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Pete Mitchell loves the water.
The beautiful waves crashing onto the yellowish-beige colored sand was something he could look at for hours. It was peaceful, satisfying, and simply calming. Above all that, however, it allowed him to feel like his father was with him.
Being a naval officer was no easy task, especially for ones with family to go back home to. His father, Duke Mitchell, was the best, most amazing naval aviator the United States Navy had ever seen. He could remember when he was able to watch him in his F-4 Phantom before he left for deployment, pulling off maneuvers Pete could only dream of doing. It was the same F-4 Phantom that he was killed in.
Pete remembers the day like it was one of his favorite movie scenes. Not because he enjoyed it, but because he could remember each word and action like it was playing on repeat in his mind for years to come. He was four years old and the only one awake when there was a knock at the door. He answered it to see someone dressed up like his father was when he left on the aircraft carrier months before. The man said he was a Viper, whatever that meant, and that he needed Pete to get his mother for him.
His mother came to the door and froze with a face akin to horror. It took the man only a few words for her to hit the floor sobbing. Pete wanted to cry when he looked up at the man’s face and saw a few tears. He didn’t know why until the man said that his father was never coming home.
He didn’t learn the story until a while later. His father had been shot down over the ocean after trying to flee from a nasty dogfight over the sea. He didn’t learn until much later that that story was a lie.
Pete Mitchell’s life was torn apart that day, and again two years later. His mother took her own life because of the stigma surrounding their family.
Pete Mitchell soon became Maverick. Six years old soon became twenty-four.
Maverick had looked up to his father despite all the folks who called him a traitor or some sort of communist insult. He used the spite festering in his veins since that day twenty years ago to push him toward his goal of being a brilliant naval aviator. He didn’t let it stop him when they denied him from the Naval Academy and he went to NROTC instead. He was the youngest in his newly-formed TOPGUN class of 1986 and considered that an accomplishment.
That “accomplishment” of his was short-lived when he lost his best friend, Goose. It was on a hot day, but Maverick couldn’t feel the heat when he spent what felt like ages treading in freezing-cold water to make sure that Goose’s body could be recovered. So his brother in all but blood could be saved from the disservice of an empty-casket funeral.
He hated it. He hated everything. He hated the absence of his best friend, the tears from Carole, the silence from the usually-cheerful Bradley, the glances his peers gave him when they thought he wasn’t looking. He hated his recklessness, his inability to let himself lose, his refusal to take a hit to his pride, his utter selfishness when it came to the people around him, himself.
He felt like drowning. He wonders if that’s how his mother felt.
Whenever he says the phrase, ‘Talk to me, Goose’, he looks up to the sky because he cannot bear to look down.
He doesn’t go inverted above water anymore because he would have to see the result of his mistakes. It reminds him of Goose’s favorite Polaroid picture.
From that point forward, Maverick felt a disconnect from his childhood. He remembered the fascination that came with Pete Mitchell waving goodbye to his father’s aircraft carrier, hoping to see him soon. Maverick wished he never had to see the water again. Pete Mitchell and Maverick are not the same.
Pete Mitchell loves the water. Maverick hates it just as much as he does himself.