Nephele and Faye

He took another sip and swirled the glass as he held it up to his eyes. In the shadow of his fedora's brim, his eyes were black as onyx, except for the glimmer of candlelight.

"You sure you don't want one, Faye? You used to be fond of whiskey."

I shook my head.

"Have a drink. I insist."

I wanted to refuse. But I was too afraid to, knowing what Regan was capable of. So, I poured myself a glass. One for me, another for him, then after sliding his scotch to him, I said,

"Now, unless you have any other business, I suggest you leave before the military police swing by. They don't take too kindly to those violating curfew. Might find yourself hanging by the neck in the town square if you're not careful."

He smiled. Threw back the scotch. Sucked his teeth again and stood.

"Alright, I can take the hint. I'll leave. But just one more thing. I need to know that when the Allies come, I can count on you."

"You mean if you can trust me."

"She killed Eli, Faye. Remember that."

He growled when he spoke, festering anger coming out. Anger that suggested he knew plenty more about my dealings with Nephele. Fear and shame both traveled down my spine. Fear that he may not hesitate to do to me the sort of things I have witnessed him unhesitatingly do to others he suspected of disloyalty. Shame that he could ever use Eli as a lever.

"Yes, you can count on me," I replied meekly.

"Very good," he said. He touched the tip of his fedora and walked out into the pouring rain.

"Be well, Faye," he said. He spoke those words as a threat.

***

When I woke the following day, I put the news on the TV above the bar and made coffee. A regular morning ritual. But something was different about the news. Different, yet altogether unfortunately familiar.

An image flashed across the screen of black smoke billowing from the airfield. Scores of firefighters trying to put out what looked like hellfire. The reporter on the screen spoke of a terrorist attack at the air base. Immediately, Regan and the Black Roses came to mind. Then came the terrifying thought of the things he said to me last night. About whether he could trust me.

"Shit," I muttered and lowered the coffee mug from my lips.

The reporter went on:

"...There are reports of serious injuries among the crew and pilot of the..."

"Shit!"

I bolted out the door. The airfield was only half a mile from the bar, down by the wheat fields at the edge of town. I immediately spotted the billowing smoke rising into the heavens. Police and media helicopters hung overhead.

I was panting when I arrived at the sentry point. No one guarded the gate, so I pressed on in a sprint. Spotted the firetrucks among the jets on the runway. Arcs of water sprayed toward the blazing fire in a skeletal hangar. Giant craters in the ground without any indication of what was there before. Please be ok, please be ok, I repeatedly whispered to myself.

I spotted people. I scanned the crowd frantically. I saw pilots. Tiny, I saw immediately. He stood head and shoulder above the others. He spotted me and waved me over.

"Hey, Faye, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Nephele! Is she ok?"

He looked over his shoulder. She was sitting on the ambulance's tailgate. I pushed back Tiny to her. She stood, and I hugged her. The other pilots were around. They must have been perplexed by the act. At this point, I didn't care who knew what. I was overwhelmed with relief that she wasn't hurt.

"You're alright!" I breathed.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am."

She held me at arms' length. Like the others, she was surprised to see me. A crooked smile on her face. Her face was blackened with ash. Her hair was strewn across her eyes and matted with sweat. I brushed it aside so I could see in her eyes that she was fine.

"Some of the guys had to go to the Emergency Room. The ones that were here on the night shift. Bat got hit by shrapnel. Just a cut leg. The guards were killed in the attack, though. It was the Black Roses. They attacked early this morning. They destroyed our ammunition depot. They destroyed all our bombs."

I choked up. Began hyperventilating. Nephele sat me down on the ambulance tailgate. She sat beside me and put her hands on my lap. A bottle of water appeared in my hand. A concerned look grew on her face. I couldn't bear to see it. I looked away. So, she pulled my face back towards her. And there, I saw that her eyes were full of worry.

"Faye... you didn't have anything to do with this, did you?"

I said nothing. I froze. The worry in her eyes grew.

"Faye?"

But I didn't have time to respond. She didn't have time to pull an answer from me.

A shrill alarm sounded then a voice over the announcing circuit boomed,

"Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!"

Nephele jumped off the tailgate.

"Now that's shit timing."

I then noticed her helmet that sat on the ambulance tailgate. She grabbed it. She had on her flight suit, too. She was all geared up to fly.

