Author's Note: I apologize profusely for any grammatical errors; I usually read it over multiple times, but I'm afraid if I do that I'll be tempted to edit... I'm still terribly behind, huzzah. Anyway, enjoy.
Chapter Four
"Oh, Christine," mock-sighed Meg, clinging to her friend wildly, shaking with repressed laughter. "Oh, Christine, don't leave me; what ever shall I do without you?"
Christine grinned, patting Meg awkwardly on the back as she made eye contact with Raoul, obviously trying his best not to burst out laughing. She rolled her eyes at the both of them, heaving an exasperated sigh. "I'll be back in two months, Meg, I've been gone for much longer before."
"But never to such a remote locale! What if you get eaten? Kidnapped by savages? Abducted by aliens?! Who will pay the rent, then, hmm? I'll be homeless! Would you put me out on the street so easily?"
Christine laughed outright, blushing a little because of all the attention Meg was generating from the rest of her team and other bystanders in the terminal. "Meg, get up. I know you're proud that you're in theater, but honestly…"
Meg gave her a mischievous grin, one that Christine was by now very accustomed to seeing light up the face and eyes of her friend and roommate. "That was rather good, wasn't it? I should have put a cap on the ground or something, could have earned some extra income, seeing as I'll truly be a starving artist soon." She surveyed the crowd, whispering conspiratorially, "How do you think they'd take to me dancing, eh, Christine? If I would have known, I would have brought my Pointe shoes."
"Oh, you're hopeless," she laughed, turning to Raoul. "You put her up to this, didn't you?"
He held his hands in front of him, looking a little sheepish, but only for show. "Guilty as charged, I'm afraid."
She smiled widely, pulling him close and kissing him, ending up lingering quite a bit longer at his lips than she had originally intended. He held her close.
"Be safe, Christine," he whispered in French, his lips brushing against the top of her head.
"I will, I promise," she replied in English. "The two months will be gone before you know it, you'll see."
He nodded, letting her go, albeit reluctantly. "I know." He gestured towards her crew, waiting at the terminal gates. "You should go."
She swallowed the unanticipated sob building in her throat, vowing to herself in her head that she would not cry, not here, not now. "Right," she said, shouldering her pack and taking a few steps forward.
"Au revoir," called Meg; Christine turned around, only to find her friend waving a handkerchief—where on earth had she gotten a handkerchief?—at her.
"Terminal Six, your plane is now boarding," a cool, female voice called out over the intercom, echoing through the small airport structure.
Christine suddenly stopped in her tracks; before her, her colleagues stepped through the gate escorted by a security guard. Behind her, she knew, stood her best friend and her fiancé, watching her back as the distance between her and pair of them gradually grew with each hesitant step.
She took a deep breath, wanting to turn around, a queer feeling, weighing down her stomach, like lead; who knew when the next time she would truly see them would be, if ever? She knew Meg's earlier comments had been in jest, but what if…
Finally making it to the gate, she caught Oliver's glance; he was bringing up the rear, half-heartedly shuffling along very much like she was. As she hesitated to walk through the gate, he approached her.
"Second thoughts?" he asked under his breath.
"Not quite so much as agitation over not being sure when I'll see them next," she confessed. Christine wasn't sure what it was about Oliver that always made her want to bear her soul to him, but she found that he was the easiest to talk to out of all of the members of her team.
He nodded sagely, a grave sobriety punctuating his features for once. "Technically, you haven't stepped through the gates yet…"
This was true; Christine was quite literally perched almost in the exact middle of the gateway, not quite in it, but not quite through it, either. Confused, she looked to him, her eyes asking what exactly he meant.
In silent reply, he nodded again, extending a hand; her eyes immediately lit up as she handed him her pack, flying back to two of her closest, most dear friends, embracing them both in one last goodbye.
After all, when it came to life and regret, there were no second chances.
-----
"You all right?"
Christine looked up from her book, the loud hum of the propellers as they hurtled through the air sounding in her ears. "I'm fine, Oliver, thank you."
