AN: A little idea that came to me one day.

It was utterly illogical, Martin knew, even as he handed the plate holding two peanut butter sandwiches over to the…man next to him. He still wasn't sure how the man ate, as he had yet to ever see a mouth appear on the blank canvas that was his (its?) face, but the food always disappeared in the brief minute or two when he was distracted. The man never spoke, nor made any sort of sound really, but he was polite and always nodded at him in greeting whenever Martin came home. He (it?) also helped around the cramped attic space that was his (their?) residence, as Martin would often come back and find the place spotless. He sometimes suspected there was a reason behind the cleaning, as he had one day came home and found some disturbing patches of…red liquid…on the wooden floors. By the time he finished his shower and walked back out, the spots had disappeared and his silent roommate was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking as apologetic as someone with no face could look.

Martin knew that he should be more alarmed by this…man, but the day he (it?) had appeared had been one of the worst days the MJN pilot had been through, having gone through six deliveries in one day where all the clients had heavy items in need of transport, hauling closets and metal filing cabinets up stairs and cramped rooms, his van breaking down after the fifth (but thankfully starting up again after an hour of cursing and kicking, with him only being half an hour late for the client), running out of gas halfway home after the last, getting soaked in the rain while pushing the van back, and then slipping on a step on the ladder to his attic room and nearly breaking his jaw when he fell and struck it against the rails. He wouldn't have been surprised if he woke up with pneumonia the next morning.

He had opened the door to his room, trudged in in a daze, vaguely registered the human-shaped thing standing in the middle of the room (he later recalled that he had been somewhat jealous of how neatly-pressed the suit was, considering the state of his own clothes at the time), staggered into the small shower, and slammed the door in the thing's face.

By the time he finished his shower (cold, the heater having broke down…why was he even surprised anymore?) and staggered out the showers wrapped in a thin towel, the pilot probably wouldn't have reacted had Douglas been dancing naked in his room. He bypassed the man-in-the-suit, who seemed to have grown some extra limbs while he was showering and was waving them around, (How nice it would have been, Martin thought in his haze, to have extra limbs. Would have saved me a lot of trouble lugging all that furniture around earlier. Thank God I don't have any deliveries schedules for tomorrow.) and flopped face-down onto his bed, out like a light. Had he been conscious enough, he would have seen the strange creature staring at him, limbs drooping as if in disbelief.

By the time Martin woke again, having readjusted himself some time while asleep so that he was no longer face-down against the covers but rolled up in a cocoon in them, it was to find a round-shaped white-thing two inches away from his nose. He blinked at it, wondering why there was a round-shaped white-thing in front of his face. It took him several more blinks before he noticed that the white-thing was, in fact, a head, and that there was a body beneath it, currently bent over him. It took him another few blinks for his sleep-bogged mind to register that there was currently a faceless thing wearing a suit and tie bent over him with its face in his face.

"Um. Hi?" He said, still not fully awake yet. "Not to be rude or anything, but I really don't have the best breath in the morning and you're kind of…close. Wait, can you smell? I mean, you don't seem to have a nose…err…" He trailed off, his mind caught somewhere between 'I need to brush my teeth', 'oh shit I forgot to put on clothes last night and I fell asleep in a towel', and 'there is a faceless thing towering over me why am I talking to it'.

The thing continued to stare (can eyeless things stare?) at him for a moment before abruptly straightening and walking over to the drawers in the corner, pulling it open and carelessly begin tossing its contents out.

"Hey!" Martin yelped and jumped, suddenly a lot more awake, "What are you doing? Those are my clothes!" He scrambled out of bed, his towel loosening in the process and falling to the floor, causing him to yelp again and scramble to grab it and wrap it around himself again, because faceless thing or not, he was not about to stand naked in front of it. The humanoid completely ignored him, still focused on going through his clothes. Martin hopped over, hands fastening the towel securely around himself, and tried to shut the drawer. The thing was obviously a lot stronger than it looked, however, and the drawer did not budge. The pilot also belatedly noticed that the thing was also a lot taller than he was, which for some reason he hadn't noticed the day before, standing at about seven and a half feet tall.

Unable to budge the thing, Martin threw his hands up in frustration and began picking up the clothes strewn across the floor. A shirt hit him in the face as he picked up another sock. "Will you stop that!" He yelled, pulling it off from his head, whipping around, only to yelp (again) when he found the faceless thing once more two inches from his face. He then noticed that the thing was holding up a pair of pressed trousers in one hand (not his pilot ones, the color was different), and a blue jumper in the other.

