Chapter Text
“How did you know that Papa was the person you were going to marry?” Poe asked, climbing up into Shara’s lap. She gathered him in, kissed him on top of his head, and looked thoughtful.
“Don’t make the joke,” Kes said, pointing at her with the spoon he’d been using. Shara smiled at him. “Shara!”
“Poe,” Shara said sweetly, “it’s because when I first met him, I could see what was truly inside of him.”
“Shara,” Kes groaned. “He’s too young for that joke.”
“Of course I mean the content of his character,” Shara said, gathering Poe in closer to her chest. “Sometimes when you meet somebody, you just know they’re good. When I met him, he was in a difficult situation and doing his best.”
“Nice save,” Kes muttered.
“You love it,” Shara said to him. She kissed Poe on the head again. “I didn’t know right then that I’d marry him, of course. I had to get to know him. But that first impression held up, baby boy, it really did. He’s a very good person and I have never regretted choosing him.”
_________
Ten Years Earlier
Shara frowned and toggled her radio. She’d gotten static, and then only disorganized noises from the contact that was supposed to be coordinating her approach for close-in air support. “Air Two to Command,” she said, “I can’t raise Ground.”
The radio crackled, on the channel Ground was supposed to be using. She toggled it one more time, and came back to catch a blurry male voice weakly saying “— respond.”
“Air Two,” she said, “calling Ground, say again, over?”
“Ground, responding to hail, over,” Ground said.
“Took you long enough,” she said. “Air Two to Ground, I need guidance for the support run, provide positioning details, over?”
“Affirmative,” Ground said, nice and snappy, but then went on, “but, uhh— I’m gonna need you to check my work, Air Two, you got a map?”
Shara frowned again, and looked over at her copilot, Lullo, who rolled his eyes and hauled out the map. “They shouldn’t have given this to someone who isn’t good at maps,” she said.
“Right?” Lullo got the map folded correctly.
“Go ahead, Ground,” Shara said, “I have a map.”
“I’ve got them at grid point 44 north, 76 west,” Ground said, “but I’m having some trouble.”
“What’s the trouble, Ground?” Shara asked. “Don’t you have a spotter?”
“That’s the trouble,” Ground said. “I’m down a guy, I can’t confirm. Forward gave his position as the big green hill is on my left and from my observations before that seems right but I can’t confirm.”
Shara sucked on her teeth. “Does that check out?” she asked Lullo.
“I mean, probably,” Lullo said, studying the map. “I mean, on the map that’s a hill, sure, and that’d be to the left of someone at that grid point, but.”
“Your reading seems plausible, Ground,” Shara said. “But I feel like we need more than that.”
“Yeah,” Ground said, “that’s what I was worried about.”
“You really can’t see it from where you are,” Shara said.
“No ma’am,” Ground said. “The mortar that took out my spotter took out the binoculars too. I got no way to see that far.”
“You’re taking fire?” Shara asked, alarmed.
“Yes ma’am,” Ground said. “Forward’s apprised of it, there’s not much they can do. And that’s the other issue, I can’t fall back. If a mortar takes me out I can’t do any more for you.”
“Well, shit,” Shara said. “I guess I can do my own recon.”
“That’ll expose us to a shitload more enemy fire,” Lullo pointed out.
“Yeah,” Shara said, unenthused.
“Stand by,” Ground said, and cut out in a burst of static.
“Did he take a hit?” Shara asked.
Lullo wasn’t really equipped to do much spotting, but he had binoculars, so he got them out and did his best. “I can’t tell,” he said, “we’re not close enough.”
“Air Three,” Shara said, “Air Six, we’re down a spotter on the ground, having trouble verifying position of forward troops.”
“Three, acknowledged, over,” Three said, and was echoed by Six.
“Command,” Shara said, “we’ve got a situation.”
“Air Two,” Ground said. “Forward’s got a signal, he’s gonna put it out past his left flank. Flag or somethin’.” Forward’s radio didn’t have the range to reach Shara. But Ground sounded like his signal was fading out.
“I’ll look for it,” Shara said. “My copilot’s gonna try to spot for us.”
“Copy that,” Ground said, faintly.
“Ground, I’m losing your signal,” Shara said.
There was a series of clicks, like Ground was toggling on and off. Which meant, at least, that he was still there, even if his radio was maybe damaged.
“I see the signal,” Lullo said.
“Commencing run,” Shara said.
Very faintly, Ground said what sounded like “thank fucking God” in Spanish, and cut out.
Shara was flying the gunship, with two waist gunners in it and a copilot. One of the gunners, Pick, took over from Lullo at spotting, and did a pretty good job at it. They lay down suppressive fire, and the order came in that the other two ships were going to evacuate troops. The opposition was too strong and they had to fall back. Shara did the best she could, including some pretty good flying to avoid a rocket-propelled grenade or three, to suppress the enemy counterattack and let them evacuate.
The other gunner, Kokely, took a hit from small-arms fire, and fetched up against the back of Shara’s seat, making awful little gasping noises. Lullo unbuckled and went to bandage him.
“He might make it,” Lullo said to her. Pick grimly kept firing, only letting up briefly when a bullet creased his leg.
“I’m okay,” he said, “I just--”
Lullo helped him bandage himself, and he went back to shooting.
“I gotta fall back,” Shara said, “it’s really goddamn hot up here and we’re not doing great!”
A second gunship came up and did a sweep while the transports loaded, and Shara pulled up a little, swinging around behind the evacuating transports. “You just about get everybody?” she asked.
Forward, who was finally in range of her radio, said, “Did you hear from Ground? Did he die?”
“What?”
“He was dying,” Forward said. “I don’t wanna leave him if he’s still alive but he was hurt pretty bad, he might have kicked it.”
Shara switched back to his channel. “Ground,” she said. She toggled the switch a couple of times. “Ground, come in. Respond.”
He clicked the switch, but didn’t speak. “Is there a plan for any of the transports to check on him?” Shara asked. “I think he’s alive.”
