Fletcher!” Over the pouring rain and gusty wind, Chance Solomon could hear his heartbeat echoing in his ears. His best friend was on the edge of the rooftop, looking at Chance with wild eyes and a crazy grin. Not the normal, innocent, fun crazy that had them howling at the moon in the middle of nowhere or pulling loops and barrel rolls in the military's newest jet fighter. This was something different. This was something terrifying.
This crazy grin was from a broken mind that had Fletcher Crossfield on the rooftop of a seventeen-story building raising his arms out, speaking calmly against the chaos. “I have the answers.” He turned halfway towards Chance. “I can read the messages. It’s code, but I figured it out.” The wind and rain plastered Fletcher's thin T-shirt to his even thinner body.
“One step and I fly.”
“No!” Chance moved, not sure if he should or not. Damn it! He should have listened to the doctors; Fletcher wasn't stable enough for a trip out of the hospital. But every time Chance went to visit him, Fletcher was staring out of the reinforced glass at the sky with that lost look that broke a bit more of Chance's soul.
Every damned time.
“You can't fly, Fletch!” He was begging for whatever part of Fletcher's mind found lucidity to listen to what he was saying.
“I know. I can’t find my wings.” Dark pain laced his words and he tapped his chest where his metal wings used to be, when he had a uniform to proudly pin them to. In a breath, the dark shadows shifted and a creepy unnatural calm took its place. “They sent me a message, Chance. It was right there the whole time. I only needed to understand it.”
“No, Fletcher, they didn’t.” He took another step forward. Please listen to me Fletch, please, he begged in his head, as if he could will it to cut through the layers of broken, crazy logic that had replaced eccentric and cavalier.
“Trust me, Fletcher, there is no code and you can’t fly.”
“It's all in my head. I’m sick and this isn't real. I can break out of it and fly again. They're sending me the code. It’s the key.”
It killed Chance to hear it. As crazy as Fletcher was, he was aware that he was locked away inside his own head. Being a pilot and flying was the one thing that had let him escape to a place where the world made sense, and now it was gone. They didn’t let psych patients fly.
“Who Fletcher?”
“The team. They never leave a man behind.”
Another part of Chance’s soul crumbled. After everything they’d been through, pulling each other out of hell and keeping everyone patched up and in one piece, it had all fallen apart. Chance’s team had been sent out on a mission. The moment they’d set foot behind enemy lines, out of communication and so far in the mountains there was no hope of getting back until their rendezvous a week out, the CIA had swooped down like the vulture it was. They took Fletcher to fly a suicide mission no one should ever have been on. Then they lost him.
“We didn’t leave you, Fletcher.” What did Fletcher remember? How much made sense to only him? “Do you remember flying Wolf and the team to the drop point?” They’d bailed out a thousand feet up to stay under the radar, parachuting into the mountains. They could have disappeared off the face of the earth at that moment and nobody would have known where to even start looking for them. Covert missions were great for that.
“I can feel bones breaking and smell skin burning.” It was as calm as a weather report.
How the hell did he answer that? When they’d found Fletcher, it had been with bodies, carved up in wholesale slaughter. Chance’s best friend had gone from the man who raced across rooftops in a high stakes game of tag, to a wild man so broken and fragmented that Chance barely recognized him beneath the filth and blood and bruises and maimed bodies and head-on-a-stick, Lord of the Flies staffs.
“They’re coming back for me.”
“Who, Fletcher?”
“Wolf, Dex, Cruiser and Chance.”
“We came back.” Chance was pleading for him to understand. “Fletcher, we came back. I’m Chance.” His hand pounded against his chest to show Fletcher how real he was. “Wolf and Dex and Cruiser, we all came back for you. You’re not there anymore. You’re safe and stateside. Please, buddy, listen to me. You don’t need signals and a code. We - your team - we’re already here.”
“No. That’s a trick. If I was home, I would fly. That’s the key, it’s all there in the code.”
“What code?”
“It’s right there.” His body swayed dangerously close to the edge as he turned to point at the blinking lights of a cell tower. “Basic, polyalphabetic cipher. So simple, so beautiful.”
Chance’s stomach sank further. The pouring down rain was making the unwashed concrete building slippery, and Fletcher was half emaciated. One muscle spasm could send him tumbling over the ledge.
“That’s not a code, Fletch. It’s a cell tower.” His voice was forced calm, almost casual, but he couldn’t hide all of the urgency in it.
