It took less than a week for Emma to realize how different her dreams of blue skies and fast planes were from the reality of the fighter program. Her dreams were speed and belonging and streaks of clouds 30,000 feet up, but this...this was Major Nolan's voice saying this isn't going to be easy. This was stacks of paper to read and monotonous tasks to test how committed they all were to being here. This was walking past hulking cargo planes and arrow-sleek jets every day while her feet stayed firmly on the ground, with page after page of the CF-18 manual dancing behind her eyelids when she tried to fall asleep. This was a carrot dangled in front of her nose when she was so close.
But today was going to change all that.
It had been two weeks since her first day here and every one had been packed with everything but flying. Objectively she knew that even she wouldn't let herself up in a multi-million dollar jet without some kind of baseline knowledge, but more than once in these past two weeks she had heard those jets scream off the runway with someone else at the controls and she knew she hadn't earned this, not yet, but oh did she want it. So needless to say this particular morning dragged on with the promise of their test on the manual so close on the horizon. It was Friday and if Major Nolan's comment two weeks ago wasn't enough confirmation that today was the day, Emma had seen him walking around with a stack of papers that she just knew were what was standing between her and the sky.
She wasn't, of course, the only one who felt the impending deadline hot on her heels.
"I'm glad you were so concerned with my place in my class considering this is how you deal with a test."
This was because the first thing she saw when she walked into the training room was Killian Jones on the couch with the thick manual balanced on his knees, his nose practically buried in it.
The past two weeks hadn't changed much for her about Killian. Between studying and work and only having a few moments to herself every day, she hadn't learned much about him that she didn't already know. What she saw of him during training was a faultlessly confident stereotype of a fighter pilot - loud voice filling the training room, eyebrows all over his face whether they needed to be or not, and a hand that shot up whenever a question was asked of the group that he knew the answer to. It didn't help her opinion of him that he was almost always right.
"A little revision never hurt anyone." He said without looking up.
"I'm pretty sure revision doesn't look quite so frantic."
"We'll see who's laughing when I beat you."
"Keep dreaming." She shot him a sarcastic smile he didn't see and sat on the corner of the desk across from him. "What are you looking at?"
Killian tilted the book towards her and she frowned, his tight expression suddenly making perfect sense, and even she couldn't joke about this. The small section of violent red pages he was showing her was intimidating by look alone, but it was the contents that were the real problem: a dozen pages of critical protocols that they had to know by heart.
Critical protocols that, if they got enough wrong, could end their careers before they even started.
"Yeah." Killian took her silence for the understanding it was, his voice more serious than she had ever heard it. "I mean, I do know them, but..."
"They aren't something you want to take a chance with." She said. "I get it."
He just hummed in return, his fingers still skimming the text, and she watched him for a moment. This was a different Killian Jones than the one she had heard so many rumours about, this person who mouthed information to himself as he read, whose foot tapped gently against the couch cushion as his fingers skimmed the pages, whose smile tugged at the corners of his mouth when he got something right. This was also a different person than the one whose eyes had burned with competition in the records room that first day, who had introduced himself and challenged her in the same breath.
This was a different person entirely, and for the first time she could see how he had gotten so far.
"So you're telling me," He said suddenly, eyes snapping up to hers, "That you're so confident in all this that we have an hour free before the test that may very well define our future here and you're not using it? I thought cocky flyboys weren't your thing."
"I never said that." She straightened a little at the sudden change in tone, his voice sharper and more of a challenge that it had been even that first day, betraying the tension he was clearly trying to hide.
"You didn't have to." He arched an eyebrow, daring her to contradict him, and damn him for being right. "So what is it? You've got some secret in that the rest of us don't?"
"Maybe I just know how to manage my own time." She said. Her gaze was hard and as much of a challenge as his was, and it slammed walls up around the truth of the matter: the long nights she had spentjust as hunched over the manual as he was now, the unending march of facts and the self-doubt they inspired, the constant shift between you've got this and you will never know this, and, more than anything else, the paralyzing fear that this would be the end of the road for her.