“Negative,” the transport pilot said, “we don’t have clearance for our rotors in his location.”
The transport birds were bigger than the gunships. “Ground,” Shara said again, “if you’re alive you gotta say so.” On impulse she switched to Spanish. “These gringos gonna leave your ass here if you don’t speak up.”
He clicked again, and after a moment, very quietly, said, in Spanish, “Friend, if I gotta die, lie and tell my Mama it was quick, OK?”
Shara switched back over to Forward’s channel. “He’s alive,” she said. “Are you assholes really just gonna leave him there?”
There was no answer. Shara looked over at Lullo. “Bey,” Lullo said, “you’re gonna get us all killed.”
“That boy is alive,” she said.
Pick hung over the back of her seat. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“The transports can’t pick up the spotter,” Shara said. “I’m gonna land and grab him. Can we do it?”
“We can do it,” Pick said. “Kokely, can we do it?”
She couldn’t hear Kokely’s answer. Pick came back. “Uh,” he said. “I think Kokely’s dead.”
“Fuck,” Shara said.
“Nothing we could’ve done,” Lullo said, “it was his lung.”
“We can do this,” Pick said. “Let’s get that kid.”
“This is nuts,” Lullo said, but strapped himself back in.
“Ground,” Shara said, “Ground, I’m coming for you. Are you there?”
He clicked twice. “Ma’am,” he said, and she could hardly hear him, “I ain’t gonna make it out.”
“Yes, you are,” she said.
“You can’t land,” Ground said.
“Don’t you tell me what I can’t do,” she said. The cover was pretty tight but she had his location plotted pretty well.
“Are you sure?” Lullo asked.
“I’m sure,” Shara said. “Easy as pie.”
“You’re crazy,” Gunship Two said. “The transports are almost away, then I’ll fall back to cover you.”
Shara set the bird down with some trepidation. “Wave to me or something, where are you?” she asked Ground, but he only clicked in answer.
“What now?” Lullo asked. “If he’s hurt, he can’t get himself here.”
“I can,” Pick said, but Shara turned her head and looked at him, looked at the blood on his hands and on the bandage around his neck.
“No way,” she said. “Lullo, take the stick.” She unfastened her seat harness.
“Wait,” Lullo said.
“No,” she said, “I got it.” Lullo wasn’t really any bigger or stronger than she was, and could fly just fine. She hopped down out the door and out from under the rotor wash. It took her a moment of looking around to figure out where Ground’s position was. He was dug in behind a tree stump, and she spotted it because of the bright wash of red from the corpse at its base.
She ran over, noticing with some horror that there was a smashed pair of binoculars lying next to the corpse. It was in their uniform, it was one of their guys, and as she got closer she could see that his head was-- just sort of gone, about half of it; he had a lower jaw and that was it.
She didn’t have time to stare. She ducked behind the stump and came up short as she encountered a second corpse in their uniform, a slumped-over shape half-curled against the back of the stump.
He had a radio handset in his hand, and she saw his hand twitch-- clicking the handset. “Ground,” she said, and reached down to touch his shoulder.
He was a young man, a light brown kind of Latino-looking guy, black hair close-cropped. He was unresponsive, so she put her hand against his face, and he twitched. “Ground,” she said. She knew it was him.
He opened his eyes, and they crossed and refocused, somewhat incredulously, on her. “What,” he said.
“I’m gonna get you out of here,” she said. How, though? He was, inconveniently enough, a strapping lad, tall and long-legged and broad-shouldered. He had at least fifty pounds on Shara, and while she was pretty sure she could lift him in a fireman’s carry, she couldn’t tell where he was injured. Well, nothing for it but to try. She pushed at his shoulder, trying to get him to uncurl a little.
And then she saw why he was curled up. He had his other hand, the one the radio wasn’t in, pressed against his midsection, because whatever had sliced through his comrade’s skull had hit him in the gut. There was a lot of blood, and-- well.
“Holy fucking shit ,” Shara said, recoiling involuntarily.
“Told you,” Ground whispered. He was, now that she looked, bloodless under the pigment of his skin. And no way could she carry a gut-shot man in a fireman’s carry. So she had to get him out of here somehow, by herself, without losing any of his-- parts.
Her eyes lit on his equipment harness. “Are you injured anywhere else?” she demanded.
“Bey, you gotta get out of there,” the other gunship pilot was saying on the radio.
“Bey,” Lullo said.
“I hear you,” she said into her radio.
“No,” Ground said. “Bad enough though.”
She ducked around the stump and paused in front of the corpse there. It was distasteful, but-- she steeled herself, unfastened the man’s equipment harness, yanked his uniform tunic off him, and gagged when a bunch of what proved to be teeth rattled out of it. Teeth and brains.
She choked down her horror and ducked back around to where Ground was still lying, clearly fighting unconsciousness. He didn’t have real long, this might be for nothing. She hauled him upright, ignoring the breathless attempt at a scream that he made, and used the dead man’s tunic to kind of-- scoop all the bits of Ground that were falling out back into his body. She pressed the tunic in place, and then fastened the dead man’s belt around the whole thing.
“What,” Ground said plaintively, looking up at her. He was really young, and pretty, and looked like he thought she was hurting him on purpose.
“Just hold on, baby,” she said in Spanish.
“Bey,” Lullo said again, “we gotta get out of here.”
Just then, the distinctive sound of machine gun fire started up. Pick, from the gunship.
“Fuck,” Shara said, and hit her radio: “I’m on my way, hang on!”
“Oh my God,” Lullo said, near-screaming, “Shara Bey, we gotta go!”
Shara grabbed Ground’s equipment harness, where it connected across his shoulder blades, and hauled him with all her might. He was big, and he was heavy, and he screamed something awful, but he came along all right, and she dragged him down that hill like every devil in Hell was chasing her. “I’m coming!” she yelled. “I’m coming!”
“I will leave you here!” Lullo yelled.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” she shrieked. “I’m right goddamn here!”
