Open Your World

by I-Empirical

In 1923, Gordon's arrival to the island of Sodor is met with severe distress in Henry, and he becomes agitated and avoidant until he stops talking to everybody entirely. Edward, disturbed by the highly unusual nature of the situation, believes the solution lies within Gordon to confront Henry, but the big engine is afraid. Heavy to RWS canon, not the show. Very long. Oneshot

A little bit about the author.

I have always known myself to be notorious for hopping fandoms- from Star Trek to Metalocalypse to the Magic School Bus- but in all this, despite my interests, I have not been able to contribute a decent piece of fan-induced insomnia to any of them. Little was I to expect that it'd be Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends of all things for which I would finally produce something, let alone something completed (even if it is only a one-shot). Funny how the world turns like that.

A lot of this piece is based on my interpretations of some of these characters' behaviours and traits and may not mesh with everybody's. I have also striven to generate a fairly realistic story drawn from history. As I am extremely amateur in regards to British rail research, the story that results may be rife with inaccuracy or contextual strangeness. If you are interested in sending me corrections, reviews, or suggestions on how to improve, my comment box is wide open. The same request is extended toward my grammar, clarity, story length, style and anything else under the sun.

The rest remains to make a positive impression if it is not too long. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

"I will not let you go without talking to him."

The larger engine sighed. It was not the first time he'd heard this discussion, but he'd always been able to push Edward aside if he was occupied or, and often deliberately these days, otherwise personally unavailable. Deep down, he knew he was misbehaving and that Edward had a very good point to bring up, for it had a lot to do with the wellbeing of everybody else. He just didn't like to talk about things of such a personal nature to anybody- especially those who weren't interested in talking to him to begin with. Right now, to his frustration, there was nothing to be occupied by, and he was unable to make up any excuses. The workday had long since ended; the other engines had returned to their sheds, and, figuring Edward and his tirades was likely to be there as well, returning home had been the last thing on Gordon's mind as he stared at the dirt at the siding he liked to rest at between his hurried journeys from Knapford Station and the rest of his newly-implemented "express" route, a feature still in development with a very bright, rapidly-approaching future. He admitted that this had not been his wisest move, for it was unusual for an engine to return home late if such an anomaly had not previously been given notice. This he ordinarily would have caught outright, but with things the way had been lately, Gordon had not been well, his care for such small things slipping, and it was a result of this that his mentor was now sitting before him.

"We've discussed this before and I know it's been hard. It's been hard for everyone, but it's been going on the same ever since you arrived upon this island, and avoiding confrontation is making nothing better."

Gordon snorted in frustration, blowing a cloud of steam from his nose. "It's not my fault that Henry doesn't like me," he muttered. "Why don't you two talk to him? You're his dear old friends, after all."

"Gordon, we've been trying that from the very beginning. He won't talk to anyone anymore, I haven't heard a word out of him since..." This detail escaping him, Edward drew in a breath. "Henry doesn't dislike you. This I'm certain of, I genuinely believe-"

"Henry could have gotten to know me the first day I arrived here," hissed Gordon. "He didn't bother showing up to my arrival ceremony, that was an important day. My first day on this island. Yes, he got a talking to. Yes, he apologized later and grudgingly introduced himself. That doesn't make a difference, he hates me and I don't care to talk to him if it makes him so upset to be around me. I can see it in his eyes- when I can see his eyes."

It was Edward's turn to sigh. An endlessly patient engine, he was assigned to every new arrival to the budding North Western Railway at Sir Topham Hatt's request under the advice of his directors at his own Furness Railway back in Glasgow. He'd gained his experience there in showing young and new engines about a busy railway and their tasks, keeping them out of trouble, introducing them to their workday and explaining what was expected of them from the men who required their services. Most importantly, however- and he'd learned this from experience- he strove to welcome them and make them feel at home. This was utterly paramount to him, for it set the foundations for the engine's future. Gordon was one such engine.

A newcomer from the mainland out of prestigious Doncaster Works, designed by Nigel Gresley himself, and barely one year old as they'd been informed, Topham had been wildly lucky to acquire him in these recent times where finding reliable engines was growing more and more difficult every passing day. The other engines didn't know the minutia of the business arrangement, but they were shocked to hear of this new engine's groundbreaking identity as a brand-new A1 Pacific and origins- for the Plant was relatively well-known in the world of the rails- only to be further flabbergasted to hear that he'd been purchased for a landfall deal, with a spare firebox and boiler thrown in to boot. Naturally, they'd been horribly curious, and asked Topham- and later Gordon himself- about it, but Topham spared broad details and Gordon simply didn't want to discuss it on the interest in leaving the past behind for the present. This they could respect enough, but even at the most general of requests he still remained elusive, even growing annoyed with it. What they did learn was that Topham had apparently had a contact that got him in touch with Gresley and, interestingly, Gordon had a somewhat unusual position in the Plant due to his circumstances. It all seemed frightfully odd, but nothing more was said. Eventually, a month passed, history had lapsed, and Gordon was approaching his second complete month of service on the railway. Edward, as always, had been working hard at introducing him to his new life, but never in his near-thirty-year lifetime had he encountered a problem quite like this.

He had gotten to know Gordon relatively well as he'd worked with him. Gordon was a devotedly hard and dedicated worker, designed for long and rushed passenger routes, and thus was fast and enormous, tipping over Henry by a foot here and there and making him the largest engine Edward had ever seen. His apple-green livery shone of Doncaster, and his size rendered his strength unbeatable. These traits, however, combined with his esteemed heritage, made him arrogant and gave him an unfortunately inflated pride which, at times, approached the impression of a sense of entitlement. Versions of this behaviour were not uncommon in young engines like him, for they had a lot to prove and tended to be instilled with great expectations of themselves and their abilities from the tail-end of their manufacture. Even Edward had to admit he was like this when he was younger, and had seen it in Thomas when he'd arrived as well. What he was seeing in Gordon was different, though, and he realized that it was most likely to be an inseparable part of his personality. A part of him hoped that he would grow out of it as he had himself, but some engines just turned out this way, and the rest of him therefore knew that this was impossible.

Still, it did not end up preventing Gordon from being approachable, and he carried with him a temperate dignity borne out of a witty charisma and deep respect for the job and his own responsibilities. Edward enjoyed this in him and found, when encountered in the correct mood, that he could be wonderfully personable.

Thomas had also had some good interactions with him, especially during their off-hours. Edward had later found out that he was as fond of Gordon as he was by the way he teased him as often as he did, for he did paint an admittedly- and, in ways, deservedly- large target upon himself for the way he boasted and grumbled. He'd warned Thomas in passing about going too far with this sort of behaviour, particularly when the stress of the new rapid-transport route he'd been assigned caused Gordon's mood to grow stormy, but the cheeky tank engine only scoffed and told Edward to stow his worries in his smokebox where they apparently belonged.

So it was with two of Topham's working engines on the railway. The third was not quite as happy.

Henry had changed dramatically since Gordon's arrival on the island. As it had indeed happened, he hadn't come to see his arrival, instead hiding himself in his shed and refusing to move (his crew, in fact, couldn't even get him started, and they spent a good part of the day on troubleshooting) to avoid Edward and Thomas' persuasion and reprimands even after relenting to accompany them the previous day. He seemed to have been dreading the then-unknown Gordon's addition from the moment Topham revealed the news; this was highly unexpected in him, they observed, and were both convinced that it was not normal. The Henry they knew was, on average, a warm and very caring person, this average being derived from the most recurring trends amidst periodic, near-hyperbolic changes in his emotions and temperament on a day-to-day basis due to the way he'd been constructed.

Built by rejected blueprints from a special prototype, blueprints drafted not too long before the subsequently revised versions began seeing official reference for production and stolen from the same Doncaster Works Gordon had hailed from, Henry was essentially a throwback A1 Pacific with rogue construction elements derived from one or two completely different engines in the process. The result left him with an inadequately-sized firebox which had begun causing him signs of trouble recently, along with a small score of operational flaws in his steam system, valve arrangement, and ventilation, but the truly curious part was that the overall failure of the whole affair had drastically affected his personality.

In addition to his unpredictable passing moods, he seemed to fluctuate between feelings of varying intensity, ranging from slight unease to full-on irrational terror, regarding aspects of his environment. The most common example of this was observed in his opinion on the rain: sometimes he was comfortable enough to operate during a squall with only the occasional, slightly-paranoid complaint; other times he was markedly distressed, which actually caused problems with his steaming. Once or twice, sparsely enough to prevent record even as intermittent, he'd grown petrified at the sight of it to the point of complete reclusion inside his shed until it ceased. The latter, fortunately, had only occurred- so far- on days where it did not cause a great issue, the worst resulting in delay by about five hours, a total examination of his mechanical condition, and a very stern talking-to.

