Fic: SG-1/SGA - "Planes In The Night" (1/1)
Title: "Planes In the Night"
Summary: "So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence." SG-1/SGA crossover of sorts.
Rating: PG
Characters: Mitchell & Sheppard
Disclaimer: Neither Stargate belongs to me.
Author's note: This story came out of nowhere one day, and I still have no idea what the point of it is. It's AU-ish, OOC, and not beta read. I haven't seen any SGA after "Aurora" and almost no SG-1 after beginning of season 9. Also, please forgive me for any military-related stuff that I fudged.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to grey_bard for giving me some plot suggestions, and to neth_dugan and sethoz for being my cheerleaders and listening to me whinge about this plotbunny from hell.
* * *
It was just Cameron Mitchell's luck that the moment he got into Guam the weather crapped out and grounded all air traffic, be it civilian, military or UFO. If not for the damned "weather conditions", he would be well on his way to Seoul, but here he was, tired, sweaty, pissed off and stuck in a crowded airport. Only the day before, he had been at Beale, sitting on his ass and twiddling his thumbs while the test flight dates for the next month were specified, and now he was hauling ass to Korea on the first available flight after spending all night packing up his meager belongings. The situation definitely called for a drink, and after pushing himself through a group of disgruntled tourists, Mitchell spotted a bar and headed there.There, his luck seemed to turn - he got the last empty barstool and a smiling bartender immediately appeared in front of him. Mitchell ordered a scotch, which appeared in front of him scant moments later, and downed it in one gulp, signaling for another as soon as he put the glass down. The barman's smile widened and soon Mitchell was once again facing a full glass. "A soon to be empty glass," he thought randomly, and felt even gloomier. To distract himself from these unexpected and depressing thoughts, he looked around the bar. A group of Japanese businessmen in one corner, a fake blonde in a rumpled black dress at the edge of the bar, several scruffy drunk guys of indeterminate origin and a giggling tourist couple to the right. To the left of him was a guy in a rumpled Air Force uniform with captain's bars, who was - drinking whisky through a straw?
The Straw Guy sucked in another sip and caught Mitchell's puzzled glance. He let the straw drop from his mouth into the glass and smiled - a friendly smile, but at the same time slightly guarded.
"John Sheppard," Straw Guy said, and extended a hand towards Mitchell. Mitchell looked down and saw several fingers sticking out of a rather bedraggled plaster cast. He quirked an eyebrow and shook Sheppard's hand, or rather his fingers.
"Cameron Mitchell," he introduced himself, examining Sheppard inconspicuously. The other Captain's uniform looked like he had slept in it, with the crumpled tie and cockeyed ribbons only adding to that impression, and Mitchell involuntarily thought that if he'd ever looked like that in front of his CO at Williams he'd have a boot up his ass.
"You look fresh," Sheppard observed cryptically and cocked his head to the side. "Just came in from stateside?"
"Yeah. Just left Beale this morning. You?" Mitchell glanced down at Sheppard's hands and saw that his other hand was also encased in a cast - that would account for his chewed-up appearance, he thought, now feeling very curious.
"Was supposed to be on my way to Wright-Patt by now," Sheppard said, propping his arms up on the bar. "Used to be stationed in Osan."
"I'm on my way there," Mitchell said, even more intrigued. "How is it?"
"Good." Sheppard didn't elaborate further and looked at Mitchell inquisitively. "Fifty-first?" he finally asked. Mitchell spotted a very familiar small pin on the other man's jacket that looked like a hybrid between a fish and a torpedo and smirked.
"Dash-forty-nine-xi-sigma-theta," he answered, and felt strangely thrilled when the corner of Sheppard's mouth quirked up. "Do I reckon correctly that you're a dash-forty-niner yourself?"
"You've guessed right," Sheppard drawled, now seeming significantly less aloof. "It's a small world, as they say."
Indeed, it was a very small world if two test pilots of Uncle Sam's classified and often shoddy experimental aircraft wound up sitting next to each other in a bar completely by chance. Now Sheppard's broken arms made a helluva lot more sense, and Mitchell's collarbone throbbed in sympathy, reminding him of the time when he had to bail out over Mojave when his experimental fighter plane's navigation system failed.
