InsaneJournal

Who: Tiffany Maxwell & Carol Danvers
When: Saturday 8/17
Where: The sky
What: Carol takes Tiffany up for a ride
Rating/Warning: PG/Talk of a life unraveling
Status: Complete




Carol’s “office” was in the hanger at one of the smaller airports in the area. It was a desk with pinups of newspaper clippings and prints of famous and not-so-famous planes, as well as a computer.

The really surprising thing wasn’t the desk, or the Cessna that was lovingly cared for. It was the deweaponized F-16 that was undergoing a routine inspection that was surprising.

Considering that doing something incredibly crazy had just gotten Tiffany into a huge mess, she was really questioning her sanity now. That and if her mother had any idea what she was doing... but she really didn’t talk to mommy all that much. She did whatever she wanted, even though that was half the problem.

She drove to the place where Carol said she’d be, which was exactly like an air hanger out of a movie. It seemed like security was expecting her, so she drove right through all the checkpoints. Honestly, Tiffany wasn’t sure if she was scared shitless or excited about this.

Carol was excited about potential students. The girl seemed like she needed an outlet, and so the statuesque blonde was willing to waive customary fees. At least to give her a taste for it, anyway.

She pushed open the large doors, wearing jeans and a comfortable t-shirt.

Tiffany was dress similarly. This pilot lady wouldn’t have known it, but she was far more casual than usual: no dark make-up, no high heels; the way her hair was piled on top of her head gave some indication that she had rolled out of bed like that. But her walk was her usual walk and her stare was her usual stare. Tiffany couldn’t help looking intense.

“Hey... I’m Tiffany.”

“Carol.” She held out her hand to Tiffany. “Come on in. Just finishing up something, then we’ll see about giving you a quick run down on flying. There’s a lot of science but we’ll skip the really complicated details.”

“How often do you take people up?” Tiffany asked, following the woman back into the hanger. She assumed she wasn’t about to be her first student.

“Several times a week. Sometimes for fun, sometimes for lessons. First we need to figure out if you can even stand to be in a tiny little plane a couple thousand feet in the air,” Carol replied, pointing at the Cessna.

The Cessna looked like some kind of dinosaur. Tiffany grimaced a bit as she ran her eyes down its length. “How is that done?”

“I strap you in, take off, and we fly for a bit,” she explained patiently.

Tiffany lifted an eyebrow, a smirk playing on her lips. Her arms crossed over her more than ample chest. She might have asked how safe it was to just dive right in, but she had a bit of a death wish going as it was. Ultimately, she just shrugged. “Why the hell not.”

"Maybe if you're feeling brave, you can join me when I take the falcon up for her weekly flight," Carol said, grinning.

“I don’t know what a falcon is,” Tiffany replied. “Does that matter?”

Carol grinned and pointed at the jet at the other end of the hanger. “That.”

Tiffany laughed. Why the hell not, indeed. Whether or not she was over her head, she couldn’t say it was phasing her today. Maybe she was putting too much trust in Carol, whom she assumed didn’t often kill her students. “Sure.”

“Lets take the Cessna before I try to make you lose your lunch in the jet,” Carol suggested. It was almost like she was daring Tiffany to take the jet. Carol had done a lot on dares, herself.

Tiffany jogged over to where Carol was leading, her hair bouncing atop her head. “So, are you former military or something like that? Or is this just a hobby that took over your life?”

“I was in the Air Force. Over my father’s objections, mind.” She glanced back a Tiffany, then stepped under the wing of the Cessna and began a preflight check. She pointed things out to the other woman. “Flew missions in Afghanistan. But I’ve loved planes my whole life. I was on track to try out for NASA when I was shot down.”

“Physically or metaphorically?” ask Tiffany, craning her neck and watching Carol’s fingers point to one thing she didn’t have enough time to grasp and then another. Hopefully this was like her first drivers lesson, where it wouldn’t really matter on day one.

“Literally. Surface to Air missile. I evaded capture for three days before a rescue op located me.” She slid the door open, and climbed in. She pointed at the seat on the right. “Sit there.” She took the left one.

Tiffany’s heart was pounding, even though she wasn’t consciously nervous. Her body was kicking in, pumping adrenaline as if it was trying to prove to her brain that she didn’t really have a death wish after all. She sat where she was told and took in a deep breath through her nose.

