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Mav wasn’t sure what he was expecting. When Ice first told him he wanted to introduce him to his mom, he’d been apprehensive. One more person to keep the secret. Besides, how would she react? He’d seen more than one parent freak when they found out their kid was queer. It usually resulted in him getting booted to a new foster home. And the threat of discharge hangs ever-present over both their heads. Ice had just grinned, that hidden little smile Mav still hasn’t figured out how to decipher in all their time together. He’d said “Secrets are one of Mama’s specialties.” And that had been it; Pete Mitchell was going to meet the Iceman’s mom.
It would help if he knew more about her. The one call he’d overheard on the sat-phone had been entirely in Greek. He hadn’t known that’s what it was, he’d had to ask.
“Yiayia came over with my grandfather, after the war. Ma helps me keep it up.”
He got her name off Iceman’s mail. The return address is for one Ms. A. Trevor. Annie. They had a fight about it. Miss Annie Trevor sounds like exactly the kind of woman a future Admiral would marry; bland enough to be unassuming, pretty enough to garner envy, hosts a good table, that sort of thing.
‘Annie’ is short for ‘Antiope’.
The night after their fight, after Ice has stormed out of their shared assignment to cool off, and Mav went to bed alone. Later, in the dark of their bedroom, Pete had told Tom that none of his mother's lullaby’s were in English. But he remembers every word. Tom speaks Russian in his sleep, sometimes, when he’s truly exhausted. He signs all his letters home ‘Toma’.
He knows Tom's father died recently, just before they all went to Top Gun.
Tom’s dog tags say he’s Jewish. But Pete’s say he’s Catholic, and he hasn’t seen the inside of a church since his mother died, so that could mean anything.
It does make Pete hold onto him just a little tighter some nights. When the flurry of “off colour” type jokes that get flung around a navy carrier stray too close to home. Ice never reacts. Slider’s knuckles crack audibly. Maverick finds his hands fisting on top of the mess tables. Iceman never reacts. Sometimes, Maverick remembers the sound of his voice, calling for help over the Indian Ocean, and he wonders if Tom ever doubted - in the back of his mind, just for a second - if they’d bother to send anyone at all. If he thinks about what would happen to him if he ever got captured, if he and Slider get shot out of the wrong patch of sky. If it terrifies him the way it frightens Pete. Ice doesn’t seem to dwell on it, so Mav wont either. He doesn’t want to talk about it. At least, not with him. This isn’t the kind of thing that would get better if Pete forced the conversation. So he lets it go.
Tom’s mother lives in D.C. They have to take a commercial flight across the country. Tom wants to surprise her. Pete isn’t sure that’s such a great idea. Even if his mom is magically fine with her son’s… lifestyle, Pete still isn’t the picture of what most parents want for their kids. He doesn’t want to see that look of disappointment again. Not when Ice means this much to him, and her approval clearly means so much to Ice. They grip the armrests from coast to coast and pretend desperately that they don’t wish they could just hold each other’s hands. Neither of them do well out of the cockpit. There’s a car in long term storage near the airport. Tom drives. He promises Pete a day trip out to the Bradshaw’s in Virginia, teases him about not having a license himself. His smile is warm. It soaks into Pete’s stomach and fizzes up his spine.
The house they drive up to is an old stone number. Modestly sized for the street, but clearly just as old and expensive. Wisteria climbs the façade, just coming into bloom. He knew Tom came from money, he’d even guessed it was old money. The reality is still hard to contend with. Tom slings both their bags over his shoulder. Charmer.
“Come on, she’ll be out back, this time of day.” He bounds up the steps like a boy, excited to be home from school. The door is flung open with a jangle of keys and Tom strides inside shouting “MA!” Pete follows. The interior is cool, a stark contrast to the muggy haze of late spring lingering outside. Everything is painted in shades of blue. He drifts after Tom through the entryway and into a cool-toned sitting room. The gauzy curtains in front of the tall bay windows are enough cover for Ice to reach out his free hand to Pete.
