A/N: This is a really important chapter, which is why it took me so long to get it out. It's a bit on the shorter side too but hopefully the content makes up for it!

Enjoy~

September 13 ,2014

Winona taps her fingers nervously on the steering wheel while she drives. It's an hour and a half from Riverside to Ottumwa where Jim's train will be departing and the first twenty minutes have been incredibly quiet. It's a stark contrast to the hectic packing and unpacking he's done for the past six days.

Outside, though it's only five, the sun is already beginning to set, throwing brilliant purple and orange shadows across the highway and the rolling fields beyond. If he looks closely he thinks he can see a few stars but they're unfamiliar and distant, in all the wrong places.

Eventually Winona sighs and stops her fidgeting. "There's something I need to tell you," she mumbles. Having already said his goodbyes back at the house, George is not present and though Jim is distracted, his wife feels the loss. His presence has always comforted her.

Jim was practically vibrating with excitement and nerves in the passenger seat when the journey began, but he's subdued now, partially by the unnatural silence, and partially through his own will power. "Yeah, what's up mom?"

There's a brief silence, the radio is off and the only noise comes from the wind whipping around Winona's beat up old Honda Civic. She purses her lips, eyes uncharacteristically trained on the road before them (she has a tendency to multi-task, this focus is as unusual as the silence). "I need to tell you a little more about Frank."

"He's your brother, right? The one I'm going to stay with?"

"Sort of," is the vague response he receives. He raises an eyebrow. "I just mean that he's not actually my brother! My family took him in for a while, and we've kept in contact but that's the extent of it. Honestly, I'd rather set you up in a hotel for your stay, but your father and I can't afford it, and with both of our parents gone….well, Frank is the only answer."

"Okay, so what's the problem?"

"It's just that…well, he's not exactly a very nice man. His temper's pretty bad so try to stay on his good side while you're there. And of course you don't have to stay with him, the hospital is ready to admit you whenever you want. I just know how much you hate hospitals so I gave you another option for the first few weeks." She trails off into silence after the rush of words but loosens her grip on the steering wheel and leans back a little.

Jim finally turns to face her fully, one leg pulled up onto the seat. "I'll be fine, mom. I know how to stay out of trouble."

For a moment it seems like she might say something else and her eyes appear glassy, then she laughs, gives a little sniff, and reaches over to ruffles his hair like she did when he was young. "More like you know just how to get into it," she teases and her son can tell the emotional moment has passed. Thank god.

The rest of the ride they talk and laugh, bantering back and forth about just how many (many) times Jim's gotten himself into trouble. Like when he was ten and decided he wanted to climb down the old well in their back yard. It wasn't terribly deep, but it was deep enough. He'd thought the whole thing was fan adventure and he'd found lots of cool stuff down at the bottom, but his parents hadn't been quite so amused. Somehow it doesn't make him too enthusiastic about this new adventure.

Ottumwa Station is a long, low brownstone building with a small parking lot and a fountain out front. Jim struggles to get his two bags out of the trunk. One is full of things Winona had dubbed 'essentials', and the other has his laptop, several books and a few other things to keep himself entertained on the ride. It's forty seven hours long after all, and that's just the first part. There's also an hour-long bus ride after the train, and a thirty-minute taxi after that. Jim's not sure if he's going to survive with his sanity intact, but hey at least he can get up and move in the train. That's going to help at least a little.

The security inside reminds him vaguely of airports he's seen on TV and almost immediately he's shuffled through some kind of check and away from his mother. He kisses her cheek, she stands on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck in a hug and then she pinches him so hard that he yelps loudly. When she walks away she's laughing and Jim's left rubbing the pain out of his arm, shaking his head because god she's ridiculous but god he's going to miss her.

At six forty five exactly the train rolls into the station and Jim hikes his carry on over his shoulder and steps up to the doors. They've already taken his luggage to be put in a different car and when he steps inside he can see why. The aisle ways are narrow, paired seats on either side taking up most of the room. He picks an aisle seat in the compartment right in front of the dining car (having priorities is important) and settles in for the long haul with several other passengers, two women a few seats in front of him, a family four rows back and a young girl across the way. It's almost completely dark by this point, and he prays he can just sleep most of the ride away.

He doesn't sleep.

Instead, it's only been an hour when the pain begins to creep up the back of Jim's neck. He swears mentally but honestly he was beginning to wonder when it would happen. Not like he can go a day without one, right?