"What…you want me to put those on?"

The thing nodded and pulled its head back, sticking its hands forward instead and shoving the clothes into Martin's face. The pilot responded by batting the hands back, but snatching the clothes.

"You could've just told me…oh wait. Nevermind." No mouth. Right.

Grabbing a pair of pants, Martin hurried into the bathroom and slammed the door into the thing's face (again, because it was sorely mistaken if it thought he was going to let it stare at him while he got changed, eyeless or not).

When he came back out, dressed, the creature had disappeared.

Martin blinked, wondering for a moment if he had been hallucinating the entire thing, and that he was actually still in bed asleep, but then saw the state of his room (clothes strewn everywhere, the bed messy and well-slept in), and decided that no, he had not been hallucinating after all and that there had been in fact, a strange faceless thing that had apparently been in the same room he had been in the entire night while he was sleeping and had probably been staring at him the entire time.

Feeling a lot more creeped out now that he was fully awake and decently dressed (thanking his lucky stars that he didn't come down with pneumonia or even a cold), Martin quickly left the room and went downstairs. Most of the students were away, but a couple were in the common area watching telly.

"Oh hey captain." Sarah greeted, munching on some cereal. She then paused, mid-bite. "Uh…do you know you have a nosebleed?"

"What? Oh, nevermind that." Martin hastily wiped his nose with his hand distractedly. "Uh, did any of you happen to see a tall…person, in a suit, leave this way?"

Sarah and Joe, the other student, both stared at him blankly.

"No, why?"

"Nevermind." Martin mumbled and grabbed a tissue from a dispenser to wipe his nose before heading back to his room.

The day passed peacefully, only interrupted by a few calls from clients requesting his service in delivering things (more filing cabinets and a large drawer, joy), and a text from Carolyn about their next flight (in three days, Fitton to Los Angelos for a client who was moving). By the end of the day, Martin had almost forgot about the encounter with the strange humanoid. A week later, he had completely forgotten about the encounter.

Two months later, he was abruptly reminded of the encounter.

It was after a long flight back from Australia of all places, and Martin was exhausted. There were no deliveries for a couple of days, so he figured he could use the time to catch up on some rest and maybe stock up on some food again. He climbed the ladders to his room wearily and opened the door.

Faceless man-thing looked up from where it was sitting, on his bed, an open book on various aerial models on its lap.

Martin blinked at it. Faceless man-thing stared back. Martin closed the door to his room, blinked hard a few more times, and opened the door again. It was still there.

"Ookay…how did you get inside my room?" Martin said, pinching the bridge of his nose as he walked in.

The thing shrugged its shoulders and held up the book, pointing a pale finger at it. (perfectly manicured too, how lovely, Martin thought sarcastically)

"I'm a pilot." Martin said, somewhat defensively, not even sure why he had to defend himself from this…whatever it was. "I fly planes so I need to know about this stuff!"

The thing nodded and went back to the book.

Martin sighed. "You're not leaving, are you."

It ignored him. Martin took that as an affirmative.

Deciding he was too tired to deal with this, he took a quick shower and wriggled under the blankets, though thankfully the thing took the hint and stood up so he could pull the blankets over himself.

When he woke up again, it was gone once more.

Thinking it would be like last time, where it would be gone for a few months at least, Martin was surprised when he came back from his shopping the next day, holding two bags that was to last him for the next two weeks, to find that it was back again. It was sitting on the edge of his bed again, but now there was a whole stack of books beside it. Martin was pretty sure that none of those books belonged to him.

His curiosity getting the better of him, he set his bags down and went over to the creature's side to read the books' titles.

"An Aviator's Guide to Piloting…The Advanced Pilot's Flight Manual…Commercial Pilot Flight Maneuvers…these are all books about flying!" He exclaimed. Faceless man continued reading without looking up. Going through the books, he suddenly gasped and grabbed at the three books at the bottom of the stack. "Advanced Airmanship: Precision Flying, Flight Technique Analysis for Professional Pilots, Aerodynamic Principles for Professional Pilots…I've been trying to save up- I mean, I've wanted these books for forever!" He exclaimed, clutching the heavy tomes to his chest, "Where did you-" He turned, and the bed was empty, the previously open book lying on the floor.

