#2022: The Survivors | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

topgunruinedme · 3 months ago

Text

When they closed their eyes (and prayed you would change)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Fandom: Top Gun (Movies)

Relationships: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw & Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Past Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw/Jake "Hangman" Seresin - Relationship, Solomon "Warlock" Bates & Beau "Cyclone" Simpson

Characters: Beau "Cyclone" Simpson, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw

Additional Tags: Referred previous relationship, Previous Hangster, Ex Hangster, Grieving, Past Relationship(s), "Dagger" Training Detachment (Top Gun), Movie: Top Gun Maverick (2022), Protective Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, Hurt Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell Acting as Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw's Parental Figure, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell Needs A Hug, Beau "Cyclone" Simpson is a Softie, Protective Beau "Cyclone" Simpson, Beau "Cyclone" Simpson Needs A Hug, Parental Beau "Cyclone" Simpson, POV Beau "Cyclone" Simpson, Guilt, Medical Inaccuracies, Survivor Guilt, Dissection, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Major Character Injury, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Wakes & Funerals, Hurt No Comfort, Whump

Language:English

Series: ← Previous Work Part 8 of (Jon Hamm) Beau “Cyclone” Simpson fics

Words: 4,462

Summery: Beau’s reaction to the outcome to the Uranium mission.

Receiving one final nod from the head doctor confirming that they no longer needed him for anything else, feeling more like a lieutenant being dismissed from a Commanding Officers office after being chewed out he turned to leave only to feel something under his shoe grind, and his stomach dropped as the risk of hurling skyrocketed. He closed his eyes briefly trying to find the will before he lowered himself down, one hand clutching around the chilled metal of a nearby hospital cot the other gently dislodging the object as he rocked back onto his heel, eyes darting towards the sticky metal as his palm clutched around the familiar shape. The unmistakable shape. There innocently hanging from his fingers by its mattered slick chain were Bradshaw’s dog tags. The chain was caked in blood, drowned in mud and slowly drying dirt and who knows what other substances had been smeared into it during transport obscuring the name. He didn’t need to be able to read it to know who it had once belonged too.

Losing a wingman didn’t get any easier.

They like to pretend it does, that its common, and that it’s just another part of the job. He was sure that numerus aviators his age, retired, climbing the brass ladder, or still flying, had heard their Commanding Officer start the tangent ‘If you fly long enough, it’s bound to happen,’ once or twice in their career. But that’s just the thing, it happens, but no matter how many times it happens; how many times they got shot at, burned in, no matter what you tried. It didn’t get easier.

Because you can’t stop it.

They were pilots, worse, Navy Aviators. Their entire lives were dangerous, from dawn to dusk, 365 days a year.

But losing a Wingman, it was different. That was someone on your wing 24/7, who was so close they were practically an extension to your own body. That’s why it hurts so much. Its why his own chest had cracked open when he had burnt in, breaking his back firmly dragging him out of the sky’s only to open his eyes to find his wingman, his best friend by his bedside, wings already self-clipped with a broad smile as Solomon scolded him for thinking he could climb the ladder before him as if it was a challenge.

It was different.

But losing an Aviator…much less one under your command. It took that crack and wedged priers into the wound and tugged, like standing in a swarming room as they performed open heart surgery, knocking around in your chest and your pretended you didn’t know about it.

It was different. He didn’t know how, but it just was. Maybe it was the fact he didn’t have them flying on his wing, he didn’t know them in the sky’s, he didn’t trust them with his life. Maybe it was because they were young, so much more then him, that they arrogant, just he was, and maybe just maybe, he was wating for the fire in the sky when they finally burnt in.

But it didn’t stop them. The nightmares that frequented him in the twilight hours. Draining terror filled dream space that was no longer filled with him sitting in the cockpit of his jet just sitting on their wing watching them get shot down with a gut wrenching feeling deep down that he could have saved them. Now it was much worse, hanging up his wings his dreams drag him to his one place of sanctuary, the control room, only now instead of being on their wing watching knowing he couldn’t do anything, he was now listening to his pilots, as life's they put in his hands for safety, crumble before them.

Those days were the hardest, the ones that he struggled to tell life from fantasy, watching a plane crash into the tarmac in one moment then clear skies in another. Those days weighed him down for hours after waking with the screams of his aviators, their cries of fear, an echo of their training coms, haunted by the feeling that he was the one who put them there. Who clutched their hands and lead them to their deaths.

