A Midnight Parallax

The Shortest Distance

Summary: When Kris and Junior’s fairy tale ending hits a snag, they return home to Raintree to find themselves again.

Chapter 4

Dani couldn’t believe her eyes.  One minute Kris and Junior were dancing like love-struck teenagers, and the next Kris was running off to escape him.  Dani sighed and followed after Kris.  Her brother didn’t deserve that.  Kris had to stop torturing both of them.

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The Shortest Distance

Summary: When Kris and Junior’s fairy tale ending hits a snag, they return home to Raintree to find themselves again.

Chapter 2

“Kris! Junior! Stop hiding inside the house!” called Matt’s voice from the foyer.  He had spotted Junior’s new Prius in the yard when he came back from his ride with Light in the Meadow.

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The Shortest Distance

The Full Story Rundown: Four years after getting married, Kris and Junior are having a few problems, causing a rift between them.  They arrive at Raintree hoping to regain what they've lost over the course of time and travel, leading to several revelations about Kris - 1) her brother Jace wants to reunite the family for a long lost half-sister's wedding and 2) after an accident during training, Kris found out that she was going to have a baby, which effectively would end her career as a jockey.  Along with a few other mishaps, Kris's world is shifted off its axis, leading her to want some space from Junior and going back to Raintree for its familiarity, hoping to find herself again.  Eventually, she realizes that she can't go back to the way things were, she has to move forward.

Chapter 1 - "Distance" by Christina Perri
Chapter 2 - "Spaces" by One Direction
Chapter 3 - "Wild Heart" & "The World We Knew" by Daughtry
Chapter 4 - "Let It All Go" by Birdy & Rhodes
Chapter 5 - "Lego House" by Ed Sheeran


I don't think this story will be broken up any differently at this point.  Chapter 1 is when Kris and Junior return to Raintree, Chapter 2 is their interactions with Matt and Dani, Chapter 3 is the party, Chapter 4 is when Kris finally spills what's on her mind, and Chapter 5 is when Kris and Junior make up.

When I started this story, it was supposed to be about Kris finally meeting her father.  The reference to Kris's half-sister comes from the webisodes, when Jace wonders out loud if they have more siblings by their father that they don't know about.  Jace's story with Kris never got completed during the series' run for whatever reason, as he appears for most of the webisodes detailing Kris's life before Raintree (ending with a cliffhanger about the guys from the chop shop) and the third to last episode of Season 3, leaving on an ominous note that he would be there to pick up the pieces for Kris if/when something went wrong at the ranch.  (Considering how much went wrong in the Season 3 finale, it seemed like he was being set up as a main character in Season 4.) Kris would attend the wedding, confront her father, and reconcile with Jace that both of them were wrong in how they dealt with each other.  At the wedding, Junior would find out that the groom was a relative of Dani's, leading to Dani finally meeting her mother.  Then that would be a wrap for this fandom.  But as seen above, I felt like this fic was getting too out of hand (it was supposed to be a one-shot, but the momentum to get to these scenes was more than anticipated), and I left the ending open to interpretation.

If I was going to invest time into a Wildfire fic, I would have done it with rewriting the Season 3 finale and all of Season 4.  Season 3 wouldn't have the illegal match race, but a deal going south between Dani and Sheik Omar, bringing Junior back into the Davis fold, and an another event causing Matt and Kris to put their relationship on pause, all of it subtly tying back to the Raintree/Davis rivalry hitting a new peak with Raintree back in a steady economic position.  Season 4 would involve Junior turning into his father, Dani trying to find herself outside of the horse business, Matt looking at whether he thinks the farm should become more like Davis to compete or remain solely a family endeavor, and Kris managing her family's tumultuous re-entry into her life.  Gillian's exit would be more played out, in like the first or second chapter.  Then Kris and Junior would hook up in secret a couple of times, but then get caught via pictures published on the internet.  It would lead to the industry questioning if Kris and Junior had an agreement about what races were won and lost, because he's owner of a horse farm and she's the jockey for the rival farm, eventually causing problems with their families.  The situation would be particularly ugly with their private lives getting dragged out in public, which is hard on them because they're both trying to be taken seriously.  Junior realizes that he doesn't want to be his father.  Kris learns how to set boundaries with her family, and to recognize that she needs to reform her decision making process.  While Kris and Junior would remain apart for some time to defer the fallout, they come to a moment when they are forced to decide whether they're friends, rivals or lovers.  It won't be an easy decision for them, but they finally choose each other.  Junior proposes but Kris turns him down, saying that if they're together for one year and one day (their relationship was always on and off again, Kris wanted to see if they could make it work long term), he can ask again and she'll say yes.  In the meantime, Matt would get a new love interest more suited to him, but he'll have to work hard to not screw it up.  The show would end with Matt's wedding at Raintree, and Junior quietly proposing to Kris at the reception in the barn with Wildfire.  She tells him that it's been one year and six days, so she's not required to say yes, but she will anyway.