𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍

↳ this is the sea
'you're trying to make sense
of something that you just can't see'

━━ 𓄼 𓄹 ━━

UNDISCLOSED ENEMY AIRSPACE
one year earlier

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂 𝐎𝐂𝐄𝐀𝐍 had never looked more beautiful.

Everytime they were over it, it was in a different mood. Today, it was a turquoise jewel spread out below her. Cam hummed, closing her eyes for a brief rest. Like the sound on the inside of a seashell, it wasn't anything more than another scientific explanation, but she always swore she could hear the ancient sound of waves. Even over the guttural roar of an F-18, 50,000 feet in the air.

"Getting bored over there, Berlin?" Kit's voice interrupted.

"A little," she admitted, flexing her fingers. She scooted to the side, stretching her back as far as physically possible. "Do you want me to start singing for us? I'm thinking a sea shanty might be in order."

"Good lord, please don't."

"Don't be so picky." Cam chastised. "Boredom hasn't made your brain completely numb?"

They had already rolled through a quarter deck of trivial pursuit cards that Kit had stashed in her cockpit. Cam's patch cord had saved her some boredom. It was courtesy of a tech savvy communications guy called Dean that she had seen for a while. He had been so enamored with her that he tried to solve her complaints about boredom on long range transfer missions or ones like these where there was nothing but ocean. It plugged in near her oxygen hose communications connection and had a toggle switch that allowed her to patch an old IPod nano into the headset. She had already listened to every song on it.

Up ahead, Kit dipped her wings side to side in a little wave. "Start singing again and I'll tank myself into the water."

Cam let a short laugh escape her lips. They were flying west, straight towards a scattered dot of an island. Their job was simple: a fly-over to capture some photos and then another long flight back to their carrier. Still, her legs were getting itchy in her seat. She was already imagining how good it would feel to fully recline once they touched down. By then, she may even fall asleep on the runway.

From out of nowhere, a bird smacked into the nose of her F-18.

An auxiliary alarm began to chime with an even steady tone.

"Shit! Bird strike," Cam exclaimed, eyes darting immediately to her instruments. No engines were out, nothing was on fire. The only evidence of the poor bird was the red smudge.

"The most expensive way to kill a bird is to hit it with a plane," Kit sang out, laughing.

Cam's heart rate gradually drifted back to normal. It had hit so fast, she hadn't been able to tell what kind it was beyond a cloud of white feathers.

She shifted her systems back, quieting the alarms. For a moment, there was peace in the cockpit. They were almost to the island. She began to dream of taking a long nap.

A blip on her radar began to blink steadily.

The skies were no longer clear.

"Bogey on radar," Cam said, internally cursing. If she hadn't been so preoccupied, she might have caught it sooner. Kit was focused on their frontal course; Cam's job as a wingman was to keep their tail covered.

"Shit, Berlin. When did they get there?"

"Must've just come into range, its origin is behind us, they aren't coming from the direction of our target."

"I thought there was no possibility of air patrol."

"Maybe we underestimated them." She thought of another possibility. "Or, maybe they aren't even looking for us. Could just be one of their planes flying back to base."

"Damn," Kit said, and Cam imagined her biting her inner cheek the way she always had when making a decision. "How long until interception?"

"Two minutes and counting." It was a risk, but Cam's hopeless optimism won over. "We can make it. We'll double back wide, they won't be able to catch us."

"Copy."

Her heart rate quickened, breath echoing against her mask as she clipped it fully on. She toggled her communications back to the carrier to update them on the situation, but they knew their orders. Decisions were to be made on a case by case basis; they were too far out for anyone to even stop them.

Green archipelagos began to dot the now light-blue waters. She swung slightly to the side and dared a look downward, a movement that might have saved her life. Not a half second later, an anti-aircraft gun fired a shot upwards.

Shrill alarms now rang without cease.

"Berlin, accelerate. We need to get these pictures now!"

Cam fired a volley of flares. "Defending!"

Whether or not Kit had taken the pictures was hard to tell. Cam's focus narrowed in on the ground fire until her radar blinked yet again. This time, the other planes were definitely looking for them. A stray shot from the ground clipped Kit's starboard side.

"This is going to make one hell of a story when we get back!" Kit said over their coms.

Cam banked hard right, velocity marker dropping to accommodate for the sudden change in speed. Finally, she saw them. "Tally two bogeys, six o'clock!"

"Head to attack position."

Cam pulled up, disappearing into the clouds.

