Late
A/N: What is this? I dun even...Just kidding. This is a little ficlet, a fluffy scrap of drabble-y floop that my mind brewed at three in the morning. Enjoy.
Down, down, down she went. The wind screamed piercingly by her ears as she dropped. The controls, the wheel, the emergency radio had all gone berserk due to the magnetism of being up so high. Hers was the world's first airship, and it was soon to be gone, deceased. Dead.
Her hands fumbled with the wheel, trying to regain control of her ship, her eyes stung with tears, she kept losing her balance on the deck.
She wished that she had not made that promise to Setzer, because it seemed she was going to be rather late now.
"I'm going to be the first woman to touch the stars! Just you watch!"
"Ha ha ha! Alright! Then make sure to meet me at our special place!"
"Sure thing!" Then she shot ahead, her engines running full throttle into the evening air, cutting through the crisp fall mist, sailing through clouds as if it were a ship on the water. She felt beyond words as she flew, crying out with joy as she went higher and higher.
Against her will, the ship's wheel spun pellmell, out of control, bruising her hands and arms as she tried to catch one of the knobs to pull the opposite way.
"Agh!" She shouted, angry that she was going to go like this. She slammed a fist down on a button on her panel, only to smash it in two, a spring curling out of the hole was now visible. Her radio sputtered white noise, refusing stubbornly to get any reception at all.
An explosion issued from above her, smoke billowed out of one of the enormous balloons.
"Godsdammit! Damn hydrogen tanks going out on me now!" Her head snapped up at the large hole burning through the balloon's material, seeing fire moving rapidly out to catch flame with the deck.
This caused her to fall faster, yet she was so high up, making the fall seem like hours, decades, centuries long as the flames ate the wood, and burned the steel girders.
Giving up, she ran to the deck's railing, clinging to it as the fire broke the flooring into pieces, cracking and breaking apart.
"The world hasn't fallen so fast before..." She whispered to only herself as she watched the ground get closer and closer.
Below decks on the Falcon, Setzer climbed into bed next to me, his long hair shining like stardust, his skin masked in a sheen of sweat, chill bumps cropping up on his forearms and legs due to the open window.
He kissed me softly, "Hello love," He breathed.
"Hello," I purred back, drunk on my post pleasure bliss, and on his scent.
"Here's your water, with ice and lemon, just like you always have it," He said handing a tall tumbler of spring water to me. I take it carefully and sip slowly. I always get thirsty after we make love, as if he drains me dry from all the passion. I share some, offering the glass to him. He smiles into the glass.
"Setzer?"
"Hmm?" He muffles, still drinking.
"What would you do without me? I'm not asking to be arrogant or anything. I'm just curious." I gaze at his gray eyes considering the question, how they sparkle just so in the moonlight.
"That's a very morbid question my love, what makes you think of it?"
"I was just thinking about the future is all. If you were to die, I would lose a huge piece of my heart along with you. It would be buried, waiting until I died too, then we would reunite in death."
"You've been thinking rather hard on this subject, huh?"
I nod, smiling a little. He was never the one to think about serious matters. His nature was always carefree and untroubled. He smiled back, at my question, and at my answer, knowing I was not just being a hopeful romantic.
"I would lose a piece of my heart too, and soul, if they really are separate. I would refuse to love again. I would never look at another female the same way I've looked upon you again. I would try holding on to anything that reminded me of you." I cupped his cheeks in my small hands, now looking straight into his eyes.
"I would wait too, for your soul to meet mine in death." I leaned my lips into his, into the kind of kiss that causes you to shake, quiver, the kind of kiss that leaves you gasping for air, the kind that makes you feel like you don't want to be doing anything else at all but kiss your love forever.
Memories flashed across her mind in a dizzying frenzy as the ground rushed to her ship. Setzer's hair tickling her face as he stooped down for a kiss. Meeting and holding hands in their special place on the hill while watching the clouds soar by. Teaching each other card tricks and other sleight of hand in their room at the inn. Giggling at Setzer when bolts started attacking him from the pressure gauges being set too high.
It finally crashed, throwing pieces of the airship every which way, the last tanks exploded, sending hellfire to torch the surrounding area.
As she lay on the ground, crumpled and broken with burnt skin and matted golden hair singed, she watched the sky pass overhead. The stars were still out, and the moon was waning.
"I'm going to be the first woman to touch the stars! Just you watch!"
"I did. I touched the stars, and fell like a bird struck by lightning. I touched the stars Setzer, just for you."
"Ha ha ha! Alright! Then make sure to meet me at our special place!"
"I think I'm going to be late..."
"Daryl, do you know how much I love you?"
"As much as I love you?"
"With my heart and soul and the sky?"
"With my heart and soul and the sky!"
"Please, don't leave me."
"I won't, I promise. Please don't leave me alone either?"
"Of course. I couldn't think of leaving you all alone."
She blinked painfully, causing tears to well up and stream down her blackened cheeks, "I'm so sorry...I'm going...to be late."