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The first thing Martin became aware of was a ringing in his ears. The second was a much more pronounced ringing… and then buzzing, and beeping, and pre-recorded monotone warning. Flinching at the onslaught of sounds, Martin's eyes blinked open reluctantly, finding his cheek awkwardly flattened against the control panel.
He was in his captain's seat, various warning and emergency lights assaulting his senses along with the beeping and buzzing. Strangely enough, though, they were not parked in Fitton Air Field, nor in any airport. They were most certainly in the middle of a field. Not even a green, green field. No, a rather dead one, only made worse probably by the fact that an aeroplane had just crash-landed in it-
Oh God.
He'd crashed.
"Douglas," he cried out instinctively before he even had a chance to spin around to look at his first officer. "Douglas!"
The first officer was out cold, slumped forward against the control panel, and Martin realized with a shout of terror that there was blood coming from a gash at his hairline.
"Oh God, Douglas!" He scrambled out of his seat, hoisting Douglas up off of the control panel and back in his seat, but the older man stayed completely unconscious. Helpless, Martin shook at the first officer's shoulders. "DOUGLAS!"
"MARTIN," came a shriek from the galley as Carolyn rushed up. "Martin, Martin!"
"Carolyn?!" Marin spun around to face Carolyn as she awkwardly stumbled into the flight deck, understandably a difficult task at the strange angle they were at.
"Martin, are you all right?" Carolyn surveyed the flight deck with a hawk's eyes, her question supplementary as she took stock of the situation.
"I… I'm fine… Douglas, he's… he's not waking up…" Martin turned back to Douglas, brow furrowed in desperation.
Carolyn hurried to Martin's side, eyes narrowing when she got a good look at Douglas. She reached forward, pushing Martin out of the way (the poor Captain simple whimpered and allowed himself to be moved aside) to take Douglas' pulse. "He's breathing," she assured Martin. "Help me get him out of the seat."
Together, she and Martin lifted Douglas out of the seat, up and over the arm rests, and onto the floor; Martin nearly set him down on his back, but Carolyn tutted him and rolled him onto his side. Through all of it, Martin's heart felt like it was going to explode out of its chest, the gash on Douglas' head making him quite woozy.
"Douglas," he whispered with a hushed voice, giving him another rough shake as Carolyn looked on with worried glances in Martin's direction. "Douglas, please wake up…"
-
The heart monitor pierced through Martin's awareness with each beep, reminding him each time of his biggest failure yet. And the visual evidence was right in front of him, medical equipment and tubes and bandages everywhere, rending Martins' first officer nearly unrecognizable.
Why wasn't Douglas waking up? Carolyn, Martin… Even Arthur, who hadn't even been sitting down when the crash happened, according to his fantastical story, had all woken up. So why was Douglas trapped in this strange comatose existence that the doctors kept explaining away with 'we just have to give him time'.
The worst part was when Martin had been approached by Carolyn, long after the wreckage of G-ERTI had been carted away, and she had asked Martin what had happened in the cockpit that had lead to their plane crashing into an empty field.
"I don't know," he'd breathed desperately.
Martin had been diagnosed as suffering from a concussion, in addition to some amnesia leading up to the crash - apparently it was common to not remember circumstances leading up to a concussion, and obviously the only person around who could offer any advice was less-than-chatty. The flight-deck recorder offered no explanation; it mysteriously turned to static right in the middle of a word game. (Book Titles and Their Authors That Make A Sentence: The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer was definitely the highlight.)
But it didn't take a genius to know that whatever had happened, it obviously hadn't been Sky God Douglas Richardson mucking things up. No, of the two people potentially responsible for G-ERTI's crash, the one that was awake and healthy was the more likely culprit.
Sitting beside Douglas' hospital bed in intensive care, Martin could hardly manage keeping ridiculous weeping tears from leaking out of his eyes, or falling to his knees to beg the unconscious Douglas for his forgiveness. Somehow, though, all of Martin's anguish and guilt, stayed inside him, tearing up his vital organs like some vicious beast caged in his chest.