When she dropped again, she came out right behind one of the sleek black planes that was chasing Kit.

"I'm out of flares!" Kit screamed into her headset. "You're gonna have to engage, Berlin!"

Cam toggled her thumb over the weapon selection on the control switch. Her first pull of the trigger missed, but the second round was a dead hit. The ship exploded into an inferno of orange light.

"Woo!" Kit laughed over the headset. Cam could hear her best friend's voice shaking. "One down."

One down.

Almost too late.

"My left engine is smoking!" Kit relayed.

"Climb! Try to do a hard restart," Cam commanded, targeting lock still engaged on the anti-aircraft weapons below. She had no weapons to match it; they were drastically underprepared for an ambush.

"Climbing." Now at a higher altitude, Kit said, "Leveling back, shutting off fuel to left engine. Extinguishing fire."

It was a set up. They had been biding their time, a small island luring two Navy pilots away from home and into their steel jaws. It was pointless, purposeless. A way to get a message across for the price of two lives.

The second bogey looped back around.

"Smoke in the air!" Kit's voice sounded muffled, broken.

"Defending!"

She was always going to be too late.

In the same instant that Cam shot down the other plane, a ground missile rose in the air with a plume of white smoke. The sound of the targeting lock rang in her ear, and the next noise was the sharp ache of static as Nikita Kasper's plane exploded right in front of her eyes.

A bloodcurdling scream tore through her body. "NIKITA!"

It was senseless, useless, and as another shot tore at the fuselage of her own plane, she barely registered any of it.

It felt like her leg was being torn from her body as she reached to eject. There was no way out of this; plummet to the ocean or get shot from the sky.

No decision was made. Her life was no longer her own as her eyes rolled back and the world went dark.

The next sensation was salt.

Salt.

Everything tasted like salt. The grit in her teeth, the blood on her lips. Salt.

Cam's eyes snapped open as she drank in the sea air. For a moment she thrashed, brain catching up with her body. Ocean water was all she could see in every direction.

"Kit!" Her voice was hoarse, more than she had expected it to be. Still, she managed to scream. "Kit!"

There was no wreckage floating on the water, only a half-expanded parachute behind her. Her leg felt like someone had doused it in oil and tossed a match. A hole was torn through her flight suit and if she twisted her neck, she could see the bloody, marred skin. She looked away immediately, stomach revolting against her.

She blinked up at the sun. Their island approach had been clocked at nine hundred hours, and the sun was now directly overhead. Three hours floating in the ocean seemed unrealistic, but her senses were already blurring from how nonsensical it all was.

She was nothing more than another glimmering patch reflecting light on the wide, open ocean. Would they send support? A rescue mission for a recon run? Was Kit already back and safe? The questions had no answers.

Another fear rose. The blood loss was concerning, and there was no way to know what was lurking underneath her in the great expanse of blue. As the time rolled on, she wondered if it might be better for a shark to swim up and swallow her whole.

The tears only began to fall as the day sank into night, an orange sunset coating the ocean. She couldn't move her legs. Her face was sunburnt and her chin had been clipped by shrapnel. Mostly, she wanted to hear Kit's voice again. The smooth, comforting tone of her speaking over a radio channel. It floated through Cam like a calm wave, easing her mind into a lull.

When her eyes snapped open again, she was met by light. The eerie, pre-dawn light cut through by the bright white glare of a helicopter's searchlight.

Voices were shouting, yelling at her or to her. Maybe both. None of the voices were speaking coherently, all muddled against the roaring noise of her brain.

She grabbed his hand. "Kit. Nikita Kasper. Where is she?"

He averted his eyes, he hadn't heard her. Perhaps she had hallucinated her own speech, perhaps he wasn't listening.

Her answer came three days later when she awoke in a hospital bed, clothed in white. "Nikita Kasper is dead." 

𓄼 𓄹

MIRAMAR NAVAL AIR STATION
present day

𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄 her truck rolled to a stop in the parking lot, Cam knew something was amiss. There was no way things could feel this good without something rising in between her and what she wanted. It was the way of life, the natural balance of things.

A car door slammed next to her. "Cam, we have to talk about this."

She grabbed her bag out from the truck bed and slung it over her shoulder. "I'm not talking about it right now, Rooster."

"Oh, come on, don't Rooster me now." Bradley came around the side of the truck. His sunglasses were still on and she couldn't fully interpret his expression.

