Highlander/Baccano! ficlet

[icarus_chained]

For a prompt on comment_fic. I've only seen the anime version of Baccano!, but that was more than sufficient for Claire to make an impression, really -_-;

Title: Music for a Solitary Dancer
Rating: R
Fandom: Highlander, Baccano!
Characters/Pairings: Claire Stanfield, random original HL immortal
Summary: A Highlander-style immortal tries to challenge Claire Stanfield in a train yard, under the mistaken impression that he's another immortal. This goes about as well for said immortal as it has for any other immortal. Or, indeed, anyone else at all
Wordcount: 523
Warnings/Notes: For those who know Baccano!, Claire Stanfield. For everyone else, violence
Disclaimer: Not mine

Music for a Solitary Dancer

"There can only be one!"

The man with the sword had yelled that, angry and arrogant, waving his weapon at Claire in time to the musical shunting of trains. With the lights of passing carriages gleaming off the blade and the light of violence in his eyes, his sword like a conductor's baton to the song of blood. Beautiful, really. Quite lovely.

He had yelled other things, too. Less comprehensible ones, things like "Wait, you're not even immortal!" and "How dare a mortal pretend to ..." Claire wasn't really interested in those, though. They were nonsense, the silly mutterings of people who thought immortality came in bottles, who thought it had to be sought out, when really all one had to do was not die, when all one had to be was real, where everything else was false.

Nonsense, he said. Much like the rest, yes, but the other words, the first words, "There can only be one!", they had been such charming nonsense. He had liked those. Those were good words.

The swordsman hadn't been the same sort of immortal as Firo, as his darling Chane's father. Not quite. No bottles, no elixirs, and in the end, he hadn't even had to be eaten. Made of lightning and blood and the point of the sword, a never ending canvas that writhed and fought and screamed bloody deprecations, but in the end a rail spike to the neck had finished it. Not long at all, not a real fight, not like the other kind would have been.

Tch. Disappointing. Blood and lightning and music to the shunting of trains, and those lovely, lovely words, like a song just for him: "There can only be one!" And there was, there was only one, there was only him. It had been so nice, to hear it said. So nice, to dance a red dance to its rhythm, with the lightning and the challenge to be the counterpoint, and the trains to be their orchestra.

But in the end, the swordsman just hadn't been strong enough. A little dream of arrogance and blood, and rather discourteous at that. Finished all too quickly, small and red in the light of passing carriages. A last taste of him, a song of lightning, a strange form of eating, so that Claire wondered if he might not have been like the other immortals after all. But no, not really. The corpse remained, as corpses do, and the swordsman was less a song and more a remembered note.

... Oh well, he thought. Fixing his cap, smiling bright and cheerful as he swung his way up onto his train, bound for New York and a nod to family once again. The swordsman already a distantly fading song in his memory.

But the words. There can only be one. Mmm. Yes, those he would remember. Those he would hum to himself, and dance to when the trains were singing and maybe, just maybe, find some partner to sing for him again.

There could only be one. There was only one. And it really was so very nice, to find someone who realised that. Heh.