Author's Notes: This story was featured in an online fanfiction magazine called Pheonix Down Monthly. The 'zine's just gotten started but the editors have put together a really amazing piece of work. Check it out at : community(dot)livejournal(dot)com/phoenixmonthly/

Now, gratuitous pimping aside, onto the real AN...

I starting writing this on the train between Ottawa and Kingston. We had a short 'momentary delay' (as is pretty common on the canadian train system) and it reminded me a scene in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere where the main character comments on how the 'momentary delays' in the London underground are sometimes caused by people commiting suicide. That sort of 'delay' happened to a friend of mine once and I chided her for being annoyed at her life being slowed down by someone ending theirs. It's a strange thing to think about.

So, this story is mostly about Midgar, a little bit about ghosts, and somewhat about Vincent. It was deliciously fun to write and I hope that it's as fun to read.

"Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living."

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Train 49

"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the inconvenience but we're experiencing a short delay. We'll be continuing on shortly."

Vincent sat against the train's window resting his temple against the glass. There was something vaguely unsanitary about the idea of touching his skin to it, the pane obscured by decades of grime and filth. Still, his temples were aching fiercely and it is always true that the windows of a train are cooler than their surroundings.

"You know why they say that, don't you?" a voice asked beside him.

Vincent opened his eyes and cocked his head to look at the person who had spoken. The man looked gruff in the evening light, Vincent thought. The dilute phosphorescent glare of the city's lights was not kind to him. His skin looked ashen and there was a two-week stubble on the man's chin and cheeks. He wore faded leather gloves which might have once looked expensive but were now so worn that a person could no longer guess their original colour. Black, brown? His trench-coat was stained and there was a rip on the left sleeve. The rest of the clothes that Vincent could see matched the other items perfectly; tattered, patch-worked, ill-treated pieces.

Still, Vincent thought, he didn't really look homeless. The clothes had all once been finely made and the man didn't smell the same way that most homeless people did; of sweat and piss and cheap liquor. He was, Vincent decided, a man who had fallen upon some very bad luck, the kind of bad luck that only a city like Midgar could provide. The hardest part about hitting rock bottom on the plate in Midgar was that there was always one level lower to sink to. Watching people try to fight off that tide was one of the longest running tragedies in the city.

"Why do they say that?" Vincent asked quietly, realizing even as he said it that he hadn't heard the man sit down beside him. The bench had been empty when he'd taken it and he couldn't recall when the man had joined him. Still, Vincent reflected, he'd been so distracted by his migraine that he probably wouldn't have noticed if the man had walked up and pressed the barrel of a gun against his temple. Vincent knew that he had to do something about these headaches but the unspoken solution of 'medication or something worse' didn't really appeal to him.

"It's because," the man said, drawling out the words in an accent that Vincent didn't quite recognize, "the idea of an unknown delay is more palatable than the truth."

Vincent felt a small smile touch the edge of his mouth at the man's storyteller tone. He found himself liking the stranger almost instantly, a rare thing for Vincent.

"And the truth is…?" he asked, knowing that the man wanted him to fill in the space in the conversation.

"They're suicides," he replied succinctly. "Sorry little people who can't sit tight and be patient waiting for their end to come. So, up and down onto the tracks they go, transforming themselves into twenty minute delays for the rest of us."

Vincent laughed even though a part of him realized that it was a horrible thing to laugh at. The glint in the strange man's eyes reflected that he'd hoped for that response. The train started up again with a lurch and they both shifted forward and back in their seats.

"Anders," the man said, extending his hand forward. Vincent clasped it firmly.

"Vincent," Vincent replied, giving only his first name when Anders had only given his family one. Together we make a full person, came the stray thought.

"Vincent," Anders said, as if testing the name on his tongue. He nodded. "It's a good name," he said matter-of-factly. Vincent didn't reply because it was, truthfully, an odd thing to say. Anders filled in the gap in the conversation smoothly.

"So, what brings you to this saintly place at such an ungodly hour, Vincent?" Anders asked, gesturing to their nearly empty train car. The next five passengers were six or seven benches ahead of them, sitting towards the front of the car. Vincent half-smiled at the line and the gesture.

"Work," he replied and the word caused the pain in his temples to flare up again, making him wince.

"Ah," Anders said thoughtfully. "Work. They say that in life there are only two guarantees – death and taxes – but I've always believed that 'work' constitutes an appropriate third."

"Not everybody works," Vincent corrected politely.