It was harder when they were people he knew. People he had seen walk into his halls young faces filled with anxiety and excitement only to leave hardened by life, confident in their abilities even if their confidence was backed with an enormous ego and cocky grins. They were good, serious enough about the missions that he didn’t need to rebuke them, yet. It was different when it was people that he had trained, that he had selected for the mission out of hundreds of other files. Watching them openly struggle to complete the training course, the bad blood, the bird strike, the g-lock. It was dangerous, too dangerous. Yet he pushed them, he still sent them to their deaths knowing he would be standing before 6 coffins that next week because he had watched them fail the simulation time, and time again. Witnessing them all slowly break down over time as they were forced to face the fact the realisation that they were being sent on a suicide mission, the mark of death finally searing into their skin digging its crawls in and refusing to let go. And despite the poorly hidden terror, the trembling palms, and flattering voices on the coms as another sim failed. He still sent them.

There was no pretending, no brushing it aside. They all knew. He could see the way Sol’s jaw ticked in worry, and how every so often the staff would send him a worried uneasy look the longer he let the pause drag on before finally denying a rescue bird. He could feel it, the heated glare Mitchell sent him, he had no doubt the man had wanted to truly burn him, fists clutched by his side, already prepared for a fight, teeth grinding, in his last resort for control. Because that's what it really was. Suicide. There was no point denying it. He gave them the tools, the means, and now they were dying for their country. But they will still be dead, and very well by his hand.

They weren’t ready, but they were they’re only line of defence.

Somehow 6 graves didn't seem all that important in the grand mass of casualties that could occur if they failed.

Only, when those jets left the tarmac for the last time it wasn’t 6 graves he was digging. It was only one. One foolish boy.

Dagger Two. Bradley Bradshaw. A lonely kid with too much anger, a warm sun who would gravitate towards people and became the light of the room, only to be smothered by the raging flames that stung anyone who got too close. A kid who had the potential to be a great pilot, if only he wasn't afraid of his own shadow. He was too cautious, too hesitant, too angry. And in the end, it cost him everything.

And he had lost it all over one man. Jake Seresin. A man that Bradshaw didn’t even like, a man the older had been ribbing since the first moment he had met them at the graduation gala. He was observed the faux rivalry, and the teasing grins turn hostile over the years as their friendship became frail, and those teasing comments became biting and tension built, their failed communication butting between them until they finally exploded. He knew, he could see it, the hesitant tense tight nod to each other over the tarmac as they climbed into their respective jets. He knew what they really wanted to say. Stay safe, come home, I love you.

Too hesitant. Too rash.

In the end, it was too late. The kid may have looked like he just walked out of a 80’s commercial with his loud shirts, crappy clique facial hair and taste in music, but by god that kid loved. He loved everyone. He knew that from the report of the man's first hop in Top Gun, the man who sacrificed himself in the very first training hop just because he was trying to save his wingman. The man who unlike others didn’t hold his life on a pedestal, instead he left it low and allowed people to use it as a stepping stool.

A man who struggled to see worth in his own life. And briefly he wondered if Mitchell had a hand in that.

They were children. All of them. And he had sent them to their deaths. He had sent one to their death.

The only son of the esteemed reckless Captain who stood beside him, anger fading as he became frighteningly pale as he swayed, his body shaking with light tremors as his hands clenched around the mission control board hunched over in an attempt to take in a breath as his panicked short rasping breaths became audible. His eyes pinned to the raider that was entirely too empty as if begging for the light to reappear, for Roosters Estat to magically activate. His knuckles were white and the man's chest was moving entirely too fast, but the older man didn't seem to hear Hondo trying to talk to him in a low voice, or register Solomon who stood beside him stock still back straight and chin high as a perfect picture of a Commanding Officer, but his face betrayed him, it radiated his sorrow as he rested a silent hand on the grieving man’s shoulder.

The silent comfort did nothing to compare to the gut-wrenching sob that was ripped from the grieving father’s lips as his son was shot down, or shot the wails as the title KIA was stamped onto his file. It didn’t stop a father who had already lost so much listening to his son sacrifice himself for a man that according to everyone, Bradshaw hated.

Lieutenant Jake Seresin, Hangman. The same man whose cry of agony ripped through their radios his grief so plainly clear, the devastating longing as he called out for Bradshaw, for Bradley, his wingman.

“Did anyone see a parachute?” Seresin demanded “Did anyone see him?”

“He's gone Hangman” Floyd said quietly down the coms.

“No! We have to go back, he could still be-”

“Return to base. Now Hangman god dammit, we are not losing anyone else today” he croaked out swallowing thickly praying no one else picked up on how his voice had cracked issuing the order. If anyone had no one mentioned it. A small mercy. Especially after having to face the fact he called off any rescue attempts on a fallen soldier, the same soldier whose family stood beside him listening to him sentence his son to death, again.

