Gently Through This Broken Sky (R/K Fic)
Title: Gently Through This Broken Sky
Author: shadow_walker3
Pairing: Kristen Stewart/Robert Pattinson rpf (written in KPOV)
Rating: I believe I’m incapable of writing anything less than R or NC-17, so this is no exception, but I’m incapable of also writing porn without plot (just ask my friends). One day though…I’ll succeed.
Warnings: Other than the above, I can’t really think of any…unless you have a really weak stomach.
Summary: I will preface all summaries by saying that I enjoy injured men. I have since I was about eight years old. I cannot explain, nor do I promote the injuring of men; however, there will be no complaint from me if they are. For some reason, I find them hotter when injured. I believe it to be some sort of Florence Nightingale complex, where the need to then take care of them takes over and…I have no idea - they’re just hotter, ok? So to get to the actual summary, which is longer now than it should be, I finally just asked my friend/beta/lover/wife/hetero-life partner, Kaia what the hell the summary should be and she said: “It’s a story about how a plane crash brings people together (she doesn’t write for Hallmark, I swear), like a bat mitzvah, but less fun - with less dancing and relatives and food and more snow and possible death and crash landings.”
Timeframe: Right after the MTV Movie Awards 2009
Chapter 1 of ? who the hell knows by the time I’m done.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, nor am I profiting in any way besides my torrid fantasies. And I really didn't think I'd ever write anything of this nature again after the last epic I attempted, so...we'll see. LOL
A/N: So in light of recent events, i.e. certain pictures that were unknowingly taken (which I feel bad for but just…can’t stop being HAPPY regardless), I had to post this sonofabitch. Because, see, I started it shortly after the MTV Movie Awards this year, and having had experience with long-ass epic stories in another fandom, I was adamant that I wouldn’t post it until it was done. But since like, half the crap has actually happened in crazy round-about ways, including HELLO private planes and shit, I just…couldn’t wait any longer. So it’s with some reservation that I start posting because I’m still adding small things in between scenes, but this is largely completed.
Further A/N: I would like to thank my three wonderful, influential, PATIENT friends, in all particular orders so no one can say “I WASN’T FIRST BITCH” : Kaia, Nickell & Mandy; Nickell, Mandy & Kaia; Mandy, Kaia & Nickell for their continued help and putting up with my flailing and bitching and whining and making this story and my life more livable and better.
I’ll shut up now.
Gently Through This Broken Sky
By: shadow_walker3
Chapter 1: When the Sky Fell
It was all that idiot Catherine Hardwicke’s fault. We had 5,000 actors to choose from and she had to bring in that last one - just one more Kristen, just one more. Yup, that ‘just one more’ would grow to be the biggest pain in my ass since…I can’t even remember when. Just a small, independent movie that no one will see…yup, that happened too - no one saw it all right, everyone saw it - I can’t even go out in the street anymore without being criticized, critiqued, censured, cond- and what the FUCK was he doing over there? I turned my head to look at Rob sitting across the aisle from me in some puddle-jumper plane that the production company had thrown together quickly to get us to wherever the fuck we were going next, and it wasn’t even an aisle - you couldn’t even call it that - we might as well have been sharing a seat for how utterly SMALL this plane was, and couldn’t a girl just wallow in peace? Was he talking to himself? My GOD my head hurt. He was singing...lowly...under his breath. Christ. And reading. At the same goddamn time. I rubbed my temples and tried not to go completely apeshit on his lanky, British ass.
I failed.
“ROBERT!”
I had to stifle the chuckle that threatened to bubble out. We were both too tired and strung out, and shit had a habit of becoming way too funny way too easily when we were this sleep deprived. He was wearing that goddamn beanie again, which, at least this time, it was cold enough. The look on his face as he registered my yelling of his name was priceless - a mix of shock, utter confusion and a hint of embarrassment. I felt bad. God, why did he bring out my inner-bitch so easily? I waved a hand at him while I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “Just…try to keep it down,” I mumbled.
How he ever heard me over the sound of the engines we were sitting on, I have no idea. How I ever heard him over the sound of the engines was a mystery in itself, but again, headache - not going to over-analyze that.
I turned again, flashing him a shy smile of apology and was met with ‘the stare.’ Yeah, that’s the one, the one where it’s the mixture of confusion, concern, a tiny bit of hurt (which I ignore), which is always followed by the scowl of disapproval and usually the offer of a cigarette and a chat. The cigarette was out of the question, and it was really too loud in here to chat. So the scowl seemed to suffice and I watched him fish something out of his bag on the floor. He handed it to me wordlessly, his nose back in the book, not checking to see if I was actually going to take the aforementioned offering.
