Take The Sky

            There they were again, it was becoming routine for them. Somehow they’d found common ground once again in the rift left by their conjoined stupidity. How odd, or not–perhaps expected–that Falco held his delicate thoughts where none could see. It was safer that way, it was safer to front the air of indifference. No, he’d not said that–but it was easier for James to assume the worst, too. It was just easier to front the smile, those affable pleasantries while seeking the crags in every personality he ran afoul of just as he had as a boy.

It was safer. Better–but it wasn’t true.

James followed brief flash of light that caught the stone’s surface before it was lost to the mire of swirling dunes. The wind was turbulent, and hot, like fire and only tempered by the absolute lack of verdant life to keep the threat of wildfire at bay.

He could smell a storm on those winds.

Falco’s grumbled words were somehow more compelling.

              “–Yeah, maybe. Maybe.                    … heh, It’s a hard thing to turn your cheek at.”

That was an understatement. The older vulpine flexed his artificial digits, troubling the thoughts he entertained without a word.

             “–but that person I cared about is dead. Both of ‘em.                           –Only got a few of those now. N’ a man of his word                                  should be just that–punctual.            . . What happened to me doesn’t matter,                                  but what happens to FOX does.”

He sighed, and scratched for the frames of his sunglasses, pushing them along his snout as had become standard even now–years later. The smile was not long to follow–that easy going gesture that had encompassed his veneer since his days in the cornerian military.

              “–Guess that’s why we got people like you.              Gotta have people that talk sense when you’re                           actin’ like an asshole.”

You’re not an asshole.

But he didn’t say that.

“If you mean that -- ”

Falco leaned over, swiping up that half-sack of water he’d left on the wayside. He tossed it his way - let James figure out what happened to it after that. He’d already done too much, said too much; that smile of James’s was a bit to close to something like concession, and for some reason, it was the last thing Falco wanted to see. 

Maybe it was the compliment.

Back to your basics, then.

“Then leave a damn note next time,” he said. “So we can at least track down the bits of you we gotta scrape off the pavement when it’s over.”

There was a pause, here: the time he needs to push the rest past his gag reflex, or whatever you’d call that inexplicable block between him and the air between them.

“You wanna know about my … feathers.

…right. Alright.

Way I hear it, feathers ain’t exactly like fur; guys like me got this oily stuff or whatever on us that makes us more waterproof than dogs, cats, apes or – whatever else you’re thinkin’. So, really, getting ‘em dry ain’t so bad – it’s just workin’ the water through enough to actually get the soaking and rinsing part done, y’know?

He stops, balancing himself, before giving Falco a look. “At least I’ve got a good side,” comes the return. He’s trying to be positive. He could very easily just lay down, show the world his belly, and call it a day, but when you’re Bill Grey…that’s just not how it is.

“It’s like they don’t wanna cooperate with me, man. I don’t get it.”

“Y’think they make training wheels for legs?”

“I think they call those crutches.”

Bill can still shoot back -- that’s good. Falco pushes off the window with his boot.

“Or a wheelchair -- I dunno,” he says. “Either way, it’d be 40 years off you that ain’t comin’ back.”

Peppy likes to say that the only thing that grays you out faster than being a soldier is being the General himself. Falco had laughed at the time - and wondered why the old man’s smile looked so damn sad when he did.

Now he wishes he hadn’t.

“Yeah, one time. One time you use our kitchen and our supplies to make yourself a whole buncha pancakes. Then you’re the one who’s surprised to see a table full of hungry, hopeful people expectin’ food.“

"Heck, we thought it was a holiday or somethin.’ You gone and went Good Samaritan.”

“‘One-time’ my ass. I make myself breakfast all the damn time; nobody wants my toast. Nobody wants my fucking Star Flakes. 

          That–well, that was hardly the response he’d been expecting. James wasn’t sure WHAT he thought might come, if at all–truthfully, he’d not considered the youth’s response to his words, not really. They’d come unbidden, shaken free with the swan-dive he’d taken, and the subsequent confrontation that had followed after. James knew the moment had passed him even as he’d squeezed the trigger, and the tears burned the eye which bore the world in its dingy, unhampered present–and he hated it.

His heart was breaking, and he hated it. Hated that his anger hadn’t been enough to snuff everything he’d once stood for as he thought it might–even in his darkest moments, as those last vestiges of starlight went out (as they should have long ago) James couldn’t find it in his heart to shoot Pigma. Not in his face–not like he deserved.