"Wha-" Martin blinked, whirling around in his room, but the creature had disappeared. No sound of the door opening or closing, and a quick check to the bathroom told him that it hadn't suddenly slipped in there either. He dropped the books back onto the bed and scratched his head, perplexed. He didn't notice that he was dripping blood all over the place from his nose until ten minutes later.

Over the next few months Martin became increasingly used to the creature randomly popping in and out of his room. Not that he ever saw it coming or leaving…One moment it would be there, the next it would be gone again. It would also often bring back 'gifts', as Martin had no idea what else they could have been, as they were all things that were either of interest to him or vital to his continued survival. (He had once entered his room and got bricked in the head by a three-kilo can of baked beans perched above the door; Martin hadn't known that non-humans could have that sort of sense of humor to pull pranks on him. Thankfully Faceless never did that again. Then there was that time when he came back and found models of various airplanes scattered all over the floor, or the time he came back and saw ten pilot uniforms spread over his bed, all from different airlines. He hadn't asked where they came from.)

He got the idea that whatever Faceless was, it probably wasn't a benevolent being. For one, everything that it had brought back so far (and his room was starting to become quite cramped) appeared to have been…owned. Martin would have thought that perhaps it had simply stole them (or found them lying around somewhere, unlikely as it was even as the thought crossed his mind), but that episode with the reddish…liquid…casted a more alarming side to whatever the thing was. There was also the news of missing persons Martin saw on the telly whenever he had the time to actually be at a place with one.

A man living in Norway with a certain interest in collecting model planes had simply vanished one night from his house. No disturbances, no sign, just simply disappeared. Along with all of his collection. The public opinion was that the man might have simply decided to move elsewhere without telling anyone, but his family was adamant that the he was a family man, and would have never gone off like that without telling anyone. That had been the day Martin went home and found the planes in his room.

A pilot from China Airlines also vanished the day before his flight to Hong Kong, and initially everyone thought he had gotten drunk the day before (he had a bit of a problem with the bottle, if what Douglas told him was right), but when after three days and still no sign, the airline had gotten worried and sent someone to find him, only to find his hotel room untouched, with an open suitcase on the bed. His uniform was missing.

(Martin went home that day and went through his wardrobe with the uniforms that Faceless had brought back and confirmed that yes, one of the ten had included a China Airlines uniform.)

However, as no one in the apartment apart from himself had ever seen the thing, also considering how usually unlucky he was, Martin figured that even if he reported it to the authorities they'd likely think that he had done it (no matter if he had been on the opposite side of the world where the people had vanished from), or think him mad and have him locked up.

After a year, the creature more or less became a permanent fixture in his room. It would disappear from time to time, sometimes a few hours, sometimes a month, but it would always be back, standing in a corner or sitting on his bed.

.

"Morning Captain…you don't look too good. Got up on the wrong side of the bed?" Was Douglas's greeting to him as Martin staggered onto GERTI, his hands half-clutching his hat and half-rubbing his temples. The headaches have become rather frequent for the past few months, but Martin figured it was from lack of sleep more than anything; Carolyn had gotten a few good deals and they've been flying all over the globe, and it was messing his internal clock up. Nothing a cup of coffee couldn't fix.

"Good morning to you too Douglas." He grumbled got into his seat. Arthur could be heard from somewhere in the back, and he could smell brewing coffee. He got busy with the usual pre-flight checkups.

They were halfway across the Pacific when Martin decided to take a break and left the cabin with Douglas. Walking over to the small lavatory, he pulled the door open.

Faceless, seated on the toilet, looked up from the newspaper it was clutching in its hands, and nodded at him.

Martin slammed the door shut.

"What was that?" Douglas called over from his seat, alarmed by the sudden sound.

"N-nothing. Nothing at all. Everything's perfectly fine." Martin managed to say, aware that his voice was probably an octave higher than normal, before reopening the door and squeezing himself into the toilet, shutting it behind him and locking the door. With the two of them crammed in the small lavatory, and Faceless taking up the majority of the space seated on the toilet, Martin was left standing awkwardly on tiptoes, keeping his balance by clutching the railings on the walls.

"What are you doing here?! Wait, how did you even get on the plane in the first place?" He hissed at Faceless, who looked up at him innocently. It shrugged and flipped a page in the newspaper. Martin vaguely noticed that it was reading the sports section.

