Another's Demise

Flying Forward

Alara

Mel had not been lying when she said that she had stolen Cameron's plane. The jet rest there upon the makeshift air strip, a little disorientating in the murky rays of moonlight.

"Mel, you know how to fly a plane right?" it was a question that rippled carefully over to her.

"Sure I do, Lara," though her answer held the usual confidence it inspired little in me, "I flew it here didn't I?"

"Yeah," I murmured, watching her unlock the door with key she slipped from her neck.

She grinned wildly, "You won't tell Leo I wear Cam's key around my neck, will you? I don't usually but it's a good place to hide important keys. Everyone looks at the necklace and thinks it's something sappy like my boyfriend's key."

"And it's not, it's your boyfriend's best friend's key." I laughed lightly, revelling in the small moment of normalcy. A friendship that surpassed the burning anxiety in the pits of my stomach.

"Fiancé's," she corrected, heaving open the door, with two nimble hands, "Airplane doors are way heavier than you think. Shout out to all the stewardess' that do this on a daily basis."

She reached out a hand to me, a spindling thing in the moonlight, "Have you ever flown the plane in the dark?"

We stepped into the alcove just between the passenger seats and pilot's cockpit, "No, but how hard can it be. They have headlights."

"There will be other planes, and I doubt this will be on any flight plans what if we crash into a commercial flight?"

"Lord, you know a lot about planes,"

"I wanted to be a pilot at one point, hyper fixated on it then gave up because I realised, I am travel sick."

"How tragic," she laughed, pulling me into the cockpit, "You're not going to throw up on me when I get this baby going are you?"

"No, I don't get travel sick anymore."

"You found a cure?"

"No, I just..." I trailed off, you couldn't really cure travel sickness, I used to take medicine before flights or long car journeys until my father, Damon, thought it a weakness I could get over. That it didn't really exist, and I was just being childish. He was furious every time we had to pull over so I could vomit after not letting me take my medicine. So, I supressed it, it took a while and a lot of non-medicinal techniques, but I learned to 'not be travel sick'. It was an awful thing, but I learnt that if you stared at one spot long enough you could control it, and gum, chewing gum was good, "I was told I couldn't be, so I wasn't."

Concern flickered over Mel's face, her expression telling me she wanted to dig further, but it must have been the dejection in my face, that made her stray away from asking, "Well, we will be fine. Cams got this all rigged up to the main channels of flight traffic that tell us where other flights are planned for. I'll avoid those paths, and follow the one given, and also send out the signal that we are in the air space. And" she flicked a switch I did not know what was for, until light spread out in front of us, "I've got our headlights on."

The flight was smooth, though my trust in Mel's piloting ability had been tenuous at best, the longer we flew the more comfortable I felt.

"Where are we heading?" I murmured; I had not left the cockpit. I did not think it good to allow my thoughts to marinate, to sink into my veins, everything that had happened. And there was a curling feeling in the pit of my stomach, nausea that came in waves. In advertently, I began to stare at one spot out of the windscreen, a flashing red light, the top of a tall building signalling to us that we needed to avoid it.

I counted the flashes, counted the seconds in between the flashes and then repeated. My vision tunnelled until all I could see was that splotch of red.

That should have stopped it, the lurching in my stomach that had to be travel sickness, but it didn't.

I felt bile rise up my throat, bitter on the back of my tongue. Instinctively my hands reached for my stomach, clutching it hard as a new wave of pain embedded itself deeply in my stomach.

"Lara, Lara?" Mel's voice was muffled calling out from somewhere far away even though I knew she was mere inches away from me, "Lara what's wrong?"

"I'm going to be sick," I gritted out, disoriented. I felt the world sway, sweat beading on my brow.

"Is it your travel sickness?"

"No," I knew it couldn't be, I had overcome that whether forced or not, I no longer became travel sick. It wasn't that, it was something else.

I groaned once more the pain spiking through my skin.

"Cramps?" Mel tried to draw me back with her voice, but she couldn't stop flying the plane to aid me.

I shook my head.

"Oh my God," she was exasperated, "Are you pregnant?"

"What?" that snapped me back to the present for a moment, the pain dulling minimally, "No. How could I be-"

"I thought you and Cam would have made up by now."

"No, God, no." And I flushed hard.

Mel laughed lightly, "Distracted yet?"

"What..." she had done it on purpose, to make me think of something other than the pain, but I didn't know what was worse, the stomach-ache or the truth that those times with Cameron would never be the same. We would never be those people again.

"Just hold on Lara," Mel quickly glanced over, "We're almost there."

"Where are we going?"

"To your brother."