Mitchell offered to buy Sheppard a beer if the latter told him more about Osan, and Sheppard accepted, telling him of the in-and-outs of the housing, the brass to look out for, nice, safe things that were allowed. Mitchell was dying to talk about the various planes that they had flown, but as usual, he and Sheppard had to suppress the almost teenage urge to boast about their big toys that cost more money than they ever saw in their entire lives. It was a pity he hadn't been transferred to Osan earlier, and that Sheppard wasn't staying there longer - they would have most definitely gotten along.
The talk shifted to previous bases and unclassified assignments, and they swapped various stories about flight training, drunken adventures and other things they could talk about. It was easy - their conversation flowed as if they had known each other before, and they did in a way - the fate had taken both of them to the same places at different times, and they had known the same brass and fellow officers and conditions, yet they were like - "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing," Sheppard quoted Longfellow, "only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness," Mitchell finished, as the rain pelted the windows, the monotone loudspeaker voice continued mumbling something about delays, and one beer slowly stretched into three.
All that beer seemed to have made Sheppard more talkative, and damn, the guy seemed to know every pilot or Air Force joke known to man. Mitchell listened in awe, remembered a couple for later, offered to tell one that he had just heard back at Beale and thumped Sheppard on the back when the latter choked on his beer. While Sheppard unsuccessfully tried to stop snickering, Mitchell wondered, once again, why the other man's name sounded so familiar. Sheppard seemed to be a bit too young to be the guy Lester told him about - he seemed barely old enough to buy booze, to tell the truth. Finally, he just had to ask.
"Listen, I gotta ask - does the nickname ‘The Senator' ring a bell?"
Sheppard snorted into his straw again, making his beer bubble. "Man, I've got worldwide fame now… Yeah, I am that Sheppard from Sheppard AFB. What'd they tell you about me and which bastard besmirched my good name?"
"Nothing too bad, I assure you," Mitchell said, signaling the bartender for another round. "A lot of interesting stuff about the flight training, though... That story involving spatulas and a cucumber-"
"True, every word of it! So you've had the misfortune of knowing the esteemed Lester Black, I assume?" It was him, then, and it meant that Sheppard was actually older than him, since Lester did flight training back in ‘90. The talk turned to Lester - the man was a good pilot; but the stupid bastard just had no common sense, and no wonder why he's still stuck at Lieutenant. They drank to Lester and a speedy promotion, and talked of other common friends - Sheppard had met Fergie at some godforsaken AFB in the Midwest, and he knew Sheppard's buddy Mitch from Williams, and they both fondly remembered their common CO at Vance, where they had been three years apart.
The comparison of bases eventually led to friendly Academy versus OTC rivalry and the revelation that Sheppard was from Colorado, or rather had been there longer then elsewhere - Fort Carson, he said with a frown, and Mitchell guessed that he was a fellow military brat and second-generation soldier, although not in the same branch of service as the old man. Since fathers seemed to be out of the question, plans for the future were discussed. Space program for Mitchell - the "current line of work" was a good thing for the resume. Sheppard just shrugged his shoulders - stars and distant planets were a nice thing to strive for, but give him blue sky any day. Sheppard's previous cheerful spirits seemed to have dampened, and he looked almost morose now, absent-mindedly tapping a finger against his empty glass. Mitchell sensed that career was another sensitive topic and steered the conversation back to the beginnings.
This seemed to cheer Sheppard up, and he soon confessed the guy after whom Sheppard AFB was named, his namesake and the origin of his nickname, was a relative of his - great-grand-uncle thrice removed, or something. Mitchell recalled that there was a Mitchell ARS in Wisconsin, but said he rather doubted that he was related to Billy Mitchell himself. A toast to the various Sheppards and Mitchells of the world was proposed and accepted, "with J. Morris Sheppard probably turning in his grave," Sheppard said as he finished off his beer, explaining that the Senator was quite a Prohibition supporter. This in turn led to more tales of drunken escapades, fond memories of being young and stupid and careless for both. The lights in the airport flickered and went out for a fraction of a second, the flights remained delayed, and Mitchell somehow felt happy that he was here, in this crowded bar and not on his way, his earlier glumness gone.
