Paradise

Just saw the movie like last week and needed something happier than the movie's ending, and so this happened... It'll probably have some more parts. First try at Snowpiercer fic. Characters are not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

Curtis wakes up, rather surprised to have woken up at all, and finds that he's surrounded by so many things he'd never thought he'd ever experience again, things he hasn't felt, heard, seen or smelled in nearly two decades.

There are birds chirping happily nearby, the tinny sound muted by glass. There's the smell of breakfast cooking, pancakes, he thinks, and bacon - coffee, maybe? There's a bed, a warm and comfortable bed, beneath him, with worn, soft flannel sheets and thick blankets pulled up to his chin, and for the first time in eighteen years, there isn't a lingering chill in the air.

It's perfect.

But, he doesn't open his eyes, because he knows it isn't real.

It can't be real.

There's no way he survived the explosion. With any luck, Yona and Timmy did, maybe some of the others on board, but even that seems unlikely, and it's even more improbable that they'll make it more than a day or two out in the arctic wasteland outside, even if it does prove to be livable.

He flexes his hands and is surprised to find that he has two again, when he should only have one. Finds that the cuts and bruises and breaks he gained in the rebellion no longer trouble him, nor do any of the old aches and pains that came with tail-section life. Definitely not real, then. A dream, one last dream of a man slowly dying in the burning remnants of the train, half-buried under an avalanche of ice and snow.

Not.

Real.

"You gonna sleep the whole day away, are ya?"

A nightmare, then, he thinks. Not even a dream, but a torturous reminder of what he lost fighting his way to the front of the damned train. That voice, it can't really be here; he doesn't even deserve to imagine hearing it again, not after what he did to its owner.

"Curtis, get up," the voice comes again, the bed dipping at his side as if someone were climbing all over it. "There's food, real food, and you should eat somethin'," this Not-Edgar tries to persuade him. "C'mon, I know you're awake. I slept under you for almost all of my life, I know when you're really asleep."

Except he's not asleep. He's dead, or dying, and this is... this isn't real.

"Curtis!" A hand pulls away the blankets with such force that he opens his eyes in surprise and... and... and...

"Edgar?"

"Were you expecting someone else?"

Curtis sits up slowly, can't take his eyes off of him, can't even blink because Edgar is fucking sitting in front of him like it's no big deal, like Curtis hadn't let him die. He pulls the kid into a bone crushing hug, doesn't let go, doesn't ever want to let go because out of everyone he lost on the damn train - Gilliam and Tanya and Andrew and Andy and Grey and Minsu, all of those people in the tail section that had died because of him and his stupid revolution - out of all of them, losing Edgar had been the worst. He reaches out, a hand sliding over Edgar's face, curling into his hair, "Is this real?" He asks, his voice quiet and catching on the words because he's still not sure and he doesn't know if he could take losing Edgar again.

"You tell me," Edgar answers, eyes locked with Curtis's, "This look like the train to you?"

And finally Curtis tears his eyes away from Edgar long enough to look around the room - and it is a room, not a car on the damned train. A room, with walls and windows and floors, a room like any bedroom might have looked like Before the freeze, with a bed and a dresser full of clothes and books on a nightstand. There's a window, a tree with the first signs of fresh, green leaves on its branches, an early sign of spring, and birds flit by now and again, silhouetted by the brilliant sun. There's a door, half-open, that Edgar must have come in through, a view of a bright hallway through it. He eyes dart back to Edgar, to the lack of old, patched clothes and the comfortable looking pajama pants and faded t-shirt he's wearing - something Edgar's never experienced, that, separate clothes for sleeping. He's out of his usual clothes, too, wearing comfortable, old sweatpants that remind him of his favorite pair in high school.

"No," he says, finally. "No, it doesn't."

"Whatever this place is," Edgar starts, "It's as real as anything else."

Curtis doesn't know what this place is, either - some kind of paradise? some kind of limbo? some kind of trap? something else? He's not sure he cares what it is if he gets to have Edgar back. "How did I get here? How did you?"

Edgar frowns, drops his gaze to stare down at the blankets. "I woke up here, after... after the tunnel."

Curtis swallows hard at the memory that brings to mind. "Fuck," Curtis breathes out, reaching out again, one of his hands squeezing Edgar's, "I'm sorry, Edgar. I'm so sorry. I should have... Mason wasn't worth it - the whole damn thing wasn't worth it. Turning my back on you..."

"He would have killed me, either way," Edgar says, voice quiet and somber. "If you had turned back, he still would have stabbed me and Mason would have escaped."

He wishes he'd let Mason escape, sometimes - trusting Mason had been a mistake, and maybe if they hadn't, they wouldn't have been so easily ambushed on the school car. Going after Mason had been a mistake, one that had cost him Edgar and then so many others on the path of his futile rebellion.

"I don't blame you," Edgar tells him, when Curtis' solemn silence has stretched on too long.

"You should."

Edgar rolls his eyes, "Well, I don't. I knew what I was getting into when we started the rebellion. I knew I could die, I knew you could die, any of us could have died. Hell, maybe this is what was supposed to happen all along - maybe none of us were supposed to survive." Edgar shrugs, gestures vaguely around the room, "The train was real. But so is this, and this place isn't fucking freezing, so can't we just enjoy it? We've got warm clothes, a nice place to sleep, good food, sunshine, there's a whole world outside - it's everything we were fighting for."

Curtis can't argue with that, even though a part of him still can't believe this is real. He heaves a sigh of defeat and decides to go with it. "Alright," he agrees, and the doubt he feels falls away when Edgar fucking beams at him.

"Good," the kid says, "Breakfast, then?"

"Not yet," Curtis isn't ready to risk this new reality, quite content for this to be his whole world for a little while longer, "Just... just do me a favor," he says, even though he has no right to ask for one, not from Edgar, of all people. He lifts the blankets in invitation, and Edgar moves without argument, sliding in beside him and settling in, arms and legs entangling. Curtis revels in this, Edgar pressed against his side, head on his shoulder, their bodies warm wherever they touch. "Just for a little while," he promises, holding onto Edgar a little tighter than is necessary.

Edgar doesn't seem to be complaining, though. He leans up and claims a long, slow kiss, another in a long list of things Curtis had never thought he'd get to experience again. "I'm glad you're here," Edgar admits.

"Nowhere else I'd rather be."