It was embarrassing, right?

‘Course you couldn’t shoot ‘em.’

When had the gauze made it into his hand? When had Falco dropped it? The senior pilot couldn’t recall, as the sentiment his reluctant companion echoed stole away James’ ability to consider things his idle hands could tend to. If for a moment, anyway.

“Isn’t it?         What justice is being served when people like that–

‘Guess we’re alike, huh? We both got nobody.          No family, no real friends.’

    ‘… I’m your friend, Pigma’

                 –are allowed to walk with their shit not settled?”

He rolled the gauze wrap between his artificial fingers, and thought, inviting the welcome spell of silence as he began to unravel it enough to apply against his hastily stitched wound.

             “–You telling me you wouldn’t?” Shoot him?                      Would you? If you were wronged?            If someone snared the last bits of light from your life?                                    Would you?

“ . . You wouldn’t shoot em?”

It would be wrong just to shoot him–

                Right?

“Didn’t say that.”

Falco didn’t look at James; not beyond the false hand peeling away at the gauze, gleaming dully in the sun rising overhead. He didn’t want to see his weakness - not today, not ever. Still, his jaw jumped once, twice, although it was quite some time before he bothered to push it to speech.

“It’s just the difference between guys like you and guys like that, ain’t it?” He said quietly, almost begrudgingly, pointlessly pulling a stone out of the sand beside him and chucking it out of the shade into the burning knoll. For some reason Falco thought, with a pang, of Zoness; of lying low behind a warehouse for hours, of skipping stones on the water with -- 

“If you can pull the trigger just like that -- he couldn’t’a meant that much to ya, could he? It can’t be easy.”

There's the sound of asymmetric footsteps echoing down a corridor. Bill, having mostly recovered from his catastrophic event, is still adjusting to the brand new and state of the art cybernetic legs Corneria had replaced his non-functional ones with. His arm was at least easier to get the hang of. Still not as good as the original though.

He can walk, but...albeit with all the grace of a drunken sailor. Unsteady, clumsy, and hardly in a straight line. "Stupid...freakin'..." He mutters, trying to get them to at least look partially dignified. How is the revered dual squadron commander supposed to uphold his public image like this?

@acewing

“Not a bad look for you, Bill.”

He looked like a shuttle crash and they both knew it. Ribbing him was just better than standing there by the window - arms folded, leaned against the glass - and watching the poor bastard limp on by him like he was off to his own closed-casket funeral.

Funny how one bad day could flip a man on his head so fast.

“You actually have a good side, now,” Falco said; it was a bad joke he wasn’t tactless enough to make with a smile.

“Of course I can,” Krystal said, bringing her hands together to rub them. They were a little cold, she didn’t want Falco to complain. “Healing a headache and digging in memories are two different things.”

She put her hands on the side of Falco’s head, fingers digging in very slightly through his feathers to get to the skin. “I promise. I won’t go looking through any memories.”

Even as he settled his head, Falco kept one eye open and fixed on one of the hands resting at his temples. The feathers around it were already bristling with discomfort and apprehension; telepathy had been a hard sell for him as a real thing in the first place. Actually using it  -- feeling it -- was like sticking his hand in a dark hole after hearing something hiss inside of it.

He'd already forgotten how he’d managed to talk himself into this.

            “Yea, it’s always different when ya play it over in your head.                      ‘If only’, right?”

      James understood the line of linking, as that phrase had become something of an old friend to him, occupying the quiet spaces of his mind when all his other means of distraction had all but dried away. Fun. It was a passing thought he set aside as he shifted back on the wrecked contraption, unbothered by the fierce, sharp wind that shot through them both. The ache was always fleeting.

       “If you ‘figuring’ shit out is you crashing and burning, then yea.                   Sure. Ain’t me you gotta convince, it’s Slippy.”

He replied before finally (with his freshly sought lighter) setting his cigarette alight. Its glow, the taste, much like his aches and pains, were fleeting. James took a draw, and his smile split with a fresh plume of tobacco.

       “I sent the signal the moment you went down, keep your shirt on.               Got maybe thirty minutes ETA–two hours at the latest.”

Neither were ideal. James shrugged.

            “–How’s your leg?”

“Fine.”

