Hydrotherapy, Now with More Donuts (Supplies Pending)

by Catflower Queen

It was funny, really, how much could change in a year's time—even when mystical, magical, trauma solving/inducing therapy trains weren't involved.

Hydrotherapy, Now with More Donuts (Supplies Pending)

It was funny, really, how much could change in a year's time—even when mystical, magical, trauma solving/inducing therapy trains weren't involved.

Sure, that first year after leaving the Infinity Train was hectic, full of the general chaos that followed a new life joining the general population of planet Earth. It was only further compounded with the fact that, typically speaking, those new lives didn't come pre-packaged with twelve to thirteen years of personal history and trauma. Lake's first year of freedom had been full of various appointments: appointments with school officials trying to gauge her grade level and then sway her into enrolling when they found out just how much she excelled in the STEM areas (she wasn't quite as good as Tulip and didn't enjoy it to nearly the same extent, but, hey, it was inevitable that after all those years reflecting her as she studied, Lake would have picked up a thing or two. Including, as a side note, the ability to read texts backwards and upside down, which she thought was actually a way cooler skill). Appointments with various different government officials and agencies to get her an official legal status, identity, and living situation figured out so that she could actually go to school. Appointments with numerous legal teams, all working together to make the previous things possible.

…Seriously, there had been so. Many. Legal teams. It seemed like every little thing had needed its own department to take care of it, and there so many different departments that the variety was almost overwhelming. Why did there even need to be so many? Like, Lake guessed it made sense to separate some things. After all, she remembered the sorts of things she'd overheard Tulip's parents say when debating whether they needed to look into hiring a divorce attorney or if they should give couples' counseling one last shot back when their fights had started to get more serious, and she could see how if there weren't separate departments, then stuff like "inability to make or stick to schedules" and "spending too much time at work instead of with the family" would constantly be set aside in favor of, like, murder trials, which would mean kids like Tulip would be stuck in the limbo of a deteriorating family situation indefinitely… but why did there need to be so many?

There was even a department for "Tree Law." It was apparently a very involved and complicated department, even though Lake only knew it existed in the first place because one time when she was complaining about how complicated the legal process was, Jesse told her about the camp he went to the previous summer. It was called "Camp Lawful Laurel," and was apparently dedicated exclusively to the study of tree law. When she asked him why on earth Jesse would ever go somewhere that sounded so extremely boring, he explained that it was because one of his "friends" from swim team had asked him to. Apparently, the guy's parents wanted him to do something "educational" over the summer so that he could "improve his CV," whatever that was, and he figured that the high cost of the camp would be a pretty good way to show off his displeasure at not getting to spend the summer playing video games with his friends instead, and to get some petty revenge on his parents. But he didn't want to be alone all summer studying with the "boring nerds," so he'd asked Jesse to sign up, too—mostly because the first three people he'd asked had turned him down. But then the "friend" ultimately decided to go to a way cooler, but equally expensive, camp focusing on marine biology (where they got to hand-feed actual sharks!) and hadn't bothered to tell Jesse until it was too late and his parents already submitted the non-refundable admissions fee—one that, because of how expensive the camp was, he'd had to help pay for using his own money that he'd been saving up so he could buy a really cool-looking dirt bike. The same dirt bike that he'd taped a picture of on the wall across from his bed, so that it would be the first thing he'd see when he got up in the early, early morning for his dog-walking gig, to remind himself just why he'd consigned himself to the torture that was an early morning wake-up on the weekends, earlier than he even had to get up for school or practice.

Honestly. If the Infinity Train hadn't picked him up when it did, Lake had a feeling it would have only been a matter of time before he got forcibly dragged on and then immediately tossed into some sort of "Pillow Car" just so that he could get some adequate sleep for once in his life.

Anyways, the other appointments she had were with various doctors, mainly to try and address her unique "skin condition" that was previously unknown to the scientific and medical fields, and that had medical professionals even now calling every other day in the hopes of scheduling appointments with her wherein she would be poked and prodded mercilessly as they tried to figure out what, exactly, caused her chrome-like sheen and seemingly metallic feel and weight. It was something which she was no way interested in, and she'd begged off of as soon as she could. Though, to be completely fair to the doctors, it did seem like most of them were simply concerned about the ramifications of her "condition" for her general health and quality of life, rather than for any sort of malicious purpose, or to treat her like some sort of lab experiment. Given the way one of the dermatology specialists had been a little too insistent on brushing off the whole thing as "just a rather extreme allergic reaction to metallic body paint" and asking her whether or not she'd tried to emulate one of those living statue performers you see "on TV prank shows, or when you take a train up to those big cities like Chicago," putting a special emphasis on the word "train," she had a pretty strong theory that she wasn't the first Mirror person that the doctor had seen, and privately wondered why someone like her, who seemed so professional and put together, had ever ended up on the Infinity Train.

But… Lake guessed that maybe that was kind of the point; that the reason that doctor seemed so put together was because she'd taken a ride on the train. After all, Lake had seen the effect such a trip had on Jesse—how much he'd grown and changed, and how he was taking those lessons seriously. Like, he'd cut his toxic "friends" out of his life so that he could spend more time with her and Nate. He'd told his swim team that he preferred free-style over butterfly, and asked his coach for the chance to see if he could qualify for that, instead. Or if he could at least put him on the roster as a backup free-styler, since school pride was a thing and he did want to give their team the best shot at winning, even if that meant him doing the butterfly. He'd even quit most of the extraneous clubs he'd been a part of, electing to only stay a member of the swim team, the tutoring club (mostly because he actually got paid for his tutoring sessions, and he'd started saving up for that dirt bike again—in addition to the tutoring looking good on whatever this CV thing was that Lake kept hearing about), the wildlife photography club, and the "Eraser Kids" club.

