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“What do you want done with your body when you die?”
The question slipped out of him randomly, sprawled out on Goose’s bunk, his booted feet hanging off the edge of the bed beside Goose’s pillow, his hands tucked behind his head at the foot of the bed, staring up at the bunk above him. Goose was seated on the floor near his legs, a book resting on his thighs with a half-composed letter stretched over it, a pen in his hand. Maverick lifted himself up onto his elbows enough to glance down at his RIO, the man arching an eyebrow at him.
“What?” Goose asked, and Maverick shrugged, flopping back down onto the bed with a sigh. He hoped his cheeks weren’t going pink but he could feel the heat rising in them.
“I dunno. Just making conversation.” He glanced over, watching Goose’s frown turn into a teasing grin.
“That’s how you make conversation, Mitchell?” He asked, and Maverick rolled his eyes, but he had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. “No wonder they call you Maverick.”
He and Goose hadn’t been together long. Maverick was still pretty fresh out of flight school. Having left Pensacola only a few months prior, he’d been burning through RIOs like kindling, all of the men he was paired with claiming he was dangerous and unpredictable. He’d been paired with Goose after his pilot had dropped out, deciding he wanted a lower risk job closer to his home and family, something Maverick had never had. They’d been together for only a few months, but their bond had formed fast. Goose was just responsible enough to keep Maverick in line, and while he was still getting used to Maverick’s flying style, he’d taken it in stride, recognizing that Maverick’s risks were calculated and built on skill and an instinctive knowledge of his plane, rather than on luck and stupidity.
“Shut up.” Maverick grumbled, but he was smiling, and he rolled over onto his side to better see Goose. “You’ve really never thought about it before?”
Goose sighed, shaking his head and staring straight ahead, tapping his pen on his book.
“Can’t say I have.” He answered, looking back at Maverick again. “Why, have you?”
Maverick frowned. Did people really not think about stuff like that? “Yeah. I kind of thought everyone did. Didn’t they ask you about it after you got through flight school?”
Just after they’d all gotten their assignments, Maverick’s instructors had pulled him and his classmates aside and gathered up everyone going into high-risk jobs, which happened to be most of them. Maverick remembered the tense looks on his classmates' faces as they’d been instructed to lay out their wills and write down their wishes for what was to be done with their bodies. They’d been instructed to be as detailed as possible, because decisiveness here meant an easier time for their families if they were killed in the field. He remembered he’d been the first one to finish his paperwork. He had no family to leave anything to, and his mind had already been made up, the only time he’d taken was to write everything down on paper.
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t really think about it.” Goose answered, “I’m not expecting to die out here, Mav.”
“I’m not–” Maverick frowned, shaking his head. “Whatever, what’d you put down when they asked you?”
“I don’t remember? Burial? Why does it matter?” Goose set his book and letter to the side, twisting to face Maverick more fully.
“Burial?” Maverick raised his brows, “you want to be buried? Why?” Goose threw up his hands.
“Jesus, Maverick, I don’t know. What’s wrong with being buried?”
“Really?”
Goose just stared at him, and Maverick watched him mouth something like what the fuck? Before he dropped his head, closed his eyes and smiled, resigning himself to the conversation.
“Really.” He said when he’d met Maverick’s eyes again. “Tell me what’s wrong with it.”
Maverick rolled over until he could sit up. He moved to pull his legs onto the bed only for Goose to snap his fingers at him, pointing down at his boots and Maverick rolled his eyes, unlacing them and tugging them off, tossing them to the floor before he pulled his feet up and crossed his legs. He grabbed Goose’s pillow and hugged it to him.
“When you’re buried, they pump your body full of chemicals, stick you in a wooden box and bury you six feet underground.” He stated, hugging the pillow a little tighter. For his father, they’d buried an empty casket, his body lost with his plane. His mother had been buried beside it. He still remembered how she’d looked at the funeral, artificial and lifeless, withered by sickness then twisted by cosmetics. She’d looked like a wax doll, laying out for the sparse attendants to see. “That just doesn’t sound appealing to me.”
Goose studied him for a long moment, and Maverick felt his hands twist into the pillowcase, suddenly feeling freshly orphaned, eight years old under the eyes of strangers just trying to figure out how he’d been hurt without feeling brave enough to ask him. He pressed his face into the pillow, holding Goose’s gaze over it.
“Alright, Mav.” His RIO said at last, “I’ll bite. What do you want done with you when you die?”
“It depends.” He answered quietly, and Goose lifted a brow.
“On what?”
“If I had a family. People to mourn me.”
Goose’s eyes shifted over him, but he gave Maverick a small nod.
“If you did?”
