CHAPTER TWELVE - EIGHT HOURS LATER
She wasn't used to sleeping for long periods of time. Maybe that was a large part of her problem.
But the setting sun's rays were in her eyes now, poking at her to wake up.
Stretching under the warm covers, Melanie glanced over for the clock by her bed.
6PM!
She couldn't believe she had been able to sleep at all, let alone 8 hours.
But as she thought back, she supposed it wasn't that much of a miracle. She hadn't, after all, slept one second of the night before.
Slowly curling back up under the covers, she positively loathed to leave the sanctuary they offered. Warm, enclosed, protected. That was how she saw her present world. A far cry from how she saw it that morning.
She thought back over the events. Not that she truly wanted to, but they just kept pushing for her attention.
'Why had Layton done it?', her ever present cynical, mistrusting side asked. 'He could just as easily have walked away. He had what he wanted. He had her train. He had her in a corner. He controlled everything now. Why bother saving her? Why not just let the execution go forward and that would solve his problem for him of what to ultimately do with her.'
But another side of her brain pushed its way into her internal conversation.
'Maybe because things are changing between you', it suggested. 'Maybe he doesn't see you as the enemy anymore. Maybe he's sincere in wanting to work together. To save the train. To save its people.'
'And maybe because he still just needs you alive.' The cynical side put in.
"Or maybe because he truly cared.' The other side protested.
Pulling in a deep breath, Melanie let it out in an exacerbated sigh.
The man was nothing but one large walking enigma to her.
"I have a question."
Despite the covers she was currently cozied up under, Melanie swore she came straight off the mattress.
Pulling over so fast she nearly fell out of the bed, she found herself facing Layton, comfortably sprawled out in the bed next to her, a bemused look on his face as he held a paper in front of him. She hadn't expected for him to be there still. It was, after all, 6PM. He usually left the cabin early in the morning and would rarely get back until late.
But she also remembered he had said he wouldn't leave her. He had promised. And one thing she knew about this man was, to date, he had never broken such a promise to her.
She had started to warm up to the thought when a cold bite of air in the room suddenly reminded her of what she was currently wearing. In the early afternoon she had been partially pulled from sleep as the room began to heat up as it always did during the day. Shifting around a bit under the covers, she easily managed to pull off the slip dress and toss it over to the other side of the bed, not thinking her bedmate was occupying his side of the bed still. Once she had discarded the dress, still wrapped in her hazy half-sleep condition, she doubted it had taken her a full minute to fall back asleep.
Pulling the covers up in front of her to cover her form fitting bra and panties, she tried to muster a shred of dignity.
Layton reached over and picked up the discarded dress from earlier, holding it up in front of her.
"Looking for this?" He asked, the smile still playing across his features.
Melanie quickly grabbed the dress and hugged it to her.
Layton turned back to the paper in his hands. "And I would like to say here, for the record, Melanie, I will accept a lot of your nighttime activities. The blanket hogging, the snoring, even the fact that sleeping next to you is like sleeping next to a warm brick. But when you start 'sleep stripping', we're going to have a talk."
Melanie frowned at him. "I was hot."
"I've heard that around the train." He replied casually, turning back to her with a small smile. "But that doesn't actually answer my question."
"Wha...wha...what question?" she stammered.
Layton casually held up the paper in his hand. "What did I ever do to you?"
Melanie tried to focus, but it didn't seem to help much. She honestly had no idea what he was talking about.
"Do?" She ask, still clutching the blankets in front of her.
Layton turned his attention back to the paper in his hand as he went back to scanning it.
"Yeah. Do." He answered her. "I mean...recently. True, we haven't had the greatest relationship start to finish. But I figured we were...sort of working things out. One could almost go as far as to say we were becoming friends. But really, I'm not even mention once in this document."
It was then Melanie suddenly realized what he was holding.
Her will.
She had given it to him that morning for safe keeping.
Barring her execution, she didn't expect the man would read it!
Forgetting everything else, with a sudden lunge, Melanie made a grab for the paper.
"Give me that!"
But Layton was quicker, and did an excellent job of playing keep-away with the document, switching it back and forth between his hands as Melanie continued to try and grab it.
"Uh-uh." He stated with a gleeful smile. "You gave it to me."