Sheppard excused himself for a moment, apologetically nodding at the wall of empty beer glasses, and disappeared into the crowd. Mitchell signaled the bartender for more drinks - hell, he might as well get totally smashed, no use to being half-drunk. This was strange but somehow right, he thought, a bit Twilight Zone and a bit high-school reunion. As he waited for Sheppard to get back from the men's room - must be a bitch taking a leak with two broken arms - the alcohol finally caught up with him and out of nowhere his brain was suddenly filled with images of his father on the hospital bed. He had been so scared then - he remembered his Dad running across the lawn with a football, so strong and tall, and the man on the bed seemed to be someone else. But now, he knew how it had happened - there were tapes, photographs and recordings, and his father allowed him to see them when he was old enough. So there he was, following right in the old man's footsteps, but only a couple of people could access the part of his file with the alphabet soup of the many first-rate and crappy planes he had flown in the last two years, planes that didn't officially exist.
Sheppard slipped back onto the barstool, and Mitchell tried not to stare at his hands, hands that probably had touched the same controls as he had, just always at a different time. He wondered what happened, wondered if he was Sheppard's replacement - too much of a coincidence, Sheppard leaving Osan and him arriving. Classified test pilots didn't grow on trees, especially those with xi-sigma-theta designation. He had been briefed on the new assignment, although Colonel Maxwell's intelligibility left much to be desired - experimental flights over the DMZ, he said, some new technology newly developed and integrated into the controls, is still a bit shaky, but a flaw had been worked out recently. Mitchell watched Sheppard sipping the new beer, the awkwardly bent left arm - elbow cast - and wondered if he would become a flaw himself. Sheppard met his eyes, saw the unspoken question there, and the corner of his mouth twisted.
"Ever hear about USS Pueblo?" Sheppard didn't look away, and Mitchell could see the anger and sadness in the other man's eyes. American submarine captured by the North Koreans in 1968, Mitchell thought and nodded.
"Yeah." Nothing more needed to be, or couldn't be said. He could imagine it now, the "flaw" occurring at the worst possible time, ejecting, but having the bad luck of being blown too far back, and the rest of the story was rather too simple, although the ending was too happy - not that Mitchell had anything against happy endings, but real world was nothing like what fairy tales had made it out to be, and those unlucky bastards who wound up in the dragon's clutches rarely made it out alive. But Sheppard did it, somehow, and now for the rest of his life he was to pretend it didn't happen, just as Mitchell would have had to if he had been in his place. But it was nothing new - just several more days he officially spent somewhere else, another plane that he didn't fly, another remark on his record that only select few would see.
Mitchell wondered what the now "flawless" plane looked like - he would see soon enough, but he wished that Sheppard would describe it to him, tell him what failed, what was so different about it, why he was here in Guam and not officially dead in a test flight, no body recovered, a flag delivered to the loved ones along with some empty words. He met Sheppard's gaze again and for a moment the two men just looked at one another, asking and answering silent questions. The plane must have not been found with him, Mitchell guessed, and without the plane there was no evidence - it could have been a crop-duster, for all they knew. Planes in the night, Mitchell thought randomly as he finally dropped his gaze, that's what we are, in the darkness. He felt bitter, and maybe even a tiny little bit jealous - a true test pilot loved even the crashes, because they taught a lesson, led to a better understanding of how the plane worked and helped improve it, but in the world below the clouds the one who was the first to crash always had some uncertainty follow him for the rest of his life - maybe it was man, and not the machine that failed that first time.
"So where're you going after Wright-Patt?" Mitchell finally asked, looking at the displays wistfully, almost wishing that he could stay in the airport longer. "Delayed" was beginning to become "late", the loudspeaker hoarsely went on about various gates and flights and airlines, and he felt an irrational urge to miss his flight. "Anywhere sunny?"