“Either way, I’d want to be cremated.” He began. “I’d want my ashes scattered out on a windy day, so I could go far. If I had a family, I’d want a stone, too. Some kind of physical reminder just to say I’d been there. I’d want the whole military ceremony. Full honors.” What his father had never gotten, even when all Maverick remembered from his ceremony was a flock of men in uniform, fighting back their tears as they apologized for his and his mother’s loss.
Goose nodded slowly. “That doesn’t sound bad.” He admitted. “Have you heard about when they plant your body in the ground with a sapling? That way when your body decomposes your nutrients go into the tree and help it grow? New life and all that shit?”
Maverick shook his head. “I don’t want to be buried.”
“Even without all the chemicals and shit?” Goose asked, leaning sideways on the bed, propping his head up on his hand. “No wooden box, no time for your loved ones to stare at your dead body at your funeral?”
Maverick just shook his head. “I don’t want to be in the ground.”
Goose kept watching him, and Maverick realized after a moment that he needed more of an explanation, but he felt his cheeks heat. It almost felt silly to say it out loud, and he pulled Goose’s pillow a little closer to him.
“I just–” He tucked his face into Goose’s pillow, until the soft case brushed against the underside of his nose and he could inhale the scent of detergent, soap and shampoo and Goose. “I’ve worked so hard to get here.” He nodded to the carrier around them. “To fly. I don’t want to be grounded when I die.”
He felt coiled tight with anxiety as Goose watched him, waiting for him to make a snarky comment or laugh at him, to call him ridiculous, but Goose just nodded thoughtfully, a soft smile lighting his features.
“That makes a lotta sense, Mav.” Goose promised, and he reached out to set a hand on Maverick’s knee, patting it lightly.
Maverick could only manage a little nod in thanks, but Goose smiled at him like Maverick was a frightened animal and Goose had just coaxed him into eating out of his hand. For once, Maverick didn’t actually feel upset about it.
After a moment, Goose sighed, twisting to lean back against the bunk, throwing his head back and looking up at the ceiling.
“You make a good point, though.” He said, “Maybe I don’t want to be buried. I like the idea of having a grave, though. My ah–” He frowned, “my parents died within a couple months of each other when I was going through flight school. Having a grave to visit them at really helped me out. If I leave anyone behind, I’d want them to have that.”
Goose couldn’t see him, but Maverick nodded thoughtfully. He hadn’t been able to make it to his parents’ gravestones much as a child, only going there when he’d guilted his various foster parents into taking him, but once he’d graduated high school and been left to his own devices, he’d visited them enough times to wonder what it would have been like if he’d been allowed constant access to them. Maybe they could’ve helped him through just by proxy, like a physical anchor for his grief and troubles.
“I think that would be nice.” He murmured when he realized he’d said nothing to Goose, and his RIO’s hand came up over the bed, blindly patting at Maverick’s leg in the constant support and kindness Maverick guessed had earned him his callsign.
The death of Goose’s parents wasn’t new information. When they’d first been paired together, Goose had recognized his last name without remembering where he knew it from. Maverick had begrudgingly told him his father had been in the Navy, going as far as telling him people assumed he’d deserted just so his new RIO didn’t hear it from the rumor mill instead. Though he’d been shocked, Goose hadn’t judged him for it. He’d asked about his mother and after navigating the sticky conversation that was Maverick’s childhood of death and foster homes, with Goose more graceful and kind than anyone Maverick had ever met, Maverick had asked about his parents. He’d seen the pain in Goose’s eyes when he’d asked, only dulled by a few years and Goose had told him his own parents were gone, too. Guess we have something in common, Maverick had murmured, and he wasn’t nearly as tactful with his own condolences but Goose had just smiled at him, and it was another thing that brought them together.
“You know what could be neat?” He twisted his head back to look at Maverick. “If you got your ashes scattered from a plane. Not one of ours but like a Cessna or something. You’d have to do it stateside, but I think it would be neat.” He gave Maverick a smile. “You could fly forever.”
“You think that would be legal?” He wondered aloud. It wouldn’t stop him, but he couldn’t expect whoever came into possession of his ashes to be quite so flexible in legal terms. Goose just snorted.
“Who cares? It’d be your dying wish. Who’d say no to a dead man?”
“Easier to say no to a dead man than a live one.” Maverick muttered, but Goose shook his head.
“I wouldn’t.” He told Maverick, twisting back to face him fully. “God forbid it ever happens, but if I die before you, make sure I get a nice gravestone and throw my ashes out of a plane. Take Carol up with you when you do. Deal?”
Maverick lifted his brows. “You’re suddenly very invested in this after never thinking about it before.” He pointed out, and Goose just shrugged.
“Yeah, well, you’ve inspired me.” He said, and Maverick snorted. “What do you want me to do for you?”
“Cremation, headstone, military ceremony.” He told Goose, then tilted his head in consideration. “And the plane thing.”
