Only the Good Die Young

***

It's only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.

John Cleese

***

The morning of the mission is cool, dawn breaking over the ocean in a way Jake's always found a heartbreaking, an endless horizon in all directions. 

Jake wakes up in the darkness of 0500 on Tuesday, alone but surprisingly not lonely. The nerves from the days before are gone. He's slipped into the battle calm. Hands steady, heartbeat regular, more excitement than terror in his nervous system.

Jake's always been oddly calm in a fight. A family trait.

They had a great-great-great-great-grandfather who first called it the battle calm, and it's stuck ever since. 

Seresins were made for war. There's nowhere else that Jake and his siblings feel as surefooted and even-keeled as they do when they're fighting for their lives. 

Every victory, no matter how small, is a victory over their fate. 

Hell, Peter survived a minor fender bender a few years back, and they threw a huge party.

He and Bradley didn't get the chance to talk about it, about what they were before they left, but it's no longer important. 

It doesn't matter if Bradley doesn't make it back.

It most likely won't matter if Mav doesn't because Bradley doesn't deal well with loss, and Jake figured out that he'll nuke whatever they are if he loses Mav.

The next day, they were on a helicopter, then a ship, and then it was nothing but waiting, waiting, waiting.

The Vigilantes are on their rotation on the Carl Vinson, and Jake was thrilled when he recognized their planes lined up on the deck.

Cyclone hedged his bets, and everyone's on board, so there's a shit ton of pilots all chomping at the bit to prove something to themselves and everyone else.

The day they got on board, Jake attended the mission briefing, checked over his aircraft, and then skipped the tense team dinner in favor of meeting up with Javy, Emily, and the other Vigilantes.

He's pretty sure he heard someone mutter something about him being a sore loser, but Jake's willing to chalk it up to nerves. None of them have been themselves since they got on board, and their stress levels are through the roof. 

Mav and Bradley are just making it harder on themselves, each too stubborn to step off their respective soapboxes, and really, Jake's going to remember this the next time Javy calls him stubborn.

So now he's standing at the rail watching the sun rise on another Tuesday that might turn out to be one of the most important of his life and trying to bury the rage that he's benched for what could end up being one of the most influential fights of his life.

Javy is doing his best not to hover, working something behind the scenes that he thinks Jake doesn't know about. Javy is sneaky, has always been better at it than Jake, whose life philosophy for tactics is mainly the best way out is through.

But Javy only ever does what he thinks is best, so Jake's not worrying about it right now. He's just focusing on the next steps.

Final mission brief and approval.

Getting ready. Left leg first, then right. Double-check your bootlaces and dog tags.

Pre-flight checks on the plane and then on Bradley, and all he can get out is a stupid 'Give 'em hell.'

Then he's sitting in his fighter, double checking the straps are flat and tight, that everything that needs to be green is green, and everything that needs to be red is red. 

He can see the others doing the same checks one after another down the row. Can see Bradley and Nat talking to one another on one of the private channels, and he's a little insulted that he's not included, but not enough to butt in. 

He's not on the mission, and he knows that distinction is going to be capitalized and underlined in the coming days. That everyone that comes back is going to share smiles and looks of understanding that the rest of them will be excluded from.

It's understandable.

Jake does the same thing.

But it's still annoying to be on the other side.

It's also annoying that Bradley looks to others for comfort and advice instead of Jake.

Which is also understandable, but Jake's still annoyed.

Bradley's always been stubbornly loyal and just as stubbornly froze people out when he felt wronged. 

Jake does the same thing, and now that he's thinking about it, he hadn't realized how similar the two of them are.

Family matters more than anything, though Jake has clung to what remains of his, and Bradley has burned bridges in the name of his.

Their work matters, though Jake cares more about winning the war as fast as possible, and Bradley cares about doing it so safely that it'll take forever.

Their friends' matter, Javy will be by Jake's side until the end, and Bradley will always ask Nat's opinion before he asks anyone else's.