Though, honestly, that last club had kind of disbanded as an actual "club," per say, after the president—who was only really in charge by virtue of being the oldest of the four kids total comprising the club (including Jesse and the semi-reluctant Lake)—finally admitted that he and the other non-Jesse or Lake member hadn't formed the club because they had any real interest in eraser shavings, but because they'd been friends with Jesse since they were toddlers, and had noticed over the years as he'd gotten busier and busier, and they'd thought that the only real way they would be able to effectively guarantee spending time with him these days was to create an actual club with a defined schedule and meeting time that Jesse would be able to adhere to and plan around. After seeing Jesse quit all those other clubs, and hearing him cite his disinterest in their contents as the main reason why he quit them, they'd felt guilty about their ruse and come clean. After some apologizing all around, the three of them became even closer—and the other two kids welcomed Lake into their fold easily. They turned out to be pretty cool to hang out with, even though they still brough up eraser shavings from time to time as an inside joke.

Of course, the other main reason that Jesse opted to quit all those extra clubs was that he had a new time commitment, one he actually shared with Lake: they both had regularly scheduled appointments with therapists—actual, licensed professional ones who did not also double as types of transportation. She and Jesse had each met with their own therapists bi-weekly at the start, but Jesse's had tapered off to bi-monthly after about half a year, and her own had switched to once a week by her tenth month of freedom.

It still surprised her sometimes that it was actually the therapy thing, more than anything else, which was the catalyst for all those other appointments. Lake hated Mace, and she would always hate Mace, but even despite the fact that he, and Sieve, tried so hard to kill her, she thought what she hated the most about him is how perfectly Mace laid out all her thoughts and insecurities about trying to live a life off the train back when Alan Dracula was protecting them all with his horns back in the Wasteland. After all, the high of freedom and adrenaline she'd been riding after giving herself an actual name and meeting Nate wore off pretty quickly when Mr. and Mrs. Cosay arrived at the lakeshore, looking a bit frantic. They'd been worried that Nate, too, had run off somewhere when they'd returned to the house from searching for Jesse—a search which had started anew after Nate swore he'd seen him finally return, only for Jesse to never come back inside (having been picked up by that blasted train yet again)—only to find that their younger son was now also missing. But their worries had given way to elated tears once they reached the trio of children and found both sons safe and relatively sound, immediately enveloping them in hugs and scolding Jesse to "never, ever, ever do something like that again, young man!"

Lake had taken a few steps back, suddenly feeling extremely nervous and out of place, Mace's horrible words echoing in her head, and she'd frozen up in fear when Mr. Cosay finally glanced up from his son momentarily and caught sight of her. She froze up when he abruptly let go of his son and headed toward her, determination clear on his tear-stained face, and for a moment she was terrified he was going to attack her, or blame her for his eldest being gone for so long. It was, after all, basically her fault that he got called bac to the Infinity Train. But he didn't do anything of the sort; instead he embraced her in a hug of her own, whispering his gratitude that she'd helped looked after Jesse while he was on the train—apparently, Nate had shared the stories Jesse told him about her in the brief period he'd returned home the first time. And if they hadn't entirely believed him before, then actually seeing a person who seemed to be entirely made of metal and could corroborate his and Jesse's stories was some pretty convincing evidence.

The thing about believing his stories about the train with the infinite number of cars that acted like something between a therapy tool and a horror show was that, well, it meant that they also had to believe that someone—something—had thought their son needed therapy. That there was something—maybe a lot of somethings—about their son's life and mental health that they had missed. Something that they weren't able to help him with—or, at least, that Jesse hadn't thought they would be able to help him with, since he'd never shared anything like that with them—and that the only person/thing that had noticed and offered any sort of help had likely created even more problems for him. Or, well, no, there was no "likely" about it; The Infinity Train, despite its best intentions, had definitely created more problems for him, given that he'd actually re-boarded it in the first place. That wasn't even mentioning the fact that a lot of those new problems, in turn, were created as a response to someone else whose problems were very much tied to the way the train was supposed to run to begin with.

The Cosay family decided pretty much immediately that everyone involved needed some actual therapy to work through everything—and that Lake was included in that "everyone." Of course, in order for Lake to get therapy, she would need to have an actual, legal identity, as well as a place to live, and things just spiraled from there as appointments were made to make other appointments so that Lake could actually have the life on Earth that she so desperately craved, and everyone could try and heal from the trauma.

It actually ended up being harder to find a good therapist than anything else. For all that Jesse's parents believed him and Lake about the Infinity Train, it was understandably a bit harder to find a professional who would be able to listen to it all without assuming that the whole thing was just some sort of hallucination or delusion, especially when they were all a bit wary of revealing Lake's origins or letting any of the doctors she'd needed to go to in order to get all her paperwork straightened out delve too deeply into her physiology or how it worked—especially after that one dermatologist who obviously knew what she was pretty much told them that it would be better to stay quiet about the whole thing due to just how insistent she was about her "paint allergy theory." But that encounter had also made them realize they weren't alone in this endeavor: People got on and off the Infinity Train all the time.

Jesse had. The dermatologist had. Even that one lunch lady Lake briefly saw (and who actually did turn out to be Mrs. Graham—and hadn't that been an awkward lunch encounter. At least she hadn't forced Lake or Jesse eat any celery) had. And since the point of the train was to help people heal and resolve their traumas, that meant that even those who gained new traumas on board would still be in a better place mentally afterwards and could go on to heal and lead productive lives in the normal, Earth way, right? So that just meant Lake and the Cosays had to figure out how they did it. And while they hadn't had the chance to ask the dermatologist, and Mrs. Graham hadn't even been an option until they'd already figured some things out, there was one other possibility available to them.

At first Lake was a little reluctant to contact Tulip, but… well, she knew Tulip would help her out. She had before, after all, even after Lake had tried to trap her in the Mirror World forever. Tulip had wanted her to be happy, to have a better life. She'd even apologized that the first car Lake had gotten to see after fleeing the Chrome Car was a boring one! (Which in retrospect, and after coming down from the initial rush of freedom, she could totally agree with. Banks were pretty boring, especially ones run by pencils who didn't have mouths and, therefore, didn't offer free lollipops because they had no use for them. She still kept that pen-chain, though, as a memento. …Also, because she was right that it would look totally awesome painted black and used as a bracelet—which, honestly, had been her first thought when she'd swiped it from the pencil people. It hadn't even occurred to her the danger it possessed as a reflective object until she'd gotten off the train and caught Jesse trying to use one to make awkward small talk with his own reflection one day when the entire family was sitting in yet another boring law office, waiting for yet another lawyer to come and decide her fate. She'd never been more thankful for her awesome fashion sense than in that moment.) But more than that… she knew Tulip could actually help her and Jesse out in terms of finding a good therapist.

