It was too goddamn hot.
Long after the witching hour and no sleep anywhere in the corners of his small room. Like the thin sheets rucked around his hips the darkness held him down to the narrow bed, hard over his flesh. Lay rigid with eyes that burned and watched the moon stab light through the darkness.
Deadly quiet where he was, so still that his own careful breathing was the loudest thing in the room. So goddamn hot and sleep a million fucking miles away.
No peace in this silence. Just the heat like a hand, pressing him down. There was no place to go after all, no relief in the darkness. Been running for so goddamn long that he'd finally found the edge of the world.
Nothing left to do but fall.
Salt and the fainter memory of blood on his lips. There was nothing remotely comforting in this heatwave, not a warm fuzzy place to be. Just the pressure like a small taste of hell, sucking him down and stealing the little will he had left. A shudder touched his skin before he stilled again.
Hours later and still had no goddamn idea what to do. The moonlight accused him, touched him with fingers that betrayed. Heat and shadow slick on his skin and the world realigning itself still despite his desperate grasp.
Before today it had been an act, a game of sorts. Deadly serious but still at the very core, a goddamn game. Push this button, say that thing and sit back to watch the fireworks. Hell, jump in and throw a few more crackers around for good measure. The greater the mayhem the more it had amused him.
It had been chaos of his own making at least. The borders and limits long since defined and rigidly upheld. Within those walls able to take it as far as he dared but he wouldn't be who he was if he didn't always take it right to the edge.
Until today he'd believed that he'd never cross the boundary of what could be forgiven. Right to the wall but never through it. Could all but feel the axis of his life turning to reflect a different light, a new and deadlier sun.
And there was no fucking time left for it to mean anything to him.
The brutal, inescapable fact was that they would die before it was over. Each day, every hour was borrowed time, stolen life. They were only five. Five against the overwhelming machine that was the Galactor bid for domination. The others might pretend, might try and fool themselves that there would be time for living after it was over.
He knew better. This was all the life they would get. That he would ever get.
Fuck duty. Fuck responsibility. Fuck saving the world. He just wanted to be able to sleep.
Sucked heavy air through damp lungs, feeling the sweat trickle down his side. This night had been a million years long so far, and looked to be another million before sunrise. Today... today the world had fallen apart and damned if anybody else had noticed. They should see that he wasn't the same. It should show. A change of color, a change of heart. Something ought to fucking show.
All tied up in the pain and the blood, the terrible knowledge that they were drowning. He wanted... damned if he could face what he wanted. Touched fingers of fire to his flesh, clawed need along his bones and damned if he wanted to name it.
Alone in the crushing darkness, he refused to name it.
Before today... he hadn't really understood why. Always the game, the push and shove that kept them both knowing exactly where the line was between them. The blood, the discipline so carefully managed, doled out in small portions so that they could both be satisfied with the exchange. Carefully divided so that nothing broke that could not be repaired. So that they could walk away afterwards and still remain who they were to each other.
Today he'd finally understood that it just wasn't going to be enough any more. He needed more. Had to have more, or die in the trying. Wanted flesh like marble to fucking bleed under his hands because that was all he had time for. Needed to have that color in his mouth, on his skin, in his eyes.
So knotted up inside that he couldn't do anything but lay here and burn. Until today it had been all about control.
Until today, he'd always thought he wanted to win.
Too much. Too goddamn much and it was too goddamn hot. Didn't want to know this about himself. Even in the darkness he didn't want to know this about himself.
Fumbled to sit up, the sheets a knot around his legs so tight that he cursed viciously trying to untangle himself. Managed to get feet to the floor, the wood giving the illusion of coolness for the briefest of moments. Didn't bother with the lamp because he damn well didn't believe in boogey men anymore. His nightmares happened in broad daylight.
The pack of smokes was on the dresser where he'd left them and a match flared in the darkness. Touched his face with trembling light because his hands were shaking.
Why today of all goddamn days? Why pick now for this world-shaking revelation? Nothing special about today, nothing different. You'd have thought he'd have woken up and by some magical intuition realized that he shouldn't get out of bed. A neon sign in the sky that said to stay where he was, that bed was the safest goddamn place to be.