Cam just looked at him, which was impossible to do without remembering his body pressed up against hers in the heat of it all.  The things he had whispered in the dark that gave light to years of her own want.  But then that memory broke and the morning flooded over her. Waking up from another nightmare about the Pacific in the pre-dawn hours with a strong arm slung over her, telling Bradley he needed to go, the hurt expression on his face and the confusion in her chest.

"I deserve to know what you're thinking, just this once," he said softly.

Whatever happens now is your call. Completely yours. He was in love with her and she couldn't even bear to say it back.

"I'm sorry." And she was. "Whatever last night was, I can't do it right now." But I want to. "There's too much on the line with this mission." There's too much that I'm still running from.

He nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, yeah I get it. I was thinking the same thing."

And they both knew he wasn't.

As with most things, there's almost always to find a way past missing your first chance. But, when you're granted a second chance, there's a high price to pay for thinking you'll have a third.

As soon as they walked into the classroom, Natasha's head flicked up. She gestured harshly at the seat in front of her.

"What's going on?" Cam frowned as she slid onto the cold fabric.

"I have it on good authority that Rooster didn't come home until 5am."

"Who says?"

"The door I heard slam at 5 in the morning."

"What, do you think he was out partying?" Cam asked.

Natasha sat back with a look of disbelief. "You weren't with him?"

"At 5am?" Cam asked, rolling her eyes. "I was exhausted yesterday. I was dead asleep at nine."

From out of nowhere, Fritz took the spot next to her and said, "So what's up with you and Rooster?"

Natasha shook her head. "It wasn't Cam."

"So he must have been out with someone else. Mystery girl, very interesting," Fritz mused.

"How long have you been discussing this?" Cam asked, looking between the two of them.

Natasha crossed her arms.  "I'm just trying to prove a point. Not every girl and guy friendship has to end with them hooking up."

"There's no romance in that, Natasha,"  Fritz said smugly. "Have some imagination."

"Please don't bring me into this," Cam lamented.

"Too late."

"Morning," Warlock greeted them, and a silence fell over all side conversations. Something was troubling the Rear Admiral deeply. "The uranium enrichment plant that is your target will be operational earlier than expected. Raw uranium will be delivered to the plant in ten days time."

Fritz blew out a breath. Behind her, Natasha muttered with distaste.

The good news, perhaps the only good news, was that Mav's day on the beach had its intended effect. No longer were there any stray glances of animosity between pilots, and there was a certain ease to the way they were all sitting. As if they had all suddenly decided to do this together instead of apart.

Still, Cam needed her head on straight today; they were still doing time trials in the mock valley, and she and Fritz were slated to go out on the first run of the day with Coyote. Every time she turned her head she felt Bradley's eyes burning into her. It was maddening.

Up in the sky, she was barely any better.

"Berlin, we're losing speed," Fritz warned from the backseat as they wove through the landscape.

"On it," she muttered, watching Coyote's F-18 up ahead. They were coming up to the climb now, but they were barely on target for time. Twelve seconds behind. If this were real, that meant death.

As they came into the straight-away, her radar began to beep.

"Bandit, Bandit. Radar contact, 20 miles left, ten o'clock. He's coming fast. 700 knots closure," Fritz relayed.

"Shit, it's Maverick."

"Mierda," Cam swore under her breath. Of course Maverick would choose now to start simulating real conditions.

"He's swinging around to the north," Fritz warned.

"What do you want to do?" Coyote asked her.

Cam froze. Though this was all fake, that question was very real. She heard herself in a memory answering the same question from Kit. We can make it. We'll double back wide, they won't be able to catch us.

"Berlin, what do you want to do?" Coyote repeated, sounding nervous now.

"Continue," she said, surprising herself. "We're close. Stay on target. Be ready on that laser, Fritz."

"Copy."

They arced into the sky, rolling over to make the 45 degree climb. Immediately, the force of gravity pulled her back into the seat.

"Talk to me, Fritz. Where is Maverick?"

"I'm a little busy right now," Fritz muttered, more focused on the target. She glanced at the radar to see the stray blip of Mav's F-18.

Finally, Fritz was on target. "Captured."

"Got it," Coyote said. "Bombs away."

Cam watched to see absolutely nothing happening ahead of her. She blinked once, darkness clouding in her vision from the g-force.

"Dammit. Hung bomb, hung bomb!" Coyote repeated. "I've got a malfunction."

Another failure. The taunting ring of the missile lock rang out in the cabin seconds after.

"He's got missile lock on us!" Frtiz confirmed.

Struggling to speak, Cam still managed a guttural, "Shit! We're dead."

