Well. Lookie here. The rewrite. I really hope this all goes to plan, because I spent a crap ton of time doing absolutely nothing. Then more nothing. And some more nothing on top of that. ONWARD!

Chapter One: The Return

The smell of coffee wafted through the cabins, a heavy yet soothing aroma that hung in the air like a gentle cloud. It seeped from the galley, snaked between the rows of seats and snuck into the air conditioning. From there it spread quickly like a virus, its influence rousing some of the less active passengers on board and refreshing the livelier ones. The smell even reached the storage cabins, finally settling in a dark corner and mixing with the scent of dust and grease.

Coffee was being handed out generously, each mug filled to the brim with the velvety black liquid and sometimes adorned with cream or sugar. The elderly couple in the front received the first choosing, ultimately settling on two cups of coffee with cream. The mother with her five sons three rows down gratefully took her mug, savoring the escape from the last hour of childish entertainment. Coffee was finally offered, in the last row to the right, to two heavily dressed figures in professional attire. One was slightly more awake than the other, who was slumped and snoring lightly. The companion, who ordered for both of them, decided that then was the time for the other one to wake up and be a considerate human being. This was achieved by a stream of scalding hot coffee splashed onto the sleeping person's face.

This created quite the desired effect.

"AAAUGH!" shrieked the victim, her hands shooting up to protect herself from any more assaults. Drips of coffee clung to her hair, plastering it to her now soaked face. Her eyes were squeezed shut in pain, forcibly attempting to rub off the remainder of the beverage. The companion, with due consideration for her friend's feelings, was laughing her head off.

"Not cool, man!" the woman growled through clenched teeth, her sleeve now damp with coffee, "you couldn't have woken me up any other way?"

"Oh, come on 'Liza. Drink your damn coffee." Eliza now had a mug in her hands, the temperature stinging her palms. She eyed her friend as she sipped the offering. It warmed her stomach, the bitterness burbling in her stomach comfortably. She breathed in the aroma with contented leisure. "Thanks for getting me one, at least. Looks like you aren't so selfish after all."

Her companion shook her head, "Selfish? You try ordering two cups and waiting for your buddy to wake up."

"Waiting for me to wake up? You tried to burn me alive, remember Catherine?"

Catherine giggled, gazing out the window. Currently there was really nothing to look at, just some fields and occasionally a town or two. The train's tracks avoided the civilization, making the trip rather less scenic than it should have been. Catherine simply looked out to look out; no purpose or incentive drove her to do anything else. Elizabeth, sipping her coffee, had pulled out a small book and was reading from it. Bound in red leather, a small satin ribbon dyed a dull grey served as a place marker. She was playing with it now, her fingers rubbing the fabric between them. Rough, she concluded as she allowed the ribbon to droop, rough but smooth on the other side.

Catherine switched her sights to Elizabeth, "How long do we have?" Elizabeth pulled out her watch, the glass face scratched and worn from use. The minute hand was barely legible, but it proved its use nonetheless after a couple seconds of critical staring. "A few more hours before we reach the station. You getting jumpy?"

"Nah. I'm just bored is all." Catherine pulled out a deck of cards from her pocket, smiling. "You wanna play?"

Elizabeth grinned back, reflecting Catherine's complacent look before pointedly rummaging in her bag. She fished out a pocketable case, which opened with a neat little *click*. A pair of glasses were taken out, and gingerly placed on Elizabeth's face. Her eyes were slightly magnified now, the irises glowing a bit from the glare. Catherine dealt out her cards, "Speed, no time. We each get half the deck, five cards in hand."

Speed was Catherine's favorite game. It required timed thinking, a quick hand and even quicker reflexes. All of these Catherine had. Elizabeth, on the other hand, could beg to differ. "Why Speed? We have plenty of time. How about War?" Catherine crinkled her nose. "War? That could take hours! It's no fun anyway. Besides, I own the deck."

