hey y'all!

since i refer to a number of manoeuvres in the text, i suppose i better briefly explain them.

play chicken: any self-respecting fan of the movie ought to know this one. it's where two planes coming together from opposite directions turn sideways before collision so that their bellies face each other.

leapfrog: think of it in terms of plane x and plane y. they fly in a row at the same altitude. plane y then flies up and plane x flies down slightly so that y is in front and x is behind. then x flies up and y flies down so that their positions are reversed. repeated, it becomes like a game of leapfrog.

lateral leapfrog: instead of the planes flying one behind another, they are side by side. so when they fly up and down, it is to switch from left to right instead of back to front.

hope you enjoy it :)

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"I thought you said you told her not to come."

"Yeah, I did."

"Why are you looking for her then?"

"It's my test. If I tell her not to come, and she comes anyway, then I know she loves me."

That makes him smile a little, despite the sombre occasion. Rafe has a thing for testing people and boundaries; pushing them again and again to see how far they can bend without breaking. Sometimes it was simple things like the number of freshly baked Christmas cookies that could be stolen without reprimand and sometimes it was crazily dangerous things like testing how far a P-40 could be held in a nosedive before it spiralled out of control. Hare-brained as they were, Danny always finds himself more of a participant than an innocent bystander in these schemes; finds himself trying to brush cookie crumbs off his shirt and running an extra fifteen miles in full kit for being stupid enough to risk the safety of very expensive machinery.

As he watches his friend's receding back, Danny realises that the only difference between this test and every other before it is that he has finally been relegated to the position of bystander. Soon, he would lose even that; the ability to know exactly what Rafe was testing, the right to tell him when he was going too far and, when he pushed things too far anyway, the chance to help him get out of trouble.

"Good hunting, Rafe," he whispers, hoping that his brother would find what he was looking for.

They never really fit in where they came from, not if you looked past the superficiality of classmates and alliances on the football field; he was too introspective and Rafe too ambitious. Even when they were just kids, he always seemed to be chasing something. Maybe it was because of his inability to read, which he always made fun of but which Danny knew hurt him deeply, but he constantly pushed himself to be the best at everything he did, especially when it came to flying. At first he thought it was to earn Mr. MacCawley's confidence, so that he could fly the crop-duster at the unheard-of age of fourteen, but that only drove him to try and out-fly every pilot they knew. He thought that joining the force, where the planes were faster and there was competition enough even for a pilot of his calibre, would slake his thirst. Obviously, even that was not enough. He didn't mind that Rafe's path in life led him to bigger and greater things than he could hope to accomplish; Danny had known in his heart that this day would come a long time ago as he watched Rafe soar over the golden cornfields of Tennessee. No, he just hoped that his friend would find whatever it is he was looking for before he lost himself.

"He told me you were a great flier. It was the same night he told me he'd volunteered to go to England."

"Volunteered? He…he told me he'd been assigned."

Stupid, stupid son of a bitch. He knows immediately that she hadn't misheard him or perhaps misunderstood anything about the nature of his transfer to the Eagle Squadron; it is - no, was - so typical of Rafe that he wonders why the idea did not occurred to him sooner. Rafe was always looking out for him, even to his own detriment. Sometimes he chafed against the heavy-handed nature of Rafe's protective instincts, but he had grown to rely on it. It was his home, his shelter from a world that had shown him loss and grief far beyond his years. Whether it was the ever-extended invitation to dinner that saw him both properly fed and kept away from his abusive father to the smart-aleck comments that drew the brunt of their instructors' ire for stunts both pulled, he was always looking out for him. Rafe was the only constant in a world that kept changing and he had come to expect that nothing would happen to change that. Now, it just leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Maybe if he hadn't protested so hard against the transfer, Rafe might have let him in on it. If he had been more daring to attempt some of the more complex manoeuvres that Rafe had been trying to execute the week before, he would have proven himself worthy of being allowed to tag along. But it is too late now for ifs and maybes.

"I always knew that no matter what trouble I got into, I'd never be in it alone."

Never had a truer sentence been spoken. What most people never realise is that he was as much of a troublemaker as Rafe; he just isn't as loud or obvious about it. Take, for example, the time he convinced Rafe that there really was no harm in flying in the winter, only for them to get lost in a sudden storm. That they managed to land the planes relatively undamaged was a magnificent stroke of luck. Or that time they kidnapped the frogs from the school lab and 'released' them in Ms. Winter's classroom, where she was incidentally planning to give them a test the next day that he had completely forgotten to study for. Or the lateral leapfrogging stunt they tried out and nearly got court-martialled for. The only reason he dared to do those things and more besides was that Rafe was always game for it; all he ever needed was Rafe watching his back.