She would have been studying too if the sheer thought of the testso closemade it hard for her to breathe.
He looked at her strangely for a moment and she thought, impossibly, that he could see everything she wasn't saying. But instead he just nodded once and said, "Well how about you try and manage testing me, if you're so sure of yourself?"
"Isn't that supposed to be up to you?" She asked, but moved to sit on the couch by his feet and accepted the thick binder anyways. Something had settled in those moments, the air not quite as thick anymore, and nothing felt strange about sitting down next to him even though there were so many things about Killian Jones she still wanted to avoid.
"Aren't we all supposed to be a team?" He retuned, waving his hand in the air to vaguely encompass the rest of the absentee trainees, arching a deft eyebrow.
"Competition or team." She countered. "You can't have it both ways. Now shut up and tell me the procedure for landing gear failure."
Writing the test had been bad but - as Emma learned several hours later, packed into the training room with seventeen other people just as anxious to hear how they'd done as she was - waiting was worse. The three hours they'd been given to write had seemed like so much time before Major Nolan had set the test down in front of them - the test that was so thick it made a muted thump on the desk when he did. Those hours had passed in no time at all, shooting by faster than she could write, but they had also crept because Emma knew the answers, she did, but she'd been searching for them in a maze built of doubt. She was thinking about it now, about every answer she had filled out a little too hastily because she had spent too much time fighting the part of herself that said she didn't know any of this and would never make it here.
That in itself was exhausting and the waiting wasn't making it any better.
Emma knew she wasn't the only one who was nervous. Major Nolan had said that a pass was 85 percentbut results were usually95 or higher. Everyone here was the best - they had to be to get this far - but that meant that the standard was higher and that here, the best was just average. Will and Leroy, who had torn up Moose Jaw in their first stage of training, all loud and cocky and talented, were uncharacteristically subdued. Emma herself was absolutely silent. It was only Ruby and Killian who were making any noise, and even that was muted. Soft as it was, Emma envied their quiet conversation because it spoke to a confidence she just didn't have. She envied Ruby in particular for more than just thatbecause in this world they were an aberration just for being women and Emma knew that the kind of confidence seeping off of Ruby would do far more for her in the long run than the silence and fear and defensiveness that Emma couldn't help but cling to.
Her gaze drifted down to the carpet beneath her feet and she glared at it. Every time she looked over at Ruby, at Killian, at everyone who knew what they were doing and knew that they belonged here, she couldn't help but remind herself how much she didn't. It was a habit she really needed to break.
There was a tap on the doorframe and her eyes snapped up to Major Nolan as he came into the room. He didn't waste any time with small talk, wordlessly dropping their completed tests in front of each of them. Ringing the room as he was, Emma was one of the last he reached and the oppressive silence of the room - papers shuffling and words muttered under breath as everyone looked over their results - was almost too much.
Worse still, though, was when Major Nolan reached Emma but didn't drop a stack of paper on the desk in front of her, instead waiting until her eyes came up to meet his, then inclining his head towards the door in a clear motion for her to follow him out.
She was sure she stopped breathing entirely as she stood, trying to pretend that seventeen sets of eyes weren't glued to her back, that they didn't know what this meant as clearly as she did.
He waited until they were out of earshot of the training room before he turned, walking backwards so he could look at her withan undercurrent of understanding in his gaze as he said, "You missed one of the red page questions."
There was always a moment just before takeoff when Emma's heart dropped into her stomach, a rush of anticipation hollowing out her chest and cementing her in place as she picked up speed and left the ground. Major Nolan's words had the same effect, except this time it wasn't excitement and eagerness opening up that space behind her ribs, it was cold dread and a looming sense of loss she knew all too well.
He ushered her into his office and nudged the door shut behind them, leaning on the edge of his desk as he glanced down at her test. "Dual bleed." He said. "Tell me about it. What's the protocol?"