"You really shouldn't be here," Martin said, "I know you're probably behind all those disappearing people I've been seeing on the news, please tell me you aren't here to make anyone disappear."

The creature tilted its head to the side before nodding.

"…Was that a 'yes, I'm not here to make anyone disappear', or 'yes, someone is going to disappear'?"

It held up a finger, indicating the first.

"…Right. Okay. Well. Um. If you don't mind, I need to use the lavatory." Martin rubbed his temples. The couple of Tylenols he had taken just before takeoff seemed to have worn off by now, his headache was returning with a vengeance.

Faceless nodded and stood up, making what little space they had between them even more non-existent, as it had to bend over forwards due to the low ceiling and its height. It grabbed Martin by the shoulders and spun them around, switching places with the pilot so that he was now in front of the toilet and itself at the door. It then grabbed Martin's right hand, reached into its suit and pulled out a bottle of Ibuprofen and dropped it onto his palm before exiting the lavatory. By the time Martin got over his surprise at the 'gift' (Advil, not that expensive but still more than what he would have been willing to pay for himself when the money would have been enough to keep him fed for a couple of days) and looked up, it had disappeared again.

Three days later, Martin came back home and found over fifty bottles of various types of painkillers stacked, pyramid fashion, on his bed.

"Martin, are you sure you are alright?" Carolyn, not one to usually inquire about the state of Martin's health as long as he showed up on time for his flights, asked, a stern frown on her face.

"What? Why? I'm fine." Martin responded, even as he winced at the volume of her voice.

"Because that," She snapped, jabbing a finger at his face, "is why. I'm not even shouting, and you look absolutely horrid. When was the last time you slept? I can't have a sleep-deprived pilot flying us to Luxemburg."

Their clients were a pair of shady-looking men, who was transporting several large crates of 'artifacts'. They hadn't provided any details on what they contained, and Carolyn hadn't asked. They were paying well above the usual rate for such a transportation, and she needed the money.

"I'm fine." Martin mumbled, even if he knew he wasn't exactly in top-shape. He hadn't been, for some months now. He had slept over twelve hours the day before, but still woke up feeling as though a freight train had driven over him. Repeatedly. Faceless was absent, though it had left several bundles of bandages on the bedside table, as Martin had found odd patches of his skin bruised and some seeping blood in recent weeks. They did not hurt too much, but he kept them wrapped up so he wouldn't get blood all over his clothes.

Carolyn stared at him skeptically, but didn't press the issue.

After drinking three cups of coffee and a blend of several painkillers, he felt somewhat more lively and got ready for the flight ahead. He was even feeling somewhat cheerful about the day.

Of course that meant everything went to hell three hours later.

Martin wasn't sure if he should have seen it coming. Really, he always had the worst luck (even if it seemed to have slightly improved with Faceless' gifts helping him out from tight, usually financially-related, spots), so it couldn't have been much different. At the moment, however, he was a little more occupied with keeping the aircraft aloft, praying that the rest of the crew were still alive, trying to keep the two shady-men-turned-hijackers from shooting his brains out, and not panicking.

One of the two men was screaming at him over the various beeps and warning alerts, demanding that he keep the plane steady despite one of the engines being on fire and autopilot being down, while his companion was in the back, cramming Douglas, Arthur, and Carolyn into the lavatory. Martin was stammering over all the noise, trying to reassure the man with the gun pointing at the back of his head that the plane was still flyable even with one engine down but that it really would be the best course to land it somewhere before the rest of them caught fire as well.

And then the second engine on the left wing exploded. Of course.

The force of the jolt caused the man behind him to lose his balance and crash into him, which in turn caused his hands to shove down hard onto the steering wheel, which then in turn caused the plane to go into a nosedive. Martin could hear the trolley and various other objects in the back tumbling forwards to the front, before the trolley crashed into the cockpit's door and blocked the rest of the objects from flying into the room.

The man with the gun had landed onto the control panel and was currently lying painfully on Martin's hands, keeping the plane in a nosedive. He tried to shift the man off despite his hands protesting loudly against the treatment, because they were down to fifteen thousand feet and oh-my-god he could see the sea down below, and the entire plane was shuddering and making horrible crunching sounds-

The next few minutes was like watching a silent movie in slow-motion.

