#my brain is mush goodnight zZzZzZzZ

[callsign-marlie]

Prologue. Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV. Part V. Part VI. Part VII. Part VIII. Part IX. Part X.

Story Content Warning: Rate M for mature content (minors DNI!!!) including but not limited to: mentions of drug use/smoking, alcohol consumption, explicit sexual scenarios, angst that will make your head spin and more to add Chapter Warning: panic attack symptoms at end of chapter, moose is a good boy :3

a/n: (unedited) life decided to take a big ol' doodoo on me this part, between writer's block and probably one of the worst months of my life to date. i apologize that this part is a little short. I'll be putting out a 6.5 part after this with some background of MusicMan and Hotshot so you can get a better feel for them to make up for it <3

thank you again for all of your support. x marlie Table of Contents

Part VI: Remembrance

Misha opened the front door of the house and let it creak shut behind her. The air was completely still and the open foyer echoed with every step of her boots. She untied them with tired hands and let her duffle fall to the floor of the landing. She’d deal with the mess in the morning. 

Moose immediately trotted up the stairs, a little yawn leaving his jowls while he waited for his mistress to follow. She smiled at her boy, the shepherd seemingly smiling back, when two taps of a pen on wood shook her from her focus. The single beam of light coming from the old chandelier in the dining room highlighted the face of a very stern looking Tom Kazansky.

Iceman sat at the head of the kitchen table like a king at his throne with a hot cup of tea in his fingers. He pursed his lips at the steaming liquid and eyed her fiercely behind his glasses. Busted, was all his glare could say. Misha’s throat was closing as she met his gaze, nodding her head to Moose to give him permission to go to sleep. The hound let out a small whine and stamped his feet on the carpeted floors in protest, but ultimately turned himself to the room to hunker down for the night.

Misha slinked over to sit near her father in her usual seat at the table, her mother’s spot separating the two. Tom put down his mug and crossed his fingers on the mahogany. Her own were fumbling with her cuticles.

You’re late. His fingers were lazy in their movement while he signed. Misha knew after falling asleep in his chair this morning that her father was probably dead tired from waiting up for her. The lieutenant glanced at the grandfather clock in the den: 10:56. It was way past both of their bedtimes.

Rooster and I were talking and I lost track of time. It wasn’t a lie in the slightest. Although her conversation with the aviator was short in comparison to her smoke “break”, she needed to make sure she had a good alibi that her father could track if he decided to pursue it. You knew I was on base, though. Did you really have to stay up? 

He gave a tight lipped smile. Yes. To make sure my girl comes home.

Misha scowled, shaking her head in embarrassment. I’m not a kid anymore, dad. I don’t need a curfew.

You weren’t a kid the last time you were out on your own after sundown. You were a grown woman in handcuffs, Tom started, locking his ice blue orbs with her emerald ones. The time before that, you had your bags packed and left the base in Jacksonville. Before that, you were in a hospital bed after the accident. You weren’t a kid at all at any of those times. I just don’t trust the sun when it comes to you, my Misha. His fingers leaped towards the sign name that he had given her. Misha’s heart jingled like a bell at the affection, but this was not the time for flattery.

Iceman not liking the sun fits, but I’m Hotshot. The heat is ok. I’m not dead yet. She chuckled to lighten the mood. Tom Kazansky didn’t budge. She gulped, gaze breaking towards the kitchen. Is there hot water left?

Stove, he motioned, signaling at the single burner still reddened. The kettle fizzed out steaming water while Misha dropped a chamomile tea bag into her favorite old mug. Perhaps it would lull her to sleep a bit easier after their conversation. 

She stood against the countertop to stay her antsy legs from shaking. Misha took a sip and nearly torched her tonsils with the herbal liquid. She hissed while mashing her tongue on the roof of her mouth, “Hot hot hot hot!”

Was it? Tom’s sarcasm laid through his upturned brows and coy smile, taking another sip of his tea. I thought you were ok with heat.

She rolled her eyes while she nursed her swollen tongue. Tom patted the seat beside him, Sunny’s seat, for his eldest daughter to join. Hesitantly, she crawled onto the rattan chair. 

It felt wrong.