How the fuck was she going to lift a 200-pound dead weight up into a helicopter? She scrambled onto the skid, hauling Ground up as high as she could manage, and pushed his shoulders onto the floor of the helicopter, then got underneath his pelvis with her back and stood up, flopping him into the belly of the bird. She clambered up after him, hauling his trailing legs in, and screamed, “Go, Lullo, go!”
“Fucking shit hell,” Pick screamed, grabbing Ground’s equipment harness and hauling, “go, go, go,” and Lullo glanced back, figured out she was in, and violently lurched straight through several tree branches and into the air.
Shara hung on to Ground’s harness with one arm and the back of the chair with the other, her body braced over Kokely’s, well, corpse, and that was fucked-up. But they made it into the air.
Pick kept up a steady rate of fire and a steady rate of cursing as well, as they careened away. They steadied enough that Shara let go of Kokely and the chair, and sat up to pull Ground into a more comfortable position.
He was conscious, panting shallowly, and again gave her a plaintive look like he thought she was doing this on purpose. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said in Spanish.
He stared at her, focusing his eyes with difficulty. She couldn’t hear him, but from the way his mouth moved she thought he was asking “Am I dead?”
“You’re not dead,” she said.
In a moment, Pick flopped down next to them, grimacing. She reached over and patted his leg. “How do we look?” she asked Lullo over the headset.
“Bad,” Lullo said. “No, stay there, hang on.”
Ground moved his hand, and she caught it with hers and held it.
“Is he hurt pretty bad?” Pick asked, over the headset. Shara nodded.
“Pretty bad,” she confirmed. “But if he survived me hauling his ass out of there, I got some hopes. Did you make sure Kokely--”
“Yeah,” Pick said, “he’s-- he’s gone.”
“Shit,” Shara said.
“Nothing we could’ve done,” Pick said. “It was heavy, back there.”
After a moment Shara pulled her hand out of Ground’s, yanked her glove off, and then took his hand again. Skin to skin seemed more, she wasn’t sure, respectful. His hand was sticky with blood, and cold, but she could feel his grip now. He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.
She would’ve asked his name, but it was so loud, she wouldn’t have been able to hear his answer. Instead she used her free hand to gently move the folded edge of the dead man’s tunic out of the way so she could see Ground’s nametape.
“Dameron,” it said. She ran her fingers across it, and Ground looked up at her, with the same sort of distantly plaintive look he’d had when she was bandaging him. It wasn’t so much that he thought it was her fault, she supposed, as that he looked like he was asking her for something.
He moved his other hand up to his collar-- pulling out his tags, she realized, and helped him get them free. She flipped them so she could read one. DAMERON, KES, RH POSITIVE, CATHOLIC. She patted his chest, then leaned in a little and said, “We don’t need to do Last Rites yet,” in Spanish.
By the time they landed, she was starting to wish she had. Dameron faded out into unconsciousness before they reached the landing zone, and he’d clearly lost a lot of blood. “We’re coming in with two casualties,” Shara said, and then amended it, looking at how pale Pick had gone, “three, I think one’s dead, one’s critical, and one’s serious.”
“Is anyone left okay on there?” the tower said, sarcastic.
“I’m okay,” Shara said, “but I think that’s it. No, we picked up an extra.”
The medics met them on the ground, and she pulled her hand out of Dameron’s limp fingers and watched them slide him onto a stretcher. She’d barely spoken to him, but she’d liked his spirit.
Kes spent a real long time mostly not conscious. There were some interludes in there, and some of them made sense and some of them didn’t. He’d been hurt before but never this bad. They evacuated him out, completely out of the theater of action, and he finally woke up for real about a thousand miles away from the last time he’d known where he was, missing three or four or maybe five or six days, he really didn’t know.
He woke up tethered to a hospital bunk with drainage tubes coming out of him, and an old white lady nurse looking disapprovingly at him and sucking her teeth.
For some reason he had a kind of-- impression that, like, maybe she should have been a really nice lady with dark eyes and a bright smile-- but maybe he’d dreamed her.
This wasn’t; this lady had the kind of washed-out blue eyes that looked like somebody forgot to color ‘em in, and lines around her mouth like she frowned a lot, and she said, “Oh, I didn’t think you’d ever come out of that.”
He blinked at her, and blinked at the ceiling, and it was cold in this room and there was no sign of light from the outdoors, just fluorescent fixtures that kind of flickered a little, and he didn’t think his mouth worked and it tasted like he’d had an old sponge in his mouth for a week or so.
He made a noise like a person would if they wanted to speak, but he had no idea how. The nurse came over and picked up his hand, taking his pulse, and he tried again to speak. “Settle down,” she said, “you’re all right.”
“Water,” he managed. His mouth was all stuck together and absolutely disgusting.
“Oh, no, honey,” the nurse said, “it’s gonna be a while before you get to eat or drink anything.”
That seemed sort of mean, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He looked down at himself, verifying that he had the right number of limbs. Christ, his mouth tasted disgusting and was so dry it hurt. He couldn’t really move. Everything hurt but he could tell he was on a lot of drugs. The nurse let go of his wrist and pulled out a flashlight, shining it into his eyes. That hurt, so he flinched away, and she hissed a little and grabbed his chin.
“C’mon,” she said, “let me check that other pupil.”
“Ow,” he said.
“Don’t be a baby,” she said. “Aren’t you a Marine or something?”
“No,” he said, offended, and she laughed.
“Gets ‘em every time,” she said, and stabbed him in the fucking retina with the light from her flashlight. But she let go, and he squeezed his eyes shut, watching the bright burnt spots dance across the darkness. She patted his shoulder. “Good boy, I’ll get you some ice chips.”
He wished he could curl up into a ball under the covers but he sincerely lacked the mobility. He felt like-- well. He felt like he’d been gutted and rummaged through and sewn back together, because he had been.
He remembered what had happened. The shrapnel had gone right through Bart’s skull and into his belly, opening him up like a slaughtered animal. He’d kept manning the radio because he’d had to, but it was so hard, and he’d been sick with terror the whole time, and he’d expected to die. He wasn’t entirely sure why he wasn’t dead. He knew he for damn sure never wanted to see a set of intestines again.