"Skip," came a quiet voice from the doorway, and Martin's head snapped up to see Arthur, timid and hardly stepping past the threshold of the door. Once Martin had sighed and turned back to look back at the battered sleeping form of Douglas, Arthur forced himself into the room, clearing his throat. "Skip… I'm sure it wasn't your fault."
Martin pulled a face but said nothing. Of course Arthur would say that. Trust Arthur to try and help when all he could possibly do was make horrible things worse.
"He'll wake up soon," Arthur assured Martin, just able to see out of the corner of his eye that Arthur was muscling through a smile. "I mean… he'll be fine. Obviously."
The bandages, the tubes, the wires… No doctor had been able to explain to Martin or to anybody what exactly was wrong with him, why he wasn't waking up. He wasn't displaying signs typical of comatose patients… He was simply asleep. It had been heartbreaking, torturous, enough to make Martin have to leave the room when Douglas' daughter had come, eyes wide and sad and confused as she took in the sight of her mangled father.
God… How could Martin forgive himself? How could he live with himself?
"The doctors will think of something! I mean, in all those medical shows… They always figure it out somehow." Arthur was wringing his hands by now, and Martin couldn't even glance at him anymore without wanting to be nearly sick.
There had to be some way to solve this. Something he could do.
-
Martin was at Douglas' flat, strangely enough. He'd been charged by Carolyn to deliver some things of his that had remained in the portakabin to his residence, brought on by the need to vacate. The empty feeling of being told that MJN was closed for good was surreal, unfocused and strange. But not nearly as strange as standing in the room where Douglas Richardson, when he'd been awake and walking about like the rest of the world, had inhabited.
It was modest, to be sure - he must have gotten his own place once the third divorce was finalized, and though he'd never asked out of courtesy he assumed Carolyn didn't pay Douglas the most extravagant fees for his co-piloting services. But even so, there were plenty of trinkets and possessions that screamed of old money, of more comfortable times.
Martin had simply used the spare key he'd found in Douglas' things from the portakabin, letting himself in. But now that he was here, he wished he hadn't come alone. The lived-in space was so foreign, signs everywhere of a man that wasn't him living here. Once he was inside, his curious streak couldn't help itself and he had to look around; the longer he poked around, the worse he felt, the more he felt like he was intruding. But Douglas hadn't woken up now for a week - it wasn't as if he was going to have anything to say about Martin taking a look around.
He was just thinking about leaving, telling himself that what he was doing was wrong and un-called for when he'd already ruined things so much, when Martin found an old, dusty volume on the bookshelf that gave him pause, brow furrowed in confusion. Pulling it out from the assortment of other books, all on topics ranging from cinema to cuisine, he set it down on the coffee table and sat himself down on the couch. The cover was written in a language he vaguely recognized as Latin, but once he opened it there were notes in the margins that translated the old words into English.
Strange words popped out to him as he flipped through delicate thin pages: 'incantation', 'trap', 'possession', the list went on. But once Martin found the word 'deal' scrawled in large black letters and underlined, his attention was fixed.
All it took was ten minutes with the book and Martin knew exactly what he had to do to make things right. It didn't matter the price.
-
How he had latched on so readily to the strange things contained in the book Martin had found in Douglas' flat, even he didn't know. Honestly - he'd asked himself a dozen times in his car on the way here. Yet here he was, parked off the side of the street at a crossroads outside of Fitton.
The 'recipe' in the book had been strangely specific: a picture of himself, dirt from a graveyard, a leaf of yarrow, and a bone from a black cat. Most of the items had been easy to procure, and squeamish Martin had somehow been able to manage procuring the bone from a strange occult shop. All of the items now rested in a metal container that had once held breath mints; it was the best thing Martin could think of to fulfill the requirements of a container that would be able to be buried.