From the garden, through the wide open French doors at the back of the house, wafting in with the heavy scent of summer flowers, a distinctly feminine voice shouts “Tommy?” Their bags thunk to the floor. He expects to see Ice rush out towards the speaker, for him to come back arm in arm with a warm, matronly woman, probably somewhere in her fifties. The figure who comes running into the house and wraps her arms around Ice, cannot be more than thirty at the very most, she honestly looks closer to twenty five. They hug like drowning people, like they haven’t seen each other in decades. Pete shuffles his feet and waits for Tom to introduce them. He never mentioned a sister.
Eventually they draw apart. The woman holds Tom by the shoulders and eyes him critically. ”Let me look at you.” She cups his face “You look tired.” Her thumb moves gently over his cheek, she says something in Greek and kisses his forehead. Red blooms on Tom’s cheeks. Iceman never blushes. He mumbles something that sounds like ‘Mama’. It might be her name; maybe Mona, or Mina? Pete wishes he’d asked, wishes he’d known to ask when she turns to him and says “You must be Pete!” she sticks out a hand. Pete shakes it. He has some manners after all. “Yes ma’am.” Her grip is firm.
“Oh no dear, no formality in this house, you call me Annie!” Pete’s lost again. He thought Annie was Tom’s mother’s name? one eyebrow ticks up in the face of his obvious confusion.
“Thomas Jacob” she turns back to Ice “You haven’t told him?” the red on Ice’s face deepens. He shrugs.
“I thought it would be easier to explain if he met you.”
“All right then Tommy,” she lets go of his hand, reaches for Ice’s arm, “introduce us properly.” Tom’s feet drag as she pulls him between them. Their eyes meet. He’s never seen Tom this hesitant about anything.
“Pete” his hand twitches towards him, but he doesn’t reach out. “this is my mother, Antiope Trevor.” He turns to stare her down, “Mama, this is Peter Mitchell” he takes Pete’s hand again “my wingman.”
“It’s very nice to meet you Peter” the impossibly young woman grins at him, “Tommy’s told me a lot about you” her eyes cut sideways, “I’ve never seen him so in love.”
“Ma!” Ice looks scandalised, her grin is sharp.
Pete is still stuck on the part where this woman is his mother. It’s impossible. She’s their age. He’s waiting for a punchline, for the two to dissolve into laughter and for one of them to go get the real Annie Trevor. Or to tell him Ice’s mother obviously wouldn’t want to meet with someone so unsuitable for her son. Pete is uncomfortably conscious that his scuffed boots, and his leather jacket don’t fit in this pretty living room, in this pretty house, on this pretty street. He feels Ice squeeze his hand at a distance.
“Mav? Pete?” Blue eyes fill his vision. Tom puts a hand on the back of his neck, fingers shifting nervously through the ends of his hair. His impossibly young mother is looking at him with concern over Tom’s shoulder. “Baby, you okay?” Ice has never called him that in the daytime before. There’s a tremor in his voice, so slight you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know what to look for, if you didn’t know Tom Kazansky like Pete did.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
Iceman didn’t like pranks. When asked, he’d say it was because of the safety risks if a prank war escalated. Pete hated pranks with all the anxiety of the hunted. Tom was one of the few people he knew who understood that fear. Tom sighs. It’s a heavy sound.
“No, Pete. It’s not. I promise.”
He is pulled towards to sturdy white mantlepiece, with a series of picture frames balanced across its length. Most common are a pair of women, one with dark hair, one blonde. Annie. Their cheeks dimple the same way Ice’s do when he smiles at Mav, the warm, fond, one that only comes out when he really means it. There’s a series of pictures of the dark haired woman with a stout redhead. One in black and white, both women in long conservative dresses. The taller one is holding a baby on one hip. One is clearly a 1920’s themed costume party. There’s a washed out photograph of the two of them across from the statue of liberty. It must be about 20 years old, they’re both in the kind of puffy 50’s dresses he remembers seeing in his mom’s old magazines. The stout woman is noticeably older. There are lines all over her face, and her hair has gone grey. The taller, darker woman is unchanged. Near the centre, there’s a photo of Annie and a middle aged man with a baby. She’s holding the kid up to the camera. He’s got her long braid clenched in one chubby fist. She’s wearing the same kind of round-collared shirt he remembers his own mother wearing. Baby Ice, it’s adorable. The man, Tom’s father, looks ancient in the photo of the three of them, taken at Tom’s graduation from Annapolis. There’s a photo of Annie and the same man again, decades younger, standing stiff and official in front of a huge brutalist building. He glances between the mantlepiece and the real life woman in the living room. She looks exactly the same now, standing in front of him, as she does in the photos, with baby Ice standing on her knees, with teenage Ice in his uniform.