I trust you. His expressions was grim. I just don’t want to be asleep when the phone rings about you.

Not if. When.

Misha could only stare into the rippling chamomile tea and bit back the frustrated tears prickling in the back of her eyes. “I’m fine, dad. I’m not who I used to be. I’m fine. Just… Give me some space, please.”

She didn’t look up. They stayed in a heavy silence until he tapped her arm, his warm palm resting on her skin. His voice was graveled; a whisper. 

“Earn it first.”

Red seeped into her vision.

“EARN IT?!”

Misha didn’t stand to hold back her voice anymore. She shot up from the seat, knocking it over to clatter to the floor. She met his eyes while smoke licked inside of her lungs and fire burned hotter on her tongue than her tea. Chamomile be damned, there was no calming this blaze in her chest. “I’ve earned it over and over again for three damn years. I haven’t caused trouble, I got my own job, I’ve doing everything you say for this stupid, PERFECT, family facade you have going on here without a hitch in my acting skills and— AND! I even took this ridiculous position you gave me without a fucking FIGHT! Even though I knew it was just going to end up making me a laughing stock of the entire Navy! I did it for you!”

Her chest was heaving as she leaned over the table. Tom’s gaze softened a fraction, but he didn’t flinch a moment otherwise at her outburst. He simply stared at his daughter working through her emotions: he was a stone wall and she was crumbling like chalk. 

She could have reached out her hands and they would have been on his shoulders, shaking him like a rag doll in incredulousness. Did he just not see? Did he choose not to in order to keep her locked away in this gilded cage? She wanted to scream, are you blind now, too?, but figured that wouldn’t go over well. 

The flicking on of the hall light revealed a disheveled Sarah, robed and distressed, barefoot, in the hall. Her stare bounced between the two of them, mouth slightly agape. “Misha, honey, what’s going on?”

“It’s nothing, Mom. Nothing.”

Her throat stung from her screams. She couldn’t even look at her mother. Did she see her the same way, too? Incompetent? Unworthy of her freedom?

Did she still see her daughter as a fucked up little girl that couldn’t be trusted?

Misha grit her teeth to look back at her father. The wetness on her cheeks was forgotten, cold and sticking to her skin. “You know, Dad, when I was little? I wanted to be just like you. I tried so hard to live up to your expectations: Ice cold. No mistakes. But you know what I’ve realized after everything that’s happened to me? I never was like you, no matter how hard I tried to be. I couldn’t be. I’m not ice, I’m fire; the chaos of life always sang to me. It made me feel like I was home.”

She turned away from the table to stand just past her mother. She didn’t turn back. “I thought once that the songs were lying to me, but you know what? I shouldn’t have doubted them for a minute. At least they tell me the truth. They’re more my family than you ever were.”

“Misha,” Sarah hissed, but the aviator didn’t turn around. She trudged up the stairs to find Sunny and Jude standing outside of their respective rooms. “Way to go, big mouth,” her sister mumbled as she passed. Her under eye patches were slipping and her satin headband was crooked. Jude’s eyebrows were upturned in concern.

Misha ignored them both, slamming her bedroom door closed.

—

“And what would you tell his family?”

Maverick was busy grilling into the aviators while Misha sat perched behind her desk, analyzing and repeating different velocities and speeds of the aircrafts during their drills. Drill reviews were necessary for a mission like this because it allowed for careful dictation to find the exact flaws in each pilot’s flying to correct for optimal speed and precision. 

Although everyone’s numbers were steadily increasing from their first dog fighting simulation (Hangman’s more so than anyone else’s), the graphs were not excelling anywhere near where they were projected to be to have full success over the mission. The room was constantly fidgeting with anxiety and tension as Maverick continued to present to the aviators. “Why did you leave your wingman, Hangman?”

“Well, sir, they just couldn’t keep up.”

Misha bristled. Something about his response left her spine tingling and her cheeks heated. It could have been the sly smirk she wanted to slap off of his lips, his beady green eyes or that stupid fucking toothpick he kept flipping between his perfect teeth. She forced her fingers to continue to rock calculations rather than have them clench in a fist.

