Warning: This fic has the death of a baby in. Implied more than stated, nothing bloody and no gore.
Pairings: None, this is gen.
Spoilers for Series Four: Uskerty.
Um...angst...
Martine having a steel core.
Disclaimer: I don't own Cabin Pressure. It wouldn't be nearly so funny if I did.
It was just a one-night stand (the first one-night stand Martine had ever had, she wasn't really one for casual sex) that was all. A simple, clear, no strings attached twelve hours of fun.
(Well, technically nine hours and fifty-eight minutes of fun and not all of it sexual in nature, dinner had been nice too; she'd never really had such posh sushi before.)
Just some easy fun to wash away the woes of having failed her CPL for the second time, six months after the first fail.
And it had been.
To be honest, at the end of it, she had almost been glad to see the back of- of, um...
What was his name again?
Richard?
(She rather assumed he'd lied about his name...his voice was too smooth.)
Yes, anyway, his rather cutting brand of sarcasm had reared its head and was more than a little put her off as she left his hotel room early enough that the sun had only just peaked up from behind the grey bricked buildings.
And for a pilot he really wasn't very interested in planes! He hadn't even known what a Bellanca P-300 C-27 was! Any twelve year old knew that.
(And that wasn't even mentioning the debacle with the Sncase SE-161 Landquedoc.)
Well, a one-night stand was what it was and Martine had been very happy to tuck any memory of it away and only ever think of it when curling up alone on her small bed and remembering, when she felt particularly bereft of human company.
But this...
She clenched her hands tightly, her blunt nails not long enough or sharp enough to dig into her skin.
This wasn't supposed to happen! This couldn't happen!
She swallowed dryly, snatching up the cup of water on her bedside and gulping it down.
Any moment now the nurse would return with an apology, that they'd made a mistake because surely she couldn't be-
She'd only fainted!
And yes, maybe her period hadn't come for a couple of months (she hardly kept track of it, it was irregular anyway) but that didn't mean...
And yes she had thrown up in the morning a few times but she put that down to poor student food. Pasta and toast was hardly a balanced diet.
She prodded dubiously at her flat stomach.
They'd used a condom! This was the thing that happened in movies not real life!
She didn't even want a- a- a-
She didn't want a child!
She was twenty-three, she wanted to be a pilot...she'd never dreamed of having a kid before, too focussed on flying and anything on aviation that she could latch her hands onto.
She prodded her stomach again as though magically it would either expand before her very eyes or a note would shoot forth saying 'April Fools!'
Neither happened.
She didn't feel p-p-p-pregnant.
Surely she should feel something?
#
"So who was he? The man whose going to make me a grandfather far too young?" Her dad asked in his rather booming voice, his mouth set in something close to disapproval.
Martine flushed.
"He, um, he's...I d-don't actually...he's um. I mean I k-know who he is, I slept with him," She flinched at her far too high voice. And did she really need to mention she'd had sex? Surely that was obvious...and this was her parents! She could see his eyebrows rising. "I, uh, d-don't actually know. He's a pilot that's um, the only thing..." She trailed off.
Her dad blinked at her and she braced herself for his reaction, anything from a roll of the eyes to being shouted at.
Instead he burst into laughter. Loud, deep belly laughs that shook his whole frame. Her mum was smiling in amusement too.
Martine had no idea what was so funny.
"Ha ha ha, um, w-what exactly is so funny?" She asked.
He wiped his eyes and quietened, sending her an unreadable look. The air in the room turned unbearably poignant. She pushed away the feeling of inadequacy that rose within her stomach.
"It's always flying with you. Head in the clouds." He shook his head. "There's more to life than the sky. You'll need to get your feet planted firmly before that one's born."
Martine frowned, having a child was not going to put her ambitions to be a pilot on the shelf, she was still determined to go through with it. Granted having a child certainly put it on hold but she planned to continue, hopefully she'd pass next time.
Flying was a type of freedom that her own body was rebelling at for the time being. But she could wait. It wouldn't be too long before she could take the exam again.
#
Her belly didn't swell nearly as much as she had expected.
The doctors said it was because her frame was so slight and that first borns weren't normally very big anyway.
She ate well now she was living with her parents again. She'd needed a new flat soon anyway but at least returning home meant she got three meals a day and could satisfy her unusual cravings.
Her mum especially absolutely loved making her whatever she wanted, even if it was as bizarre as aeroplane shaped pieces of toast dipped into marmite with a fried egg smothered in nutella.
Well, maybe not the last. But her mother had certainly been amused.
She couldn't stand fish.
Caitlin had attempted to knit a baby jumper.
It looked like a woolly bladder. Martine didn't have the heart to mention this. Especially since Caitlin had attempted to sew a little aeroplane onto the front.
(The aeroplane looked like a bear's toenail but was close enough.)
Simon had visited, from his oh-so-important-job, along with his wife and a blanket.
(Store brought but it was obviously chosen because it was blue with white clouds here and there.)
Of course he had still picked her up and pretended she was an aeroplane. She could only expect so much.
Although...when she turned green he had dropped her pretty quickly.
His face!
She got rounder, her clumsiness got worse and her confused mix of feelings grew for the alien distending her stomach.
#
She didn't have a day of remembrance for her baby. There wasn't a day where she sobbed over photos of the scan.
That felt too cheap to her, like she was only sparing a thought for her baby on that date. Like she didn't think of him nearly every day.
Plus she had never got the hang of dates. The date of a release of plane yes, that she could rattle off easily but things like birthdays, wedding anniversaries and the like slipped away from her.
It's always flying with you. Head in the clouds. Her father's voice murmured.
So the 12th of October was just another day, no different to the 21st of August.
