In My Life – Chapter 1
Hey everyone! I return with my new story, brought to you by me and inspired by the artwork of Artisticrainey which you can check out here: .
This is about Rainey's OC Dominic (I spell this name as Dominique and yes I am aware that this is more commonly used for girls) who is a new recruit of International Rescue. I will spare you the actual recruitment story, and get straight to his new job as a field medic and surgeon. Due to exams I have had very little time to develop/ research a large chunk of the plan here so if I am getting medical/linguistic stuff wrong here do please tell me. While I do speak them both relatively well, French and Arabic are my second and fourth languages, so please be patient with me.
I should probably point out that this is set about ten years after the start of the 2015 series, after Jeff has 'disappeared.' I will firstly try using bold for English translations, but if you guys can think of a better way to do this then that would be GREAT! Thoughts are usually in italics.
Anyway, as our new characters might say: allons-y!
"Lucille, please get your last bag ready! We have to leave soon." yelled the dark-haired man up a small flight of stairs, his French twinge still noticeable as he spoke.
"Non, Papa!" Came a young girl's reply. The man calmly abandoned what he was doing and climbed the stairs, he knocked on the thin white door on his left at the top of the stairs and entered slowly. The teenager was sat on the bed next to a large open suitcase, pouting.
"Lucille," he began, she crossed her arms in protest and turned away from him; the man sat next to her on the bed.
"Look, I know it's hard but firstly, you need to get ready. Second, you really must start speaking English; we talked about this weeks ago." He tried to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but she flinched and shrugged him off.
"Je ne peux pas!" I don't want to! She whined.
"I understand that English is hard, and I know you must hate to leave your friends…" she cut him off.
"Je n'ai pas des amis!" I don't have friends. He let out a sigh of impatience, almost like shame. He didn't know what to do.
"Won't you look at me?" The girl slowly gave in and turned around. She tucked a stray lock of hair back into her blue hijab. Her expression made the man on her bed hate himself; she was losing everything for what was essentially, his gain.
"I promise everything will be different, you won't have to worry about your mother, or the people at school, or anyone. It will be fun, we are going to be with the most famous organisation in the world and…" she refused to be defeated.
"Je peut-être avec ma mère." I want to be with my mother. Her eyes spoke the rest of her emotions for her.
"It isn't safe for you to be with her." The girl screwed up her face in confusion.
"Don't be like that; I know you can understand me." Although really, he wasn't sure; he continued,
"She wouldn't have let you finish your education, she didn't want to you to do any of the things you want to do and you know it." She rolled her eyes at him, and raised an eyebrow to display her irritation,
"Est-ce parce que je suis un musulman et vous n'êtes pas ?'' Is this because I'm a Muslim and you're not? The man threw his arms up in defeat.
"Of course not! Think of it like this, there you will be allowed to be whoever you like; regardless of the stupid laws in this country. I won't let anyone do anything to you there." Lucille let a small grin creep out of the side of her mouth at the prospect of being completely free, but truly, it felt like almost nothing. She gave in and stood up to finish packing her suitcase. The man stood up on the opposite side of the bed.
"Will you at least try to speak English?" he pleaded,
"Je préfère être silencieux." I'd rather be silent. He hung his head, accepting that only time would work a way around his daughter's protest.
During the drive to the airport Lucille refused to speak a word of anything. French, Arabic, English; nothing. As far as her father was concerned, it was going to be a difficult few weeks, especially since he didn't really have an explanation as to why his daughter refused to speak.
"Will you not at least hug me?" He put out his hand, his palm facing his daughter and his fingers outstretched and splayed. She lifted her hand without looking at her father made contact in the same way. She despised most physical contact, and allowed him only this as her way of displaying affection.
TBTBTBTBTBTBTBTB
"Hi Dominique!" A friendly American with dark brown hair waved to greet them on the private runway of the airport. Lucille and her father wheeled their suitcases in front them, leaving the car behind them for good. They walked at a brisker pace to meet the man, Dominique and the other man shook hands warmly; it was clear to Lucille that they already knew each other. The other man turned to Lucille and they also shook hands, Lucille forced herself to wear a false smile; while she intended on remaining silent, she had no plans to be rude.
"This is my daughter Lucille, by the way." Dominique said, his accent still present. The other man's face turned to shock, like someone had shot him. They worried that it was Lucille's hijab that had caused this sudden vexed behaviour, but they were none the wiser.
"Bonjour Lucille." The other man said, her smile brightened, yet she still refused to verbalise herself.