Mr. And Mrs. Olsen… they were good parents. They weren't the best parents, and there were definitely things they needed to work harder on, but… they did the best they could. Even with the whole divorce thing, and how badly it was handled in the lead-up, everything they did was an effort to protect Tulip and ensure she would be okay. Tulip didn't know this—or at least, she hadn't before running away—but those arguments Lake had overheard as she reflected Tulip's sleeping form from the blank screen of the turned-off television, the ones the Olsen parents had about whether they should try again for couples' counseling or go straight for the divorce attorneys? They happened because they didn't know if it would be better for Tulip in the long run to have both of her parents living together, even as they struggled and needed help to get along, or whether it would be best for them to just have a relatively clean break so that Tulip didn't have to deal with any more fights in the house. That was why they'd actually been able to make a compromise, for once, and agreed to try a period of separation first; it would keep the fights out of the house and away from Tulip while they tried to work things out in a calmer manner, and if they did, ultimately, end up divorcing—which they had—then it would hopefully help Tulip ease into the idea. Which… it hadn't, really, but that wasn't all on them.

They'd tried to help their daughter, to engage with her. To get her interested in a life outside her room. They'd noticed her grades dropping and correctly guessed that it was because she was upset by the recent changes in her life. That's why they'd come up with the contract, and the promise to send her to Game Design Camp if she brought her grades up. And, yeah, that had fallen through in a spectacular manner, but… they were only human. They were trying their hardest. And Lake knew that they would try just as hard for their daughter once she finally got off the train.

Which meant that they would have tried to find an actual, licensed therapist for her—especially since they'd already been debating on finding her one after camp ended if she still didn't seem to be adjusting well. Given what ended up happening, there was no way they didn't follow through on those plans. Even if Tulip was feeling better and more adjusted now about the divorce, there was no way the train didn't leave any sort of negative experiences or memories on her, like it did on Jesse. Or on Lake. Or, heck, even on Nate, and he'd never even boarded the thing! And given that Tulip, like Jesse and Lake, had the same sort of concrete evidence of her story being real (the exact same evidence, actually, if in reverse—that being Lake's existence on Earth and non-existence in the Olsen family mirrors, respectively), they would have shown the exact same concern that the Cosay family had in trying to find a good therapist who wouldn't immediately claim that the whole thing was just a hallucination.

After coming to that realization, all (most) of Lake's fears fell away, and it was pretty easy to contact Tulip for help. She knew all the passwords and usernames for Tulip's social media accounts, after all, so it was a simple matter of sending her an email from her own address, and then giving her a brief update of what had happened after they separated, where Lake currently was (and that she'd named herself Lake), and then asking Tulip to either send an email to the account Jesse helped Lake set up, or to call Jesse's phone.

The ensuing conversations were enlightening. Lake didn't really feel like telling Tulip everything that had gone on—mostly because she still wasn't quite sure where exactly she stood with Tulip, like, if she actually wanted to try being her friend and let Tulip get to know her the way Lake already knew Tulip—but Tulip seemed elated that she'd made it off the train. Though, how much of that elation was just the general "I'm glad you're getting to live your own life now" kind versus "I'm glad that you, specifically, who is a denizen, managed to get off that hell-train" kind was unclear—mostly because Lake wasn't entirely sure whether Tulip even knew about the restrictions denizens had in regards to the doors. Though, honestly, she probably didn't—if Lake herself hadn't known, despite technically being a denizen, then there's no way Tulip could have. In any case, the elation was good because it meant that Tulip was, indeed, willing to help out in any way she could—which turned out to be a lot.

Lake's predictions about the Olsen parents had been spot-on. After Tulip got back and they'd been able to assure themselves of her physical well-being, they swiftly dedicated themselves to trying to ensure her mental well-being. They'd already done loads of research on good child psychologists for the divorce stuff, and they quickly set to work on weeding down the list even more in light of Tulip's new issues—in addition to doing further research into some doctors they'd skipped over before, now that the whole divorce thing was the least of Tulip's problems.

Though, surprisingly, this still involved them trying to contact Megan's divorce attorney. Apparently, he'd given her a list of good child psychologists to try out when Tulip had first come up during one of their appointments as they were figuring out the issue of custody. They thought that if they contacted him again, then maybe he would be able to help them find one who specialized in runaways, and how they could more easily integrate back into society when they returned home (because even though Tulip hadn't meant to be gone for so long, that was still five months of life on Earth that she had to catch up with—including a lot of missed school). But, apparently, he'd never answered their emails. When they tried calling instead, his secretary informed them that he'd announced he was going on a sabbatical or something right around the time they'd sent their first email. She hadn't heard from him since, so he probably hadn't even seen them in the first place. But she'd had a few suggestions of her own, so it wasn't a total loss.

Tulip told her that there had been one option that really caught her parents' attention, some sort of boarding school called "Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children." It was apparently really good for runaway situations since it was small and offered daily therapy sessions along with schoolwork. They'd thought it might be easier for Tulip to go there, at least through the summer, so that she would be able to catch up with all the schoolwork she missed without worrying about being held back a grade—thus losing even more of a connection with her friends, such as Mikayla. Ultimately, though, they all decided it would be better to look somewhere else. Eleanor West's school was in a completely different state, for one thing, even farther away than Oshkosh was, and Tulip and her parents were reluctant for her to be that far away when she'd already been gone for so long. Her parents also didn't like the fact that Tulip wouldn't be allowed to actually see the school until after she was already enrolled—the proprietor didn't allow her to sit in on the initial meeting, and she didn't even let her parents take a real tour of the school. Ms. West claimed it was for the students' privacy, but how would Tulip know if she would like it there if she didn't get to see it for herself, or to at least hear some firsthand testimonies from current students? So, they ended up going with just enrolling her in a summer school program and getting her a normal therapist closer to home.