“Here,” the nurse said, handing Kes a little paper cup with ice chips in it. There weren’t many in there, but it was like heavenly nectar. Kes managed to thank her, though he wasn’t sure he did so in words. She made a little hm noise and left.
Kes briefly pondered how a single ice chip that objectively probably tasted like the moldy inside of a 40-year-old ice machine was the most delicious thing he’d ever encountered.
“Oh, hey,” said a voice, and Kes turned his head with some difficulty, far enough to see the next bed over. It was none other than PFC Vaughan, one of the excitable rookies who’d joined them for this trip.
“Hey,” Kes said, “the fuckin’ new kid. You didn’t die?”
“Neither did you,” Vaughan said. “Captain was-- he told the transport pilot you were dead, he was pretty upset about it.”
“He wasn’t far wrong,” Kes said. “What happened to you?”
“Oh I just got shot,” Vaughan said. “You, though! You got the dramatic rescue!”
“I did?” Kes blinked.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t even know!” Vaughan said.
Kes considered it a moment. “Woman,” he said, trying to match words with the scattered images. Most of it was pain and terror in his memory, but there had been a woman. She’d spoken to him. She’d. Hurt him, but everything hurt. He remembered her helmet, with the headset like a helicopter crewman would wear. He remembered that she’d spoken to him in Spanish but that was probably a hallucination.
“Yeah, woman,” Vaughan said, laughing. “Woman is right!”
“Who though,” Kes said. “How?”
“Lieutenant Bey,” Vaughan said. “You lucky fuck! Gunship Bey, the hotshot herself. Landed her bird and ran and hauled you out her own damn self because she knew you were alive and couldn’t stand to leave a man behind.”
“No way,” Kes said. Everyone knew who Lieutenant Bey was. She was the first Latina helicopter pilot in the service, and while everyone loved to call her a hotshot, there was no denying that she was real good at what she did, and what she did was whatever she wanted to do. She was absolutely unfuck-with-able. And she was never wrong.
Once, in the mess hall, Kes had said something within her earshot that she’d found funny, and she’d laughed and touched his arm, and he’d almost passed out. It was a joke that everyone had crises of sexuality around her because they didn’t know if they wanted her or wanted to be her, and for once Kes agreed with the prevailing opinion. He’d never felt any kind of way about being a man or a woman, he’d always just been who he was, but he definitely felt that if he ever had a chance for a do-over he would want to be Shara Bey.
“Yes way,” Vaughan said. “I don’t know how she could lift your enormous ass, but she did, somehow.”
Kes had a sudden vivid memory of that, and shook his head. “Dragged me by the equipment harness,” he said.
“How’d she get you into the helicopter?” Vaughan asked, after a good laugh.
“I don’t remember that part,” Kes said. “Threw me, probably.”
“Picked you up over her head in both hands like a dumbbell,” Vaughan said.
“Christ I wish I remembered that,” Kes said. He hadn’t recognized the woman at the time, but-- he knew Bey was Latina, he’d been in a fistfight or two over her honor with various gringos. Maybe she really had spoken to him in Spanish.
“If anyone could do it, she could,” Vaughan said.
“I think she held my hand,” Kes said, “and told me everything was gonna be okay, but I’m not sure I didn’t hallucinate that.”
“Ha,” Vaughan said. “She did more than that! She came in after everything was over to see if you’d lived!”
“No she didn’t,” Kes said.
“Yes she did!” Vaughan said.
“Don’t toy with me,” Kes said. God, the very idea that Lt. Bey even knew who he was, let alone cared if he was alive.
“She absolutely did,” Vaughan said. “The nurses were all laughing because after she left they found a piece of paper in your hand with her address on it.”
“No,” Kes said. “That’s dumb. Nobody would do that.”
“For real,” Vaughan said. “They saved the piece of paper for you. It’s gotta be in your bag with your stuff.”
“Sure,” Kes said. Vaughan was being an ass.
“I’m not even fucking with you,” Vaughan said.
The ice chips were gone and Kes was noticing now that he was really, really, really uncomfortable. He definitely had a catheter in, and he’d only ever had that once before and it had sucked but he didn’t figure he had a lot of choice in the matter. It didn’t feel good, none of it did. “So uh,” he said, “who do we gotta bribe to get painkillers around here?”
“Ha,” Vaughan said, “good luck, we got real hard case nurses in this joint.”
“They always are,” Kes said. And it was fucked-up, but he was an old hand at this. He wasn’t legal to drink in most states but he’d done his fair share of time in military hospitals already. He was in for a long shitty recuperation, and he knew it. Hopefully it wasn’t enough to get him discharged. He really wasn’t ready to change careers yet.
He closed his eyes. “Ugh,” he said, “it just fucking figures that Lieutenant goddamn Bey held my hand when I was too almost-dead to appreciate it.”
It wasn’t long until the doctor came by on rounds. Kes had drifted off a little, and woke up listening to Vaughan describe his lingering symptoms in more detail than Kes strictly wanted. The doc was a nice enough lady, youngish, a major, very sympathetic-seeming.
“Dameron doesn’t believe me about the note,” Vaughan said, and Kes blinked awake again.
“Hungh,” Kes said, which wasn’t what he’d intended to say, but when he tried to speak he abruptly became aware of just how fucking badly his entire torso hurt. It was like he was on fire, but also a deep sick kind of tearing pain underneath that, so he stopped trying to talk.
The doctor had turned and addressed him but he wasn’t paying attention. After a moment’s pause, during which Kes managed to pry an eye open, she said, “You look pretty rough, buddy.”
“He was talking before,” Vaughan said. “He seemed pretty okay.”
“Mm,” the doctor said, and put the back of her hand against Kes’s forehead. She picked the chart clipboard off the foot of the bed. “That’s because he was drugged before. We ought to have given you another dose before now. You feel pretty bad?”
