Several days had passed since Robin and Monarch had tried to repair their plane, and in that time they had made no further attempts. Rumors had also started spreading across the base that Monarch was in a pretty bad state, and morale amongst just about everyone from the rank-and-file infantry to the officers had subsequently plummeted from rock-bottom to basement-dwelling. Frankly, Robin found it hard to blame them.

It wasn't Monarch's fault, she knew that much, there was only so much horror that anybody sane could handle. Even so, her own spirit was shot to hell. Monarch had always been an incredibly steadfast, robust person, but he was still only human.

Thankfully, he was still just as able to help her as she was to help him. Listening was, despite what many would believe, a genuine skill that surprisingly few possessed, requiring a great degree of patience. Monarch had always been good at listening, and having somebody trustworthy to talk to was the first step towards helping her work through what was weighing on her own mind.

Indeed, for as terrible as things were, they were at least calm. Whatever Federation holdouts that had been left were either successfully and quietly evacuated or exterminated by vengeful Cascadians, and so for all intents and purposes, the war on Cascadia itself was over. The developing naval conflict was a different story, but if the now Admiral Woodward was to be believed, it wasn't too much to be concerned about. Most of the Federation's navy was already sunk, and what member states they had left weren't exactly eager to hand over their remaining vessels.

It was a refreshingly quiet day, and both of them were quietly relaxing in their room, occasionally talking as they read through some of the books that had started to arrive in Cascadia along with the humanitarian aid. The quiet moment, however, was banished as a knock at the door came.

Curious, and admittedly a little bit annoyed, Robin spoke up. "Come in!"

The door opened, revealing a familiar Cascadian pilot. Stardust looked a little bedraggled, and surprisingly out of breath, but there was a visible excitement to his step as he spoke.

"Sorry for bothering you, but I've got some news that I figured you'd want to hear." Stardust prompted, but spared no further delay as he got right to it. "We found your wingmen, they're both alive and well!"

There was a moment of brief, disbelieving shock, before she and Monarch both shouted out and laughed in relief and joy. The two of them immediately pulled the other into a victorious, triumphant embrace while Stardust continued to try and catch his breath.

"Sorry, ran across the base, promised that you'd be the first to know." Stardust explained between gasps for air. Even so, his words barely reached hers and Monarch's ears over their laughter.

Monarch, ever level-headed, managed to recover his demeanor fairly quickly. "Where were they?"

"Kaiser found 'em out by Presidia, they've been lying low since the battle." Stardust answered. "They're on a helicopter heading here now, if you'd like to greet them when they land-"

Monarch reached for his sweater even before Stardust was done speaking, prompting an amused chuckle from their former liaison. "-Well, I'm sure they'll be happy to see you too!"

"Thanks Stardust!" Robin replied, figuring that he at least deserved that much. "Give me just a moment here Monarch, gotta find my jacket…"

A short time later…

The last time that Peter "Diplomat" Kennedy had flown in a helicopter, the sky was blue, not orange. There was no booming thunder that gave him doubts about whether or not their supposedly safe flight was about to swiftly end, and the now torrential winds were a lot less intense than before as well. It had also been in the back of a relatively modern gunship, and not the aging museum piece that they were in now.

Mercifully, neither he nor Comic were especially prone to motion sickness, but a few of the Cascadian Infantrymen that they were flying with apparently did not share the same fortune. As a result, it was an awkward, relatively quiet flight, at least until a sudden possibility at what might await them at the Highway came to mind.

"Hey 'Mic, do you think Monarch's going to be angry with us? We kind of left him in the dark…"

It took her a moment to reply, and when she did, the professionalism and faint sense of passive anger that usually accompanied her words in the past was gone. When the adrenaline had worn off after Prospero, she hadn't really seemed all that alert, and it would've been a lie to say he wasn't worried about her. "Why would he be? He's a merc, he gets it. He knows why it wasn't safe for us to come out yet."