What will you tell them when you're dead? What will you tell their families?

There was nothing he could say, not without cutting out his own warm intestines and wrapping them around his neck first. A noose that pulled too tightly with each breath he took on borrowed time stolen from someone far too young.

Calling them back to base had been one of the hardest things he had ever done and yet, it had also been the easiest. Calling them away from Bradshaw, condemning him to death had been the hardest thing he had ever had to condone, yet making the choice to save 5 other lives in the process had been a no brainer. In fact, hearing that all 3 jets had landed on the tarmac in okay condition had caused him to release a guilty breath of relief.

To have to stand next to a man's world who had just lost all steering and crashed into a fiery end was not, watching Trace drop from her jet and rush over to their sonic leader and throw herself into his arms sobbing hysterically has been pain inducing.

Yet somehow, he doubted his pain came anywhere close to what Mitchell was feeling watching everyone return home safely.

Everyone except his son.

Search and rescue took hours. It took hours too long.

The only small mercy he could offer the Captain was sending out a ship wide notice that only required staff were to be on deck, preventing anyone beside the ground staff from witnessing the Halo land, from witnessing the way Mitchell shattered as they wheeled a black body bag out on a stretcher, to witness the way the man’s hand twitched as if to reach out for the boy, as if his touch alone would solve whatever ailment plagued the kid. The sight of the black bag caused a mass to form in his throat, his chest wrenching open ever so slightly more as his pradictions were confirmed. But if he had thought the idea of the kid dying had hurt, it was nothing compared to how he silently closed the door to the medical bay in the Captain’s face, baring him dorm the medical examination. From the horrifying post modem report as they all but caved open his chest and cracked it open with a wrench.

Bradshaw had been killed by extensive blood loss. Which in itself wasn't typically unusual, ejections were just as dangerous as flying the jet. Anything could go wrong at any moment, and you have nothing to protect you as you quite literally fall from the sky. Only he bled out, slowly and painfully. Not from his initial ejection, not from burning in, or succumbing to the cold climate. But from an unfortunate and ill-timed run in with an attack helicopter that had decided to finish the job that the SAM’s had failed.

Bradshaw had been shot to death. He had been alive when he went down.

And he had called them off.

He had killed Bradley Bradshaw.

Maverick's Son.

His aviator.

Staring down at the man before him he couldn’t help but feel sick. There was specks of dried blood in the kids moustache, and he felt an odd parental urge to reach down and fix it for him much like his own mother had for his father, and his grandmother had for his grandfather, much to his annoyance. His skin itched with the urge to lick his thumb and brush it across the man’s face to rub away the blood like an insignificant speck of dirt.

As if he had the right to touch him.

It was him. Bradshaw. Part of him had hoped when they set the bag down on the cold morgue table that it would be a stranger’s face staring up at him in a familiar uniform. He had hoped…but the kid hadn’t managed to escape the clutched of death. So he laid there naked, chest cut up in three different directions barely held together by stapples, face filled with tension, brows furrowed, lips pursed as if squeezing his eyes shut in fear of facing his death. rigor motus, the doctor had explained, the tension of muscles freezing after death, he would relax in time as the muscles burned away. He wasn’t sure if it made him feel better or worse.

He didn’t have the heart to let Mitchell in here, not after he was the reason his kid was on the slab. He couldn’t bear the idea of making the man identify his own kid, ruining his last memory of the lively man. Taking over was the least he could do. Mitchell had just lost his wingman, had just put one of the most important person in his life into the ground and now he was about to burry another, he didn’t deserve to have his image of Bradshaw tarnished like this, no matter how messy of a relationship they had.

Swallowing down the bile as he silently signed his name on the bottom of the document confirming his witness to the identification as he tried to ignore the nurse who gave the boy a shed of decency as they wheeled him over to the freezers placing a white sheet over the body. Receiving one final nod from the head doctor confirming that they no longer needed him for anything else, feeling more like a lieutenant being dismissed from a Commanding Officers office after being chewed out he turned to leave only to feel something under his shoe grind on something, and his stomach dropped as the risk of hurling skyrocketed. He closed his eyes briefly trying to find the will before he lowered himself down one hand clutching around the chilled metal of a nearby hospital cot the other gently dislodging the object as he rocked back onto his heel, eyes darting towards the sticky metal as his palm clutched around the familiar shape. The unmistakable shape. There innocently hanging from his fingers by its mattered slick chain were Bradshaw’s dog tags.