"God, I miss him."

"Yeah, but don't you think he was up there the next day, cast and everything, telling me to make some adjustments on those wings."

What he doesn't tell Evelyn was how he raged at Rafe for suggesting that. Oh no, it wasn't enough that he had nearly killed his best friend, here was a second go at it, natch. Mrs. MacCawley was so surprised at the sound of his raised voice that she had just stood by while he shouted himself hoarse. Rafe had been taken aback too, but only because he didn't think that what he had asked for was too dangerous. It was then that he realised that Rafe seemed to have a lower threshold for the recognition of danger; he had such confidence in the benevolence of life and his ability to get out of trouble that he often took risks no sane person would. This lack of sensitivity to danger only became more pronounced as he aged and more avenues for venting destructive energy opened up. He thought nothing of crossing the river that ran across the back of the MacCawley property on a rotting log or of nicking the truck keys for a joyride.

People seemed to think that it was a phase he would grow out of, but only Danny knew that this was more of a permanent deficiency; thus it fell to him to keep Rafe's near-suicidal tendencies in check, to make sure that he at least knew the risks of the things he got himself into. On the odd occasion, Rafe would actually listen and decide not to play chicken during the Commodore's visit or whatever it was that week. Danny didn't resent his role as the voice of reason, no more than he resented having to eat or breathe. It didn't take very long for them to realised that they had hit upon a winning formula because of this; with Rafe coveting something or rather and coming up with unworkable plans to get it, and him polishing those plans into success, there was very little that the two of them could not do.

"I'm gonna be twenty-five. I might as well be an old man."

When Danny was eleven, two things happened. Rafe caught a particularly nasty case of chickenpox. His English teacher lent him her dog-eared copy of The Wind in the Willows. He had no idea at the time that these two seemingly unrelated incidents would have an indelible impact on their lives. Being laid up with chickenpox wasn't exactly a party and his hyperactive friend quickly became cranky and restless. To help him while away the time, Danny read to him the adventures of Mr. Toad and his steadfast, ever patient friends. To him, it was little more than a heart-warming and well-told story. Rafe on the other hand identified with the mad amphibian, and became convinced that every life had a purpose. Mr. Toad's, despite his half-mad escapades in the beginning, was to unite the creatures of the river against the intruders from the Wild Wood, and his own purpose would surely be revealed to him one day.

Was it to fight the Huns? Die young? Truth be told, Rafe was more afraid of old age and insignificance than he ever was of death and had he been told at thirteen that this would be his fate, he would have laughed.

"Danny, don't do this. Don't go on this mission. You got nothing to prove."

"You've been trying to protect me since we were kids."

"Yeah, well, you do tend to need it from time to time."

It is all painfully familiar, but he can't help thinking that they had changed too much to ever look at things the same way again. Rafe would always look out for him and he would always look to him for guidance because they don't know how to do things any differently, but they had learnt to survive without each other and that knowledge is the elephant in the room now.

People who know them see, at the most, friends closer than blood brothers, but there is so much more to them than that. Rafe, for all of his cantankerousness and supposed lack of sense and responsibility, had taken on the role of a parent from the tender age of five. If anyone taught him to tell the difference between right and wrong, made sure he was fed and clothed and loved, it was Rafe. When his father died and he moved in with the MacCawleys, it was like finally buying a house that he'd been renting for the past couple of years. Looking at Rafe now, where he sits in the sand with a haunted expression on his face and dark circles under his eyes, Danny realises that he is not the only one who lost a part of his childhood; only Rafe had given it up willingly, and Danny wonders why he did it. Rafe was always the first to try out whatever stunt he wanted them to attempt. He took the fall for their collective mischief. It was selfless, purely and truly so; self-sacrifice at its most muted and most noble, kind that only heroes were capable of.

"There's Jap patrols everywhere! Danny, land somewhere else!"

The mission is all kinds of fucked-up. Nothing had gone according to plan, not the take-off, the bombing run itself, the landing but one thing never changes; Rafe was watching his back the whole time. And now, even as he is heading towards certain doom, he is still trying to protect him. Danny smiles at the thought, and keeos the bomber on course for the coast; if his friend thinks that he is just going to leave him to die like that, he is sorely mistaken. Rafe had taught him better than that.

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DO hit the review button and tell me what you think. Danny is always so damn difficult to write for and i'd really appreciate any feedback on the matter.