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Goose always knew it would end like this.
The war her government was raging against… everything in the known galaxy was as futile as it was relentless, and she had known as soon as she’d returned from her first dive - alone and covered in bug guts and the blood of her fallen comrades - that she was going to die on one of those far off planets.
It didn’t really matter which one, she supposed, but over the years there were a few she’d been to that she put on a list she kept back in her bunk that she wouldn’t mind going back to, wouldn’t mind if one of those were where her body came to rest eternally. It wasn’t that she liked thinking about dying, but it was impossible to avoid when everything about every operation, every mission felt so slapdash, felt poised to put you in harm's way every time you dropped through an atmosphere and essentially crashed on the surface, hoping whatever got crushed beneath you was an enemy and not someone useful to you, someone precious. After a while you just had to start looking the other way, or at the very least finding something else to lay your focus on. And she’d chosen to fixate on what her tomb would look like, and how many times she’d seen it and if it would be somewhere beautiful, in its own alien way. Beautiful in a dangerous, foreign, and lonely sort of way.
So it felt natural that as she lay bleeding out, prone behind an outcropping of rock covered in the namesake red moss of Crimsica in the Draco Sector, Goose tried to remember her list. She tried to remember if she’d scrawled the name of this rocky planet on the scrap of paper she kept taped to her desk, untitled and ever present. The quietly ominous, sacred list of preferred eternal tombs. But everything felt so fuzzy, and her mind felt soft and slippery and it was easier to just close her eyes. She should have known it was going to be the damn bugs. The bots had been harder to fight, of course, more dangerous but she’d known from her first drop that the bugs would be the end of her, eventually. Sooner or later she’d start to underestimate them, and the time - clearly - had come.
Farther away she could hear gunfire and shouts; her fireteam still battling their way towards the extraction zone but not making much headway, if how close they sounded was any indication. She thought, for a brief moment, she heard someone scream something about an orbital and she hoped it wouldn’t drop near her. She’d always hated the idea of dying to an orbital strike; it felt too much like some bad analogy for an angry, vengeful god pointing down on her and saying “fuck this helldiver in particular”. Although maybe she deserved it. Who was to say, anymore?
“Goose! We gotta go, Shrike called in the extraction-“
The familiar voice stopped short and Goose guessed that Partridge could tell she was on her last leg. Good old Partridge; of course it was him that had come looking for her. Of course it was him that found her like this. Despite everything, she chuckled before sucking in a sharp breath. The broken ribs didn’t really allow for laughter, no matter how wry.
Too bad.
She’d had a reputation for always laughing. That’s how she gotten the call sign Goose, a few years back. Partridge had given it to her, when they’d all joined together in a loose, informal squad under a nearly legendary old-timer who went by Shrike. Shrike had always been Shrike, and the others got their nicknames for no good reason other than the old man liked giving bird names to the people he worked with, but she’d earned Goose for herself, after mouthing off to their unofficial leader for the millionth time.
The older man stalked off and returned to his own ship, muttering under his breath. The mission had been a success - barely - and she had refused to let him get down on anyone for the parts that had gone south. No one had been at the top of their game, and they’d all paid for it one way or another and she didn’t think anyone needed to hear his critical commentary when they’d all be licking their wounds and pondering their failure for a few days anyway. So she’d met him blow for blow with snide remarks and needling, petty jokes and Shrike had given up his attempt at a stern debrief before he could come down too hard on them. She’d watched him with a lingering grin that edged on disrespectful as he left; she’d always thought he needed more pushback in his life.
‘You always have a smart ass comment or joke. Can’t you take anything seriously?’ Partridge had said, voice torn between wonder and frustration when he followed her back towards the infirmary. His shoulder was alarmingly dislocated.
‘Why bother?’ She asked, grinning. By that time, she had long since given up on taking anything she was doing seriously. She had long since realized she was never going back to Super Earth, so why not laugh about it? If she wasn’t laughing she would be crying. Or raging. Or numb. And she hated all of those options. So laughter it was.
‘Goose, then. Like a silly goose. That’s a bird we need in this flock.’ Partridge had grinned back at her and the look was so sincere she felt like she was about to burst into tears right then and there. In that moment, she’d known she’d found at least one person worth fighting for. Worth sticking around for. Worth dreaming of home for.
“You should get out of here,” she said, voice shakier than she meant it to be, weaker. She wondered if he’d even hear her over the sounds of battle still rumbling around them. “If Shrike called the extraction it’s time to go.”
“I don’t… I can’t leave you here.” His voice was softer than she’d ever heard it, and that scared her. Gentleness in a Helldiver was reserved for last moments, for goodbyes and partings. For friends dying on a battlefield light years from home. Hearing it from him cemented her reality: she was going to die here.
“You have to. You need to get home.” She winced at her own words. He likely wouldn’t make it home, either. Not the home she wanted him to return to. No; home now was the spartan room on his ship, bare and empty aside from a bed, a dresser, a desk. Maybe a strange rock found planet-side that looked vaguely dog shaped and glittered in the light. Or a piece of shell from the last Charger you’d taken down, iridescent and sharp-edged and a reminder that it was gone too, just like the comrade it had killed. Or, if you were lucky, pictures sent from parents, siblings, lovers; little reminders that there was a Super Earth still turning and lives still being lived that didn’t involve falling from space and getting drenched in bug guts and fired on by sentient robots.
Partridge was lucky. He had a mother and a father and three sisters who still used his given name rooting for him, waiting for him to come back. If anyone deserved to go home, to really go home, it was him. He needed to leave, to have half a chance at it.
