A/N: Major warning for suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide of a main character below.

The fifth time that Martin failed his CPL exam, he tried to kill himself.

It had seemed a reasonable thing to do, at the time. It wasn't like he was ever going to become a proper pilot anyway, not at this rate. Proper pilots didn't fail the same bloody exam six times even when they knew all the answers and could recite the textbook backwards and forwards. Proper pilots didn't get flustered at the first sign of trouble or panic when a perfectly routine alarm light went off. Proper pilots didn't fail at the only thing that had ever mattered to them, five times over. Wishing and wanting would never get him where he wanted to be, no matter how hard he tried. That much was obvious now.

He was numb now as he sat in his tiny attic room, numb past the point of tears or disbelief or shock. There had been plenty of tears after the exam when he had huddled in the back of his van, hiding from anyone who could have seen his shame as he rocked back and forth and sobbed into his jacket. He had cried until his sides ached, his eyes burned, and his throat closed. He had cried great, wracking, heaving sobs that shook his thin frame until he thought his tears would rattle him apart. He had cried for everything he wanted to be, everything he could never be, everything he would never have, until there were no more tears left. Nothing left but the emptiness inside of him and the vicious whisper in his head always there to remind him that he would never be anything worthwhile.

Driving home and stumbling up the stairs to his room had been a blur. A blur, except for the brief flash of sound and light and color from the rooms of the students downstairs as they celebrated the end of term and the successful completion of their exams with a loud and raucous party. Of course they get to have a party Martin thought bitterly as he shuffled into his dark and tiny room with head bowed and shoulders slumped. They're young, they're successful, they have futures. They're going to be somebody. Not like me. Nothing like me. He had been in this damned attic for three years now, far longer than he had ever planned. God, his dreams had been so big when he moved in here. He'd thought this would all be temporary, that he would breeze through his exam on the first try and get picked up by Air England or some other big airline. He'd thought that by now he would be successful, be wealthy, be happy. But he was none of those things. He was exactly where had been when he'd moved out of his parents' house, exactly where they had predicted he'd end up. Broke, miserable, and alone.

His eyes began to burn once more as he collapsed in the rickety chair that served as both kitchen chair and the only seat in the room besides his tiny cot. Why can't I just pull myself together? I know the material, I know it! I know it better than the examiner, why can't I just stay calm enough to pass the bloody test? The thoughts were beginning to crowd together in his head, piling up on each other, spinning out of control. He felt dizzy, sick with desperation and despair and hatred for the mess that was his entire life. A look around the room to steady himself only made it worse. This place was the only place he could call his own because it was the only thing he could afford, and it was terrible. He hated it. It was small, cramped, dark, and depressing. A tiny little attic, probably not even meant for human habitation, full of drafts with barely enough room for him to move about comfortably. Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside of him as he looked around, scraping out of a throat rubbed entirely raw from crying. It was absurd, that he should live like this. That he should scrimp and save for months to afford one single test, living on a single meal a day and working himself to the bone at a horrendous job as a dish-washer, all to fail. To blow all of that money in one day, on one test, leaving him with nothing but an empty wallet and an emptier life. Life shouldn't be lived like this.

I shouldn't live like this. The thought seemed to come out of nowhere, and yet it was if he had known it all along. As if it had been lurking in the back of his mind all this time, waiting for the right moment to strike. I'll never succeed. I'll just keep failing, and failing, and failing. I can't do this anymore. I should just give up and save myself the trouble.

And there it was. The thought he had been avoiding. The one he had kept pushed down inside himself for so long, diligently ignoring it and pretending it didn't exist in hopes that it would disappear. But it never had disappeared, no matter how carefully he pretended it didn't exist. It was too late now, too late to pretend that he hadn't thought about it. About ending the charade, about no longer pretending that his life was worth living. About giving up.

It seemed like his entire life had been an exercise in not giving up when he really should, in persevering against impossible odds and ridiculous circumstances long after it was reasonable. His entire life had been a struggle, a constant battle against his own personal failings that seemed t o work against him at every turn. He It wasn't fair that he should try so hard and get so little. Other people had everything handed to them: good looks, natural charm, cool dispositions. And here he was, a scrawny, ginger, nervous git who couldn't string together a coherent sentence to save his life. Literally.