The chain was caked in blood, drowned in mud and slowly drying dirt and who knows what other substances had been smeared into it during transport obscuring the name. He didn’t need to be able to read it to know who it had once belonged too.

He swallowed thickly standing, stepping back to compensate for the way his head buzzed with dizziness, tongue frozen glued to his lower jaw bile coating the inside surfaces as he gently folded the tags into his palm before clenching them feeling the pin prick of the name as the indented mental pressed into his skin. Searing its victims name into its murders skin.

He didn’t remember the walk back ot his quarters. But he remembered the red lines across his skin from where he had clutched too tightly in fear they would disappear if he didn’t clutch them. He remembered thinking about debriefing and how he’d have the brass on his arse for a report, before immediately dismissing the idea. There would be a time and place for debrief, it just wasn’t now. He would let them have some time to grief and get over the initial shock of the mission and allow them to suffer their individual adrenaline crashes and dinful hospital stays before he bothered them. he remembered the slightly pause in his stride as he stepped out into the hall into the communal ward, the fuzzy faces of the daggers all exhausted and waiting their turns to be check on, their voices wobbling in his ears unobtainable in his own silent panic, no doubt asking about the very man whose figure, cold, still, and dead, that haunted the corner of his vision.

He didn’t see any of it, his own jaw clenched so hard it made his head throb. His shoulders wound so tight that one touch might send him into hysteria as his eyes filled with tears.

He didn’t remember the stumbled walk back to his quarters, he didn’t remember how he got from the hallway to his sink. Fingers trembling as they wrapped around the still wet chain. He didn’t remember if he had locked the door or not, but he remembered reminding himself to be careful as he ran the tags under the water with shaky hands. Turning them over as he cleaned them with a gentle stroke of his thumb revealing the name beneath it as he attempted to repent, to remove the sin that cling so tightly to the kid’s innocence.

His sin.

He deserved better. Bradley deserved so much better.

The water turned red, and the colour of his sin settled at the bottom of the sink staining stark against the cracked white porcelain for all to see. Red dripped down his wrist and travelled down his arm into his elbow drenching the front of his uniform due to how close he stood hunching over the sink as he worked.

He had to get this right. He had to fix it. He had to do something.

The funeral was the worst he had ever attended. Not because no one came. If fact it was one of the biggest, he had seen in all his years, Bradshaw was truly loved. And worst of all, he wasn’t entirely sure the man had realised how much. A man who walked thorough life alone with the occasional Phoenix by his side willing to walk him through the darkness failing to reach out to the welcoming hands as if he was blind to them, as if he was all alone in the world.

He had been to many funerals, families, friends, comrades, it was part of the trade. Almost second nature. But he had never been to a silent funeral. Pure silence. No one other then the officiant spoke. Not a sob, not a cry or a sniffle. Nothing. As if the sound of shifting itself would rob Bradshaw the small amount of peace he had found in that stuffy box as they lowered it into the ground Mitchell standing blankly at the edge, golden wings imprinted into his palm, taps still ringing in his ears as dirt dropped from his palm onto his sons grave.

Returning the boy where he truly belonged, between his mother and father.

There was no cheerfulness that Bradshaw always managed to prompt by being nearby, there was no one to be slowly dragged out of their shell at the sheer ridiculousness of the older man, and there was no soft music for the man to serenade as he sung the house down his voice reverberating off the walls.

This wasn’t a funeral; it was a tomb.

He watched as Solomon, a man stronger than himself, stand up and approach the podium to softly conclude the service. A man who knew Mitchell so much better, who was more empathetic than he could ever make himself, hand him the flag that represented his son’s life. He watched silently waiting until Mitchell was able to step away from the swarm of condolences, the smaller man visually shaky on his legs before Kerner swooped into his side gently taking his weight without blinking.

It was now or never.

He stood form his seat, the grounds mostly cleared out now as people began to congregate towards their cars to drive to the Hard Deck for the wake, forcing himself to take a step towards the man and swallow his own anxiety and flaring guilt, he knew the moment Kerner clocked him, hand twitching on Mitchel’s shoulder ever so slightly in warning, incoming. Neven and Wolf never standing far, the guard dogs watching him carefully while pretending to be interested in the conversation they were holding.

He watched Mitchell tense his tired gaze drag to him, shoulder slumping in defeat. “Admiral Simpson” Mitchell sounded dull. Empty.

His lips parted then closed, then again. What the hell was he meant to say to a man who just buried his son far too early? What was he meant to say to the man after killing his son?

They're dead! What do you tell their family!

What excuse is worth their child’s life?

