Work Text:
“Did you see her?” Shilo. They don’t even have to say her name out loud. They both know. Alex nods slowly. “I’m sorry.” The words sound clunky coming out of his mouth. “You shouldn’t have had to see that.”
“Wish you thought of that when you killed them all,” Alex says, curling up on the seat. She’s here with him now, in his hospital room. He was snapped awake with a harsh coughing fit—she’d pinched his oxygen tube closed, using the lack of air to wake him up. Wilford was almost impressed by that. “Don’t think it crossed your mind until now.”
Wilford sighs. “You know I had to do it, Alex. You can’t save everyone.” Despite the flippancy of his words, they’re delivered with none of the usual cockiness. He still remembers the day he let those train cars go. He remembers how utterly inconsolable Alex was. That night he held her while she cried, and allowed her to sleep on the couch in his apartment—a rare show of kindness. Dubs? she asked late at night, when everything was dark. Will you cull me too?
No, darling. You’re safe.
It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Wilford opens his mouth to say that, but he finds the amount of oxygen coming through the tube is sorely lacking. “Alex, can you…can you turn up my air a bit? It’s that blue knob there.” He wonders if she’ll actually do it—after all he’s put her through, she’d be well within her rights to refuse—but then she turns the blue dial as asked, and Wilford can breathe properly again. “Thank you.”
“Can’t have you dying,” Alex says flatly. “Not good to have you as a martyr, is it?”
Wilford chuckles. “It’s not that. You still love me, don’t you?”
Alex doesn’t even respond to him; she simply stands and storms out. “Evidently that was the wrong thing to say,” Wilford mutters, slumping back into his pillows. His refined accent is slipping—after all the stress he’s been through, he still finds himself reverting to his Sheffield voice. He’ll have to keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn’t become even more obvious. Just as he’s thinking about that, a figure pops into his field of vision: Melanie. “Oh,” Wilford says grumpily, “it’s you.”
Yeah. Happy to see me?
“Not at all.”
Too bad. Melanie strolls in, sits down on the chair Alex just vacated. I’m here because of you.
“So I heard. What do you want?”
Did you really speak to Alex like that? Come on, Joseph. You killed her best friend and her mom. Surely you can play nice.
“Don’t think I have it in me anymore.” Wilford rolls over, curling up into a ball. “Go away.”
No. You like having me around, you said so yourself. Melanie gives a self-satisfied smile. Your favourite thinking partner? You don’t remember that?
“I was delirious from hunger and thirst,” he says drily. “Don’t get too excited.”
You begged me to help you earlier. I’m just a figment of your imagination, remember? I can’t do anything.
“Bloody Brakeman was the one who did it.” Wilford can still remember the needle entering his chest, the paralysing cold as the drugs entered his heart, his sudden breathlessness. “I did his family a favour. How was I supposed to know those sleeper cars didn’t work properly?”
You did. I told you not to install them, that we didn’t know whether they did what we designed them for. But you did anyway. Anything for your train. Melanie’s right, but of course she would be. She’s in his head, granted special access to his deepest, darkest memories. He’s hallucinating her, trying to ignore her presence just so he doesn’t have to admit that she still rules his mind. He loved her truly and without reservation, and he’d never be able to admit it. How pathetic is that? He’s lying here in the medical car, unable to leave his bed in case his heart gives out on him. Long live the Eternal Engineer, Melanie says, an air of irony to her voice.
“Oh, shut up. Now you’re just rubbing it in.” Wilford pulls the blankets over his head so he doesn’t have to see her. “You better be gone when I wake up.”
That’s not up to me. Of course it isn’t. Melanie’s the result of his synapses misfiring—she’ll go away when his brain sees fit to make her go. Sleep now. You have a long recovery ahead of you.
“Don’t I bloody know it,” Wilford grumbles, closing his eyes. Under here he can hear the hissing of the oxygen mask, the beat of his heart. The latter has returned to normal, but sometimes he presses a hand to his chest just to check. Even as he drifts into sleep, he can tell she’s still sitting there watching him. He was stupid to think that he could just leave her behind. She’ll always be with him, even in his own mind. Maybe that’s his karmic retribution. He killed the one he loved, and now they are fated to never be apart.