Legal Disclaimer: Lost not mine, as usual.

Personal Disclaimer: I do know where I am going with this. But next time, would you please remind me to actually plot out my story before I start to write? It's like cooking rice, you start with a tiny kernal and it just keeps growing and growing and growing...


Static

There is piercing cold all around. Everything is white. White, and bathed in a restless fog that seems to be flowing backwards.

I float upon it, and for one perfect moment, I wonder if death has finally taken me. Not to heaven or hell, just to sweetly, blissfully dissolve in the blank insenscience of afterlife...

But no. I have not been finished.

"Master," whispers the man who but hours ago was a boy called Alex, "What is our task?" His thin, breathy wisp of a voice trembles, and suddenly, I am flooded with terrible, irrevocable, inconceivable feeling. I hate this thing, this once-child who rests against me cold and empty and drives me in this endless chase. The hatred seethes in me like acid, painful in it's sickening, swollen sweetness. And yet...

And yet I love him as well.

I love him as only a suffering soul can manage. I love him as one who wanders in the labyrinth of death and then discovers that he is not alone forever. He is my anchor, my armor. Even as he is my destruction, he embodies my savior.

This twin-bladed sword writhes within me, so irresistibly, awfully, brilliantly powerful that I cannot conceive of resistance. I burn for an action to alleviate this terrible acknowledgment. I would kill him, this sentient figure against me, in mercy and in vengeance, if only I had a form with which to do so.

And as I shift so slightly in the swell of emotion, I perceive for the first time that we have been bound together. Thousands upon thousands of gossamer golden threads encircle us from our necks to our ankles. I choke back horror as recognition of those strands thunders through me, and I suddenly, finally understand the role I have played in writing my own doom.

Blame swirls about me, vague and virulent. I shove it aside, refusing to drown in it's seething tides. I will follow this through. I will see my end.

Alex waits against me, still but for the occasional twitch of his spirit. Our very souls are inescapably sealed together, locked by the terrible destiny that will swallow us whole. Yet how different we are. His ignorance is what buoys him, what keeps him complete, while I float in the cresting of wave after wave of terrible understanding.

He wants to know, but there will be no answers given. He will know when he must, and not before. He cannot understand the finality, that there is no need for preparation or even for thought. Our actions are rote, blank fulfillments of Fate's eternal dictation.

And I will go as they wish, I have decided. But I will not go before.


A hard jerk. A violent twist.

Noise...

Then, color.


We are falling, falling too hard and too fast to pull out. The aircraft door is jammed. My knuckles are white, gripping the controls of the aircraft so hard that there are gouges in the thin rough leather.

"Mayday! Mayday!" I scream into the transmitter. "Itasca, do you copy? We have lost our destination target! Mayday!"

The only answer is the earsplitting shriek of empty, hopeless static.

The aircraft is spinning, whirling in a relentless tornado of sound and speed. I cannot even tell which direction we are plummeting. I twist every knob, savagely wrench every lever in a desperate attempt to right the plane before we crash. I can feel Freddie's gaze piercing my battered helmet. He doesn't cry out, but he twists around to grip my shoulder from behind. His touch is warm and solid, and blameless.

Hot, acid tears blind my eyes and burn my cheeks. Only 7,000 miles left, and we were going to die? All those endless years, those hot, painful, blood stained years , only to fail within sight of posterity?

"Around the world," people would say, "but 7,000 miles short."

A wail of grief tears my throat.

I curl into crash position and await the impact.