He pressed his lisp together firmly swallowing, instead his hand slipped into his pocket collecting the precious cargo where he had been running his finger pad over most of the service. He hesitated slightly before extended the handout towards the man. Mitchell adjusted his grip slightly freeing one hand clinging the flag to his chest, his eyes were red, puffy, and bloodshot as he held out his hand palm up. Making it very clear this was a very frail olive branch of trust.

His breath hitched slightly as he twisted his wrist, fingers brushing the man’s freezing skin and finally let the tags fall, before letting his hand fall back to his side as Michell stared at them like he’d never seen them before, then as if they were the stars themselves. A nebula, a supernova promising life beyond the universe. Like a man behind a yoke who was just told that they would be flying into enemy land with no wingman, no flairs, no ammo, with no parachute.

A death sentence.

He cleared his throat rasping as the emotions threatened to choke him. His own words trying to crush him under the weight of his father’s gaze. His voice shook slightly “They- they got left behind in medical while they were working on him- they were covered in blood and…” he wavered trailing off silently, begging the man to understand why he withheld them from him for so long.

I already took your son; I couldn’t bare giving you last part of him covered dripping with the same red that drenched my own hands.

“Thank you” Mitchell rasped tightly, hand curling around the tags hand coming up to clench them to his chest joining the flag, Mitchell flattered slightly “Thank you. For seeing him…”

“Of course,”. The boy’s face was going to haunt him from the rest of his life. But he didn’t regret it. Not when he had ripped him away from the world too soon. No number of apologies would ever be enough. No matter what he did would ever make up for that, for stealing him from Mithcell.

“I don’t think I would have been able to handle seeing him like that” Mitchell whispered admitting it with a pained look eyes flickering over to the coffins and the photo beside it. The man’s haunting smile mocked back at them. Playful and alive.

“You shouldn’t have had to”.

No parent should ever have to bury their child before them.

“Take some time”. He knew he hesitated too long when Mitchell’s tired eyes tracked his, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the moment he dreaded so much finally happen, at his sons funeral to all places. He wasn’t that cruel.

Aren’t you? His mind mocked.

“Take some time…you have until the end of the month then I expect you back in my office for debrief Captain” he watched the man’s brows furrow and the Admiral’s hand on the man’s shoulder squeeze, grounding him as Mitchell wavered swaying to the man’s side, all but collapsing like a puppet with no strings, “That is if you still want the position”

“Position?” Mitchell croaked weakly.

“As a teacher. There are still 11 daggers, and I would like them to stay that way. I can’t guarantee you will be flying missions anymore, but I can waver flight hops. At least for a few years until the Brass manage to kick you to the curb”.

“You want me to come back?” Mitchell sounded distraught, destroyed.

“If you’re willing. You don’t have many years left in you Mitchell, but I think a few years teaching the best of the best what you know, then it’s well worth it. Even if it does mean I’m going to have to get used to those flybys of yours haunted the base”.

“Thank you” Kerner rumbled when it became apparently Mitchell was lost, unsure how to answer, the man frowned slightly there was a slight hint of gratitude, but the man held it behind tightly locked gates. “It’s a very generous gesture considering what I’ve heard your opinion on Mitchell has been in the last few weeks”.

It’s the least I could do, he could suffer for a few years. He deserved it. It would stunt his career taking on the role of Mitchell’s protector he knew that. He could care less.

It’s what Bradshaw would have wanted.

To have a chance to fix things between him and his dad, to be able to teach side by side and hear them laugh in the hallways or yells as they lecture the pilots after a risky hip. To see the man hang over his godfather with that goofy smile clad in those stupid loud shirts singing out his heart.

Where he should be.

Instead, he settled on “It's what Iceman would have wanted”.

#Referred previous relationship #Previous Hangster #Grieving #“Dagger” Training Detachment (Top Gun)#Movie: Top Gun Maverick (2022)#Protective Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw #Hurt Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw #Pete “Maverick” Mitchell Acting as Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw's Parental Figure #Pete “Maverick” Mitchell Needs A Hug #Beau “Cyclone” Simpson is a Softie #Protective Beau “Cyclone” Simpson #Beau “Cyclone” Simpson Needs A Hug #Parental Beau “Cyclone” Simpson #POV Beau “Cyclone” Simpson #Guilt #Medical Inaccuracies #Survivor Guilt #Dissection #Blood and Gore #Blood and Injury #Major Character Injury #Implied/Referenced Character Death #Wakes & Funerals #Hurt No Comfort #Whump #top gun fanfiction #top gun imagine #top gun fandom #cyclone: takes drag from cigarette i inherited admiral kazansky's trophy husband #beau cyclone simpson

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