No, instead he had to get up. Had to shower, dress, drive to town for the morning sessions. Trade insults with Jinpei, make wiseass comments to Nambu and generally let everyone know that he'd gotten up too goddamn early in the morning. So routine it had nearly put him back to sleep. Probably put the others to sleep too but that was their problem.
Even the emergency scramble had been nothing but predictable. So laughingly typical that he could have slept through the thing and watched the tape back at headquarters for the highlights. It was what they did after all; waited for Galactor to reveal themselves and then jumped all over their asses for being so stupid as to crawl out of their holes.
Even destroying the Galactor mecha had started out routine. Jump into the God-Phoenix, rendezvous with the poor human pilots. Let the fighter jets play distraction while his team proceeded to kick the enemy's ass out of the sky. Standard fucking procedure, luring the Galactor captain away from his target. Away from the grounder population who couldn't run, couldn't hide, couldn't do what they could do. Save another city, save another million or so people who would call them heroes, name kids and pets after them.
The faceless people that gave him nothing back that was worth the pieces of himself that he was destroying in this war.
Took a steady drag on the cigarette. Galactor would fail and they would die. Sworn that they would go down under his hands, but really didn't give a damn about whether humanity made it through at the same time.
Fuck, ok, maybe he did care. But not as much as they probably wanted him to.
Yet again the same arguments on the 'Phoenix, the same words, the same refusals. They would win by stealth, subterfuge, deception. Infiltrate and destroy. Raise the banner of white shadow a little higher; encase the legend with another choking layer of fear.
So many layers they were suffocating under them all. Yet the Eagle never faltered, never showed any sign of the myth that was eating them alive. Innocence guttering in Jinpei's eyes, shadows darker than midnight in Jun's. Didn't want to know what his own eyes revealed. He caught enough of it on the other's faces.
But he'd followed. Followed like he always did, Eagle's darker shadow. Gone through that mecha like a wind of silence until he'd reached his assigned target. Knelt in the blood and flesh that spattered the engine room and planted his incendiaries right on schedule. On a whim had called up the captain on the internal comm link to the bridge, had traded a few insults just to mess things up a little more. It had been so goddamn predictable.
Stupid, stupid Condor.
Of course the Commander had overheard the exchange. Man was a damn machine, knowing which channel to be tuned into at that particular moment to catch him being his usual reckless self. Racing down the twisting corridors the Commander'd still managed to convey his cold disappointment. Racing down the clock and still that disapproval had lit all his fuses, yanked the chain hard between them.
So pissed off that he hadn't paid close enough attention to their escape route. And for fucking once, the Eagle had been equally distracted. They'd both been caught almost totally by surprise. Ambushed by those they'd infiltrated.
Who'd have figured it after all? Most Galactor had the brains of tapioca and that included the ill-fated mecha captains. Where the hell Katse found them all was a goddamn mystery. Had to be a whole lot of serious inbreeding in Galactor ranks to produce that many idiots.
This one however - this one had managed to get them both by the goddamn balls. Score one for the Galactor.
This captain had figured out that they had to get away. Filled the adjoining corridors with men so that they'd been herded like sheep to the gullet of the trap. Hadn't bothered trying to save the ship once he'd known he had them onboard, courtesy of the Condor's grandstanding. Had thrown every warm body he had to keep them there so they'd all go down on the pyre.
The cigarette flared, a baleful eye. He was smarter than that, damn it. Get in, get out, that had been the plan at its bare bones. So he'd messed with it a little, big fucking deal. He always messed with the fucking plan, you'd think they'd have figured it out by now. His consolation prize was that the Eagle had been suckered right along with him.
They were the Kagaku Ninja Tai, the unseen shadow. They didn't die in those first, brutal seconds.
But even the legendary Condor couldn't wade through that much blood.
Stalemate at the end, with the two of them crouched high in the exposed wreckage made from a hastily tossed grenade. The Galactor squadrons milling around on the floor, looking for revenge. Gods, it had looked bad. Given more time, they could have blown a way out. Hell, just sit tight until the rest of the team could show up and they'd mop the floor with Galactor uniforms. Be home in time for that highlight tape.
