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There were omens even before the plane took off. An airliner narrowly missed colliding with another upon landing at John F. Kennedy International, drifting down at an insane speed over its peer's roof as the second plane turned onto a runway. Landing gear just missed clipping the top of the hideously expensive, super fragile vehicle carrying hundreds of lives. Only those people standing at the windows noticed, and by the time they called their friends and family over, the near miss had passed, the planes jogging along the runway. Joker, alias, Rin Sakura née Amamiya, was one of those watching. Unlike the rest of the horde waiting to climb onto a thin metal tube to be flung across the face of the planet, she did not call her sole companion over, and not only because he was on the phone talking to their adopted daughter. She didn't call him over when he ended the call either, she merely kept looking out the huge windows as a plane came in to park below her. Of course he noticed the hubbub and only then did she inform him what the problem was, and only after he asked twice.
“One jet almost hit another.”
“What?!”
“Mmm. Disaster averted though.”
“How could they almost collide?!”
“Human error. Instrument bullshit. It's rare.”
The former government official, who had travelled extensively before he ever met Rin, looked out at the air lanes, leaning heavily on the balustrade as he did. He and she were facing a long trip - New York to Tokyo, the homestretch. Not the longest, but still. It was a business trip, her business, they'd travelled to an awards ceremony of some kind, and he was along for the ride as her husband. She didn't ask him to come, but as any sane and intelligent lover of a young and beautiful woman, there was no possible world in which he'd let her go alone, even if that meant leaving their young children in the care of others for a few days.
The trek onto their own plane was calm, for them. Not so for others, those people who are either an inch off being legitimately afraid of flying, or so blase about it that they may as well be taking the bus. Both types of people are a liability. While walking ahead of her down the boarding bridge, Sojiro often turned back to check that A. She was still there, and B. To make sure she wasn't freaking out thanks to the almost accident. Yes and no. What Rin was doing was latching her eyes onto the side of their plane as they slowly approached it, as well as onto the people around her. Sojiro had not been there for when she was abducted by her volleyball coach, but if he had, he would recognise what she was doing - checking for escape routes, sizing up potential friends and foes, securing ways out should the worst come to the worst. Even after becoming intimate with her, he still understood almost nothing about how her mind and soul worked, often assuming the worst based on this lack.
“Crashes and accidents are very rare.” He said, after stuffing their luggage into the overhead compartment and falling into the seat beside her. Said not for the first time, and not for the last. Cattle class for the economy they both preferred, the shuffle down the aisle was uncomfortable, the couple being unusually tall and weighty for Japanese people. Sojiro liked to tease his wife about her not being pure blooded, but that's only because his own mother likewise did not hail from Nippon, but Europe. For rebels like them, such an inbuilt otherness wasn't that much of a problem, although Sojiro secretly nurtured a couple fears related to it. Luckily, Rin didn't need to check their seat numbers. Thanks to her dyscalculia she'd memorised the image of the seat numbers, their shape, rather than the numbers themselves. Window seat, that was her, with Sojiro beside her.
“I know.” she said, pulling her rosary out of her pocket and beginning the prayer, silently, without asking him to join her. Prayer - even after converting to Catholicism from nothing at all it didn't come naturally to Sojiro to resort to it automatically, but then again, he'd converted at her behest. Still, he had plenty of reasons to believe in it. More than enough reasons. Her failure to ask was not an indication that she was upset, but simply how she was. She did so many things alone, kept her own counsel, although she had made many concessions since becoming a two-person unit, and despite his playful complaints, she always listened to him. That's why she married him, after all, for the protection and guidance he was supposed to provide her. Supposed to. By his judgement he rarely provided either. He's not as smart as her, or as powerful. Not as manly either, not where it really counts - in the mind. Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure why she loved him.
The engines spun up without issue, and the massive machine slowly turned toward its designated runway. A little bit rattled by the almost-crash, but unwilling to let his stoic, badass beloved realise it (as if) Sojiro plucked at the crappy magazine shoved down the back of the seat in front of him. Of course the emergency instruction booklet came with. He should have paid attention to the pretty woman who explained where the emergency exits were and what to do in case of a disaster, but he purposely didn't, for stress, and because he didn't want Rin to look at him suspiciously.
He wished. She was nowhere near as anxious about losing him to a romantic rival as he was in the reverse. Sometimes he feared she could take him or leave him, so long as she had someone to fill the general position.
