Title: "Ghost Train"

By: Mercury

Rating: PG-13 for some language to come.

Disclaimer: I don't own Taken; I'm not profiting from this, and the song "Ghost Train" belongs to Counting Crows.

A/N: Three-quarters of this chapter is mostly everything that happened in Episode 4 ("Acid Tests"), but the end and the rest of the story as well is all me screwing around with what happened and creating a whole new Jesse (as the summary says, it's 'delving deeper'). Sort of. Feedback is appreciated, since I didn't use a beta for this and therefore probably missed a bunch of errors. Enjoy anyway.

"Love is a ghost train, rumbling through the darkness…"

-"Ghost Train", Counting Crows

If there was one thing Jesse Keys loved more than anything else, it was logic. He loved the logic in math, and how in the end everything fit together perfectly. He loved knowing how machines did what they did, how each and every piece of the mechanism fit together to form a fully functional device. He loved how all the pieces of a puzzle fell in place once the problem you had been working on had been solved, and how you could look back on it and say to yourself, yes, that makes sense.

What frustrated him the most was the lack of logic in what had been happening to him his entire life. Unlike struggling with a math problem, which had been built around the answer itself, what he had done in Vietnam had no reason to it. He couldn't explain how he had been able to survive there, fighting as close as he could to the enemy, so close he could see the whites and pupils of their eyes, filled with the same fear that often was evident in the eyes of his own friends. He couldn't explain how he had been able to avoid all of the land mines planted in that hell - some of them placed only inches away from where he stepped. And he sure as hell could not explain how everyone in his unit had died in an ambush and he had survived - without a single hair on his head damaged, no less.

He had discovered the answer to all of those problems - something to help him forget, even for a little while - some time ago: drugs. And, sitting on the worn sofa in his dealer's apartment, he felt the needle push away from the body of the syringe and puncture his skin. The same unexplainable panic he always experienced when he used drugs rose in his throat briefly and then disappeared, like it always did, as the drugs entered his blood stream. His eyes closed and he let out a small breath of relief, letting the poison that was now running through his veins begin to work.

Chad walked over to him and held out his hand. "Hey. You owe me for this, man."

Jesse half-shrugged, his eyes hidden under closed lids. "You know I don't have it, Chad."

"I'm not kidding. I got to eat, too. Besides, you could do without the stuff."

A small smile crept onto Jesse's face. "You have no idea how much I really need it, man."

Somewhere, distantly, he heard a switch flick, and the sounds of the Who started streaming out of Chad's old radio. "Tough. You're not getting any more until you can pay." He lowered the volume of the radio, ignoring the protest Jesse made by raising his arm slightly as if to say hey, I like that song. "Get clean, Jesse. I'm not kidding. Get yourself to a hospital or something and get yourself outta here before you end up dead."

His own voice seemed far-off. "I'm not gonna end up dead, 'cause I've got them watching out for me."

Chad shook his head. "I'm not kidding, Jesse. Go somewhere, find a nice girl, settle down."

Jesse sighed, his eyelids fluttering against his cheek. "All right, if it'll get you off my back for once." He stood up and stumbled a little, reaching for the torn plaid pattern of the sofa's arm to support him. Chad's arms shot out to keep him steady and helped him to the door.

"Don't let me see you again, man."

But Jesse was already gone, a quarter of the way down the street, drunkenly stumbling down the littered streets of the city.

His vision became blurry as he made his way down the alleyways of the city, his feet missing the ground every once in a while. Graffiti decorated the walls of the brick homes lining the streets, covering the antique buildings with obscenities Jesse couldn't make out if he tried.

Finally he reached a building of uninviting bright marble. His experience in the war had helped him to realize that anything this brilliantly white was either a hospital or heaven itself. Up the stairs his feet went as he tried to pace himself. Easy now, he thought. You'll get inside and everything will be all right. But the words were muddled even inside his head, and he could feel everything becoming hazier. Maybe I took too much this time.

Slowly he reached the entrance and pushed himself through the swinging doors leading to the hospital ward. All I really need to do is lie down.

His eyes focused for a moment on the nurse currently on desk duty. Her eyes locked on his before she tilted her head slightly and said in the same manner one would address a silent child,

"Are you all right?"

Jesse took note of his blindingly white surroundings and thought must've been heaven after all before crashing to the ground and seeing everything fade to black.

The nurse immediately dropped her pen and ran over to the unconscious man lying in the hallway of the hospital.

"Someone get me a doctor!"