Well. Normal aside from the fact that said therapist had apparently also boarded the train at some point during their childhood, and then channeled their experience into becoming a child psychologist in the hopes of being able to help other children so that they would never even need the train in the first place. But they were just as good at helping former passengers, too, as Tulip apparently wasn't the first former passenger to find themselves in that doctor's care.

Given that a lot of Jesse's issues had stemmed from peer pressure, he and his parents thought that maybe Ms. West's school would be a good place for him to start over, to learn how to make new friends of Lake's caliber and to get him away from the toxic influences of his current "friends." The distance, as in the case of the Olsen family, was a bit daunting, but the thought of a new start did appeal to Jesse, so they all took a trip to go check it out. (And, as Jesse later admitted to her privately, he and his parents also thought it might be better for Lake, too, since the population of Ms. West's school was a lot smaller than the local high school. That meant that Lake could get a tiny taste of the normalcy and stability of life on Earth and being surrounded by humans all day before being thrown in the deep end. "After all, both of us know how bad you are at swimming," Jesse had told her, a mischievous grin on his face that fell to a slight wince as he tried to playfully jostle her shoulder and forgot, yet again, that she was made of metal and wasn't easily pushed around.) The whole family went on that particular scouting trip, because even if Lake and Jesse wouldn't be allowed to sit in on the interview, there was no way the Cosays were going to leave them and Nate home alone for so long. The kids could just hang out in the nearby town for a while and meet up with the adults when they were done with the appointment.

But, just like Tulip, she and Jesse ended up not going there after all—mainly because Ms. West had caught sight of the kids as she was seeing the older Cosays to the entrance after their meeting, and then seemed a bit too interested in Lake, and had become very insistent, borderline demanding, that she and Jesse enroll in her school. Seriously. It was like some sort of switch had been flipped in her personality. And the lady's never wavering stare after the initial shock of seeing Lake was both rude, and a little creepy.

They ended up emailing Tulip again and asking her to see if her therapist had any therapist friends in Arizona with similar experiences. There actually ended up being quite a few to choose from, and Lake was enrolled in Jesse's school to start attending the next fall.

So, that was Lake's first year of freedom—a whirlwind of appointments to figure out her legal identity to go along with the personal one she was still carving out for herself—one which let her leave her past on the train behind so that she could actually live.

Except… as the next year would show, things weren't that simple.

Sure, there were no actual trains involved—be they either magical or mundane—but, as her therapist had warned her during her first session, the train would always be a part of her. She could move on from her experiences, sure, and the passage of time would inevitably dull some of the memories, but it would never fully leave her. Not entirely.

At first, she was furious about it—after spending so much time trying to get off the train, almost dying due to the flecks and the train's own unfair coding, after finally, finally getting out and starting to establish her own identity… only to find out that it could never truly be her own, free from the taint of the Infinity Train? To say she took it badly would be a gross understatement. But… well, a lot can change in a year.

The therapy helped. Like, a lot.

One of the big things that she and her therapist worked on was how to deal with her emotions and problems in a healthier and more constructive way than she had been up until that point. There had been more than one destructive outburst from Lake during that first year. It would have been one thing if they had just happened after particularly long appointments with the various lawyers trying to determine her fate on where she would stay, or how to get her an actual identity. It wouldn't have been great by any means, since it was embarrassing to lose her cool like that in front of Jesse—and especially in front of Nate—but it would have been understandable. Thing is, though, she would sometimes have those outbursts after smaller, inconsequential things—like the adult Cosays making her and Jesse turn off the TV by nine o'clock every night, or the teachers not letting her sit in the seats closest to the windows without giving her any reasonable explanations as to why. Or at least… not any explanations that she thought were reasonable. Which, in itself, was actually quite telling about what the core of her issues were. At least, that's what her therapist thought—and after a few days of stewing in her room after that particular session, she reluctantly conceded the point.

Due to her experiences as a reflection, and especially with what happened with the flecks on the Train, Lake had a lot of problems trusting others. It was pretty easy for her to understand why she had so many problems with authority: The flecks had left a pretty big impression on her, and given their whole "conform or die" deal, she got why that would extend to teachers, or even the older Cosays. She couldn't feel safe trusting them because doing so made her feel like she was losing control of her life, even though the reality was that everything they were doing so far was in an attempt to actually give her a life. This was pretty much literal in the case of the attorneys—if she didn't have documents, an ID, proof of citizenship, etc., then she could have problems with the prime world's equivalent to flecks (not to mention that she wouldn't be able to get a job or buy a house or anything when she was older if she didn't have a paper trail to back things up—she'd spent a lot of time in that bank car, after all, and even though things were slightly different for sentient pencils than they were for humans, she knew enough that stuff like that was expensive, and she wouldn't be able to take out loans or anything if she didn't actually have a legal identity). But even for the smaller things… the curfew was in place so that she and Jesse wouldn't be tired in the mornings, and could actually be functional during the day and get enough sleep to stay healthy. And the thing with the windows was… well, okay, technically that one had been mostly for the other students' benefit—it turns out that the way many of the classrooms were positioned made it so that they got tons of natural light, and apparently the glare caused by the sun reflecting off of her shiny, metallic body was inadvertently blinding the classmates who sat closest to her and making it hard for them to concentrate on their own work. …In addition to maybe causing some deterioration and problems with their eyes themselves, especially later on in life.

But revealing that particular incident to her therapist was actually pretty revealing in itself, as it turned out that a lot of her issues weren't just with authority, and how to manage those necessary relationships in healthy ways, but also somewhat with the concept of empathy itself. Or, maybe not so much "empathy" as "the understanding of the consequences your actions can have on others before you act." There had been, after all, a lot of things she'd done on the train that she now deeply regretted… but the most important thing that Lake could do—at least, according to her therapist—was to work through those regrets, to analyze and understand them so that she could move on and do better.