“Ooh!” exclaimed Rin. She pushed her face into the tiny window and watched the albatross-like wings bouncing as the aircraft picked up speed. They looked like they might snap at any moment. Roaring and rattling abounded, but most people paid absolutely no attention, too busy staring at their tiny personal screens all glowing in the dark. Sojiro didn't intend to disturb his young wife's enjoyment of the miracle of mechanical flight, but a soft hand quested for his, as did soft eyes, bright behind her fringe. Weightlessness took over as the plane lifted off the earth, and she leaned over for a kiss.
“Thanks for coming with me, baby.”
“I kinda didn't give you a choice, sweetheart.”
“You know I love it when you get like that.” Rin smiled in two parts, the one half turning down, the other up.
🔥🛬🔥
The flight itself was uneventful. A bit of turbulence here and there, nothing too major. Nothing too major, although Sojiro very much did not appreciate even the minor turbulence they experienced, and neither did a number of other people nearby. Meanwhile, Rin could have been relaxing on the couch for all the anxiety she showed. She read one of her science fiction novels, or else typed away on her laptop. Sojiro, unable to distract himself, could do nothing other than look around and wish Rin had not made herself a shadow VIP. He ought to ban her from being anything other than a traditional, humble Japanese housewife who occasionally helps her hubby at his work, but he feared losing her if he attempted such a thing. She's a Chosen One type person. That can't be removed or forgotten. If he didn't like it, then he shouldn't have married her.
A hand landed on the back of his neck, caressing him, attracting all his attention. Rin's face was bright against the deepening blue outside the window. “Are you going to nap, ‘Jiro?”
“Nah, I don't think so. You?”
“Only if you aren't going to.”
“I'll keep watch. Don't worry.”
Rin never had trouble on planes, in airports, or anywhere else, her habitual calm carried her through, at least so long as she wasn't triggered, and the same thing occurred while they were so many thousands of feet up in the air. She slapped a pillow to the wall by the window, and promptly fell asleep. Envy and admiration, the two emotions she most commonly produced in others, including her own husband. Without her awake and aware, the flight became much worse for him, and Sojiro had to subdue and resist the urge to fidget and get up to fiddle with their luggage or go to the toilet for no reason. Yes, he's afraid of flying. After years of denying it, he could almost admit it.
Once or twice Rin opened an eye to watch him, but always closed it again before he noticed.
Hours passed and the little plane icon on the screen inched slowly across the blue until it hit the lurid green squiggles of Japan. Sojiro watched with the rapt attention some people show movies. The tiny fly-like plane inched another millimetre closer to its destination. Thank God. Almost home. Never to leave again if he could help it. Beside him, Rin stirred and yawned, straightening and pushing at his arm playfully.
“Are we there yet?” she mock-whined.
“Almost. The cat better not have gone stir crazy in your absence.”
“He's a good boy. Mostly. Just have to keep the fatty tuna coming.”
Half an hour later the captain's voice emerged over the intercom, indicating that he was beginning the approach to Tokyo International. Still, very few people gave any indication that they were doing anything other than riding a bus. It wasn't calm, it was obliviousness. A blase attitude about an extremely dangerous operation. Rin began making sure her hand luggage was packed. Her seat belt remained in use the entire time, so she didn't need to buckle it. Sojiro did, as wearing it the whole way made him feel even more trapped and claustrophobic.
“Almost home.” said Rin, as the lights turned off and the no smoking signs came on. When was the last time people were allowed to smoke on a plane? That would help a lot, a heck of a lot. G-Force or whatever makes taking off and landing so woozy, began to afflict them, and soon the tarmac was flying by beneath the plane like a hard grey river of stone lit up by fireflies. Even Sojiro leaned over to watch out the window. The couple held hands, and prepared for the shuddering jolt as the wheels touched down.
A crack and a boom like the fuselage itself had split apart ricocheted throughout the cabin, eliciting both screams and stunned looks from the human cattle trapped inside. But there was no time to wonder what had happened, before the plane crashed face first into the ground, throwing Sojiro and Rin against the seats in front, and even breaking a crew member's harness, tossing him to the floor. The dark outside lit up with flame, orange and red, thrown back in sparks as the fire rushed along the wing towards the fuselage, the air wailing in agony. The same was occurring to its twin. The plane skidded on its belly down the runway until a pilot managed to guide it onto the grass, the monster churning up two patches before coming to rest in a third. By then the cabin was already full of thick black smoke and screams and shrieks were being cut off by coughing and choking.