It would take a lot of effort to fake up this many photos.
There’s one on the end, Ice points to it with their linked hands, it’s worn, faded more than the others, sepia tone. A man in a military uniform Pete doesn’t quite recognise stands in front of a WWI era single-seater aircraft.
“That’s my grandfather. Steve Trevor. He was a recon pilot and a spy in World War One.” There’s a reverence in Ice’s voice Pete’s never heard before. “This is the only picture we have. He’s why I wanted to be a pilot.”
Annie snorts. “Ironic, then that he was a spy.”
Tom grins “Well, I also wanted to keep up with you.”
Annie’s expression melts into fondness. This is an old argument. “I think you far outpace me by now, my dove.”
Maverick is still stuck, staring back and forth between the photographs, and the woman in them. Unchanged by what must be decades of time. He scans the pictures on the mantlepiece again. Annie does not seem offended when he stares at her, searching her face for any sign that the passage of time has even touched her.
“Pete?” Tom is still holding his hand. His expression is unfamiliar, something small and hesitant. It’s such an un-Iceman expression, like it doesn’t rightly fit on his face. Pete struggles to say something to make that awful uncertainty go away. The concept of words, any at all, anything he could string together in a sentence, have flown out of his brain. They stick in his throat.
“I… uh… What?” is about all he manages. Annie sighs.
“How familiar are you with the myth of the Amazons, Pete?”
The non-sequitur knocks his brain back into gear.
He hadn’t known a lot of Greek myths, before he met Ice. The subject had just never caught his attention. None of his foster homes had really been the sort of places to keep piles of books kicking around, and his goal had always been the Navy. Even after the academy rejected him, he’d been more focussed on mechanics and engineering, knowledge that would help him fly. Ice had started telling him the stories. Late at night. On the carriers where there was nothing to do and too many people around for what they really wanted. In their assignments, when Mav woke up from a nightmare whimpering Goose’s name. He hadn’t told Ice about the stories he knew. Ice’s stories were all from his mother, every single one was a memory of young Tom being lulled to sleep with tales of adventures and heroes and gods. Pete had stumbled on his stories one unassuming fall day in the bowels of the college library. So deep in the stacks you had to check around every corner for errant young lovers. He’d recognised the name on one of the spines: Oisín. That’s his name. His middle name. It tripped a memory in the back of his mind, the dark of a child’s bedroom, soft fingers in his hair, coloured in his mother’s gentle lilt. Oh-sheen. Pete had almost forgotten what she sounded like. What he’d sounded like, before she died. He’d taken the book down and read it cover to cover. Then he’d read everything else on the shelf. And now he knew about Cú Chulainn, and Queen Medb, and the Sidhe. And he’d wanted so badly to hear her voice again, just for that moment, his chest had ached so fiercely he thought he might be sick. A couple searching for privacy had found him, what felt like an eternity later, sitting at the foot of the stacks.
“Amazons?” Annie nods. “They’re warrior women, right?” she nods again. He doesn’t follow. Ice’s arm comes around his waist, gentle, like he is after Pete’s had a nightmare. No, not gentle. Hesitant.
“Not so mythical.” He murmurs against Pete’s hair.
He looks again, between Tom’s mother, here and real and alive, and the photos. Decades of life. Most of the history of this century has been captured on this one unassuming mantlepiece. The lives of two women, mother and daughter, both frozen in time.
“So… you’re, what, like a goddess or something?” Annie laughs, but her smile is soft.
“Not me, no. My mother…” she shrugs “maybe, we’re not really sure.” Oh. Some part of him. Most parts. Still hadn’t thought she was serious.
Silence descends over the little living room. A cavernous space waiting empty for his response. His mouth opens. No sound. He can feel his throat constricting, dry, while he struggles. He nods
“Okay” he forces out, “Okay.”
Tom’s arm tightens around his waist, his relieved sigh ruffles Pete’s hair.