She pulled out of the climb and peeled right, immediately losing the heavy feeling of the g-force. Her breath came back in fits.

"Blue team, that's a fail," Maverick said. The disappointment in his voice was not lost on Cam. He was hoping for a miracle after yesterday.

Coyote seemed to be pulling back on the stick and giving it all he had. "Level out Coyote," Mav repeated.

"Son of a bitch," Fritz said, concern lacing his tone. "He isn't leveling, do you think he's–"

"He's in G-lock," Cam finished for him.

"Coyote, come in! Coyote, level out wings!"

No response. He was locked in a free fall, headed straight for the rocks. From this distance, it looked like one of Amari's toy planes in the sand box. Sunlight glinted off the wings like the harsh slash of a knife.

"He's gonna burn in!"

Maverick took off after him, aiming right for the plane. The only hope was to wake him up with the missile lock tone.

A second before he hit the ground, the plane leveled out.

Cam leaned back in her seat, whipping off her mask. Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat and her heart still raced. No close call was ever far enough.

"Coyote, you okay?" Maverick asked.

A heavy wheeze on the coms. "I'm okay! I'm good."

"Good, good. That's enough for today."

Cam leveled out the F-18 so that they were flying in line with Maverick's cockpit. "That was close."

"Too close."

In a mass of white feathers, a bird smashed into their cockpit.

"Bird strike," Fritz said, coming to the understanding as the alarms began to flare. "Bird strike!"

Cam's voice was lost. She heard the same words coming out of her mouth in a laugh as she flew with Nikita over the Pacific Ocean. This time, though, her instrument panel was an array of lights; MASTER CAUTION, L BLEED, and an obnoxious blinking FIRE.

"Left engine is completely out!" Fritz relayed, somehow remaining a semblance of calm as the ship bounced in the wind. "Both engines are on fire! Berlin, you have to climb."

A shuddering breath and she came back to her body, yanking towards her on the joystick. "Climbing." Now at a higher altitude, she said, "Leveling back, shutting off fuel to left engine. Extinguishing fire."

It did nothing to help. "Right engine is out!"

"We're still spinning, try to restart it!" She panicked, running through the rest of the protocol. Protocol, protocol. No one ever told you that when you were near death you would never remember any of the things you had learned in time.

"Still on fire!" Fritz yelled.

"Throttling up," she swallowed, her voice weak. Was it time to bail? Where was Maverick?

The Pacific Ocean holds all my secrets now. I died in that crash too. I'll never be the same.

"The most expensive way to kill a bird is to hit it with a plane," Kit sang out in her mind. Laughing. Always laughing.

All calm was lost. "We're on fire, Berlin! We can't put it out!"

One last hope. "Extinguishing right engine."

"Berlin, Fritz! Punch out, punch out!" Maverick yelled in her ear.

"I've got more warning lights than I can count!" Fritz told her. "We need to bail!"

They were in an uncontrolled dive. None of her controls were working or responding. The hard packed sand of the desert floor would be just as unforgiving as the flat blue surface of an ocean.

The arrow on the altimeter was spinning like a broken clock.

"You can't shake it!" Maverick insisted. "Eject!"

Finally, Cam said the words. "Eject, eject!"

A half second after Fritz pulled the cord, so did she. Whiplash yanked her head back hard in the wind, and the last thing she saw before her eyes closed was the white parachute unfurling above.

She woke up when she hit the ground.

Her heart hammered in her chest. Every moment of doubt and every sleepless night dulled in comparison to this feeling. Sheer helplessness.

"Kit. Nikita Kasper. Where is she?"

"Nikita Kasper is dead."

She broke into a run, limbs aching. Her boots were heavy on the ground, green helmet discarded in the dust.

"Kit," she rasped, trying to shout. Ocean water was closing in, rushing in waves, dampening her neck, her hair, her clothes. Salt stung her eyes and burned as it flooded her throat. Let me die here, let me die too.

Voice crossed between a sob and scream. "Nikita! Please, Nikita."

Suddenly Fritz was in front of her, grabbing her by the shoulders, voice echoing. "Cam, I'm fine. Breathe, try to ground yourself."

The waters receded and pooled only at her ankles. Her legs, unstable as paper in the wind, bent and she fell to her knees, clinging to scraps of herself. Fritz held onto her, his breathing as shaky as her own.

