Chapter Text
It starts like this.
Alina is five years old. The first day of school is in three weeks, and Daddy will be home soon. Daddy is her most favoritest person in the whole wide world. And so is Mama, and so is Uncle Mickey, especially when he hides candy in his pockets so she can unzip all the zippers on his fly suit to find it all.
Daddy and Uncle Mickey fly planes. Daddy and Uncle Mickey went all the way to California to learn to fly planes better, so they can show Alina all the best new tricks.
Alina is a third-generation Navy brat. Her father's father was an aviator. Her father is an aviator. Alina is going to fly, just like Daddy.
When Daddy tells her he will be away again, she pouts. But Daddy promises that she and Mama will visit Daddy and Uncle Mickey in California at the end of the summer, and they will go to the zoo and to the beach and if she asks really nicely, maybe the ad-mer-al will let Alina look at the plane Daddy and Uncle Mickey fly.
She has to promise not to push any of the buttons, though. (Uncle Mickey says she should push all of the buttons. Silly Uncle Mickey. That's Daddy's job.)
It starts like this.
California is warm and sunny. Uncle Mickey says it's summer all the time in California. He sets her on top of the piano, and Daddy plays their favorite song. Uncle Mickey tickles her stomach until she sings along, and then Mama is sitting next to Daddy, and Alina never wants to leave California-where-it-is-summer-forever.
On the Thursday before they go to the zoo, Mama takes Alina to the Base. They sit in a room with big leather seats. There are little planes that look like the one Daddy flies. Mama leaves her there with a man who has a very silly name—Dogma. He looks nothing like a dog, and Alina tells him so. He laughs and says it's a nickname, like how sometimes the other pilots call Daddy something else too.
When Mama comes back, she is very sad. Alina runs up to Mama and gives her the biggest hug she can. Mama should not be sad. They are in California, and California is the best place in the world. They are going to the zoo in two days with Daddy and Uncle Mickey. Mama cannot be sad.
Uncle Mickey is standing behind Mama, and he is crying. Alina has never seen Uncle Mickey cry.
It starts like this.
Alina is five years old when her daddy goes to Top Gun. Daddy is her most favoritest person in the whole wide world. There was an accident and Daddy hit his head very hard, and Daddy will not be coming home with Alina and Mama and Uncle Mickey.
Alina moves to California when she is seven years old. Uncle Mickey tried everything under the sun to be stationed closer to her and Mama; he even bid for a post in Georgia, until the Navy realized he was bidding for a submarine base and put a stop to that.
Mama, the smartest person she knows, says that if the Navy won’t move Uncle Mickey, then Alina and Mama will move to him. Uncle Mickey, Mama, and Alina live in a big house on the end of the street with a big red door. There aren’t as many big trees to climb, but the beach isn’t far away, and Uncle Mickey promised to teach her how to boogie board this summer.
Uncle Mickey has a new wingman; not a best friend, like Daddy, or a little best friend, like Alina. His name is Henry. Henry is very tall, much taller than Uncle Mickey, and Alina has to tilt her head all the way back to see him. Henry’s name is Dogma, because a dogma is a rule and Henry will follow the rules most of the time. He is not like Uncle Mickey at all.
Alina tells him as much, when Henry asks Alina very nicely where she got her cookie from, because dinner is in an hour and even Henry knows that Mama doesn’t let her eat dessert first. Uncle Mickey did not give it to her, Henry, so much as he helped her up onto the counter so she could reach the cabinets.
Henry flies planes just like Daddy and Uncle Mickey. He has many new stories to tell Alina about all of the missions he went on; he even tells her about the time that Uncle Mickey saved his life. Henry is very cool, and he gives Alina a patch from his squadron that Alina begs Mama to sew onto her jean jacket. Uncle Mickey, not to be outdone, rings up his old buddies from the squadron he and Daddy flew on to get patches for Alina, plus one from his new squadron here in California.
Uncle Mickey jokes that soon, you won’t be able to see any of the denim on Alina’s jacket with how she’s racking up squad patches.
Six months later, she outgrows her jacket. She cries for days when Mama hangs it up in the closet for good.
For Christmas, Uncle Mickey and Uncle Dog—because that’s what he is to her now, Henry who is tall and kind and gives the best hugs—buy her a new jacket, big enough that it’ll last her a few years.
The patches from their respective squads are already sewn onto the shoulders in Uncle Mickey’s unsteady stitches.
“I hate him with a burning passion,” Alina bites into the receiver. “He’s the worst person alive, and one day, his arrogance is going to get us all killed.”
She hasn’t spoken to Uncle Mickey—Longshot—in years. It’s been almost as long since she spoke to Dogma. Orphaned at seventeen twice over, the second by Longshot’s own doing.