“It’s okay, Chance. You’re stuck. You can’t see it. I know what it’s like.” The toes of his shoes inched over the edge. “Once I can fly again, I’ll come get you out.” Fletcher was slowly raising his arms out like wings again.
“Fletch, wait!” He wanted to scream in his mind, wanted to scream out loud so that everyone could hear, but he couldn’t. It was too risky. Too much chance of startling the madman that was his best friend. “You remember Hawaii? That sunset?” He was reaching for straws.
“I’ve never forgotten that. We promised.”
“Right,” he assured. “It was beautiful and safe and real.” It meant something to both of them. It was right before the world turned upside down, before the darkness had settled and before their lives had changed. Fletcher and Chance had shared that sunset, reminiscing over how beautiful the world could be. The rest of the ugly chaos they had headed back to a few days later didn’t exist there. “We promised that we’d always find safety in the team, in each other. No man left behind, right?”
“No man left behind, no regrets and...” For the first time, Fletcher looked unsure. “We promised to never be like the people we fought, to never be the monsters.”
“You’re not a monster, Fletcher.” Chance shook his head. It should have never happened. “You’re my best friend.”
“I can feel it, Chancey.” Fletcher looked down at his hands, but God only knew what he was seeing. “Feel the blood on my hands, hear the screams. It smelled like the slaughterhouses back home.” He looked back up at Chance. It was impossible to tell if it was raindrops or tears running down his face. “The work of a butcher, but it was me.” They were staring at each other, the rooftop was forgotten while memories of a godforsaken piece of land in a valley no one gave a damn about rebuilt around them. “It was me, Chance. I did that, and it felt good.”
“You did.” It was a fact that neither of them could deny. “But it doesn’t make you a monster, Fletcher. It makes you a survivor.”
“I’m sorry you got left here with me, Chance.” Fletcher turned around and opened his arms wide.
Chance moved. Closing the gap between him and Fletcher, wrapping his arms around his waist, catching him before he found the free fall he was so intent on, he twisted back towards the safety of the roof. They landed hard, water splashing up around them.
“No! I need to fly! I can’t be this!” Fletcher was underweight, still recovering from weeks of torture at the hands of terrorists and months of torment from his own mind, but he fought like a man being chased by demons, desperate and wild.
Chance held on, wrapping his body around Fletcher’s like years of training had taught him to do. Even if he’d been up to full strength, Fletcher wouldn’t have gotten out of it.
“You aren’t, Fletch. Listen to me. Just breathe and listen to me.” Forcing his voice to be calm and steady, Chance let the words come. “It’s you and me back on that beach, with the warm sand beneath us and the sun beating down. We left Lana and Ann sleeping in the cottage and went to watch the waves roll in.” It was the stark opposite of the rain pelting down on them now, and the cold hard concrete digging into Chance’s back.
He kept talking, painting that memory over the other ones. Fletcher gave up talking, using his energy to try in vain to get away, to make his leap. The man never did know when to give up. Time warped and changed and lost meaning. There was nothing and no one, only the two of them. They’d saved each other’s lives more times than Chance could count. Fletcher had saved his soul more than once. Chance would be damned before he let him go. The rain never stopped, drumming like white noise on the roof, setting the tempo to his voice. At some point, Fletcher’s struggles changed, turning into slow, body shaking sobs. “Please, Chance. Let me make it stop.”
“We’re going to stop it together, Fletcher.” Low and steady, all the calm and confidence Chance had no right to feign, but still did. He had to. “As a team. I promise. You’ll get your wings back. You’ll fly again. But not this way. You’ve just gotta trust me.” It was the one thing that had saved them time and time again. Blind trust that held true, bone-deep even when they couldn't trust themselves. This time was no different.
“I’m broken inside. I got no mind, no soul and no wings. Please let me die, Chance. Please.”
“You do, Fletcher. We just have to piece you back together.” Warm tears mixed with the cool rain against his cheeks. “I give you my word, if you can’t be saved from that, I’ll take care of you myself.”
Holding on for both of their lives, Chance stayed right where he was, waiting for the sobbing to slow and Fletcher’s body to stop shaking. It could have been minutes or hours or maybe lifetimes were born and died in the time and space it took for Fletcher to borrow Chance’s strength and fix enough of the cracks to find his way back to reality again.
The rain had finally stopped when Fletcher's too flat, too soft voice said, “Kill me if I can’t be unbroken, Chance. I did it for you.”