In truth he couldn't have been happier to see the fight in her rise up so quickly. Even just for a simple game of keep-away.
He was seriously worried for her that morning when he had laid down next to her after she had already pulled herself into the bed on her side. He had expected her to cry, to sob, to scream, even have nightmares. But she had simply laid on her side, facing away from him, hardly even seeming to breath. Eventually he had reached over and pulled her gently to him until he could wrap one arm completely around her torso. But truth be told, that was more for his comfort than her's. It gave him physical reassurance that she was really there. That they had both survived the ordeal and were once again, at least for the moment, safe.
She had laid in that embrace for a long time, her eyes open, staring straight ahead. She never spoke or made any sound he could hear aside from her breathing.
Eventually they had both fallen asleep like that.
He had woken several times that day, with the events of the previous hours crashing back in on him. But at first he could never remember how it all ended. His immediate reaction each time was to look for her. And each time, in a frantic, panic driven moment, he had turned to the other side of the bed, only to see her apparently sound asleep, and safe.
Sometime in the early afternoon, he had been woken up to a piece of material slapping itself across his face. Pulling it down, he worked it around until with wide-eyed near panicked understanding he suddenly realized what it was.
Her dress!
Slowly looking over his shoulder, unsure of what he was going to find, Layton gave a silent exhale of relief to find her still on her side facing the wall, apparently already asleep again. He supposed she had been getting warm under the blankets since he had already discarded several of the upper layers to the middle of the bed himself earlier.
Moving over as close to the edge of his side of the bed as he could get, he eventually fell back asleep himself.
He knew he shouldn't have drawn her into the game. He knew he should have simply handed the document back to her and let her respectfully crawl back under the covers. But in truth, he didn't much care what she was or wasn't wearing at the moment. His goal that afternoon was to get her moving again. To draw her out of herself.
She was so much like that engine she loved and coddled.
They both ran best when they were fired up.
After a few minutes of managing to keep the document from her, but realizing he was losing ground when she straddled his lower body to help hold him still, Layton suddenly folded the paper quickly and shoved it down under the covers, straight down the center of his body.
Melanie froze. Still straddled over his body so she could hold him down and gain some advantage, she could easily feel just how far down he had shoved that paper.
She stared down at him with a good amount of malice.
"You didn't!"
With a self-satisfied smile, Layton pulled his hands free from under the covers, sans one piece of paper, and folded them above his head.
"I dare you." He said with a wicked grin.
"You think I won't?"
She didn't even give him time to consider if she was serious or not as she grabbed the covers and dove down with her hands for the document.
"Melanie!"
Layton tried to grab her hands. But faster than he could even follow her movements, she had the paper and was out of the bed.
Now standing next to the bed, she triumphantly waved her prize at him.
Layton gave her a disgruntled stare in response. "Your lucky that's all you grabbed hold of, lady."
Still waving the paper above her head, Melanie turned and walked off towards the outer room. "YOU'RE lucky that's all I grabbed hold of." She called back to him.
Layton smiled at her at first. He was happy to see her take pride in besting him. That was more his old Melanie.
But his features softened as he watched her go. From that vantage point, he had a perfect view of a small, very well tone derriere, snuggly cover by a form fitting pair of black panties that didn't give his imagination much of a work out.
He knew he looked longer than he should have. But the view of her walking out of the room like that sent a warm tidal wave coursing through his body.
He tried to get his thoughts back in line. This was Melanie, for heaven's sake! The woman who had helped him keep everything, including himself, on track. He didn't need to go there with her. He didn't WANT to go there with her. He needed her more as a friend right now.
But even as he tried to set himself back on the main rail, his thoughts took another side track when he remembered that perfectly shaped rear-end had, only moments before, been straddled over his lower body.
'Think cold!' He told himself sternly. 'Think very, very, very cold. Think outside cold.'
Taking several deep breaths with his eyes closed, he managed to get the image out of his mind finally.
"What are you doing?"
Layton opened his eyes. Thankfully she now had on her very unflattering engineer's uniform, which also gratefully covered most of her body.
"Meditating." He replied flatly.
Melanie gave him an 'uh-huh' look before disappearing into the bathroom.
Layton followed her with his eyes. "What are YOU doing?"
Melanie stepped back into the room, brushing her hair out. "My shift starts at 7."