Kes didn’t dare nod, moving would hurt, so he just made a strangled little noise between his teeth. “Mm-hmm,” the doctor said. “I came prepared for this.” He had his eyes closed so he didn’t see what she did, but in a moment the morphine hit like a freight train and he let his eyes roll open.
“We gotta stay on top of that,” the doctor was saying. She went on to say something else, but Kes was floating blissfully and didn’t really give a shit. Finally, though, he managed to peel his eyes open as the doctor handed him something.
“What,” he said.
“C’mon, space cadet,” the doctor said. “Come on back to me. Vaughan wasn’t bullshitting you, they really found this in your hand when they went to load you up to come here.”
Kes blinked, and focused with some difficulty on the slip of paper in his hand.
It was kind of smudged, but it was ballpoint pen on a scrap of notebook paper. And it was a military address, the kind that didn’t have a location so that it would follow the individual around without revealing where they were deployed. Kes squinted at it. The name was a little hard to read but it--
“Oh holy shit,” he said. It said Lt. Shara Bey. And underneath the address, in the same confident block-capital scrawl, it said, “Let me know if you survive,” and then there was a scribble he puzzled over for a moment.
“It’s a heart,” the doctor said. “She drew a little heart.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kes said, staring at it in disbelief. Sure enough, it was-- a little lopsided and messy, but in keeping with the rest of the handwriting.
“She’s been commended for her rescue of you,” the doctor said, “but I should mention, you’ve had a couple of commendation letters written for you, for sticking by that radio as long as you did.”
“I mean,” Kes said, “it wasn’t like I could go anywhere, I would have needed like, a bucket to carry my organs around in.” He was still staring at the little heart on the piece of paper. “Oh holy fuck, Lt. Bey touched my organs.” He’d sort of forgotten that. “She had to like, push them back in so she could drag me out of there. Oh gross. Holy shit that’s gross.”
“Maybe that’s why she drew a heart,” Vaughan said.
“Holy shit that is why,” Kes said. “Maybe that’s not supposed to be a heart. Maybe it’s intestines.”
“It’s probably not intestines,” the doctor said, amused.
“Jesus Christ,” Kes said, and held the piece of paper against his chest. “She’s the baddest bitch to ever live . That is so fucking badass.”
“That’s what you’re impressed with,” the doctor said.
“I mean,” Vaughan said. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little bit jealous.”
Kes was looking at the paper again. He tilted it. “Maybe that’s a spleen,” he said. “What does a human spleen look like, Doc?”
“Your spleen was not hanging out,” the doctor said. “If it was you’d be dead.”
“Liver,” Kes said. “Pancreas?”
“It was just your intestines,” the doctor said. “There was some damage to the small intestine but it’s all been pretty well repaired, I think. The surgery went well and there’s no major damage, I don’t think we had to remove any sections or anything. It’s gonna take a bit for you to heal up all the way but it should be relatively uncomplicated. You’re just gonna have a scar, is all.”
“Aw your flawless abs,” Vaughan said.
“I already had an appendectomy scar, I never had flawless anything,” Kes said. He held the slip of paper out. “Can you put that back with my stuff, I don’t want to lose it while I’m high as hell.”
“Good thinking,” the doctor said, and took it. Kes tried to watch where she put it but he couldn’t sit up at all so he just lay there and blinked, forgetting what he’d meant to say. Fuck, he was really high.
“So I wasn’t lying,” Vaughan said. “She really did come to see if you’d survived.”
“She saved my life,” Kes said dreamily. “And she touched my organs. That’s so gross.”
“All right, space cowboy,” the doctor said, laughing. “I’ll see you later.”
Kes stared at the ceiling for a little while, drifting. “She totally took her glove off to hold my hand,” he said. He remembered that now. “That wasn’t a hallucination. She really did that. She was so nice.”
Vaughan laughed. “Okay, you’re really star-struck,” he said.
“You would be too!” Kes said. “Oh my god. You would be too. She touched my spleen or whatever. That’s so gross.” And then he thought, as he had been really trying not to do, about the various livestock he’d had a hand in slaughtering back on the farm, and the wild animals he’d hunted. “Oh gross. Guts smell bad. I bet my guts smelled real bad. And she had to smell my gross guts. Oh gross.”
“I bet she didn’t have time to worry about it,” Vaughan said.
“Oh no, gross,” Kes said, and now he had the heebie-jeebies. “Fuck. Why did I think about that? Oh no.”
“She still drew some guts on a piece of paper,” Vaughan said, “and if we were somewhere we had phones she would’ve given you her number. So she clearly wasn’t that grossed-out.”
“You think it’s that?” Kes considered it. “I bet she just wants to know if I lived, though. She’s not gonna, like, want to date me or whatever. All she knows about me is that my guts fell out.”
“And you still radioed in an air strike,” Vaughan pointed out. “You must have impressed her.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Kes said, forlorn now, and creeped-out.
“She drew you a heart,” Vaughan said.
“She drew me a stomach or a spleen or something,” Kes said glumly. “She just wants to keep track of me because she’s probably going to get a Silver Star or something and it’d be good form to know if I survived the rescue or not.”
“She drew you a heart,” Vaughan repeated. “Or guts. Maybe she’s into that! Maybe she was into your gross guts.”
“Brr,” Kes said, “gross. No.”
It was a long, and gross, and wearisome recovery, just as Kes had expected, and the nurses were stingy with the morphine, as he had anticipated, and it wasn’t that he wanted to get hooked on dope, but he also wasn’t exactly eager to suffer. He was finally able to get out of bed and at least sit at a desk, so he wrote to his mother. Just a notecard, a quick one, letting her know that if they’d sent her anything about him getting hurt it wasn’t anything she should worry about, and that he’d write more soon.
He got out another notecard and copied Lt. Bey’s address over onto the envelope, but he didn’t really know what to write. And about then he got really tired, and had to give up on sitting for a bit. But it was better than nothing, and at least he could get the card sent to his mother. She’d be upset, but not as upset as if he hadn’t written to her.