Edward had originally believed that this sudden and total change in Henry's behaviour upon Gordon's arrival was just another particularly untimely instance of this quirk that was lasting a bit longer than usual. As the days passed and turned into weeks, however, it became clear to him that something was not right. From the cheerful fellow they'd grown fond of over the course of a year, he'd now become agitated and bleak, almost as if under a form of mind control, withdrawing from his friends and saying as little as possible until a starkly impenetrable silence had developed, causing him to resort to using gestures and whistles to communicate. At first, if Edward could catch him on his own, he could get him to talk, but only for a short time with deliberate moves of avoidance of what was troubling him so. Usually this would be at his favourite spot in a small overgrown patch at the end of the shunting yards beyond the sheds.

Henry seemed to grow calmer when exposed to nature and greenery, and in past times, observing this behaviour, Edward would take him here to talk to him if his day had been frustrating or he'd been feeling troubled. It'd always helped, but these days there was nothing, and sitting there alone seemed to be the only thing outside of his work Henry was interested in doing. Sometimes he tried to spend his night there, and Thomas once claimed he heard his driver and fireman arguing with him over the issue. He'd relented, of course- in truth he knew that it was ultimately irrational, and there was still enough steam to move him- and he took his place in the shed farthest from whichever shed Gordon was located.

Indeed, Gordon was the crux of it all. There was no denying that, and Edward and Thomas had to admit that it put a bit of strain on their developing relationships with the big engine for what had been associated with his arrival and Henry's turbulent mental state. Gordon himself was only willing to accept this fact from stories he'd been told about Henry from both the other engines and Sir Topham Hatt, who had also had little success in coaxing him back to his old self or even learning a bit about what it was that was bothering him. As Gordon had no reference of Henry's old self to fall back upon, he was also just as ready to accept that Henry was simply an engine of extremely selective taste in his friends and allowed his hatred for somebody to affect every scope of his existence. Needless to say, it did not paint him a pretty picture of his cohort, and he had a very difficult time understanding where Thomas and Edward were coming from when he tried to make heads or tails of it.

What Edward did know was that this strange rancour was causing havoc in the railway. Henry was not performing well at all, Sir Topham Hatt was growing very impatient with the mess that resulted, and Gordon was rapidly growing less and less happy with his new life on the island. Rather, he was becoming depressed; when Edward had inquired about his health a week before after noticing that his arrogance was being replaced by self-depreciation, he had learned that Gordon had been harbouring feelings of being unwanted, unneeded, and disliked. He'd even revealed to him that he had been considering asking Topham if he could be sold to another railway on the mainland with the hope of forgetting he'd ever set his wheels on Sodor forever.

Edward had been horrified.

The answer had stricken him, for it is ubiquitously known that every engine's only dream is to work at a railway where their actions are met with satisfaction and acknowledgement of their use to the humans they serve. Here, Gordon felt his actions were causing the direct opposite, and Edward had been very caring towards this claim. There were only two problems. One was that Gordon didn't seem to have done anything wrong. He hadn't talked to Henry until four days after he arrived when Henry properly introduced himself and took responsibility for his actions, recognizing they were inappropriate. Other than that, Gordon had attempted to be relatively friendly. It was Henry who had been as avoidant as he had, and it ended with Henry that a tension had developed.

That was Edward's understanding of the underlying conflict and it didn't make sense. The other problem, however- and this was where Edward had a slightly difficult time accepting Gordon's plight- was that Gordon had not come forward and confronted Henry in an attempt to mend whatever had come asunder.

Thomas did not feel the same way about this topic. He had told Edward that Gordon was innocent, and later fired to Henry the same evening that he was being unbelievably rude and childish and that it should have been him who was to properly apologize and make the first move toward forging something of a friendship; in a sense Edward supposed this was true. What he did not agree with was turning it into Henry's responsibility. For after many nights of hard thought and many days of scrutinous observation of Henry's behaviour and emotions, along with the occasional, rare snippets of light shed upon it from Henry himself, these still often having been cryptic, he finally came to the conclusion that there was something… else. Something completely different or extraneous, something that had been overlooked, or couldn't be controlled, or perhaps kept a guarded secret from everybody for reasons he could not fathom. It had to be. It was the only thing that made sense for such a position taken so staunchly, and that narrowed down the measures that had to be taken to the only choice available: Gordon had to talk to Henry. And he wouldn't.

All of this had brought him to where he was now, and he'd made up his mind that this would be the final talk he would have with the larger engine on his course of action, especially when his timing couldn't be more perfect. Tonight he would not let himself be ignored.

"Gordon, look at me," he began, his voice commanding, but tinged with genuine well-meaning. Gordon hesitated before looking up. "I know it's been brutal. It really has. Believe me, I have no way of knowing exactly what you're going through, and I'm not going to pretend I do. But I also will not pretend that I don't care for you. Your beginning on this island was never supposed to happen like this, and I refuse to let it go on. It hurts me to see you as my pupil- and my friend- suffering like this for something you haven't done, but it is for this very reason that I've determined that the best way to solve everything is to pick yourself up and find out what is going wrong, because another friend of mine, another pupil like you, is also hurting- badly. He's growing ill- I know you can see that."

"I see it," said Gordon quickly. "I see it, but he's being a stupid fool about it. Yeah, he's making his life miserable. His own life, but also mine and everyone else's, and everyone's getting really sick to the teeth of it."

Edward would not be deterred. "Do you like it here, Gordon?"

The question had not been expected. "Wha… do I like it here?"

"Yes. Do you like this island, this railway? The work you're doing?"

Gordon rumbled. "Yes, I do, yes to all. Especially the work I'm doing. Why is that important?"

"What about those you've met? The people and engines?"

"I don't like Henry."

"Forget about Henry for now, please. Did you enjoy meeting us on the island?"

"This isn't important," muttered Gordon. "Sure I did, I guess. The humans that live here are good. The Fat- I mean Sir Topham Hatt- seems to be doing a good job keeping this railway going, though I do wish he'd talk to us more. I like my crew enough, my driver and fireman say they like to work with me. They mess around in my cab too much for my liking when they should be focusing on the work, though. As for you and Thomas…" he looked away. "You two I will miss."

Edward smiled slightly. "The way you talk, it's as if you're going to leave us. Do you want to leave us?"

"I wish you wouldn't say us. It's not an us thing, it's about the wellbeing of this railway. If leaving will make Henry feel better, then there we are."

"But it is, Gordon," said Edward. "Us, we make up this railway. We're all in this together, including you. Personally, I would be quite saddened to see you go, and Thomas would be too. If you know you can help Henry… why do you need to go?"

Gordon shut his eyes for a moment. The subject needed to be changed. "What does this have to do with helping him?"

"If it will help you, why don't you imagine yourself in his position?"

There was a brief silence. "His position?"

Edward nodded. "How would you feel if you had something, perhaps a second voice if you want to think of it that way, screaming at you that something, real or imaginary, about somebody you've only barely met, somebody you're spurning without thought or knowledge, was somehow so unbearable that it became important to fixate upon it and deliberately drive them away? Fixate to the point that, whether you can help it or not, you shut out the ones who want to help you?"

"It's… not my problem," Gordon replied, but his convictions from before had visibly been deflated. He hadn't learned this lesson yet.

"Would you like to do that to others?" Edward softened. "You said you had brothers back on the mainland; would you like to remove them from your life because of something you didn't know?"

Gordon grew quiet, and he thought for a while. Something stirred in his eyes. "It doesn't sound right."

"No, it doesn't. There's something very wrong with Henry, Gordon. Very wrong; and I think you cannot be the direct reason for it."

"But…" Gordon looked back at Edward. "I can be the solution? I can fix him, and everything will be okay?"

Edward smiled. He was so young. "Yes, you can. You most certainly can. And everyone would appreciate your actions greatly if you did so."

"To do so, though… He's… it's so hard to be around him."

Edward nodded again. "Yes, it is, and it will be an incredibly brave thing for you to approach him. By doing so, you will prove to yourself- and everybody around you- that, instead of running away from a problem, you have the courage to stand up to that problem and face it without fear, perhaps even coming out all the better for it. They will be so impressed with you. I will be very proud of you." He looked into Gordon's eyes and saw that stirring flicker, producing sparks. "I've seen you do it before; I know you can do it again."