The pain moves quickly, too quickly really, up into his skull and down along his spine. It's not accompanied by the tingling sensation he associates with his seizures but Jim does feel his vision beginning to go dark around the edges. Blackness creeps up on him from the corners of his sight until he's swimming in it, the faint internal lights of the train only a tiny pinprick at the end of a long tunnel until that too is gone, and his hearing narrows with it, the sounds of metal on metal, of quiet conversation, has been lost to an all engulfing silence. Only he hasn't knocked out exactly, he's just kind of floating in limbo, the seat hard and real beneath him. Everything that rests beyond his sense of touch might as well not be real by this point. He can feel his breathing begin to pick up, his heart beat faster but then-

"Captain."

He knows that voice, has heard it a million times he's sure.

"Captain."

Jim's eyes snap open (when had they ever closed?) and he tries to grip the fabric of the seat, white knuckled. The seat's gone though, replaced with smooth, cool plastic. Around him the rest of the train compartment has disappeared as well; there are people milling around, familiar, open faces that say they know him, bright shirts and dark, military pressed slacks. Someone is holding out an unfamiliar device to him, like an iPad but not and they're speaking but he can't hear it, can only watch the woman's lips move.

"Captain."

He turns to glance behind himself, towards the voice he knows but doesn't, and the woman in his periphery dissolves into smoky white tendrils when Jim takes his eyes off her. The mist coalesces, moves back into his sight and then reshapes itself into some kind of console, a man before it, tall and straight with his arms locked behind his back. His features won't solidify though, constantly swirling and reshaping themselves, eyes then nose and finally mouth when the man speaks again, "Jim."

He blinks and it all disappears; he's sitting with his head between his knees, his breath coming too fast, sweat cooling along his skin and his body shaking. His heart thunders and for a minute he thinks he might be having some kind of panic attack. And that would be just his luck wouldn't it? Saddled with epilepsy for fourteen years and then slapped with some kind of mental disorder to boot. But his breathing slows and his heart falls back into a regular pattern and he's able to sit up again without falling into hysterics. Thank god for that at least.

The girl across the aisle has moved away and he doesn't blame her. He wouldn't want to sit by someone who looked like they were having a mental breakdown either.

Jim falls asleep after that, to worn out by the experience to be anxious, and he wakes up to sunlight streaming in through the large windows and a woman dressed in white and black gently shaking his arm.

"Breakfast is being served in the next car," she tells him with a too white smile and then she's gone, off to the sleeping family four rows back. For a second there she had appeared pale, blonde hair curled around her jaw and gaze a light blue. But when Jim glances back at her, still blinking sleep from his eyes, he can clearly see that she's dark haired.

He stumbles into the dining cart a few minutes later, back aching from the upright position he'd slept in, and he spots the woman again. She's serving tables and the light in here is much brighter but he can see no trace of the blue eyed blonde nurse type he'd seen earlier. Huh. Must have been something about the light in the passenger car.

One coffee later he forgets about it entirely.

Forty seven hours is a long time, and though the first fourteen and a half pass pretty quickly (between sleeping and the seizure), Jim starts to feel a little stir crazy around the twenty hour mark. Which is not good because he's not even half way there yet and he's already finished his book, he's bored of fucking around online, and he's starting to get that itch beneath his skin that he usually soothes via riding. His motorcycle's at home though and home is…well probably hundreds of miles away by this point.

He wanders around the train for a while before settling his twitchy self and his carry on at a table in the dining car. It's brighter here, the windows larger, and definitely roomier than the cramped seats from earlier. Flirting with the waitress earns him a free meal and a coy little wink and Jim likes her, he really does, but the longer this trip goes on the fuzzier his head gets, the dizzier he feels, and though he knows she would totally go for him, is trying to go for him, he ends up finding an excuse to slip away and sleep off what he thinks is an impending sickness for the next eight hours.

When he awakes he feels even worse, like his head is static and before he can stop himself he turns to the seat next to him and asks, "Hey, Bones, are we almost there yet?"

Only silence answers him, obviously, because there's nobody there and he doesn't even know anyone named Bones. It's a stupid name anyways.

He spends the last few hours of the trip recuperating and by the time the train pulls into Caltrain station in San Francisco he feels almost human again. That is, of course, until he steps outside, gets one glance at the city sprawled out before him, and promptly collapses.

I don't even remember what research I did for this one. Oops. Oh well. Be sure to leave me a comment please!