Please see the most recent MOD NOTE and ADDENDUM

(updated 5 July)

Welcome everybody. How you got here I have no idea but thank you for coming and welcome again, nonetheless . As you may have gathered this is a Fic Prompting Meme dedicated solely to the hilarious and oh-so-addictive BBC Radio 4 sitcom - Cabin Pressure. I'm aiming for this to be pretty anything goes - but in order for everything to run smoothly, there are a few guidelines. Don't worry - they're not too restrictive.

FILLING GUIDELINES

As you probably all know - our meme now has it's very own database created and maintained by the great Enigel. It both catalogues each and every prompt that we post and provides links to fills. You can find it here: Google Spreadsheet

We also have a Pinboard archive which has been put in place by the lovely

oxfordtweed in the place of our late Delicious Archive. This Archive contains a list of all the prompts this meme has to offer - you can find it here: Pinboard Archive

This is a great step forward in making our meme just a little more organised (but not too organised of course. This is Cabin Pressure) which is always a good thing.

So in order to make things easier to archive - Please nest your fills.

This can be done by either posting each part as a reply to that part's immediate predecessor, OR by replying each time to Part I OR - well you get the idea :D

It makes it simpler for Enigel and myself to link fills in a clean and clear manner. Following these guildelines will be very much appreciated guys :D

REPROMPTING

Reprompting is allowed but please include the URL of the original prompt when you do so. It will make it infinitely more easy to Archive which would make both Enigel and I very happy :)

As for everything else

Be respectful to one another. Disagreements are fine, but not everything disagreeable is trolling. If you suspect someone of trolling, just ignore it. If you cannot respond to a comment without attacking or trolling someone else, keep it to yourself.

No bashing prompts. It might not be your cup of tea - but obviously someone wants it enough to go to the effort of requesting it. So just scroll past it.

Prompt away as much as you like guys - seriously, go wild - but please try to fill as well.

NEW - If your fill includes a major element that veers from the original prompt (crossovers, established universes, kinks, et cetera), please take a few moments to check with the OP that such additions are welcome. This has caused problems in the past and it only takes a few moments of your time.
Please no RPF. I'm not trying to oppress you RPF writers and enthusiasts, I would just really like to avoid any legal problems.

When you post a fill (or post a new part of a WIP) please go over to the Filled Prompts Post (if it is complete) or the WIP Post (if there are still more parts to come) and, following each post's guideline's, post a link to this fill or new part.

REALLY IMPORTANT ADDENDUM

According to numerous Child Safety laws it is illegal to provide pornographic material to minors. Seeing that the majority of the stuff we have here is rather adult in nature, this Meme is consequently an 18+ zone. Failing to comply to this rule could result in the Meme getting shut down. So if you're here and you're under 18 please back button now.

+ Please do not post anything regarding minors in a sexual situation. It really doesn't matter how tasteful or crass it is, there are laws that classify that sort of thing as child pornography and as such, I'm afraid we're going to have to go with the attitude that safe is better than sorry.

It really is VERY important that these rules are upheld as the consequences are severe.

Other than that - go crazy guys. Any problems please just message me and I'll try my best to work it out.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Prompt Index

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cabin_pressure @ LJ | Cabin Pressure @ AO3 | IRC Chat @ irc.ecnet.org #FittonATC

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Omg how do format?!
I forgot what I was going to write originally, but I'll try to finish this.
Probably 1 more bit to finish.
Logic has been thrown out of the window along with my ridiculous dog. I don't even know...

4/?

The only who knows his secret is his grandmother. That was when he was five years old, a time long past in history. He was a small thing back then, a little boy full of hope, with dreams unsullied and free. A dirty mangled little thing, as they told him affectionately from when he would scamper back in covered in garden dirt and leaves, and chirp about adventures of birds and planes and tree top dreams. A time when he still believed in himself.

You mustn’t let anyone know, his grandmother had said, sternly. Her fingers were hard against his shoulders, bony, digging into the soft flesh. Not a single soul, do you hear me?

