Chapter Text
Phantasia
Diane attacked the cliff face, squirming her trembling fingers into salt-crusted jagged pockets and jerking herself upwards into the warm feel of the sun on her shoulders. The boys who’d dared her were screaming on the beach; the roar of the waves drowned their words.
She crawled up onto the high ledge and finally opened her eyes. Air, just clean air, and noise, and pounding sunlight. A white bird stiffened its wings and rested on the wind, suspended in perfect tension, almost close enough to touch.
It took her parents four frantic hours to get her down. Everything changed, afterward.
Eros
The RAF airshow had set her on fire. She tossed in her bed, tormented by Tiger Moths.
Diane thought of boys her age, schoolboys with delicate birdlike faces and cruel lips, and the buzzing loops of the Tiger Moth biplanes, and her own womb, kicking against her. Hysteria, the doctors called it.
She reached between her legs and drove herself. The release came slowly, way too slowly.
But there was no point in desperation, because the Vibro-Electra Massage Unit never failed. She plugged it in, took hold of its metal handle, thought of riding Tiger Moths... and this time, flew.
Phobos
"Diane, if you had chosen a more suitable area, I would not be so opposed," said her father, his words melting together into a warm, reasonable rumble. "This is not the time. Your brother is sick, your grandmother is dying, your mother... we need you here."
She's been dying my whole life, thought Diane, hating herself in silence.
"She's been dying my whole life," she said, out loud.
Her father twisted his lips as if she’d slapped him.
Chained down with her love, their pain. She’d break her own back to get free, the fear was that strong.
Eris
Reggie was light and easy and danced like a champion, and they'd gone more than a few steps beyond kissing, up against his Spitfire in the quiet of the early morning.
In the afternoon, his Captain reported Reggie shot down over France.
There was a raid across the Channel that night. Diane and another WAAF, Betty (her man was flying, alive) watched the Spitfires rush into the sky.
"Kill as many as you can," said Betty, like a prayer.
Diane wanted to be that death, wanted to come down on the enemy from above. Ride them down, make them pay.
Thanatos
Even before she'd flown through the Rift, she'd heard her death come calling. When a ray of sunlight pierced the cockpit at just the right angle, and she hung suspended in air, in time...
There's nothing more perfect than this.
If you go down, you will never remember how perfect.
Don't go down.
Go on.
Diane loved the shiny machines, the shocking abundance of everything, even her crude, elegant-looking man, she loved him too, but all so faintly, because she wasn't real anymore. She was a museum piece.
The voice never stopped now.