It was much warmer than the rest of him and throbbed like hell -- and that was nobody’s business but his. It couldn’t bother him any more than the infuriatingly casual way James could chew a guy out, as if he was only discussing the (hellish) weather or the outcome of a sports game he couldn’t really be bothered with. Falco knew what to do with mad -- this bizarre cocktail of exasperation and whatever else he was playing at was just annoying. He had half a mind to chuck that lighter of his into the wind out of spite.

“I ain’t huddlin’ under this -- ” Falco gave a bit of lose debris a good kick and watched it disappear into the snow about a foot away. It only made him feel a little better. “For two hours. Walking or crawling, I’m gettin’ some walls around me.”

He shielded his eyes from the wind with his free wing. The horizon wasn’t easy to separate from everything else out here, but there was no mistaking the shadows: he recognized the top of a power generator just over the next hill. To maintain a generator, you need people, and people don’t like standing outside in blizzards; there’d be a tent, a shed, a bunker, something to duck into.

It wasn’t too far. But a mile anywhere else was twenty in this weather; for the first time, Falco truly considered making use of that extra jacket.

Considered. 

Let that sanctimonious bastard chew through a few cigarettes first. 

Falco pulled up his scarf, ducked into his collar, and started off toward the hill.

“I made one pile of pancakes one time for myself, and now I gotta make ‘em for everybody once a week. I don’t even like cooking.

“No, unfortunately,” she said, with a sweet shake of her head. Two could play hardball. “Unfortunately, Peppy took the bottle because his joints were hurting, and I believe he has fallen asleep for a nap. If you want to go and bother him at risk of life and wing, be my guest!”

“However, I value my life a little, so I will not.” Krystal raised her hands and wiggled her fingers a little. “If you insist, I won’t push the subject. But I promise, I’ve never fried a brain and I don’t plan on it, if you’d let me help you.”

Damn the old man and everything that came with him. A few bitter pills, fast-acting or whatever else, aren’t worth getting up, poking around, and then getting chewed out for an hour straight for skulking around in places he “shouldn’t be” and sticking his fingers where they “didn’t belong” for his trouble. 

Again.

Falco runs his hands through his plumage, grinding his beak irritably. 

“Okay,” he says at last.

“Yeah, you were supposed to pick it up the same way I picked up that a city bird will spaz out whenever he gets dirt up on his ship or his pretty little jacket.”

“Buddy, I reckon I was flyin’ before you were and it shows. For starters, I figured out there’s more than one setting on the thrust.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you found those settings real quick after hittin’ the boost for the first time. Scared you pretty bad, didn’t it? You gotta go in slow and steady so you don’t faint like a dame behind the wheel.”

Falco clutches his heart dramatically, draping the back of his wing over his head: a performance worthy of a film too terrible to exist.

“Y’mean that ridiculous button on your face? Nah, nothing like that. It ain’t blind, but you won’t see me tracking bounty heads with it.”

“This is like the part where I’d normally intervene and say something.”

“–but some slick here thinks I’m a ‘hick’ too, so I think m’just gonna allow it and see how this goes down. I guess, for the sake of hicks everywhere.”

“So, were you gonna tell me your first plane was a crop duster, or was I s’posed to just pick that up through the grape vine?”

“Hooo. Wasn’t aware you were

                colorblind

                        on top of bein’ a twerp.”

“Nah, color’s got nothing to do with it.”

                  “City boy.”

“You forget, Falco, I come from a world of those who are very gifted in the mind.” Not that she was calling him stupid, by any means. Finding the remote was simple, as it was always within arms reach into whoever possessed the chair at the time. However, Krystal could understand that the other side of the end table could seem like a lifetime of distance, unattainable by mortal hands. Unless you were Krystal, fully functioning, and not a sour-tempered bird with a migraine. She clicked the television off in an easy motion, going to step around behind Falco. “Where I lived before joining the team, it was very, very easy to strain yourself by using your mind too much for too many things. Don’t you think I could be passable, dare I say it, even reasonably good at fixing migraines and headaches?” Checkmate, Chicken Little. Or was it Poultry Small?

“Yeah, I do.”

It wasn’t that he was ungrateful for the gesture; it was just that Krystal’s special brand of help wasn’t exactly his favorite thing about her.

“And I told ya before: I don’t like the psychic stuff,” he said, craning his head over the back of the cushions to look at her -- or try to dump the pain out through his bristled crest. In either case, it wasn’t incredibly effective.