She didn't have a day to mourn. How could she set aside a single day when the memory nagged at her 365 days every year?
Sometimes she wondered...
Wondered if she would have still got her pilots licence if her son had lived...
Maybe she would have married...
Got a nine-to-five job that bored her, nowhere close to her dreams of soaring...
Maybe she would kiss grazed knees, serve out ice-cream, still live with her parents, wipe away tears...
Help stubby, clumsy fingers piece together a small model aeroplane...
Those thoughts lingered at the corners of her mind, ready to leap out at unsuspecting moments.
So she threw herself into getting her CPL.
It had been all she dreamed of before, now it was only half the dream but she would dam well get that half and cling onto it with all her strength!
Half the dream was better than none. And nothing could beat flying through the clouds, the yolk beneath her hands and a hat perched atop her head.
She would get it.
One day.
#
She had done it.
Got her CPL and got a job as a real pilot.
It had only taken seven tries, endless nightshifts, years of awful food and living in the attic of a house filled with students.
But none of that mattered.
She had done it!
Nothing could sap the joy from her.
(Although her first job at an airline nearly managed to make her forget how much she loved flying. Nearly. MJN reminded her how much she loved it.)
#
"Hey Skip! Skip!"
"What is it Arthur?" Carolyn sighed, a frown crossing her face. Did her son really have to yell?
"Nothing. This just fell out of Skip's coat pocket." He answered holding out the small item in question.
Carolyn took it with a sigh. She'd give it back to Martine in the morning. They had a flight booked anyway.
She opened it just to check it didn't have something Martine actually needed right now, like her driving licence or keys.
At first she didn't quite realise what exactly she was seeing. It was grey and the shapes were oddly distorted.
"What is it? Because it looks like a picture of someone's stew after they've eaten it and it's from black and white times! There's no colour-"
Her son rambled on but Carolyn didn't listen, her stomach clenching uncomfortably.
Briefly she imagined a life without Arthur at her side...she shoved those dark thoughts away and looked back to the small scan picture, lovingly encased in plastic and kept almost sparklingly clean.
The words at the bottom just made her gut twist further although a smile twisted up her lips.
Trust Martine to make it about the planes. Honestly.
Tomorrow she silently handed the small leather wallet filled with a single picture back to Martine who took it with a flush and a thank-you.
Martine didn't ask if she'd looked in it and Carolyn didn't offer a word of sympathy.
Neither would have liked it.
Arthur, bless him, shut up when Carolyn asked him too and didn't know what the grey picture meant anyway. She didn't let him pester Martine.
#
Douglas felt slightly cheated.
Not from Martine, no, God no.
Just...he'd had a son. A flesh and blood son for all of three minutes.
And he hadn't even known.
That was...
The worst thing about all this was that he had no right to feel like this. No right to mourn the child that had died about fifteen years before he even knew of him. Three minutes after being ripped from his mother.
But he could all too well imagine him. A sturdy lad with red curls, amused brown eyes and a shy smile. All that cocky charm and awkwardness in one package.
A room full of planes...because with Martine there was no way the boy wouldn't like aviation.
And Douglas would have missed it all.
Martine probably would never have come to MJN if their-her son had survived. Douglas would probably have never met her again, never even thought of those red curls and prissy mouth again.
The only reason he recalled that night even now was simply because he'd had to wine and dine her to entice her to come to his hotel room and because she had managed to fall off the bed at one point.
Otherwise he'd never have put the dots together when she mentioned a pilot who took her out for sushi as the father of her son.
She knew. She'd recognised him. But Douglas rather thought that was simply because she didn't have a habit of one-night stands so the nights couldn't all merge into one for her.
A son...
#
Martine sighed as the goose, not the last one (third to last actually), made the metal detecting machine bleep. She grinned, more in exasperation than cheeriness, and paid for it.
Now was the unpleasant business of waiting for the bird to...well, give her the ring back.
She was going to wash it copiously before putting it back on her finger. Her dad's signet ring was too precious to lose.
Carolyn sighed too but not really in an angry fashion despite the fact it was well past sunset. They would have to wait before leaving in the morning.
At least Carolyn had got her sheep.
Martine glanced at her watch and froze.
"You alright Skip?" Arthur asked, still looking far too excited to be playing with the glorified metal detector.
Her neck unfroze and she raised her head giving a short nod.
"Hmmm? Yes. Fine. I'm fine. Absolutely fine. Fine."
"Yes because you always repeat the word 'fine' four times when you are in fact fine." Douglas said, raising an eyebrow.
Martine glanced around the deserted airstrip before looking at the three people looking at her with various amounts of exasperated-concern.
Her always-colleagues and most-of-the-time-friends.
She smiled.
"I'm fine." She said more firmly.
"Well, if the Captain is sure..." Douglas drawled dubiously.
She smiled, real amusement touching her when she once again saw the, now rather damp and bedraggled, stuffed sheep and goose tucked under Arthur's arm while he petted its head.
The 12th of October was just another day...
(And this one had been spent being attacked by geese, thrown out a taxi due to something Carolyn had said for once, attacked by bees – hey, bee stings hurt – falling out of said tree, towing round a fluffy monstrosity that had once been a living breathing sheep and then scanning each and every individual goose in hopes of finding the one that swallowed her dads ring...
Well, she couldn't say her life was uneventful.)
#
'Ryan Douglas Crieff. Mummy's little Albatross, you soared too high for me to reach.'
Ryan XFR-1 Fireball. Douglas A-2D Skyshark.
The planes for which Martine named her son.
(There were lots of Douglas ones but I thought Skyshark just fit. And I wanted a normal name, so Ryan it was. Rather than Lockheed.)
(And yes, there was a line from Harry Potter. I couldn't resist.)