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“So, did you have fun?” Lastimosa asks.
Jack blinks.
This dream has taken him to same place he called in a Titan for the first time, where he first saw BT. Pretty, murky water color pink, in a drowsy reminiscence of a time before.
“Yeah,” Jack answers truthfully, “I did,”
In that hazy pink, Jack finds himself twisting his head around. Looking for his friend in the last place he has left to look. The last nook and cranny left to search; inside of his own head.
“Looking for someone?” Lastimosa teases him, head bobbing.
“Depends on if he’s here,” he replies nonchalantly.
It’s strange how clearly Jack remembers Lastimosa’s voice. The accent, how the accent shifts beneath the helmet. How this dream places Lastimosa back in said helmet. The one that in Jack’s gut he wonders if he still has any right to own, despite the several planets he saved wearing it.
It’s funny how much a piece of equipment can mean. It’s funny what a rifleman can become.
Still, oddness floats around him. This dream is so perfectly crisp that it cannot be mere memory. Light glints too easily, gravity pulls on him too strongly.
But that helmet will never be on that man’s head again. There is a pile of rocks somewhere out there on Typhon to testify to that.
“I can neither confirm or deny the sentience, and thus afterlife, of our Titan,” Lastimosa laughs, swinging around a canteen he can’t even drink from.
Jack twists his face into a forced smile. Our Titan. Who isn’t even here.
“Just, know you did good. You did really good. Everybody up here knows it,” Lastimosa says proudly.
“Did I really make that big of an impression?” Jack asks.
Lastimosa’s posture shifts, “Kid, you sent a lot of people up here. For better or worse, you made a significantly big impression,”
Jack’s head grows heavy enough to force him to stare at his feet. Guess he did send a lot of people away.
One by one, in flashing numerical order, Jack sees all the faces of those he shipped off into the unknown, by the end of his own gun. The length of the flashback twists within him. Curling impossibly outwards like dna strands.
“I’m proud, if it means anything,” he shrugs, swirling that canteen like it’s interesting.
“I don’t need you to say that. Why are you saying that?” Jack questions the dream.
“None of this is about need, pilot. What if I just wanted to? Ever think about that?” he says.
Lastimosa claps Jack on the back. Shoving the canteen into his hands. Jack tumbles a step backwards as he accepts the cold metal.
“Now, you run along now. You got work to do,” he dismisses.
The dream begins to collapse. The edges begin to weaken, to falter. The crispness fading into something less pink and more black.
Lastimosa turns away from him. Walking toward the unmistakable sound of a titanfall. Of metal charging against sky. A sound Jack could name blind or dead or worse.
Jack cannot lift his gaze to the sky faster than he can escape the dream. Returning to colorless, dreamless sleep.
—
There is nothing easier than falling in love with the Frontier.
It’s why people die for it. Miltia, IMC, grunt or pilot. People die for this place because it is worth dying for. It’s that promised land sort of madness that drives people crazy enough to stay, crazy enough to actually live here.
Dying for the Frontier is a lot easier than living for it. Jack is finding that out the hard way.
He’s been leaning into it, though. That craziness. It’s his only weapon against the over bearing sense of absence.
The absence of all the friends now dead and the strangers that are too.
Jack’s leaning toward it like leaning over an edge, examining the deep void below. Wondering if his jumpkit will let him take the endless fall.
Something in Jack, that’s long since learned to fly, now wants to see how far he can fall.
It’s the kind of crazy shit he probably should report to someone who does something important and medical. But if he did they’d stop him.
With where he’s heading, he can’t afford to be stopped. Forward, ever forward. Pressing even harder on the Frontier’s edges to see just how farther this little game is going to go. How much craziness he’s able to take.
It’s forward or backward. There’s only one choice, and there’s about a million ghostly hands pushing him toward it.
—
Jack’s gotten a lot of sudden free time to run then rerun the gauntlet. He’s also got a lot of stupidity that lets him think that if he runs it one more time, memory lane is going to stay the next street over.
He can’t help it. He remembers. It’s making him sick to remember, but he knows he’s feel sicker if he let himself forget.
Jack remembers what it felt like to embark a real Titan for the first time. The electronic, easy sensation of becoming two in one.
And he remembers what it felt like to clutch, in too tiny but tender hands, the ark that could’ve been the Militia’s demise. To literally hold space and time in a little ball.
He remembers what it felt like to stand, with the stench of blood in the air, and listen to that audio log from that Elias Marder jackass.
Hearing him talk about how human life was somehow expendable, replaceable. Talking about how entire plants worth of people would die and he wouldn’t feel a thing. Talking shit like that with a body in the room, with grief in his head? Jack felt like he was floating. Like everything had gone still and quiet, and most importantly dead.
Jack nearly fumbles a wall jump he’s done perhaps a million times just thinking about it. The uncomfortable, dissociative eeriness of it all.
He remembers how he languished there for a second. Letting his anger smolder, letting the existential dread kick in like adrenaline does. Staring blankly at the radiant blue glow of the ark hologram. Wishing he could strike down every IMC dog with his bare fucking hands.
Then he cracked his knuckles, and marched over to BT to do exactly that.
Then he remembers stretching out that same hand as he was thrown to safety. Space and time enveloping his truest friend. Gone in this big ball of blue light.
Jack flies through the finish line. Skidding on his knees until he comes to a stop. Heaving in gulps of air through the filter of his helmet.
How is he supposed to be ok remembering all of that? Those impossible, too large memories?
What’s he supposed to feel about the good ones, now tainted with the gapping hole of so many absences? Like what it felt like to race back toward the communication room?
Sweat beneath his helmet, his jumpkit propelling him against the fans as he flicks them off, the soldiers cheering. Calling him pilot.
When the hell did he become a pilot? When did, like snakeskin, one Jack Cooper get traded for another? Why wasn’t he paying attention when this knighting took place?
Because in one second, he’s just a boy trying to fight for his home. Trying to make sure there’s a home still left to fight for. In the next second, the tides of battle change on his whim.
It was maddening. Still is! It’s crazy. It’s absolutely, positively, off the wall fucking crazy.
That’s why there’s pilots in the first place. It’s that special breed of Frontier crazy. It’s the only thing that can cause someone to ascend like that. To take that title. Pilot.
Jack remembers how the praise from each man on a job well done sort of just, droned out. Becoming muted as he turned to BT, who’s back was against the setting sun filtering through those bomb blast windows. The red light a harsh and beautiful contrast against the blue SERE kit. BT always was very red and blue, so Jack thinks it’s only fitting to remember him that way.
He thinks that’s when he stepped into his own two shoes and became who he was. He thinks that’s when the sword set on his shoulders, raising him up.
Jack thinks that’s when the urge to fight became the instinct to.
He doesn’t get up for a very long time. The reality of the gauntlet slowly but surely fading out. Returning him to the real world, where his body sits hooked up to one of those pods.
It’s takes a special, Frontier exclusive, breed of crazy to continue moving forward. After all he’s seen, all he’s done, all he’s gained and lost and won back.
Jack Cooper gets up on shaky, fawn new legs. Waiting to see that the world is going to hit him with next.