But before that, before Longshot burned the bridge and she salted the earth behind him… Alina had patches from every squadron from here to the Mississippi, sewn with care onto her best jean jacket. She had uncles, Longshot’s brothers-in-arms, all around the world. Longshot may not be her family anymore, but aviators take family seriously, and none of them have ever left her hanging.
She’s not stupid. Dogma is climbing his way up through the brass. Longshot is still the most famous pilot alive. She hears their names as often as she imagines their spies (teachers, commanding officers, and any fresh-faced plebe who knows even a smidge of her lineage) pass hers along to them.
Sue her. It’s been a long six months, Texas is hotter than Satan’s ass, and there’s a piece of shit, egotistical, air-headed naval aviator who’s grating on her nerves. She wants a familiar voice to sympathize with her never-ending battle against Alexander Morozova.
“You know, Dogma said the same thing about your uncle when we saw his times in flight school,” Uncle Des says. Alina curls her finger around the telephone cord. She’s long since let the love in her heart fade away, but something about Ensign Morozova makes her want to bite her tongue, crawl back to San Diego with her tail between her legs, and lounge on the overstuffed couch in Uncle Dog’s front room while he and Uncle Mickey poke fun at Ensign Morozova’s absolute dogshit, hotshot idiot manoeuvers.
Of course, Uncle Mickey would probably agree with Morozova. He probably pulled every single bullshit move Morozova has, before Morozova was even born, if the stories Uncle Dog told her about flight school are to be believed.
“Doesn’t make him any less of an ass,” Alina mutters into the phone, and Uncle Des laughs loud enough that her ears are ringing, even through the receiver.
“No, it sure don’t, peanut,” Des says. “You’re gonna fly circles around him, though, ain’t ya?”
“It’s like you don’t even know me,” she rolls her eyes. “He’s been chasing my tail in second place since we got here.”
“That’s my girl,” Des cheers. “When are you finishing up?”
“Three more weeks in Corpus Christi, then they’re packing us off to advanced flight training.”
“You give me a call when you land there, peanut,” Des says. “Dan and I will come down and take you out for dinner. Can’t have my best girl eating nothing but mess hall food.”
“I think that your daughter might have something to say about me being your best girl, old man,” Alina laughs. It’s been so long; she’d forgotten how nice it was to be taken care of.
“Tess thinks you’re the coolest shit since sliced bread, and you know it. Stop hunting for compliments, your ego’s gonna be too big to fit in the cockpit.”
“Now who’s telling tales?”
“It’s absolutely tragic, it is!” Fedyor cries. It’s their last night in preflight indoctrination. Come Monday, they will be shipped off to Texas, just in time for summer. Fedyor’s already packed what must be five metric tons of sunscreen. God love him, he burns like a lobster if the sun even looks his way.
“Teddy,” Alina stumbles towards him with her vodka sprite in hand, “I don’t know what the fuck you mean.”
“I mean, that I am a happily taken man, and my boyfriend is hot as shit, and even I get hot and bothered when you and Morozova go at it.”
“You take that back!” Alina elbows him in the ribs for good measure, careful not to spill any of her drink.
“It’s the worst,” Fedyor moans. “It’s like watching a TV drama will-they-won’t-they, but you can’t turn the TV off because the remote doesn’t exist and there’s no mute button on the TV!” He mimes pushing the off button on an invisible remote, and alright asshole, just for that, Alina’s going to steal his drink and finish it off.
“Hey! I wasn’t done with that!”
“Snooze you lose, aviator,” Alina bites back with a grimace. Bourbon burns on the way down.
Fedyor leans his head against Alina’s shoulder.
“Seriously, though. You should do something about Morozova.”
“Got a shovel?” Alina jokes.
“Ha ha,” he deadpans. “I was thinking more like, ‘jump his bones.’”
Alina stands up abruptly, laughing as Fedyor tries to keep himself seated on the bar stool.
“Why are you standing? Are you leaving?”
“It’s the principle of the thing, Teddy! I will never, mark my words, never, jump Alexander Morozova’s bones. And you can quote me on that!”
“I’m taking down the time and date,” Fedyor says. “You’re going to eat your words.”
Alina slides back onto her stool, and Fedyor latches onto her arm again. He steals a sip of her vodka sprite, and yeah, maybe he has earned it.
“Why do you think Morozova likes me? He hates my guts, Teddy,” Alina lets her head rest on the top of Fedyor’s. She can feel the way his groan echoes through her body as he pulls himself upright to stare at her in the face.
“Tell me you’re not this stupid, Starkov.” He searches her face for some kind of sign, but he must not find it, because he looks up to the heavens instead.
“Oh my God, you really don’t see it, do you?”
“There’s nothing to see, Kaminsky!”