Late afternoon was slipping by as some of the few remaining passengers stepped off the coaches to the last station in the route before Knapford, where the last would disembark to retire for the night with their families. They weren't the only ones to come home after this stretch; Gordon's fireman and driver, as well as Gordon himself, still had a ways left to go before their days were done, and even then it would take a little longer: a request had been made, resulting in an arrangement.

Edward's words, when they could amidst the hurry, had been bothering Gordon since they'd had their discussion. He had set about putting them off for more convenient moments, akin to the many times he'd done so before, but this time it was different. Words were not conducive to the running of an efficient, high-speed passenger route; a distracted engine, for having the same conscious faculties as any human, were also prone to the same consequences their flesh-and-blood counterparts suffered from distraction from their tasks at hand. If he'd been given a choice, of course, Gordon wouldn't have returned to these thoughts with any willingness, and it still wasn't easy. This wasn't an option anymore, and hopefully it never would be again- at least not in regards to the same topic.

It all seemed somewhat dreamlike now: his talk with Edward three nights ago; the troubled sleep which triggered the feverish formation of a sort of plan; the early meeting that morning with The Fat Controller, as Thomas liked to call him, with a plea for help with what he hoped could return everything to normal. Topham had agreed with a measure of surprise, seeing Gordon taking this initiative (well aware that it was a result of Edward's counsel- the mixed-traffic engine deserved a new coat of paint and a performance overhaul to his valve gear), and in short notice the message had been spread to everyone whose aid they knew would be required.

Gordon was going to talk to Henry.

Consultation with the others involved was necessary for a small variety of reasons, the foremost being simply because he was an engine who needed to confront another engine, and that carried implications beyond simply walking up and asking for someone's time. Henry had to remain inert, he couldn't be allowed to run away or be moved back to the sheds in the middle of conference just to stick to a timetable. The same couldn't happen to Gordon, and the two engines' crews were happy to negotiate the changes that needed to occur to their workday hours as a result. The selected day's schedules were swiftly revised, waived by Topham himself to cover the bases of authority, to compensate for changes to the times for the engines to retire, including that one had to be operational later in the night so as to move the other back to the sheds later, for it was also agreed that the two could talk in the absence of Edward and Thomas for the purposes of comfort; Gordon had desired this, and the location was easy. Both crews knew Henry liked to rest in the same grassy patch Edward would visit him at every so often before going to bed. There was plenty of privacy, and Henry could at least be somewhere he was known to be relatively easier to talk to for a matter like this. Seeing as Gordon would more likely be the one shunting afterwards, it was debated whether or not he should be left with a low fire on all night, but that depended on how long they wanted to talk. He'd been allowed to take as much time as he wanted in order to do the best job he could, giving his and Henry's crew a cutoff time at midnight whereupon, if it looked as though it would last that much longer, they would leave for the night and stoke their engines up in the same spot the following morning. With some promised overtime pay thrown into it- a generous rarity from Topham, who wanted nothing more than for this business to be settled- the men were more than satisfied with this.

Most everybody was, including Gordon himself, although satisfaction for him was also mixed up with a myriad of other feelings which eventually boiled down to a persistent, nagging uneasiness. How he hated this sort of thing- he remembered the heart-to-hearts he once had to have with Gresley back at his home on the mainland regarding his situation and future. They weren't bad necessarily, but he was not good at them and they made him feel vulnerable. If he'd had this mess his way, a quick, sharp get-back-on-your-wheelses and a few don't-you-feel-sorrys would have been much easier.

"You're making good speed, Gordon!" His driver called. "But you don't need to rush- the last ride isn't quite as critical as the others, especially with the evening coming on."

Gordon glanced briefly to his left, keeping on his way. "Nonsense, Stiles," he rumbled. "This is the express. A high-speed engine like me is never late no matter what time of day it is, who is or isn't riding the train, or what colour his fireman's shoes are!"

The driver and fireman exchanged looks. The fireman looked down at his feet.

"They're tan today," he said blithely. "Or at least they were. I think they're black now. It always happens that way."

"That's the worst for it, being a fireman," said the driver. "It gets better when you move up, but then you've got a bloody fireman throwing coal dust on your new ones."

"It's the circle of life on the railway, John."

"Tell that to the little woman."

Ordinarily, Gordon ignored the banter that went on in his cab behind him, but this time he listened intently. It distracted him from his own troubles, and he suspected the men knew it too. With Knapford Station nearing at every moment, he'd known his anxiety would worsen. The shoe colour comment had worked, and the corners of his mouth twitched as his crew moved on from complaining about their shoes and began complaining about their lives at home. At one point, the distracted fireman had allowed his interval between shoveling to lapse, and a hurried compensatory stroke resulted in a few too many rocks. A stream of thick white smoke poured behind Gordon's funnel for a few minutes, leaving him with a strange feeling of fullness until the next stroke.

The rest of the trip seemed to blur between the speech he prepared in vain for his meeting with Henry and prattle in the cab; before he knew it, the final stop had been made, his whistle had chimed, and the final passengers bade them good-night and the occasional gratitude for the expeditious return home. Gordon shifted his weight between his wheels, the springs creaking slightly with the subtle motion. The water in his boiler lapped up the sides of the walls and back.

"Feeling all right, old boy?"

The name he'd been given in the question was somewhat flawed, for Gordon was younger than the driver's little niece (as he'd come to learn he had, it had been a curious conversation for him) who had just finished learning how to successfully deposit human boiler sludge in what had been referred to as a potty.

"No, I'm not, but I'll give you time to recover from shock," he said.

"You can do this," the driver assured him. "Henry's not at all bad when you get to know him."

"He's a sweetheart, really," added the fireman. "I'm sure you two will hit it off like old friends when all is said and done."

"You've made certain his crew hasn't told him anything, yes?" Gordon asked.

"Not a word. They've made sure he's sitting where you asked him to be, though."

"That's good." Gordon drew a breath and the light in his firebox brightened for a second. "Shall we, then…"

At the half-hearted command, the valves were opened once again, sending steam through his pistons and carrying him slowly up the line to the turntable before the sheds. Last-minute dread seemed to be adding itself generously to his starting inertia, and he groaned feebly as his tired wheels heaved forward in protest. It had been a long day, and he would give everything for a rest at the present moment. As they rolled to a second stop while the fireman stepped out to actuate the heavy table- a troublesome process as the wind decided to have its way with it, only then to find out that Gordon had not been positioned right- he could see Thomas and Edward winding down with their crews in the sheds, the doors still open. He scanned the building: there was nobody else. The two there gazed over at him as the driver began to reapply steam, and Thomas giggled as the much larger engine inched forward and back on the short strip of rail he was sitting on. Gordon knew he'd have said something, likely about his tender and just what he should do with it, but the look Edward was giving him mandated the opposite. For normalcy's sake, Gordon wished he did, but knew it was better not to in lieu of the moment. Eventually, the table began to turn, and the last stop beyond the sheds beckoned him to the shunting yards where the empty trucks there eyed him in confusion.

His breath caught, slow and cautious approach drew him nearer and nearer to his party with every passing second. A short turn to the left straightened out to a section of rail leading up to a small switching station that looked weathered as to be almost unusable. With some exertion, however, the ties were moved. Gordon looked down before he looked forward; beneath him lay a similarly weatherbeaten track that ended at a set of old buffers, but within it lay, surprisingly, a second smaller track designed for narrow-gauge traffic that ended shortly before meeting the switch. He would have pondered this further if he could find control over parts of his brain he'd seemed to have lost. As he drew up to the end of the line, now focusing on steadying his breathing, he blinked and dragged his eyes from the ground to the space ahead of him. There sat the third engine, absent from the sheds, still tightly withdrawn, and green as the grass that threatened to snare itself in Gordon's undercarriage.

Hearing the sound of another engine sidling itself up beside him, Henry glanced to one side, unable to see behind himself. At first he figured it might have been Edward, for it was not too uncommon for Edward to visit him here. This thought was countered by the fact that Edward did not produce a chugging sound this heavy no matter how slowly he was travelling. With the following process of elimination making it very easy to discern who the owner of the sound could be, as Thomas was not possibly big enough and he'd heard of no new arrivals to the island, the last of the steam slowly circulating in his boiler suddenly condensed and grew cold. Footsteps inside his cab, the feeling of his crew stepping down to walk away from the shunting yards, confirmed the worst of his hazy suspicions.