The next time he got up he wrote the card to Lt. Bey. He was too shy to make a joke about whether she’d drawn him a heart or not, though. So he just said, awkwardly, Thank you for rescuing me , and yes, I survived, and they expect I’ll recover fully , and I heard a rumor they might give you a medal or something and I hope they do , and he chewed on the pen for a little while before he just signed his name and wrote his rank underneath.
In a final burst of inspiration he added, on the back of the card, p.s. Thank you for collecting my organs before you rescued me, I’m very glad to still have them all . Fuck it, if she didn’t have a sense of humor about that, well then, she wasn’t as cool as he’d been imagining, and it was just as well he’d never know.
He belatedly wondered if he should have written it in English. It was presumptuous of him to have written to her in Spanish. He thought she’d spoken to him in that language, but he wasn’t sure she really had. And just because she was Latina didn’t mean she’d be comfortable reading Spanish. But his spelling was so awful in English, and the painkillers made him so foggy he wasn’t sure he could compose much of a greeting in English. So he sealed it and set it out to send it.
The next day, the staffer who took care of the mail spotted Kes in the lounge, where he’d managed to get himself, and snapped his fingers, then rummaged through the mail bag. “You know Lt. Bey is in this hospital,” he said, producing Kes’s card. “You could deliver it to her yourself.”
“What?” Kes sat up a little straighter and regretted it. They’d tapered him off to almost nothing, pain medication-wise, and he could fucking tell.
“She had a bad landing,” the staffer said. “We were just talking about it. You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know,” Kes said. He put his hand out for the card.
“I’ll deliver it, don’t worry,” the staffer said, sticking the card back into his bag.
“Where is she, though?” Kes asked. “I should-- I should at least-- oh my god how bad is she?”
The staffer shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just saw her on the list.”
That was as much information as Kes could get, there. But he screwed up all the strength he had, and shuffled himself along to the directory listings, and found, sure enough, Bey, Shara, LT, listed there along with her room number.
He had to rest up for a couple of hours, but after they gave him his next dose of painkillers, he gathered himself and went along to the room they’d had listed.
It was in a hallway that was all female patients, and Kes realized maybe they didn’t expect him to have taken it upon himself to go visiting. He also belatedly thought that maybe she wouldn’t want visitors, especially since it was likely she was badly hurt. But, he’d come this far, and honestly was too tired to make it back to his own floor, so either he had to give it up and find somewhere to sit down, or he could stick it out just a little farther.
So he did, and paused outside the room, trying not to look lost. The nurses hadn’t paid him any mind as he’d come down this way. And there on the wall was the placard with Bey’s name on it, and the slot where the room’s other occupant would be listed was blank.
He went in, and sure enough there was an empty bed, and then there was a bed with someone in it, and then there was a chair, so Kes made a beeline straight for that chair, and sat down, and looked up.
Lt. Shara Bey was definitely in the bed, with one leg in a cast all the way up to the thigh, just her toes sticking out the bottom. Her other leg was under the blankets, and her arms were by her sides, an IV in one of them. There was a bandage around her forehead as well, down over one eyebrow sort of rakishly. And she was asleep, or unconscious.
Kes sat there, and realized he hadn’t come up with much of a plan for this. Now he knew where she was, and he’d figured on coming in and saying hi and thanking her for saving his life and then leaving. But he couldn’t really stand up now, and he felt like his whole body was maybe on fire, and the insides of his limbs were full of lead. So he leaned back in the chair and tried to come up with a strategy.
Lt. Bey was awfully pretty, even smeared with iodine and looking beat-up and tired in her sleep. She was just-- a really pretty lady, and Kes was uncomfortably aware that he was probably going to seem creepy, to whoever found him here. Because somebody was going to find him here. He couldn’t get up.
This had been a premature impulse. He should’ve waited until he could get around more easily. But, well. He was here now. So--
He picked the chart off the hook at the foot of her bed and flipped through it. He was here, he might as well at least find out if she was in a coma or permanently disabled or anything.
He was a slow reader, dyslexic, but he could pick his way through a chart. He’d looked through his own enough, he knew what he was looking for. A helpful someone had included a brief typewritten list with bullet points, clearly to be presented to Bey when she awoke, for her reassurance: the crash had been determined to be not her fault, her copilot had not been injured, her injuries were not debilitating or permanent, she would make a full recovery. It was extremely helpful to read, and he put the chart back, greatly reassured.
But. She was still unconscious, so now he was sitting here like a creep. Could he stand up yet? No, he decided; his knees were still sort of rubbery. Well, maybe he could get out of the room, at least. But then the nurses would discover him, and might be upset. A few more minutes, and then perhaps--
His dithering over what to do was abruptly put to an end by Lt. Bey opening her eyes, turning her head, and looking right at him. “Oh,” he said, as she blinked her eyes into slow focus. “Oh, uh, hi.”
“Where,” she said blurrily in Spanish, eyes crossing as she tried to focus them and missed. “What the--”
Oh, hey. The convenient list. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said, speaking Spanish, “you’re in a hospital.”
“Did I crash?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, “but they determined already that it wasn’t your fault. And your copilot wasn’t injured. Your injuries are serious but are expected to heal fully.”
She blinked at him, frowning, but some of her confusion eased a little. “Oh,” she said, “thanks. Okay.”
“Yes, it’s good news,” he said. “I should go and get a nurse, though.”
She’d looked away, toward the ceiling, but her attention snapped back onto him. “Wait, you’re not one?”
Kes laughed sheepishly. “No,” he said, “I’m another patient. I just sat down here to rest because I shouldn’t have walked this far. I figured I’d give you the summary before I went to find someone because I can’t move real fast.”
She frowned at him, a slow deep frown. “Do I know you?”
He shook his head. “I-- I mean, we’ve met, but--”
She pointed at him. “You’re that-- the boy on the radio.”
“Sergeant Kes Dameron,” he said, “at your service, many thanks for saving my life.” And he made a gesture with his hand like someone might during a courtly bow, but there was no goddamn way he was moving his torso for shit .
