Work Text:
Denial:
Pete is eight when he is truly confronted with death for the first time. It's not the loss of a pet or a grandparent whose name he doesn't remember. No. Pete is eight-years-old, sat at the dining room table and coloring in the book his dad had sent. The pictures are funny, and he can't read the cover ("Vietnamese," his mommy had said), but he loves it all the same. Then there's a knock at the door.
Pete doesn't stop coloring; red crayon scribbling over the lines to make something new.
His mommy answers it, humming as she goes from the kitchen where she's making him lunch to the front. She stops humming, it's abrupt, and Pete hears a man's voice. At first, he thinks his dad is back, and he turns to look up, smiling wide.
It's a man who looks like his dad, at least when he has to dress up for the boring, stuffy adult things he tells Pete are stupid but essential, but it's not him. Pete is confused, even more so when his mommy puts a hand on her mouth and starts shaking.
The crayon drops from Pete's hands when his mommy falls forward, and the man in the uniform catches her. She's crying, he can hear it now, and Pete gets down from his chair, confused and scared. The man looks over his mommy's shoulder, and their eyes meet.
There's something hard there, and Pete wishes his dad was here so he could hide behind his leg. His dad wouldn't let the man look at Pete like he was.
A week later, Pete is dressed in an outfit he's never seen before. It's black and itchy, and his mommy puts it on him in total silence. She's been quiet ever since the man left. She smells funny, too, not like her flowery perfume, the kind his dad got her for Christmas last year. It's not a nice smell.
She won't tell him where they're going, just whispering, "please be quiet, Petey, please." So he is.
He's more scared when they arrive at the cemetery, but he stays silent like his mommy asked because maybe it will make her smile.
There are people around a long black box, a coffin. He thinks that's what mommy had called it when grandpa died a year ago. It's shiny. There are a few people in uniforms like his dad wears, but not as many as he's used to seeing when they gather together. Mostly it's a few people Pete thinks he recognizes from the holidays and someone in a robe like he from church. When they reach the front, Pete is handed a flower, taking it because everyone else is taking theirs. Then, right as the churchman opens his mouth and starts talking, Pete sees it.
There's a picture of his dad beside the coffin, with ribbons and a bow.
Now, Pete's been to a funeral before; he knows that the pictures are the person that's died. He's not a baby. But... that would mean his dad is the one in the coffin, and that doesn't make any sense. His dad is a million miles tall and stronger than anything else. He's the best pilot in the entire Navy, so there's no way he's in that box right now.
"Mommy?" Pete knows he's not supposed to be talking, but he just doesn't understand.
She doesn't reply, she's looking straight ahead, and that's when Pete notices she's crying.
He doesn't believe it.
He won't.
Duke Mitchell is flying on a mission right now, and he's gonna be home in time for Pete's birthday, just like he promised.
Pete refuses when they lower the casket into the ground and tell him to put his flower inside. They try to make him, but Pete throws it on dying grass right where he's standing instead. They don't try after that.
"Leave him to his grief; he's mourning."
No. Pete isn't. There's nothing to mourn.
Pete spends a week sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the door, and waiting. Then he spends another and another. He sits like that until his coloring book is full... until his mommy stops trying to make him sandwiches at lunchtime... until his birthday comes and goes... until he can't convince himself anymore that he's right and everyone else is wrong.
Until he realizes his dad's not coming home.
Anger:
There's a song Pete learns to hate while his mom slowly kills herself.
It's the drink at first. Bottles clinking, new ones empty every night when Pete scrapes his poor attempts at feeding himself in the garbage. She'll be on the couch, clutching her bottle, ignoring him.
At least she doesn't cry as much anymore. At almost ten years old, Pete is tired of her tears. They hurt, and they make him feel red, and he doesn't have it in him to join her in her sorrow, not when it's been going on for so long and he's run dry.
Pete thinks maybe it's the booze that fills her up again, and her wailing is it spilling back out.
"Put the record on for me, will you, Petey?"
