6 Month Anniversary What What?

So, funny story:

Six months ago today, I posted the first chapter of What Fates Impose on fanfiction.net.  I had actually tried to post on February 16 vs. February 18, but I ran into issues with the site not wanting people to spam and a 48-hour waiting period.  At the time, I had six chapters done, well on my way to finishing either the seventh or eighth.  I had put three weeks of solid writing in, and had devoted hours of research to figuring out things like "how do Sarah and Chuck get from Siberia to St. Petersburg" and "if Sarah has this much fuel in this type of plane, how far will she make it before she has to land and ditch the plane?"  Decisions had to be made like how to format the scene headings, how much detail, will people like a Chuck who is essentially broken, and all of this.  And oh man was I nervous when I put that first chapter out there.  I wasn't even sure if I liked the name What Fates Impose since it was picked extremely last minute. 

Hard to believe that was six months and over nine hundred reviews ago.  Did I expect Fates to take off like it did?  Hell no.  I didn't even expect it to be this long.  But it's like the story that keeps on giving back, really.  I can plot and plot until I'm blue in the face and somebody (COUGHSarahCOUGH) will do something that completely startles me and makes me go, "Hmm.  Okay, that works."  And people still continue to amaze me with the amount of support and faith they have that Fates will continue to be a story that they can enjoy, even though they haven't the first clue where I'm going with it.

Anyway, when I imagine stories for the first time, I usually see them a lot like a movie in my head, with the major scenes giving me glimpses of what's to come.  I had no idea when I started Fates what lay in store for the characters save that they were in a Frea Vehicle, and that usually means bad things to come for them.  Anyway, the following section was one of those major scenes that played in "What Fates Impose: The Trailer."  It's what starts off the next chapter, which unfortunately won't be ready for the big six-month anniversary.  I could post it on its own on ff.net, but I'm very particular about how my chapters begin and end, and that they tell a story.  So we'll be celebrating the six month anniversary of Fates on the blog instead.

So now I present to you, a scene that both excited and terrified me, and which has been on my mind since I started writing What Fates Impose*:

 

The Canyon Is Not Enough

26 NOVEMBER 2007
07:02 MST
GRAND CANYON, YAVAPAI POINT

Over the past hour, the edges of the sky had slowly, subtly taken on various shades of first a lighter purple, blending easily into pinks and blushes that signaled the oncoming sunrise. It was almost like watching the sun melt from the sky, but in reverse. After the snowstorm the day before, a snowstorm that had ripped briefly through Colorado, lost steam through Utah, and finally peppered down across northern Arizona, Chuck hadn’t been sure he would actually see the sun rise this morning. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one that had wondered, as there was not another soul at the outlook to watch the world light up. Everybody else was still in bed, he figured, probably snuggled up warm, while he sat in the couple of inches of snow at the outlook and watched the sun rise.

He didn’t mind the solitude. People made things tricky.

In some corner of his mind, he could hear Ellie’s voice, nagging at him to get inside, to go get out of the cold before he caught his death of fever or the flu or various other ailments. The coat that had luckily been stashed in the back of the FBI SUV he’d taken from the Heartbrake Hotel wasn’t nearly warm enough to hold off the elements, especially not with the biting wind.

He’d spent five years in Siberia, always frozen. In a way, feeling that again, after the warmth of Burbank and southern California, was comforting. He kept his hands tucked in the jacket pockets since he didn’t want to lose fingers to frostbite. Toes were a little less important, and he’d stopped feeling them ten minutes after stepping from the stolen—borrowed, he reminded himself. He was going to return it—so it wasn’t like they mattered much to him one way or the other.

What was he doing? He was agoraphobic, and he had a life and people that loved him, so why the hell was he out here, all alone, with all of this space all around him, and nobody to protect him?

Chuck pushed the questions away and climbed to his feet. Yavapai Point Outlook, one of the few he could park by and hike to without worrying about a shuttle bus, faced the east, but he would still get to see the sun’s virgin rays strike the canyon that spread out majestically below him.