Layton frowned at her as he pulled himself up on his elbows. "You think they HONESTLY expect you to show up!?"
Melanie frowned back at him. "Why wouldn't they?"
Layton pulled himself up to a sitting position in the bed. "Maybe because they think you're dead. You show up in that engine room and you're going to give half of them screaming fits, Melanie. They'll think you're a ghost."
Melanie started to tie her hair up in the tight little bun she always favored. "Well, that's fine then." She replied casually. "Since half of them always said they believed I would haunt the engine room when I was dead anyway. So I doubt I'll be surprising anyone."
Getting out of the bed, Layton walked over to her with a smile, stopping just in front of her as he placed his hands on her shoulders.
"And I'm really glad you aren't a ghost, Melanie." He said quietly, gently kissing her forehead.
Melanie returned his smile. But her expression slowly slipped to a more somber one.
"In case I forget to tell you later," she said in a soft tone, "thank you for what you did."
Layton quickly wrapped his arms around her and carefully folded her into his embrace. "Hey. Surely you didn't think I was ever going to let them go through with that?"
"It still could have gone very differently." She whispered back to him.
Layton shook his head as he gently laid it over her's. "Never."
Melanie pulled back and looked up at him. "You're were so sure of that?"
Layton smiled down at her. "Not 100%. But we certainly had a back up plan."
"We?"
"You think I was running that show by myself, lady? I'm not that good. Every single person you saw had a part to play this morning. Even Ruth. She just didn't know about her part in it all. And they all played their parts to perfection. But if things HAD gone awry, there was, as I said, a back up plan in place."
"Back up plan?" She asked. "What was the 'back up plan'?"
Layton sighed quietly, his smile fading slightly as he stared back at her. "Let's just say things could have gotten very messy."
Melanie's expression fell to that neutral expression she used when she didn't like his answers. "A fight." She finally said. "You were going to fight."
Layton shook his head quickly. "Not just me." He added. "Not a person outside of Ruth's group didn't have a weapon of some sort. Trust me, it would have been a darned short fight. All Ruth had was a few guards and a bunch of people who didn't know their backsides from a sharp end of a sword. I had a whole car full of people with most of them having everything but Ruth's name carved on their weapons."
Melanie stared up at him.
"Look," he added, "somebody stood a good chance of not walking out of that car alive this morning. But you were not the first name on that list by far."
"Because all those people were such great supporters of mine?"
"Because all those people cared a lot more about you than you allow yourself to think." He answered. "Listen, maybe a lot of them don't run around the train every day waving their 'Melanie Cavill' flags. But they sure as heck weren't about to let Ruth Wardell and her First Class fanatics get away with their plan either. And for your information, executions are banned on this train. If someone would attend more of those council meetings she suggested, you would have known that." He smiled down at her.
"Then how did it even get this far?" She asked.
Layton sighed. "Because according to Till and the rules of the train, Ruth WAS within her rights to call for YOUR execution, because that sentence was passed down before the new laws were passed. But instead of fighting her outright, I thought it would be better to take her on in another way. A way that would shut her up at least for a little while. Trust me, she'll think long and hard before she tries something like this again."
Melanie kept her stare fixed on him. "And what is going to stop her from trying this again?"
"Well, for starters, she'll find it hard to execute anyone on this train short of something that won't amount to murder."
"Meaning?"
"As soon as we left that room, a swarm of eager hands went in and destroyed every vestige of that place. No one, no matter what their crime or their sentence, will every be executed in that manner again on this train."
Melanie paused, then smiled up at him. "You are going to be a very good leader, Mr. Layton."
Layton smiled back at her. "Only because I'm being taught by the best."
Hugging her once more, Layton finally relinquished his hold on her and turned her towards the door to the cabin. "I'm only letting you do this because I know how eager Bennett is to see you. And Melanie..."
Melanie turned back to him at the door.
He gave her a small smile this time. "I'll understand if I don't see you tomorrow."
She returned a full smile to him. "I'll see you for breakfast."
He quickly returned the smile. "Don't stay your whole shift and make it back for dinner." He called after her. "You deserve that much."
A slight wave answered him. "Breakfast." She called to him as the door closed behind her.
Layton smiled after her as the door slid shut. "OK. Breakfast."