"What's that?"

"I'm on alert. Means I gotta go up."

She pointed to the sky.

Then I saw Bat jogging out from the hangar. He jogged with a limp.

"Oh, like hell you're going, Bat! Your jet is in no condition. Neither are you."

"It ain't that bad. Besides, ours are the only two ready. Let's roll, Shirley."

Nephele grimaced and mouthed,'fuck'.

He was right. And there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise.

She turned to me, whispered in my ear, "I'll be back soon. We'll talk after, alright?" then hugged me tightly and kissed me on the cheek.

As she ran to her jet, I called out after her,

"Be careful up there!"

I looked on, through the haze the smoke made and the spray of water, as Nephele and Bat jumped into their cockpits, put on their helmets, and started their jets. In no time, they were roaring down the shimmering black runway and up into the silver sky. Worryingly, a light grey smoke issued from Bat's right engine. That was where the damage was.

When they were gone, and the roar of their jets faded into murmured echoes of thunder, I turned and saw that Tiny and Trigger were gawking at me. They averted their eyes immediately to pretend like they weren't. I walked past them silently, back towards the gate and to my bar.

My heart grew heavy for Nephele and Bat. But it was also heavy with the coming collision between my two worlds -- the one where I was in love with Nephele and the one where I was her enemy.

***

That evening, the sky was blood red. 'Red sky at night, sailor's delight,' they say. It was a beautiful sky, but I could tell by the stark silence and the plainness of the early twilight stars that only terrible things came my way. And there was no wind to carry me away from this place. Whatever it was, I had to face it.

I made the bar ready, just as I always did. I didn't expect any of the Skybreakers to show up that evening. But someone did. Nephele did.

She still had on her aviators, so I couldn´t tell the trouble by her eyes, but I saw the shining streaks down her cheeks. She had been crying. And her lips were straight and thinned.

"Neph..."

She marched right up to me, and before I could react, she slapped me so hard that my knees buckled, and I fell to the floor. Stars appeared, and my ears rang.

"What the fuck!"

I scrambled to stand. She shoved me back onto my ass. Then, she kicked me hard in the side of my shin.

"Stop! What are you doing?" I screamed.

Nephele screamed back, "What am I doing? What am I doing? What the fuck are you doing?"

Her scream came tremulously and cracked. She was beside herself. She went to kick me again, so I scrunched up into a tight ball to take the hit. I didn't even bother with finding out what it was that had her this way. I didn't have to. She made it crystal clear:

"You killed him, Faye! Goddammit, I trusted you! We all trusted you. And you killed him. You bitch. You fucking bitch!"

Eventually, Nephele's kicks grew weak, then she wavered and fell to the ground in a sobbing heap beside me. Instinctively, I went to her to comfort her, but she pushed me away. So, I sat there as still as a statue and watched her weep with my throat in the pit of my stomach.

I've always considered Nephele, even at her most tender, this steely Wonder Woman. A woman who reveled in her profession as a warrior. A woman who lived for war, which I always found scarier than any man that does. I always thought that for her to be as good as she was at her job, she had to have this unique barrier against any emotional vulnerability or attachment to love. I could see my fault now. I could see how stupid I was or how blind I had been to the sort of woman she really was. Even though a warrior, even in this domain of cruelty that is war, she had a tremendous capacity for love and heartbreak. I bear witness to that fact now. Here she lay, curled against the foot of the bar, her face in her forearms, heartbroken like an innocent child by the death of a person that really mattered to her. A person she dearly loved.

A good few minutes passed before her tears ran dry, and her breathing calmed. She sat up against the bar. I sat next to her.

"Neph, I'm sorry. I told no one."

It was a meek, shameful thing to say. I felt dirty saying it because it was true, and I used that one truth to hide a thousand lies. Still, I was pained by the news of Bat's death and pained by how it affected her, and she saw that in me, so it softened her. She breathed out.

"It was a two-on-two. We should have had them, but Bat's plane... If those god damn cowards didn't..."

I risked putting my hand on her. I reached out and touched her knee.

She sighed, then continued,

"I hear the words coming out of your mouth, Faye, but I don't know if I should believe you."

I nodded and acknowledged,

"It's probably not smart for you to."

