Work Text:
Day 5
Exhibition
Centennial
Pendennis Castle snuck up quietly alongside the A3, “Well what's a cute little thing like you doing here?”
Flying Scotsman mock groaned, “I can't believe that worked on me.”
Pendennis chuckled, “I can, you were always a useless lesbian.”
“I was a male for fifty years!”
Pretty Polly opened her eyes from where she had been napping in front of her sibling “you were a useless lesbian even then.” She closed her eyes again as Scotsman spluttered.
Pendennis chuckled, “it was so easy to rile you up back then.”
“Only back then?” Polly said without bothering to open her eyes.
Scotsman gave a long sigh, “Had I known I would be bullied I wouldn't have agreed to this.”
Polly opened an eye to stare skeptically at her sister, “if you didn't like being bullied by Pendennis the last hundred years would have been very different.”
Scotsman sighed again, “why did I think this was a good idea?”
“Because you're a romantic sap who jumped at the chance to recreate the exhibition you met her at,” Polly said simply.
Scotsman thought for a second then gave the engine equivalent of a shrug, “ah, fair enough.”
Pendennis smiled at her, “it's very sweet, although the railfans are already at it.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask, what is it this time?” Polly asked
“They're claiming Scotsman isn't the original Scotsman anymore because she presents female now. That it proves she's had too many parts changed to be the original engine.”
Scotsman looked baffled, “I've presented female since Seventy-three, why is it a problem now?”
Polly shifted irritably, “you know what those railfans are like, they're not happy if they're not complaining about something.”
Pendennis realized something, “Scotty, you’ve spent more time presenting female than male now, haven't you?”
Scotsman thought for a moment, “I think so? My overhaul was… fifty-one years ago?”
“It suits you,” Polly said genuinely.
“It does,” Pendennis agreed.
Scotsman stretched her valve gear lazily, “At the time I was just glad to not hurt anymore,” she suddenly laughed, “you two should have seen the look on the workmen's faces when I woke though. They thought they had truly screwed up.”
Polly and Pendennis burst out laughing at the mental image.
“They thought they had screwed up Flying Scotsman’s overhaul. I bet they were writing their wills in their heads.”
Scotsman rolled her eyes, “it would hardly have been that bad.”
Pendennis and Polly looked at each other in askance.
“Darling you were, and in many ways still are, the symbol of preservation,” Pendennis said, “if there was ever an overhaul not to mess up, it was yours.”
“Especially then,” Polly said quietly, “the engines secretly preserved from the Other Railway had only just begun appearing…I had only been revealed weeks prior, and as far as anyone in Britain knew we were the last two A3s.”
“I’m shocked there was no more trouble over it than there was,” Pendennis admitted.
Scotsman shrugged, “they just fixed what went wrong with my last overhaul under the Other Railway. Everyone was happy to blame them.”
Pendennis’s drive came up carrying a sign, the two A3s glancing curiously. It was sat against Pendennis’s buffers and the cover removed, revealing the words, Most Powerful Express Locomotive In Britain.
Scotsman took one glance at the sign, “ REALLY?”