He never wants to; the song grates on his brain. He's been made to listen to it over and over again. Pete's surprised it hasn't been run down, cut clean through with how many passes under the needle it's had.
Pete puts it on. Sometimes she doesn't cry when it's playing.
Eventually, it catches up with her. The sadness. The drinking. It comes in the form of a sickness and takes her away. It's ugly and quick, and Pete flares up under the eyes of all the people who try to get him to talk, ask him if he's sad, tell him it's okay to cry.
His mom took all the tears with her. Pete's not going to cry when he's just so... so angry.
That scarlet blur, making his chest tight and his blood hot any time he catches the scent of lilies or hears that damned song play, follows him. It's a cloud that hangs over Pete's shoulders through four different foster homes until, finally, one sticks. It drapes over him as he grows up, kicking and screaming his way through middle school.
Immature, they label him, walking around with a chip on his shoulder, making it through by the skin of his teeth. Because every time he fucks up, gives in, and gets his knuckles bloody at the unfairness of it all. Eventually, someone opens their mouth, and Duke Mitchell's name is on their tongue, and it's like his fire is doused in water, icy shame pausing it.
It never takes away the rage, not wholly, but it settles Pete down enough to keep it trapped inside, waiting like some hulking beast for the next time an idiot thinks of dragging up his mom.
Then, at sixteen, Nick Bradshaw walks into fourth-period chemistry, all lanky and awkward, and changes Pete's life forever. He sweeps into the room, backs him up during a fistfight in the lunch hall because he "thought you could use a bit a' back up," and takes all the anger out of Pete's chest. His smiles are a scalpel cutting out all of Pete's bad parts, his laugh a breath of fresh air, and when he puts bandaids on Pete's knuckles, it's like the world makes sense again.
Bargaining:
The world stops making sense nearly twenty years later because Goose isn't in it anymore.
Maveric, because he's Maverick now, doesn't believe it when he wakes up, and they remind him of those hours floating in the water with Goose cradled against his chest. Then, when he looks himself in the eye in the locker room mirror, that anger is back. Enraged at himself, the world, and a God he doesn't believe in.
God...
Once the idea latches on, Maverick can't let it go. He's gathering up the things from Goose's locker, getting them ready for Carole, and when his hands touch the golden chain with the little cross Goose wore but sometimes forgot to put back on, he tucks it into his pocket along with his RIO's dog tags.
He'll give it back to Carole when he's done, say he misplaced it if she asks. He just... Maverick needs to borrow it for a minute. Just a little while.
Maverick doesn't go to church, hasn't since his second foster home forced him. Walking through the doors is more challenging than he'd thought it would be, a weight, like guilt but so much worse, dropping over his shoulders.
There's a young man with a collar and black coat near the entrance, and Maverick doesn't know what his face is saying, but something like sympathy makes the man's eyes soften. Maverick feels frozen, the priest is stepping forward, and Maverick is going to bolt. He doesn't think he can take someone trying to talk to him right now.
"Father Ethan," a girl, maybe fifteen, cuts into the decreasing space between them, and Maverick takes the chance to nod when the man casts him a concerned glance, absolving him of whatever duty he thinks he has, before moving toward where there's an alter lit with candles.
Maverick sits in the first pew, but at the far end of the aisle, out of the way. He takes Goose's cross out of his pocket, and he knows it isn't a rosary, but he curls the chain around his fist like it is. When Maverick looks up, the figure of a crucified Jesus stares down at him, and Maverick feels judged.
Who is he, coming to this place, a man without faith, to beg for something he knows is impossible from a God that doesn't exist?
Still... beg Maverick does.
He bows his head and keeps his voice low.
"Please."
Maverick sounds hoarse, and for some reason, almost immediately as the word drips out, tears are stinging at the sides of his eyes.
"Please, he didn't- he shouldn't-" it's an effort to suck in the shuddering breath he needs. "You should have taken me." Once Maverick starts, he can't stop, only conscious enough to keep his volume respectful to the echoing space of the cathedral.