They laugh together, more Jake thinks, than either of them does with anyone else. Which should be weird, given how they crashed and burned in flight school before they were really anything to write home about. But it works now; it could work in the future if they both want enough, and he figures that's the point.

They both have to want it to make it work.

They're both too passionate and too invested. They might as well walk away before it starts if neither of them means forever. 

Jake told Lily Grace about Bradley for the first time last night. Nothing serious or important, just a funny line about him falling out of bed, but it's a significant shift from the way Jake's treated others who have shared his bed.

He's never mentioned them to his children before.

He's also never thought they might be good with his kids….

Huh, maybe that's why Javy has been on him about who he's been seeing lately?

Jake would never endanger his children, but he would like to make their lives better, as good as he possibly can, and seeing their dad manage a happy relationship might help with that.

Lily Grace calls him grumpy sometimes and tells him he needs someone, and she's usually not wrong.

Dustin wants a wedding and, for some reason, is convinced Jake needs to wear white?? Which isn't going to happen for a lot of reasons unless he gets married in his whites. 

But Celia and Javy just started planning their wedding, so it's entirely possible it'll fade once he gets to be ring bearer.

The sun's almost fully risen when the radio checks roll around, and whoever thought this mission taking place during the day was a good idea is an idiot, but that's just another in a long list of things Jake doesn't agree with about this whole shit show.

Cole stops by his aircraft, and Jake's relieved to know the other man is keeping an eye on things. Cole will launch every member of the Vigilantes if he thinks he needs to, orders be damned, but that's still no guarantee of anyone coming back alive. 

And there's a part of Jake, part hurt, but mostly ego, that knows the others still have doubts about him actually backing them up.

He doesn't know what happened at the team dinner the night before.

***

Jake's absence was noticed immediately, but Javy had just shrugged and said he was talking to one of his brothers. 

Reuben makes the remark about being a sore loser, more scared than he'll ever admit and looking for a target.

It almost starts a fight, but the surprise arrival of Admiral Kazansky stops it, and Javy immediately doesn't like where this is going, refusing to go and get Jake despite Mav's request.

It might be the last time he gets to talk to them. You want to interrupt that, Captain, go ahead. But I won't do it.

And no one had pushed because they were all thinking about their own mortality tonight.

Mav had kind of been hoping Ice would have some grand speech to allay everyone's nerves, but he's beginning to think he should have just winged it with something because the first thing Ice does is look around and ask if anyone looked up Davey Seresin.

"Davey Seresin."

"Yeah, we all heard what you said in the classroom." Payback, bitter.

"Did you look him up?"

Bradley stiffened. "No." He'd hated having his own father thrown in his face. He wasn't going to do that to Jake.

"You should have."

Javy had gone still in the corner, eyes dark.

"Why? You said he failed out of Top Gun?" Phoenix wasn't in the mood to dance around. Not when Bradley's past had been dragged out front and center because Jake didn't like losing.

"He did. Inability to pull the trigger. Lack of aggression needed to survive."

"How did he even get in-"

"Davey Seresin lost every hop, every training match, every competition he was ever in."

Ice had glanced at Javy then and he looked oddly disappointed and pleased at the same time. 

"Gentlest human being I ever met, and I knew your parents, Bradley. He used to nurse wounded animals we found on base back to health and then release them back into the wild. Fucker was a goddamn Disney princess."

So, why'd he join the Navy? Why'd he fly? It's what they're all thinking. The military isn't the place for someone that kind.

And Javy has a clear memory and a worn photo in his wallet of his first pet, a rabbit with a broken foot that he'd helped nurse back to health and that had lived the rest of its life in the vegetable garden behind the homestead.

"Never yelled, never lost his temper, never took a swing. You couldn't get that man into an argument for all the reasons in the world…except one."

And Ice had paused then, eyes old and tired.