The florescent lights illuminating the hospital ward blinded Jesse at first as he slowly opened his eyes, his heart pounding in his head. Memories of the war came flashing back to him as he looked around and saw more bodies in hospital beds surrounding him. Except the hospitals in the war had been housed in makeshift tents the color of olive, not in a perfectly sterile, immaculate environment like this one. His limbs were stiff, and his memories of the night before were vague, beginning with a trip to Chad's apartment and ending with a fade to black in the hallway engulfed in white.

Footsteps jolted him back to the present as a faintly familiar nurse approached him with a cart full of trays. Chestnut eyes peered out from under her white hospital cap, full of concern.

"Are you all right?"

Jesse ran one of his hands over his short buzz-cut and made contact with her lovely, lovely eyes. "I guess so. What happened last night?"

"You came in and fainted dead away in our foyer." Smiled as she brought him the tray of food and displayed it before him. "You nearly OD'd, too. If you had come an hour later, you would've been dead by now."

"Creepy how you can cheat death like that, huh?" He stuck out his hand, which she readily shook. "I'm Jesse Keys."

"Amelia." She paused, hands pressed against the handle of the food cart, waiting to move onto the next bed. "I thought - all your ID's - "

"Jesse's my real name," he said as a grin lit up his face, "maybe later I can explain everything to you."

That comment earned a quick nod from her, as the cart was wheeled to the next bed. Jesse stared down at the metal tray, the dry, bland food arranged systematically, as if the eggs mixing with the potatoes would prove to be catastrophic.

"Hey, Amelia." He called out, gathering many surprised glances from the patients who had never heard her addressed as anything but 'miss' or 'nurse'. Amelia set down a tray on one of her patient's tables, then hurried over to Jesse, a grin plastered on his face.

"What'd you say to getting some real food with me?"

Amelia struggled to suppress a smile herself as she answered. "Why, Mister Keys, I'll check up on you when it's my break and perhaps we can work something out." And, with a glance thrown over her shoulder as she continued her walk down the hallway, "I think that would be an excellent time to talk about a problem with authority you seem to be having here."

Jesse suddenly felt the pressure in his head disappear.

A brown trenchcoat concealed most of Amelia's hospital whites as they strolled through the park, each one holding a steaming hot dog with one hand, their free hands dangling by their sides as they made vague attempts to lock fingers with each other. This was what he had been looking for all along, Jesse realized. Not a drug, but something to just make him happier. To get his mind off of Vietnam and the aliens, to make him feel as if he had someone else looking out for him. Someone to make him feel a little less alone.

They wandered over to a park bench and Jesse sat beside Amelia, watching her observe her surroundings as she chewed the hot dog. His eyes focused on her face, her eyes and her hair, as he silently absorbed every detail of her face, every wrinkle and crease, everything that made her all the more beautiful to him.

Eventually she noticed his eyes fixated on her face, and she turned to him. "What?"

"Nothing." He shook his head. "You're… very pretty."

Bright crimson overcame her cheeks. "Thank you."

He managed to tear his eyes off her and scan the park. Nothing there except for the hot dog stand, of course, a small group of children on the swing set, and another group of children clustered around an old man, his crudely made bubble wand made of a Hula Hoop and Scotch tape enveloping the doe-eyed kids with bubbles. Eventually the bubbles popped and both the old man and the child were sprayed with the soapy residue of the soap and water mixture.

Spokes turning, passing by a truck - a brightly colored circus truck covered in dancing clowns. Passing the font now, moving ahead of the driver, an old man. Hand dangling over the side, his eyes focused on Jesse. Legs working to pedal the bike faster without him realizing it, then the lights appearing out of nowhere and -

And the bubble man turned to Jesse, his face the same as the one Jesse had seen all those years ago. All throughout his life, he would never forget that man and the look in his eyes - something Jesse had tried to put his finger on many times but never succeeded.

He rose from the bench, despite Amelia's questioning glance and call of "Jesse?" He kept walking, though, eventually breaking into a run and plowing right into the old man, knocking him to the ground. You stole my life from me, you son of a bitch.

The man's face turned to the side as Jesse drove his fist into his cheek again and again. Two arms suddenly grabbed his and pulled him off the bubble man, a narrow line of blood trickling down his face. It wasn't him, Jesse saw. It wasn't the man who had chased him down the road all those years ago. Shit.

"Jesse!" Amelia's voice was shrill and fearful. "Jesse!"

He looked at her and stood up. "I'm sorry. I-"

The bubble man stood up and backed away slowly from Jesse, who thrust his hands in the pockets of his coat, turned on his heel and began walking away rapidly. A small group of people had crowded around the injured man.

