Work Text:
How many times was that?
Corpses piled themselves high, now. Scarred metal and flame-blood engines dashed into the ruins of the burning city. So many ghosts. None at all.
It was probably supposed to be a duel, once upon a time. One last meaningless fight for the husk of a dead world. One where I could proclaim that the world still lived without us, and that the fires didn't burn everywhere.
Now I'm not so sure.
"You're a slave to history."
Those words again, recited verbatim, running out the predestined script. I'd turn my radio on, say his own speech back to him, but the power's shot. Probably has been since the day it existed.
I lick my dry lips and nose-down once again.
Project Wingman bears down like a descending angel, and my airframe creaks against my sore hands. Chafed skin rubs against my seat, venal blood weighed down by gravity of past lives. The Sword of Damocles cuts through the ghost of its former self.
We spiral together, scraping belly-to-belly, fatigue and rage powering our mutual descent into madness. I don't know why the fuel gauge hasn't ticked down. I don't know why the hardpoints regenerate their payloads as if they had never left at all. I don't know why I care.
My missiles splash against his body once again, and I look to wherever up is as I await the too-familiar response of payback in hundredfold. The scars of his flaming sword, those lines of burning cordium, still linger as gashes cut through the hateful red. As the familiar tone chimes, I cough as I throw myself against physics once again, silent and hoarse and spittleless. Choking on air.
How many hours has it been, fighting for my life, feeding the wreckage down below? It must have been days. It must have been months. Not like the haze of cordium ash would ever show the sun pass below the horizon.
In between one railgun shot and the next, I catch another glimpse of it, the angry eye of a god that knows nothing but violence.
Perhaps this is hell. It would be fitting, at least.
Another gout of heavenly flame drenches my RWR in red, and as I swing hard to evade my heart stops beating. A bodily thump comes from behind me as I level off, the missiles going mad, and I remember Prez is dead. Somewhere between eternity and the spiralling now, her blood fell into her legs and out of her soul, and she ceased to exist. Good, I think. She received absolution, hopefully. Or maybe it's a way to ignore the fact I killed her.
We trade blows, and as my engine gains one more scratch against its housing I forget to breathe. In its place, I remember that once upon a time, he was Crimson One to me. Or rather, some version of him was. Now it doesn't seem like anyone is behind those repeating words anymore. An echo, perhaps. Purpose-built to be my doom. Whatever he is now, he doesn't deserve a name, I think. Or maybe it's a way to ignore the fact I killed him, too.
A scream across the radio forces air back into my lungs, the fight having fallen to the Presidian cityscape. PW-Mk1 after PW-Mk1 flood the bombed-out streets, broken glass and shattered composite among scores of the same dead pilot. Yet missile warnings still flood my HUD, the Final Peacekeeper racing through the sea of his own corpses in order to drown me in my hollow victories. Does he know? Does he understand? Does he care? Do I?
As we skate through the remains of all that we fought for, caught in a circular chase that drags our battered selves through the annals of our memories and motivations, I catch a glimpse of a simpler life. A butterfly painted on some alleyway wall, wings torn by shrapnel and body shot with dust. A gout of gunfire from my pursuer carves a line across my back, and collapses the mural back into featureless gray rubble. Body and soul destroyed in one. I don't know why I persist, I think to myself. It would be so much easier to just eject. I cannot win; should I have to give my life for a loss? But I cannot raise my hands to the ejection handle. My grip still lingers on the stick and throttle, held more by instinct than will. Something still tells me to fly, even as my eyes threaten to close forever.
So I pitch up, and let the clouds cover the last of what I lost.
We play out the end of our dance in the burning red once again: cracked lips, dry eyes, hoarse breath. The enemy's convictions drain away in the face of getting one last shot in. My blood oozes like tar in my arteries. We spark off one another like steel striking flint, and once again, he is burning, falling under crimson sky.
"Remember me," he says, and my tongue feels like sandpaper as I respond.
I don't need to remember you. You'll be back again soon, after all.