Safe and Sound

Prologue

*trigger warning for abuse*

"Hannah."

Hannah's mother, Ashley's soft Scottish accent filled her ears. The redheaded eleven year old lifted her head to look into her mother's soft blue eyes. "Mum?" Hannah had her mother's accent. Despite being born in New York, she rarely ever spoke to anyone but her mother and so she developed her mother's Scottish accent, which had never changed even though Ashley had been out of Scotland for more than ten years.

The mother and daughter currently sat on the old sodden blanket between the Starbucks and McDonald's as the air began to grow cold. In their hands, they each held half of a chicken sandwich which they had managed to obtain. Someone had thrown it away, the sandwich had still been in it's packaging when Hannah had found it in one of the trash cans in Central Park. Proud of her find, Hannah had rushed back to her mother in the alleyway to show her mother.

Ashley gave her daughter a soft smile as the eleven year old sat down beside her. She had tried to get her daughter to eat the whole thing but Hannah had insisted that they share it. Ashley was hyper aware of how underweight her daughter was, how underweight they both were, but living on the streets and having no money, made obtaining food extremely difficult.

The two redheads had gotten a package of food from a local food bank, but most of the food had been useless because they didn't have anywhere to cook most of the cans of peas and beans they had been given. They had managed to make a box of cereal last over a week but that has run out that morning. The twenty dollar note that a tall blonde woman with long legs in a short plaid skirt and black tights, her hair flowing effortlessly with a side fringe, had placed in their empty cardboard coffee cup as they sat on one of the benches in Central Park had gone towards buying them both hats, gloves, a thin jacket hole-less each and scarves in an attempt to keep them both warm in the dropping winter temperatures.

Ashley knew that she and her daughter could go to the homeless shelters but she also knew that meant there was a chance that one of the volunteers would call the police or child protective services and she would lose Hannah. Hannah would fall into the foster system and be lost to her forever. Ashley did not want that, she herself had grown up in the foster system in Scotland and that had been hell, she did not want the same fate for her daughter, but also knew that with global warming, winters were getting harder, colder and they could both be dead from frostbite before it was even over.

"Tell me what you do if something happens to me." Ashley asked her daughter. She'd asked this question every day from the day her daughter was able to understand their situation, that had been from when Hannah was about eight years old.

Hannah let out a soft groan in complaint as she gripped the half eaten sandwich in her gloved hands. "Again, mum, really?" She was getting tired of this question. She knew what to do if anything was to happen to her mother.

"Hannah, I only want to know that you know exactly what to do if something bad ever happens to me." Ashley said in a soft voice. She'd had to tell her daughter this every day for the last six months.

With a heavy sigh, Hannah stared into her mother's blue eyes, searching them for a moment. "I go to the police officer that stands at the corner of Central Park outside the Barnes and Noble. I tell her that I saw someone in an alleyway looking injured. I show them to you and then I go to find Harry." She repeated the words her mother had told her.

"And where does Harry normally hide?" Ashley asked, letting out a soft breath as she felt herself relax with the knowledge that her daughter knew that to do. She could see her breath as it met the cold air, clouding around her lips like a dragon breathes fire.

Harry was Ashley's friend. She'd met him when she first moved to New York, back when she had a job in a small run-down coffee shop. He'd become a surrogate uncle to Hannah. Sometimes Hannah wondered if Harry was her father but she quickly dismissed these thoughts because she looked nothing like Harry. Hannah had never asked her mother about her father but sometimes, when they sat by the duck pond in Central Park in the warm days of summer, Hannah wondered who her father was as she watched fathers and daughters feeding the ducks and eating ice cream.