𓄼 𓄹 

𝐂𝐘𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐄 was the first one in the infirmary to see them, and it wasn't to give them any wishes of his sympathy. Though he looked sorry for what happened, it felt like a ruse. He was out for blood; this completely uncontrollable error would give him perfect reason to remove Pete Mitchell from duty at Topgun.

He asked Cam questions like it was a script. "In the course of training, have you felt Captain Mitchell was forcing you beyond your feasible abilities?"

The nurse removed the oximeter from Cam's finger. "No, sir."

"Would you say that his training left you no margin for error?"

Irritated, Cam met his cold stare with one of her own. "We suffered a double engine failure at low altitude. We had no choice but to eject. Maverick didn't throw the bird at us, did he?"

Realizing she wouldn't give him the answer he wanted, Cyclone turned to face Fritz.

"Would you say that his training left you no margin for error?"

Fritz shared a look with Cam.

"Don't look at her," Cyclone said sternly. "Answer the question, Lieutenant. Would you say that his training left you no margin for error?

"I know what you want me to say. I'm not going to say it," Fritz answered stubbornly.

"We did what the mission calls for, what we've been training for," Cam interrupted. "Captain Mitchell is not responsible for what happened out there. If you want someone to blame, I'm sure there's a dead bird laying in the desert that would love to talk to you."

Cyclone left the room without another word.

"What do you think they'll do to Mav?" Fritz asked quietly.

"Hopefully some of the bird guts ended up on his F-18, then they'll have evidence that it was an accident. I'm sure they'll draw this out, though. I wouldn't be surprised if we have someone else in charge of training us by tomorrow."

Fritz sighed. There was a cut to his cheek that was still angry red. "You always know how to cheer a person up, Cam."

"What can I say," she said bitterly. He had just witnessed her in a state that no one else had. Complete and utter vulnerability. She missed Basil.

He sat silently for a moment before eventually speaking in a hushed tone. "You don't trust me."

She stared forward. "I don't trust myself. I almost killed you today."

"Yeah, but I was up there too. I take the risks as a WSO, I know what it means to go up in a plane that someone else is flying. I'm talking about the moment of panic, the one where decisions mean the most. You don't trust me to make the call. You haven't been able to trust me the entire time we've been here."

She knew it was true. She didn't trust him, the same way she didn't trust anyone.

"I don't trust anyone to make that call." I've seen how it can go wrong.

"You can't keep living like this," he paused. "I don't think I can do this mission with you like this."

Cam turned to face him. Her cheeks flared with the heat of her anger. He was right, he was so right, people had been taken off missions for far less. Still, her pride would never let this go.

"No? And who are you to tell me that–that after a year of this, that I can just forget it all happened? That I can forget what it feels like to cheat death at the price of someone else's life?"

"I'm not asking you to forget that, I'm asking you to take a step forward, to be honest about what you're thinking until it's too late and we're plummeting towards the ground. You don't trust me. You don't trust yourself," he scoffed as if he could still barely believe it. "You've put up this wall around yourself like you're expecting people to climb over it–"

"I never asked you to!" she spat. A nurse poked her head around the corner, so Cam lowered her voice. "I don't want you to! Why do you think I left in the first place? I left to get away from the feeling of not being in my own body. The feeling that everyone was watching me."

He took a step away from her and Cam wanted to take it all back. She had completely abandoned him and rejected his every attempt to truly reconcile with each other. There would be no going back now.

"So what now?" His shoulders rose. Fluorescent light reflected in his eyes, and there was no forgiveness within them. "You gonna run away without telling anyone? Hope there's another corner of the Navy where you can collect dust?"

"No," she told him coldly. "We do this mission, I owe you that. Then I'm out. You won't need to worry about being dragged back anywhere for my sake."

"You're wrong, Cam," he told her. She didn't turn around. "I only came because I wanted to make sure you were okay. I don't need this mission to feel like a full person. I'll go back to flying with my squadron like it never even happened. You, on the other hand, will never recover if you can't let go."

━━ 𓄼 𓄹 ━━

a/n yikes!!

so cam is basically at a very tough crossroads right now in all aspects of her life.  I tried to write it from the perspective of her coming off of time at home and facing that reality, facing the reality with bradley, and now the bird strike (so essentially a very bad emotional hangover).  normally, I try to avoid erasing the role of a canon female character and replacing it with an oc, but so much of this story is built around a similar incident of the one that Phoenix and Bob are apart of in the film that it felt right to break my own rules!!

I don't get a lot of engagement on this story, so I was obviously not prioritizing it this summer as I originally thought I would!  if you're still reading this, let me know what you think :)

--nat