He had never been to the Grand Canyon before. He and Ellie had tried to talk their dad into taking them as kids, but he had always been so busy, so wrapped up with his work. He’d said, “Next year” until they had learned to stop asking, that “Next year” would never come.

One more thing to cross off his list, Chuck thought. Sarah and Casey were going to murder him. Casey would do so overtly, possibly choking him to death, while Sarah…after her first angry outburst, she would say something encouraging and supportive, but her eyes would clearly broadcast her unhappiness and distress.

He wasn’t looking forward to either reaction. Neither of them, he knew, would quite understand that he had needed to get away, to think and do nothing but think and evaluate and compare and contrast, all of those things he had forcibly stopped himself from doing ever since he entered that line of Zork text and Sarah had shown up in the bunker.

And now, here he was, at the Grand Canyon, of all places. He wished Ellie were there, even while he dreaded seeing her again, knowing that she would well and truly flip her lid. Hurricane Ellie left very few survivors. But still, Ellie would have liked to see sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

He didn’t even have a camera to take pictures and show her later, once her wrath burned down to embers. All he had was a borrowed laptop that had run out of juice after he’d sent a short email, the jacket on his back, a borrowed car with its emergency food-stash, and a five dollar bill, all that was left of the money Sarah had handed him to go get change at the Heartbrake Hotel. It was almost peaceful, being without a cell phone, even while it was terrifying.

Chuck wasn’t sure why he heard the rustling on the trail behind him, given that he was fairly positive most of his hearing hadn’t returned, but he turned his head nonetheless, curious as to who else would be out on this windswept outlook in the bitter dawn cold. Certainly somebody better prepared than he was, given that his jacket provided very little warmth in the overall scheme of things.

When the gun came down the path before the person holding it, he yelped and immediately threw his hands in the air. “Federal agent! Don’t shoot!”

The gun lowered. Belatedly, he realized it was a very familiar Smith & Wesson 5906, instants before the white face behind said gun confirmed the identity of his visitor. He froze. He hadn’t expected Sarah and Casey to show up for at least a couple of more hours, but now it was clearly time to face the firing squad.

Sarah, still on the path down from the Rim Walk, didn’t move, save to lower the gun limply to her side. She seemed absolutely stunned to see him. “Chuck?” she asked, and her voice sounded strange, like she hadn’t used it in a while.

Chuck winced. “Um, hi.”

Now, he thought, was the part where she tried to kill him for directly disobeying orders and vanishing off the face of the earth and stalking his ex-girlfriend and nearly getting them killed several times and lifting a stranger’s cell phone, and about a million other misdeeds. She would remember the gun in her hand at any second and simply shoot him, making her life ten thousand times easier, so she could jet-set off to go murder prime ministers with eating utensils and…

Sarah dropped the gun. Like, actually let it go. Chuck watched it fall in absurdly slow motion, watched the silver catch glints of the early morning sun as it tumbled the couple of feet between Sarah’s limp hand and the snow.

It hit the snow without a sound. Chuck only had time to blink before Sarah herself seemed to collapse just like the gun had, only this time it wasn’t in slow-motion. Sarah’s knees hit the ground and she crumpled forward, her shoulders already beginning to shake. If Chuck moved, he didn’t remember. One second, he was up against the rails, the next he had vaulted over the rise that split the middle of the lookout point into two tiers. “Sarah! Oh crap, are you okay? Oh, crap, crap.” Had she been hit? Was she shot? Injured? Dying? What the hell had happened after he’d left? He tried to grab her shoulder, to see where she had been shot.

Sarah’s hand, ice-cold, grabbed his wrist, and he half-expected to go flying. Instead, she yanked, and he went forward onto his knees. Before he could react, she had burrowed against him, wrapped her arms around his middle, and just clung.

It took Chuck’s foggy brain a second to catch up. Sarah Walker wasn’t injured.

She was crying.

Oh, hell.




*mxpw: Wait...you're doing the wall sex?