Archive of Our Own

It was a duel for the soul of the nation, after all. The survivors on the ground watched as Crimson 1 fought his archnemesis in a vicious dogfight, the man who had taken everything from him… Hitman 1, known to most as the Crown. Monarch.

He had to kill Monarch.

He carried the name of a king, but he ruled over ashes. Cascadia, Crimson 1's home, was in ruins because of him. The war was lost because of him. Crimson Squadron was annihilated, the Federation was on the brink, and Crimson 1 had lost his place as the world's greatest pilot, all because of a mute mercenary. Mercenaries, the absolute scum of the Earth. Worse than wild dogs. At least dogs could be made useful.

All that Monarch could do was destroy.

But now, behind the controls of the stolen PW-Mk. I, Crimson was unstoppable. With its formidable armament, he disabled or destroyed dozens upon dozens of aircraft, ground vehicles, and static installations… anything with an IFF tag, within seconds. Then the cordium bombs detonated, plunging the city and its surrounding environment into the rising geothermal lava. Gold and orange lightning struck at varying intervals with terrible force. The geothermal storms of the Second Calamity knew no rivals besides those that happened during and before the Long Cold. Nothing since could compare.

All for an arena, an opportunity to duel in spite of it all. No wingmen, no distractions, no war. Only a test to see who the best pilot in the world truly was. Their duel above the scorched capital city was a terrible dance of flame and gunpowder and missile propellant. Witnesses said they were setting the sky on fire.

He had to kill Monarch.

Crimson 1 was no stranger to fighting mercenaries like this. Not only had he destroyed every actionable air unit in the region, he had fought the Signatures in Oceania when no one else could or would. He had fought a thousand different battles in a thousand different places and lived to tell the tale.

But Crimson 1 was losing.

The PW-Mk I was a powerful plane, but an unstable one. The ground crews and ATC had told him as much when he sped off in it. It didn't matter then, but now that all of the safeties were off and every weapon was active, the cordium containment systems were starting to struggle. The aircraft's two cordium engines glowed hot like their counterparts in the lava below, and Crimson was feeling the heat.

He had to kill Monarch.

He lined up for a pass. Monarch was approaching head-on. He locked on as Monarch popped his flares. He squeezed the trigger and let out a burst that hit Monarch's plane but did not destroy it.

A missile collided as Monarch zipped past, the sonic boom shaking the PW-Mk I. Crimson's head rattled. A hundred-string symphony made mincemeat of his neurons as the Mk I's auto-stabilizer attempted to steady his course again. The console flashed red and the radar had been knocked out.

But Crimson did not know that. He was still reeling from the strike.

He opened his eyes to see something entirely different. He knew in that moment that he was in Cascadia again, in his hometown. The sea was a ways off and the sun was low in the sky. Seagulls sang in the dying light as they prepared to head home to their nests for the day.

In front of him was Monarch. Crimson never knew what the mute merc looked like without the mask, and he still didn't. Both he and Monarch were wearing their full flight suits, tinted helmets included.

Monarch was holding his hand.

"Monarch," Crimson said without thinking. "I will marry you so completely… the world will turn over a thousand times before my love wanes. You, solely, are responsible for this."

They turned, the two of them, and entered a chapel. The Dust Mother's emblem hung over the room, which was filled with rows and rows of people they knew. People Crimson had never met before but somehow recognized anyway.

As they went, the people applauded. On the left side of the chapel were Monarch's guests. On the right side were Crimson's. Every one of his late wingmen was there. His old instructor at the air academy, Loulow, was there. Squadron leaders from Oceania were there. The reservist squadron that had saved him in Magadan, K-9, was there, along with their unamused AWACS, Vita. Even Steel Squadron and the Khan were present.

Monarch's side was an interesting collection. Most of them were Cascadian. Crimson knew some of them from the academy. He wondered if he and Monarch had attended together somehow. Stardust, and Kaiser, and the other Assassin were there. The Cariburn pair, and all of Gunsel Squadron, and the Circus crews and ground troops who perished. Ronin was there. Somehow all of them just seemed to fit in that place. Even Wild Boar Actual, General Elizabeth, was in attendance.

At the altar were a handful of others. On Monarch's side were his wingmen, Comic and Diplomat, and his "best man" was his weapons systems officer, Prez. On Crimson's side were Crimsons Five and Seven, the only two to have survived the Bering Strait with him.

And in the center of them was the ever-lovely AWACS Galaxy, holding some kind of text in his hands.

Monarch and Crimson stepped up to the altar as the band finished their tune (it was the Federation Air Academy Marching Band. He hadn't heard them in decades.) They faced one another, both hands in the other's, with Galaxy between them.

Crimson's heart raced as Galaxy spoke.

"Do you, Monarch, take Crimson One to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

Monarch nodded.

"And do you, Crimson One, take Monarch to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I do," Crimson said.

"Then I pronounce you eternal wingmen! You may crash helmets!"

Crimson and Monarch grabbed ahold of one another and pulled with great force. Their helmets met with a crash, and had they not each been clinging to the other, the recoil would have sent them both to the floor. They steadied themselves and the chapel cheered. Crimson's heart soared and he felt he might collapse at any second.

They danced not long after.