Amelia's pace doubled as she hurried to catch up with Jesse. "What was that all about, Jesse?" Her stomach turned as she felt the fear one might feel if they were walking with a murderer.

"I thought he was someone else. I'm sorry." He took special care to avoid making eye contact with her, his eyes staring straight ahead.

"Who?"

"Just… someone from when I was a kid." He paused. "It's a long story."

"I have time."

Jesse stopped and faced Amelia. Their eyes locked. "Maybe later." He turned to start walking again, but Amelia stopped him with her hand placed on his shoulder.

"Jesse?"

He turned around as she gazed up at him, brown eyes meeting brown. "Maybe you just need some help."

"I don't need any help."

"Jesse!" She exclaimed as he turned around again. "Jesse, you could've killed that guy if you had kept going." She stopped and swallowed hard. "I want to be with you, but I don't want to have to see you hurt people like that again."

"You've only known me for-"

"That doesn't matter. It's best to try to solve a problem early on."

He looked at her, her eyes begging him silently.

"All right."

The office of Dr. Elizabeth Goodman resembled an old-fashioned study one might see in a British library, complete with a ceiling-high bookcase stacked with books and assorted medical journals, as well as several leather armchairs resting atop of a plush Oriental rug. Her desk was a glossy cherry wood, and placed in front of it was a leather sofa.

Jesse had been ushered into the office by her secretary, who insisted that Dr. Goodman would be here soon and he could wait inside for a few minutes. It was clear that the secretary was relatively new and unused to being around mentally unstable people - alone, no less.

That thought brought a smile to Jesse's face as he browsed her personal library, most of the selection consisting of studies of the human mind, psychoanalysis and the like.

The door swung open just as Jesse was about to open a slim book on something dealing with suppressed childhood memories. A tall, thin woman entered, a few strands of her blonde hair breaking away from her otherwise securely fastened bun.

"Jesse Keys?" She set down her briefcase and shook Jesse's free hand. He carefully placed the book back where he had found it and walked over to the couch.

"Do I have to lie down?"

Dr. Goodman shrugged. "If you want." She took off her coat and hung it up on the coat rack by the door before sitting down at her desk. "I'm Dr. Goodman, as you probably know, but you can call me Elizabeth, Liz, whatever you want." She waved her arms in a wild gesticulation.

Jesse sat down on the couch, feeling very much like a child paying a visit to the principal's office in this academic atmosphere. He watched Elizabeth shuffle a few more papers around her desk, then focus all of her attention on him, her hands clasped and resting on her desk.

"So?" Jesse began, unsure of what he was to do.

"Well, why don't you start off by telling me why you're here?"

"I… beat up a man in East Park."

Elizabeth nodded and scribbled something on a notepad. "And why did you do that?"

"I thought he was someone I knew. From when I was a kid." Jesse shook his head and sunk backwards into the couch a little more. "I made a mistake. Doesn't mean I have to see a psychologist." He suddenly felt hostile towards Amelia for making him come, for making him talk about things he'd rather have left alone to a complete stranger.

If his hostility had made an impact on Dr. Goodman, it didn't show. Her pen scratched something else on her notepad as she nodded. "And what made you want to hurt this man?" She paused and settled back in her chair, locking her eyes on Jesse. "Did this man in any way… abuse you, perhaps, when you were a child?"

"No, no." Said Jesse. "He…" He was an alien, Jesse imagined himself saying. That would certainly make an impact on her, as he would be no longer classified as 'troubled', but instead as 'crazy'. "…Just an old bully from school. Nothing much." He finished, his hands beginning to drum lightly on the shiny, hard surface of the leather couch.

Dr. Goodman looked at him for a minute. "There's not something else?"

Jesse shook his head stubbornly.

"We have a patient-doctor confidentiality policy, you know. Everything that's said in this office stays in this office. You can tell me anything. I'm not your enemy."

His arms shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, Jesse stared at Dr. Goodman before saying, "There's nothing."

An uncomfortable silence followed. Elizabeth jotted down a few more notes, this time placing them in a manila folder. Jesse allowed his eyes to wander around the office, taking in his surroundings.

"Well," began Elizabeth, "If we don't have anything more to talk about, I suggest we end here for today."

"Really?" Jesse asked. I can go home now?

"Maybe next week we'll open up a bit more and actually have something to discuss." She grinned as Jesse immediately headed towards the door, desperate to leave.

"All right… bye." His pace quickened as soon as he had left the room, leaving Elizabeth alone, surrounded by files and hastily scribbled notes.

Who does he think he's fooling? Dr. Goodman thought with a smirk. He's hiding something.

But what?