As the large, similarly-greenish shape of Gordon gradually absorbed his view to the right, Henry fixed his eyes on the windswept field directly in front of him in empty, agitated consternation. His crew was gone, his fire had been reduced to cinders, and it wasn't time to be brought back to the sheds just yet. He still had an hour to go, he knew, and with no other options available to him in this state, the low roar of static that pounded inside his brain began to grow unbearable.

Not that his visitor felt any better himself. At his request, Gordon's crew would not remain with him to listen to what he had to talk about, and left him to meet up with Henry's crew, with whom they would spend time at Knapford Station enjoying cocoa and smokes and playing card games between unobtrusive check-ins to see how their engines were doing. With nobody else around, Gordon felt somewhat more at ease, but this was hardly measureable in comparison to how he was feeling otherwise. A bloated tension lay between the two made it hard to concentrate. Henry remained inert in visible internal distress, and, remembering what Edward had told him, Gordon knew it was up to him to take the first step.

"I," he began, then stopped short. The steam was pushing into his head and making him dizzy. "I need to talk to you," he dribbled.

Henry didn't move.

"I need to talk to you," Gordon repeated, finding it helped him gather his thoughts. "I need… I need you to listen to me and I will listen to you."

Henry didn't move, and his silence was both crushing and tearing Gordon's boiler rivet by rivet.

"If I listen to you then I'll know what's going wrong with you, and if you listen to me I can make it better," stumbled Gordon. "Does that make sense?"

There was still nothing. Henry was making it acutely clear that he was not interested in listening and was not about to tell him anything about himself. Even with his minimal life experience, Gordon could also tell that Henry was putting every grain of his iron into making himself as unapproachable as possible so as to scare him off in a manner than was almost primal. He had to admit that it was working very well so far, but upon realizing this, something inside his head was pulled to its giving point and snapped.

Having made it here, all the worry and dread that had been building up over the last three days, combined with the misery he'd been stoppering up inside himself for an entire month, was reducing itself, in a moment of a strangely lucid clarity, into a spiteful, quiet seething that churned inside him and threatened to explode into a furious ranting at the other engine about how stupid he was being and dense he was to the effect his negative emotions were having on the entire railway and himself. He'd been so tempted to spit at him, tell him to live the rest of his life paranoid and reprehensible as he had been from the day he'd met him, and leave the railway right there and then. It'd have been so easy: the only thing that stopped him was the same thing that brought him here.

Edward had known exactly what he was doing in baiting Gordon with the prospect of respect and approval from his peers and superiors for what a champion of his own inhibitions he could be. With an engine like Gordon, whose swollen ego and arrogant personality wreaking havoc with the problems he already had with being young and petulant, it was really the only way he could make it work, but everybody believed that the outcome would benefit him, leaving him a somewhat wiser person with a touch more temperance. Moreover, as if this just wasn't sufficient, these days he was practically salivating for approval; everybody around him, barring his crew and Edward- whom he didn't really listen to most times if he wasn't concerning him with the job- were too busy with keeping the railway running smoothly and damage control down to go out of their way. This prospect was enough to keep him from throwing in the towel as Edward knew he otherwise would.

Now, cheeks red with frustration, Gordon was almost trembling with drive to prove them he was worth the grand reputation he so frequently crowed about and win the acknowledgement his heart craved. This time, choosing to ignore Henry's silence, he opened his mouth and began to speak.

"I know I should really look back on the time, however brief, I've spent on this obscure little island with a sense of nostalgia and veneration for bygone days and old lessons learned in the years when I am young and foolish like I am now. My manufacturers told me about some of the old engines they'd talked to and generally found that to be the case, that they were all like that, happy to remember and revere their pasts right from day one, you know? They'd tell this to me and my brothers back on the mainland, and we liked to think that we'd all make it there one day. I imagine every engine does." The words came to him more smoothly as his angry, ramshackle train of thought began to pick up speed, kicking up memories and feelings that forced open a door that had been shut for a long time.

"We wanted to make it. Even I did. I really really did, I wanted nothing more than that, but really everyone knew that they all had a better chance of doing that than I did- my brothers, that is, not the men, I think humans don't live very long- due to my circumstances; they were all completed, already being put in service with the transforming railway they were built for, the Plant was making rollicking business and it still is, but by the time Great Northern- my first brother- appeared, I'd pretty much done what I had to do and was awaiting scrapping by then. And it looks like if I can't get work at another railway after this then that's what'll just end up happening anyway. I doubt it will, everybody wants engines these days, and who knows, I may wind up the happiest engine in the world on some paradise-railway where the work is steady and there's no risk of anything. It could happen.

"Or, if I don't get lucky, and I don't really see myself getting much of anything else in life beyond the short end of the stick, I'll probably end up pissing everybody off there too and wind up being sold to someone else who's brave enough to take me who I'll only then also piss off. Enough of this and I'd become marked in infamy, then it'd be off to the scrapyards in the end and that's that. It'd end the same way and maybe I should just accept that that is my fate." Anger had given way to bitterness and futility as he slipped down the gaping pit behind the door where the monstrous parts dwelled, the same ones that kept him awake at home. How he'd hate to face Gresley again only to tell him that nothing had changed.

"Anyway, that's enough about me… unless you wanna hear more which I know you don't, and frankly I won't either. I mean I'm not looking for sympathy or anything, Henry. I don't give a damn about what you're thinking about. You're so messed up you're beyond hope, but I am talking to you because the others still hold on to their hope for you and I can fulfil their silly prophecy. I don't have a clue why you're combusting so much about me, but I sure as hell wish you wouldn't because it's hurting them, the ones who hope. You really should let them into your world; they're worried something stupid about you. Me, it's whatever. I'm gonna leave and you can go about life all skips and blossoms. But… knowing that I did something to some total stranger I've never met or nothing and wind up ruining everything here while being kept in the dark about it the entire time. It's not fair. I'd at least like to know something about it before forgetting about this place forever.

"I do want to see this little place get better than this, though, you know. If things had gone better, or if I could take everything I've ever done here back to before I screwed up somehow, or something, I would stay here until the end of time. I know you don't like to hear this, but I really liked it here. I still like it. The lush open spaces. The green hills and humble cobblestone stations. The freedom you have within even a busy schedule to just… I don't know. Exist. To just be you and do what you want to do. And unless I find it again, I'll miss that for all my days, however many I have left."

At this point he paused to pick up on another point when he became aware of what he'd been saying. His emotions had gone well out of his comfort, loosed by the maddening confusion of the past two months. He'd revealed more about himself than he realized he'd been willing to allow for this, and, to make matters worse, had ended up only really talking about himself instead of Henry, where he'd been certain the most of his progress in making everything right would have lain. No, he'd grown selfish, indulging in his own troubles and arrogantly throwing them in Henry's face so that he could take pity on him for his hard time when even he could plainly see that Henry had been so violently upset. The futility that had arisen was igniting with shame and humiliation, flushing his face redder than ever and stinging his eyes. He bit hard on his lip and concentrated on controlling his breathing, not even daring to look at Henry beside him. The latter had been silent from the beginning.

"Look," he managed. "I'm gonna go… I've… this was a bad idea. I shouldn't have thought about it in the first place, I'm gonna go and if I can make one request to you I'd like for you to just forget we ever had this conversation in the first place. I'd suppose you'd be more than happy to do that. I'll hail my driver and we can just-"

"Wait."

Gordon stopped. Stunned, his eyes darted toward Henry in the hope of finding something there.

Henry had been shaken, and visibly so. It was the first time he'd seen him without wild eyes the size of dinner plates or the tight-lipped expression of blank near-terror he'd sported in every moment he'd happened to encounter him. Instead, Henry was staring out at the trees, his features furrowed in a jigsaw puzzle of disturbance, incredulousness, and a faint sort of sadness.

"What?" Croaked Gordon.

"I said wait," Henry mumbled, his voice low. "Don't go."

Gordon blinked. "Oh, er. No no, ah, I won't go if… I won't. I… what's…?"

Henry glanced over at him and their eyes met properly, again for the first time ever. "You started talking," he murmured. "I didn't really listen to the first part. The rest got… the rest was different. You kept talking about scrapping. Awaiting scrapping."

Gordon blinked again, then regained enough control of his mouth to close it. His eyes flitted between Henry's face and the ground.

"Well, scrapping," he stuttered. "I… I was being really melodramatic, honestly, thinking about everything I spewed there. I went a bit insane."