Sheppard smirked, his earlier gloominess almost gone. "Don't know yet, unfortunately," he said, pausing to finish his beer. "The docs at Osan said I'm gonna be a glorified paperweight for another month, until the casts come off, so they just want me to get checked over stateside and then I'm on medical leave until I finish physical therapy. I'm thinking I'm gonna go get some of my graduate coursework done, because I'm not going to be seeing the inside of a cockpit for a good long while." Mitchell heard what was left unsaid again - no more glamour and adventure of xi-sigma-theta, back down to the world of mortals, ferrying soldiers or stuck behind a desk, maybe for life. It was something that he himself feared - but the hope for the space program was his shining beacon, and he hoped that Sheppard would find such beacon for himself.
"Passengers Donaldson, Mitchell and Norigawa, please proceed to gate nine immediately for flight 382 to Tokyo," the loudspeaker belched out with sudden intensity, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Mitchell recognized his flight number.
"They're calling my name - quite literally," he said sheepishly, digging in his pocket for his wallet.
"Hey, that last round's on me," Sheppard said, awkwardly dropping some crumpled bills by the empty glasses. "Thanks for the company, man. I'm almost out of here myself - I think my flight's about to get a gate. Good luck."
"Good luck." Mitchell shook the proffered cast-encased hand again, grabbed his carry-on and hurried towards his gate, glancing back briefly to see Sheppard walking off into the opposite direction. His gate had been announced, probably - ah, there it was, in the same bored monotone - "...Kwajalein, Majuro and Honolulu. Thank you for choosing Continental Micronesia." Sheppard disappeared in the crowd and Mitchell hurried up, smiled sheepishly at the pissed off airport worker at the gate and soon was seated at the window and looking outside, at the terminal building that looked like a flickering lantern in the darkness that surrounded it. Soon the plane was moving, and in no time it was taxiing down the runway, and then there it was, that brief moment of weightlessness and exhilaration as the chassis left the ground and the plane flew off into the darkness, the lantern-terminal flickering a few times and disappearing behind the clouds.
Summary: "So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence." SG-1/SGA crossover of sorts.
Rating: PG
Characters: Mitchell & Sheppard
Disclaimer: Neither Stargate belongs to me.
Author's note: This story came out of nowhere one day, and I still have no idea what the point of it is. It's AU-ish, OOC, and not beta read. I haven't seen any SGA after "Aurora" and almost no SG-1 after beginning of season 9. Also, please forgive me for any military-related stuff that I fudged.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to grey_bard for giving me some plot suggestions, and to neth_dugan and sethoz for being my cheerleaders and listening to me whinge about this plotbunny from hell.
* * *
It was just Cameron Mitchell's luck that the moment he got into Guam the weather crapped out and grounded all air traffic, be it civilian, military or UFO. If not for the damned "weather conditions", he would be well on his way to Seoul, but here he was, tired, sweaty, pissed off and stuck in a crowded airport. Only the day before, he had been at Beale, sitting on his ass and twiddling his thumbs while the test flight dates for the next month were specified, and now he was hauling ass to Korea on the first available flight after spending all night packing up his meager belongings. The situation definitely called for a drink, and after pushing himself through a group of disgruntled tourists, Mitchell spotted a bar and headed there.There, his luck seemed to turn - he got the last empty barstool and a smiling bartender immediately appeared in front of him. Mitchell ordered a scotch, which appeared in front of him scant moments later, and downed it in one gulp, signaling for another as soon as he put the glass down. The barman's smile widened and soon Mitchell was once again facing a full glass. "A soon to be empty glass," he thought randomly, and felt even gloomier. To distract himself from these unexpected and depressing thoughts, he looked around the bar. A group of Japanese businessmen in one corner, a fake blonde in a rumpled black dress at the edge of the bar, several scruffy drunk guys of indeterminate origin and a giggling tourist couple to the right. To the left of him was a guy in a rumpled Air Force uniform with captain's bars, who was - drinking whisky through a straw?