When it came to a stop, Rin uttered no sound at all, and Sojiro couldn't say anything either, as her stomach pressed up against his face. For an instant his panicked mind suggested that she was smothering him in some long delayed revenge. But then the pressure was gone and instead her hands pawed at his crotch. Again his mind suggested insanity, and even when his belt was loose and she was savagely pulling him to his feet, he couldn't grasp what was going on.
Neither could anyone else, although some passengers were beginning to push towards the front, into the fire rushing at the cabin from the wings. Incredibly, the rest were trying to get their overhead luggage down, or otherwise sitting in their seats waiting for instructions. No oxygen masks had descended.
“Evacuate!” cried a steward, but Rin was already long on it, dragging her husband along behind her, held in her iron grip while she barged violently into anyone in her way, knocking men and women aside, back into their seats and into each other. In her relentless march, she forced Sojiro to act as a bowling bowl too. He knocked a lady down, and caught a long glimpse of her frightened face as he was dragged past.
At the emergency door she'd marked out beforehand, at the back of the plane, it seemed like Joker would have to turn around and perform a death march towards another potential exit, as the thing was stuck. Reluctant to let go of her man, she threw herself against it without dropping her vice grip on his wrist. It budged, a crack of night falling through into the even deeper dark inside the plane, before closing again. Pandemonium covered the sirens rapidly approaching. Approaching, but already too late.
“Snap out of it and help me!” Rin snarled, turning and slapping Sojiro across the face. That helped, the pain and shock of the slap dispersing the shock and pain of the crash. Together the couple slammed their bodies into the door, forcing the crack to widen. The thing unjammed and slid open, deploying an inflatable slide as it did. Wolf eyed, Rin turned and shoved her husband out, before leaping after him. At the bottom there was still no time to even catch their breath, as she dragged him up by the collar, forcing him to run with her towards the fire engines, just in time to get out of range of the earth shaking explosion turning a plane into a fireball behind them.
🔥🛬🔥
For about two hours after the crash, neither person spoke much. Partly because of shock and horror, partly because of the necessity of going through the rigmarole of being checked out at a hospital, and partly because Sojiro found himself boiling with anger. Not at the airliner or pilots or engineers or whoever was to blame for the crash, but at his wife. Unfair, he knew it. Mad even. But still, the feeling was there, and he didn't trust himself to speak. Especially as they still held the hands they mutually took during the ambulance ride, sitting side by side on an examination bed. Minor smoke inhalation, some scrapes, bruises, that was it. Not like what happened to most of the rest of their fellow passengers.
The airline sponsered them a hotel room, one attached to the airport, because staggering back home and scaring the children and cat after the adrenaline left them shaking was unthinkable. Plus, legal stuff. Face saving had to be done. The walk to their room, the undead shamble, made Sojiro even angrier. Rin still had her hand luggage, and he had his phone and wallet and keys, but the reminder of her superior capability irked him as it never had before. It was almost like she wouldn't let him be the man. Like she didn't take him seriously, and never would. Sometimes he felt like that fish, that ugly deep sea fish where the male is so much smaller. Comically useless. It latches onto the female, living on her kills and otherwise doing nothing but fertilizing her eggs. Unfair, woefully unfair comparison to them both, but that's how pride distorts things.
“What the fuck was that?!” he found himself shouting, as soon as the hotel door locked behind them.
Stolid as a brick wall, Rin placed her bag down on the bed, and then remained standing side-on to him, staring at the black slab of TV that took up part of one wall, but really staring at him in the reflection. “A plane crash.” she said, an acerbic, haughty undertone in her voice. It very rarely appeared when she spoke to him, being confined to attic days.
“I thought you were supposed to be a hero, but you knocked all those people aside. You didn't even try to save them!”
A nasty little humourless smile crossed Rin's face as she partly turned his way. “Would you like me to explain the obvious? Or would you like to abuse me some more?”
“...What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
But, infuriatingly, she failed to answer, continuing to stare at him in icy fashion, letting his mind spool possibilities. An underrated torture technique. Hatefully, she didn't even flinch when he approached and got in her space.
“I'm glad you're safe. Even if you think I'm a villain.” Rin said. No nicknames, no tears, not from her anyway.
Fear began to rapidly eat away at anger, and Sojiro yanked her into a hug, cradling her head. “I don't think you're a villain, sweetheart. Forgive me. Forget what I said. I don't deserve you.”
A butterfly kiss to his cheek and a return of his embrace said that she would, that this would be another blow she'd simply absorb.