Comfyvember 1
Story: superhero siblings (original) Prompts: Breaking bad habits — New day — Train ride
“I'm hungry,” Grace announced.
“Just a minute,” Sophie sighed, plopping down into the seat next to her. “Let's wait until the train gets underway.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, sitting down across from her. Unlike his sisters, he hadn't taken off his backpack. He sat staring tensely out the window at the train station, eyes flicking over the early-morning passengers milling about, poised to run at a moment's notice. “In case we have to get out of here in a hurry.”
Sophie glanced around the drab compartment at her siblings, whose faces looked pale and wan in the sickly lights overhead. Grace's big grey eyes seemed to take up half her face as she clutched her stuffed cat and looked up plaintively at her older siblings. Rebecca slumped in the window seat opposite Grace, long brown hair disheveled from their recent escape. Her jaw was set, as if to keep her teeth from chattering, and she hugged herself tightly.
And Jack...he looked so old. Bags under his eyes, creases in his brow, worry radiating off him like heat. He shouldn't look like that, like Dad did before everything went wrong, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Sophie wondered what she looked like.
With a jolt, the train began to move, sliding away from the platform. As one, all four let out a breath of relief.
And immediately tensed as they heard a voice steadily approaching, calling down the corridor, “Tickets! Tickets, please!”
Sophie's eyes locked with Jack's across the compartment. Suddenly their plan of getting on the train and hopping off at the next city before anyone realized they didn't have tickets seemed as flimsy as Jack's initial suggestion that they hitchhike all the way to Missouri.
They listened to the ticket man opening the compartment behind Sophie, the rumble of his voice as he exchanged pleasantries with the passengers, the thump of his feet on the carpet outside...a pause, and then a brisk knock at the next compartment behind Jack, and more rumbling voices as he took the tickets from the people on the other side.
Sophie sat frozen, still staring into her brother's eyes as their mirrored expressions of tension faded into confusion. It was like the ticket man had...forgotten them. Or that he got confused and thought he'd already checked their tickets.
Narrowing her eyes with suspicion, Sophie looked at Rebecca, whose expression was oddly smug for someone who'd been terrified a moment before. “Rebecca!” she said sharply.
Rebecca held up her hands defensively, as if to say don't look at me! Tellingly, though, she didn't speak a word.
But Jack grinned, all the tension seeping out of his shoulders instantly. “That was you? Atta girl!”
They high-fived, but Sophie crossed her arms and snapped, “Don't encourage her! Or she'll never break her bad habit!”
“Bad habit?” Jack snorted. “Of what, saving our hides?”
Sophie glanced at the window to the corridor, even though she knew no one could hear, and lowered her voice to a hiss. “Of using telepathy when we know Dr. Clementine has machines that can sense it!”
Rebecca, still unable to talk in the wake of using her powers, waved her hands to get their attention and then pointed out the window meaningfully. The train had already picked up speed, and tall buildings and streetlights flitted past, growing more and more spaced out by the minute. Soon, they would be out of the city limits—and hopefully out of Dr. Clementine's grasp.
“I'm hungry,” Grace reminded them.
“Right. Sorry.” Sophie glanced at Rebecca, including her in the apology.
Bending down, she opened her backpack and looked at the rather paltry supplies she'd managed to grab from the kitchen on their way out. “Well, I've got crackers and peanut butter...no knife, though.”
“That's fine,” Jack said, holding out his hand to accept the jar of peanut butter so he could open it. “We don't really have an easy way to wash one anyway.”
Sophie carefully divided up one sleeve of crackers into four portions and handed them out. Jack passed the jar over to Grace first, and she scooped out a generous portion of peanut butter onto her cracker before passing it on to Rebecca. She looked up imploringly at Sophie again. “Read to us?”
Setting aside the cracker sleeve with her meager portion, Sophie reached over to dig around in Grace's backpack for the one book she'd allowed her to bring (well, seven books in one, but who was counting?). The only book from their old home that they'd hung onto despite Dr. Clementine's assurances he could buy them as many books as they wanted, and all in first editions. And Sophie was glad of that now, since he never had taken them to the fancy bookstore like he'd promised.
Pulling the bookmark out and tucking it behind her ear, Sophie began to read as she'd been doing every night. “At first Shasta could see nothing in the valley below him but a sea of mist with a few domes and pinnacles rising from it....”
And so, as the sun slowly rose in the sky and the buildings of the city gradually faded away into rolling hills, the four siblings passed around the peanut butter jar and listened to a tale of far-off lands and talking animals, a world far away from the dangers looming ahead of them. At least for a few minutes, they could believe they were also headed for a home that would welcome them.