I looked skeptically at his outstretched hand and then snorted out something of a sigh and took the little bottle which held temporary relief for my headache. I shook three tablets out of the bottle and dug around in my own bag for water, finally remembering I’d left it on the window ledge before we got in this bucket of bolts. I sighed as karma bit me in the ass again and smiled more warmly when a half-drunk bottle of water appeared in my line of vision. I should really be nicer, I decided. I nodded my thanks and Rob flashed me a smile, and then the world upended.
~ ~ ~
Did I mention it was all that idiot Catherine Hardwicke’s fault? She HAD to bring in that last actor, and he HAD to be the one that was the best out of all the others. Seriously, what are the odds of that? Like…5,000 to 1 that the last person that walks in the door is the one you’ve been looking for? I mean, I could very well be sitting here with Zac Efron or something. I suppressed the chortle the picture of that brought - actually I couldn’t really imagine the Disney prototype Efron on a puddle jumper with all his hair and bust-out-the-musical moves. It didn’t really compute. Rob looked at me curiously while the chortle made its way to the surface as I imagined Efron busting into song in the middle of this tiny plane. I waved him off again, and being well versed in Stewart-hand-gestures, smartly went back to his book without questioning me. I liked that Rob was quiet when he wasn’t running his mouth in nervousness. When it was just us on set, or just us and the cast, he had a quiet confidence, a peace amidst the chaos that was very comforting. He was jittery around crowds, and terrified of mass trampling, and rightly so as fans seemed to get more and more out of hand, but away from all the glitz and horror of walking down a normal street, he was just happy, goofy, intelligent, complicated. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes, trying to will the pills to work faster and stop the steady thumping of the blood vessels threatening to drum their way out of my head. If I still had this when we got to the promotional crap it was not going to be pretty. In fact, the antithesis actually, since the whole cast of Stomp running around in my brain would most likely cause the awkwardness and nervousness to reach new and amazing heights. I mean, let’s face it, I couldn’t discuss this shit when I was operating on all cylinders, sometimes I don’t have a deeper understanding of Bella than what’s there, and this was all just mixing together as a total recipe for disaster. I couldn’t even remember where we were going…Seattle? Yeah, Seattle. ‘Just a quick jaunt from Vancouver down to Seattle, Kristen - you’ll get there so much faster this way. In and out!’ Uh huh. Sure. We should have pushed for a commercial flight, but honestly, besides the noise of the plane, there were just me and Rob and the pilots, so it was far less crowded and much less stressful. Or so I thought.
If he would have just stayed in his seat, we might not be in this position. But no, the British love to help apparently, or some shit. And Rob had to get up if he was going to be chivalrous and fetch me…whatever the fuck he was fetching. As my eyes were closed, I felt more than saw him move, the shadows and the air shifting behind my eyelids, and I cracked an eye open to watch him shuffle his way to the front of the plane, which let’s face it, was about six freaking feet…and wasn’t that MY bag he was suddenly digging in!? I was too tired to voice much of an argument, and it stopped when he handed me a small, rectangular, heavenly mp3 player, the likes of which could drown out plane engine noises. The British are so awesome. The ear buds were in, the heavenly music was about to begin and then I found that I didn’t need the music...
~ ~ ~
I bet this wasn’t even an American-made plane. It was probably made by some poor…Poor Chinese? In a sweatshop. Or something. Do they have sweatshops in China? Do they make shitty airplane parts there? Ow. My head. They obviously manufactured the parts for cheap labor and that’s why the fucking engine on the right just spontaneously shut off, only to be quickly followed by the one on the left…with fire! Awesome! And then chaos descended. The cockpit, which was separated, again, by literally feet, erupted in a symphony of beeping noises, alarm bells and whistles, and one really fucking annoying horn that sounded an awful lot like a submarine was going down or something. I had about a second or two to register what this really meant, looking up to find Rob still standing in the aisle with his body facing me, hands nonchalantly grasping both seats in front of us, but his head turned towards the cockpit and then that weird slow motion thing happened. I can’t begin to describe the look on his face when his head finally swiveled my way, but I’m sure mine was very similar. And funny, my headache went away, just like that.