Flinching as he worked with his bare hands, having not thought ahead to bring a gardening spade, he dug a small hole at the side of the road, swearing when he cut his palm on a sharp rock. Pulling the mint case out of his pocket, he opened it up quickly to check and be sure he had all of the items prescribed by the strange book, his gaze falling on the hole he had dug. He took in a deep breath, hesitating, but then pressed the metal box into the earth and covered it up with the dirt he'd dug up.
Standing and brushing off the soil from his trousers and his hands, he sighed shakily, the chill of the wind piercing through his clothes as he scanned the landscape. Was he insane? Did he actually think some strange book written in Latin was going to be the answer to his troubles? What if was real and he'd made some error? What if this wasn't the correct spot that had been indicated? What if-
"Looking for someone?"
Martin spun around so forcefully he nearly lost his balance, yelping in shock when he saw a young woman standing before him. Her low-cut black dress made Martin's cheeks flush before he could consider the implication's of her presence.
The woman smirked and chuckled at Martin's blush. "Awful coy for a boy wanting to sell his soul."
The cold chill that ran down Martin's spine caused him to actually shiver, diverting his eyes from staring too long at the woman's cleavage, tripping over his words. "J-Just… I was picturing something with horns, or at least a tail. Red skin. All that."
Arching a single eyebrow up at Martin, the woman's smirk persisted. "Honestly? Why have a tail when I can have this?" She ran her hands down from her waist and over her curves, her hips rolling to accentuate the action. "Much more enticing. Helps with the line of business I'm in."
"I-I didn't come here to chat," Martin snapped out nervously, eyes still fixed on the ground somewhere near the woman's feet. His hands were in his pockets, clenching and unclenching and writing in the safety of the fabric.
Yet another chuckle came from the seductive woman. "Fine, then. You want a deal with a demon. What do you want so badly, hm?"
Swallowing down a sudden arresting lump in his throat, Martin forced himself to look up at the woman, startled when he saw that her eyes were not like standard human's eyes, but swallowed completely in black. "D-Douglas," he stuttered. "Douglas Richardson. My friend. I want him to wake back up. And the company, the one I work for… Can you make it right? Make it so we can fix the plane, fix the debts…"
"Woah, woah, woah." The woman cut Martin off, holding her hands up in front of her. "You're getting awful greedy." Her smirk widened, not unlike a cat eyeing a mouse.
Feeling his heart skip a beat (oh God, this wasn't going to work), he went on. "Please, I… I crashed, and now my first officer is in a coma. The company's ruined, all because of me. I-I know I'm an awful pilot, I know, but… but if he could just wake up, if I could get one chance, I would never do it again." Even if he didn't know what he did wrong, even if the events of that crash were still so hazy in his mind, Martin would do anything for a second chance…
"So you're not asking for superb flying skills, or for a bucket of money, or even to get the girl," her silky voice drawled out. "You just want me to fix the plane and wake up your friend."
Gulping down his fears, Martin nodded decisively.
Folding her arms, eyes scanning over Martin's trembling form and smirking still, Martin waited as the woman - the demon - seemed to consider his offer.
"Please," he blurted out, voice squeaking slightly in his higher register. "I'll do anything."
After a longer pause, the woman broke into a grin that simultaneously made Martin sigh with relief and his gut seize up with fear. "Alright, Captain. I'll wake him up, and your boss will miraculously be presented with the means to get your company back to where it was. Deal?"
The seizing feeling in Martin's chest felt like an electric shock. "Wh-what do I do, again? What… happens to me? I mean… do I die?"
"Oh sure, one day," she shrugged. "Like everyone. Just you'll have a pre-determined flight path." She chuckled at her joke, eyes shining, a strange phenomena when they were still pitch-black.
He took in a slow breath through his nose, hands still burrowing in his pockets. "So I still get to live to old age, keep my job… all that?"
He knew it was all too good to be true; the woman held up a finger to pause Martin where he was. "Ten years. I'm being generous, trust me. Ten years is plenty of time, don't you think?"
