Long Way to Home
Fandom: Yukikaze
Pairing: Jack Booker/Rei Fukai
Spoilers: Operations 1 and 2
"It's because you know he'll be taken away by Yukikaze again, right?"
Were you that obvious?
Her question echoes in your head. He'll be taken away. Taken away. By Yukikaze. That damn plane.
You suppose it's jealousy. He looks happier strapped in that death trap than he ever has with you. A peace you can never give him, no matter how many times you take him home, pry him away from it, tuck him away in your bed. Even when he's with you, it feels like he's still in that hangar, surrounded by empty planes.
But Yukikaze's not right.
It's nothing you can point at and say, "I don't want you up in that thing anymore, Rei..."
It's nothing you can name and understand and verbalize. It's just a gut feeling. Every time he closes his eyes, you wonder if it's Yukikaze he's seeing. If it's Yukikaze he has conversations with in his head.
You know it's not you. You don't think it ever was.
"It's all I have."
He knocks the breath out of you and puts you in your place, and doesn't even realize it. Brick by stony silent brick, he builds the wall between you. His anger pushes you away, and you wonder at the fear underneath it all. His fear that he's nothing without the damn plane that you named. You regret ever painting the kanji on its nose in the first place.
And as you stand alone in the command center, feeling the eyes of every subordinate on you, you can't bring yourself to stop trying. You have to find him.
He has to come back.
Because you're nothing without him.
You have him back, but now he's lost somewhere inside himself where even you can't reach. The doctors and your coworkers and the rest of the crew all expect you to be able to get through to him. It's in their sympathetic but hopeful expressions. The way they follow his wheelchair with their eyes, and smile sadly at you.
But he's not with you anymore.
When you brought him home from the hospital, you were hoping that the familiar setting would jog something in him. Make him recognize something. Wake him up. You didn't even think to take him to his barracks, since he barely spends any time there. When your apartment doesn't work, you try the hangar, then the air strip. You make plans to have him present at the launch of the new automated Yukikaze, even though everything in you rebels at having it back in the sky.
It did something to him. You haven't voiced your suspicions to anyone else, except Rei and he didn't answer back. But you know it was Yukikaze, and you know that if anything will bring him back, that plane will.
So you take care of him, and your superiors ignore the fact that your relationship is obviously more than comrades as long as you don't flaunt it. You're left staring into his vacant grey-brown eyes, wishing he could wake up if you will it hard enough. When he's at the hospital, hooked up to all those damn machines, your apartment feels empty and you desperately miss his quiet presence.
Before he disappeared, he would dream at night. He woke you up with sharp kicks and whimpers, but when you shook him, he would just roll over. In the morning, he'd claim he couldn't remember anything, but you would see him staring at his hands, and you know he did.
The major is upset because you changed his prototype's call sign to Yukikaze, but the plane isn't his anymore. He's the only one that doesn't see that. That plane isn't a normal jet, and Rei isn't a normal pilot. Not anymore. You realize it now. You just didn't want to see the connection before.
So when the screen says, "You have control, Lt. Fukai," and you hear him standing up. Moving. Awake finally. You can't do anything but stare.