Rooster’s eyes rolled nearly in the back of his skull at his callous response. “That’s how people die, Hangman. You can’t just speed through a mission like this without your wingman.”

“Success requires the fastest finishers, bird brain.”

“Don’t tell that to your next conquest in bed, Hangman,” Bob spat, fiddling with the pen in his fingers. He paused as the words left his lips and looked up sheepishly. His eyes were as large as a doe’s. “Oh, did I say that out loud?”

Phoenix did her best to hide her chuckle beside her WSO and patted him on his shoulder. Hangman threw an insulted, pointed glare at the other man. Bob nearly curled into his seat, flushed.  

“Alright, reign it in,” Maverick clashed. “This is serious. What’s going on here isn’t teamwork. Watching these training sessions has been like watching mercenaries that don't care for their comrades. Hotshot, numbers please.”

Misha switched the screens on the projector to reveal her most recent number set. The screen lit itself mostly with yellow and red bands. A singular green brick in Hangman’s speed section was the only pop of difference on the graphs. 

Misha stood, her knee popping to crack. Her body hurt more today than it had in months thanks to a brewing thunderstorm and she was certainly not in the mood for a lecture. 

But duty called.

“You can see here,” she started, “that numbers are up trending in comparison to the last mission change.” The graphs moved side by side as she swapped the numbers, noticing a general uptick on her scatter plot. “Which would be sufficient if this mission was, say, two months away. But here, aviators, we have less than two weeks. You want to see what numbers you should have projected at this point?”

Another click. The next graph was nearly double the angle of the current plot. The pilots sat up straighter in their chairs. A chorus of groans echoed through the group. “Not even close. The numbers speak for themselves. This is unacceptable work. Get. Serious.”

Misha’s gaze drifted directly to Jake who was nonchalantly twisting his toothpick in his fingers. His lips were tight as he eyed the graph, his irises flicking back and forth along the axis. This Jake, the stern one with the cogs spinning in his head, was the one she remembered the most. The Jake she knew was a problem solver, not a problem starter. He flicked his head up at the graph.

“Your numbers are off.”

Misha paused. “Excuse me?”

“They’re off. You underestimated my acceleration equation.”

Her teeth grit. Spoke too soon. “I can assure you I pulled the information directly from your Hornet’s black box, Hangman. This is as accurate as it can get.”

“Then your information is incorrect because I can guarantee that my acceleration was at least 850 knots based on my speedometer on my last pass with pops over there.”

“Even if I were for some god forsaken reason wrong, Hangman, your one stat value wouldn’t make a difference in the positive for the overall team equation.” Misha inputted his new value of 850 to the chart, seeing exactly one point move on the scatterplot higher than the average. “All you did was create a further outlier to decrease the sensitivity of the upwards progression. In fact, you might have actually worsened the average by your acceleration nonsense. Let’s check, shall we?”

Surely enough, the p-value, previously showing significance of change, proved the graph now insignificant. There was now statistically no progression to the aviators’ data with Jake’s rumored 850 knots. 

Coyote groaned in his seat while Payback glared full laser beams at the back of Jake’s head. Fanboy let out low whistling, shaking his head side to side. 

Hangman’s cheeks were flaming and finally, he tore his eyes away from the projector. His mouth shut for the rest of the debriefing. His fingers never stopped fiddling with his toothpick

“Lieutenant.” Misha gingerly placed herself back in her seat. “Would you like a glass of water to wash your foot down your mouth now or later?”

He remained silent. A pin drop would have sounded like a cymbal. 

“Dismissed. Watch your emails tonight for instructions for tomorrow,” Maverick began. “Be prepared for… physical work.”

—

Misha lit her cigarette on the walk out of the hangar with Moose trailing a few feet in front of her. Her briefcase was hitched under her armpit as she balanced a forgotten, overpriced latte in her opposite hand. She was going to need all the caffeine she could consume if she was going to make it through all of the paperwork she’d been delaying.

“Misha.”