Gratifyingly, instead of looking creeped out, she looked delighted. “Dameron!” she said. “Yes! Oh, I’m so glad you survived. Oh, how funny that we’re in the same hospital.”
“I thought so too,” he said. “I just found out because I wrote you a note like you asked me to, and the guy who delivers the mail was like, you don’t need to mail this , and I just-- well, I thought you’d be awake when I came to visit you.” A thought struck him for the first time, a little spark of horror straight through him, and he said, “Or-- I mean, I don’t know if that was really a note from you. Someone might have been messing with me.”
But she was smiling. “It was from me,” she said. “I just-- I came to see if you’d survived the rescue, and they said you had to get shipped out for surgery, and I thought I could very easily lose track of you forever in the bureaucracy, and then I’d never know what happened to you.”
“That’s very sweet,” Kes said. But, notably, she had not said any variation on Vaughan’s theory that this was romantically motivated. “But I bet when you get a medal for it, they’d’ve told you if I lived or not.”
“Oh, I’m not getting a medal,” Bey said, rolling her eyes. But then she brightened. “But you might!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Kes said. “I got shot and lay there in a puddle of grossness until you carried me out. Oh!” he interrupted himself. “So, I have two questions for you. The first: how did you get me up into the helicopter? Everyone wants to know and I don’t remember that part.”
“Thank God you don’t remember it,” Bey said. “How much do you weigh?”
Kes looked down at himself. “Well,” he said, “I’m sort of… sadly reduced at the moment, but at the relevant moment, I was in the vicinity of 190 pounds.”
“Shit,” Shara said. “Well, I’m impressed with myself, then. I hauled you by the harness until I got to the bird, and then I locked my arms around your chest, stood up, heaved your shoulders up onto the floor, got myself under your back, and kind of stood up with my shoulders under your-- well, under your butt, I guess. And then I just kind of. Threw your legs in and hoped you didn’t flop back out.”
“Damn,” Kes said. “That’s-- I don’t know if I would have known to try that.”
“It was desperation,” Bey said. “My copilot was screaming about how he was going to leave my ass there, and I was screaming back that he’d better fucking not. And then my surviving gunner, who was injured, by the way, leaned out and grabbed your trailing leg and pulled you in, so.” She gestured with one hand. “So we made it.”
“I should write him a note too,” Kes said.
Bey laughed. “If you want,” she said. “He’s a good dude. He wasn’t hurt too badly.”
“Well,” Kes said, “good.” He was suddenly too shy to ask his other question.
“You said two questions,” Bey said. Damn it, she was sharp.
“Well,” he said. “I kind of. I mean. Mostly I want to apologize that you had to-- I mean--”
“Had to what?” Bey asked.
“Well,” Kes said. This was harder than he’d thought. He rarely had the gumption to go for flippancy but it was going to be his only salvation here. “I mean. The thing is. I’m not the kind of guy who usually--” He grimaced. She probably got hit on a lot so he had to be real delicate with this. “It’s a little embarrassing. I would never normally show someone my actual intestines on such a brief acquaintance. Or really, at all. I feel like that was a-- a wrong-footed start to our acquaintance, and I just-- I want to thank you for handling it so gracefully.”
Bey stared at him for a moment, then burst out with a bright laugh. “Oh my god,” she said.
“I mean it, though,” he said. “It’s-- I just want you to know, it’s really uncharacteristic of me to just-- splay my guts out like that. I never, never would do that, especially not to a woman I barely know.”
She laughed again. Shit, she was really pretty when she laughed; even banged-up like this she sparkled. “Oh, that’s good to know,” she said.
“So we actually,” he went on, emboldened, “had kind of a dispute, earlier. The doctor, and my roommate, and I. I was presented with your note, upon waking up,” and he patted at his pockets, as if he’d have it on himself. No, it was very safely tucked away inside his address book back with his belongings, as the treasured possession it was. “Ah. Anyway. And it had your name, and your address, very kind note. And then you drew a kind of squiggly mark at the end.”
“Did I,” she said, amused.
“Yes,” he said, “and now I wish I had it on me. At any rate. The doctor was convinced this was a little heart symbol, such as a person might append to a note to a friend. But I think it was a drawing of perhaps some other organ, because surely, my heart hadn’t fallen out, I’d be dead.”
She laughed at that, as well, which had been the goal. “Well, hearts aren’t heart-shaped anyway, really,” she said.
“No,” Kes said, “and neither was this, so I thought it had to be perhaps a spleen or something, but the doctor insisted my spleen hadn’t fallen out either.”
“I don’t recall,” Bey said, “but I do sometimes sign notes to friends with a little heart symbol, it was probably just meant to be that.”
“Oh,” Kes said, and maybe he was blushing, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge it. It was a heart. Friends. Well. “I figured it was like, the stone-cold baddest power move ever. Draw a picture of a man’s spleen for him to remind him of the debt he owes you. I was so impressed.”
Bey laughed again. “You’re a good time, Dameron,” she said. “I’m glad I saved you. The doc’s right, though, I don’t think I actually saw your spleen. For what it’s worth, your organs weren’t really that far outside of your body. I didn’t have to go around and collect them or anything.”
“Well,” Kes said, “I’m gonna keep telling people it was a spleen, and cement your reputation as the baddest of all time.”
After the nurses had shooed Dameron away and the doctor had been by and reassured Shara of all the stuff Dameron had told her when she first woke up-- how had he known?-- the mail call guy came in and handed her a card and sure enough, it was from Dameron. She opened it and read it, and noticed the postscript on the back. That made her laugh out loud.
She wrote a letter to her father, and included Kes’s entire card in it because she knew he’d get such a kick out of it. She also told the story of how Dameron had come to see her, and how amusing he’d been. All in all , she wrote, even if they don’t give me a medal or anything, I’m delighted to have met this guy .
It wasn’t until she’d seen him a few more times and spent each time nearly helpless with laughter that she realized she was in trouble.