"I know, Fletcher.” It had been years ago now, but that time around, Chance was broken. More broken than he’d even known. It ended with Fletcher putting a gun to Chance's head to end the misery. He’d even pulled the trigger. That’s how true a friend Fletcher was. Chance had moved at the last second, saving both their lives. Now it was his turn to stand that guard. “I promise you, I’ll kill you before you suffer that.”
This crazy grin was from a broken mind that had Fletcher Crossfield on the rooftop of a seventeen-story building raising his arms out, speaking calmly against the chaos. “I have the answers.” He turned halfway towards Chance. “I can read the messages. It’s code, but I figured it out.” The wind and rain plastered Fletcher's thin T-shirt to his even thinner body.
“One step and I fly.”
“No!” Chance moved, not sure if he should or not. Damn it! He should have listened to the doctors; Fletcher wasn't stable enough for a trip out of the hospital. But every time Chance went to visit him, Fletcher was staring out of the reinforced glass at the sky with that lost look that broke a bit more of Chance's soul.
Every damned time.
“You can't fly, Fletch!” He was begging for whatever part of Fletcher's mind found lucidity to listen to what he was saying.
“I know. I can’t find my wings.” Dark pain laced his words and he tapped his chest where his metal wings used to be, when he had a uniform to proudly pin them to. In a breath, the dark shadows shifted and a creepy unnatural calm took its place. “They sent me a message, Chance. It was right there the whole time. I only needed to understand it.”
“No, Fletcher, they didn’t.” He took another step forward. Please listen to me Fletch, please, he begged in his head, as if he could will it to cut through the layers of broken, crazy logic that had replaced eccentric and cavalier.
“Trust me, Fletcher, there is no code and you can’t fly.”
“It's all in my head. I’m sick and this isn't real. I can break out of it and fly again. They're sending me the code. It’s the key.”
It killed Chance to hear it. As crazy as Fletcher was, he was aware that he was locked away inside his own head. Being a pilot and flying was the one thing that had let him escape to a place where the world made sense, and now it was gone. They didn’t let psych patients fly.
“Who Fletcher?”
“The team. They never leave a man behind.”
Another part of Chance’s soul crumbled. After everything they’d been through, pulling each other out of hell and keeping everyone patched up and in one piece, it had all fallen apart. Chance’s team had been sent out on a mission. The moment they’d set foot behind enemy lines, out of communication and so far in the mountains there was no hope of getting back until their rendezvous a week out, the CIA had swooped down like the vulture it was. They took Fletcher to fly a suicide mission no one should ever have been on. Then they lost him.
“We didn’t leave you, Fletcher.” What did Fletcher remember? How much made sense to only him? “Do you remember flying Wolf and the team to the drop point?” They’d bailed out a thousand feet up to stay under the radar, parachuting into the mountains. They could have disappeared off the face of the earth at that moment and nobody would have known where to even start looking for them. Covert missions were great for that.
“I can feel bones breaking and smell skin burning.” It was as calm as a weather report.
How the hell did he answer that? When they’d found Fletcher, it had been with bodies, carved up in wholesale slaughter. Chance’s best friend had gone from the man who raced across rooftops in a high stakes game of tag, to a wild man so broken and fragmented that Chance barely recognized him beneath the filth and blood and bruises and maimed bodies and head-on-a-stick, Lord of the Flies staffs.
“They’re coming back for me.”
“Who, Fletcher?”
“Wolf, Dex, Cruiser and Chance.”
“We came back.” Chance was pleading for him to understand. “Fletcher, we came back. I’m Chance.” His hand pounded against his chest to show Fletcher how real he was. “Wolf and Dex and Cruiser, we all came back for you. You’re not there anymore. You’re safe and stateside. Please, buddy, listen to me. You don’t need signals and a code. We - your team - we’re already here.”
“No. That’s a trick. If I was home, I would fly. That’s the key, it’s all there in the code.”
“What code?”
“It’s right there.” His body swayed dangerously close to the edge as he turned to point at the blinking lights of a cell tower. “Basic, polyalphabetic cipher. So simple, so beautiful.”
Chance’s stomach sank further. The pouring down rain was making the unwashed concrete building slippery, and Fletcher was half emaciated. One muscle spasm could send him tumbling over the ledge.
“That’s not a code, Fletch. It’s a cell tower.” His voice was forced calm, almost casual, but he couldn’t hide all of the urgency in it.
“It’s okay, Chance. You’re stuck. You can’t see it. I know what it’s like.” The toes of his shoes inched over the edge. “Once I can fly again, I’ll come get you out.” Fletcher was slowly raising his arms out like wings again.