She turned around to find the one and only Jake Seresin standing before her. Alone, and shockingly vulnerable with his flight suit tied around his waist. A black tank was the only thing he had on his chest. She stopped walking for him to catch up, his torso nearly ramming into hers as he overshot his stride. He looked disheveled. A fat, wet curl of hair hung down to his eyebrows. She could smell faded sandalwood cologne and the starch in his uniform under the staunch Irish Spring soap. Moose, realizing that his charge had stopped, went directly between her legs to keep Jake’s distance. Surprisingly, the aviator respected it and backed away.

“Can I help you, Lieutenant?”

His jaw clenched while she saw the wheels in his brain turning on how to say what he wanted to. “Can I… can I ask a stupid question?”

“Better than anyone I know.” Misha took another sip from her drink, adjusting her briefcase. “What is it? I’m on curfew and I don’t wanna leave Admiral Kazansky waiting at the dinner table again.”

“Why?”

His posture was tight, his shoulders nearly shrugged to his ears in tension. Why? “Why what?”

“Why did you do that? Why did you have to embarrass me like that?”

“Embarrass you? No, Jake, you did that to yourself.” She lifted a leg to release Moose from the cage of her knees and turned away from him. “You were trying to embarrass me by proving me wrong. You think I’d let your boasting go unchallenged? I’m not pitiful enough to let you get your way, you brown nose. I’ll rub your face in your bullshit just like I used to in TOPGUN. I’m not afraid of you.”

Jake moved himself back into the front of her vision. His fingers flexed open and closed at his sides. He was coiling like a rattlesnake while the vein in his forehead throbbed. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I want you to realize I’m right: t’s too dangerous for you to be here, in the air or otherwise. I still have no clue what Iceman was thinking about bringing you back here.”

Misha’s nose upturned. “I’m not some fragile piece of glass, Seresin. I’m healed and healthy. The admiral obviously thought that my skills were unmatched and were needed for this particular mission.” She pulled a drag from her cigarette and stomped it out prematurely under her boot. A shame. “Frankly, the more I’m seeing, the more right he was this whole time.”

“I want you to resign from this mission, Misha.”

For the second time that day, her blood pressure tipped over the edge. Her eyes were daggers as she met his gaze with her own. “No, Jake.”

“If you don’t, your connections are going to put everyone here in danger.”

“My connections? With who? Mav and Rooster? Phoenix? Coyote? You? Hangman, I’m not even flying with you guys. Get that through your skull.”

Jake’s hands grabbed at her shoulders and shook her with a grip so tight, Misha wasn’t sure if she would be bruised. “I lost you once, I’m not losing you again, Misha.”

Moose’s patience snapped.

His fangs were bared as he jumped between the two, snarling with his haunches raised at the aviator. Jake immediately pivoted back and Moose pressed forward to detach Jake from her shoulders. Misha’s knees had given way and she was on the ground before she even realized that Moose jumped in. Her guardian was immediately by her side as soon as Jake was far enough away that he couldn’t touch her anymore. 

She was dizzy. Her head was spinning with sandalwood, tobacco, and him. Why did he–

“I can’t, Misha. I can’t. I won’t be responsible this time.”

Her breathing was ragged as she did her best to bring her droopy vision towards her former wingman. A single tear slid down his cheek and he was slumped on his knees in front of her. 

“I wasn’t fast enough. But I am now. I am now, and I’m not going to let y-”.”

Jake’s lips were moving at hyperspeed, but Misha heard nothing but static. Moose was nudging harshley at her arm. Lay down. She did, her head resting on her briefcase. He laid directly on top of her chest to apply pressure. Was Hangman still talking? Was Moose barking? She couldn’t tell, the ringing in her ears was so fucking loud. She couldn’t speak. When did her arms get so heavy?

It could have been seconds, minutes, hours, but eventually, a hand swiped itself across her sweaty forehead. It pushed the hair out of her head while a pair of arms lifted her into the sky. She couldn’t find the strength to open her eyes against the damn ringing in her head. If she stayed still… Maybe… Just maybe.

Maybe just this once.

taglist: @alanadetigy@luckyladycreator2@alldaysdreamers@blue-aconite @blank-velvet @mirandastuckinthe80s80s @bluecosmics

#top gun maverick #arsonist’s lullaby fic #hangman x reader #rooster x reader #top gun oc #what do i even tag this as anymore holy moly #my brain is mush goodnight zZzZzZzZ