Dameron was funny, of course. And he was fine , too, which was-- here’s the thing, this was the Army and mostly everyone in it was male, in great physical shape, and under 40. She was surrounded by fine men all of the time, and didn’t give a shit. She had things to do and trails to blaze and mostly, helicopters to fly, and it was amazing that she got to do that. Her eyes were on the prize. She was not interested in men, no matter how fine.
But Dameron was also, and this was the thing that was the real kicker, respectful. He genuinely never slipped up. He never made her uncomfortable, never made off-color jokes. If he said something iffy, it was always done in such a way that she was in on it. He was good , was the thing.
And he was funny, God, he was funny. In two languages. He had a little bit of an accent in English, a cute sibilant one, and his Spanish was slightly Mexican-flavored but generally clear like a textbook-- educated, even; he seemed well-read, noddingly familiar with high culture in a way that Shara herself sort of wasn’t.
But he was a noncom. He wasn’t an officer. He was completely out of reach, for her. She was under more scrutiny than most people, and as such, it was impossible for her to consider any kind of close friendship with him. Or anything more than that, of course.
And he knew that. She wasn’t sure, at first, but one time as they sat next to each other, she laughed and put her hand on his arm without thinking, and he smiled at her and she watched him think of it. Looking into her face, his smile faded a little, he looked down at her hand on his arm, and then he looked away for a moment, and when he looked back, his expression was composed and polite.
Since they’d been rotated back Stateside she was allowed to call her dad after a couple of days. He picked up on the third ring, and was delighted to hear from her, but worried.
“You’re back home, then?” he said. “You got hurt that bad?”
“I’m gonna be okay, though, Papa,” she said. “Broke my leg but it’s just the bone, it should heal clean.”
“You sure about that?” Papa asked.
She thought about the scar she was definitely going to have in her eyebrow, and how close it had come to taking her eye. “Yeah,” she said, “I’ll be fine.”
“I got your letter,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, “good, I figured you must have.”
“That card, girl-- are you flirting with a sergeant?” he asked.
“No, Papa,” she said, but sighed. “I mean, I really did save his life.”
“This ain’t a romance novel,” Papa said. “You worked hard to get where you are and if you don’t make careful choices with your heart, you’re gonna lose every bit of what you’ve got.”
“I know that, Papa,” she said, stung.
“I’m just saying,” he said. “He seems pretty great.”
“You don’t know anything about him except that he had a good comeback for having gotten literally eviscerated,” she said.
“I don’t gotta know more than that,” Papa said, “because you mentioned him, and you never mention boys to me.”
“That’s because I don’t care about boys,” she said, “but it was a good story.”
“Well,” Papa said, “you keep your guard up with this one. You know how fraternization works and you’ll get your ass kicked out and what’s worse, they won’t let any other girls fly helicopters. You know that’s how it works. They’ll use you as an excuse.”
“I know that, Papa,” she said.
Sergeant Dameron sometimes came by with snacks for her, since she couldn’t easily get around. He came by that afternoon, and she sat up and looked uncomfortably at him.
He put the tray down on her little table, dropped gingerly into the chair, and said, “So, I mean, obviously I’m completely infatuated with you, but this only works if you don’t like me back all that much.”
She didn’t really know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. He was watching her, eyes sharp behind that affable face.
After a moment he sighed. “So,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter, because I’m getting out of here pretty soon, and I don’t think our paths will cross that much going forward.”
She knew she was in trouble then, because it hurt to think that. “You’re probably right,” she said.
He gave her a sad little half-smile, which happened to show off the devastatingly handsome little almost-dimple crease he had by his mouth. Damn it. “I don’t suppose I’ll have any trouble keeping up with your career from a distance,” he said. “It’s pretty clear you’re going places, Bey. I’m not, so you can’t really keep track of me, but it’s probably for the best that way.” She made a protesting noise, and he shrugged. “I’m just another dogface,” he said. “I might make E-6 someday, you know? They’re not gonna write about that in the hometown paper. It’s respectable, I’m not knocking it, but you’re not gonna find me anywhere.”
“Then give me your address,” she said. “Like, your real one. Your home of record.”
He shook his head a little. “You don’t need that,” he said. “That would involve my mom, and you don’t need that.”
“Maybe I do,” she said.
He smiled-- two dimples-- and shook his head again. “Nobody needs that,” he said. “But I tell you what. As you go on in your career and do all kinds of historic and important things, just know: you have a fan. I’ll be watching and I’ll be cheering you on. And I’ll definitely keep giving gringos black eyes outside the mess hall for saying dumb shit about you.”
“I heard about that one,” she said, sitting up a little straighter. One of the other girl lieutenants in her dorm had told her there’d been a fight over her that day, some NCO had beaten the shit out of a big dumb white boy for saying something nasty about her. “That was you!”
“It’s happened more than once,” he said, eyes crinkling a little as he suppressed a smile. “I’ve always been a fan.” He pushed to his feet. “So think of that, as you go on in life. Even when people are dicks and say rude things, know I’m out there rooting for you.” He held out his hand, like to shake hands, so she took it. He gave her a businesslike handshake, then stepped back and saluted her.
She returned the salute. “Thanks for saving my life,” he said. “It’s probably the coolest thing that’ll ever happen to me.”
“It was an honor,” she said, and her eyes were kind of burning.
He turned and left, and she let herself cry about it a little, but he was right. There was no point writing to him, no point getting his mother involved. He was a nice boy, and she liked him an astonishing amount, but it wasn’t to be.
Her dad had kept the card, though. Next time she visited-- she got a whole month of leave, to hobble around and learn to walk again-- she stole the card back, and put it in her diary, along with a photo she’d managed to get of Kes. The photo was of herself with him, sitting in the hospital lounge with her crutches next to the chair.
She looked at it kind of a lot. She got a new posting, and new people always asked, you got a boyfriend? You got a sweetheart back home ? (Occasionally, in more candid moments, you got a girlfriend? ) and she always just said, cheerfully enough, No, my bird is my boyfriend , and she mostly meant it. But when nobody was around, she’d look at that photo and think, that could really have been something .