backstory/history (the Train): for Gilliam

Higher. Faster. Quieter. Other hand, Grey. Do it, again, faster. Get up. Stay up. Never give up, not even if it means your life. When the time comes ....

Grey wipes the sweat from his eyes and looks up at the ceiling of the part of the car they've cordoned off for training. He's tired, boneweary, and hungry, but at least his bones have stopped aching - growing pains, he was told they were. He just needs, he tells himself, to do one more. He's the fastest, the most agile, the quietest, but even if he weren't mute, it would be hard to be louder than Edgar, who's always somewhere, always with something to say.

He readies himself then sprints, leaping to the top of a box with one foot, using it to leverage himself to the rafters of the car, then he swings, landing on the metal pilings with barely a whoomph of displaced air. The ball is tossed across the floor and he flings himself down, scooping it up with his right hand, throwing it with his left; it hits the window of the door just as it should before he lands in a crouch. Next time, they'll practice with the knife.

He looks to Gilliam from where he's perched. Did he do all right?

for Rat

It isn't as if Grey has found a sense of peace in the two days since he's seen Rat. He hasn't found the solution, an answer to his existential crisis. But he remembers where Rat lives. And, carrying the cat once again, he finds his way to the building and to the door and he taps his fingers against it. There were flowers on the side of the walk as he'd come here and he plucked them and they are already starting to wilt, even as the cat tries to eat them. Silly cat.