Fic -- Phoenix Grounded

[vanillafluffy]

Title: Phoenix Grounded
Authored by: vanillafluffy
Pairing: None. Ian POV
Rating/Work-safeness: Safe
Approximate word count: 365
Disclaimer: I claim rights to nothing but the neurons and electrons I composed this with.
Summary: A brief glimpse of what happened shortly after the Phoenix landed. A belated companion piece of sorts to Comfort Food and Cost Benefit Analysis. Thanks to cheerleader karaokegal, who asked for Ian!fic.


Phoenix Grounded


He feels like Icarus: he's flown too close to the sun, and now, sitting in the shade of a hanger at the little strip where Towns landed them, Ian feels light-headed. From their escape. From the altitude. From the knowledge that he isn't going to be mummified in the desert sands, that he has a future and it doesn't include disgrace or jail.

The airfield workers have been freaking out about their sudden appearance. Ian leans back against the wall and wants to tell them not to worry. Really, they're fine. They're alive. The rest is utterly, completely trivial. He almost laughs. Maybe "hopes and dreams" speeches are contagious?

Something hot touches the back of his hand, and he starts. Funny, how the mind plays tricks, he thinks as he accepts the chilled bottle of water a worker hands him. It's cold, dewy with condensation, but it's been so long since he's had a drink that wasn't room temperature...he'd forgotten that you can feel cold radiating from something the same way you can feel heat.

He hastily cracks the seal on the bottle. The first mouthful is a shock to the parched tissues and burns going down. With the second swallow, he notices the taste---or rather, the lack of taste. This doesn't have an aftertaste of plastic and those damned purification tablets. The cool, crisp moisture is the most wonderful thing in the world. His throat works convulsively, gulping....

Ian stops, horrified at his faux-pas. He's downed half the bottle. He glances to his right, and to his immense relief, sees that the others have bottles, too. Most of them are drinking thirstily. Liddell is touching his to his sunburned cheeks in between swallows. At the farthest end of the line from him, Elliott is accepting his bottle from the good Samaritan. He catches Ian's eye, and Ian raises his own bottle in a silent toast. Elliott's eyebrows lift like wing flaps, but he returns the gesture.

Things could have so easily been different. If he'd pulled the trigger...Ian is as thankful for that surrender as he is for the fresh water.

Not Icarus. Yes, he flew near his own destruction...but he didn't fall.


***


Comments are shiny.

Comments

[karaokegal.livejournal.com]

Whoooo-hoooo! Awesome. So HIM and thanks so much. Maybe I'll put on FOTP while I'm writing tonight.

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for wheedling it out of me. I've had the idea drifting around for a while, but I can procrastinate like a professional....

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is beautiful! Perfect in-character voice for Ian, and you've drawn out one of the things I loved about him in the movie -- he came out of the experience so greatly changed and able to be "one of the guys."

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

Thanks. In my head, returning to corporate America is going to be an uphill struggle, and he's going to end up saything The Hell With It. He's thrifty, he's got money stashed away, I think he's going to have the most productive mid-life crisis out there!