Thomas turned around in his seat, cocking his head to the side, his cowboy hat shifting a little, as it was too big for him. "You don't look it."
"First plane trip," she explained, her mouth dry. She licked her lips and lowered her eyes to her book again; she needed to focus on something else other than the unsettling fact that they were currently hundreds of feet in the air over the open ocean.
"Ah, I see," said Oliver, warming up to the subject. He took the empty seat next to his team leader, smiling broadly. "Did I ever tell you gents about my first plane trip?"
Christine saw faces as the rest of her team and a few other minor members of the expedition turned to look at them in interest. She raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms and clearing her throat, looking pointedly at Oliver.
"Oh… and lady," he amended.
"Much better," she replied, smiling at him.
"Well, my first trip was about ten years ago; I was only twenty at the time," he began his story, his eyes coming to life, expressive in their hazel depths. Not more than a dozen or so words had come out of his mouth, yet she already found herself entranced.
"I was with my father, and he was scheduled to do a routine fly over a vacant field for a training exercise; he was contracted to the military at the time, and he knew I was interested, so took me along with him.
"Things were going swell for the first fifteen minutes up in the air; I had never felt so free in my life, to tell you the truth, and we just kept climbing higher and higher and higher; I felt so dizzy with excitement that I thought I would positively burst at the seams."
"But that wasn't it, was it," interrupted Doctor Flynn. "You were losing oxygen."
"Ah, that's the rub, as the Bard would say, Bobbie," continued Oliver, ignoring Flynn's wince at the name the younger man had taken to calling him, though out of affection or annoyance he could never be sure. "Yes, indeed: we were losing oxygen."
"What happened?" asked Simon, his baritone voice slicing through some side conversations and the hum of the plane easily enough.
Oliver waved him off impatiently, though obviously in jest. "I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Really, Simon, you have got about as much patience as a three year old."
There were collective chuckles and Simon straightened up in his seat. "I hope you are aware," he said primly, though a glint very much akin to Oliver's entered his eyes, "that this now means war."
"Ooh, Thomas is shaking in his ridiculous boots," he quipped back, which garnered another round of laughter.
"Now, boys," chided Christine with a smile. "Play nice…"
"Yes, Mother," said Flynn with a smirk.
"All right, all right! Doesn't anyone want me to finish my story?" Oliver struggled to regain the attention he once held, finally recapturing his audience after a few moments of scattered conversation and laughter.
"Finish it, then," murmured Jonathon, sitting back in his seat, his arms crossed in front of his chest; Christine noticed that he seemed to not be in the best of spirits. Perhaps the plane was getting to him as well.
"Excellent suggestion, my man, thanks very much." Oliver grinned at Jonathon as he sat up straighter, his green eyes quite wide; he obviously had not expected anyone to hear him.
"Well, as it turns out, we lost so much oxygen, that…"
Christine leaned forward in her seat, her nerves on edge. She reflected idly that with his charisma and personality he would have made an excellent actor; perhaps she might introduce him to Meg…
"…That?" was the general response.
"The pilot wasn't wearing his mask, so he passed out. All of a sudden, we felt a shift in direction, and we began to fall, tail spinning out of control, hurtling faster and faster and faster towards the ground. We panicked, tried getting the doors open so we could jump out with our parachutes before impact, but they were jammed. The whole scenario seemed ridiculous, like it was straight out of the pictures; everything seemed to be moving so slowly, even though I heard the voice of my physics professor from university screaming in the back of my head that if we were in a vacuum, we would, in all actuality, be falling at a terminal velocity of negative nine-point-eight meters per second, squared…"
There were a few chuckles at that, but Christine was positively bursting in anticipation. Her eyes were wide. "What happened next, Oliver?"
He nodded towards her. "Glad you should ask that. A storyteller always likes it when his audience gets involved; less work on his part. Now, where was I? Ah, yes: we were all about to die in a fiery inferno of twisted metal and petrol…
"We dropped from the sky, hurtling to the ground; frankly, I was surprised that we hadn't made impact yet. I made the mistake of peering out the window. I saw the ground coming closer and closer to us, knowing our death was quite inevitable and inescapable.