"No," pressed Henry. "You said something about your circumstances. Having to just await scrapping. Like you were condemned."

Gordon had said too much. This evening, solving Henry's inner turmoil, not his own, was not going to happen like this, much less did he feel strong enough now to bring it up. On the other hand- and it was really an enormous point- Henry was looking at and talking to him, talking at all, even after such an unsightly display of self-centredness. Something, somehow, had gone right. The semblances of a second wind began to reshape Gordon's dazed mind and emotions. It might be necessary after all.

"Only, Henry," he puffed, "only if you agree to talk to me. That's part of what I came here for, I want to know- for your sake and everybody else- what I have done to harm you; then I will let you know more."

There was another pause as Henry looked back at the field before them. Gordon watched as he seemed to engage in an invisible battle with his mind over how badly he wanted to know and what he would have to do to acquire it. His eyes widened slightly as he saw something inside Henry seem to transfigure itself.

"I'll talk to you, Gordon," he exclaimed, suddenly fixing his gaze upon his eyes.

"You will?"

Henry nodded eagerly. "But you have to tell me about yourself first. I want- I have to know more about you."

"You must know so badly…? Why, will it help or someth-"

"If you don't, I'm terrified I'll plummet back into that hole I found myself trapped in," he blurted, his tone desperate. "Please, Gordon- you, your story, it… I'll tell you why later."

"As you wish then." Gordon shifted once more and sighed, giving himself a chance to steady his nerves. Henry waited, watching him.

"So you want to know what my deal in life has been so far. I suppose you'd be okay to hear about it from day one; that's how I tell it best because it puts everything into perspective. I'll try not to drone too much as it is quite long so I'll give you my best gist of things. And I'm not gonna lie, a lot of that stuff was filled in for me from workmen and engineers who were in on the whole thing. I wasn't around for a lot of it. I mean, I was, and at the same time I wasn't. It was put to me like this.

"Nigel Gresley wanted to make a new engine, something strong and fast that was able to carry passengers longer distances than the existing models that are still in service today. He had a pretty good gig going with the Great Northern Railway, I'm sure you've heard of it, and the last thing I heard was that it's only getting bigger; there was a lot of talk regarding an amalgamation of sorts with the London North-Eastern. This doesn't concern me necessarily, not anymore, but the money was there and man was motivated to get things done.

This was back around the end of the war, when he started it all. 1915 to 17 sort of times we're talking about. In those years, he'd been working with his crew on blueprints, constantly being revised and improved and prepared for what he referred to as the GNR A0 Pacific, his brainchild of sorts. The story everyone- except The Fat Controller- heard, including Thomas and Edward and, I assume, you-" Henry nodded, and he continued "-was that, at the end of all this planning, the original A0 design had changed so much that, by the time production began, the three new engines that rolled out of the works were dubbed A1s instead to keep them separate from the rougher first drafts. Those three were, from youngest to oldest, Sir Frederick Banbury, Great Northern and, of course, me.

"That was 1922. So, as you've been told, I was built in 1922 and became the victim of unusual circumstances that were not elaborated upon that basically ended in the decision to sell me here rather than keep me at GNR where my brothers were to operate together. Is that correct?"

Henry's eyebrows rose. "Er. Yes, that's what we all figured..."

Gordon gave him a wry smile and settled his sights on the grass, watching it ripple in the strong breeze. "I was told to keep it all a secret myself at the time," he chuckled. "And I did. It doesn't matter now, but in the interest of leaving the past behind and the disinterest in drawing that kind of attention to myself, I didn't want to discuss it with Edward and Thomas. It didn't seem right then, but here and now… I guess It's okay. I was not expecting nor hoping to do it with you of all engines.

"But an agreement is a promise. I was not built in '22, although my brothers truthfully were. I was built in pieces rather earlier than that, the process lasting pretty well from 1918 to the end of the following year, and my eyes didn't open until 1920 on the thirteenth of May. I consider it my birthday, I suppose.

"What you didn't learn was that the last set of blueprints for the proverbial A0 were quite functional and, even with so many changes bringing forth rapid plans for the newer, official engine with a new name, parts from these blueprints were already seeing production and pieces were being put through functional tests. The information derived from these was turning out to be so fruitfully useful, so enlightening as to the potential to optimize the A1, that the men ran amok with it until, before they knew it, they had an entire production line thing going on and an engine was built- an A0, a prototypical engine with no plans for use on a railway proper, but a perfect opportunity to shed some light on the A1's potential by monitoring its use in a series of trials of all manners.

"That prototype A0, never stated to have been built? That was me!" At this point, Gordon couldn't help but laugh. "I, for all my boasting, all my great image? I've never pulled anything on a real railway until I arrived here! I didn't have a number or registration; I didn't even have a name! I was known for the longest time as 'Zero', short for A0 Pacific I suppose and more familiar than 'Prototype', and I have to admit I'm still getting a bit used to being 'Gordon' after being Zero for almost three years!" Amidst the humour he made of this story, he glanced at Henry and took note of the surprise that had overcome him. It cajoled him to keep going, this profound display. Finally, it looked as though he might be getting somewhere with him.

"Yeah, I was Zero, and I'd been called this before I'd even know it. From what I'd been told, the men had taken a fondness to my bulk and started calling me that around the middle of January, roughly four months before I kind of became aware of my surroundings. The name was certainly not official, and my existence had been kept a big fat secret from everybody who was not in on it; I guess Gresley and his engineers didn't want the Nosy Parkers to come sneaking in and stealing our idea. I had heard that it had happened once before, now that I think of it… rough drafts of some blueprints that were moving into the realm of the A1's advances had inexplicably gone missing one night. It'd apparently driven Gresley ballistic; that would have been something to see, he was usually so- "

Hearing this, Henry's interest suddenly gave way to a similar feeling of malaise to the one he'd experienced the first time he'd ever talked to Gordon, followed by a flooding sensation of enormous discomfort that ejected an unwelcome hiccough from his throat. Gordon, hearing the unusual sound, met his eye and stopped.

"Ah- Henry, are you okay?"

Henry gasped and looked toward the other engine. "Gordon, I have something to tell you regarding that, but I want you to finish what you were saying," he said. "It will give you another good insight about… into why I shut down."

Gordon cocked his head slightly, an action which human observers found confusing enough, regarding the body it was attached to, to prevent them from questioning it. "If you say so," he murmured. "I can stop if you like."

"No, just keep going, please," Henry said, his voice quavering.

Gordon held his gaze upon him for a moment or two before continuing. His upset was uncomfortable, but Gordon had come such a long way so far and was only making progress. Although he'd been told to continue, he decided to tone down his dark sense of humour and take this all a little more seriously. Still watching Henry closely, he picked the story up where he left off.

"Well then… as I was saying. I wasn't let outside very often as a result; from the start of the testing to the day I woke up, I'd been locked up inside a relatively small bay where my boiler had been stored during construction as other things were being done at the time. The first time I opened my eyes, I looked upon the walls in the dark and didn't know where I was. I had no memory of manufacture, or any of the testing, or anything of the months that followed my bodily completion in November, and I was honestly quite frightened to suddenly… well, be. The workmen realized I'd become aware when they opened the door to my room probably a half-hour later after hearing me calling out, and were probably gobsmacked to discover their engine had developed a mind at all. I don't know how I recognized them as humans, or knew how to speak English, or even understood what they were shouting about, but it only distressed me even more. Gresley had been called over immediately to address this din of wildly excited workmen and a huge, mortally terrified engine bellowing its tubes out for help. Embarrassingly, I even started crying- yes, crying, fat tears and ugly crinkled face and everything- because I just didn't know what to do.

"It became funny amidst the crew later on and I must admit it paints a picture of hilarity you'd only see in a bedtime tale. At the time, however, I didn't think so. Over the months that followed, I was educated in some of the things in the world you'd teach an engine, and life settled down to a routine of getting to know the workmen, hearing stories, going for testing, and, in the end, being sealed behind the closed doors of a more spacious empty bay that had been temporarily repurposed to store me. I won't elaborate on the things I felt in the years that came, but I was bored, lonely, frustrated, and overall more miserable than I've ever been in my life. Every night I wished it would change.