"Take me instead. I don't know how, but just... do it. He's got a family, he's got a son, so much life left to live, and I- I don't . I just got myself, my wings, but that's it. I was in that seat, and I was supposed to bring him home, so just... I'll go right now, won't even ask for anything else, but please..."
Tears are rolling down his face now, not that Maverick tries to wipe them away. He doesn't deserve the comfort. He wants his shame and distress to bleed. He wants this place to see his guilt and his plea in the hopes that maybe, somehow, his useless prayers might be answered.
He stays there for a while longer, until he's dried out and hollow and slip-sliding backwards into being angry.
Maverick gives Carole the cross over a silent breakfast, and she doesn't ask why he had it. He never tells her.
Depression:
When Carole gets sick, Maverick is halfway across the world, an emergency deployment taking him away from his station at Top Gun. It's 3 AM, and he's dragged out of his bunk to take the call, the phone ringing off the hook and driving the graveyard crew insane.
It's Bradley, sixteen and sobbing down the line. Maverick has to coach him through breathing so that he can make out what the kid is trying to tell him.
"It- It's cancer, Mav, she's-" And he's wailing again right as a fist closes, vice tight, around Maverick's heart.
He'd told her to get her headaches checked out, the downtime between migraine episodes shorter and shorter. Before he'd left for his mission, he made Ice promise to take her to her appointment and then dragged Bradley into the pledge, too, knowing it would take the both of them to get her to look after herself for once.
By the time he's stateside again, she's started treatment, Ice getting it set up, pulling strings that only he can, calling in favors he shouldn't have to.
"She's family," he whispers into the side of Maverick's neck when the smaller man finally breaks, curling into his lover for comfort as it all comes crashing down. He's right, she is, and the world, like it always does for Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, will take her from him.
Carole lasts longer than any of the doctors thought she might. Almost a year, enough for Bradley to reach seventeen, to see the stars in his eyes when he talks about joining the Navy. She lasts long enough to pull Maverick aside on one of her last days and make him promise.
"I won't be here, Mav. I won't be able to protect him, so you need to. Promise me. Promise me you'll keep him out of the cockpit." And Maverick, already seeing the path laid out in front of him, does.
Carole Bradshaw, mother, wife, passes away on a sunny Saturday morning with her son by her bed and a smile on her face.
When they put the blanket over her, Maverick feels all the light leave the room. It's like, the moment she's hidden from sight, the candle she's kept burning in Maverick's heart is blown out.
That sadness swallows him up, but he tries not to let it show. It gets harder, though, the longer time moves on, and he doesn't face the loss, the impending loss, the way he needs to.
Ice lets him become a ghost of himself, and Maverick is thankful for it. He needs to be numb for what comes after, for what he'll have to do.
Maverick watches Bradley cross the graduation stage with unshed tears and a tremble in his hands. Carole would have loved to see it, her boy, standing tall with his honors sash.
Bradley, always the braver of the two of them, stands in a room that's missing one of the most important people in their lives and smiles despite it.
The smiling doesn't last long.
A month later, he's storming, furious and spitting, into Maverick and Ice's house, the blonde thankfully absent. He rips Maverick apart, shouts until he's raspy, and throws out every sharp piece of himself until Maverick is bleeding.
"I never want to see you again." The cracks left in Maverick's heart spiderweb. "You're dead to me."
He's left, shattered on his knees in the living room as the door slams.
Maverick doesn't know how long it is before Ice comes home and finds him, but by then, Maverick has been scooped out and left empty.
It's unfair to Ice because Maverick loves him as much as he did Carole, as much as he does Bradley, but still, the warm hands and soft words aren't enough to pull him back from the brink, to drag him from the shadows he wraps around himself so that the hurt can only reach him so much.
It gets better, though, with time, watching Bradley from afar, hating himself still but being proud of the man he's becoming despite the hardship Maverick has laid over his shoulders. It's easier to smile, to fly, without feeling like the world is passing him by while he's standing still.
Ice is his anchor, his teether into the here and now, the one person who refuses to let Maverick be left behind.
Acceptance:
When Tom starts coughing one morning, Pete doesn't think much about it, flu season and all that.