By their feet, the body of the family dog lay, mangled and broken, blood matting into its fur, dead.

Please, he sobs, begs through the tears and snot running down his face, hands grimy and dirty and he tugs helplessly on its coat, runs his hands through the fur, feels the blood twisting and tangling it between his fingers, the bones, broken and shattered beneath the skin. Please.

You cannot help him, grandmother had said, her hand hiding poor, dead Tony from his sight. No one can help him now.

He had been sent to his room alone, on the excuse that he was ill, where he huddled up beneath his blankets and pillows. He did not understand, was too young to understand what death was, and what he had done. There was something wrong with Tony, and Tony won’t be well again. No more playtime with Tony, or delighted barking when he has barely stepped into the house. No more crying into the thick and fluffy fur when he is sad, no more whispering of secrets into Tony’s ear. It is a fact that is simply reinforced by the following days of unfamiliar silence and a cold kennel for the next few days, and a fresh mound of earth in the backyard.

Thinking back, perhaps this was where his fear of dogs began.

This is your secret.

He does not realize, not until he was older, much older, and his family has forgotten about Tony and his accident.

He is shivering, when he makes his way into the attic, soaked through to the bone with rainwater, shutting the door behind him and then slumping down against it, burying his face into rain numbed hands. His clothes are in ruin, his hair a shock of tangles, but he does not notice any of it.

Douglas. Douglas knows.

Had seen him, watched him swallow another’s soul.

A high-pitched giggle escapes him.

Now Douglas knows, too.

It really isn’t anyone’s fault, though. It is simply the nature of secrets, and he cannot fault that. It is what he is, undeniably, and a secret like that cannot be hidden forever. There will be a day when he will slip, go mad with hunger and pain, and forget who he is. In a way, he is glad that someone has found out before then, before he makes a mistake that he cannot forgive.

The soul was delicious, though, and he would not deny that.

Would Douglas be horrified? Shocked? He entertains the image of himself being burned at the stake, or drowned in a duck pond or river, but shakes his head. Those methods have long since outdated in the modern times. Instead, there would be sterile white cells instead of dark and damp cellars, needles and syringes instead of clubs and red-hot iron and stones. It is still enough to make him shudder.

It is frightening, how easily he senses them, needs them, feeds on them. Takes from them what isn’t his, devouring the essence of what makes them human so that he in turn could resemble and pretend to be one. While it is true that he waits, ever so patiently, for people to pass away naturally before snatching them up in his hands, it does not make him any less of a monster, or any better than horrors that live in stories between words and sentences. And when he catches himself wishing, wishing for someone to die just so he could feed, it frightens him, scares him, terrifies him, but it is the nature of what he is.

This will be the end now, he knows. No one will side with a monster that steals souls. Never mind that he has never willingly taken from a living human before: it is simply a detail that they will not care about when their lives are at stake, and he does not blame them for it. It is human nature to fear what dangers them, what they cannot understand, and logic to destroy what threatens their existence. He thinks of the little girl, the sickly children in the wards. Does Douglas think that he will tear their souls from their chest to sate his hunger? Leave them bloody remains and smears of what used to be a living and thinking being? Perhaps, that he might steal his daughter’s soul in the middle of the night when everyone is safe and warm and asleep in bed to wake to a fresh horror in the morning.

Humans often think the worst of what they do not understand.

He laughs, bitterly. It had been a long and painful existence, for him. No one knows. Not his siblings, not his parents, and when his grandmother had passed away in her sleep one quiet evening, he was left on his own. It is a secret that he cradles to sleep each night, lying awake beneath the blankets, one that he hides behind smiles and laughter, disguised as kindness. There were wonderful moments worth living for, sometimes, a bright ray of light in the dark. Flying was one of them, and MJN was another. For the first time in his life, he had a family, albeit a rather strange and dysfunctional one. It may not be the same way that they see him, but it is the way that he sees them. Friends, family, lives that he cares for, people who aren’t strangers.

