A/N: This is the kickoff of a new drabble series I'm writing entitled "Meetings". It'll revolve around the AU meetings of various pairs within the Lunar Chronicles series, set in the past against a historical backdrop. A little fluffy (aren't I always?), but a little historical, too. I'll probably write about 5 other one-shots to follow this first one, but if I get requests for more, then I'll write more. Though I've got a few ideas for historical time periods, I'm always open to suggestions, and I'll be sure to give you credit for your idea. Anyway, this first one-shot is set in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A., in 1920. It's a Scarlet/Wolf drabble. Hope you enjoy! Review and share your thoughts!

Disclaimer: While I do, in fact, own a scented candle (evergreen. Delightfully Christmas-themed), I do not, in fact, own the Lunar Chronicles series, nor any of its consequent subsidiaries.

One

"Irish Girl"

September 8, 1920

New York, New York

Scarlet Benoit had been an American girl for a year now, or so her papers said. Immigrant, they read. Came through Ellis Island in 1919. Special year, that 1919. Repeating numbers, lucky as hell, or supposed to be, anyway. Scarlet didn't put much stock in superstition. All she got in 1919 was a lower-class ticket on a steamship that tossed and turned on a sea the color of charcoal, a heady douse of homesickness, and a rat-infested flat in Brooklyn. Not much luck to that.

Scarlet adjusted her position on the uneven barstool, looking down at her hands. They used to be beautiful hands before she came to America, creamy white skin and slender fingers, dotted with a faint spattering of freckles. They were rough and red and raw now, chapped from lye. A worker's hands, Grandmère would've said. Be proud of them, Scarlet. They show you've worked hard. They show you're no wishy-washy dilly-dallier. Grandmère was always fond of the idiotic mash-up of English words. Wishy-washy. Dilly-dallier. It was as if they gave her some pleasure to roll the words off her tongue.

It was silly, Scarlet supposed, to be upset about her hands. They were just hands, after all. She'd spent the first few years of her life with dirt caked underneath her fingernails, soil ingrained into her calluses. She'd been a farmer's daughter, accustomed to work. She'd weeded and seeded and ploughed until she was blue in the face. But the dirt always washed out, though it took a bit of fervent scrubbing. Scarlet's work as a cleaning woman had tarnished her hands forever, and no washcloth would take the reddish tinge away. Cleaning women carried scars for all their lives. Scarlet had spent ages on her hands and knees, scrubbing away at the floors of grimy flats, until her back was crooked and her knees were bruised an ugly purple-green shade.

Scarlet had never been a vain girl. Eighteen years old, and she prided herself on being down-to-earth. She'd dealt with her tragedies. She'd dealt with Mama's death, the cholera whisking her away before Scarlet could blink. She'd dealt with Papa's abandonment, yanking her out of Dublin and plopping her on Grandmère's farm, on the front doorstep to her stout, creaky old house. But Scarlet hadn't dealt with leaving Ireland. She hadn't been able to stomach it. So much had been taken from Scarlet already, and she couldn't bear the thought of her homeland – the little island out in the midst of a gray-blue sea, all craggy rock and emerald stretches of grass and moss – being taken away from her, too.

"Don't throw a fit, Scarlet," Grandmère had said sternly, when Scarlet screamed and cried and protested. She was usually such an obedient girl, all yes, ma'am and yes, sir. Something in Scarlet had snapped the day Grandmère had given her the ticket. "You're going, and that's that. You have no future in Ireland. You have no job. I've found you both a job and a future in America, and you should be grateful, groveling on your knees."

"I might have a future, and a job," Scarlet had said. "But it's not the one I want. Not away from you. Not away from Papa. Not away from Ireland."

"Very little in life happens the way we want it to, Scarlet," Grandmère had said unsympathetically. "You have to take what you're given and make the best of it."

Make the best of it, Scarlet thought now, staring down at her mug. Tepid ale swished in the cup as she set it down, the filmy surface shimmering in the dim lighting of the taproom. Working as a cleaning lady, living alone in a dank, dirty old flat sandwiched in-between crumbling buildings in the Irish neighborhood of Brooklyn, among the Sicilians and the Jews and the other immigrants from God-knows-where. Make the best of it. Not bloody likely. Not much to make the best of.

"You alright?"

Scarlet snapped her head up, startled out of her reverie. Despite herself, her heart stuttered a bit in her chest as she saw a man sitting at the end of the bar, looking at her earnestly, a touch of sympathy in his expression. "Er… yeah," Scarlet said, raking a hand through her hair. "I… I suppose so."

The man smiled a bit at that, as if he knew she was lying. He was awfully handsome, Scarlet couldn't help noticing, if a bit on the burly side. Tall, broad-shouldered, and massive, a mess of muscle and brawn. Puckered scars marred his face, and his nose was crooked and bumpy, as if it had been broken more than a few times. A bar fighter, no doubt. That was what Scarlet got for hanging about in bars alone. Still, some part of Scarlet – the racy, adventurous part that had always made Grandmère worried – found the man's scars interesting. Behind the bulk, he had a nice pair of eyes, bright green, like the meadows back in Ireland. She felt a pang of homesickness twist her stomach. His eyes didn't fit his rough exterior. They were soft, somehow.

Scarlet turned her attention back to her mug. "I… Maybe not," she admitted, though she didn't know why. Perhaps it was the ale. Scarlet had never weathered alcohol particularly well.

"Want to talk about it?" said the man. He had a French accent, one that reminded Scarlet of Grandmère's. Lilting and soft and breathy. It sent her heart stuttering.

"You don't want to hear my problems," Scarlet said with a rueful smile. "You'll never hear the end of them."

