I guess if the fic you want to read doesn't exist, you have to write it yourself, so that's what I'm doing. This is a completely self-indulgent one-shot that I'm writing unplanned and (mostly) unedited about ten minutes after finishing the show, so yeah. I hope you enjoy my ramblings.

Oh, by the way, this fic takes place after the end of the show and may contain some spoilers, so please go finish it if you haven't.

Edit 1/11/2020: It's actually after the end of season one, not the whole show, and since the fandom has come back to life after season two I feel like I should add in this note that not all headcanons here are necessarily possible in canon anymore. I won't say any more to avoid any spoilers, sorry for the long note, and please enjoy.

~~~

Tulip's eyes snapped open and she sat up with a gasp. Her glasses were fogged up so she couldn't see much, but she could tell it was cold and wet wherever she was. After cleaning her glasses and putting them back on, she realized she was in a snowy forest. And not just any snowy forest, but the one where she had found the train.

Suddenly thinking of the train, Tulip flipped her hand over, and saw that her palm was clear. The number was gone, like it had never been there.

She simply sat there for a while, snow falling gently around her, only the occasional soft click clackof the wind shifting empty branches breaking the heavy silence. Was that it? After everything she'd done, was she finally home? Then Tulip shivered, and remembered that she was still out in the cold. She clambered slowly to her feet, and began the long trudge back home.

It's funny, she thought to herself as she waded through the snow, when I started all this I just wanted to get away from home, and now? Now there's nothing I want more than to get back.

If it had taken a long time to get to where she had found the train, it took even longer to get back. Tulip was already exhausted, plus it was starting to get dark out. After the second glorious faceplant into a wet pile of winter slush, Tulip finally decided to slow down and be more careful. But when she finally broke through the edge of the forest and caught sight of her house, all the exhaustion faded away.

Home. After months on that hell of a train, she was finally home.

Tulip broke into a sprint, eyes locked on her front door. Finally, finally she'd be able to be in her familiar house, and sleep on her familiar bed, and talk to her familiar...

Tulip froze with her hand on the doorknob. Her mom. What would she say to her mom? She'd been gone for months, her mom, no, both her parents, were probably worried sick. Maybe they even thought she was dead.

Tulip took a deep, steadying breath. If those months on the train had taught her anything, it was that running away from your problems wouldn't do any good. She would have to confront her mom eventually, better to do it now before she could second-guess herself.

Tulip slowly opened the door. Seeing her familiar house on the other side instead of some unknown room almost made her want to cry right then and there, but she forced herself to keep it together. She could faintly hear her mother's voice drifting from the kitchen, and began heading towards it.

"...not with you either? Then I don't know where..." Tulip's mother trailed off, and Tulip could hear the faint scuff, scuff of socked feet pacing on a linoleum floor. Finally, her mother sighed. "No, I'll take care of it. I'll let you know how it goes." She paused for a moment, and then added in a quieter voice, "Thank you. Bye."

Tulip peeked around the doorway to the kitchen to see her mother hanging up the phone, back to Tulip. Her mom sighed deeply before leaning down and resting her head on the counter.

Tulip gently cleared her throat, but when that got no response she opted for a quiet, "Hey, mom."

Her mother spun around, and Tulip could finally see that her eyes were red and her cheeks were damp.

After a moment of shocked silence, she finally managed a small, "Tulip?"

Tulip smiled shakily, her vision blurring, and this time it wasn't because of foggy glasses. "I'm home," she said simply.

Her mom rushed over to her and scooped her up in a bone-crushing hug. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please don't ever scare me like that again," she sobbed into Tulip's shoulder.

"No, mom, I'm the one who's sorry," Tulip replied, sniffling. "I'm the one who left, after all."

"But it's my fault, it's all my fault," her mother continued. "I was the one who made you run away, I... it was me, wasn't it?"

Tulip was silent for a moment, resting on her mom's shaking shoulder. "I don't know," she said at last. "I guess it was a lot of things at first, but I really didn't mean to stay away for so long! I wanted to come home a lot sooner."

Her mom took a deep, shuddering breath and finally pulled away. "Where did you go, anyway? You were gone for hours."

Tulip sighed. "Well, actually I... wait, what?"

~~~

Tulip flopped down on her bed and groaned. After her conversation with her mom, she had learned that apparently, from when she got on the train to when she got off, no time had passed. She pressed her pillow to her face and groaned louder. Was it possible that the whole thing had been some kind of dream? Tulip glared at her empty palm out of the corner of her eye, but it offered no answers.

Finally, she dragged herself out of bed and padded sleepily to the bathroom. It was going to be light again in a couple of hours anyway, and she wasn't going to get any sleep tonight. Might as well get ready early. Maybe she'd even be able to convince her mom to let her see Mikayla later. But should she tell Mikayla about what happened on the train, even if it was all just a crazy dream?

Tulip was thinking so hard about that question that when she first walked into the bathroom, she completely missed it. But as she was washing her hands, she finally looked up into the mirror and-

Nothing. Her reflection was gone. All she could see was the wall behind her.

"It... it wasn't a dream," Tulip whispered, reaching out her hand to gently, disbelievingly brush the surface of the mirror. The time in her house had been so completely normal that Tulip had convinced herself that none of the chaos on the train had really ever happened. But it had.

Tulip watched the mirror for another minute or two before asking no one in particular, "Nobody will notice... right?"

~~~

Whoops, this turned out a lot more serious than I originally intended... and I didn't even get to the part I really wanted to write! Oh well, as I said this was mostly unplanned. But anyway, since the other part will have a much lighter and sillier tone, I decided to split it into its own story. So if you're hungry for more Infinity Train, keep watch for that.