It's not like I'll be giving up anything worth having he thought viciously as he looked around the room once more. No friends, no job worth having, no flat worth living in, hell I don't even have any food in my cupboards to go bad. I don't think anyone will even notice. That was the worst part, the thought that stuck in his brain and made him feel like he had no other choice. There was no one to notice, no one who would actually care if he ended this right now. It might even be a relief for my family. They could finally give up on pretending like I've ever been anything but a disappointment.

A disappointment was all he had ever been, really. The last child, the unwanted child, the one who didn't fit in with the rest of his family. Simon and Caitlin, they had always been the favored children. The ones who did their father proud, the ones who were tall and beautiful and clever and ambitious within reason. They had excelled in school, earning top marks, winning trophies and prizes and friends, all while he was left alone, struggling just to get by with his dreams in the sky. He'd never had friends. He'd never been top of his class. Hell, he'd been lucky to be in the middle of his class. That was always who he'd been, who he'd always be. Martin Crieff, average to the bone with dreams far too big for him.

Even now as he stared emptily at the surface of his kitchen table, he could hear his father's disappointed words still echoing as if they had been spoken moments ago. "You've got to do something with your life, Martin! You'll never get anywhere with your head in the clouds like that, you've got to be realistic. I know you want to be a pilot for some bloody stupid reason, but you've got to accept that it's never going to happen, lad. You're just not cut out for it." The gruff words hurt just as much now as they had when they were spoken, as they had every time his father had told him to stop dreaming and come back down to earth. But how could he ever stop dreaming? Flying was all he had ever wanted, all he could ever see himself being happy doing. Other jobs could never possibly match up, could never make him happy the way he knew flying someday would. He had tried to tell his father this, tried to explain why he struggled every day for something he might never achieve. But the words never came. He tried, but just like everything else in his life his voice failed him and left him stuttering and ashamed in the face of his father's disappointment.

Well, time to finally prove his father right. Time to finally complete something, even if it was the last thing he ever did. The room spun and tilted as he stood suddenly, determined to finally do something worthwhile before he lost his nerve. Time seemed to be rushing and leaping past faster than he could possibly manage, and yet he felt as though he were frozen in place as he walked over to the kitchen and pulled out the only knife he owned. It was a dull, cheap thing he had bought years ago and never been able to replace, but it would have to do. He had no other options.

Time jumped, lurching forward once more, and he was seated back at the kitchen table, staring at the knife. Now that it came to it, he was afraid. He was more afraid than he had ever been in his entire miserable, worthless life, so afraid that his hands trembled with terror as he reached for the handle of the knife. But there was nothing for it now that he had started, no other choice left for him to make. This was what his life had come to, and this was all he had left. So he picked up the knife, and with shaking hand brought it down across the delicate skin of his left wrist.

He'd thought that it would be quick.

It wasn't.

The knife was a jagged flash of pain across his wrist, burning brighter and sharper than anything he had ever felt before. His vision blurred and the knife clattered to the floor as he stared at the sudden bloom of bright red blood against his pale skin, spilling and pouring out of him faster than he had expected and leaving a trail of warmth as it ran down his arm. Funny. He'd never thought about that before, how warm blood was. The wound was not nearly as neat and clean as he had intended it to be – the shaking of his hand as he held the knife meant that there was a small false start cut followed by an uneven line across his wrist that mocked him with its shakiness. The knife had hardly even been sharp, leaving a wound nothing like the lovely straight line he had imagined. No, instead it was jagged, uneven, dirty, horrible. It shouldn't be like this. He didn't want it to be like this. He stood up, desperate to find something else, to fix this so he could at least do it properly. But he had lost too much blood, was too weak already. He crashed down to the floor, pulling the table down with him and hitting his head on the hard floor with a sickening crack. As he lost consciousness and the world faded to black, his last thought was quiet and resigned. Of course I can't even kill myself properly.

The world had dissolved into fragments of sensation, running and blurring together as he drifted lost and alone. Only a few broke through the haze, sharp and painful.

Shouting.

Sirens.

Voices speaking urgently above him.

A blur of lights flashing quickly overhead.

Pain.

Searing flashing pain blooming bright behind his eyes growing spreading consuming.

A moan, possibly his own.

Sweet release.

Darkness.