A/N: You guys can blame AmbulanceRobots and her love of Ryker for this one. (Which isn't to say I don't love the big brute as well, although nothin' and nobody is moving Windlifter and Doc Hudson out of the top spots. Even you, Nick, so stop pouting. You knew that coming in.)
But, essentially Ryker's thoughts following the first half of Ch12 of All Hallowed.
The Art of Planes book has proven a very helpful resource in writing these stories; among other things, it provides the name of Ryker's assistant, which is Kurtz.
HAUNTED
There were some people, he had learned, that you could never get away from.
Sometimes they were just memories, chasing you through your lifetime.
Others were a slightly more physical presence, but equally difficult to escape.
Nicholas Ryker had met a number of these people, both the remembered and the present, throughout his life, and gave them their due when they came calling, in whatever form that may have been.
Dusty Crophopper, for better or worse, had become one of the latter.
Ryker's superiors had called his posting at the finish line of the Wings Around the Globe Rally a 'respite', following the conclusion of a three-week long investigation into a multiple-fatality crash in Boston.
Being assigned to an airport crowded with several thousand screaming, overwrought vehicles, waiting for one of the so-called 'professional' racers to end the race in a permanent fashion, was not what he deemed pleasurable, or relaxing - even if the ending of the race had been rather enjoyable to witness.
Although he had been only passingly familiar with the planes participating in the rally, Ripslinger was difficult to avoid, even for airport service personnel, and did not make efforts to endear himself to anyone.
Crophopper, on the other tire, he wouldn't have been able to pick out of a lineup if his assistant Kurtz hadn't been following the plane's meteoric rise quite so damned enthusiastically. It was entirely against TMST policy for agents to wear or carry any form of endorsement on their person, but that regulation didn't extend to off-hours television viewing, Internet browsing, or coffee mug purchases. (Ryker would be slagged before he'd admit aloud that the propeller mug was actually rather amusing.)
But it had made for a few extremely awkward minutes when they had been routed from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to a one-runway town lost somewhere amidst the cornfields of Minnesota's southwest, only to realize that said town was the home of one Dusty Crophopper.
The awkwardness was overcome with the professionalism that only many years practice could grant, although it resurged when Crophopper himself had quietly interrupted to take the blame for the fire, then again, viciously, when the evidence of gross negligence left Ryker no choice but to shut down the airport.
He was not kind in doing so, which he refused to regret. Firefighting was not a kind profession, and while he respected the ancient engine, it would have been far crueler to offer kind words and a blind eye only to let a greater accident, and perhaps loss of life, happen. It had been only incomprehensible luck that had spared both the airport and the lives of its citizens from far greater harm this time around. Such fortune would not be repeated.
When he found himself routed to a double incident at a National Park in California only a few weeks later, he had stared at the assignment for several long minutes before calling his office to double-check the information. Twice.
Because certainly it went against any odds for him to be encountering Dusty Crophopper again, particularly this soon and halfway across the country?
The odds, he discovered, were ones not even Las Vegas would have taken. Crophopper was indeed at the Air Attack Base, though still unconscious and under the care of their aggressively effective mechanic.
(And if the Chief of the fire crew had looked unsettlingly like someone distantly remembered from one dreamlike day in Ryker's childhood, he'd ignored that just as fiercely as the thread of guilt that tried to gnaw into his thoughts when he saw Crophopper in that mechanic's bay. One life did not measure against two, against ten, against a hundred. No matter how much influence he might have had in driving that life to the point it hung at now.)
But another week and a half found him making his way back through the cornfields of southwestern Minnesota, to encounter both Crophopper and the hauntingly familiar Fire Chief again - thankfully, on more agreeable terms this time.
Foolishly, he thought that might have been the end of it. And it was, for three nearly-uneventful months.
Until he was called back to California, and found himself driving along the valley roads of Piston Peak National Park again, Kurtz dawdling slightly behind him to take in the view, ashy though it may have been. And Crophopper, present once more, had sounded nearly as surprised to see Ryker as Ryker was to see him.
The Fire Chief greeted him with wry politeness, the nagging familiarity sharp enough to bite, now, with that sardonic humor in his tone.
And then he'd glanced past the Chief - whose gleaming paint and freshly restored bodywork were not enough to distract from the fact his main rotor hub sat empty, a mute testimony to his crash - to the helicopter beside him, and every thought but one had fled his mind.
Impossible.
Because Nicholas Lopez had, for three decades, been nothing more than a childhood memory, one that lingered in the corners of Ryker's life, serving as a quiet source of driving determination.
He remembered crying after his father had told him the new of Lopez's death. In the years since, he'd often wondered if better regulation and stricter safety precautions could have saved Lopez's life.
Those questions were, in large part, why he was such an unforgiving investigator. No child should ever have to learn that someone they loved had been lost in a preventable accident.
The shock only intensified when Nick, his smile undimmed and unchanged from those hazy memories of decades ago, offered his explanation. And the Sikorsky offered his explanation, which...
Kurtz didn't bat an eye at the entire thing, which was a mystery for another day. One when he wasn't attempting to juggle words into an explanation that wouldn't get him put on psychiatric leave.
Because turning in a report claiming the former ghost of his childhood idol had developed a communications system based on the teleportation abilities of ghosts was just not, no pun intended, going to fly.
Beside him, Kurtz discreetly cleared his throat and pushed a can of coffee across the desk. A few swallows of the stuff - it was prepared the way he'd gotten used to on endless duty shifts, which was to say, easily mistaken for hot tar - managed to shift his brain back into gear.
"...employing a relay-style system of communication between the aircraft of the team to ensure orders were effectively communicated between team members," he muttered to himself, nudging the coffee out of the way of his computer's microphone. There was the sound of crinkling paper as the cup moved, and he glanced down, confused.
The bold title on the papers - Identity Reclamation - Post Core Rebuild - took a moment to process, but when it did, he allowed himself a small smile, and, minimizing the report, opened his email program instead. Nick Lopez had done him a great favor those decades ago, in becoming both a friend and, however unknowingly, a guiding force for the young child he'd cheerfully welcomed.
It was nice to finally have a chance to return it.