He's Pete again, and Tom is Tom. They've spent too many years together, learning each other inside and out, away from Iceman and Maverick. They've relearned themselves through the love they've shared, and now they simply are.
The cough doesn't get worse, but the pain around Tom's eyes does, and Pete catches him trying to hide a bloody handkerchief early in the morning, a fit waking them both up. He drives Tom to the hospital that night, and even though there's a shocking chill in Pete's veins, a strange calm is also pushing him forward.
The doctors run tests, drawing blood and wheeling Tom away to take scrapes and samples. They give both of them pitying side eyes, and Pete takes it all with nods of his head and his fingers linked tightly with his love's.
When the email comes before the call, the diagnosis reading in large bold letters a few paragraphs in, Pete is expecting a slew of emotions to roll through. He's waiting for the anger, he's waiting for the fury and desperation, he's waiting for the bone-deep sadness. None of it comes. Pete sits next to Tom at the computer desk and reads "Stage 3 Larynx Cancer" and feels almost nothing. Well, it's not nothing. It's just a wash of acceptance. Tom has cancer. The love of his life, his wingman, the last person Pete has left, has cancer.
"Pete-"
"We'll call the doctors up to get treatment started, okay?" They'd gotten treatment for Carole too, and it hadn't helped. It probably won't help Tom either, but Pete is learning that that is just how his life is meant to play out.
"Pete-" He turns to the other man and takes his hand. He doesn't know what Tom sees when he looks at him, but it makes him stop; it makes him angry. Pete watches his brows furrow and his top lip curl. "I'm not dead yet. You don't get to give up on me, Pete Mitchell."
And he isn't, not really, but Pete can understand why Tom might think he is. Pete's just preparing himself for the inevitable he's already seeing, and is it fair? No, not to himself and not to Tom, but he can't help it.
Every good thing, every close person, that's walked into Pete's life has slipped through his fingers, taken by death and the choices he's made. He doesn't have the strength not to start grieving the process early this time.
"I know, Tom, I know."
It's little use trying to convince himself, but for Tom, he'll at least try.
The Stage After:
Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is forty-eight when a ring is slipped on his finger, and he has a new last name to add to his own. He's staring at bright blue eyes, crowded at the edges with laugh lines and crow's feet, a smile just as bright as it had been at twenty-four when he'd seen it the first time, and a long scar, both new and old at the same time.
He kisses Tom with everything he's got, and there are hollers from the synagogue seats when the both of them step down and break the glass waiting for them.
When Pete looks out into the small gathering of friends and family, he feels choked up by it.
So much in his life had been taken from him early. A father who should have been young enough to walk him down the aisle, middle-aged as Pete is. A mother who would have spent hours going over wedding plans even if she didn't get the traditions Tom had insisted on keeping. Goose… Goose and Carole, staring up at him, smug and happy, ribbing him when he'd gone to a pick a ring.
Goose wouldn't have let him live it down. Carole would have tried to convince him to wear a dress.
But… as perfect as all those maybe's, all those never-can-be moments would have been, should have been, Pete doesn't feel even a lingering of that twisting anger-sadness. No. The tightness making his eyes wet and his heart hammer isn't from all of that, because Pete? He's happy.
Hollywood and Wolfman (holding himself up from his wheelchair with all the strength and determination Pete's seen him carry) are front and center, Sarah and her husband Anthony one row back. Penny Benjamin and little Amelia are across from them on Pete's side of the aisle, along with Merlin and Maverick's favorite student Warlock (who now outranks him, the little shit).
Slider is standing by Tom's side, a best man to rival all best men, but Pete... he thinks his, regardless of blatant bias, takes the cake.
When he turns to look over his shoulder as Tom starts leading him down the steps, Pete catches Bradley's eye. The boy he'd helped raise, now a man, is staring at him, grinning, and Pete matches him.
It's not perfect. Pete has lost so much in seemingly such a short time. But he's going to hold on to what he's been given, the things that have been threatened, nearly taken, and the ones that have come back.
It's his next and final stage.