Out Of The Past
Part XXII - A Step Back To The Past
For the next few hours Layton simply wandered the back hallways of the train. It was a common activity for him when he needed to think. Walking had always been a great way to clear his mind. Help him focus.
But tonight it didn't seem to be working it's same magic. Tonight it just allowed his mind to chase a single thought around in his head.
Ever since he had taken the steps he did to deal with Terrance, the act had never been far from his thoughts. Always a second guess. Had he done the right thing? Was it the only way?
But after some time, he pushed the thought aside as he always did. There was no point dwelling on it, he sternly told himself. What was done was done. Like so many other things, Terrence had been a threat to the train. So he had dealt with it just like...
His brain seized onto the new thought. Just like what? Like she had in the past? When someone in the Tail became too much of a problem, what had happened to them? An 'Extraction' they had called it. Guards came back to the Tail and the person was taken away.
Sometimes the Tail had done less than mourn the person's disappearance. They were usually someone most were glad to see gone.
Sometimes the 'Extractions' seemed random. Like his. The guards came an took a random person for some unknown reason. Those that came for the person rarely felt they owed them any explanations. They were just Tallies after all.
Sometimes, like him, the person came back.
Sometimes they didn't.
Sometimes Melanie had come herself instead of sending Ruth. He remembered those times the most. She never spoke. She just stood to the side and let the guards take whoever they had come for.
He remembered the look on her face. He had made sort of a game out of it. The way she would react when the name was called. He doubted anyone else noted the subtle change. But he could see it clear as day. Maybe it was just a skill he honed as a detective, but after she left, he would tell Josie if the person was coming back or not just based just on what he saw in that near expressionless look.
He never knew her name then. The guards seemed to ignore her presence. He knew by her cloths she was part of Hospitality on the train. Another fact he found amusement in. Just to look at her he couldn't imagine a less hospitable person.
After he learned her name and came to know who she was on the train, he realized she had likely been in the Tail under other circumstances. Things broke down and needed repair in the back cars as much as the front. He just had never seen her then, likely in an engineer's uniform instead of her Teals. But when a crews came to make repairs, the guards also usually pushed all the Tallies to another car until the repairs were completed.
Back then he couldn't have imagined a colder person on the train.
Now he realized he couldn't have been more wrong. The look wasn't indifference, or contempt, or any of the other words he attached to it. It was simply that mask he had become so familiar with. The one she wore so that no one saw the hurt or the pain of separating families and friends. And knowing sometimes without question they would never see each other again.
A pain she knew all too well.
How far they both had come from those days.
Laying in the bed in the cabin, Melanie stared up at the ceiling as she had for so many nights she had lost count. She had spent the last several days in the Tail, working on the new school area. It was coming along well and she was pleased with how much everyone was pitching in to make the school become a reality. And though Bennett and Javi had agreed to allow her time to work on her 'project', she still managed each day to stop by the engine just to make sure everything was running smoothly and help out if it was needed.
What it also afforded her was almost a guarantee she would not run into Layton. After their last meeting she acknowledged she needed some time to sort things out as much as he said he did. To come to terms with yet another new reality of her own making.
What else had she expected him to do? He stated he just needed time to sort this out for himself. But on his last words she had heard a finality. A certain sense that had her knowing what he was going to say before he even spoke the words.
She gave him considerable credit. He had tried. He had come with offer after offer for them to sit down and talk. To try and work out an answer together. She had been the one to feel a clean break was best.
How could it have ended any other way? How could she sit in a room with him and not wonder what he saw now when he looked at her. Certainly not a friend. An enemy? The tyrant he had first encountered?
She gave a deep sigh as she stared at the ceiling still. In truth she was being a coward. Simply put, she was running away from him because she didn't want to know. It was easier to imagine a situation than face it head on sometimes.
She rolled over in the bed, facing where he used to sleep. Somehow she knew no matter what she tried she wasn't going to get much sleep this night.
It had plenty of others to keep it company.
When they had first started sharing the cabin, she remembered feeling much the same. Sleepless nights because her new roommate, after laying out every rule she could image about sharing the bed to make sure she came up with the lion's share of the amenities, seemed bound and determined to see on the very first night how many of the new rules he could break. From stealing as many of her pillows as he could, to using her as his personal thermal unit. A small smile crossed her face as she remembered how many fights they had had every night it felt like, until they each seemed to finally settle into accepting the others ideocracies and establishing some sort of routine for sharing the bed.
Well, maybe not 'accept'. More like 'tolerate', she thought with another small smile.
His habit of stealing pillows was still the one act that irritated her the most. But she had come up with a self-satisfying method of retaliation by waiting for him to go to sleep before reaching over to his side of the bed and abruptly yanking the pillow out from under his head. By the time he had oriented himself and turned to face her down for the act, she was already happily curled up under the covers, facing the other direction as she quickly settled off to sleep. A loud huff and considerable rearranging of what pillows he had left usually followed before the night settled down again and they both went back to sleep.