Did you know that 53% of plane crashes are caused by pilot error? 21% are caused by mechanical failure, and 11% by weather. The odds of being on an airline flight which results in at least one fatality are 1 in 8.47 million if you’re looking at the top 25 airlines with the best records. If you’re looking at the bottom 25, your chances raise to 1 in 830,428. The odds of being killed on a single airline flight with airlines in the top 25 are 1 in 13.57 million, while the bottom 25 are 1 in 1.13 million. This plane? I don’t think it was in any of those statistics. They say it’s far more likely you’ll die in a car than a plane…Know what all that means? Means expressly shit when you’re stuck in that weightless feeling, in a piece of metal that was never meant to float in the air, and you know your ultimate destination is thousands of feet below.
~ ~ ~
Have I told you yet about Catherine Hardwicke? All those statistics? Bet we’re the only ones who’ve got Catherine Hardwicke as our reason. The bitch is totally hearing from me if this fucking plane ever decides to meet the ground. Slow motion is a real bitch, and I’m so pissed off at her right now. What does that make us like…0.00001% of plane crashes? Shit, we’re not even going to be on any charts. We’re going to be like fine print on the bottom of the chart! How unfair! The injustice! We’ll be an asterisk on the bottom of a goddamn chart!
*Note: 1 plane crash due to intervention of Twilight Director Catherine Hardwicke.
Actually, in hindsight, I can’t really blame her. I’ve been told the crash can in no way be linked to her involvement, but I still hold her responsible!
I’m beginning to think that in addition to the unholy intervention of one independent director, this flight was doomed from the start, because we’re on a stupid charter plane, one whose next passengers were supposed to be three hunting buddies from some backward, tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin, USA (boy I hope they got their deposit back, because this plane? YEAH, NOT flying anywhere else, I can tell you that much), we already were not allowed to follow the same flight path as a commercial plane - something about air traffic laws, blah, blah, legal jargon that I do not understand. In addition, the ‘safety and maintenance coordinator’ of said airline, otherwise known as Hank Yarbo, 72, of Dog River, Saskatchewan, is apparently a little lax in his actual pre-flight checklist, and failed to check not only the autopilot system, but the backup system for the fuel injector as well. So…when the plane’s autopilot system malfunctioned, sending us veering further off course into unknown wilderness, that path also pushed us into dangerous head winds which this tiny little plane could not handle…causing not only the flaps to malfunction, but completely rip off, thereby sending our flying bucket of grade-A, Hank-approved metal into an engine stall...the engine which could not then be restarted due to that pesky non-maintenance of the fuel injector. So - just to keep you up to speed here, right engine? Out. Left engine? Running our little plane on full power, no flaps and completely overworked. What happens to overworked engines you might ask? Well they have a tendency to overheat. What do overheated engines cause you might ask? Overheating causes sparks, melting, and generally not two things that you want happening to machinery keeping you suspended in the air. So…left engine? Out. Right engine? Out. No engines? Not a good thing. Airplane flaps, refurbished: $1,200.00; Basic Fuel Injector Replacement Kit: $100.00; Handyman Hank: $200.00; Crashing in the Forest: Priceless.
Sonofabitch. Why the fuck isn’t Rob sitting down? Does he somehow think that the plane crash will be less impactful if he’s standing? We didn’t have a stewardess on this plane, or maybe I would have remembered that whole ‘in the event of an emergency, the following procedures apply’ thing. I know there are crash positions on those fucking pamphlets that no one bothers to look at. That might have come in handy in this very situation. It’s insane the amount of thoughts that run through your head at a time like this - like who the fuck cares about crash positions and stewardesses and emergency oxygen masks? THE FUCKING PLANE IS GOING TO CRASH AND ROB IS JUST STANDING THERE.
Apparently, it takes a long time to crash. I wouldn’t really know because of that whole slow motion thing, but it sure as hell seems like a long time. Actually, it all probably happened really quickly. Going from floating in mid-air to, holy shit: ground, can’t take that long in reality. I remember looking out the window and not seeing clouds, but trees, trees that were looming way too closely for my liking. I remember seeing snow-covered surfaces and a large body of frozen water, but that’s about all I could glean in the moments until impact. Funny, the landing itself didn’t seem that harsh. I mean, sure - it was a lot rougher than the usual, but not terribly jarring. Sort of like a really bad amusement ride, minus the amusement, and with a shitload more force. When I looked over at the aisle again, Rob wasn’t standing there; that’s when the panic set in.
Chapter 2
Chapter 1 Chapter 2