Author's Note: I know many people will be upset that this isn't a Batman piece, but the plot popped into my head and just refused to go away. I hope that some of my Batman fans who are familiar with Starfox will give it a read.

This is essentially an alternate version of events between Starfox 64 and Adventures. Happy reading!

Falco had to laugh at himself as he shrugged on his old Starfox jacket. When he'd left the team eighteen months earlier he'd told himself that taking it with him was practical, as it was the warmest thing he owned. As he pulled it out of his bag for the first time since he'd packed it, though, he realized that he'd been lying to himself. It was the thickest coat he had, yes, but that wasn't why he'd kept it. He'd kept it for sentimental reasons, sappy, stupid sentimental reasons, and that was all there was to it. Practicality had been nothing but subterfuge, just like so many other aspects of his character.

Fox had wished him luck at finding himself, which was what he'd claimed he wanted to split off on his own to do. Burying his stiff hands in his pockets, Falco wondered if he had made any progress. He'd certainly 'found' himself marooned on this barren wasteland of a planet, if nothing else. It wasn't the sort of discovery he'd been hoping for when he'd closed his cockpit lid and waved goodbye to the others, but his dreams so rarely came true that he almost didn't register his own disappointment.

Even if he had gained some bit of knowledge about himself during his sojourns, it didn't seem like he was going to get a chance to put it to use. Two weeks had passed since he'd sent out a begrudging SOS and ditched his ship in a freshwater sea, and his survival was becoming more tenuous with each passing day. He'd been far off of the normal transit routes when his electrics had given out, and there was no telling how many miles of water now lay between his radio transmitter and open air. If someone did happen to hear his signal the odds were good that they would ignore it. He couldn't blame them – in this part of the quadrant a call for help was more likely to be a trap than a true sign of distress – but he also couldn't help but wish for a better death than the one that was slowly creeping up on him.

Starvation, he knew, was a very real possibility. He'd rationed his few emergency bars for as long as he could, but they'd still been gone in a matter of days. There was a fuzzy purple moss growing between the boulders that made up the landscape, but it had made him violently ill the only time he'd dared to try it. No other life had presented itself on land, and he'd been grappling with grim hunger for a week and a half now.

An experimental dive into the sea might have revealed a cornucopia, but such an attempt would be foolish unless he wanted to speed the end along with a bout of hypothermia. The waves that had swallowed his fighter carried small chunks of ice on their crests, and the shiver-inducing soakings he'd received while gathering something to drink were enough to convince him to keep his distance. With nothing to burn for heat and no shelter from the constant wind except for his battered parachute, he was as much at risk of freezing as he was of wasting away.

Either end felt anti-climactic to him. Hadn't he dragged himself up from nothing to become as much of a war hero as any mercenary could ever expect to be? Hadn't he earned a less ignominious demise than the ones this heartless place was offering him? Dying he could deal with, but he deserved to die actively. If some foe would just come down out of the star-crusted night and offer him a respectable way out, he would take it. A blade between his ribs, a blaster shot to his face, a rock against his skull...any other goodbye to life had to be superior to the misery he seemed fated for.

He watched the sky for a long time, but its now-familiar configuration offered him no relief. Finally he sighed and retreated beneath the low tent he'd made in the lee of a large rock. There had been frost atop his little abode when he'd woken that morning, and he had no doubt that it would prove thicker with each new dawn. In another ten or twenty degrees it would no longer stop at the entrance to his cave, but would creep inside to stiffen his clothes, his feathers, his blood. If he was lucky, winter would come fast and steal him away in his sleep. If he wasn't, the fall would draw out until he was too hungry for slumber and he had to watch the cold crawl up his extremities. Pillowing his head on his depleted rucksack, he closed his eyes and hoped he would have good fortune just once more in his life.

His dreams were made up of happy memories, and in a moment of vague lucidity he thought perhaps the temperature had performed a merciful plummet and that this was the end. His parents appeared first, laughing and smiling, their foreheads miraculously clear of the precise black bullet holes that had ended their lives so early. After that came a break, followed by a few brief shots of the old gang. Fast cars featured heavily, and so did Katt and her come-hither smirk. She was more beautiful than he'd remembered, and he hated himself for leaving her. He wanted to stay with her now, in his not-so-distant youth, but there had been many more bad times than good and before long that period of his life was past, too.