Emma's heart sank even further because she knew this. Dual bleeds could cause fires and engine damage so of course she knew this, and what's more she could remember this question on the test itself. She could practically see it on the page, but she could also feel the same overwhelming rush in her mind that she had when she was writing, the fear that had followed her into the room, the cold certainty that this was going to be the end of the road for her, the permeating thought that she would never even get up in the air. She remembered talking herself down during this part of the test, could remember thinking that she just needed to breathe and stop psyching herself out, could remember writing an answer she had thought was right but hadn't known.
She started speaking - saying the answer she knew, and had known all along - and in her mind she could see one word crossed out on her test, replaced with another, and she could remember wondering right up until Major Nolan had walked into the training room whether she had made the right choice.
"Land the jet as soon as possible." She finished. Possible, not practical - the word she had crossed out, not the one she had kept.
"That's it." Major Nolan nodded resolutely and Emma just stared at him. One verbal answer couldn't be it. There was something else coming - a dismissal, disappointment, something. There had to be. But he just cocked his head slightly and said, "You got it. One wrong answer, you deliver it verbally. Two, you would have had to re-write the red pages, but you're good. The rest of your test was fine." He handed the thick collection of pages over and gave her a small grin. "Don't look so terrified. Everyone makes mistakes here. Learn from them and you'll get there, alright?"
"Yes, sir." She bobbed a nod and god she felt stupid getting a virtual pep talk from one of their instructors, but she also felt like she might fall over because now relief was chasing through her, fighting with the sheer anger that was still there and only growing now that her worry about getting kicked out was dissipating, and she had known the answer and had just gotten in her own way. Again. "Thank you, Major Nolan."
"You can call me David, you know. I'm your training officer, not a troll."
"Yes, sir." A corner of her mouth tugged up in a grin despite herself. "Thank you, David."
"It's my job." He offered her that same understanding smile and waved a hand at the door, pushing off the desk and sinking into the chair in front of it. "Get back out there, Emma. We'll see you tomorrow."
She thought that everyone else would have left the training room as soon as they had gotten their tests, but when she got back they were still there, all flicking through the pages and trading answers back and forth. The room was louder now, full of their collective relief, and it sounded exactly how Emma didn't feel - too light and nearly jubilant for her thoughts that were darker, heavier, and filled with an endless list of everything she had done wrong and everything she should have done differently.
One set of eyes flicked up to hers as soon as she walked in - blue, set under an already-quirked eyebrow - and Killian left Ruby talking to Will to wind his way over to the door, his voice raised slightly to ask, "Hey, we're all going out for drinks to celebrate. You in?"
It would be Killian who would propose drinks even though the next morning was going to be as early and packed as the rest had been. He looked so happy, though - everyone did - that she almost said yes. She had passed after all, if only just, and a small part of her said that Major...David was right - that everyone made mistakes and that she should let herself fall into the group's collective relief, let herself revel in the lingering sound of tomorrow. Tomorrow, which she got because she was still here, had still made it.
Yes was on her lips but as she looked up at Killian she caught a snapshot of the room and suddenly all she could see was seventeen people who belonged here, seventeen people who had what it took, and her.
"Nah." She shot him what she hoped was a casual grin, picking an empty water bottle that was probably hers off the table behind the door and holding it up like it was any kind of excuse. "I've got some stuff to go over. You know. Just came back for this."
"I'm sure you can spare an hour," He said. "We've all been working hard for weeks now - we earned this."
"Yeah." She said, and wondered if he heard not all of us in her voice. "I just can't tonight. Thanks, though."
"Suit yourself." There was something off about the way he said it, his tone a little too heavy and his eyes a little too serious, but she backed out into the hall before she could notice any more. "Congrats, though. Guess you're not going to be as hard to beat as I thought."
"As if." She muttered under her breath, and she could see the words on his lips to ask her to clarify but she was halfway down the hall now, Killian leaning in the doorway so he could still see her as she - not ran, but... "Have fun."
"You too." She could see the shape of the words but the sound was lost in the distance between them, and if there was something uncertain in the way waved after her, she didn't stick around long enough to figure out why.