The Straw Guy sucked in another sip and caught Mitchell's puzzled glance. He let the straw drop from his mouth into the glass and smiled - a friendly smile, but at the same time slightly guarded.
"John Sheppard," Straw Guy said, and extended a hand towards Mitchell. Mitchell looked down and saw several fingers sticking out of a rather bedraggled plaster cast. He quirked an eyebrow and shook Sheppard's hand, or rather his fingers.
"Cameron Mitchell," he introduced himself, examining Sheppard inconspicuously. The other Captain's uniform looked like he had slept in it, with the crumpled tie and cockeyed ribbons only adding to that impression, and Mitchell involuntarily thought that if he'd ever looked like that in front of his CO at Williams he'd have a boot up his ass.
"You look fresh," Sheppard observed cryptically and cocked his head to the side. "Just came in from stateside?"
"Yeah. Just left Beale this morning. You?" Mitchell glanced down at Sheppard's hands and saw that his other hand was also encased in a cast - that would account for his chewed-up appearance, he thought, now feeling very curious.
"Was supposed to be on my way to Wright-Patt by now," Sheppard said, propping his arms up on the bar. "Used to be stationed in Osan."
"I'm on my way there," Mitchell said, even more intrigued. "How is it?"
"Good." Sheppard didn't elaborate further and looked at Mitchell inquisitively. "Fifty-first?" he finally asked. Mitchell spotted a very familiar small pin on the other man's jacket that looked like a hybrid between a fish and a torpedo and smirked.
"Dash-forty-nine-xi-sigma-theta," he answered, and felt strangely thrilled when the corner of Sheppard's mouth quirked up. "Do I reckon correctly that you're a dash-forty-niner yourself?"
"You've guessed right," Sheppard drawled, now seeming significantly less aloof. "It's a small world, as they say."
Indeed, it was a very small world if two test pilots of Uncle Sam's classified and often shoddy experimental aircraft wound up sitting next to each other in a bar completely by chance. Now Sheppard's broken arms made a helluva lot more sense, and Mitchell's collarbone throbbed in sympathy, reminding him of the time when he had to bail out over Mojave when his experimental fighter plane's navigation system failed.
Mitchell offered to buy Sheppard a beer if the latter told him more about Osan, and Sheppard accepted, telling him of the in-and-outs of the housing, the brass to look out for, nice, safe things that were allowed. Mitchell was dying to talk about the various planes that they had flown, but as usual, he and Sheppard had to suppress the almost teenage urge to boast about their big toys that cost more money than they ever saw in their entire lives. It was a pity he hadn't been transferred to Osan earlier, and that Sheppard wasn't staying there longer - they would have most definitely gotten along.
The talk shifted to previous bases and unclassified assignments, and they swapped various stories about flight training, drunken adventures and other things they could talk about. It was easy - their conversation flowed as if they had known each other before, and they did in a way - the fate had taken both of them to the same places at different times, and they had known the same brass and fellow officers and conditions, yet they were like - "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing," Sheppard quoted Longfellow, "only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness," Mitchell finished, as the rain pelted the windows, the monotone loudspeaker voice continued mumbling something about delays, and one beer slowly stretched into three.
All that beer seemed to have made Sheppard more talkative, and damn, the guy seemed to know every pilot or Air Force joke known to man. Mitchell listened in awe, remembered a couple for later, offered to tell one that he had just heard back at Beale and thumped Sheppard on the back when the latter choked on his beer. While Sheppard unsuccessfully tried to stop snickering, Mitchell wondered, once again, why the other man's name sounded so familiar. Sheppard seemed to be a bit too young to be the guy Lester told him about - he seemed barely old enough to buy booze, to tell the truth. Finally, he just had to ask.
"Listen, I gotta ask - does the nickname ‘The Senator' ring a bell?"
Sheppard snorted into his straw again, making his beer bubble. "Man, I've got worldwide fame now… Yeah, I am that Sheppard from Sheppard AFB. What'd they tell you about me and which bastard besmirched my good name?"