So lost was she in her thoughts that Melanie nearly jumped a foot off the bed when there was a knock at the door. As she pulled on her robe and headed for the door, she admonished herself as a part of her actually thought it might be Layton. But she opened the door instead to one of her apprentices, apologizing while still managing to get out some context of the message he didn't seem to think was nearly as important as the apologizing.
Finally, barely able to understand the problem, Melanie called a halt to the stammering.
"Jasel!" She stated firmly, getting his attention. "What is it you need exactly?"
"It's...it's not me, ma'am." The apprentice told her. "It's Mr. Knox. You're needed in the engine room right away."
Melanie never bothered with questions. When Bennett sent for her directly, whatever was wrong wasn't a casual matter.
"All right. Wait here." She stated. "I need to change."
She knew she could get changed in less than three minutes. But straightening out the bed was a must with her. It was one of the things she and Layton had fought about the most. If she left first in the morning, she was almost guaranteed to come back that night to an unmade, disarranged bed.
It never appeared to bother him.
It drove her nuts.
But the message, while important, didn't sound urgent. So she felt she could spare an extra minute to straighten the bed.
Less than five minutes later Melanie was following the young man out of the cabin and up to the main engine room. Whatever was wrong, providing it wasn't immediately endangering the train or its passengers, she was actually grateful for it. It would at least give her something else to think about likely for the rest of the night.
Ten minutes after Melanie had left, a figure approached the cabin door.
Raising his hand, Layton lightly knocked on the cabin door. When he got no answer, he knocked louder. Then he remembered what trying to wake his former roommate was like after she went to sleep.
Although if her nights were any better than his, she wasn't sleeping.
The last time he had seen her in the hallway, that was his immediate conclusion. She had looked just as tired and worn out as he felt. On impulse, he had reached out for her hand. He made sure he had a firm grip on it, so even if she tried to pull free, she wouldn't be able to. But to his surprise, she hadn't tried, and had even managed to squeeze his hand slightly as they passed.
The total interaction was hardly the stuff romance novels were based on. But romance wasn't what he was looking for with her. It never had been. At this point, simple, personal contact sustained him.
But that had only lasted a few days. He hadn't seen her since, and, after walking the halls most of the evening that night he had finally given up and admitted if only to himself he was worried about her. And so trying to think of a logical reason for him to be there, he had made the trek to his former home.
When he needed time alone, he had spent a lot of nights in the counsel chamber. It was a quiet place where he could just think in private. Once a member of the cleaning crew had wandered in. Layton suspected the young man snuck into the room to catch a short nap rather than coming to actually clean. But seeing Layton sitting at the table, he had hurriedly dismissed himself back out the door.
A lot of what Audrey had said tonight struck a cord of truth in him. Mainly because it echoed so closely what Melanie had told him that fateful night in their cabin. What had happened had been a tragic, but unplanned event.
But somehow, even knowing that and accepting it, didn't allow it to hurt any less.
'Just checking in', he told himself. That would be his excuse. Then he could see how things went from there. Maybe they could have a cup of tea together. It wasn't the whole meal he had hoped for over the past few weeks, but it would be a start. A place to plant his feet as he tried to figure out where this relationship was headed now. Audrey had been right about one thing if nothing else. They needed each other. So somewhere in all of this they had to try and salvage what was left of this relationship. They didn't need to live together, he told himself as he stood at the door waiting. They didn't even need to be friends. But they needed to respect each other still. And they needed to sort out this new relationship and how it was going to work for the good of the train.
Pausing for a moment more as he scanned the hallway, he quickly pulled a small glass cylinder out of his jacket pocket and passed it over the locking mechanism. She hadn't asked for the 'key' back, so he had kept it. 'In case of an emergency', he told himself. And as far as his poor tired brain was concerned, this constituted one.
As soon as the door slid open, he akinned the feeling to what he felt the first time he had entered the room so many months ago. It felt like the cabin itself was welcoming him home. Unlike it had the very first time he had stepped into it after she took it over. He had felt more like he was the intruder then.
When Melanie had first showed it to him and asked to live there, it was an empty space. Dark, musty, and utterly devoid of any life. But she had completely taken it over and made it a warm, welcoming place to come to at the end of a day.
Stepping into the cabin now he hadn't felt this much of a sense of coming home in the past several weeks. The smell of the room immediately assaulted his nose with its familiar and comforting scents. He swore he could smell the aroma of the last thing he had cooked in the kitchen, telling him that she probably hadn't cooked anything for herself since he left.
Walking into the main room he cautiously looked around. The last thing he wanted was to be caught sneaking about.
Walking across the room, he stepped as quietly as he could down the short hallway to the bedroom. Taking a deep breath, he reached forward and cautiously opened the door. He was prepared for this, he told himself. He had solid reasons laid out for being there.
But when the door opened, he found the room empty. The bed neatly made.
For several minutes he simply stood in the doorway to the room and stared at the bed.
Soft. Warm. Inviting.
He swore that for nearly the year he had lived here, there had been days when that bed had been his only refuge. Offering peace, solace, relief from a day that seemed filled with nothing but problems and stress. Sometimes it had even given him a companion to talk to if she happened to be occupying her side at that time. Someone who understood what the day had been for him like no one else on the train possibly could. Someone he could talk with. Laugh with. Share his problems with.
