Flashback - Protolouge?
1915
Getting on the train, he took a seat alone, he let out a small sigh in the process. He was tired and he was about to drift off at any moment. He had a good reason for being tired, enlisting in the army, running away all the way from California and all. But that didn't matter now.
“Excuse me?” Another man's voice cut through the surrounding noise he was around his age, curly brown hair, maybe a bit shorter. Jay rather blankly responded with a single mummed out
“yes?"
“Is this seat taken?” The other man had asked this now having actually woken up Jay from his exhaustion for a moment. He glanced at the man again, a brown vest… and the man had these… piercing green eyes, there was something about them to Jay. He took a moment to mumble out his reply to the man’s question when he realized he hadnt yet responded.
“Yeah… its not taken, you can sit here, if you want to that is,” Jay paused, right. Ask the other man his name that was the obvious thing to do. “May I ask, what is your name, old sport?”
“It's Nick, and your name?” Nick had responded in an awkward fashion.
“Right, my name is Jay, it's nice to meet you, old sport,” Jay thought, it didn't really matter, all he knew about this man was that he had a single first name Nick, and he just happened to sit next to him on the train. Better to strike up some small conversation while we’re here, he thought. “So, Old Sport , where are you heading?”
“Back home in Minnesota, back to family for a bit, got a break from university for a bit, and uhm, how about you, Jay,”
“Army,” Jay spoke tiredly, he replied in a single word rather blankly though one can assume not many men would enjoy going off into a whole new continent for war. They stayed mostly silent the rest of the time, only occasionally mumbling a small sentence or two. Jay watched as Nick got on his feet, and left the train having arrived at his stop. And just before Nick stepped off the train he spoke to Jay.
“And maybe don't die pointlessly in the war, Jay,”
And that was the last thing Jay heard from Nick in a while. He mulled over his thoughts for a while, over thinking things as usual. Many things were left out of this whole conversation from Jay’s said and from Nick’s side of the conversation. Jay had not been drafted, he came to escape his past, Nick was visiting family one last time before being shipped off after being drafted. Even though they would never meet again, well at least he thought.