As her therapist had said during their first ever session—and then repeated during that first session a month or so in when Lake really started to get into the hard stuff that she usually tried to keep hidden from everyone—she wasn't there to judge the morality of Lake's actions. Not only were there species and cultural differences between the two of them that the therapist would never be able to understand, but much of what Lake had done on the Infinity Train was out of a sense of self-preservation. If she hadn't acted how she did, she likely would have been killed. And at the time, she wasn't really in a place where she could have stopped to list the pros and cons of each action, or consider the consequences—and with her upbringing, she didn't really have the experiences she needed to do so, anyways. After all, before Tulip had helped her escape the Chrome Car, the only people she'd had to worry about affecting were herself and Tulip—and even then, Lake only really had to think about Tulip in terms of making sure she herself knew enough about what was happening with her prime's life to make sure she was an accurate reflection for her own safety, rather than Tulip's. Not to mention the fact that Lake was still a teenager, and teenagers weren't really known for their capabilities to act like completely rational beings. But at the same time… when she'd actually gotten to meet Tulip face-to-face, she hadn't cared one bit about the fact that her leaving meant that Tulip would be trapped—even as she'd admitted to Tulip how boring it was to be stuck on the reflections' side of the mirror.

Yeah, she'd done all that because she wanted to live her own life. But by doing things in the manner she had, she'd actually put herself in far more danger than she probably would have been otherwise. After all, Tulip had been extremely sympathetic once they'd gotten the chance to actually sit down and talk to each other. Even after admitting to Tulip's face that she wanted to trap her in the Mirror world forever, Tulip had still helped her—and, in fact, was still helping her even now! So maybe if she'd actually stopped to talk to her about her desires after switching sides and opening the door, rather than just immediately running away, the two could have worked out her solution with the multi-tool way earlier, and in a more peaceful manner. Like—sure, the mirror person assigned to One-One might still have called the flecks on her eventually, given that he was even more of a stickler for the rules than his prime was… but it probably would have given Lake a head start, and it may have even made Mace and Sieve be less intent on outright killing her (although she kind of doubted that last part).

Beyond that… there was also the lizard girl to consider. She was completely innocent in everything going on in Lake's life, but Lake hadn't stopped to think for even a moment about the girl's own struggles, or why her pet's death would have been enough to get her picked up by the Infinity Train beyond that self-admittedly insincere apology as Lake tried to steal her number. If she'd succeeded… what would have happened to the girl? Would she have been able to get a new number? Or would Lake's actions have trapped her on the train for the rest of her life? If Lake had stopped to think about it, then maybe she could have tried dipping into the coding skills she'd learned along with Tulip to try and program the machine to give her a number of her own without having to get anyone else involved. Or she could have tried to use the porters to send a message to One-One or someone to try and get help in a calmer manner.

Sure, One-One hadn't really been the most helpful when he'd actually shown up, but… in retrospect, it didn't seem like it was because he didn't want her to be able to live her own life. He had, after all, been instrumental in helping her escape the Chrome Car. It was more like he just didn't understand why she wouldn't be happy to keep living as a denizen and help other passengers while she lived her own life, the way that he and Atticus had done while helping Tulip. Or like how she'd realized that Alan Dracula was doing, and how he wouldn't be happy the way she was now if the two of them had actually made it off the Infinity Train with Jesse that first time. After all, One-One himself had seemed a lot happier to be in his rightful place as conductor, watching over passengers and trying to help them get home. And from what she'd gathered about the process of making train cars, each one of them was tailor-made down to the smallest detail—including which denizens would be able to fit into that world and find it a comfortable place to live. But even then, One-One didn't seem to care that denizens could and did move between cars—just look at Terrance, and all the places Randall and The Cat had gone!

If Lake had just taken the time to talk to him peacefully… well, she still might not have been able to get a legitimate number without resorting to that loophole with Jesse, considering that One-One was still very much bound in some ways to his programming. In hindsight, that paradoxical loop he'd gotten caught in when Jesse returned to the train was very reminiscent of the scene from that one game Tulip liked with the other British-sounding, spherical robot and the infamous lemon rant. The one where the protagonist—on the advice of another robot who had been the villain for the first third of game, but who had to team up with the protagonist in order to defeat the game's ultimate villain—tried to use logical paradoxes to defeat said British-sounding, spherical robot, and the only reason it didn't work was because he was too dumb to actually understand them. Or, maybe a better example would be some of those stories she and Jesse had to read for English class last semester—the ones by that Asimov guy who wrote about robots. Specifically, that one story of his called "Liar!" Anyways, the point was that One-One's issues weren't anything personal—even as much as it hurt to admit it. And getting back to the original topic… if she had been able to talk things through with him more peacefully from the start, maybe he wouldn't have started freaking out so much when Jesse came back.

And… even before One-One or the lizard girl… there was something else she'd done that was probably far worse, whose consequences she definitely could have mitigated had she thought things through: hijacking that one old dude's escape pod. If she'd taken a moment to just think, then maybe he wouldn't have been stranded out there on top of the train, without having the benefit of One-One's videos to know what was going on or how to get home… or even the (relative) safety of waking up on the inside of the train. She had no idea what happened to him; if he'd eventually managed to get inside the train, or if he'd fallen off the top—or been eaten by one of those weird bug creatures that lived outside—and she hadn't even tried that hard to stop him from fleeing after she pulled him out. Yeah, she'd instinctively reached for him, but… she could have, like, called out or something. Or just… not hijacked in the first place. Not the way she did.

She could have made a smaller hole in the pod and then asked Alan Dracula to help strap her down as it reversed and went back to maintenance with the guy still safely inside. Or she could have even just ridden the pod with him to his intended car and then slipped inside for its return trip after the orientation video finished and he left the area. There were so many better things she could have done, and there was no way for her to apologize for any of it—either to him personally or to any family he might have left behind—since she didn't know his name, or where on Earth he came from. But… that was just something she was going to have to learn to live with, and it was part of why she needed the therapy in the first place: Both so she could move on for herself, and so that she could learn to be better so that nothing like that would happen again.