"No," Anders amended. "But almost everyone has. And if they haven't," he added, "well, life constitutes a kind of wok, don't you think? Life can be a very hard job to keep doing, even at the best of times. Why, my ex-wife had a friend, a lovely girl, and she gave birth to a beautiful baby daughter. Now, you'd expect a new mother to be happy as a clam but, no, she wasn't. Maybe it was the post-mortem thing or maybe it wasn't. In the end, the woman drowned her baby in its bathtub and swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin along with a bottle of whiskey. You see," he finished with a certain amount of succulence, "she couldn't do her job – couldn't do her time – so she clocked out early."

Vincent found himself laughing again even though he knew that he should have been horrified. The polite thing to do would have been to say something trite like 'that's horrible' but the truth was that Midgar sometimes felt half-choked on dead babies. One more didn't really add much. Besides, Anders had a raconteur light in his eyes that made him a hard person to ignore or take seriously… or perhaps lightly; Vincent couldn't decide.

"I suppose that you're right," Vincent said eventually. They passed through a tunnel then and the train went dark except for the hazy fluorescent lights which marked the emergency exits inside of the car. The temporary darkness only lasted a few moments and when they emerged into the comparative brightness of the Midgar night, Vincent was reminded of a swimmer surfacing for a breath before another plunge.

"And you?" Vincent asked politely.

"Hrm?" Anders said, as if he'd already forgotten that they had been talking. Once again, a smile touched the edge of Vincent's mouth.

"What brings you to this saintly place at such an ungodly hour?" he asked, quoting Anders' line back at him.

"Oh," the man said. "Me, I just like the trains. I come here almost every day. Some days I watch them and some days I ride them. The free train service is the only decent thing about this city. It serves me well to pass a bit of time this way."

Vincent nodded and Anders continued.

"You know where you are with trains. They take you down their set paths, click clacking along. There's hardly ever a train accident in this city, did you know that? It's been almost twenty years since the last one. Well, we do have our 'momentary delays' but those are hardly even worth mentioning."

He frowned as if troubled by some thought.

"Of course," he said, drawing the last word out slightly, "they do pose some problems, the suicides. The bodies are no good for robbing or eating after the trains are done with them. The workers are the ones who have to clean up the mess. Time is money or so they say. I hear that instead of bothering with the 'official' channels, the staffers just flush the corpses down maintenance tunnels that open up onto the slums. They tumble down right out the sky."

Vincent made a noise in the back of his throat and Anders eyes' glinted.

"Ha, you doubt me but it's true. In the slums, people die by getting struck by falling dead people! A body can be a mighty weight when it's fallen for over a mile. It's, what, 1.2 miles down from the plate to the second city's floor? That's what they used to call it, you know, before it became a complete wasteland – the second city. Still, there are so many things that people can die from down there; falling dead people must be the least of their worries."

Anders paused in his narrative briefly before continuing.

"Of course," he added, his eyes twinkling, "it doesn't always happen that way. Why, I once heard of a boy that was out walking with his mom and his pop. He was a wee thing, probably only four or five. One of our 'momentary delays' came tumbling down out of the sky at them. The wind whipped that body so hard that the force of the air did what the train hadn't managed to and it split right down the middle. Most people, they don't run when they see something like that, you know. They're like the deer they used to have around here before the land all went to rot. Well, the upper bit with the arms and head fell smack dab on the boy's pop and the hips and legs crushed his mom. They found the kid hours later, sobbing in all that muck – and it would be a messy business, of course; think mosquito – without a speck on him. A real miracle; no word of a lie."

"What happened to the boy afterwards?" Vincent asked, mildly perturbed by that particular image.

"Oh, nobody really knows. I like to think that he went off to become some big-shot Shinra manager. With a train phobia, of course."

Vincent smiled again.

"Of course."

Anders hunched forward to fish around in his pockets before pulling out a battered packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered one to Vincent but the younger mind declined.

"You don't mind if I…?"

"No, of course not," Vincent replied. Anders nodded and took a long drag on his cigarette.

"The kid would probably feel right at home there," he said with a touch of darkness in his tone. Vincent gave him an perplexed look and Anders gestured with his cigarette. "With the Shinras," he clarified. "Half the people you talk to say that that's building haunted."

Vincent shrugged and Anders took another drag on his cigarette.

"It is, you know," he continued, "though I prefer to think of them courting with demons."

Vincent cocked an eyebrow wordlessly and Anders chuckled.

"Devils in blue suits," he clarified again.

The insinuation lurched in Vincent's stomach. He managed to keep from frowning but his training kicked in instantly. He watched Anders eyes, his face. Did the man know who he was? Had he followed him here? But just as suddenly as it had come the moment was gone. Anders looked over Vincent's shoulder to the obscured view from the train's window, tapping his foot absently.