The man grinned. Nice smile, Scarlet thought. "My name's Wolf," he said, stretching out his hand.

"My name's Scarlet," she said, shaking his hand. His grip was firm and warm, and his touch sent an electric shock up her arm. "You'll regret this, you know. Listening to me and all. We Irish girls can be a bunch of chattering ninnies when we set our mind to it."

Wolf laughed. "Well, if it makes you feel any better," he said, "you're nice to listen to. Irish accent and all. You might be a bunch of chattering ninnies, but you've got beautiful voices."

It was open flattery, almost artless. But a reddish tinge creeped into Wolf's cheeks, and Scarlet felt herself smiling – really smiling – for the first time all day. She had been stuck in a puddle of melancholy since she'd dragged herself out of bed this morning, and this man – this horrible beast of a man – was pulling her out. His embarrassment was endearing, and she felt her heart swell.

"You've got a nice accent, too," Scarlet said. "Like my grandmother's." Silently, she kicked herself. What a way to flirt with a bloke: mention her grandmother. Idiot.

Wolf chuckled at that. "I'm not sure if I should be flattered or not."

"Oh, it was," said Scarlet. "Trust me. It was a compliment."

Wolf looked sideways at her, lips twitching. Scarlet felt like banging her forehead against the bar counter. She really was quite terrible at this whole flirting thing. Still, Wolf didn't look as if he seemed to mind. He just went on smiling, making Scarlet's stomach flip and her heart do somersaults in her chest, and she wondered if he found her embarrassment endearing, too.

"Anyway," Wolf said, clearing his throat. "Your grandmother has a French accent? I thought you said you were an Irish girl."

"Oh, I am," Scarlet said, tugging at one of her bright red curls. "My name's Scarlet, remember? Credit goes to my ever-original father for that one. I'm the typical Irish girl, red-haired and freckled, through and through. I can even do a bit of an Irish jig."

"An Irish jig?" Wolf seemed delighted by the prospect.

Scarlet threw back her head and laughed. "You'd have to get me a lot drunker than I am now to dance for you," she said. "Last time I attempted to jig, one of my shoes went flying across the room. Hit someone in the face, if I recall, though things were a bit woozy."

Wolf grinned. "Sounds exciting," he said.

"For everybody but the crazy girl dancing her arse off," Scarlet said moodily. "Woke up with a wretched headache and a missing left shoe the next morning."

His eyes gleamed. "Perhaps I should signal for the bartender…"

Scarlet shot him a look, but a smile still played at her lips. "Anyway, my grandmother's French. She moved to Ireland when she married my father, an Irish merchant. They met in Paris and settled down in Ireland a little later. I'm a bit of a French girl, but mostly I'm Irish, through-and-through."

"What, not American?"

Scarlet's smile disappeared. She glared at her mug. "No," she said quietly. "Not American."

They were both silent for a moment. "I understand," Wolf said after a beat.

Scarlet lifted her head. "You do?"

He nodded, tracing the rim of his cup with his index finger lazily. He had big hands, Scarlet noticed. Strong, manly hands, crisscrossed with scars. "I've never met anyone who says Brooklyn is their home," he said. "Not yet, anyway. People in Brooklyn are still Europeans, just living under an American flag. They're still Polish, or Russian, or Italian, or Irish," he said, gesturing at me. "But they had to leave their home, because to love their homeland was to die of stupidity. Everybody moves to America for a reason, be it famine, freedom, or opportunity. Underneath their American exterior, they're still the same as they always were, just free, homesick, and set adrift."

"It's been a year," Scarlet said softly. "A year exactly since I left Ireland. God, I miss it. I'd give almost anything to be back."

"Who knows?" Wolf said, looking at her intently. His eyes were bright. "Maybe you will someday. Never say never."

Scarlet gave him a half-smile, saddened and weighted down. She felt the customary sorrow begin to seep into her pores. Short lived laughs, nothing more. She was still a moody old Irish girl, just sitting at the end of the bar, reminiscing about a childhood with dirt underneath her fingernails, when ugliness could still be washed away with a bar of soap.

Then, before she knew what she was doing, she picked up her mug and her ratty old bag and moved down a few barstools, until she was directly next to Wolf. His eyes widened, but he didn't say anything; he just looked at her. He smelled nice, Scarlet thought; clean, some mixture of soap and mint. Some part of her screamed that she was being stupid, that there was no future here. But another part of her remembered Grandmère's words, about making the best of things. Wolf was an unexpected arrival. In a matter of minutes, he'd brightened up her own world, brushed aside her personal raincloud and rescued her from drowning in her sea of self-pity. Perhaps he could do it again.

Scarlet adjusted herself on her seat, crossing her ankles, tapping her leather clog on the sticky floor, picking up her mug and taking a sip. The barroom was dimly lit, light emanating from a smelly paraffin lamp. The bartender was lazily wiping down the counter, whistling some old showtune. A rowdy group of boys sat at the end of the bar, telling dirty jokes, and a group of scantily-clad girls whispered secrets in each other's ears a few seats down. A couple of college men hurled blunt darts at a pockmarked darts board, chipped and peeling with red and black paint, like a marred chessboard.

It wasn't home, Scarlet realized. But she'd grown accustomed to Brooklyn. And looking at Wolf, silly as it might seem, Scarlet no longer felt so alone. Maybe – just maybe – she could make the best of things after all.

She folded her hands on the countertop. "So," she said evenly. "Tell me about your childhood in France."

Wolf smiled.

A/N: Hope you liked it! Review and share your thoughts! Constructive criticism is always appreciated!