"Nothing too bad, I assure you," Mitchell said, signaling the bartender for another round. "A lot of interesting stuff about the flight training, though... That story involving spatulas and a cucumber-"
"True, every word of it! So you've had the misfortune of knowing the esteemed Lester Black, I assume?" It was him, then, and it meant that Sheppard was actually older than him, since Lester did flight training back in ‘90. The talk turned to Lester - the man was a good pilot; but the stupid bastard just had no common sense, and no wonder why he's still stuck at Lieutenant. They drank to Lester and a speedy promotion, and talked of other common friends - Sheppard had met Fergie at some godforsaken AFB in the Midwest, and he knew Sheppard's buddy Mitch from Williams, and they both fondly remembered their common CO at Vance, where they had been three years apart.
The comparison of bases eventually led to friendly Academy versus OTC rivalry and the revelation that Sheppard was from Colorado, or rather had been there longer then elsewhere - Fort Carson, he said with a frown, and Mitchell guessed that he was a fellow military brat and second-generation soldier, although not in the same branch of service as the old man. Since fathers seemed to be out of the question, plans for the future were discussed. Space program for Mitchell - the "current line of work" was a good thing for the resume. Sheppard just shrugged his shoulders - stars and distant planets were a nice thing to strive for, but give him blue sky any day. Sheppard's previous cheerful spirits seemed to have dampened, and he looked almost morose now, absent-mindedly tapping a finger against his empty glass. Mitchell sensed that career was another sensitive topic and steered the conversation back to the beginnings.
This seemed to cheer Sheppard up, and he soon confessed the guy after whom Sheppard AFB was named, his namesake and the origin of his nickname, was a relative of his - great-grand-uncle thrice removed, or something. Mitchell recalled that there was a Mitchell ARS in Wisconsin, but said he rather doubted that he was related to Billy Mitchell himself. A toast to the various Sheppards and Mitchells of the world was proposed and accepted, "with J. Morris Sheppard probably turning in his grave," Sheppard said as he finished off his beer, explaining that the Senator was quite a Prohibition supporter. This in turn led to more tales of drunken escapades, fond memories of being young and stupid and careless for both. The lights in the airport flickered and went out for a fraction of a second, the flights remained delayed, and Mitchell somehow felt happy that he was here, in this crowded bar and not on his way, his earlier glumness gone.
Sheppard excused himself for a moment, apologetically nodding at the wall of empty beer glasses, and disappeared into the crowd. Mitchell signaled the bartender for more drinks - hell, he might as well get totally smashed, no use to being half-drunk. This was strange but somehow right, he thought, a bit Twilight Zone and a bit high-school reunion. As he waited for Sheppard to get back from the men's room - must be a bitch taking a leak with two broken arms - the alcohol finally caught up with him and out of nowhere his brain was suddenly filled with images of his father on the hospital bed. He had been so scared then - he remembered his Dad running across the lawn with a football, so strong and tall, and the man on the bed seemed to be someone else. But now, he knew how it had happened - there were tapes, photographs and recordings, and his father allowed him to see them when he was old enough. So there he was, following right in the old man's footsteps, but only a couple of people could access the part of his file with the alphabet soup of the many first-rate and crappy planes he had flown in the last two years, planes that didn't officially exist.
Sheppard slipped back onto the barstool, and Mitchell tried not to stare at his hands, hands that probably had touched the same controls as he had, just always at a different time. He wondered what happened, wondered if he was Sheppard's replacement - too much of a coincidence, Sheppard leaving Osan and him arriving. Classified test pilots didn't grow on trees, especially those with xi-sigma-theta designation. He had been briefed on the new assignment, although Colonel Maxwell's intelligibility left much to be desired - experimental flights over the DMZ, he said, some new technology newly developed and integrated into the controls, is still a bit shaky, but a flaw had been worked out recently. Mitchell watched Sheppard sipping the new beer, the awkwardly bent left arm - elbow cast - and wondered if he would become a flaw himself. Sheppard met his eyes, saw the unspoken question there, and the corner of his mouth twisted.