“Fletch, wait!” He wanted to scream in his mind, wanted to scream out loud so that everyone could hear, but he couldn’t. It was too risky. Too much chance of startling the madman that was his best friend. “You remember Hawaii? That sunset?” He was reaching for straws.
“I’ve never forgotten that. We promised.”
“Right,” he assured. “It was beautiful and safe and real.” It meant something to both of them. It was right before the world turned upside down, before the darkness had settled and before their lives had changed. Fletcher and Chance had shared that sunset, reminiscing over how beautiful the world could be. The rest of the ugly chaos they had headed back to a few days later didn’t exist there. “We promised that we’d always find safety in the team, in each other. No man left behind, right?”
“No man left behind, no regrets and...” For the first time, Fletcher looked unsure. “We promised to never be like the people we fought, to never be the monsters.”
“You’re not a monster, Fletcher.” Chance shook his head. It should have never happened. “You’re my best friend.”
“I can feel it, Chancey.” Fletcher looked down at his hands, but God only knew what he was seeing. “Feel the blood on my hands, hear the screams. It smelled like the slaughterhouses back home.” He looked back up at Chance. It was impossible to tell if it was raindrops or tears running down his face. “The work of a butcher, but it was me.” They were staring at each other, the rooftop was forgotten while memories of a godforsaken piece of land in a valley no one gave a damn about rebuilt around them. “It was me, Chance. I did that, and it felt good.”
“You did.” It was a fact that neither of them could deny. “But it doesn’t make you a monster, Fletcher. It makes you a survivor.”
“I’m sorry you got left here with me, Chance.” Fletcher turned around and opened his arms wide.
Chance moved. Closing the gap between him and Fletcher, wrapping his arms around his waist, catching him before he found the free fall he was so intent on, he twisted back towards the safety of the roof. They landed hard, water splashing up around them.
“No! I need to fly! I can’t be this!” Fletcher was underweight, still recovering from weeks of torture at the hands of terrorists and months of torment from his own mind, but he fought like a man being chased by demons, desperate and wild.
Chance held on, wrapping his body around Fletcher’s like years of training had taught him to do. Even if he’d been up to full strength, Fletcher wouldn’t have gotten out of it.
“You aren’t, Fletch. Listen to me. Just breathe and listen to me.” Forcing his voice to be calm and steady, Chance let the words come. “It’s you and me back on that beach, with the warm sand beneath us and the sun beating down. We left Lana and Ann sleeping in the cottage and went to watch the waves roll in.” It was the stark opposite of the rain pelting down on them now, and the cold hard concrete digging into Chance’s back.
He kept talking, painting that memory over the other ones. Fletcher gave up talking, using his energy to try in vain to get away, to make his leap. The man never did know when to give up. Time warped and changed and lost meaning. There was nothing and no one, only the two of them. They’d saved each other’s lives more times than Chance could count. Fletcher had saved his soul more than once. Chance would be damned before he let him go. The rain never stopped, drumming like white noise on the roof, setting the tempo to his voice. At some point, Fletcher’s struggles changed, turning into slow, body shaking sobs. “Please, Chance. Let me make it stop.”
“We’re going to stop it together, Fletcher.” Low and steady, all the calm and confidence Chance had no right to feign, but still did. He had to. “As a team. I promise. You’ll get your wings back. You’ll fly again. But not this way. You’ve just gotta trust me.” It was the one thing that had saved them time and time again. Blind trust that held true, bone-deep even when they couldn't trust themselves. This time was no different.
“I’m broken inside. I got no mind, no soul and no wings. Please let me die, Chance. Please.”
“You do, Fletcher. We just have to piece you back together.” Warm tears mixed with the cool rain against his cheeks. “I give you my word, if you can’t be saved from that, I’ll take care of you myself.”
Holding on for both of their lives, Chance stayed right where he was, waiting for the sobbing to slow and Fletcher’s body to stop shaking. It could have been minutes or hours or maybe lifetimes were born and died in the time and space it took for Fletcher to borrow Chance’s strength and fix enough of the cracks to find his way back to reality again.
The rain had finally stopped when Fletcher's too flat, too soft voice said, “Kill me if I can’t be unbroken, Chance. I did it for you.”
"I know, Fletcher.” It had been years ago now, but that time around, Chance was broken. More broken than he’d even known. It ended with Fletcher putting a gun to Chance's head to end the misery. He’d even pulled the trigger. That’s how true a friend Fletcher was. Chance had moved at the last second, saving both their lives. Now it was his turn to stand that guard. “I promise you, I’ll kill you before you suffer that.”