"The only time you could get Davey Seresin to fight was when someone else was in trouble. It was like a switch flipped. He was terrifying against an actual enemy. Never left anyone standing that could hurt one of his wingmen."

And then Ice seemed to soften. 

"He was the best pilot of our generation. Took five enemy fighters to bring him down in the end, and he took them all with him. I helped find enough pieces to bury."

"It was appreciated." Is all Javy will say, still poised for a fight. The memories of those dark days after Davey died are still fresh, even if they are tangled with the losses of the Seresins over the years. 

"He used to talk about the Seresin Ranch and the family. Took endless amounts of shit for taking his wife's name."

"Why'd he do that?" Halo's been curious about the family since Jordan and Peter showed up, but Javy leaves the answers to Jake. 

The Seresin name matters.

Family matters.

Celia never married Jake, but she wanted the same name as her children, and wanted to help keep the Seresins alive.

"No idea." And Ice probably didn't know, Javy realizes. He and Jake had erroneously assumed Iceman knew more than he did because of the familiarity he'd expressed talking about Davey.

But maybe it wasn't familiarity. Maybe it was just wishful mourning for a friend long gone and a misguided attempt to help.

"I used to wish I had his confidence. They sent him home with a Navy Cross and a Medal of Honor. Callsign Have Mercy, 'cause once you did get him in a fight, he'd never give any. Seresins die protecting."

The heavy silence that followed was broken, naturally, by Fanboy. "That's the coolest callsign I've ever heard."

And oh, maybe Bradley can breathe a little bit easier now. Not because he ever doubted Jake would back them up, and that's a conversation he needs to have with Payback when they get back from this, but because now that he's heard it and gotten to know Hangman a bit better, he can see where he was carrying his father.

The same place Bradley had always carried his.

Gentle Davey Seresin, who'd father Jake "Hangman" Seresin, first of his generation with an air-to-air kill. Current Top Gun record holder and royal pain in Bradley's backside when he wants to be.

The one who makes Bradley laugh in the darkest hours when the memories and the loss and the anger are at their most powerful.

The one who constantly pushes him to be better.

The one whose brothers Bradley is terrified of pissing off.

This is a terrible time for emotional revelations, but Bradley finds himself having one anyway.

When did he fall in love with Jake Seresin?

More importantly, where is the fucker so Bradley can tell him?

One look at Javy tells him that's not going to happen tonight, but that's okay. That gives him time to figure out what to say.

He's good when he has time to think.

***

He isn't, Javy tells him later.

You think too much, Jake says when he's trying to be nice, and 'For fucks sake, actually do something!' when he's not.

***

Naturally, Jake doesn't know about any of that while he's sitting in his fighter, listening to the engine purr and watching the mission crew take off.

The radio traffic is oddly subdued as they move further away. Jake leans on the steady hum of life on the ship to keep all his frayed edges close.

The Vigilantes were at their planes, though Cyclone controlled the runway, and they'd have to get his order to, legally, take off.

Jake knows the NCOIC in charge of the deck crews has worked with him on a previous deployment, and any good officer knows that the only way to survive in the military is to treat your enlisted well. 

Jake's always made a point of treating them well, and he's already spoken with them about today.

The enlisted tend to be more practical than officers, and none of them had liked this mission, so Jake's not too worried they're going to stop him if it goes that way.

An hour in, he sees them.

Lined up along the runway on a ship with horizons on all sides.

All the way back to the beginning.

***

The first Seresin was the daughter of pilgrims, who came over on ships of hope and misery and just kept going West until they reached Texas fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. 

They stopped and died when she was ten, and she married the son of the family that took her in, but she wouldn't give up the only thing she had left of her parents.

The name they gave her. Something new for a fresh start. 

Seresin.

They all figured she must have been the one who made the deal or broke the deal, whichever.

Or maybe her parents had done something horrible to ensure she survived, but there was no way to know.

No one to ask.

Nowhere to look.

It wasn't until her great-great-grandson died in a blaze of bullets and glory that the family started paying attention. 

