Disclaimer: Not mine, I just like to play with them for a little while.
A/N: I've often said that I can't write Colt, but found out about a year ago that I was wrong. Colt, it turned out, was a lot deeper and more interesting than I thought he was. There's a lot going on under that cowboy hat that we are not aware of.
Under the Cowboy Hat
When Colt puts his hat over his face nobody can see what's going on inside him. They think he's asleep, or possibly daydreaming of pretty, sparsely dressed girls. They are wrong, but he prefers them to be.
Under his hat Colt can hide his worries, because cowboys don't worry. They don't think about problems not immediately on hand and when a problem is immediately on hand they don't have time to worry about it either, because they are too busy dealing with it. Cowboys are cool and live in the moment, superficial and easy-going. Or at least that's how Colt wants others to see him. No need to worry about Colt, folks, he'll be fine no matter what.
It's true, too. Colt knows he will be fine in the end no matter what happens. He'll deal with it the way he has with everything life has thrown at him before. He's been through a lot and has always adapted. He doesn't worry for himself.
No, when he hides under his cowboy hat and nobody can see his face and tell what he's thinking Colt worries about other people. He worries about the people on the New Frontier like any good Star Sheriff should and he worries about the future of Cavalry Command and all the people there after the war. When there is peace there is no need for this many soldiers and too many of them have never learned anything else.
Sometimes he even worries about the Outriders who don't seem to know any other way of life than fighting and are so desperate for conquest and then he wonders whether humanity is headed in that direction as well. And he worries about the traitor Jesse Blue, because he can see it in his eyes that deep down Jesse is really just a lost little boy who made a big mistake and has no way back. So Jesse keeps playing his part and he plays it well, but Colt knows, because Colt knows all about playing a part and hiding your feelings, even though Jesse does it without the hat.
Most of the time, though he worries about the people who are close to him, his team-mates and friends.
He worries about Fireball, because of his idealism and enthusiasm. Yes, Colt takes at least as many foolish risks as Fireball, but he does so knowingly, because he knows somebody has to do it, because he knows he can handle a dangerous situation and because, if he is killed, he has no family left to miss him. Better it's Colt that dies, if one of them has to and the rest can go home to their parents, siblings and girlfriends.
Fireball is still such a child. He believes that he's immortal, trusts that he will survive anything. Someday he might not and that worries Colt. That and the fact that sooner or later Fireball will have to face reality, will have to realise that people aren't perfect and even Cavalry Command's high ideals are too often just words on a piece of paper. It could destroy Fireball's faith in humanity forever when it happens and Colt worries about what it will do to him.
In a way April is a similar case. Colt knows she doesn't mean to be flirtatious, to flutter from one man to the next, but she's always dreaming of that big perfect love you only find in the cheap romance novels she loves to read whenever she puts the technical manuals aside. It's such a contradiction. On the one hand she's a Star Sheriff, a soldier and an engineer, a grown woman with a strong place in the world. On the other she's this foolish romantic girl looking for her knight in shining armour in a world full of Outriders, traitors and spies. The only knights here are gigantic robots. There's nothing shiny about soldiers fighting a desperate war.
The men who don't know her as well as Colt does think she's just a slut and sooner or later someone will use her and break her heart just as she has unwittingly done to so many others. Or maybe she'll cling to Fireball, marry him and live with the illusion of perfect love for a while until it shatters and ends in divorce and tears. April will never find her dream and she might drag Fireball into her big disappointment with her and that worries Colt.
Those are small worries, though. There are thousands, maybe millions of dreamers in the universe who get disillusioned everyday. They grow up and move on, scared, but wiser and deep down he knows that April and Fireball will, too. It's just because they are his friends and he doesn't like seeing them get hurt that he worries about them.
There is a bigger thing that weighs on his mind everyday and it worries him even more, because he knows he is the only one that sees cause to worry about Saber. Sometimes he wonders whether everybody has gone blind that they don't notice how Saber is destroying himself by trying to kill off his emotions, suppressing them, cutting himself off until even his closest friends and family can't tell what he's feeling, no longer know when he's hurting.
Colt isn't even sure whether Saber realises it himself anymore. He has no idea when it started or whether there is still a way back, if Saber should want to return. It scares him that this has been going on for longer than he's known his friend and that he doesn't even know the real Saber well enough to be able to offer any help. He wants to reach out and pull him back before the dam breaks and all the suppressed feelings rush back and drown Saber, but Saber won't let him get close enough, won't let him in.
Fireball is so much closer to Saber, so much more likely to be taken seriously, but his idealism blinds him. He only sees Saber as an idol to imitate, not a person with his own flaws, not a friend in need of help. That wouldn't fit his picture of Saber or Cavalry Command.
April has known Saber for so long, she should have noticed when it started, but she is not a very perceptive person and perhaps she was too young to understand and the process too gradual at first. It is even scarier to think it might have been going on since Saber's childhood.
What of Saber's parents? Are they so estranged that they don't see? Colt has never met them, so he cannot tell.
There are other parental figures in Saber's life, though, Commander Eagle and General Whitehawk. They are his superiors as well as his mentors, so he'd have to listen to them, but they turn a blind eye, refuse to see what is in front of their eyes, because Saber is too good at what he does and they can't afford to unbalance him. Only the balance is already lost. It's just not obvious, yet.
So the ones who could help do nothing and Colt can't get through the wall Saber has built around himself and when Colt takes his hat off his face he laughs and smiles as if he has no care in the world and he stays close to Saber as much as he can, because someday soon that wall is going to break and somebody will have to be there to catch Saber when he falls, even if it might be too late by then.
And whenever he hides under his hat again Colt worries that maybe even the best psychiatrists won't be able to put Saber back together once he breaks.