Her face was still a mess, so I pulled a handkerchief out from my pocket and handed it to her. She scrunched it in her hand, blew her nose with it, and held it out to give it back to me.

"Keep it."

She hesitated, then laughed and stuffed it into a pocket in her flight suit.

"I like how it smells. It smells like you."

I reached out a hand. She put hers in it. A sad tonelessness washed over her voice.

"You know, this might be the last time I see you. So, regardless of what you've done, whatever you think of me, I just want to say..."

Her voice petered out. Whatever she had to say, she didn't have the strength to say it. Just as well, I didn't want to hear it.

I turned my head to face the red-gold sunbeams that filtered in through the bar windows. The sun hung low on the western horizon. It went nicely with the gentle breeze that now came in through the wide-opened bar doors and the lapping sound of the ocean. The weather was nice now. It often was at sunset. The worst that wars offer often occur on nice days as much as the best of peace.

My face and shin still throbbed painfully from Nephele's slap and kicks. As far as pain goes, however, it wasn't even close to the pain of grief she now felt. Bat was someone special to her. To call him a mentor would be to undersell what he was in her life. After her father's death, he stepped in to become a father to her, and she held him close to her heart because he was all she had left of her own father's memories.

Nephele joined me in watching the sky. Two pairs of cloud white contrails in the north drifted southward. They seemed alive in the way they drifted, but I knew it was just the wind. I watched them slowly fade. Fading like memories. You'd never think they'd disappear. But then they're gone.

Then an idea came to me. Something I thought would be healing because I had found it to be healing once.

"Wanna go for a ride?"

She nodded. So, we got into the car and drove down the coast to the lighthouse point. To our lighthouse point. We walked along the top of the dune along the fence. It was bitter cold here, and a mist hung over the beach, but the waves were gentle. They were quiet as if to pay respect.

We stopped to watch a pair of seagulls pull at something with their beaks in a pile of kelp washed up onto the beach. As we watched, she murmured a story directed more to the wind than me.

"You know, I almost washed out of flight school. My flight instructor didn't think I had it in me to fly. He recommended me for separation. He was right too, you know. I couldn't land a God damn plane to save my life. I was young and so unsure of myself. So full of doubt. I wanted to fly because that's what my dad did. I wanted him to be proud, you know if he were watching. But, for whatever reason, I just couldn't hack it. No matter how hard I tried. No matter how many late hours I stayed back to study the books.

When you're filed for separation from flight school, they set you up with a different instructor for an evaluation. Just so happened that Bat was my evaluating instructor. It was the first time I saw him since dad died. But he acted like he didn't know who I was. His face was stone cold. Professional. He hopped into my plane and said, 'alright, show me what you can do.'

I remember being so nervous that morning and confident he would fail me. If there was anyone who wanted to make sure I never flew a plane, it was Bat. I asked him permission to start the plane. He just shrugged and said, 'it's your flight, Lieutenant. it's up to you.' I asked him permission to radio the control tower for takeoff, and he repeated the same line - 'it's your flight, Lieutenant. It's up to you.' Only that time, he added, 'don't ask me for permission for anything on this flight. I'll let you know when you're all fucked up.' So, I stopped asking for permission. And for the entire flight, he was dead quiet. Nothing during takeoff. Nothing during the flight. Nothing after I made my reports to the control tower. And when it came to the final approach, my heart was beating so hard that my hands were shaking. Sweat streamed down my face and got into my eyes, so they stung badly. I couldn't land a damn plane to save my life, and I was sure he would just watch me struggle and fail, then write his evaluation that would certainly mark the end of my short career as an aviator. But then he turned to me and said, 'you got this.' And that was all he needed to say. That was all I needed to hear. He said it with such conviction, like it was a divine truth, or a law of physics or something. And that confidence in me was all I ever needed.

And he was right. I got it. I landed the plane. First time I ever made my approach, and my instructor never swiped the controls from me. He never berated me. Heh, granted, it was a real hard landing. Nearly ran off the runway. But I managed it. I was so fucking happy that I made it. I was about to hop out of the plane and do a victory dance. But then, he said, 'Ok, let's go back up for another.'