"She's a bit shy, she doesn't speak English." Lucille was thankful for her father's intervention, they wouldn't have to know that she could speak some English, but it would be easier this way. It would take a while for them to realise anything, machine translation was still horribly inaccurate, even in 2070; and people still relied on learning the language itself in order to use it.
"Oh," he said,
"Je m'appelle Scott, je travaille avec votre père. Ne vous inquiétez pas, je ne mords pas." My name is Scott, I work with your father. Don't worry, I don't bite. He continued, to Lucille's surprise. Okay, she thought, he can kind of speak French.
The flight in the tiny red jet lasted for nearly 12 hours, even as one of the fastest in the world, Paris to the island in the centre of the Pacific Ocean still took some time. Dominique spent the majority of the time on the flight deck with Scott, going over a mountain of forms on the holographic displays together. Must be legal, Lucille thought; probably to do with confidentiality and inheritance.
Most of the cabin was one big surface, with the ability to become see-through to see the earth below; but instead of marvelling the features, Lucille stuck to her old-fashioned books. She liked the way that the paper felt in her hands, and the smell of musty pages. Books were expensive and good quality paper was hard to find and had extremely controlled distribution and sales due to humanity's destruction of forests, only for the rich and special occasions seeing as how most of the world had been granted access to universal technology; needless to say, her ancient and battered copy of Les Misérables had originally cost a fortune and her books were her most prized possessions, that her recordings of the musical itself, nearly a century old.
Scott walked through the cabin to get something to get something from the end of it and looked over at Lucille as he wavered through the cupboards. He opened his mouth to speak and over the sound of the music in her headphones and she saw him begin to mouth 'mon frère' as he attempted to find the words he needed. She slipped off her headphones as she was sure that he was going to speak.
"Mon frère adore le livre," My brother loves the book. He pointed to the book in her hands.
"Je pense que vous aimerez mon frère." I think that you will like my brother. He said, and smiled as he walked back to the flight deck. Lucille let herself smile back, more at Scott's hilarious French than his kind attempt to make conversation, not that she didn't appreciate his effort to be nice to her.
Meanwhile in the cockpit, Dominique was getting carried away by his thoughts as he almost mindlessly continued to skim through the forms. He barely acknowledged Scott's return to the flight deck and was startled when he finally spoke.
"You worried about something?" He was asked, Dominique let out a long sigh as he glanced towards Lucille, who was still buried in her book.
"I'm worried that I'm not being a good father." He said softly before looking up at Scott, whose face screwed up in confusion upon hearing the words.
"Why would you think that?" He asked, sitting down and leaning forward to hear their conversation better.
"This is the fifth place I've dragged her to for the sake of my work in the last seven years, she hasn't had a chance to lay any roots or make any friends. I'm worried that I'm preventing her from pursuing what she wants to do, I feel like she hates me for it."
"Did she not want to stay with her mother?" Scott mused,
"Yes, but she wouldn't have been allowed to finish her education with her; besides, it wasn't safe for her to be with Halima. She would have been married off before she had a chance to do anything for herself if she didn't stay with me, hence the divorce." Scott nodded understandingly, he couldn't say that he related to the situation, but he did have sympathy for the pair.
TBTBTBTBTBTBTBTBTB
As they went in to land the butterflies fluttered around Lucille's stomach. The feeling had nothing to do with the landing, she was perfectly used to flying and almost do it herself; it was what waited on the ground that she was worried about. Almost everywhere else she had ever lived had been a large city or town, meaning that there was always somewhere to run where she could blend in and not be found; but now she was going to be on a small island in the literal middle of nowhere, with a handful of people she had never met before. The prospect of not being able to hide and disappear scared her, she could always been seen, be constantly watched with conscious knowledge of who might be there, with no clue about what of these people might be like.
In truth, Dominique was wrong; she was not shy, she was terrified.
I'm really sorry about how shit this is, I might delete this later and start all over again fucking hell. I've completely ruined it oh god Rainey I'm so sorry. I promise I will make this more centric to what Dominique is doing rather than Lucille, I just needed her to set the stage for a few disasters without spreading this crap out through more chapters. Rescue shit will go down soon, I promise; and soon you'll also found out who is a little more involved in the story than the others, but I'll let you guess which brother that is…
Hopefully I will update again before exams but if not I will be back in the middle of June to continue this, if there's anything you'd like to suggest please R&R with your thoughts and I'll be the happiest person ever!
BYE!
