Jenn stumbled and almost fell as Michelle pushed her towards the door. She spun around to glare at Michelle, who looked slightly sheepish. "That really wasn't supposed to happen," Michelle muttered, in her own unique version of apology. Jenn said nothing; she suddenly found that her throat was very dry. She almost licked her lips, then remembered that would smear her lipstick. Like a savior, Michelle suddenly pushed a paper cup of water into her shaking hands; Jenn had no idea where it had come from. She drained it in three gulps as Michelle gently rubbed her back.

Jenn couldn't remember walking to meet her father. She remembered whispering, "Daddy," and locking her arms around him in a desperate hug, as though to grasp some shred of sanity in a world that was about to turn upside down. He patted her softly on the back, intimately understanding the futility of words in the moment. The music outside changed, and Jenn straightened, determined at least to look confident. She took a deep breath to calm herself, took the arm her father offered, and began to walk.

Rachael Leigh Cook was not a happy person. And when Rachael was not happy, the people around her tended to either make themselves scarce or suffer along with her. But at the moment, Rachael was looking for someone in particular. "Tobey!" she snapped, tearing a magazine page in half in her agitation. At least it wasn't the page.

Rachael looked around impatiently. "Tobey!" she yelled more loudly.

A man ambled in casually. Rachael glared, as though willing him to walk faster, but he moved so slowly it bordered on insolence. It was quite a scene: Rachael couldn't have been much more than five feet, and Tobey at least a foot taller, but Tobey had a healthy respect for Rachael. She didn't scare him, but some of the guys who worshiped the ground she walked on did make him nervous.

"Yeah?" he asked, annoyed. "I was busy. This better be good."

Rachael pushed the magazine into his hands. He stared at it. "Rachael. I am not going to read Cosmo. I don't know, it's just so… girly. And… well, I'm not. At least, I hope I'm not." Tobey wasn't normally a babbler, but he'd woken up twenty minutes before and had been trying to decipher a complicated television manual since; somehow he'd managed to get himself elected to set up the new television set in the rec room upstairs. It made him a bit groggy.

Rachael snatched the magazine back, acting a bit melodramatic in Tobey's opinion. She flipped to a marked page and threw it back at him. "Read it," she demanded. Her intensity was bothersome, Tobey decided. This was not one of her better moods. Cautiously, he looked down, afraid of what may have made Rachael go off like a bomb.

Tobey skimmed the page with his head cocked to one side. There was quite a bit about a celebrity marriage, but he didn't really care. The picture at the bottom caught his eye. It showed a man with longish brown hair and piercing eyes, with his arm around a bright-eyed young woman with red hair and soft hazel eyes. She was cute, Tobey decided. He could definitely get used to somebody like that. He glanced up and told as much to Rachael.

She sputtered, and Tobey sighed, wishing that once in a while he'd say the right thing. He didn't want to deal with an exceptionally angry Rachael at the moment. He needed to finish with the stupid television. He needed to go back to bed.

"Just tell me," he ordered, overly patiently. "Just tell me what the problem is so I can leave."

"That's Orlando Bloom," Rachael hissed.

Tobey looked again, mildly surprised. "So it is." He glanced up. "Your point?"

"Do you not remember me telling you I wanted to be with Orlando?"

Tobey closed his eyes briefly, struggling with annoyance. "And?"

"And now he's getting married!" Rachael yelped.

Tobey rubbed his temples. "I don't see the problem." It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it, but he could work Rachael up a bit. She always told him he was too cute to get rid of. Tobey wasn't sure what he thought of that, but it meant that as long as he didn't push Rachael too far, he could still live in this luxurious house of hers, with plenty of room and free food. Tobey was a sucker for free food.

"We have to do something about this," Rachael declared.

Tobey was only mildly surprised by this suggestion. He regarded Rachael thoughtfully, but warily. He'd always suspected that madness ran in that family. Sometimes dealing with Rachael was like walking on eggshells. It was just better not to try it at all.

"And what are we going to do about this?" he asked, curious.

"We have to stop that wedding."

Jenn focused every fiber of her being on putting one foot in front of the other. Right, left, right, left, right-left-right-left. It was such a long walk. She was afraid to look up, afraid that her fear of this crazy thing she was doing would be echoed in Orli's eyes, because that would just shatter the calm she was working so hard to maintain.

