[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Lessons

Series: Flying Red Barrel

Genre: Slice of Life (I guess?)

Length: 2455 words

B/D: Time for some Flying Red Barrel, this time not actually featuring Marc (even though Marc is a cutie).

Islay rolls her shoulders, wincing as she feels the joints crack. It’s been a long day. Too long, like all the others. Really, she needs to go home. She needs a bubble bath – no, scratch that. She needs to take a day and fly off to one of the little resort towns in the area, and book herself into the spa. In the short term, she needs a cup of coffee. Preferably with something a little stronger mixed in. These are things she once took for luxuries, trifles with which to amuse herself; now they are necessities, part of the process of lashing herself together to face another day.

The Guildmaster has no authority now; the Guild was dissolved, and the war that would come was averted. But things are never quite that simple. A Guild was an organisation, and taking it away was like trying to destroy a house by taking off the roof. Even with the roof gone, the walls and the foundations still remained. Even without the Guild, there were still planes and pilots and stewing animosities, people who were brave and foolish and desperately lost. Marc led them against the Guildmaster, and she certainly had a kind of charisma – but she wasn’t the kind to do the long, nervous work of a diplomat. It fell to Islay, and so she herself fell into a position of responsibility she had never really wanted.

This evening’s job is a little more familiar than the shuffling of paperwork, and the demands and counter-demands of pilots from neighbouring territories. It was the kind of thing she had to do often as an instructor. But it’s still one of her least favourite jobs in the world, and it comes at the end of tiring day.

“Peat,” she says, sitting down on one of the cracked wooden stools. “I’ve had some complaints about your behaviour.”

His hands make angry arches as he clutches his knees, the tendons visible even beneath the leather pilot’s gloves. He has a strong, broad back and his legs are getting longer; he has the look of a boy growing into his inheritance. But he still seems… very young, she thinks, in this borrowed classroom. They were lucky to get even this; she’s an old friend of the teacher here, and from time to time they let her use the schoolhouse to talk to her pilots. Their old common room was destroyed along with the castle, of course, and although you can say a lot of things in a tavern – god, doesn’t she just know that – it’s hard enough to get any attention from the pilots without surrounding them with barmaids.

“I’m told that, after finishing a routine job two days ago, you went to the tavern. Nobody observed you drinking anything alcoholic, which is good and bad… About an hour after you arrived, you got into an altercation with another pilot, and socked him hard enough to take out three of his teeth,” she says, recounting it as dispassionately as she can. The judging will come, but it will come later, when she’s heard both sides. “…That’s about the size of it. Do you have anything to say?”

He raises his chin, and looks her right in the face before he speaks. His eyes are like cold fire. “I’m not going to apologise.”

She gently presses a hand to her head. Of course not, she thinks. Fantastic. Lovely start. Her chances of getting home in time for a warm bath are evaporating like steam before her eyes. But she shelves away her disgruntlement for later, because she knows that this is a time to take things slowly, word by word and step by step. There is something to be taught here, and a lesson must never be rushed.

“We’ll get to that. I want you to give me your side of things. Start from the moment you walked into the tavern.”

“There’s not much to say,” he begins, petulantly. “I walked into the tavern after work, ordered a lemonade, and sat down to relax. Johanne” – his nose wrinkles as he says the name – “was at the next table, being… Johanne.”

“Oh? How so?” She pretends not to know what he means, because it’s important that he tell her himself. But privately, she knows that Johanne is an idiot with a habit of letting his ego get in the way of his flying. The sky demands respect. You can’t fight the wind, the storm, or the rain; they’ll always win, because they’re bigger and angrier than you could ever be. Bravery certainly has a place for pilots, but in her opinion, humility is much more useful.

“Doing that stupid horse-laugh of his. Bragging about his flying to his meat-head friends. Bothering the barmaids every five seconds,” he says, looking especially displeased at the last part. “I wouldn’t mind, but he’s barely fit for hauling cargo. If he could fly worth a damn, he wouldn’t have to brag about it. His flying would do the talking for him.”