“Not without you.” His voice was regaining its usual steadiness, its usual forcefulness and she could feel him turning her a little, and her body was wracked with pain. Goose clamped her mouth shut when she realized the unearthly howl she was hearing was her own voice. Half a moment later she felt a thump against her chest and a sharp sting and a flood of unnatural adrenaline began to seep through her. She was still hurt - bones were still broken, she was still bleeding internally - but she wouldn’t feel it, for a while. She could continue exacerbating her already damning injuries.
“Partch,” she muttered, false strength returning to her voice. “It’s not enough. You gotta go.”
“I fucking told you,” he nearly growled, throwing down his machine gun and lifting her into a standard fireman’s carry. He steadied himself a moment when he rose before drawing his sidearm and he began to move from the cover they’d been in, hauling ass towards what had to be the extraction site. “We aren’t going without you. I’m not going without you.”
She wanted to argue, to tell him to drop her and run because over the comms she could hear Shrike announce that there were ten seconds left until the ship landed, that there was another wave incoming and they couldn’t hold them off longer than a few moments beyond that. She weakly tried to push herself away from the man until she heard Grouse bark back over the comms.
“I see Partridge! He found Goose! We aren’t leaving them.”
When she didn’t hear Shrike command anything in response, she wondered if that was his version of agreement. The adrenaline was beginning to fade from her system already and every jostling step Partridge was taking over the rocky, uneven ground sent new shocks of pain through her. Somewhere behind her she heard the sound of an Eagle swooping in low and half a heartbeat later the heat of a cluster bombing hit her like a wall.
“Too damn close!” Partridge yelled through the comms, his voice ragged.
Goose wasn’t sure but Shrike might have said something in response, something enough to make Partridge move just a little faster, but it was impossible to focus long enough to know exactly what he’d said. The man carrying her stumbled a little and it was enough to send a violent jolt of pain through her entire body. Goose coughed and she could smell the iron tang of blood flooding her respiration system, taste it filling her mouth.
Uh-oh.
Partridge had bought her a little time with that last stim, but it wasn't going to be enough. His luck wasn’t going to extend to her, it seemed. The last things she noticed before slipping into darkness was the feeling of hands pulling her upwards, the familiar smell of the afterburner of the engines on the Pelican, and the distinct sound of its hatch closing and her squad mates calling her name, Partridge the loudest of them all.
—-
“There she is.”
Goose opened her eyes and immediately regretted it. Heaven was too bright, too sterile white, and smelled too much like bleach and antiseptic, sounded too much like Partridge.
No, not heaven. The infirmary.
She closed her eyes again and sighed. Her ribs were still sore but didn’t feel as bad as they had when she’d been dying on the ground on Crimsica, when she’d tried to laugh. All of her ached violently, her limbs heavy and stiff but she didn’t feel as badly as she had… however long ago it had been. Days, probably. A week? She felt like she might live, yet.
“You with us, Goose?”
“Despite my best efforts, it appears that I am.” Her voice was thick with disuse and hitched funny, but it was enough to make the man sitting at her side stand up, maybe a little too quickly, too eagerly. Partridge was always like that. Quick and eager and devoted. She wondered how long he’d been sitting with her still body, watching and waiting.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Like I should have died on Crimsica.”
There was a long pause and Goose opened her eyes again, letting them adjust and focus on the man who was standing beside her. The expression on his face was strange: it was always strange to see her comrade’s bare faces. Sometimes it was easier to not be able to see their expressions, their emotions laid so bare. Now, the look on Partridge’s face was a mix of relief and anger and… anguish? Regret? Grief? Goose looked away. She didn’t want to think about why he might be feeling those things.
“I wasn't going to let that happen.”
“Why not?”
It surprised even her how quiet and bitter she sounded. If her squadmate noticed it, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat down and leaned back in his seat, his hand finding hers. He didn’t hold it, just touched her; bare skin against bare skin and Goose couldn't do anything but focus on the feel of it. She was reminded of one of the times he’d come to her room to talk about some mission, or some operation or rumor or whatever and he’d seen her list for the first time.
“What’s this?” his voice had a tinge of laughter in it, like he was already anticipating the joke that the list must be the punchline to. Goose had smiled wryly, putting on the reverent air she gave whenever anyone asked about it.
“My preferred places to die.” She’d said, matter of fact and as if speaking of a beloved treasure. “If I can’t die on Super Earth, I want to go cold somewhere I at least halfway like. Somewhere pretty .”
Everyone else had laughed at this comment, had gone on to nitpick her choices, had rolled their eyes and moved on with their conversation. Partridge had just stared at her for a long moment, his hand reaching for and touching hers for just a second before he chuckled nervously and moved on, changing the subject. She pretended not to notice every time his eyes fell to the list for the rest of their talk but she couldn’t tear her own thoughts away from the way he’d touched her hand, how gently he’d set his hand on hers before pulling away quickly, as if he’d made a mistake.
Even back then, as they were now, his hands were calloused, like hers, but his touch was still oddly self-aware, as if he knew not to press too hard or hold too tightly. Neither a tether nor a cage. Simply a reminder.
Because Partridge, who’d given Goose her name, who always laughed with her, who had promised to never leave her behind, knew she needed that. He knew she needed to be reminded that someone saw her, was always looking for her, and used her as a focal point. That she was someone else’s reason for fighting, for sticking around, for dreaming of home.
“Because we still need you. I still need you. We still need to go home.” His voice was gentle again, soft in a way that felt final and devastating but it was tinged with something Goose had realized she’d been hearing from him all along. Maybe it was desperation. Maybe it was resolve. Maybe it was hope. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He was handsome when he smiled at her like that. She decided then that she wanted to imagine he was always smiling at her like that, under his helmet. He spoke again as he leaned down and pressed the gentlest, most tentative kiss to her forehead. Her heart rate monitor kicked up a notch, and she was sure the attending nurse would be in soon to assess her.
“Besides, Crimsica wasn’t on your list.”