They'd opted for an outdoor wedding, deciding that June in New York offered weather that was just too perfect to pass up. It was in a rather spacious grove of plants Jenn would never be able to identify by name. There were pretty trees that boasted all sorts of fruits, and bushes that glimmered with flowers, and grass still glistening with morning dew. Orli had insisted on a rich red carpet to lead up to the portable, but very tasteful, altar they'd set up for the occasion. Jenn had thought it rather silly, but as she stared at her strappy white shoes, she knew they would never have survived the wet grass without stains.

Jenn was suddenly very aware of her surroundings. She saw Michelle, gorgeous in a forest green bridesmaid's dress, walking slowly in front of her, seemingly without a care in the world. She felt her father's arm around hers and heard her ragged breath and the birds chirping all around her. Jenn experienced a moment of dizziness, unable to take in everything she was feeling in all its intensity.

She looked up.

Orli was waiting for her eyes to meet his. He smiled when he saw her. He did not, as Jenn had so feared, look uncertain. Orli looked like he knew exactly what he was doing. Jenn felt mildly jealous of his cool collectedness, until she realized that watching him made her feel more confident in her own decision to walk down this makeshift aisle and say "I do" to the man she loved.

Rachael whipped out a map and spread it on the table. It was all very comical, like a general explaining battle tactics, and Tobey would have laughed, but for once he kept his opinion to himself. Let Rachael do what she wanted, so long as it didn't involve him… or so he figured.

In fact, Rachael wanted him to "detain" Jennifer so she could "detain" Orlando and convince him to fall madly in love with her. It sounded a bit dubious, but then Tobey was never all that interested in Evil Schemes and Very Cunning Plans. For all he knew it could be brilliant, although he was fairly sure kidnapping was a felony. He pointed this out.

Rachael took a moment to glare at him. "Did I say kidnap?"

Tobey started to explain what he thought was quite obvious.

Rachael interrupted. "Did you hear me say the word 'kidnap'?"

"No, but…" he started.

"I never said anything about kidnapping," Rachael told him decisively. "I said 'detain.' Point out where the law says you can't detain a person. Kidnapping is nabbing a kid. We're not nabbing kids. We're detaining."

"It's the same-" he protested.

"No," she snapped. "It's not. Don't question me."

Tobey sighed. Sometimes it was just easier to go along with Rachael, no matter how whacked she seemed. "What do you want me to do?"

It was a walk that lasted forever.

To Orli, it passed in an instant. He savored every moment he was able to watch his wife-to-be take little baby steps down the aisle. He smiled as he watched her, so intent on doing this thing called marriage right. He blessed the loose hairs that rebelled against her sleek French twist and swirled in the wind to rest in little tendrils against her face.

The wind picked up without warning. In the distance there was a sound of helicopters.

Rachael enlisted the help of four of her latest boyfriends, all of them big and burly. Within minutes she had a fifth boyfriend on the phone, promising that he could loan her two helicopters. Rachael had many boyfriends, and none of them minded sharing her. All of them minded Tobey and his questionable relationship, so to speak, with her.

"Tobey!" Rachael yelled, and he snapped to attention, feeling very much like a soldier about to go into battle.

"Yeah?" he asked, determined at least to sound irritable. It wasn't hard. Tobey was irritated. He wanted nothing to do with this.

Rachael singled out two of her boyfriends, by the names of Dan and Ryan. Tobey found these to be rather common names, and immediately decided his more unusual name made him superior. Tobey was rather cranky; the television still was not working, and he'd literally rolled out of bed at five in the morning when Rachael had declared a "state of emergency" and summoned everyone to the dining room, where her plans were laid out on the table.

"I found out last night that the wedding has been moved to this morning," she announced to the room at large. She paused, clearly waiting for a reaction, which never came. Apparently Rachael was the only one who cared. She ploughed on, "I don't care what it takes, I want this wedding stopped. So…" Here she took a deep breath, prepping herself to say something that even she found difficult. "We have to move now. Tobey, Dan and Ryan, I want you to take one of the helicopters Javier loaned me. Do whatever you need to do to eliminate Jennifer from the picture, short of actual murder. I mean, don't hurt the girl, just get her out of the way. Got it?" She didn't wait for a reaction. "Alex and Dean," she said, naming two of her oldest and most faithful boyfriends. "I want you to do the same to Orlando. Bring him back here as soon as possible. I'll be watching and waiting."