“I see.” She’s still carefully neutral. Maybe later, in a week or two, she can tell him that she more or less agrees with him. But not now. “So you sat down next to him for an hour, and got so sick of him that you had to punch him. Is that correct?”

His lip curls, and she knows she hasn’t quite gotten to the bottom of his story yet. But the answers aren’t forthcoming. Instead, he clears his throat, and stands up sharply, sending his stool tumbling with a clatter. “Well, do what you want. I’m leaving.”

“No, you aren’t,” she says tiredly.

“Why not?” he asks. “You can’t expel me. There’s not Guild to expel me from, and I don’t have to answer to you. You’re just another pilot.”

“To begin with, Peat, everybody answers to someone – even if they don’t have a superior. The Guildmaster had his authority and his castle and his war, but he still answered to Marc, and to me, and to you. I might just be another pilot now, but I’m another pilot that happens to have taught you to fly, and devoted a lot of time to making sure you don’t kill yourself. You don’t have to respect my position, but I’d like you to respect me.”

She doesn’t raise her voice. She’s not angry because she knew it was coming, and that’s the hardest part for him. If there’s nothing to push against, he just spins his wheels.

“Secondly,” she says, and her voice is just a little more precise now, with a touch of danger in it, “if you try to leave, I’m going to get up and stop you. You can fight me if you like. I don’t think you will, because I know you don’t like to hit women, but if you do, you’re going to find that I’m older than you and I’ve had to slug a lot more people in my time than you have. And if we have to take our disagreement to the sky, you won’t be the first pilot I’ve shot down. You might not even be the hundredth.”

She wonders if it’ll work. Diplomacy and discipline aren’t her speciality; it seems like a coin flip every time she tries. But he doesn’t move towards the door, which is reassuring. He just needs one last push.

“Sit down, Blue Crow,” she says, and gestures to the stool he upended. “Talk to me. I’ll listen.”

Slowly, grudgingly, he rights his seat and sits back down. This time his gaze falls not on her face, but on his own feet. Cowed. Ashamed of himself. If he were a different boy, she might tell him that moments like these are what makes her proud of him. He has an ego, just like Johanne. He can’t stand being treated as an inferior – everything has to be equal, and if it isn’t, he needs to put himself on the same level. But even so, he can be persuaded to put that ego aside if he needs to. It’s a struggle. Humility isn’t natural to him; it’s a learned skill, hard fought for, and that makes it all the more impressive. This is on the list of things she’ll tell him someday, but right now, tough love is the only love he can understand.

“…after about three quarters of an hour, he started running his mouth about some of the other pilots,” he continues. His voice is a little quieter, but he’s managed to control the ragged edge it gets when he’s upset. “You were one of them. He called Sherry a madwoman, and said that Marc was a pipsqueak.”

Ah, she thinks. Well, that would explain it. She feels a warm smile starting to creep onto her face, and forces herself to clear her throat and swallow it down. She still needs to be professional right now.

“Well, I’m sure we all appreciate the attempt to defend our honour. But I can tell you categorically that Sherry absolutely does not care what other people think of her,” she says. The words are more right than Peat can know. People think that Islay is unemotional and cold, and that Sherry’s cheerful, free way of thinking is more personable. But Sherry can be even more distant, in her own way; getting her to come back down to earth and actually interact emotionally with things that aren’t the sky and aren’t flying is one of the hardest things Islay does on a regular basis. Sherry is a genius, without a doubt, but like a lot of geniuses, she simply isn’t interested in anything outside of her passion. Her heart only has room for one thing, and that thing is the sky. “As for me, I’m quite capable of addressing any comments people make by myself, so you should just report them to me in future. And Marc… forgive me if I’m wrong, but you call her a pipsqueak as well.”