All that was left then was the team, and even in sleep Falco felt his heart ache at seeing them so clearly. Instant after instant flashed by, piling up until he couldn't take it anymore. They blew by one another in training and practice, blew out burning candles on birthday cakes, blew up bad men with evil intentions. Peppy sent him that warm, quiet look that said 'I'm here' without words; Fox stretched upwards to throw a brotherly arm across his shoulders; Slippy brought him funny little gifts made out of mechanical bits and bobs that were beyond reuse. They knew him, he groaned, even when he didn't know himself.

The last moment came, and the three of them stood together and stared up at him. He looked down on them, then closed his cockpit lid and raised his hand in farewell. They didn't want him to go, he knew, but going he was. The whum, whum, whum of his engine filled his ears, growing louder and louder as he pulled his craft back from its docking cradle. They watched as he slipped away from them, and finally he had to be the one to turn away. The exit loomed ahead of him once they were out of sight, but where there should have been stars, a future, and hope there was nothing. No more good memories remained to be reviewed; all that was left was that lonely whum, whum, whum...

He snapped awake with a gasp, but the noise didn't stop. "What the hell?" he croaked, confused. Perhaps he'd lost his mind since he'd laid down, driven mad by a loneliness that all the one-night barroom brawl alliances in the universe couldn't banish. Maybe some strange planetary spasm was preparing to grant him eternal relief. Or, he thought triumphantly as a searching beam of light swung by overhead and cleared away the last of his sleepy ramblings, he'd just gotten lucky one more time.

It didn't matter to him whether the new arrival was a friend or a foe, his savior or his slayer. They were here, and that was good enough. Determined not to be missed amongst the forest of boulders, he dashed outside as quickly as his half-frozen legs would carry him. The light cutting through the dark was easy to follow, and he stumbled into view of its source expecting absolutely anything but what he found.

There, emblazoned proudly along the flank of the small transport that had touched down at the water's edge, was the same flying fox that graced the back of his jacket.

"...Holy shit."

Falco turned ninety degrees to find Fox gaping at him from atop an eroded chunk of granite. "Hey," he greeted, his eyes crinkling with joy at the sight of the other man. "Long time no see."

Fox dropped to the gravel with an icy crunch,and in a second he'd closed the gap between them. "We picked up a random SOS and thought we should check it out, but you're the last person I figured we'd find. What are you doing here?"

"Heh. Waiting for you to show up, I guess. My plane crapped out on me." A beat passed. "So...what took you so long?"

Fox sputtered. "What took me so-? Falco..." He shook his head, but he was grinning. "You never change, do you?"

Falco examined his friend, then craned around to look out over the awful sea that had trapped him alone with himself. "Maybe not," he said quietly.

"...And maybe so?"

"Maybe. Who knows?" Peppy would know, he thought privately. Slippy would figure it out before long, too. And Fox...he could tell that Fox already sensed that something was different. "Would it be a problem if I did?"

"No. Not so long as looking bedraggled and half-emaciated aren't essential parts of this 'maybe' new you, at least."

"Nah. Being clean and fed are two things I'm pretty much guaranteed to always be in favor of."

"Good. Peppy'd have a cow otherwise." Fox cast another critical glance at him. "...So would I."

"Okay," he shrugged.

"What's this? No rebuttal? No telling me to look after my own hide or back off or any one of a half dozen other Falco-isms?"

"Eh. You wouldn't listen to me anyway." And that's okay, hung between them. "...Let's get out of here, huh? I'm sick of this place."

"Sure. Where's your stuff?"

Falco stared back towards the makeshift tent he'd been prepared to die in less than fifteen minutes earlier. Then he pulled his jacket closer around himself and faced his friend once more. "I've got everything I need. The rest is just baggage."

"...You're sure?"

"Yeah. I'm sure."

A warm arm landed across his shoulders and squeezed. "Then let's go home, buddy."

The wind gave a sudden howl as if it had been cheated, but Falco barely heard it. "...Right. Let's...let's go home."