Title: Fragmentary
Fandom: Top Gun / Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Author: DaenaBenjen42
Characters: It's drabbles. Clowns in a circus car, with a special guest or two, because I love the idea of Charlie meeting a recently divorced father of five whose entire family is mad at him for moving to Virginia.
Disclaimer: **points to Paramount, Bruckheimer Productions... Tom Cruise...**
To quote Bratling/Brightfeather, who was actually quoting someone else: "I borrowed them, squeezed them, hugged them, called them George, and then gave them back like a good girl." (Yes, I'm going to keep using it!)
Story this is Backstory Exploration for: Seeing a Trailer
Notes: There is a Permanent Angst Warning on this. (I didn't actually mean to earn it right away.) This makes two fandoms where I give a Permanent Angst Warning... the other is Robocop. I'm not normally a writer for Top Gun, but this is where I went when I returned to writing after a year away, and I've been making endless jokes about a story stuck on Bespin ever since. In an effort to actually GET unstuck... Top Gun it is.
Drabble Prompts taken from Ultimate Drabble Challenge #10, which is taking place at the fanfiction forum at Jedi Council Forums.
Week One - UDC 10 - Charlie gets a study partner...
1. Prelude
He was in the base library after their last Hop for the day when he noticed their civilian instructor, Charlie, poring over several books and what looked like duty rosters at once while writing on a yellow notepad and muttering to herself. Carefully, he looked over her shoulder to read what was on the pad and frowned. "Otis Redding?"
Charlie froze and turned her head to look at him. "I'm trying to find answers on something. You're...?"
"Wolfman." He frowned at the other details. "Who disappeared in an F-4 in November of '65?"
"That is part of what doesn't make sense, Wolf. VF-51 wasn't even flying F-4 Phantoms at the time."
2. Bygone
She'd explained what the research was for, and now Wolfman was even more intrigued as he read through a record of service for a member of VF-51, who was the father of one of his classmates. Then he frowned. "Charlie?"
"Hmmm?"
He showed her and she stared first at the information, then down at her yellow notepad. "Home on leave in February of '68?"
"And the memories of children are fluid," she muttered, writing that detail down. "Thank you."
"The rest of this file is redacted," he said, flipping some pages in confusion. "Why would they do that?"
3. Impend
Charlie sighed. "If I knew the answer to that, I'd already have that promotion I'm working to get, Wolf."
Wolfman nodded. "The detail I don't get is the Otis Redding song."
Charlie smiled, then noticed something. "Huh. That's interesting. F-8's, something classified I couldn't get into, and the squadron downed at least two North Vietnamese MiG's in '68, making them MiG Killers." She sighed. "That doesn't answer my question about what happened to Duke Mitchell, though."
"Maybe it does," Wolfman told her, waving his hand down at the service file he still had open. "And it's so secret they redacted it."
4. Descend
Charlie sighed again. "Maybe it does," she echoed, reading another service file. Then she frowned at the redacted pages that covered the same amount of time. "And I know just who to ask."
"Who?"
"Commander Metcalf." She continued frowning as she raised her head to look at him. "What were you actually doing in here, anyway? I know you didn't come in here to help me with this mystery."
Wolfman shrugged. "Yours is more interesting?" Charlie glared at him. "Research on radar systems, because the F-14's radar cone has blind spots and Jester keeps using it to his advantage."
5. Arise
Charlie stared at him for a long, long moment before laughing. "Oh! Well, you can go do that, then, Wolf. Thank you for your help."
Wolfman paused. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure. I keep running into redaction roadblocks." She glanced down at the notepad, shook her head. "November 1965, when he was home for a month in '68. That is some story, there. It's like someone was daring anyone to actually look into it and discover the holes."
Wolfman left her to it, and Charlie continued to grumble over twenty-year-old paperwork for another hour or so. Eventually, she found something that made her chuckle.