"I fell to my knees and prayed to our good Lord for forgiveness of whatever it was that I had done to get me into such a mess; who knew, perhaps it was a sin to listen to your mad father, I don't know. But, naturally, I couldn't take any chances with this sort of thing. After I was done, my old man approached me, and with tears in his eyes, he grasped me firmly by the shoulders and said to me…
"Wake up and get your arse out of that bed."
There were sighs and chuckles of relief at this most eminent conclusion of Oliver's story—well, technically speaking, his dream.
"You are unbelievable," Christine gasped through peals of laughter.
Oliver stood and bowed, sweeping Thomas' hat from his head and placing it over his own heart. "At your service."
She shook her head, tucking a lock of hair that had escaped the pony holder she had tied the blonde length back with behind her ear. "It seems we've found ourselves some proper entertainment, then; not that it's likely to be boring in the rainforest, but on the off chance that it is, then I know just who to turn to."
Christine waited until the rest of the occupants in the plane settled down and returned to their individual pursuits before leaning over towards Oliver—who still sat beside her—and murmuring, "I would appreciate it if you go and talk to Jonathon; he seems a bit unsettled."
"All right, my fearless leader," he joked quietly, but then his countenance became serious. "What about you? Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine, really," she replied, picking up her book again, holding it in her lap as she waited for him to leave before starting to read.
He nodded, then, a little reluctantly, it seemed, he stood.
"Oh, and, Oliver?"
He turned to look at her, his notorious ginger bangs obscuring his vision at the sudden turn of his head. He swept them back impatiently, and she cracked a smile of amusement.
"Thank you."
-----
Later, when most of the crew was sprawled out in their chairs, blankets draped over them sloppily as they slept, Christine approached Doctor Flynn, as he was also awake.
"I had no idea you stayed up so late, Doctor," she remarked.
He looked up from his book, regarding her with a touch of surprise through his reading spectacles. "I would say the same of you, my dear. Unfortunately, this staying up late business is not my usual habit, but I find it impossible to get any sleep on this abominable contraption, no matter how useful it may be for travel."
She nodded, sighing, looking a little weary in the good Doctor's eyes. "May I?" she asked politely, indicating the vacant seat next to him.
"Of course, Christine," he replied immediately, removing his coat from the seat and hanging it on the seat in front of him instead.
Gratefully, she sunk down into the chair. "Thank you."
"You needn't have asked, my dear. Tell me…what is troubling you? You look upset."
"Oh, I wouldn't want to trouble you with it, Doctor, it's a trivial matter; I'd feel silly."
"No matters, however small or unreasonable in one's eyes, are to be considered trivial, Christine. At least, that's what I think."
She flashed him a small smile, then leaned against the back of the chair, looking at the ceiling, listening to the continuous noise of the propellers of their aircraft. "I don't know…"
"Well, Christine, I just want to make you aware—again—that I am here if you need someone to listen. I know this is tough for you—"
"That's just it, Doctor; I'm not finding it difficult. On the contrary, everything seems too…easy now, something which surpasses my wildest dreams about the success of this whole thing, but I fear it has lost interest in dreams altogether and now allies itself with my nightmares. It worries me. I have a hundred different scenarios bouncing around in my head of things that could go horribly, horribly wrong."
He paused, collecting his thoughts. "Believe it or not, Christine, it is completely natural to be thinking that way. However," he continued, place distinct emphasis on the word when he saw that she opened her mouth to interrupt—most likely to disagree, if he knew her at all. "However, while there are definite dangers—there are dangers all around us every day, if you stop and think about it—I very much doubt that anything remotely catastrophic will befall us."
"You think so?" she asked, conflicted, wanting to believe him, doubts plaguing her.
"Indeed I do. Don't worry about it Christine; everything will go smoothly. You'll see."
"I hope so," she murmured, staring at the ceiling again, slumping in her chair.