The lights had flickered out at ten thousand feet, plunging the entire aircraft into semi-darkness. Martin could see the sky through the windows, but the colors were blurred. All sound disappeared as well, both the man-in-the-back's shouts, the mechanical warnings bleating through the speakers, and the sound of the plane falling apart were all gone. A rapidly growing chill spread through the aircraft, and suddenly something was pressed against Martin from behind, somehow slipping in between himself and the seat he was strapped in.

"The others-" He tried to say, but he couldn't hear himself. Before his eyes, something dark, liquid and oily, spread across the windows, blocking out the view and sending the entire cockpit into darkness. Even without looking, Martin somehow knew that the oily blackness was spreading throughout the rest of the plane, covering everything. He could feel it wrapping and curling around his limbs, until only his face was left uncovered.

And in the darkness, a pale, round white shape appeared before his eyes, and Martin knew.

"You."

Darkness took him.

.

The next time Martin opened his eyes, it was to find himself lying on a bed in a hospital, surrounded by various medical equipment. He was alone in the room. Mostly he felt numb, and he wasn't sure if it was sign that he was unhurt or if he was paralyzed. Testing his limbs though, he was glad to find that he could still move, even if everything felt heavy and sluggish. Why was he in the hospital?

"Mr. Crieff?" The door opened and a woman in white doctor's coat strode in, holding a notepad.

Martin blinked at her.

"I'm glad to see you're awake. I'm Doctor Carsa." She had a warm, soothing voice. Martin liked the sound of her voice.

"You've been in a coma for the past two weeks, we were beginning to wonder if you were going to wake at all."

Two weeks?

"Wha-" He croaked, before he was overcome by a fit of coughing. The doctor took out a bottle of water and poured him a cup, which he sipped on gratefully. "What," he tried again, glad to find that his voice was no longer so hoarse, "What happened? Where'm I?"

"You're at Fitton Hospital. You were in a plane crash." Martin's eyes widened. He had crashed GERTI? "What do you remember?"

Blinking wildly, Martin tried to remember what had happened. There had been a flight…two men…they had been hijacked!

"Two men…plane taken over…" He rasped. The doctor nodded.

"Yes, I heard about that on the news." And predicting his next questions, she answered, "Your fellow crew members are fine, by the way. It's a miracle, considering the state of the plane by the time the rescue workers found you."

Martin sagged back into the bed in relief.

"Your crew members suffered no lasting injuries though your co-pilot, Douglas Richardson, suffered a rather nasty blow to the head. He's still under observation but Ms. Knapp-Shappey and Mr. Shappey have both been released. Those are from them, by the way." She pointed to some flowers beside the bed that Martin hadn't noticed previously. "The police will want to question you some time later if you're feeling up to it."

Martin nodded, slightly dazed.

Three days and several interrogations later, Martin was finally cleared and released and back in his attic. The next couple of weeks flew by with him somehow being lauded as a hero by the media and public for managing to get the plane down with all crew members surviving, though the two unfortunate hijackers had been torn apart from the fall. Not that anyone missed them. Turns out the two had been a part of an international smuggling ring-turned-terrorist organization and they had been planning on dropping off some highly toxic 'supplies' to some other members of the crew which would've been catastrophic had the plane not combusted itself in mid-air.

An investigation was launched to determine the cause of GERTI's malfunction, but after several months there were no conclusive results, although it was determined that it had not been pilot error. Carolyn did get a hefty sum from insurance, however, and was able to retire from the flying business altogether. Last Martin heard, she had opened a catering business with a rather glowing success, Arthur being one of the employees. Douglas, despite not having done anything at all during the whole hijacking incident, had managed during several interviews to gain quite a bit of popularity, and was hired by another airline, where he was now a full captain once again.

As for Martin himself, after being declared fit for flying once more, had received several offers from different airlines, but had declined for the time being. He still loved flying, of course, but there were a couple of things he had to take care of first.

It has been three years since the incident, and Faceless hadn't shown up again. However, Martin knew without a doubt that it was still out there, doing…whatever it was that it did. Every once in a while, he would return to his room, and find another 'gift' lying on the floors or bed.

His bruises faded over time, and gradually the headaches and nosebleeds stopped as well. He could only conclude that Faceless had been the cause for them, and was glad they stopped. If he had ever felt wistful over the lack of the being's presence, he never showed it.

He also never did tell anyone who the real cause for the plane's combustion was, and only smiled awkwardly whenever someone mentioned how odd it was for someone like him, with all his flying memorabilia and trinkets, to have two skulls as part of his room's decoration.