"The scrapping part…" He paused to swallow back a lump in his throat. "The scrapping comes in when production for Great Northern had begun in 1921. Testing had wrapped itself up at the end of 1920 and I was starting to gather dust in my room. The workmen were visiting me less often with the bustle going on in the works part from manufacture. These were the times where Gresley himself would come by when he had the time to talk to me, for I'd changed much since the first time I'd ran on a short track and was deemed unsuitable for operation on his railway due to complications in the registry and the face of the company as things were expanding. I'd pleaded for service, I'd begged to be employed alongside my future brothers, whom I was also desperate to meet for obvious reasons, but it'd turned out to be non-negotiable, and Gresley couldn't bear to watch me suffer as I had been. He offered me a handful of suggestions, but they eventually boiled down to one inevitable result.

"I was going to be scrapped, my parts reused for new engines in the GNR lineup.

"With this business decided, I had been given a living grace until the decided day would come. I was allowed to roam the inside of the grounds with a driver, pulling pretend payloads about to keep me limber if I preferred; I was given care from some workmen and had stories read to me, things like nursery rhymes and history and classic fiction; and, above all, I was allowed to see my two new brothers, and they would tell me things about their busy lives and include me in their off-hours activities.

"We grew so close… I think they were honestly the only thing that really kept me carrying on. I couldn't have lived like that for much longer, I… my thoughts were filled only of scrapping and the remains of empty wishes that I'd be put to work. But they'd play with me, engine games, and assure me that everything would be all right; they'd even try to fill me with hope that my luck would change and that somebody would find a use for me, employ me on a railway somewhere else if the men there would allow it. For the most part, I just shook my head and thanked them for trying to cheer me up. After all, nobody was to predict that they would end up being right.

"The rest is pretty much history. I'm not too sure how The Fat Controller was tipped off that I was there, but he mentioned something about having a connection. With the word to be sold to this island put through, I experienced a rapid and total overhaul in both body and mind and was even given a proper livery, Doncaster Works' trademark green, which I guess I'm still wearing now. I still wasn't given a proper name, for that had been left up to The Fat Controller when he met me over two months ago now. I wasn't going to be called Zero my whole life, and that was all that we'd known, but no matter how odd it feels for now, I do like being Gordon... I bade my brothers farewell, leaving with promises to exchange letters between here and the mainland and to visit one day and see my old family again, by which I'm sure I'll have more brothers, many more. Maybe even sisters."

Henry, hearing this, gave him a timid smile. "Would you like that?"

Gordon smiled back, more broadly, and nodded. "I would, yes. I really, really would; I do write to them a few times a month with my crew and the letters get sent off to the mainland with my fondest wishes. They write back to me, too, and their news cheers me up greatly. They're building new engines now, and I would like to meet them all." He chuckled, awash in nostalgia, then relaxed and turned a pointed eye to Henry. The latter appeared to be studying him closely.

"Well?"

Henry's little smile faded. "Well what?"

"Henry, I've talked about nothing but myself for… what looks to be well over an hour now, maybe two. Ordinarily, I'll admit that I do that a lot, but that's all different. I'm trying to learn something about you, and here you told me outright to go on being selfish when it's obviously me who has come under some sort of fault for making you stray so far from your usual self as I've heard. It's not right."

"Oh but it is!" Henry cried. "Your story, your history, it's shattered me to my core and broken a terrible fever that worsened ever since the news came up that you were arriving to this island until it overcame me completely the night before you showed up. I call it a fever but it was like a storm that came through my head and wiped out everything… I became so closed up that I stopped talking completely, everything I've been doing has been foggy, and my perceptions were dim… you say the others- they've been worrying about me?"

Gordon raised an eyebrow. "You've been doing more than worrying them," he grumbled. "So this is what happened? You got this sick and vile because of me?"

Hearing the accusing tone, Henry flinched and his features fell. "It's essentially easy to fill in from my story and it will sound incredibly asinine, but there's a lot in there that explains most everything about me; your intro sort of struck a number of chords with mine and that's why I had to know more about you. It helped me put together a bit more about myself and honestly has a lot of crossover. The connections helped me wake up. It'll be your turn to not like to hear all this, and you will probably hate me and… well, I can live with that because of the harm and panic I think I've been dealing everybody."

"What's done has been done," Gordon said. "I only want to have everything put to rest and return this railway to the 'normal' that everyone talks about here. I've been deprived of it but it sounds kinda fun, if I'll ever get to enjoy it."

"Well…" Henry sighed. "Once you hear my side of our deal, I can almost assure you you'll be staying. It might be me who as to worry about getting scrapped. The fear of scrapping is really not a stranger to me, too, but how you'll feel about that is up to you- that's just my take on it."

Gordon's expression remained dour, but his thoughts were wandering in all directions. In spite of his displeasure with the implication of similarity between them, he wouldn't deny that it piqued his curiosity in the worst kind of way, and the thought that Henry purported to understand his feelings incited jealousy, spite, sympathy, intrigue, offense, and, above all for some reason, openness in a similar manner his brothers tended to create. Maybe it was all the heart-pouring and memories, or maybe he was giving in to feeling bad for this engine whom he'd considered his greatest source of present torment. Maybe it was just the fact that Henry seemed to bear an impossible resemblance to his brothers that he refused to accept. As he sifted through this mental jungle, he shook himself and focused upon Henry again.

"It doesn't matter," said Gordon. "Tell me about yourself, Henry. It's my turn to know."

"All right," Henry began. "Well… to be honest, the best place to begin is where you brought up something about vandals stealing blueprints from your works in Doncaster. Gresley probably was furious, but I'd never know; all I knew was that their little heist was one of the greatest crowning moments in their stint with locomotive engineering and rail, and that already sets a lot of the stage for it all."

"I came to this island only a year before you did in an act of kindness and mercy from The Fat Controller and the ones who cared regarding my situation with the ones who owned me. I am grateful for it every day, but that doesn't stop me from worrying that it was not worth it. He assures me otherwise all the time but in short supply I will be costing this railway a lot of money because of the manner in which I was created; Gordon, did they tell you when the A1 blueprints were stolen?"

"That was 1919," said Gordon. "Sometime in early 1919."

"That's pretty much right, then," Henry went on. He glanced over and noted Gordon's features had changed from a look of frustrated annoyance to one of deepening interest. "There were two vandals, and they went by Chadwick and Paul. Blueprints in tow, they fled quite a ways from Doncaster, all the way out to Gloucestershire where they owned and ran a surprisingly well-furnished workshop set up with a small crew and everything. Their idea, of course, was to build an engine with heavy inspiration from the A1 Pacific, but they wanted to put their own spin on the thing, likely with the idea to create filler for some niche market. With competition so heated and engines so hard to come by, it made enough sense that they could make an easy killing; I suppose they could have, too, if they hadn't gone through with the idea to combine the A1's specifications with those of a C1 Atlantic. Don't ask why… it was a way to stand out, I suppose.

"They were hoping to come out with a hybrid that received the best of both worlds. The beginning of their project was where the problems began. Even with the price of metal having fallen slightly after the war, they still ran into issues with obtaining good-quality materials for less which, when compounded with issues in staff payments, equipment maintenance, and all-around sources of revenue to keep it going, eventually caused them to cut a lot of corners. Those problems didn't let up for the entire process, and, after what must have been a year and a half of bashing and chipping away, they somehow came out with an engine, and that engine was me."

At this point, Gordon's jaw dropped open. "You, an A1…"

Henry caught his eye, as if to invite a question. With a nod from Gordon, he went on. "I developed my mind very shortly after that, some twenty-three days after, and call the eight of July my birthday. It was a fast thing, they said, and happened overnight; needless to say, I was asleep, and when the doors to my shed were opened, we were both substantially surprised to see each other.

"At first, the crew were overjoyed; they'd successfully completed an engine that had the capacity to think. It started out so nicely, too… the workmen were introducing themselves to me, they were telling me about the process of my construction. Before they started getting about to giving me a name, the owners- Paul and Chadwick, the vandals from before- showed up on the site to assess it themselves. They, too, were impressed, but talk changed rapidly from welcoming me to the world to something along the lines of 'Okay, this engine has a brain. What do we do with that?!' and turned to finance.

"Finance, Gordon, is such a cold world. There developed a schism in the workshop between two parties over it: one side was held by the owners and their accomplices who wanted to build the company and attempt to recoup their losses; the other was made by the workmen and engineers who'd been involved so intimately with my designs and inner workings, pushed through the trouble to crank out an engine. I liked this side a lot more; they would talk to me in a similar way to how I imagine yours talked to you, telling me stories and bits of education about the world. They too would take me out for exercise and, while they would still write down numbers and performance figures, they'd have some fun with me and we'd play semblances of games that pretended to be test trials. We all thought this a great bit and kept it a secret from the owners. They gave me my own name, too, and sometimes referred me by it in the other party's presence. Oh, the arguments that would start.