Peter awkwardly scratched the back of his head as he decided to be a little more blunt. "I'm only worried because Kaiser was worried about him, and, well, you know what the boss is like."

Comic shook her head. "I've only ever seen Monarch angry once, and you were there, remember?"

"Shit, how could I forget…" Peter replied. Between avoiding all of the hellish fighting and rivers of molten city, he hadn't gotten to witness much of Monarch and Prez's duel with Crimson One. What little he had seen was less like a duel between warplanes and more like the sky fighting itself. Between the smoke, fire, and lightning, all that he'd really gotten to see up until the end of fight was the missile trails and streaks of light from Crimson One's railgun.

He was also pretty confident that everyone who was still alive in Presidia had immediately noticed when the rogue Federation Pilot was killed, because the resulting blast had been loud enough to at least temporarily deafen a good portion of the survivors.

"You're worrying too much." Comic continued, summoning a bit more effort in her voice as she concluded her statement. "He made it, we all did, that's what matters."

Peter let out a long sigh, he still kind of had trouble processing exactly that. The odds had been stacked so far against them that they probably should've been killed a dozen times over, and yet, they'd still made it. "Won't argue with that."

It was around midday by the time that they touched down onto a fairly crowded runway. What had once been a barebones, makeshift base built around a half-finished highway was now on its way to becoming a full-scale military installation, home to two battalions at an absolute minimum.

"Sheesh, we weren't gone that long, were we?" He asked, a bit taken aback by just how much things had changed.

"Didn't feel like it…" Comic remarked.

With landing procedure swiftly cleared, the helicopter touched down, much to the gratitude of the poor infantrymen that they'd been traveling with. Once he was disembarked, Peter couldn't help but feel a huge sense of relief as, for the first time in weeks, he didn't feel like a sniper was training their reticle on his head. He was smart enough to recognize that there probably wasn't a safe place on the planet where anybody from Sicario could ever be truly safe, but being surrounded by allies and friends in the middle of nowhere was about as good as he could ask for.

Naturally, it took all of about two seconds for them to spot Monarch and Prez waiting beside the helipad. Although he was still a bit nervous about what they might have to say, there was nothing that could keep the smile off of his face as he was reunited with an old friend. Even Comic, who rarely smiled even before the Second Calamity, had a very slight, almost invisible grin.

"Hey, good to see ya Monarch! Sorry about-"

He was cut off as he, and Comic, both grunted with surprise as they were pulled into an impossibly tight hug by Monarch who, by every metric, had effectively teleported to close the distance between them. Out of everything that he'd possibly expected from Monarch, that was at the very bottom of the list.

"Alright, easy buddy!" Peter managed to croak out.

Comic wasn't any more durable than he was. "Kinda, killing me here Monarch…"

There was a visible reluctance as their Flight Lead released them. It took him a minute to find his words, and they ended up coming out in a rough stammer. "Dust above, I- I thought… that…"

Whatever fears that Peter had of Monarch being upset with them vanished in an instant as he saw the look of relief, and even tears in his eyes. It was very, very unusual for Monarch to really display any large degree of emotion through gesture, or at least, it had been. He and Comic had obviously missed quite a lot, and already, he was starting to get a terrifying vivid picture of exactly how Monarch had reacted to them going MIA.

Just to be sure, he spared a brief look at Prez, whose own expression of blended concern and relief said more than a thousand words. She looked like she'd been through the wringer, and once Peter got a better look at Monarch, he saw that she wasn't alone. For a moment, he wasn't sure exactly what to say, but thankfully, Comic proved as capable a wingwoman on the ground as she did in the air.

"Easy, it's alright, we're here now." She said, managing reassuring words whereas Peter had been left with nothing but a desert where his throat had once been.

While Monarch struggled to pull himself together, Comic turned her attention to his backseater. "Prez, I saw some of Monarch's maneuvers while we were on the ground, are you okay?"