His stomach had sunk down in dejection, seeing the harshness of his decision laid before him. He was giving up the rest of his figure for this. But then… what future would he have without MJN? Without Douglas? What was the point of living to old age if he was like this? Much better to get ten years in doing this, doing what he loved… "And then you'll come for me," he spoke slowly, his voice having lost its higher squeak and instead falling to his lower register.
"If you don't want to make the deal, I can always just leave," came the sudden threat, paired still with a pompous smirk. "Your friend will probably end up with brain damage. Never fly again…"
"I'll do it," came the rush of air from Martin's lungs, heart hammering in his chest.
It must have been his imagination that the wind picked up around him, cutting through his clothes and chilling him to the bone. The grin that came from the demon was a fitting accompaniment to the drop in temperature, as if Martin's blood could actually run cold.
"So," stammered Martin. "Do I sign my name in blood now? Do we… shake on it?" Reluctantly, Martin pulled his hands out of his pockets, clearing his throat as they hung awkwardly at his side.
She shook her head, still grinning, and Martin had to keep himself from retreating backwards when she walked towards him. "Not my style," she purred.
Before Martin could even think about stopping her, she was upon him, her lips locked onto his, a hand threaded in his curly hair. Eyes wide open and shocked, he made a sound of protest, hands shaking at his side uselessly, feeling almost paralyzed. He wanted to push her away, resist, but his muscles were rigid.
As quickly as it had started, it was over. The woman pulled away from Martin, licking her lips with a satisfied smack, leaving Martin confused and still shaking. "You really need to get laid sometime, sweetheart," chuckled the demon, taking in his awkward stance.
Mouth dry, he was hit with the brick of realization that the deal was made. He had actually, sincerely, sold his soul and a large portion of his life away… all for Douglas. And MJN, obviously, but… "Is he okay, then?"
"He's waking up right now," she assured, still grinning malevolently. "Though you should probably go talk to him… He'll have some explaining to do…" Her words dripped with something dark implied, something else…
Martin hesitated, confused. "…What do you mean?"
The woman was already turned around, walking away from him.
"Wait, hold on!" Martin lurched after her. "What do you mean, he'll…?!"
But she was gone; as if Martin had looked away, the perception in front of him shifted and she was gone, faster than if he'd blinked. Rubbing his eyes, stunned by the impossibility of what he'd just seen, he looked around him in a sweeping circle, searching for the woman. Sighing long and heavy, Martin's heart finally started regaining it's former rhythm.
So, that was that. Sold his soul. And in ten years, he would probably regret it. Who knows where he could be in ten years; married, kids… But it didn't matter. And there was nothing that could be done to change it.
Reaching into his pocket, feeling numb and strange in his own skin, he pulled out his phone, dialing Carolyn's number.
After a short pause, he spoke, quick and breathless. "Carolyn, it's Martin. Is… is Douglas…?" His heart leapt, spinning around in a circle in amazement, his eyes slipped shut with relief. "Oh, thank God." He let out a loud, nearly hysterical sigh that was punctuated with laughter. "Oh, thank God," he repeated, noticing as well as anyone would the irony of his thanking God after his actions; after all, God wasn't to thank in this scenario, was he? "I'll… I'll be right there…"
-
"I don't understand," Douglas repeated once again, staring at Martin with probing eyes, dark and concerned. "You must have done something."
Martin stayed stock still in his chair, confused but not yielding. "You just… woke up, Douglas. Of-of course I didn't do anything."
Sitting up straighter (or as straight as a partially reclined hospital bed would allow), Douglas set aside the glass of water that had been offered to him earlier by the nurse. "Martin. I can tell when you're lying. It's not as if it takes a super sleuth to notice," he remarked. "You're only slightly above Arthur in that department."
"Well, what do you think I could have done?!" Martin was getting panicky (of course he was), hands messing with the fabric of his trousers where they were worn at the knee. "The doctors said you might wake up at any point, and you did!"