The band struck up Cascadian folk songs for the occasion, and everyone was in a wonderful mood. The dead danced with the living, and the souls of hundreds glowed brightly. A Federation reservist commander spoke to a Cascadian naval captain, and an apology was exchanged from one for having killed the other. Stardust, who had been made a part of Assassin Squadron for the final mission, shared a friendly dance with Kaiser, much to the joy of Assassin Two, who had seen this coming ever since the two first argued. Diplomat and Comic were completely ensconced in one another's embrace and they flowed like water as they went. Of course, they stepped on one another's feet at every opportunity, because Hitman 2 and 3 could only go so long without inconsquential little slights like that.

And in the center of them all, Crimson and Monarch were together. They seemed to cast smoke and light in all direction as they went, entwined and inseparable. They were experts by now, despite neither of them having been particularly good at dance. It was an optional class at the Air Academy, after all, and why waste time on foot dancing when the dance of combat was so much more productive?

But Crimson understood now. There was something truly special about being perfectly in sync with your equal, with someone who you shared a mutual understanding with that was unmatched by any other, that could not possibly be replicated or understood. It was beyond words, the way they felt. The sun cast its orange beams through the windows of the chapel and the band played on. Crimson's lips parted and he laughed, keeping balance only because Monarch kept him upright. He was good at that. Monarch understood their dance very well.

And so they danced. If Monarch spoke, Crimson missed it. His joy was unmatched and would never be topped by any other experience. He felt, in a way, that he'd been sick his whole life and just found the cure.

Monarch, his equal, and his alone. His now and forever. The band was loud, and the crowd were loving spectators. Through the window, there were flashes as they passed. The sun was shining and they were dancing in its light.

Crimson was warm. There were flashes of orange light and the deep hum of cannon fire. Monarch slipped out of his arms and all of a sudden he hated the warmth he was feeling. The daydream was dead, ripped away from him.

"No… no, not yet!" he said. The dream ended too soon. He had been knocked out of it by the crash of a missile, that was what it was. The consoles of the PW-Mk I warned of impending disaster. The life support systems were failing. Oxygen was pumping irregularly and the air conditioning was a thing of the past. The engines were maxxed out and every weapon was at full. Icarus Armories did not intend to ship the plane with the ability to use every weapon at once. It was too dangerous.

Monarch had snapped him out of the dream with a missile.

"God damn it!"

He pushed the throttle forward. The onboard scanner system warned him that the Crown was active in the AO. He pulled the trigger and the Mk I's guns whirred, but they missed Monarch's plane by hundreds of feet.

"Come on, I've almost got him!"

Another missile struck the Mk I. Crimson was rattled again, and he hoped with all of his heart that he would return to the dream, to Monarch's warm embrace, to the chapel and the dance.

No such relief came. He was here, in a flying, overloading cordium reactor, over the ruins of a city he had destroyed for the opportunity to kill Monarch alone. Too late to save the war. He tried and tried and the dream did not return.

He panted and screamed.

He wanted it back. He wanted it back more than anything. Even in death. As long as it was there. As long as he could go back. He placed the Mk I's sights on Monarch again and fired, and missed. The burst missiles fired as well without his ordering them to, and they all missed, of course. Monarch weaved through them like a butterfly through blades of tall grass, effortless and majestic as he went.

Monarch's plane kept going past, and gained speed as Crimson attempted to adjust his position. The maneuvering thrusters on the Mk I were tossing a coin every time he made an input as to whether they would fire or not. He saw that Monarch was turning at last and preparing for a gun run.

"Come on, come in for that kill, you dog!" Crimson hissed. He lined up his sights on Monarch again and fired three bursts with the railgun. He must have hit at least one, but it didn't matter much. Another missile struck the Mk I and more alerts went up on the screen.

"God damn!" he shouted, or rather, tried to shout. The oxygen supply wasn't working right, and he coughed into his mask.

The PW-Mk I was giving out on him, and the temperature was rising. He sweated through the flight suit, and tried and failed again to get a bead on Monarch. The Crown was too nimble, too enduring, too deadly. Inevitable as the setting sun. Another missile struck. Then another, and another.

And eventually it was too much. The Mk I's consoles went dark, and the cordium engines began melting through the airframe. They hit the ammunition dumps, one at a time, but the IC engineers had at least kept the pilot safe. For a while, anyway. All that work was for nothing as the Mk I locked into maneuvers and veered upward.

"Monarch…"

Crimson spoke his final words.

"When you hear the thunder…"

He listened unconsciously for the music. For the tapping of feet on the chapel's wooden floor, for the cheering, for anything at all besides the horrible buzzing of the melting cordium engines and the deafening booms of the ammunition racks.

"When the storm comes for you…"

In his mind's eye he saw them together again. It wasn't what he'd wanted entirely but it was a momentary reprieve. He hoped that if this was truly it, then that feeling he'd had in Monarch's arms would echo on into eternity even as his body was disintegrated.

"…remember me."

The PW-Mk I's engines at last melted down completely and exploded. Crimson 1 was destroyed instantly, along with the airframe and whatever ammunition was left. An orange fireball hung over Presidia, reflecting in the eyes of the survivors. Reflecting in a pair of eyes beneath a tinted flight helmet.

Monarch circled the blast once, then twice, for any trace of a parachute. For a body. For anything but glowing-hot cordium fuel remnants or the sparse shavings of aluminium and steel debris.

Nothing remained. He had won the duel. The dance was over and the crowd was silent. The band was absent. No one would be able to reach him, and it wasn't quite clear where he should go from here. Presidia was burning and Crimson 1 was dead. Monarch was alone.

In fifty years or so, there was to be another dance.