Elizabeth grunted and swiped her half of the deck from Catherine. For her friend, she could be a real kid sometimes. "Fine, you win. But I'm going to beat you so hard that you'll be dying to play something else." Catherine's eyes glimmered sinisterly from over her cards.

"You're on."

It was a flurry. Hands snapped from cards to table and back to cards. Catherine deftly took cards from her deck without looking, though the hand never decreased in size. Her tactic was simple: Every time she got a card, put it down and have the next one ready. One by one, she quickly decreased her deck to half its size in a heartbeat.

Elizabeth used a different tactic. She had lined up her cards in order, and with irregular timing she would slam down packs of cards. This quickly diminished her hand, but she too quickly refilled it with cards from her deck. Bombing, she called it. It was a strategy Catherine detested, half because she believed that it was a crude and unprofessional tactic. The other half was that it was the only strategy Elizabeth beat her with on numerous occasions.

"SPEED!"

Catherine hand hovered just above Elizabeth's, whose had slammed into the table with the last cards in the deck. Elizabeth smiled proudly, "Take that."

Catherine stared at the deck for a few minutes, then sighed as she let her last card fall onto the table. She would have won too, but Elizabeth had beaten her to it. "Aw, come on Cat. It's just a game."

"Yeah. My game." Catherine gathered up the cards and shuffled them again, and began to file them into the little box. Elizabeth shook her head, "Don't be such a sore loser. You wanna play again?"

"No."

"Do you want to play something else?"

"No."

"Well, what do you want to do?"

Catherine snapped the little case shut, replacing it in her pocket. "How about we just talk."

"Okay…" Elizabeth started, taking the glasses off and replacing them in the little case, "Have you talked to you little sister lately?"

Catherine's expression immediately softened, "Yeah, we did before we left for the station. She sounded super excited, and promised that there'll be a surprise waiting for me when I get home." She stretched her arms while glancing out the window, the fields from some time ago now dramatically changed into some kind of desert. The worn sun-bathed dirt glowed in the afternoon light, the occasional desert tree zooming past like a blip on a heart monitor.

"What about Raph?" Catherine asked, tugging her cufflinks lightly, "have you heard from him?"

Elizabeth shook her head. She hadn't been able to talk to Raphael since last Christmas. It had been so long ago that she could barely remember what he looked like. Has he changed at all in the past seven months? Who knew, really? She had to make some serious connections just to talk to him for a good half-hour. He was super excited, showing me all the cool presents he got. Science projects and laboratory equipment, of course. What else would you expect from a kid like him?

"Well, I bet he misses you tons," stated Catherine. I could only nod and stare down at my hands.

I hope he does.

The train station was busy that day. Masses of people squeezed themselves in and out of the sleek cabins, all bustling to get somewhere. A few had parked themselves in the middle of all this chaos, either waiting for the two o'clock train to Las Vegas or just people watching. The great big board of all the arrival and departure times flipped and shifted, the numbers and letters flittering in and out. The smell of coffee was present all throughout the station, thanks to a Back to the Grind coffee shop located near the entrance. My mother was sipping her cup in between anxious glances at her watch. "I wish they would come."

I didn't reply to her mumbling. It wasn't meant for me anyways. I checked the great big clock located on the wall above the arrival times. Four o' five. The train was five minutes late, a rare occurrence in the Carson City Station. I shifted in my seat, my feet swinging involuntarily to the sounds around me. The clicking of a woman in high heels. The thrum of a train pulling away from the boarding station. The dampened pop music echoing through the speakers around the station. The rhythm was everywhere.

My meditative thinking was interrupted by the sound of a train whistle, painfully ear-piercing. A train had arrived, now settling up front nearest to our side of the station. A man wearing a blue suit had approached the train, and deftly swung the door open and entered. I watched his blue hat bob through the cabins, disappearing in the parts where they joined and had no windows. People began to get off, retrieving their luggage from a couple of young men also dressed in blue. One of them was being exceptionally polite and enthusiastic, hoisting the largest bags and setting them down as gingerly as he could. An elderly couple thanked the man for his help, and then took off with a map clutched in their hands. Tourists, maybe. Or visiting relatives new to the area. A large family of six filed out one by one, the mother clearly busy with one of her small boys. She had the poor guy by the ear, yelling something while she handed the luggage boy a tip. The young man said nothing, but tipped his hat in respect as the mother and the rest of her children moved en masse towards the public parking structure.