Douglas pursed his lips, eyes losing some of their sharpness as he seemed to retreat slightly. "It's not that simple."
A heavy silence hung between them as Martin tried to reason with himself that he couldn't possibly tell Douglas what he had done to save him, he just couldn't. But Douglas didn't seem to be letting up, convinced somehow that something else was at work here.
Taking in a slow breath through his nose, Martin weighed his options. He could figure out why Douglas was so convinced Martin was lying (outside of what Douglas claimed were Martin's obvious tells), or he could confess. But how was he supposed to even begin going about the first option? "Douglas…"
"All right," Douglas suddenly broke in, surprising Martin and causing him to snap his lips shut. "Martin," he went on, gaze locked on the young captain. "I'll keep this simple. When you went to my flat…" (Martin felt his heart skip a beat at that.) "…did you find an old black book? Written in Latin?"
Even if Martin had wanted to lie, he wasn't stupid enough to think he could keep it up after a direct question like that. But he didn't even have a chance to actually reply; he took a deep breath and sighed, and that seemed to be answer enough for douglas.
"Oh Martin…" Douglas' face had fallen so quickly, it was as if he was a different person from moments before. The despair didn't suit his features at all, so often confidant and assured. "Martin, tell me you didn't…"
Flustered and confused, Martin's words came out in a flurried rush, unable to look at Douglas directly while he spoke. "I crashed the plane, Douglas! It was my fault you weren't waking up, it was my fault that MJN is folding, and-and… I needed to do something! So I did something! I acted, instead of… fussing around like you always tease me for doing!" Martin's eyes were glassy with his emotions, indignant at the unfairness of this all. Here he was, a young man who would never see fifty, who'd given up what seemed to him the biggest sacrifice he could have possibly made so that Douglas would wake up… and the least Martin had hoped for that Douglas would be grateful to be awake, to be alive.
The silence that followed didn't help matters at all, and Martin was nearly ready to snap when Douglas broke in. "Martin, you didn't crash the plane," came the hushed voice from the older man, causing Martin's head to jerk up and stare at Douglas in confusion. The first officer's eyes held the deepest sadness Martin had seen in a long time, certainly from a man such as Douglas. "It was my fault the plane crashed."
Martin's stomach felt like it had turned to solid stone. "…Douglas…"
"That book you found," Douglas explained, not looking at Martin anymore but glued underneath the young man's gaze, "wasn't just an ordinary book. I've… I've been doing things, awful things I shouldn't be doing. Playing with fire."
"Douglas?" Martin had no idea what Douglas was going on about…
"I tried this spell," he explained, brow furrowed. "It's supposed to bring success to the caster. Just got tired of… well, not being Captain. I didn't know what I was doing," he muttered bitterly. "I shouldn't have even bothered. And… she showed up."
"She?"
"A demon," Douglas explained, looking up at Martin properly with a grave face. "I thought it was just a dream, because she was gone when I woke up, but that day… Martin, that day the plane crashed." His eyes narrowed in confusion. "You don't remember?"
"I…" Martin's voice wasn't coming readily to him. "I… don't remember anything before the crash," he choked out.
"She was on the bloody flight deck," he hissed. "In the middle of some god-forsaken word game. And she crashed the plane. She knocked you out first… All the equipment started going off, and she told me I owed her… I thought I was a goner…" His face had turned a sickly shade of white, not unlike how he'd been looking for the past week.
"You were," Martin whispered distractedly, eyes unfocused.
Taking stock of Martin's shell-shocked appearance, Douglas shook his head and leaned forward towards him. "Martin… Please tell me you didn't use some spell to wake me up. Please."
Hardly noticing Douglas anymore, Martin's gaze had drifted to the window of the hospital room, stomach lurching when he saw the silhouette of a curvaceous woman, alluring and seductive, and a flash of black eyes and a grin before she was gone. "Oh, God…"