"Ever hear about USS Pueblo?" Sheppard didn't look away, and Mitchell could see the anger and sadness in the other man's eyes. American submarine captured by the North Koreans in 1968, Mitchell thought and nodded.
"Yeah." Nothing more needed to be, or couldn't be said. He could imagine it now, the "flaw" occurring at the worst possible time, ejecting, but having the bad luck of being blown too far back, and the rest of the story was rather too simple, although the ending was too happy - not that Mitchell had anything against happy endings, but real world was nothing like what fairy tales had made it out to be, and those unlucky bastards who wound up in the dragon's clutches rarely made it out alive. But Sheppard did it, somehow, and now for the rest of his life he was to pretend it didn't happen, just as Mitchell would have had to if he had been in his place. But it was nothing new - just several more days he officially spent somewhere else, another plane that he didn't fly, another remark on his record that only select few would see.
Mitchell wondered what the now "flawless" plane looked like - he would see soon enough, but he wished that Sheppard would describe it to him, tell him what failed, what was so different about it, why he was here in Guam and not officially dead in a test flight, no body recovered, a flag delivered to the loved ones along with some empty words. He met Sheppard's gaze again and for a moment the two men just looked at one another, asking and answering silent questions. The plane must have not been found with him, Mitchell guessed, and without the plane there was no evidence - it could have been a crop-duster, for all they knew. Planes in the night, Mitchell thought randomly as he finally dropped his gaze, that's what we are, in the darkness. He felt bitter, and maybe even a tiny little bit jealous - a true test pilot loved even the crashes, because they taught a lesson, led to a better understanding of how the plane worked and helped improve it, but in the world below the clouds the one who was the first to crash always had some uncertainty follow him for the rest of his life - maybe it was man, and not the machine that failed that first time.
"So where're you going after Wright-Patt?" Mitchell finally asked, looking at the displays wistfully, almost wishing that he could stay in the airport longer. "Delayed" was beginning to become "late", the loudspeaker hoarsely went on about various gates and flights and airlines, and he felt an irrational urge to miss his flight. "Anywhere sunny?"
Sheppard smirked, his earlier gloominess almost gone. "Don't know yet, unfortunately," he said, pausing to finish his beer. "The docs at Osan said I'm gonna be a glorified paperweight for another month, until the casts come off, so they just want me to get checked over stateside and then I'm on medical leave until I finish physical therapy. I'm thinking I'm gonna go get some of my graduate coursework done, because I'm not going to be seeing the inside of a cockpit for a good long while." Mitchell heard what was left unsaid again - no more glamour and adventure of xi-sigma-theta, back down to the world of mortals, ferrying soldiers or stuck behind a desk, maybe for life. It was something that he himself feared - but the hope for the space program was his shining beacon, and he hoped that Sheppard would find such beacon for himself.
"Passengers Donaldson, Mitchell and Norigawa, please proceed to gate nine immediately for flight 382 to Tokyo," the loudspeaker belched out with sudden intensity, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Mitchell recognized his flight number.
"They're calling my name - quite literally," he said sheepishly, digging in his pocket for his wallet.
"Hey, that last round's on me," Sheppard said, awkwardly dropping some crumpled bills by the empty glasses. "Thanks for the company, man. I'm almost out of here myself - I think my flight's about to get a gate. Good luck."
"Good luck." Mitchell shook the proffered cast-encased hand again, grabbed his carry-on and hurried towards his gate, glancing back briefly to see Sheppard walking off into the opposite direction. His gate had been announced, probably - ah, there it was, in the same bored monotone - "...Kwajalein, Majuro and Honolulu. Thank you for choosing Continental Micronesia." Sheppard disappeared in the crowd and Mitchell hurried up, smiled sheepishly at the pissed off airport worker at the gate and soon was seated at the window and looking outside, at the terminal building that looked like a flickering lantern in the darkness that surrounded it. Soon the plane was moving, and in no time it was taxiing down the runway, and then there it was, that brief moment of weightlessness and exhilaration as the chassis left the ground and the plane flew off into the darkness, the lantern-terminal flickering a few times and disappearing behind the clouds.