* I don't own Jane and the Dragon or its characters
Another modern fic, hope you'll get who I'm talking about. Ask questions of you'd like, I'll answer them. And thanks again to SunRise19, who's comments give me great encouragement. Hope you'll enjoy!
Every moment on the ground was like death without choices.
My plane, Coppertop, has not been fit for flying for at least twelve years. After the crash in Jethro's barn, I had felt a part of myself was missing. My friends were the skies, the air, and the clouds above, the only family that ever mattered. And then, in a head numbing moment, they were gone. And for twelve years, I was punished, and left to live a terribly dull life. Twelve years were the sourness of complacency.
Working at The Cave night club as a bouncer had been a bore, watching all those short lives of walking flesh, with their drunken chatter and lovey-dovey nonsense, what rubbish. My days spent in wasteful sleep, but they were never empty. Dreams were a solace, they were a forgiving consequence. How I've dreamed of parading the skies, and waving at Laputa and laughing at those intellectual fools. Why walking is too plain, flying would be more then a dream, it would be life itself.
I waited, waited many years for my chance to come. And yet, I could never reach that opportunity, not until I met her. I was outside The Cave as usual when she approached and I felt apprehensive when she asked me questions about my past, about my days as a movie stunt man. We fought a little, but after a while we sort of clicked and after several similar meetings we became friends.
As we got to know each other, I told her of my past. Where I was born I don't remember, I knew that I used to live with a family of fire breathers; who swallowed and spit fire. When I was old enough, at least old enough to know better, I left; since it made me realize I didn't like the human race, and that my true wish was to fly. With the money I had saved over the years I learned to fly, and after some practice I was quite good. Movie studios took notice of me and saw my potential, so I worked in the movie business for a while. Everything changed the day when I crashed into that barn and was in a coma. When I woke,I had forgotten myself, and who I was. I had to start over, and slowly I regained part of my memory, but something at that time had been missing.
When I met her things were different, and I changed.
A young girl, twenty-four years old, too young for me I had to say, but she was my friend. I was dead, but she woke something up. She was as honest as could be, stubborn in every right, but loyal in a proper sense. We talked of our work as protectors in a way, and she showed me the possibilities of what I could be. We had common interests and there were times when others frowned upon us for being different; I was thirty years her senior, but sometimes it felt as though she was the older one. I was light, giddy, and bubbled over with life. Picnics, hikes, and travel wasn't beyond our reach. We could almost reach that world, the place of my remembrance, but It wasn't enough. She knew the struggles, the pains I carried of uncertainty, but she never left my side. What a stubborn creature she was, so alive, so wonderfully made, I could swear she was a bird herself.
I decided that I could start over with this life of mine, a life with her, something lasting. Putting away some of my hopes, I sold my damaged plane, which was worth more for its parts then as a whole. I don't know what I was waiting for, but it was like I could move forward having her with me. With her help, I got Coppertop 2, and I flew the skies again. Happiness was never the skies, but it was in me and it was her, and the death trap which we flew in like imitators. Though there was new life in the skies now, it was clearer, warmer and sweeter then birth. This time it was us, with the air and the wind as a witness of our love of the skies, and I was never the same again; for no flies higher then me and Jane, no one flies higher.