“Jesus Christ, and they let you fly planes! Alina, my love, light of my life, my best friend,” Fedyor grabs her by the shoulders and stares her down. “Alexander Morozova has a crush on you.” She pulls a face, but Fedyor does not give her an inch. “I mean it!”
“Gross! He does not!”
“Yes, he does! Just because he’s acting like an absolute dipshit about it doesn’t make it not true!”
“What?”
Fedyor looks at her like a teacher having to explain a problem to a very stupid child. She’s not sure she appreciates it.
“Alina, he’s just an overgrown schoolboy. He likes you, a lot. Like, he like likes you.”
Alina brushes his hands off her shoulder and drains the rest of her vodka sprite. She signals the bartender for another. There’s not enough alcohol in the world to erase this from her mind, but she’s going to damn well try.
“Now that we’ve established that Morozova is juvenile, which I would like the record to show I already knew because he’s such an immature ass—”
“But that’s the point, Alina! He likes you! He’s just an idiot boy tugging on your metaphorical pigtails to get you to notice him! He wants your attention, but he doesn’t know how to get it besides pissing you off!”
“No, he’s not!”
Fedyor levels her with a glare. “Tell me one time that he’s actually been a dipshit to you where it was because you specifically were a woman, then.”
“Every time I talk to him!”
“No, every time he talks to you, he tries to open with a line about whatever the fuck it is we’re doing today, you snipe at him because you’re a prickly little hedgehog, and then he teases you back. I’m telling you, Starkov, he thinks it’s foreplay.”
And isn’t that just the worst?
Alina groans and lets her head fall forward to the bar.
“I hate you,” she moans.
“No, you don’t,” Fedyor says. “Oh, look! Our drinks are here!”
Alina finishes flight school when she is twenty-five years old. There is a picture of Longshot and Dogma hanging in the hallway of the administrative building, and she flips it off one last time as she tucks her certificate under her arm and tears open the envelope with her orders in it.
She is first in class, no thanks to Alexander fucking Morozova. Everyone knows that he’s taking a posting in the Atlantic fleet, and despite all of her misgivings about staying on the west coast and well within the sphere of Admiral Dogma and his wayward wingman, Alina picked the first posting she could find in the Pacific.
The world isn’t big enough for the two of them, but she will damn well try to make it seem like it is.
It wasn’t always thinly veiled barbs and glares that could petrify a man at fifty paces.
(Once upon a time, it might have been a velvet box, the orange sunset behind them, a house in San Diego filled with life again. Matching pictures on the mantle of two weddings, thirty years apart. A fight between her uncles as to who would walk her down the aisle.
She wanted it so badly, she could taste it. The smoke from the firepit in the backyard that Uncle Mickey set up when she was twelve and toasted marshmallow was her favorite flavor. The coconut-and-aloe scent of sunscreen on the salty summer breeze off the beach. The laundry detergent she still buys because he preferred it, and she didn’t care either way enough to have an opinion.
For a brief moment, she even thought about returning to Pensacola. Morozova would never tread where he had already gone before; his ego would not allow it. But then she would be stuck in Pensacola for the next God knows how long, and she’s had enough of Florida sun for a lifetime.)
Longshot stays away, finally using the brain that God gave him. Five years is not long enough for Alina to have forgiven him, and he damn well knows it. Dogma chances an appearance at the ceremony, but keeps enough distance between them through the crowd that she only has to meet his eyes once. He’s still hurt, but fuck him, because she is too. Uncle Des sends a letter brimming with pride and an original Tess drawing of Alina in her jet. Uncle Josh surprises her by pulling rank and turning up unannounced the following Saturday; he toasts her at a bar he once dragged Jack Starkov out of when they had finished flight school, and then it’s her turn to pour Uncle Josh into the back of an Uber and send him on his way.
Uncle Josh, in all the tales her mother—and Longshot—told her, never could hold his liquor.
Her parents were young and in love. Her favorite story to hear, on all those long nights she spent in the hospital, waiting for death to finally take her mother, was how Jack Starkov bumbled around like an idiot for a full ten months before Ivy Li put him out of his misery the day before he left Annapolis and asked him out herself. Theirs was an epic that made even the mundane seem divine.
Was it too much for Alina to hope that after everything, after the shit hand that the fates dealt her, she could have a love like that? That life could take her father, then her mother, then her uncle, but she could have a love so deep and encompassing, it could wash away any hurt that came before it?
At eighteen, she would have sighed and said it was a pipe dream.
At twenty-three, she would have smiled like the Mona Lisa.
Now, she doesn’t know a damn thing.
Less than two weeks later, she’s on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. She does not have to think about Longshot, Dogma, or Junior Lieutenant Morozova. There is only the sky above her. She is her father’s daughter, and no one can take that away from her.