To help facilitate this, her therapist suggested that she write out apology letters. Even if she never sent any of them out—and, really, the only one she actually could send would be to Tulip or to one of the Cosays—it might help her to work through some of her feelings, and maybe help her consider things that she hadn't thought of before in regards to the Infinity Train. Putting herself in someone else's shoes like that could help a lot—like how going into Jesse's memories helped her to understand him a little more, despite how unconventional and, frankly, invasive that process was in hindsight.

In any case, the letters did seem to help. Writing to people she'd met on the train, apologizing for the things she'd done that may have hurt them… it helped to take some of the weight of guilt off of her shoulders. Mainly because a lot of the time after writing and re-reading the letters, she could see how absurd some of her adventures had been, and how absurd some of her feelings of guilt were. Like… recently she'd written an apology note to the carrot people whose dance she'd refused to join. She knew it was probably a silly thing to feel sorry about, but, at the time of writing, she'd been in kind of an emotional slump, second-guessing everything she did on the train and trying to figure out what, if anything, she could have done better as she'd travelled through the train, both on her own and with Jesse.

But after writing the letter, she realized that, yeah, it really was kind of a silly thing to be sorry about. After all, she hadn't been rude to them or anything in her refusal—she just hadn't wanted to dance at the time. And it wasn't even because of her memories of having to copy Tulip's dancing, either, during that year where her parents had made her take that dumb ballet class in an attempt to help her with her "clumsiness" before they realized the issue was that she needed glasses. She hadn't even been thinking of Tulip at that point. Instead, she'd been thinking about how pretty the sky in that car was, and how nice it was to hear the dance music in the background as she explored, and how she didn't want to spoil the atmosphere by being too close to the source of the beautiful music. That's why she'd even offered the carrot-person who'd invited her inside a little smile as she'd waved him off. She really had been thankful for the offer, after all, even though she ultimately didn't accept it. And that was okay.

It had been a bright little moment of calmness on the train. A moment where she'd been happy, and worry-free. And the more she thought back on that moment, and found more moments like that as she continued to write her letters, the easier it got for her to feel more at peace with her situation, and her complicated relationship with the Infinity Train. She still didn't like it, the way that it just plucked people out of their lives and put them in danger when their problems could just as easily—and far more safely—be solved by seeking help on Earth… but she didn't really hate it anymore, either. Ultimately, the train was just trying to help. It just… had a very weird way of showing it. But sometimes, maybe that's what people really needed. If they didn't have the courage, the ability, or the knowledge to seek out help themselves… then it made sense for someone else to try and step in. That carrot person and Alan Dracula had done it for her, and then he and Lake had helped Jesse—and he'd helped the two of them, too. And there were plenty of other denizens who'd helped along the way, or who'd at least been kind or funny even if they didn't really help directly.

Like… Lake could remember this one mirror person she'd actually really liked, when she was little. The mirror person was part of the paramedics, or something, and she'd been really comforting and helpful after that one incident where the reflection of Tulip's grandfather tried to kidnap her. It had been really weird, and really scary. Apparently, Lake's last prime before Tulip had been the girl's grandmother, and, because of how much time they'd had to spend together with all the reflective surfaces in their primes' house, and how long the two primes had been married she'd had a really close relationship with that other mirror person. Supposedly, at least.

The grandfather's reflection hadn't taken it well at all when Lake's former prime died and she'd opted for reassignment rather than becoming a fleck or paramedic. Thing is, though, since mirror people often got reassigned to the same general prime families—something about it being easier for them to reflect their primes, since similar mannerisms and body language tended to run in prime families, and, since not everything could be completely reset upon reassignment, the muscle-memory stuff made it easier when their new primes started to find reflective surfaces independently since both prime and reflection would still be kind of uncoordinated in that little kid way.

Anyways, since her old prime died while Tulip's mom was pregnant with her—like, only a few days before Tulip's birthday, actually—it was pretty clear to everyone (even Lake's own former self, apparently) that Tulip was going to be her reassignment, so the guy had basically just had to bide his time until his prime inevitably got the chance to hold his new granddaughter at the next family reunion. And the second that Lake was in his arms, reflecting Tulip's own position, and his prime walked away from the mirror he was standing in front of… his reflection tried to take off with her.

Thankfully he didn't get very far, since apparently there was another reflective surface nearby where more of Tulip's family was standing, and one of the primes happened to be facing away from it at such an angle that the mirror person assigned to them could grab her and keep her safe without endangering themselves by breaking character, since the whole place was busy enough that none of the primes realized that someone was being reflected when they shouldn't have been. But the guy who'd grabbed her managed to escape into the crowd, so one of the flecks got the delightful job of standing in as Tulip's grandfather's reflection until they either caught him or an emergency reassignment could take place. As for Lake, she was put into protective custody for a little bit and had her own stand-in until they either figured things out or his prime was far enough away that he wouldn't be near Tulip in any reflective surfaces, which would have necessitated the two of them to be in close enough proximity that he could have tried again.

Lake had been really scared, since, well, she'd been a little kid herself, and hadn't really known what was going on. But the paramedic had stayed with her, and made sure she was all right, and answered her questions about what was going on, and why her prime's grandfather's reflection had tried to take her. She'd talked about things like love and loss, and how some mirror people took it hard when the primes of their friends died and their reflections got reassigned elsewhere, forgetting them entirely. Or how even if they opted to become a fleck or paramedic and didn't lose their memories, the relationship still wasn't the same since they had even less time to hang out together, since they couldn't even have those purely physical moments of hanging out together in reflections anymore—which was actually why a lot of flecks and paramedics quit and got reassigned after only a few years of service.