That sucked the soul right out of my body. I just scraped by with a barely passable flight. The last thing I needed was another length of rope to hang myself with. But I swallowed my fear. And I did it. I did it better. He told me to go up for a third. So, I did, and I did it better again. Then again. And again. Each time better than the time before. Then after ten or so touch and goes, he hopped out of the airplane and said, 'one more time around.'

You have to understand that at this point, I only had about fifteen hours of flying in -- I was sure I wasn't going to get my solo until I had at least thirty. But there I was, sitting all by myself in the cockpit and my instructor for the day, the base commander, standing on the tarmac, waiting with his arms crossed for me to do the unthinkable. I had half a mind to pretend I didn't hear him and turn the engine off, but then a funny thing inside me flared up -- why not? This was my one chance to prove to everyone -- I can do it. It wasn't a coincidence that Bat, my dad's old wingman, gave me the opportunity. That was the first time ever that I actually wanted to fly.

I taxied to the end of the runway, swung around, and throttled up, and, before I knew it, there I was, in the sky all by myself, and it was where I was meant to be. I never felt so free. Sure, I was nervous as hell, too, but it was the best damn feeling in the world.

Usually, when a pilot first solos, there's a ceremony. Your classmates come out to meet you on the taxiway, toast you with a bottle of cheap fizzy, then your instructor cuts off the tail of your shirt. It was a Sunday, so everyone else had the day off from training. There was no one else there but me and Bat. Still, I couldn't have asked for a better ceremony.

You know, I don't think I ever told him how special that day was for me... how much it meant that he believed in me. Until then, besides my dad, he was the only one that ever did."

Her eyes grew light and wistful. Her chest shuddered heavily. Her voice cracked as she said,

"Every time we go up, it doesn't matter the mission, we risk our lives. Every pilot knows this. Bat knew that better than any of us. He went up in a damaged ship. He understood the risk."

"Bat was a good man," I said.

I said it as reassurance. But it felt a stupid thing to say. I didn't know Bat besides the few short interactions I've had with him. Still, it was true.

"Yeah," she replied.

The pair of seagulls grew tired of trying to find whatever it was hidden in the clump of kelp and jumped up into the wind and drifted away like kites. They left their soft caws behind.

The moment's quietude pulled me to rest my head on Nephele's shoulder. She brought her still-wet cheek to press against the top of my head.

"I don't know if I could bear it if you never came back from a mission," I said.

I gasped at what I had just said like I had nearly committed a direly sacrilege act. So, I turned away from her and blushed.

She shot me a saddened grin.

"I'm not the girl for you," she said, then added, knowing full well my ailment, before I even recognized the right word for it,

"I'm the wrong girl to fall in love with."

"Who says I could ever love again?" I challenged in a quick, hushed tone.

She shrugged.

"No one."

"And. Suppose I could?"

"Then don't let it be me."

I couldn't agree more with her sentiments. But my reasons were different than hers. And it made me sick to my stomach. I kissed her quickly, closed my eyes, and tried to forget this whole mess. Yet, I began to feel the frills of darkness begin to spider inward, threatening to extinguish the only light in my soul that, since the start of the war, I had given a chance to shine.

***

When we returned to the bar, we sat together in the car beneath the moonlight for a long moment. Crickets chirped, the waves were loud, as it was high tide now, and the lower limb of the full moon touched the edge of a glowing horizon.

"I'm the new squadron commander," she finally said.

"Those are big shoes to fill."

"I hear that."

"You think you got it?"

She shrugged.

"We'll see soon enough. The Allied fleet is on the move. They're heading this way. I suppose they'll be off the coast within the week."

She spoke in a clinical, matter-of-fact manner that reminded me of how Bat spoke. She avoided my eyes, but I could see what she didn't want me to see in them -- that they were heavy not only with grief, but a pained distrust.

***

The early curfews were soon reinstituted. The blackouts happened every night now. They wanted us ready for the inevitable air strikes that would come should the Donavian navy not be able to stop the Allied advance. It was also an attempt to cool the resurgence of rebellious activities.

Anyone caught wandering around after curfew was not given any leniency. Once a week, we held air raid drills. We taped or boarded up our windows so they wouldn't shatter should the bombs start falling. I couldn't imagine the Allies ever bombing Estean cities. I suspected these were part of the propaganda to give the image that the Allies were the enemy of Estea, not a liberation force.