Prez shrugged in response. "I lost consciousness pretty early on, and gave the medics a hell of a scare, but there wasn't any lasting damage."

Comic nodded. "Damn good to hear it."

Monarch still looked like he was barely keeping himself together, and Peter, feeling a need to do something to help him out, did the only thing that he could think of and pulled him into a hug, although a much gentler one than he'd received. He must've been doing something right though, since Monarch's breathing steadied a bit as he returned the hug.

"We missed you too, buddy." He said, finding it unsurprisingly difficult to decide on what to say. He couldn't actually remember the last time that he'd been called upon to offer reassurances, rather than the other way around, and he was clearly out of practice. "Are you… gonna be alright?"

Reassuringly, Monarch didn't have a moment's hesitation as he nodded. "Yeah. Shit, sorry."

Peter gave him a reassuring pat on the back as he replied. "You don't have to apologize to anyone, let alone us. Hell, you saved our asses back there. I don't want to think about what that maniac might've done if he'd won…"

It was a possibility that neither of them really wanted to acknowledge, and probably, as Peter swiftly realized, something that he should not have said to Monarch in his current mindset. Thankfully, Comic stepped in to cover for him again.

"And thanks to you, he didn't." She said, with a familiar confidence and satisfied grin on her face, her earlier exhaustion apparently vanquished. "Ronin was right, by the way, should've called you the King of Hell if you're going to fly like that."

None of them missed the faint smile on Monarch's face as he replied. "Aw, but then we'd have to paint over the butterfly…"

Maybe it was their mutual exhaustion, or the giddiness that they all had at being alive, let alone reunited, but Monarch's little comment had them all laughing. Perhaps not hysterically, but a genuine, good-natured laugh.

"Alright yes, very funny, but can we get out of the cold here, people?" Prez asked, rubbing her hands together to prove her point. "The sky might be glowing, but we're still in Cascadia!"

Monarch nodded, but apparently couldn't resist the urge to tease her. "I offered you my sweater…"

"I'm not just gonna let you get cold too!" She insisted.

Monarch and Prez had already started on the way back to the Barracks, but Peter held back for just a moment, which Comic noticed. "Hey Dip, you good?"

He didn't even spare it a moment's thought, the answer was obvious. "You know, I really think we're gonna make it."

At his words, she grew a very satisfied, almost smug smile. "I don't know Dip, that almost sounded confident."

On another day, he might've said something to tease her in response, but today was hardly an ordinary day. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Now come on, Robin wasn't kidding, it's freaking cold out today…"

…

…

Days later, with the news of Hitman Team being reunited had spread across most of what was left of the Independence Force, and what was rapidly becoming the Cascadian Foreign Legions. The news was frequently accompanied by unsubstantiated rumors of them preparing to take flight once again. Unsurprisingly, the momentary lapse in morale that Robin had noticed vanished overnight, and desertion rates amongst Federation soldiers increased by a few more noticeable notches.

Although the world was a scary, dangerous place, more so than ever thanks to the Federation and Crimson One, they all slept a little easier with the knowledge that they had a few Guardian Angels to watch over them.

Author's Note: I was looking back on this story and thought that it could use a more solid ending, with a more hopeful tune as well. Perhaps that goes against the spirit of the unashamedly dark ending of Project Wingman, but that's just not how I fly. Too many things in the world are already dark, so why not turn on a light?

I find it immensely interesting that this short little story, originally intended to be a one-off, ended up amassing so much positive feedback. Now that's obviously thanks to all of you, and for that you have my immense gratitude.

This story's not perfect for certain, there's a few notable things I'd change if I decided to rewrite this, but unless there's demand for it, I'll probably just leave it as is.

M̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶ ̶W̶i̶n̶g̶m̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶W̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶i̶e̶n̶d̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶.̶

It's been fun, I hope we get the chance to do it again. -Kpmh2001