"I was given a few names, but eventually we all agreed that Henry seemed to have stuck. I seemed like a Henry, they said. They weren't wrong, but the others didn't think so.

"And so that was, the truly happy side of the company, and it lasted almost three months. While that was going on, however, the owners seemed to be pushing me aside more and more in the process of advertising themselves and getting word out that they were an engine manufacturer, which for some reason wasn't going too well. I had heard that some of the workmen had started to spread word that they were mistreating their engine, for they had recently tried discouraging them from treating me like a person, fearing that it would get in the way of their sale. This, alongside the arguments I mentioned and general paranoia it caused, aggravated the schism and started causing quite a lot of rancour.

"Threats were frequently made to fire some of the rebellious employees and workmen to save the face of the company. A handful of them were, but it was confessed to me that a good portion of them were sticking it out as long as they could in the hopes that they could change something and make things better for my sake. They were sticking up for me… it was the kindest thing I'd ever heard, and I loved them for it. It was very hard for them, though, and sometimes I tried to tell them to quit so that they could get better themselves. They still wouldn't go, and it went like this for another month or two, but the last straw was reached when they were attempting to show the owners the meaning of their giving me a name." Henry took a deep breath and shivered slightly as the ugly memories began to come to him more clearly.

"I remember how they humoured the workmen as artificially as possible. Simon, one of my closest supporters and one of the engineers who translated my blueprints, was explaining how calling me Henry was a fundament to recognizing me as a person and why that mattered. Chadwick was eyeing him so intently, it almost looked as though he'd had a light go off; and, in a sense, he had. He walked up to Simon's side, looked at me and said 'You know, I kinda like this name thing, I think it could do nicely- don'tcha think, Paul?' and Paul, already in on it I imagine, agreed. Then he turned back and, with that awful grin of his, pointed at my nose and added 'I've got a name for him of my own, Simon. Wanna hear?' and he told him. He called me Berk, short for Berkeley Hunt, and for some reason the guys who came out with him started laughing. Simon turned red with rage, a few of the workmen gasped, and they just laughed and laughed; and while they left, telling him what they could do with their silly name thing, he shouted at them that enough was enough. Later that night, with heartfelt goodbyes and promises to keep track of me, they all got together and left.

"The year that followed was the worst in the world. I was Henry no more, for Berk had become the name of choice thereafter, and I hated it. The company's reputation by then had dropped so far that nobody would touch me, and it was discovered, as a result of my testing, that I was riddled with a series of operational flaws in almost all of my systems, including my personality, which I'll get to in a bit. The workmen had told me that it had the potential to make it difficult for me to find a railway that would take me, but at the same time said they'd somehow find a way to get me a good home somewhere. That gave me some hope for a few months before I gave up.

"A few interested parties had come to Gloucestershire in search of an engine and some had come very close to purchasing me. They'd take me out for rent and test drives, but, if they didn't find my flaws outweighed the strengths they were looking for, rejected me instead on the grounds that my owners were asking for far too much for me. They were impatient with this and ended up sending a lot of them away, throwing their company and my future further into jeopardy.

"There were many days where they abused me. They'd talk harshly to me, accusing me of being the source of all their economic and entrepreneurial woes, and the worst part was that I started believing them. I became associated with bad luck and curses and was left alone for weeks sometimes between bouts of use as an emotional punching bag. When a rushed attempt at selling me for a bargain at a local railway auction also went sour around the end of things, they could take it no more and began threatening me with scrapping… scrapping as a means of making something… anything… off my metal so that they could forget the incident had ever happened.

"I was wounded so deeply. My emotions would torque themselves so tight that I'd go into lockdown like I had here to run away from them; I'd shut out the world in those months. I did it so often that I only clearly remember less than half of what happened in that year of being with them. I'd probably be mute forever if I hadn't found an escape for myself.

"It was a saving grace that the workshop was located by the woods a quarter-kilometre away. I'd gaze at it from afar for hours into the night; there, I wanted nothing more than to hide away, to go to the forest and the trees and see the greenery, live and fresh like my paintjob had once been- for it was peeling by then- and ultimately disappear into it. If I was going to be scrapped, I thought a much better way to go was to be abandoned in the woods to be grown over by plants, grasses, roots and trees. Then, one night, after a fitful run of testing me on the track they had, the vandals had gone to bed early, probably with a few drinks, and neglected to douse my fire for the night.

"With every capacity I had to move myself without a driver, I made my way out to the wood as far as the track would take me and immersed myself in its presence. For the first time in a long time I felt peaceful- even though I was still a good ten yards from the forest edge, I could perceive all the sensations it made: the twittering of small birds and chirping of crickets; the wind rustling through the leaves and grass, causing it to flow like a river, like the one just in front of us here; the cool air, the warm smell of the plants, the colours of the flowers in the dim light, the size and expanse of it. It was like a giant, collective thing, with small parts of it looking out for each other, where nothing was lonely because it had itself- and, in effect, everything around it. It breathed and thrummed with harmony. It was the only place I ever wanted to be. I knew, too, that I had to return to my shed before my fire went out, but I'd became disobedient with my displeasure with my owners and decided to stay there all night. When they found me in the early afternoon the next day, they were furious; my fire was lit too hastily, I was dragged back to my shed and was doused. I was never started again, but once again I shut out the world and dreamed of that night by the forest.

"I might have gone a little off-topic there… at any rate, that's what I did for the last while of my existence with those people. By then, the company was pretty much finished; Chadwick and Paul had turned to the bottle as a means to douse their sorrows and I had committed myself to sleep forever, clinging to that memory as a catharsis while I waited to be scrapped. Then a landfall happened.

"I'd lost hope in the workmen who stuck up for me. It was a bad thing to do, but I didn't believe anybody could help me then; as I said, I'd given up, so I'd never have guessed, in my wildest of fancies, that they'd come through. I was fast asleep, lost in my dream, when I heard a faint voice calling something out to me in the early morning. It belonged not to Paul or Chadwick, as they hadn't shown up yet, but sounded very familiar; when it repeated itself a few times, I realized that it was not calling me Berk, but Henry instead. When I awoke and opened my eyes, I was amazed to see Simon and a couple of the workmen standing there in front of me! In excited words, they told me of a gentleman they'd contacted with the prospect of an engine for sale; the man had been desperate and was looking for anything. They'd told him of me, told him of the abuse I'd been facing, and the deal was made between him and my owners to come and see me in two weeks. The joy in my heart was unimaginable… I was so happy, so amazed, that they'd kept me in their thoughts and found, somehow, a home for me somewhere.

"The rest can be abbreviated. The gentleman who arrived that day was, of course, the Fat Controller, and he was astounded and angered by my condition, visibly mottled by the mistreatment I'd faced. When he asked me of it, I told him stories of my plight, further reinforced by the ones Simon and his company revealed from their time in the company and anecdotes they'd heard from the outside. I do not know how his meeting with Paul and Chadwick went. I did not listen, for I was occupying my time with my old friends, grateful for their rescue. What I do know was that something about legalities uncovered a link between British railway law and federal law regarding human rights which sort of turned the tables. The vandals were never seen or heard from again.

"Now I live here… I'd been given restorative treatment and swiftly grew accustomed to my work on this island. I love it here and I, too, want to see this place get bigger. It's my home… the place that saved me. And that's my story."

The brisk wind that rippled the tall grass rustled the trees in the distance, punctuating the quiet that had settled when Henry had finished. He sighed to himself, almost forgetting the reason he'd been here, and, for a moment, drifted back to his fondest memory again. It was with a second sigh that came from beside him that he was returned to the present.

"You're right," came the murmur that followed. Henry turned to see Gordon staring at the dirt.

"Come again?"

"I said you're right," said Gordon. "There's a lot we have in common, Henry… I'd never have admitted it myself with any willingness if it slapped me in the face. But there it is. You and I…" he trailed off.

"That's why I had to know more about you," Henry said with a nod. "Like I said, a lot of chords were struck. I thought it'd be crazy to find that out about you, that you're so similar to me; outwardly, I knew we had similar origins, us both being derived from A1s and all- I mean, you're not an A1, but you know what I mean. It was the original thought, that you were. And it scared me, you know… meeting a real Gresley A-series engine. It scared me a lot."

Gordon snapped up to see him. "Is that what that was all about?" He cried. "That I was an A1 Pacific, and we shared blueprint origins?"