“Deal.” Goose told him with a grin, and he caught Maverick’s hand and shook it. “Kindred spirits, Mav. I’ll see you in the afterlife.”
And are those real angels in the magazines?
Oh, is there a heaven? You’d know now you’ve been.
The conversation had been drifting round his head since he’d woken up in the hospital after the training accident. Since he’d opened his eyes to find Ice passed out in a chair beside his bed and even under the effect of more pain meds than he could name, his drug addled brain had been able to piece together the hazy memories and realize his rival wouldn’t be sitting next to him in the hospital if something bad hadn’t happened, if the terrible memories floating around his brain hadn’t been just a bad dream. Goose was dead and Maverick wasn’t.
Are those real stars that hang in the sky?
Or are they man-made, a trick of the light?
It took a while for the truth to really sink in. When Ice woke up, he looked at Maverick with deep sorrow in his eyes, guilt and pity but Maverick had felt nothing. He’d just stared ahead, like all of his effort was going into drawing breath into his aching lungs while his body tried to heal him from the accident that had taken his best friend’s life. Ice had stayed by his side while he’d been doted on by doctors and nurses. Slider and their other classmates had flitted in and out, along with Viper and Jester but Ice had never left his side. He’d been there when Maverick had fallen asleep and he’d been there when he woke up. The pain had never left his eyes but Maverick had just stared, and already he’d felt like a husk of everything he once was.
And is there a God up there?
So, where does He hide?
He didn’t get a chance to spread Goose’s ashes before they were sent on the mission. He watched as his friend was cremated, Carol was fighting back tears but Maverick was so drained his face was dry. Carol cradled the urn against her chest, and at the funeral they buried a beautiful wooden casket without a body inside. Just a letter Maverick had slipped into it, wondering if by some divine providence Goose would ever know what it said. Maverick pounded his wings into the casket and his tears freckled the polished surface. He remembered the feel of when one of his superiors at flight school had lined up him and his classmates outside the classroom buildings one night after they’d all qualified and pounded their wings into their bare chests. An initiation of sorts. The man probably should have been fired, but Maverick longed for the feeling, because he wanted anything to distract him from the grief raging through his body. He drove the pin into the surface of the casket and hoped the blood that had once been smeared over the prongs would bring him closer to his RIO even when death stood between them.
‘Cause the devil is raging inside my mind.
And is there a moment where it all makes sense?
When saying goodbye doesn’t feel like the end?
He hadn’t had the strength to grant Goose’s last wish before he’d left for the mission. He’d wallowed in his grief and fallen apart and hadn’t had the strength to do anything until he’d forced himself to visit Viper and he’d dragged himself to graduation. In the whirlwind that had followed, all he could think about was Goose. Goose and his last wishes Maverick never should have had to tend to. He should have been the one to die first, it seemed like his lot in life. He’d lost his parents when he was only a kid, with everything he’d done as a teenager it felt like a miracle he’d lived past twenty, and he hadn’t expected to live long after he’d become a pilot. He’d be the best, but being the best meant being sent into the worst, and that would catch up with him someday, no matter how good he was.
Sometimes I can’t help blaming you
For leaving me here, what am I supposed to do?
He told Ice about Goose’s last wishes in the middle of the night while they were on the carrier, when he’d woken in a fit of nightmares and he’d dragged himself across the floor. He’d rooted around his duffel bag until he’d found one of Goose’s old shirts, and he’d sobbed as he wrapped it around his fist and pressed it to his face, hurt and angry and wrecked, sobbing because Goose had left him alone and he couldn’t live like that. Ice had held him the whole time and it couldn’t take away the stabbing pain of the loss but it was like putting pressure on a wound. It hurt, God, it hurt so bad, but it would save his life and Maverick knew it even as he cried under the pain of it all. He told Ice about the conversation before his tears had even stopped falling. He told him about how Goose wanted him to scatter his ashes and how Maverick thought he was going to die before he even could but Ice had pressed kisses to his temples and promised him he’d make it back, that he’d lay Goose to rest the way he wanted to and he would survive this.
There’s plenty of women, there’s drink and there’s drugs
But we both know that won’t be enough
Sometimes he wanted to be reckless. He didn’t want to fly like he’d survive, he wanted to damn everything and fly like he had nothing to lose, to be more reckless than he’d ever been, but he never could. Merlin, Ice, and Slider never left him, and they learned the look in his eyes, the tension in his voice when everything became too much and he just wanted to snap. When he wanted to let go of everything and fly like he didn’t have a future because he’d never believed in it, anyways. They’d talk him back down every time. Ice would stay on his wing and just his presence would remind Maverick that there were things he wanted to experience before he died. With just a few words, Merlin could convince him life was actually worth living, that things were worth fighting for and that his pain, as suffocating as it was, was only temporary, but it didn’t make him hurt any less.