She was also the one who told Lake exactly what happened to the mirror person who'd tried to kidnap her when it was finally safe for her to return to reflecting Tulip—the guy had been caught and sanded. Thinking back on it… that entire incident was probably a major part of why Lake tried to escape when Tulip made it to the Chrome car. The thought of forgetting everyone she loved, and then getting in trouble—getting killed—just because she wanted to see them again (though, granted, that dude had gone about it entirely in the wrong way—and it actually made Lake wonder if the two of them actually had been as close as he'd claimed, or whether she'd chosen to get reassigned specifically to get away from him, like those cases on TV where people went into witness protection or got new identities so they could get away from their abusive exes or whatever)… being stuck only looking at friends from afar because they couldn't join her in reflections anymore… having to choose between that pain and an entirely new life on the chance that your prime did something stupid and got themselves killed… it really made her question the whole set up.

…There was also the fact that she never saw that paramedic again. Not just because she hadn't actually needed to see one—that would have been one thing, and she probably wouldn't have been so bothered if it was just that. But… part of that paramedic's explanation of her kidnapper's probable motives had included the fact that she could empathize with him a bit. Apparently, she'd already planned on retiring and getting a reassignment before the whole kidnapping attempt, for the exact reason that she could no longer stand seeing her friends being in pain and missing her without her being able to do much to comfort them after her own prime's passing. She was just waiting on the news that someone from her old prime's family had gotten pregnant, or that one of their partners had gotten pregnant, so that she could get reassigned as the eventual baby's reflection. And since it had been years since that incident, it had probably happened by now.

Anyways—the original point was that through writing letters and having therapy sessions, Lake had slowly come around to acknowledging that not all of her experiences on the train were bad ones, and that she didn't have to deny them, or the people she'd met, in order to be her own person. Which was a big change from last year.

And, as has been stated before, but cannot be stated enough… A lot can change in a year.

But what hadn't changed much in a year, or in the previous year, for that matter, was how much Lake loved relaxing by the lake that was her namesake.

That's actually what she was doing right now—relaxing by the lake as she waited for Jesse to come back from swim practice. Normally he didn't have them on Sundays, but there was a big competition coming up and his coach wanted the team to be as prepared as they could, since they were facing their biggest rivals. Typically, she would spend times like those hanging out with Nate or playing videogames or something (or catching up on the homework she'd procrastinated on), but today Nate had invited a friend over and they'd decided to monopolize the gaming systems. She'd spent a little time watching them, but then they'd decided to break out the really old PC games and had started playing Shrine Circus Tycoon—reminding Lake of the Lucky Cat Car, and a few other apology letters she probably needed to write.

Like her most recent one, addressed to Randall.

Randall had always been… interesting to encounter on the train. He was always really friendly and amicable, but he had some really, really weird priorities. On the one hand, it made it really easy to get his help with things, so long as you could navigate the conversation properly. On the other… because of how fixated he could get on certain things (mainly donut holers, despite seemingly not knowing what donuts actually were beyond their relative shape), it made talking to him and getting things done extremely difficult when you were in a hurry and just wanted some straightforward help. That's honestly why Lake had gotten so frustrated with him in the Lucky Cat Car. She'd been annoyed about the whole "rigging the game in favor of passengers" thing, sure, but it was the way he'd immediately blown past the unfairness of the situation in favor of his donut holer fixation that made Lake lose her cool and storm off.

Randall hadn't deserved her frustration: he was just doing his job as both a denizen and employee of The Cat. And considering some of The Cat's rules, and the fact that her car had a debtor's prison on board, there were some pretty major incentives for Randall to stick to the rules The Cat set forth. Also… well, Randall had sort of bent the rules for them already—the fact that he'd whispered when telling them that the games were rigged in Jesse's favor more than likely meant he wasn't supposed to be sharing that information, and considering that's actually what led to Lake and Jesse starting to outright cheat at the games, he probably was more at risk for any other creative punishments The Cat might have thought of if she'd ever caught wind of what they were doing and where they'd gotten their information. Beyond that… well, it had finally gotten through Lake's head that it wasn't that the Infinity Train itself had anything against Lake personally; its very design meant that a lot of denizens were perfectly happy being denizens, and helping out passengers, and might not even be able to conceive of doing anything else—like she'd already realized about Alan Dracula and One-One.

So, yeah, even if she would never be able to apologize to him directly (and, privately, wasn't entirely sure that Randall would necessarily understand that said apology was for her brief outburst and not, say, because she decided not to buy a donut holer from him), she still figured that she owed him one anyways. Besides—it was good to reminisce about some of the better people and denizens she'd met on the train at times.

And speaking of people she'd met on the train…

"Hey, Lake!" she heard call behind her, making her immediately flip onto her back from where she'd been sitting sprawled chest-down, check pressed against her arm and fiddling with a pencil as she tried to think of exactly what to say that could actually keep the aquatic denizen on-topic. She sat up, and, just as she'd thought she would, spied Jesse waving an arm at her as he jogged over.

"Jesse!" she called, lazily waving back. "Is practice finally over?"

"Yeah, we got out a little bit earlier than I thought we would," he said as he flopped down beside her. "I wanted to surprise you at the house, but Nate and his friend said you'd come out here, so…"

Lake made a sound of assent, turning back to stare out over her namesake.

"Were you writing apology letters again?" Jesse asked, after a minute or so of staring at the beautiful view afforded by the waters.

She gave a sheepish grin in response. "Yeah… did the stack of papers give it away?"

"Well, I mean… more the crumpled-up balls of it, but…" her friend said cheekily, making her shove him in response.

He winced a bit—though, honestly, he was being a baby about it since she hadn't even pushed him all that hard—but he was still smiling a little when he asked "Who is it for this time?"

"Randall," Lake admitted, looking back over the lake as it rippled just the slightest bit—which was a little odd, considering the lack of breeze. But, then again, there may well have been a slight one that she just couldn't feel all that well. While her metallic body didn't mean she lacked a sense of touch, exactly, it did mean it was a bit dulled in comparison to normal human skin.

"Oh, Randall!" Jesse exclaimed, oblivious to Lake's musings about the weather. "He was pretty cool!"

"You think every denizen was cool."

"Not all of them!" Jesse protested. "Like… I don't think Perry was cool!"

"Yeah, but you totally did for most of the time we spent with him—not to mention you still rave about his trick and loophole about the hands every few days!"