Those early generations had been in such dire straits, wrapped up in such a battle for survival that it was hard to catch at first. 

The early days of settling America were no walk in the park; few families made it generations, and Texas, every inch fought over by so many sides, was no different.

But Seresins were stubborn, and they hadn't moved since the first had buried her parents on a small hilltop and then, a decade later, built the homestead with her husband. 

That ramshackle building had protected their family ever since, though it had changed and grown over the years. 

It had protected their allies, too. When they'd ridden with the likes of the Earps (assholes) and Holiday (the real deal, and they'd been heartbroken when he'd stuck with the Earps instead of them) and the Texas Rangers. 

The Texas Army.

They'd fought the Commanche and Apache, bandits and rustlers, Santa Ana. 

Bowie and Boone had stayed on their way to the Alamo and taken two of the Seresin brothers with them when they left the next day.

The brothers had seen the whole of their family lined up on the walls as they came down.

They never got their bodies back.

They watched the formation of Texas from beside the stage and looked for every fight they could find. 

When World War 1 kicked off, Jake's great-great-great-great grandfather had volunteered to fly with the French, one of the first combat pilots in history.

He'd gone down in flames above the Somme, picked his way across the battlefield in the midst of the greatest artillery barrage of the war, and snuck across the German trench while they were sleeping to get back to friendly lines. 

He'd died a month later from a wave of mustard gas.

But before he'd died, he'd written home about the battle calm and the peace he felt in the fight. No fear, no nerves, no hesitation, just an elation they only called odd because people would think they were weird if they didn't.

His daughter had been one of the first female police officers, known for the speed of her draw. He'd been thirty-seven when he died, looking at the eyes of all the Seresins that came before him as they watched him choke on his own blood in the mud, and she'd been twenty-eight, leaving behind two children when she'd died looking at them lining that alleyway.

She'd known the calm, too, and passed it on to both her children, and it had served them well as they'd expanded the ranch into one of the largest owned family ranches in the state. 

When World War 2 had begun, every Seresin old enough to fight had been first in line at the recruitment stations and then first in the line. 

All of them wrote home about the battle calm.

Their letters were still carefully preserved at the homestead, now hundreds of times bigger than the tiny one-room hut it had begun as.

Jake's read most of them. Seresins tended to read them far more than they ever read the good book.

Religion wasn't of much use to those already being punished.

And now they were all lined up in front of Jake.

Dead by bullets and knives and bombs.

Fire and gas and water.

Some had even died a coward's death because the Seresin blood made you good in a fight and killed you young, but it didn't make you brave.

That was a choice.

Like the one they all made to go on with their lives no matter how short it was.

And now they were lined up for Jake, untouched by the wind and the saltwater and the fear on a bright Tuesday morning in the thirtieth year Jake had been alive.

"Javy…"

"They're fine, Jake."

"I can see them."

"You're visions not that good, bro."

"No. They're here, Javy. All of them."

"What? Jake-"

"Unidentified aircraft inbound."

"Don't you dare fucking launch, Jake!"

"Permission to launch, sir."

"Denied, Lieutenant. Stay put."

"Jake-"

"It's an F-14!"

"It's Mav!"

"All aircraft are grounded."

"Jake, don't!"

"Ready for launch."

"Runway is clear."

"What? Who the hell cleared-"

"JAKE!"

And then he's in the air, Javy, Cyclone, and Nat all screaming over the radio and all the Seresins following him up.

It's nothing to shoot the lone SU out of the sky.

"This is your savior speaking."

"You look good."

And he's pretty sure he can hear Mav laughing in the background.

But all he can think is…that's it?

Bradley and Mav are trying to talk to him over the radio. Cyclone's demanding a report, and Javy's swearing up a blue streak, but Jake can see generation after generation of eyes as green as moss.

Jake's already turning to meet them when the alarms sound in command.

"Enemy fighters inbound!"

All Seresins go home in the end.

~tbc~