Hadn't been any goddamn time. Bombs on a string, daisy linked and sequenced the way Jun had set them up. The Galactor squads were already dead, but they were determined to take the legend down with them into hell.
It had taken the God-Phoenix itself to get them out, smashing its way through the metal skin of its enemy. Swan and Swallow to the rescue as Owl tore his way through to where they'd been trapped. Stupid, risky move, exposing all of them then to the implacable numbers. Entire squads of Galactor had gone down under that screaming intrusion while more had run, but most had stood and fought.
Rivers of blood. Oceans of pain to swim through. Even with all of them it had been a gamble whether they could win through in time.
Flesh on fire from bullets that had stitched up his side. Hadn't cared at the time that ribs had cracked, that every move was agony. He was Condor of the Kagaku Ninja Tai.
Galactor had died in waves around him.
Then he'd seen Swan falter. A breath of hesitation in a place where anything but perfection meant death. Had long ago accepted that he would die in this war but across the killing field had seen the reality stare him in the face. He was not the only one that could fall.
Only an instant for that frozen, terrifying understanding. Then Eagle fell from the light, first and best of them all. To shield. To protect white over white.
Stupid Condor. Still hadn't realized the shift even as it laughed in his face.
Moved from rage to slaughter in a heartbeat, wings black with blood. Won them a space, a moment where Ryu could break away in the damaged 'Phoenix, leaving the gaping hole he'd clawed open for them.
They'd flown then like the birds they were named for, away from the doomed Galactor. To the 'Phoenix who collected them and bore them away as fire roared behind them in the sky. Abandoned the battlefield to the pilot squadrons who swarmed close to the falling wreckage, leaving it to them to clean up whatever remained.
Not a word. Not a single goddamned word on the bridge of the God-Phoenix with the rest of the team listening to their hard silence. All the way back to base Eagle hadn't said a damn thing and he'd refused to break under the weight of it.
God that had hurt. Worse than the pain that made breathing an exercise in will, worse than nearly anything he remembered. He'd screwed up damn it, screwed up again and this time it had been Jun that had nearly paid the price of it. He deserved the words. Earned the harsh reprimand that Ken wouldn't give him.
Took the last drag on his cigarette and corrected himself savagely. Honesty, even here with no one to know if he lied.
It was the Commander that hadn't said a word, having already expressed everything he needed to say in the corridors of the Galactor machine. Ken was different though, that one necessary step away from the shadow that was the Eagle. Ken would have understood, would have given him what he needed. Permitted the words, permitted the excuse that they both used to express what could not be said.
Would have danced the steps they both knew so well, ice to his fire until the rage could no longer be contained.
Deadly sweet, the game between them. Blood would stain the ground before it was over because that was what it came down to. The line once again reaffirmed in red.
Yet through it all Ken never lost control. Calm discipline to the core, pointing out the error of his ways, his mistakes. No heat to match his, but even ice could burn and most of the time it was enough. Always the same fucking game between them.
Eagle's darker, hotter shadow.
So in the end that left his chewing out to Nambu, who'd done rather well considering that he'd only listened to one word in three. It had assuaged a little bit of his guilt though, enough at least that he remembered that the Eagle had made his own mistakes. Finally able to get away, to get his cracked ribs treated. To start the process of burying the last few hours so he could pretend that the blood wasn't touching him, a second skin. So that he could wake tomorrow and do it all over again.
Then he'd made the mistake of looking up leaving the medical room. Looked along that pristine white corridor and seen them waiting.
Eagle and Swan, waiting for him. Or maybe not for him. Talking so seriously it seemed that they hadn't noticed him hesitating there. So close to each other that Ken's breath must have touched her hair. Jun had said something, god knows what because he couldn't have heard a goddamn thing over the spasm of his heart.
Ken had actually smiled. Had reached out to touch her face, so gentle it must have felt like a feather.
Standing there, for the moment just another part of the scenery, that was when his world had taken that final step sideways and dropped him off the edge. Hadn't, after all, been angry with Ken.
He wanted to kill Jun for being the reason for that smile.
Stubbed out the smoldering remains of his vice with fingers suddenly steady. Lay down again and once more contemplated the ceiling.
Stupid, stupid Condor.
What the hell was he going to do now?