Jesse blushed. "Well it was a pretty cool loophole… except for the fact Alan Dracula didn't like it…" he muttered, twiddling his forefingers a bit. Then he cleared his throat. "Anyways… Randall was really cool. Like, he was always down to hang out and take pictures, and he didn't mind me accidentally falling into him, like, three times, and he always knew exactly what he wanted in life, y' know?"

"Yeah, I know," Lake admitted. "That's… kind of why I'm writing him this apology letter, actually. It's just so hard to get into his headspace sometimes!"

"I know what you mean," Jesse said, turning to stare over the water. "But, I think it's okay if you can't? He seemed pretty nonjudgmental, overall. And, like I said—the falling into him multiple times thing? He was totally cool about it. So, he'd probably understand if your letter wasn't perfect."

"I guess," Lake sighed, even as she briefly glanced over her recent attempt and then crumpled it up to add to the growing pile of rejects.

There was silence for a while, as both friends tried to think of what to say—Lake on her paper and Jesse aloud—before Jesse coughed into his hand.

"Maybe trying to say your apology out loud would help?" Jesse suggested awkwardly. "Like… doing that rubber duck thing that you told me Tulip used to do with that ferret-guy on her book covers?"

Lake raised a brow, and Jesse glanced at her and started rubbing the back of his neck as if to forestall the embarrassed blush that had started to rise there. "It's just… Sometimes, I like to come out here and imagine that those dark spots in the water are Randall's eyes. It helps me to practice talking to people and asserting myself since I kind of, uh, don't really feel comfortable doing that in front of a mirror anymore."

Lake didn't know how to respond to that—with a joke, or sympathy, or a brush off—but before she had the chance to decide, she nearly fainted from shock when she heard a familiar voice say, "Oh, well you should have mentioned that's what's you were trying to do!"

It took a few moments of stunned silence before their bodies caught up with their brains enough to truly understand the ramifications behind that voice sounding as familiar as it did, and when that finally happened the two of them slowly turned back around to face the lake, and then their necks craned up, and up, and up…

…Until their eyes finally focused on the form of Randall, in all his watery glory, rising out of the lake before them and towering over the duo with a smile on his face.

"I did always wonder why you were craning your neck like that—it looked very uncomfortable!" the denizen continued, blithely unaware of the total shock shared by the two teens sitting on his shore. "From now on I'll try to make it easier for you to see my eyes."

"I—what the—?!" Jesse spluttered, unable to form a coherent sentence as he scuttled backwards in complete surprise.

Lake, meanwhile, was no less surprised, but admirably covered it up by jumping to her feet and giving the coherent, if short, demand of "How?!"

Randall, completely misinterpreting the demand, answered seriously, but no less cheerfully, "Oh, I know I'm rather tall, but it's easier than you'd think!" He shrank down fully into the lake before expanding its banks a bit—nearly to the teens' toes, in fact—so he could pop his face back up to be closer and more level to Lake's and Jesse's. "I'm very flexible, you see!"

Jesse gave a dull sort of nod—his brain still unable to fully comprehend the absurdity of the situation before him, and latching on to what little bits of sense and rationality it could. Lake's brain, meanwhile, had latched instead onto more familiar territory: anger at the unfairness of life, especially as it pertained to her own wishes and circumstances. "No!" she all but exploded, stomping her foot in childish, petty jealousy. "I mean, how are you even here?! How did you manage to get off the train without a number?!"

"Oh, well that's simple!" Randall said, shuffling back and rising up a bit to better get himself in the proper mindset for storytelling. "I couldn't help but overhear the two of you discussing apology letters, so I suppose that's a good place to start! See, after you left my booth in the Lucky Cat Car, my buddy Randall told me that I'd been a bit forceful in my donut holer pitch. After mulling it over for a little bit, I realized that Randall right. So, I left my friends Randal and Randall to man the booth while Randall and I went after the two of you—since I had an apology to make and Randall would be able to give a much better pitch, you see, since he has a much better head for business than I do. Well, we finally caught up with you and, wouldn't you know it! When this passenger here fell into Randall that second time, he must have accidentally swallowed some of him because, there he was, sweating my friend Randall! Randall and I got briefly sidetracked giving Randall a handshake, and then, wouldn't you know it, by the time I let go I'd ended up by that house of yours, in full view of this beautiful lake.

"So, I thought to myself, 'Randall, that would be an excellent place to set up a satellite donut holer distribution center!' I told Randall my plan, and he was in complete agreement. So, when you got back on the train, Randall decided to hitch a ride back with you to establish a supply line—since, like I said earlier, he has a much better head for business than I do!—while I set up shop here and think up a better pitch, as well as an apology! Honestly, it's taken a bit more time than I thought it would, but I think I've finally got the perfect one!"

Randall nodded decisively, lightly hitting a watery fist to an equally watery hand and completely missing the incredulity on Jesse and Lake's faces as he shrunk down again once more to Jesse's eye level. "As an apology for my earlier forcefulness, as soon as Randall establishes that supply line for donut holers, I'll offer you the premium pick of the first shipment at half-price! How does that sound?"

He held out a watery hand towards the human, who—despite still being extremely shocked by this turn of events—took it (was enveloped within its surprising warm depths) with a hesitant "S-sure, Randall, that… that sounds great!"

Then the two of them looked to the side after hearing the "Clang!" of Lake's palm meeting her forehead as all of the revelations about Randall she'd been thinking about not even ten minutes previously—like his one-track mind when it came to donut holers, and the fact that one had to keep that in mind if they wanted to get anywhere with him in conversation—came rushing right back to her.

And along with them came the new realization that, for all that a lot could change in a year… Randall would always remain the same.

Perplexing, amiable, and obsessed with donut holers.

(Lake would, eventually, write that apology letter and deliver it to Randall in the form of a folded up paper airplane thrown at him from a distance where he can't see her blushing. Of course, this will only happen after the revelation that, apparently, Nate has known Randall was there since about six months into Lake's living with htem, but didn't say anything about it since he thought everyone else already knew.)