“Relax. I’ve done this thousands of times.” She gave Tiffany a reassuring smile as she taxi’d the plane out of the hanger and towards the runway. “We’ll be fine.”

She radio’d into the control tower and then started her take-off run. The plane bounced a little as it picked up speed, before it smoothed out as she took them into the air.

Tiffany had been on a plane before. She’s been on a plane lots of times. But even though she was still just a passenger at the moment, nothing had ever felt quite like this. Her thoughts bounced between What the fuck am I doing? and Is this really happening? as she braced her shoulders tightly against her neck.

Being in a smaller plane was a different experience. Every shake and bump and movement of the plane could be felt. After all, there was only a few inches of material between them and the world outside. Despite that, it was pretty quiet, the hum of the engines and props seeming distant.

Tiffany looked at Carol, trying to take in the serenity and pleasure on her face like she was soaking in the sun. Slowly, her heart rate returned to its normal pace and she realized she could swallow again. “...I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she sighed in disbelief, but she didn’t sound scared anymore.

Carol decided the jet might need to wait. It was a lot less serene (at least when you weren’t cruising) and a lot more energetic. The Jet was for fun. The Cessna was for relax. She smiled at Tifffany. “Well you’re doing it, and we’re perfectly safe.”

She adjusted her position in her seat, working out what was left of the tension in her muscles. “Yeah, well, the truth is I haven’t been quite myself lately. This is kind of a big deal. Other than, you know, in the super obvious ways. I’ve kinda been stuck for a while.”

“Figured out any reason why yet? Or is that still an open question? I lost myself for awhile, when I couldn’t fly. I needed to find that thing that made me alive.”

“I had... some really shitty dreams,” Tiffany replied, taking the time to fix her bun atop her head. “And I let them get to me. Dreams about people dying and my life falling apart.”

“I’m sorry. Bad dreams can really throw you for a loop.” Or at least the really nightmarishly ones.

“Did you have any?” she asked, looking sideways at the woman.

“Yeah. I’m trying to decide if the good ones have been worth the bad ones.” She wasn’t sure they should discuss such things in the air, but then Carol wasn’t one to back down from anything, as long as she wasn’t admitting a weakness.

“I had a husband,” Tiffany said bluntly, almost blankly. “And then he got smashed by a car.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose and smiled grimly. “For a while, I wasn’t sure which one was the nightmare. ...I’m messed up. Don’t worry, I know.”

“Wow. I’m sorry.” Carol looked back out the cockpit window, and started to take the plane on a long looping curve, waggling the plane’s wings as she did so. “It’s okay to feel a little messed up. You shouldn’t let it define you. Either the husband, or the car.”

Tiffany had to admit, up the the air, her problems seemed very far away, literally and figuratively. “I should have nipped it in the bud sooner.”

“What stopped you?” She reached over and put Tiffany’s hands on the co-pilot’s yolk. “Get used to the feel of it. Especially when I make adjustments.”

She didn’t answer right away, instead getting a feel for how the controls felt in her hands. They seemed to tug and pull on their own according to the wind. It took her a moment to get used to the motion and Tiffany was quiet while she focused.

“What stopped me?” she finally repeated. “I guess I’ve always been a little freaked out about mental stuff. I thought I was really losing it.” It was the first time Tiffany had spoken about it in the past tense.

“Plenty of people go through crisis and come out of them. How you come out the other side is up to you, though. I’ve almost given up, a few times. You can have a lot of mental beating yourself up over things you’ve done, or things that have happened to you.”

Looking sideways, she couldn’t imaging the woman beside her had ever come close to giving up. They’d only just met, but already she thought that highly of her. There was also the fact that she looked damn good sitting in the pilot’s seat, so it was hard to think her anything as less than sexy and awesome. “I’m feeling better. I mean, I guess I wouldn’t be here, doing this now, if I had given up.”

“Yeah,” Carol said, patting her arm. She smiled at Tiffany. It wasn’t condescending or patronizing. “One foot in front of the other.”

They were almost speaking in cliches, but a few thousand miles above the ground, it didn’t feel that way. Tiffany’s naturally mischievous smile returned, as she tested the controls, pushing the plane back and forth. “This is the first thing I’ve been in control of in a long time.”

Carol lifted her hands from her own yoke. “Then let yourself be in control.”