He pouts, because he doesn’t have a particularly good answer to that. “Well, yes. But… I’ve earned it.”

“Have you, though? I think Marc decides who earns that right. If I ask her tomorrow, will she tell me you’ve earned it as well? It’s not like you can claim the right based on your flight record against her, after all.”

She can see his jaw moving as he grits his teeth. Marc is a sensitive subject for him. She’s his rival, of course, but she thinks maybe he’s just at that age where being attracted to somebody is a confusing and labyrinthine maze of feelings. (‘That age’, she thinks, lasts from about 15 to 50 and possibly beyond, depending on the person).

“Well, leaving that aside… I’m not inclined to say that what you did was categorically wrong. People have disagreements, and they have the right to settle them – within certain limits. You’re also correct in that this isn’t the Guild, and that I have no right to chastise you,” she says, making her voice more friendly. They should also be complaining to you, instead of complaining about you to me, she thinks, although she doesn’t say it. “But listen to me for a moment, Peat.”

She leans back on her stool, and looks out of the classroom window. Sunset over a field of corn, orange all over the land. “You, and Marc as well, are… well. You’re like our emblems. When the people of this town look at you, they see all the other pilots as well. You two are the ones who decided to fight the Guild when it went down the wrong path.” She halts a little in her speech, ruminates on it. It was their youthful ideals versus an adult’s ambition, and those ideals stirred up the other pilots to support them. Perhaps all pilots are children at heart. “So when you do something, it reflects on all the other pilots who followed you – whether what you do is good, or bad. That might strike you as being wrong, but that’s how it is. I won’t ask you not to fight people. You have to pick your battles. But make sure you give it some thought before you start swinging.”

He smiles, just a little. “I did. I started thinking about hitting him from the second I sat down.”

“Yes, well… That’s not quite what I meant,” she says, but there’s a little bit of amusement in her voice. “You wouldn’t leave the runway without thinking what the weather will be like. You shouldn’t act without considering what the consequences might be. Be mindful of that.”

“Fine,” he sighs. Thinking ahead isn’t his strong suit, she knows; he prefers to just have the skill to navigate himself out of whatever trouble he gets into. But he has to learn foresight sooner or later, and now is as good a time as any.

“For now, I’ll have a word with Johanne in the morning about disrespecting his fellow pilots. I think I’ll put him through his paces at well; it should give me time to hear what he has to say about me with my own ears.” She stretches. Her shoulders still ache, but her long-awaited bubble bath will have to wait until tomorrow. “If you need to punch anybody else, please try to make sure you don’t do any permanent damage in future. You’re free to go, Peat.”

He springs to his feet, obviously itching to get out of the door and put this all behind him. But he has the good graces to linger just a little, even if he still can’t quite look her in the eye. “Um… Thanks, Islay.”

He’s gone before she can reply, walking back to his plane in long, hurried strides. But he takes off in his plane as safely as ever, just the way she taught him. She feels worried but proud, in a way that she never thought she would when she was just flying her plane as a young girl herself. She feels that the time she spent in this old classroom, as sore and tired as she is, was worth something. That’s all she can ask.

The one thing she dislikes is that all this teaching she’s doing has made her feel old. So when she gets in her plane, she doesn’t fly in the direction of home like she was going to. Instead, she looks to the mountains. No doubt Sherry is flying there, even now; she wonders if the Rose Windmill could be persuaded to come down to earth for a drink or two. There’s only one way to find out. It’s been a while since she’s done a night-flight. She breathes deeply, smiles, and starts her engine.

A/N: This is the first time I've really written about (or considered) Islay, and as occasionally happens when you write about a character for the first time, I fell in love with her very slightly. I like the idea of her being somebody who's quiet but very sensitive and insightful emotionally, but also very tightly controls how much she shows to other people because she feels she has to be professional, because nobody else she knows really is. I think I'd like to do another Islay story at some point.