Tobey groaned inaudibly. This was wonderful. The Plan, as Rachael had taken to calling it, and you could just hear the capital letters in her voice, had originally been to run into Jennifer while she was out or whatever, and… Tobey wasn't sure exactly what he was supposed to do. Rachael was going to convince Orlando to accompany her back to her house for dinner or something, and go from there. She was pretty dependent on her charm, and admittedly she was very cute, but charm could wear thin, and few people knew this as well as Tobey. It had always been ridiculous to him. Why Orlando Bloom was the only person Rachael wanted when she had so many boyfriends, Tobey didn't know. But if it interfered with his life, he cared a lot.

Tobey was not a vicious person. He wasn't even cruel. But somehow, Rachael had intrigued him when they'd first met, and he'd stayed with her for a while. Eventually he grew annoyed with her insatiable need for more and more boyfriends, but still he'd stuck around. Rachael was interesting; you never knew what she would do from one moment to the next. Tobey was afraid to double-cross her, had been afraid from the start to back out of The Plan, for the simple reason that he was content with their relationship, whatever that was, and did not want to jeopardize his life when he was working so hard to find stability after box office burns on multiple movies that affected him personally.

He realized Rachael was talking again and forced himself back to the present. Dwelling on hard memories did him no good. He followed Dan and Ryan outside, relishing the warm breeze on his face and thinking sadly of all the things he would rather be doing.

Unbidden, an image conjured itself up in his mind, of a slender, pretty young woman with fiery red hair and warm hazel eyes filled with laughter. He didn't want to daunt that happiness. But Rachael was glaring at him, rather suspicious, and Tobey sighed quietly. He glared right back, took a deep breath, and stepped up into the helicopter, feeling both ridiculous and sad.

After what seemed like hours, Jennifer realized the altar was drawing closer. She was too afraid to look up for some reason, as though afraid to see her uncertainty reflected in Orli's eyes. She'd already looked up once, and now she was keeping her eyes on her shoes, trying not to cry, although she could not fathom why she would have any desire to. But she was suddenly getting the sense that everything was wrong. She couldn't even hear the orchestra over the noises of the helicopters, which for some reason were skimming the tops of the trees. Jenn could see them now, and though she knew nothing about aerodynamics, she was very much afraid they were going to crash right in the middle of the wedding.

Some of the guests seem to have noticed the same thing and were half-risen from their chairs, afraid that departing would mortally offend the bride and groom, but at the same time fearing for their lives. But even as the guests debated what to do, the helicopters landed a short distance away, in empty field.

Jennifer breathed a sigh of relief, but something still seemed wrong. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the helicopters, from which half a dozen large and rather ominous-looking men had filed out. She froze as they headed towards the wedding area, racking her brains as she tried to remember if she and Orli had any friends who were pilots, wore masks and carried semiautomatics, but somehow she didn't think so. She wanted to move, but her feet would not obey her screaming mind. So, she simply did not move as she watched the men draw nearer and nearer. She did not duck when one of them pulled his gun and waved it in the air, pointing it threateningly at random people. She did not cry in surprise when one vaguely familiar man came up and took her arm, rather politely, and spoke softly to her, and led her to the helicopter, managing to be both gentle and forceful.

She saw it all in slow motion, as though she were in a dream. It was like one of those dreams where the sleeper is aware of the unreality, but with no real control over the events. But then, in such a dream, it hardly matters what happens, because the sleeper knows that wakefulness follows the nightmares, no matter how bad. Such was Jenn's interpretation of the events that unfolded before her eyes. She saw Orli being pulled into the other helicopter, and felt hands pushing her into a corner in the helicopter, and heard voices yelling, but she couldn't take it all in. This wasn't real. The wedding hadn't begun yet. Soon she would be waking up, laughing at her silly nightmare and shaking it off.

Dimly, very dimly, she realized the helicopter was lifting off. She wanted to jump, could still make it and perhaps only twist an ankle, but it seemed a small price to pay. But, stunned, she found she still had no control over her movements. A figure walked up to her, bent down and pressed a cool cloth against her face. It smelled terrible, and Jenn tried to pull her head away, but found that she could only manage to back into the wall just behind her. Jennifer remembered little else except for the helicopter spinning crazily, and not just from the sudden motion. The world was growing darker… or perhaps she was just used to the brilliant June sun outside? She felt all at once that there was a considerable lack of air… she sucked it in, but her lungs still burned as though on fire… and her head ached from fear and sudden fatigue… Somehow Jenn couldn't work out what was going on… and the images in front of her eyes swam, and then faded altogether….