"Me, I only half-believe that those suckers exist. Baby-snatchers and all that. This isn't a good city, but is it that bad? I wonder."

"So do I," Vincent murmured quietly, thoughtfully. The dull pain at his temples reminded him of his headache. There was, he noticed absently, a small dark stain on his right sleeve, too small to notice unless someone was specifically looking for it. His temples pulsed.

There'd been a kid tonight, he thought absently. He hated when there were kids. She'd been about four – or rather almost four – and she'd looked at him with big, black eyes. He'd pressed his index finger to his lip when she'd snuck up on him.

Shh, Daddy's sleeping. Go back to bed.

And then, after a moment, she had.

He always hated when there were kids.

"Vincent?" Anders asked and the younger man blinked. He looked over at his companion.

"I'm sorry?" he asked politely. Anders chuckled kindly.

"I lost you there for a moment."

"Sorry," Vincent replied. "Headache," he clarified.

"Ah," Anders said sympathetically. "A headache."

They rode on in silence for a time.

"Are you a company man, Vincent?" Anders eventually asked. Vincent looked over at him and shook his head.

"Not really, no," he replied. Anders sighed and lit another cigarette.

"I used to be a company man, ages ago. A bit of a go-for boy only the adult kind. It was a good paying job but when I lost it my luck just didn't come back. You know how it is. Sold the house but then the wife left and now, here we are." He looked over at Vincent and his eyes sparkled a little. "Two ghosts on the railways."

Vincent smiled at the line and nodded.

"Two ghosts on the railways," he replied.

The train clatter-clacked on for a little while longer before Anders spoke again.

"You know, they say that half these trains are haunted."

"Oh, do they?" Vincent asked, oddly comfortable to return to the subject of ghosts. Anders nodded.

"All the suicides, you see," he replied. "It's like electricity on the track lines. They get caught up in it and find themselves going around and around. Sometimes they half-get off at a station but then they always find their way back on again. A hard way to spend eternity, if you ask me."

"I suppose that it would be," Vincent replied. He suddenly blinked and looked out the window. He swore quietly under his breath.

"What station was that?"

"Forty-two, why?" Anders asked.

Vincent swore again.

"That was my stop. My apartment's just down that way."

Anders made a noise in the back of his throat.

"Well, you can always get off at the next one," he replied. "Or," he clarified, "you can ride all the way around again."

Vincent thought for a moment and then smirked, leaning back in his chair.

"Maybe I will ride it around again," he said, his smirk stretching at the thought. Anders grinned and then passed him the cigarette box. This time, Vincent accepted.

"There now, that's my boy."

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

A train rattled by and the wind it stirred up caught at Vincent's long hair and cloak. Tifa let out a small cry and held down her hair with one hand. Vincent frowned and watched the train as it passed. His companion said something but he missed it. When she said his name again, he looked over at her.

"I'm sorry?" he asked. It still sometimes threw him to see that the trains were still running in this Midgar which was not quite the one that he had known. Tifa placed her hands on her hips.

"You disappeared on me for a second there, Vincent," she chided. "I asked you if you know your way around this district. I hardly ever come to Sector Four and the others will be waiting for us."

Vincent was a bit slow in answering, something intangible dancing at the edge of his thoughts. He felt momentarily as if he were standing in two places at once… but of course that was impossible.

"I used to… live in this district," he said finally, voice raised a little to be heard over the train. "My stop was the next one down. We're not far from our destination."

"Oh," Tifa said, her mouth forming a perfect and pretty 'o'. For a moment Vincent almost smiled. She brushed some imaginary dirt from her miniskirt before turning, her long brown hair flipping behind her. "I guess that's alright then."

Vincent paused to watch the train go, not moving until it had left his sight. When it had, he turned to lead Tifa on with him. They were supposed to be meeting AVALANCHE later on to discuss strategy and it would not due to be late.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

Vincent rested his temple against the glass pane of the train, content to watch the world swim past him as it moved on towards its destination. Anders smoked his cigarette quietly and Vincent was not bothered by the silence.

For a brief moment he thought that he saw a woman and something swathed in bright crimson on a passing platform but they were gone in a moment, dissolving into the unending city lights.

Two ghosts on the railways, he repeated in his head. He chuckled to himself. It was a good phrase and he liked it. Maybe he would ride the train around a few more times. After all, it wasn't like he'd been going anywhere in particular.

Just home, a voice told him but for some reason he couldn't quite recall where that was anymore. The train felt good enough for now.

And then?, the voice asked.

Then we'll see, he replied quietly, watching the lights blur by. Eventually, he fell asleep and dreamed strange dreams that didn't quite belong to him; dreams of a mansion and a woman but, for the life of him, he couldn't remember her name.