I didn't know what to expect when I saw her. After five hard years serving for her country, I had figured she'd be tough as nails. My mind had procured an image of a hard-built woman, arms and chest filled with tattoos and scars riddling her skin. Maybe somewhere in there she might have been smoking a cigarette, all the while flipping through a firearms magazine. I had only seen her spastically throughout the five years, and my mind always went back to that image. She would be sneering, I thought, unhappy and scared of her own shadow just like all the other veterans I had seen. Either that or she would be cruel and unforgiving, and quite possibly eager enough to teach me a few things about barrack life. My mom swore she would never let that kind of thing happen, and scolded me to put that ridiculous image out of my head.

What I did see were two women, dressed in starchy uniforms. The one on the left donned a dark blue suit, complete with hat and shiny buttons. Dark brown hair, dark eyes, and sleek glasses. She carried a roller pack, the Air Force emblem silk-screened onto it. She tipped the luggage boy with a smile and a gentle 'thank you'. She then bid goodbyes to her companion, pulling her into a hug.

When they parted was when I got to see the other woman. She was dressed in a suit, but instead of dark blue, like her friend, she was enveloped in a layer of dark green. She had no hat, but her hair was done up in a blond ponytail. Thick combat boots thudded on the floor, over to the luggage boy. She spoke a few words and pointed to two large duffel bags on the top shelf of the compartment. He greeted her request with a complacent smile, then went ahead and attempted to pull the bags straight outward.

*CRASH!* the bags toppled on top of the guy, making him collapse as if his legs were paper. He screamed in surprise, struggling to shove the bags off of himself. The woman pulled out her wallet, leafing a good five dollars out. Then, with one hand, she grabbed both of the bags and gave a good jerk. The bags jumped from the luggage boy's chest, settling on the woman's shoulders like great big flour sacks. Once the poor boy caught his breath and recovered from the awful attack, she gave him the five dollars and a pat on the back, smiling brightly. She then turned to us.

My mother shrieked, running towards the woman as fast as her four-inch heels would let her. I could only stand there, staring as my mother hugged and cried into the shoulder of this woman I could barely recognize.

"Don't run like that, Mom. You'll hurt yourself."

My Mom peeked over her shoulder and waved me forward. It took me a few steps before I found myself gaining speed. She was there. She was actually there. My sister, whom I haven't seen since Christmas, was here and here to stay.

She wasn't at all like the picture inside my mind. Her skin was clear of any tattoos (at least, any I could see) and the only scars I could see were gracing the collarbone. No large, grotesque wounds or even bigger, grosser scar tissue. The only things she carried were her two duffel bags, and no bulge in her pockets suggested a cigarette pack. She was hugging my mother, smiling like a kid at Christmas on her birthday, and she was crying.

Not at all like what I had imagined her. But it was much better than that.

She noticed me standing there, taking it all in. She let go of Mom and knelt down to my height. Her eyes shimmered with tears, and she was still grinning. "Come on, Raphael. Can't I hug you for real this time?"

I ran at her with all my strength, gripping hard as if she would escape if I didn't. She didn't move, returning the force of the hug. She laughed into my shoulder, her tears already staining my sleeve. But I didn't care. She was real, as real and solid as anything else in the whole world. This wasn't one of those fake hugs we gave each other after the few video chats we had, or the care packages I got once a year. This was her.

"My God," she declared as she released me from the hug, "look how you've grown!"

"Only ten centimeters," I retorted, now smiling just as widely, "you didn't miss much."

She laughed, a hearty good-from-the-soul laugh. It was great to hear.

"It's good to be home, Raph. It's good to be home."