And it asked nothing in return.
He kept staring at the bed. Currently it was unused. No one else was there. He was alone in the cabin.
He knew it was wrong.
He knew he should leave.
He was, as he had been that first day, invading her space. Her private quarters now.
But standing in the doorway to her bedroom, his mind already wrapped up in that comforting, familiar softness, he swore he would have given half his life for five minutes in that bed again.
Just five minutes.
Three hours later, that was how Melanie found him.
Walking into the cabin, she had stopped abruptly as the door slid closed behind her. Something was different in the cabin. She wasn't sure what it was. Just...something.
Looking around, she reminded herself two guards were standing just outside the door and would be there all night. One scream and they would likely take the door down if they had to rather than face their superior for having failed to protect her.
She scanned the room slowly. But it only took her a few seconds to find what had her senses feeling something was out of place.
The bedroom door was open.
She knew she had closed it when she left. It was force of habit. When she and Layton lived there together, she hadn't fixed the vents until several months into their living arrangement. So leaving the bedroom door open was out of the question. Plus, she simply liked the feeling of enclosure the closed door offered. The privacy of being in her own small space with the door a barrier to the outside world.
Unsure of what she might find, Melanie slowly walked over to the hallway leading to the bedroom, pulling a knife from the butcher's block on the kitchen counter as she went past. Since Layton had left, she had lived with a not totally unreasonable fear that someone who meant to harm her would manage to break into the cabin and lay in wait for her.
Holding the knife in front of her, Melanie carefully walked her way as silently as she could over to the bedroom. But what she found was the last thing she expected.
Laying on his side, on what had at one time been his side of the bed, was Layton. Apparently sound asleep.
Melanie congratulated herself that she managed not to drop the knife. With her luck so far that day, it would have stabbed her in the foot.
She wasn't sure how long she simply stood in the doorway to the bedroom, just staring at his body in the bed. For one brief moment she even questioned if the last few weeks hadn't been some awful dream and she was now awake and back in reality. But finally she shook off the thought as she set the knife down on the top of his old rickety dresser by the door and decided she needed, if nothing else, to get some answers.
Walking over to the bed, she carefully sat down on his side.
"Hey." She softly called. Then, chastising herself for her cowardice at waking him and facing whatever brought him there that night, called a little louder. "Layton?"
Still nothing.
Sighing to herself, Melanie steeled herself up for his reaction as she leaned down closer to his ear. He had come here of his own volition, after all. He had to want something.
"LAYTON!"
Layton shot up in the bed so fast he nearly knocked her off of it. But Melanie had quickly pulled herself to her feet just the same, remembering within the first few seconds of his being woken up just how disoriented he could be sometimes.
Sitting for a few moments, looking around quickly, Layton finally settle his gaze on her. Shaking his head, he immediately fell back over in the bed.
"Don't ever do that again." He grumbled at her in a barely coherent, half asleep voice.
Walking back over to him, Melanie sat back down on the bed and, reaching over, shook his shoulder.
"Layton, wake up." She stated.
Layton opened one eye and glanced over at the clock by her side of the bed.
"Melanie, it's three in the morning."
"I KNOW what time it is, Layton." She relied, but quickly softened her tone. She didn't want him to think she was angry or upset at his being there. She just wanted an explanation. "What I don't know is why are you in my bed at three in the morning."
The body didn't move. "Until a few moments ago, I was sleeping." He answered, then slowly rolled over on his back with a deep sigh. "Which is something I don't think I've been able to do in the past three days." He added, looking up at her hopefully. "So, just as a personal favor, just this once, could you not over-think this right now, and just go to bed? You look like you haven't slept much either lately."
Melanie paused as she considered the offer. One night. A return to a simpler time when things made sense.
But logic was still waging a winning battle in her brain.
She met his pleading stare. "The last thing you told me was you didn't think you could ever sleep in this bed with me again."
Layton sighed as he rolled over, his back facing her again as he hugged his pillow. "See? You're over-thinking it. Go to bed, Melanie."
Melanie sighed as she watched him for a few minutes. She had to admit if he was actually getting some sleep, she was happy for that. He had looked so worn down and tired when she had last seen him, she was wondering when he last slept through the night.
Getting up she sighed again to herself and, grabbing her thermals, headed for the bathroom.
By the time she came back out a few minutes later she swore he was sound asleep again. The soft, regular sound of breathing coming from his side of the bed.
Walking over to her side, she carefully crawled under the covers and settled into the bed. For a few minutes she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.
"You're still over-thinking." A voice softly told her from the other side of the bed.
Melanie turned her head to him, catching his eyes reflected in the dim light of the room.
"Just tell me why." She asked him.
Layton stared back at her for a few seconds before answering.
"I'll tell you over breakfast."
Melanie almost refused. But then her assistant's words came back to her. 'If he offers again, accept.'.
In the darkness, she actually managed a smile this time. "OK." She whispered back to him. "Over breakfast."