"It was a large part of it," Henry answered quickly. "There were other things, like how you'd be of a similar size. You'd be so big and strong, so much stronger than me- and you were- that you'd take over my jobs here. I was frightened that The Fat Controller would find he'd have so many more uses for you that I would become redundant and unneeded, and I'd be sold off to somebody else who wouldn't care for me… or that Thomas and Edward would like you more than me, or that you were shining new with no hitches and a system that came with nothing to hold back your power. You had this incredible prestigious history, you being a real Gresley engine… no, wait, that comes back to the A1 thing. It's… there were a lot of things going through my mind.

"You were so flawless and perfect that I couldn't take it. All this talk about a new arrival- new engine this, new engine that, Gresley A1 Pacific, brand-new great strength in high demand and you'd bring a whole new market to this island. There was so much excitement, even the other engines were getting pumped, and I guess I was feeling really ignored. The thing is, though… remember how I mentioned how my design issues caused my personality to be affected too?"

Gordon nodded.

"My personality is such that I have these… sort of like mood swings. Sometimes I'm really happy and cheerful, and Thomas and Edward tell me I can be really warm and caring. Then, the very next day, I become somebody different. Some days things can be forgotten really easily and others they stick and bother me for days. I don't know why I do this and I can't help it; even my crew can't find the one source of the problem but it's been said that, if I can be torn apart and rebuilt, it'll all go away. I'd like to see if that can happen one day, but at the same time I'm scared of what would have to happen to me to permit that. It's not like The Fat Controller will just send me off to some works and say 'go at it' without a good reason."

"It would cost a lot of money," agreed Gordon.

"Right," said Henry, "so I'm just going to have to be the way I am. I'm a messed up engine whose whole system is so out of order it ruined my brain, too… can you believe it? The thing that happened with you was that your arrival was causing me to feel so many different emotions in such a short timeframe. I felt everything... everything under the sun, all the unhappy, negative things you can name, and it was clouding out my thoughts. With no other coping mechanisms I know of and no way I was ever taught to stop this one, I did what I always did when things got brutal back at home."

Gordon's breath caught. "You shut out the world," he said.

"Exactly. I pushed it all out, I kept it from bothering me, but the thing was, and this is how I know my errors are going to start catching up with my performance- I couldn't open up again. The fever had gotten so bad that I was trapped inside my mind and couldn't get out like I used to. I don't know why, or how… I wish I could know what's wrong with my head so I can remove it and be a normal engine like you and the others. It was the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me and I don't want it to ever happen again."

Gordon blinked, taking this all in, and then blinked again. His jaw hadn't fully tightened its slackness, leaving his lips parted in a goofy expression of half-bewilderment and awe, but his eyes were glowing in a way Henry couldn't quite read. He could tell a million things were firing like rockets in the big engine's mind, but couldn't know what they were.

"Please tell me, what are you thinking?"

Hearing the plea, Gordon's face lit. "What am I thinking?" he exclaimed. "You were so scared of me, so beaten-down by the world and insecure with your new place in it that you became incapable of telling anybody why… I don't know what precisely I'm feeling but I can give you an idea…"

"You hate me, don't you," muttered Henry, looking away. "I knew you-"

"No!" Gordon bellowed, and Henry nearly jumped, making a small noise of surprise. "Henry, you're not listening to me properly, I don't hate you! In fact, I think it is you who hates yourself, all the trauma and pain you've gone through has hurt you and you doubt yourself constantly, just like how you did when comparing yourself to me! That Edward is a very good judge of character, for his annoying nagging habits, and I was wrong to judge you so harshly. I wrote you off as a crude, spiteful engine who was selfish enough to let his ill will toward a person affect everybody around him in the hope of attracting some attention to himself. For this, I apologize from the bottom of my heart and hope you can find it in yours to forgive me because I have learned so much more about you. I am moved deeply by your story, so fraught with desperation, so relatable to mine. I didn't realize that you were such a kindred spirit to me."

He was looking into the other engine's eyes, searching him for his feelings and response. Henry shut his, quivering slightly, and his cheeks flushed.

"You, you really think so?" He asked. "You and I… kindred spirits?"

"Yes I do, I strive to put true meaning behind everything I say, but I do feel that to you. If you do to me, I welcome it with an open heart. After all, you are almost-"

At this point, a shiver, subtle enough to be missed, coursed through Gordon's body from his tender to his nose and wheels. He winced slightly and swallowed.

"Sorry about that, cold wind up my firebox," he chuckled, noting the concern in Henry's features. "But after all, as I was saying, we share so much in common. You are almost like a brother to me."

This said, it was enough to change Henry's features into a bright grin Gordon had never seen before. It was the first time in a long time that he'd been this happy, and as he laughed to himself, joyful for the end of fear and the prospect of restarting this year anew, Gordon smiled too, gently revelling in his energy and watching how the sound transformed his face, how his boundless smile seemed to illuminate his eyes.

The next morning Thomas and Edward awoke to find everything had changed. Their crews, having arrived early to prepare them for their assigned duties for the day, came running into the sheds with waving arms and excited voices, cheering for the complete recovery of Henry and Gordon's success, a far greater outcome than all had been expecting. They too had been thrilled by the news, and were only further amazed to see Henry and Gordon sitting in the shunting yards together, stoking up their fires and chattering cheerfully to one another as though they'd been old friends catching up on each others' lives. The sensation it made could be heard well inside Sir Topham Hatt's offices at Knapford Station, and he soon arrived upon the scene to give Henry a warm welcome home and Gordon his gratitude and, at last, his genuine acknowledgement. He and Edward both received valve service and new coats of paint, and everyone agreed that Gordon looked even more splendid than before in the glossy blue he now sported with red stripes to top it off.

The two smaller engines were eager to talk to Henry again, and the four of them regrouped at the end of the day to learn about what had happened and what had been said. To poor Thomas' chagrin, the broad details of the affair had once again been spared, but it was implied that the full story may come out another time in another place. This business passed, the rest of the evening was spent as friends in a complete fleet for the first time since Gordon's arrival. It felt wonderful, they later told their crews, as though they were family again.

The days that followed settled down into a simpler life amidst the bustle of work that felt fresh and harmonious, lifting the last stresses of the months before from the railway's shoulders and returning it to comfort. Thomas and Edward were basking in this comfort a few days later, watching the sun set over the station and Gordon and Henry playing in the shunting yards at the expense of some loud and very displeased trucks.

"Look at them," said Edward. "You'd never guess they used to be so opposed. They really got to know each other."

"They won't leave each other alone," huffed Thomas. "I'd like to play with trucks too, but they won't let me join in. They're taking all the fun."

Edward laughed. "Thomas, they're still enjoying such a new friendship. You were like that too when you first came to the island. Sir Topham Hatt practically had to lock you in the sheds so you'd stop taking me away from my jobs."

"I'd have included others if they wanted to join me in my games."

"No you wouldn't."

Edward, of course, was quite right, and Thomas muttered incoherently to himself.

"What was it that Gordon said to Henry, Edward? Because obviously it worked. Why couldn't we have done that?"

"That's difficult to say. They did mention there'd been a lot of history that was brought to light and found that they were really quite similar. I got the sense that a bond of sorts had been formed."

"But we've known Henry so much longer. Don't we have a bond, too?"

"Sure we do. Bonds come in many forms." He chuckled as Henry passed a truck to Gordon, then bounced on his wheelbase for a good push back to him. "The bond that we have with Henry is one of friendship and caring, and it's developing with Gordon as well. Gordon's will look slightly different because he's a different engine, and the same goes across the board for everyone you will meet. But the one they have between each other is a little deeper than that. Similarity between people- and that goes for engines, too- is something that connects them on a different level. They'll probably be each others' closest friends because of it, but that doesn't mean we're any less important at all."

Thomas thought for a moment. "Can there be more than one type of bond between people?"

Edward raised his eyebrows. "Of course there can. For instance, I'm bonded to you as your mentor and caretaker, but also as your friend. That's very observant of you, Thomas. Why do you ask?"

Thomas glanced back toward them again. Henry was sneaking up behind a line of trucks, trying to hide his chuffing beneath their shrieks and squeals, when Gordon rammed him in the tender and sent the whole train flying back into the sturdy buffers at the end of the track. Henry hissed at him as he laughed and, after much repositioning, shoved some trucks of his own into Gordon's front bufferbeam with a clatter.

"It's really nice to have Henry back again."

"Yes it is," Edward smiled. "It really is."