FLYBY (b. bradshaw)

𝙏𝙒𝙀𝙉𝙏𝙔

𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐲'𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐯 -

Chaos was all around me as I turned in circles on the tarmac that had been completely empty minutes before. Admirals and medics were shouting orders. Then he emerged from the crowd, like a beacon in the darkness. I could tell he'd been crying. I might've been crying.

"Where is she?" 

Panic. 

It was a looked I'd never seen on Maverick's face. 

And it scared the hell out of me.

"Where the hell is she?" I demanded again, the voice that came out sounding nothing like my own. I realized I was gripping onto his shoulder's so tightly that there's no way it could've have hurt. 

He didn't say anything for a few beats. He wouldn't look at me. "We - we lost her. Her nav system it - it crashed." 

I wanted to punch him. "This is your fault! You let her up there."

There was something different in his tone when he spoke. "I - I thought she wanted to fly, and just fly, nothing more." His voice cracked. "I - I can't lose her." 

Blind rage was the only thing that I saw anymore. "You, you can't lose her? I can't lose her! She is all I have!"

He finally glanced up at me, a shine of tears in his eyes. "She's all I have left too, Bradley, think about someone other then yourself for once!" 

"And yet you let her fly to her own death." My voice was more hiss than whisper. 

Then we heard it. 

The helicopter. 

I don't know which one of us moved first, took the step towards the landing helicopter. But I reached to the stretcher before Maverick. 

Blood.

That was the first thing I saw.

It covered her flight suit, gushing from her thigh. It was on her her face; her hands. It crusted into her hair, her eyelashes. Then her shoulder. It was in an impossible position. 

"Oh god." I covered my mouth, feeling vomit climb up my throat. I stumbled into Maverick, whose skin was paler than I'd ever seen it. "I'm going to be sick." 

I moved to the side and puked up every bit of food I'd consumed since the morning. When I returned, they were moving her body onto a new stretcher. More doctors's flooded around her. 

"Get a sling for that shoulder!" one of them ordered.  

"Someone bandage that damn leg, she's lost more than half her blood!"

Half of her blood?

"Check her pulse, is it strong again?" 

Again?

"Oh fuck." 

I coughed up the rest of the contents in my stomach. My hands were against my knees, my breaths coming out in too quick puffs. The vile taste lingered in my mouth, making me gag. 

Someone's hand was on my back.

Maverick.

He was yelling at me, motioning to something.

"Get up." he was in my face, his words moving slowly through my brain. "Go to the hospital with her. Do not leave her side, you understand me, Bradshaw? Do not let her die on us." 

It was a blur, but I managed a nod. Mav shoved me towards an ambulance. I crawled inside. Someone shoved me out of the way. I let them. 

It was like being stabbed in the chest, watching them hook her up to all these machines. They stuck an IV into her arm. She didn't move. It looked like she wasn't breathing.