ailerons | sb: inbox.

[ Significantly longer than ten seconds. Then, ]

You would've loved my buddy Rooster

I'm not interested in hurting you, Koby. Hard line.
But if you're asking me to pop your nose a couple times
I'm in

[ There is a difference. ]

Pop q:
This isn't part of some redemption tour, is it
Rules say you have to tell me if it is

You know a person named "Rooster"?

[koby, you know a person named helmeppo.

but, after a pause:] That's an acceptable distinction. I don't need you to cause a lot of damage or anything, just Don't treat me like I'm going to break. Don't hold back once you have a couple hits in. You know?

[this answer, though -- this comes promptly, with that raw sort of honesty that runs like a compass line, right through who koby is:] Nothing like that. I felt safe here, before. I don't anymore, but I want that back. I want to stop being afraid.

Unfortunately

[ A longer beat.

Fear, and the searching attempt to master it. Flight school, Advanced Training, the one mission over the Red Sea; living in a fucking cabin and looking into the glass of a warped, old mirror and seeing mottled handprints climb up his obliques like a true, waking tally of yet another life he'd put down. Knowing, down to the core, that there were things in life that a man's soul could never recover from. The fuzzy, dreamless memories of a chair, and knife, and what might be hours in it. The flash of pink hair and cold limbs in the dirt.

I want to stop being afraid. Yeah. Hard to say no to something like that. ]

I've got your back
Only have to ask

[ And then: ]

You talked to anyone about that feeling?

[lost for those months out in the commune, koby finds himself reaching out, unseen, for the perfect-sky-blue of jake, out in the mutable tapestry of saltburnt. he finds it, as easy as tipping his chin upwards and looking into the summery sky -- look up, tug at the scar around his throat, tug at the curve upwards from jake's perpetual grin. the same, if it weren't for ani, weren't for the burden she carried awake, alive, all that month.

was it easier to be silenced or be dead, for that time? which was better to try and claw your way back from? koby almost says she blames herself for not protecting me too. he almost says did she see me, after? did you? and he almost asks jake to lie about the answer.]

Well, I'm asking. I'm at the gym at 4:30, most days. Before the rush. No. Nobody needs to see me fall to bits. It's a better use of time to try and get strong enough to stop feeling that way.

[ He writes. Backspaces. Writes again, his thumb hovering over the button before tapping it, decisive: ]

First time I killed a man, don't think I slept more than three hours a week

[ Not like it's dying, but — the whole time, Jake had thought, in a surefire way, that it would happen to him, too. Dying. Nightwatch, and all. Worth it to take the hit for her. Kind of pales in comparison now, doesn't it? An air-to-air kill. So far away from the enemy that you don't know how fast their blood spills, or how wide their eyes get. What their bodies might look like headless, posed, staged for the morning after. Jake thinks, briefly, of the tally count of apologies he owes Koby. Thinks, even more bizarrely, about the Amalfi coast, a thought that scratches at the periphery of a life he hardly even recalls— ]

Think this might be something you should at least bring up with that guy of yours, jarhead

Not saying I won't be there at 0400 sharp tomorrow
Saying that every time you come back home, alive isn't going to cut it in the long run
Gotta be working towards whole, too, before that feeling chases you down

[there's a pause, and in the ripple of the weird-bullshit-people-can-do-in-saltburnt-that's-none-of-his-business, jake might feel something akin to a hand covering his, someone slight and short and wide-eyed and warm leaning against his shoulder, unseen, unreal, to say: can't frighten me off. to say: thank you for telling me.]

I can't imagine. Did it get easier? After a while? [koby assumes it must; soldiers have to find a way to keep going forward, one step after another. he's not too dense to see the parallel too -- you live with the horror and you try to be who you are in spite of it.]

Okay. If it's still bad, after I try all this, I'll bring it up. To someone. I just [a pause, a cop-out, because it'll still be bad. this isn't going away or alleviating with time. this is for the rest of his life, scarred as deeply as the one around his throat, the ones bisecting his chest.

but, finally:] There's nobody to be mad at. It wasn't their fault. They didn't choose to hurt us. But I'm still angry. So. Maybe getting punched in the face a few times will give that an outlet.

[ Unseen, unreal. Jake brushes it off the way he brushes off the roil of things that happen both in this house and outside of it. But it settles something subconsciously, anyway. The way he feels seconds before being airborne, or when uneven terrain smooths into the long, unending quiet of flight above the seas. A knot loosens. (Tonight, he'll sleep an extra half hour he wouldn't have otherwise.) ]

Sure does
After a while. Maybe a year.
Plenty of things make up the measure of a man after you see combat

[ Which, he supposes, they all have, now. Regardless of what it was like before they woke up in this house. Jake runs his tongue over his teeth and reads It wasn't their fault, they didn't choose to hurt us, but I'm still angry and knows that there is not a soul in this place that would fault Koby for it. And that, he thinks, is perfectly fine. Even if Koby's melts away, Jake's won't. And that's what loyalty is. You pick up what those you owe put down. ]

You know, this is the first time I have ever believed you are a marine
Hooyah
And I'm holding you to that agreement
0430 hours you said?

[koby thinks: there is a boy made of rubber in a world made of ocean and the first time koby saw it, saw the strange, illogical, bizarre magic of that boy, it skipped off the surface of his mind like a stone on still water. he thinks of that, because jake never addresses the unseen nudges and glancing moments of here, but he doesn’t resist them either. he doesn’t quite know how to thank him for that, yet.]

A year? Really? I mean, I’ve been here for a year, I suppose. Things that were awful when I arrived don’t feel quite as sharp anymore.

[the nightmares he’d had at the beginning, the ship, the bloodied deck, the pitch and roll of the hull beneath him. now koby only thinks about there, her with a glancing ache, now and again.]

I think it’s “oorah”. I’m not that sort of Marine, though, Jake, I told you. 0430. I’ll be there. Don’t let me quit after 100 pushups, either.

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