Maverick knew that Rooster would be unable to evade the missiles without any more countermeasures. He knew that Rooster's jet would not survive a direct hit.

He knew that Rooster was out of options.

Maverick had promised himself that all his airmen would complete the mission and return home - alive. Maverick had promised himself that he would not fail Rooster like he had failed Goose so many years prior.

With gritted teeth and whitened knuckles Maverick pulled up, feeling himself be forced back into his seat as the F-18's frame groaned around him, the jet rising to fly back above Rooster's position. His gloved hand slammed down on the button to activate his flares as he did, lighting the sky with an orange glow. He saw Rooster's jet soar beneath his, with no more missiles on his tail and the metal reflecting the glow from the explosion behind them, and he let himself have a brief moment of relief.

Rooster was safe, for now.

Maverick, however, was not.

Looking to his right, Maverick could see one last missle heading right for him, his maneuver to save Rooster having killed his speed and leaving him vulnerable.

Maverick couldn't escape this one.

With an explosion that deafened him, the missle ripped his jet apart like a child who played too rough with a cheap toy. Maverick was jostled hard enough to knock the wind from his chest as his jet fell from the sky, the back of the jet falling away as the frame split and broke. As the ground rushed up to meet him, Maverick slammed his fist down to open the canopy and reached to eject himself from the falling jet. Maverick was thrown from the jet, sharp pieces of metal slashing across his flight suit and acrid black smoke clouding his vision as he rushed past the falling jet and into the open air, his parachute opening as he began to plummet down towards earth once more. For a brief moment he lost his bearing, unaware of what was up and what was down. As he was abruptly lurched to a stop as his parachute filled with air and slowed his descent, another piece of something - pieces of his jet were falling like hail all around him, like a shattered glass thrown into the air - slammed into the back of his helmet, his visor cracking from the impact as his head was slammed forward hard enough to send his chin into his chest. Maverick couldn't say if he lost consciousness for a moment, if the ground had become a lot closer than before, but blood began to steadily trickle down his forehead and into his left eye, his head throbbing as he clenched his teeth together.

With how low to the ground they had been flying, Maverick's parachute hadn't had enough time to slow him down as much as he would have liked for landing on solid earth, and the unforgiving ground quickly rose to meet him. He tried to raise his legs in the moments before he slammed into the ground in an explosion of snow, but one of his legs stumbled and snapped, the layer of soft snow not nearly enough to pad his limbs from the rough impact. Maverick's strangled scream split the air, agony possessing his body as he curled in on himself, his eyes clenched tightly as his leg throbbed, his body twitching as the pain raced through him. When he opened his eyes, he could see his leg was crooked and bent the wrong way, and any attempt to move it was met with sharp pain.

He wasn't going to be moving himself anywhere fast anytime soon.

Pieces of the obliterated F-18 littered the white landscape around him, smoke curling up towards the sky and fire blowing bright as flames licked around the shattered remnants of Maverick's jet.

It was a clear signal, to both friend and foe, of where to find him. Maverick was a sitting duck, unable to move and - going off the darkness encroaching around the edges of his vision - soon to be unconscious and unaware.

He needed to move, to get into the woods that lined the edge of the large clearing he was in, but he had been rendered helpless.

As his head fell back and tilted to the side, snow slipping into his helmet and burning hot like fire against his exposed skin, Maverick noted that the once pure white snow around his limp form was turning pinkish. When he looked down at his body, he could see his flight suit was stained with dark spots of blood, spots that were growing wider by the second.

He knew he should feel concerned about that, about the fact that he was lying in enemy territory without backup, weapons, and with (at minimum) a broken leg and countless scrapes and bruises, but his clouded mind didn't seem to care.

He was just so tired, and his eyelids were growing heavy, too heavy to keep up as the bright sunlight painfully bounced off the snow and forced him to squint against the glare. He let his heavy eyelids slide shut, the bloody snow being replaced with peaceful blackness, and he let himself drift off...

He let himself...

"Maverick!"

As a yell split the air, snow was splashed onto Maverick's exposed face as a form collapsed to their knees beside Maverick, their hands reaching out to run across his chest, his arms, searching for injuries.

"Hey!" the person, his voice familiar but Maverick's concussed brain unable to corral his thoughts to identify them, snapped his fingers in front of Maverick's eyes as he spoke, "Can you hear me?"

"I..." as Maverick looked up at the form leaning over him, the sunlight creating a glowing halo around their head, his eyes screwed up in confusion as he recognized their familiar features.

It wasn't possible...

"Goose...?" Maverick murmured, his eyes slipping shut as his words slurred, "I thought you were..."

He was supposed to be dead.

Maverick slipped into the grasp of unconsciousness before he could register the heartbroken expression on Rooster's face, before he could see the fear flitter across the younger airman's features as he watched Maverick slip away.