‘Cause I see you in the daytime, and I hear you at night
There’s a pale imitation burnt in my eyes
There was hardly a moment that he didn’t think about Goose. They’d stopped pretending Maverick was alright the first real night they’d spent on the carrier. All the endorphins Maverick had been riding after the mission had crashed. They’d checked on Hollywood and Wolfman in medical and they’d gone to bed and Maverick had been going through his duffel bag for clothes, the mission finally sinking in and he’d pulled Goose’s shirt out of his bag and broke. Everything felt like a reminder of what he’d lost. The carrier halls, his locker with Goose’s right beside, the shitty bunks he and Goose would always grouse about, even the shitty soap Maverick had used in his shower smelled like Goose. Maverick had stared at the old shirt in his hands and maybe it was the stress of everything he’d gone through in the past month finally boiling over but he’d collapsed into a fit of tears so heavy no one had been able to drag him out of it. Ice and Slider and Merlin had stayed with him the whole time but Maverick’s tears hadn’t stopped. Not until he’d fallen asleep with his head pillowed on Merlin’s thigh, Ice seated on the floor beside the bunk next to him, his hand on Maverick’s arm and Slider seated beside him, his head tipped back against the bunk just barely brushing Maverick’s knee. He’d had the shirt wrapped around his fist, tears still falling from his eyes, cursing everything he was for throwing Goose’s tags into the ocean because he’d thought he was ready to let him go, and he’d cried until exhaustion had dragged him under.
I don’t wanna be here, I don’t know what to do.
Sometimes I’d rather be dead,
At least then I’m with you.
He thought he would die when he was sent out for the mission. He thought he’d leave everything behind. Facing down six MiGs with Ice, he thought he’d die over the Indian Ocean like it was his destiny, and he’d never get the chance to come back to his RIO and fulfill those last wishes. He’d meet Goose in the afterlife just like Goose said he would and he’d have one more thing to apologize for, but his RIO would forgive him. He almost wanted it. In his darkest moments, he did want it. He’d been responsible for Goose’s death and he hadn’t even spread his ashes like Goose had asked him to but at least he’d be with his RIO again. At least the pain would stop and he could finally just let go of everything. He could hug Goose again, feel his arms around him, breathe him in and know he was there without having to press his face into an old shirt or smell a bar of shitty soap he’d always hated. He wanted to die on the carrier, but he couldn’t. He wanted to die and he wanted to live and he wanted to fly and he wanted Goose back and he wanted to stop hurting.
Amen.
He didn’t die on the carrier.
Amen.
He had Merlin and Slider and Ice to thank for that, Merlin and Slider and Ice to thank for dragging him out of the darkest pits he’d ever experienced. They held him when he was broken and gave everything they had and Maverick hoped they could tell how grateful he was when he looked them in the eyes and gave back with all he had even if he was so weak it was almost nothing. He didn’t die on the carrier and he didn’t die in the air. He didn’t die fighting in the mission and he didn’t die with Merlin as his backseater. He didn’t die on the way back to Miramar and he was wonderfully, gloriously alive to greet Carol and Bradley on the tarmac. He was alive to go with Ice to a hotel room, to kiss him and love him without having to worry about being caught. He was alive to sign the lease for a house with Ice and he was alive to go to dinner with the entirety of his new family, with Ice and Merlin and Slider, Bradley, Carol, Slider’s girlfriend, and Merlin’s wife, people he’d never known but had learned of him through the people who’d been saving his life and decided they wanted to help, too.
He was alive for him and Ice to move in together, and they covered their house in pictures of the family they’d found themselves wrapped up in. He was alive for all the pain and the aching, stinging grief that came with teaching at Top Gun but Ice was beside him the whole time. Viper and Jester took them under their wings and Maverick had never known support before in the Navy but now it was all around him and suddenly he understood what all the other guys fought for. He understood what it was like to be in the air not to fly against a ghost but to fly because he’d found a world that was worth protecting and Maverick would give his life for it in a heartbeat but for now he would live.
Amen, amen, amen, amen
He was alive for the weeks after they’d started teaching, when Ice helped him when he thought back on Goose’s wishes. He was alive to join an Aero club, alive to take Ice up in a little Cessna 172 and fly over the California coastline until he knew he could do it without falling apart. He was alive to finally talk to Carol about what Goose had asked him to do, and he was alive on a sunny Saturday afternoon when they piled into the little Cessna. Ice and Bradley were wedged in the backseat, Carol at his side and Maverick was alive to soar through the California skies and spread his best friend’s ashes on the winds.
He was alive to let the wind pull the ashes from his fingers, and he was alive to send his RIO off the way he’d asked him to. He didn’t fight his tears when they fell, and he lifted his eyes to the skies and hoped wherever his friend was, he was happy, because Maverick was trying to feel the same. Fly forever, Goose.
Amen, amen, amen.