looking at the bright yellow bandaid.

  “Biohazard yellow is your favorite color?” He asked, assuming she was joking. When she only happily nodded, Cb paused. “Oh-cool. Lucky that I had it,” he said, a bit quieter. There was a pause. “Well, I guess you should go back to your room now.”

  She paused. The white room. It was certainly nicer than this, but the company wasn’t nice. “I guess…but I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Slick asked. He was the first one to be nice to her. He was her first friend.

  “Uh sure-“ Cb said, knowing she’d probably forget or want nothing to do with him once she knew what he was. With a bright smile, she stood up and looked back at the window. Cb cringed as she got her muddy feet on his mattress. She seemed to give up on the window. 

  “I don’t wanna go…”

  “The sooner you sleep the sooner you can play tomorrow,” he offered. He didn’t mention himself. It would for the best if he forgot her. She seemed to perk up at that

  “Bye bye Bb! See you tomorrow!” She exclaimed, waving before bolting out the old door, slamming it shut. 

  He cringed at the loud sound. It was…nice having someone else’s around, even for just one day. Cb started to pick up the stolen goods he had rummaged through, shoving them back in the bag. He couldn’t help but think a bit about that infectious little laugh as he tried to tidy up the abandoned room he had claimed as his own. She seemed to already have a sneaky way into his heart.

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  Cb hadn’t expected to hear from the little fuel truck again. He figured some older train took pity on her and let her in on what he was. After someone knew, they didn’t really want to spend time with him. To be fair, he didn’t usually like them much either. While the thought of not seeing that stupid little smile again wasn’t a nice one, he also knew it was the best and definite outcome.

  The caboose found himself once again sorting through the piles of rubbish found around the factory. Humming to himself, he made small piles out of the various objects. It was a routine, one he was used to. It was like clockwork to him. Something gummed up the gears. It was a soft voice and the gentle patter of trainlet tippy toes.

  “Bb?” The soft voice called out. He turned in time to see her beam and run towards him. He flinched and started to tell her not to touch him, but her little arms were already around him. He cringed slightly before freezing. It was weird and…warm. He didn’t mind it. Yet, it was soon kver.

  “What are you doing here…? Also I’m Cb,” he asked. Slick, as he now knew her, just shrugged. 

  “You said I needed to sleep to get to see you again. I slept and now I’m seeing you again. What are you doing?”

  Cb froze. She had remembered that? Par5 of his heart fluttered with hope at the prospect of having someone else around, but he knew, deep down, that it wouldn’t be good for her to be seen with him. “Listen kid-“ He started to say. Slick cut him off by sitting next to him and making a shush noise. “You don’t want to be seen near me,” he tried to tell her, hand reaching under his beanie to mess with his red-blonde curls.

  Innocently, the oil tanker cocked her head, “Why not?”

  He couldn’t just tell her about his failures. Well, he could. He could and he should. Yet, Cb couldn’t bring himself to. Part of him desperately craved that little smile and glowing eyes looking at him in wonder. He never had someone to take care of, or anyone to take care of him for that matter, and his internal systems wanted to take her in. But he couldn’t. They were the same. Nobody was like her, but anyone was better than him. “The others will tease you again,” he offered. It hasn’t been harmless teasing. He had wrung oil out of that rag for an hour. 

  She looked up at him from where she knelt, admiration in her eyes. “I know you’ll protect me, Bb,” she declared.

  “I’m not-I can’t be there to help you all the time. Why don’t you go find a nice train to help you out?”

 Slick simply smiled, “I did! Anyways, what are you doing? I thought you weren’t supposed to play in trash.”

  He sighed, the implications of her words not hitting him until he laid alone at night years later. “I’m earning my keep. It’s not something you really need to do, bein’ all fancy and such.” Cb noticed that look in her eyes that he had seen in many other trainlet’s faces. There was no getting out of it. “It’s boring,” he warned. No budging. “And gross-“

  “I like gross,” she said with a wide smile.

  Cb couldn’t help but snicker at that. “Okay, you little goblin. Fine, just for today you can help me. But just for today, got it?” He asked her. She nodded quickly and did a little salute. Cb felt a small smile threaten to tug at his lips. He picked up an old travel comb. “This is a comb. It’s plastic and in good condition, it goes in this pile,” he showed her. 

  Slick looked at the pile of plastic objects and then back at Cb. “That’s not a comb,” she pointed out, looking at an old food container.

  “Well yeah, but it’s still nice and plastic,” he said. Cb went back to sorting. “That’s the trash pile. Anything with food or bugs on it goes there,” he told her, tossing a wrapper back into the bin. 

  “I’m bored. Can I ask you stuff?” She asked. He should have mnkwn to say it was boring to dissuade her. Part of him was glad that he didn’t think of it. 

  Cb raised an eyebrow. “Maybe if you sort,” he sarcastically said. She beamed and started to work. The elder paused in mild shock before going back to work.

 “So why are you doing this?” Slick asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But you said if I worked-“

  “You said that, Oil Slick, not me,” he said, nickname spilling out without a thought. It seemed to make her giggle. 

  She paused as they sorted a bit more. “Okay, how about the question of why you smile a lot?”

  Cb paused. It wasn’t a bad question, not really. Yet, he didn’t want to share the response. To be fair, he didn’t want to share much about himself anyways. But Slick was persistent, perhaps more so than Cb, so this not as invasive question was probably his best option.

  “Well, because it makes people feel weird. If you’re being all mean and nasty to someone, you don’t expect them to smile. It throws them off their groove, you know? It makes them miss a step. Then they don’t have as much power to talk sh-say mean things,” he said after a moment. Slick nodded, as if noting down every word.

  He stopped and gasped. Slick looked over with what seemed like worry in her eyes, but it soon shifted to confusion as Cb held up a mostly intact cup. “Only one chip,” he whispered in amazement. She didn't say a word as he set it aside and went back to work.

  The pile was done much sooner than expected. It made sense, kind of. With two sets of hands, the work was simply done sooner, even if one set was inexperienced. So when slick followed him to the next pile, he let her. The one after that was the same story. Before he realized it, it was the end of the day. He was at the recycling center, trying to trade in the plastics for quarters, and Slick was next to him, trying to peep over the counter. 

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her to leave until it was time to go to their separate rooms. As soon as they set foot back in the factory, people in white coats swept Slick away to her white room full of nothing but white walls and a white bed. It was certainly fancy, but she couldn’t help but remember jumping on the run down bed to get in through a window. Sitting next to the caboose had been warmer and softer than the “top notch” bedding she was given.  

  Slick slid out of bed.

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Man it would be crazy if I actually finished this….anyways might restart but life hit me like a freight train

K bye