He thinks of the MJN, thinks of GERT-I, the first time when he had stepped into her flight deck. He wasn’t paid, but he was disgustingly happy to be able to be a Captain, pilot of a plane. She was small and old, but it doesn’t matter when they ground drops away, the wind beneath her wings carrying and lifting her up into the blue skies, the exhilarating and liberating sense of freedom that comes with each flight carrying him through his days.

The first time he had met the crew, he remembers being nervous, stammering twice as much as usual. Remembers the easy way Arthur accepts him as Captain despite of his stammering and nervous fidgeting unbefitting that of a Captain, and instead asks if he could borrow his hat in a very Arthur-like manner. Remembers Carolyn’s scathing remarks, although he has learned that she means no harm, merely concerned about the future of her company. She would have sharper teeth than him, either way, and the thought brings a smile to his face. Douglas, standing by the side, condescending and patronizing, teasing him and making fun of his Captain status until the day he lands GERT-I in a rather hairy situation. Remembers the grudging respect in their faces, and the relief he felt when they touched down, safe and sound on the ground, alive and breathing.

Remembers the trust that they place in him with their lives in a rickety aluminum tube that might fall out of the sky.

No more of that, now.

It is only a matter of when they find out, and he does not want to stay around till then. Does not want to see the fear and disgust in their eyes, see them flinch away from him, turn their backs upon him.

He might have survived without flight, but he cannot live without them.

He lurches to his feet, and stumbles across to collapse onto his bed. It is almost comical the amount of relief that this brings him, knowing that this is the end. It should frighten him, but it does not, not when he would be doing a favour to them all, not when things are still semi-perfect in his mind, when they still remember him as Martin Crieff, as who he had tried to hard to prove himself to be.

Just to satisfy his morbid curiosity, he presses his hand to his chest, reaches in, and rips.

The pain that follows turns his vision white, has him screaming. The students won’t be home for a week, there is no one to hear him. He thrashes, he screams, as something in him tears, snaps and breaks. The pain is twisting, in his head, in his chest, white-hot needles burrowing into him, his eyes rolling back into his head even as he cries out soundlessly. Just as suddenly, it stops, the pain disappearing, leaving him limp and boneless and exhausted and dizzy on the bed-

And there it is.

It floats before him, hovering inches above his chest, a strange shade of blue that he has never seen before, one that reminded him of the skies, of dreams. Vaguely, he wonders why he isn’t dead yet, but if the humming in his ears is any indication, that is simply a matter of time. His body feels heavy, clumsy, and he smiles, smiles at the sight of his soul. He had fancied it to be dark, and slimy, something heavy and thick, dripping of sickness and death, like phlegm. He had not expected something this – beautiful. It was the only word to describe.

It shimmers, and hovers, and does nothing for a while, even as he struggles to stay awake, to breathe. His body feels heavier, and his thoughts grow slower. No one lives without a soul, and he is glad that he has one. Something to show that at least, he was once alive, and feeling. He grows colder, and his breathing slows, and everything is a pleasant blur around him.

He thinks of flying, and thinks of MJN again. His eyes were just drifting close when the door to his attic is thrown open, to reveal a rather unhappy Douglas in its frame.

A Douglas who pales, and stiffens in shock at the sight of his captain lying lifeless on the bed with his soul outside of his body.

“Martin,” he was by his bedside immediately, grasping hold of his wrists in his warm hands, as Martin belatedly realizes “Martin. Put it back in.” He gives him a shake, the pilot’s head lolling to the side instead. “Put it back in.”

Douglas was a rather frightful sight, his tone urgent, and he fancies that he hears fear beneath his words.

“Martin. Please.”

I’m sorry, he mouths, or tries to, but he is tired, so tired… Surely he is allowed to sleep, where this one will take him?

He last thing he sees is Douglas, pale and frightened above him.

He sleeps.

LOVE THIS. NEED MOAR. OMG MARTIN YOU PITIFUL CLOT.

OHMYGOD NO

MARTIN.
DOUGLAS.

Help, this fill is giving me too many feels.