~Seven years ago~

"Knight Flight, this is Knight Lead. Keep your heads on a swivel and watch each other's backs. In this soup you're not going to have much warning before the Shivans are on top of us."

He clicks his mike twice in reply, along with the others. Outside the viewscreen of the Perseus fighter, all he can see are red and purple billows of gas like clouds, the faint blue-white glows of the other's engines. Azure eyes flick down to check his scope. Green blips mark the other wingmen around him as he looks, and for just a moment, he sees something else - a flicker of red, there and gone in a moment...

"Knight Lead, this is Beta 2. I just got a flicker on my scope, could be a Shivan fighter, sir."

The response is immediate, terse. "I don't see anything, Beta 2. Can anyone else confirm?"

The other reports are negative, and just as he is about to shake it off, perhaps blaming the flicker on his eyes, he sees it again.

Only not one flicker this time, but several. "Knight Lead, just saw it again. Make the bearing zero-two-eight mark six."

He looks up from the scope just in time to see something else outside, a flash of red drive trails...

Without conscious thought he pushes the throttles up past the stops, the kick of the afterburners as he realizes where they're headed, arming the fighter's primary weapons. His wing leader squawks something to him about getting back in formation as he zooms away, and he cuts the woman off, yelling into the mike. "Knight lead, take evasive...!"

And just then he sees flares of red pulsing towards the place he knows the flight leader to be as he's closing in. Other voices join his, a cacophony of them as they finally realize what?s happening.

The angular, insectoid shapes of the Shivan fighters appear before his eyes as he closes in, as well as the now-crippled form of Knight Lead's fighter, and without thought he flips on the targeting system, taking a bead on the closest fighter and hearing the distinctive triple-beep that indicates his Harpoon missiles have locked.

As fast as thought he squeezes the secondary trigger on the stick, and a pair of missiles streak towards the enemy fighter. There is a flare of red as the missiles hit the shield, followed a millisecond later by a bloom of orange-white light as they warheads explode. The Shivan fighters are tough, all right - he can see the Mara trying to limp away as he draws a bead on the fighter, leading just a bit...

White pulses of light lance out from his fighter as he squeezes the primary trigger, and the enemy fighter, it's shield crippled and already in critical condition, explodes spectacularly as his shots find their mark, smacking into the hull and releasing zero-point energy upon impact, fracturing the armor and finding the small reactor beneath. As he pulls away from the blast zone, he checks his scanner, his thumb touching a button on the stick to target the nearest hostile fighter as he swings around, finding the selected target turning to make another pass on the flight leader's crippled craft.

"Oh, no you don't..." He cuts the engines and pulls hard, then shoves the throttles forward hard, the acceleration driving him into the seat again as he points his nose at the Shivan fighter and pulls the primary trigger again...

It's a thousand times better than the thrill of the fighter. The only thing that would be better would be if he had wings.

Finding himself alone in freefall, the first thing he does is laugh, a sound of pure exhilaration, as he tumbles through the air, his arms and legs flung out spread-eagle as he feels the night air rushing past him. Not even a look around for her as she is gone, no panic, no fear.

Just pure, simple freedom and delight.

On a whim, he curls himself up, tucking his legs and arms as he tumbles in the air, and yet another long, loud laugh is snatched from him by the air rushing past, the sound of a child that's found a toy that's sure to be endlessly entertaining. Turning in the air, he sees the rose-and-lilac form of Dor falling after him, diving towards him, and he turns onto his back, spreading his arms and legs as he lies on his back in mid-air, watching her come after him, heedless of the ground below rushing up to meet them both....

He's still laughing as they fall through the portal together, catching her as she slams into him and holding her tight as they land, rolling, in the soft grass of the glen.

He'd known he wouldn't die, just like all the other times. No fear, of course. When death does come for him, he'll be prepared, but now wasn't the time.

He'd known she wouldn't let him fall to his death. Something in her eyes, a certain softness there, had told him all he'd needed to know. Despite the hard, cold surface, there was warmth beneath.

It was a stomach-twisting rush going through all of that, and one to make anyone else want to run for their life from this girl, with her lavender skin and shimmering burgundy rose hair, her strange eyes, never wanting to be near her again.

But where would be the adventure in that"

As they come to a stop, finally, there is a moment when he's holding her close to him, both entwined with the other, he staring into her eyes, her right back into his, and there is that moment again. That warmth, that softness, something stirring in her that he is certain hasn't been seen in a very long time.

All this, and that too' How could anyone want to hurt this girl, not want to hold her and keep her with them forever" Life would never be a trivial thing with her, not a moment that wasn't an adventure of some kind or another.

Just as that thought crosses his mind, she shoves him away, almost angrily, as she gets to her feet and runs.

For a long moment, all he can do is watch her go, running into the trees, enraptured and bewildered all at once.

For a moment, he wonders if he wasn't just seeing things out of his own imagination, if he was seeing what he wanted to see. Replaying it carefully in his mind, though, it sure hadn't seemed that way. Just as she is about to vanish into the trees, he rolls to his feet and starts after her.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained...right...?

"You want to die, is that it?"

He'd volunteered for a mission surely meant to be suicide, an incursion deep into Shivan space, for the Intelligence branch. The discussion was taking place in his quarters, and his accuser, the willowy, lovely LTJG Amelia Hawthorne, was standing in his doorway, looking utterly furious.

"C'mon, babe. How many opportunities am I going to get like this" How many would anyone get' They said they needed the best, and I wasn't about to say no, not to something like this."

"Don't you 'c'mon, babe' me, Raleigh. That's the same argument you used when they asked you to go looking for that GTI officer that got his @ss in a bind."

"It was not! Well, okay, maybe part of it was, but most of it was because I owed him. He saved my ass when I got in a bind, I owed him."

"Yeah, and both times you were damn near killed! I swear...you're constantly volunteering for missions where you're going to end up dead!"

She was yelling now, her expression both furious and pained. He straightened from prepping his flight equipment and walked over to her, reaching out to take her hands, but she jerked away from him, looking even more angry.

"No! I'm not going to listen to some damn speech about how you have to 'push your limits,' about how you're going to be just fine, about how it all works out in the end! You're going to end up dead one of these times, you can't keep thinking you're invincible or charmed or...whatever the hell it is you think you are!"

He shakes his head, sighing. She didn't understand - it wasn't just the piloting, the thrill of doing things never done before, the rush of adrenaline of the fight.

It was about duty. They'd both chosen this life, they'd both known what might be the outcome one day. She was a pilot too, after all.

If it weren't for the honor involved, if it weren't for the fact that he knew he could survive this mission where another probably wouldn't he wouldn't have volunteered, would gladly give it up.

But he knows differently, that he had been asked because they knew they would get him back, because he didn't want to die. It wasn't about loving something else more than her - it was about doing what he had to do, because no one else could.

"Look, Amelia...I have to do this. I'm not going to let someone else die in my place when I know I can go in and survive where others wouldn't be able to. This one mission, babe."

She'd shaken her head, looking at him. Not sad, but angry. Not hurt, but infuriated. "You go on this mission, Raleigh, and we're through."

He comes across her, and what he sees wipes the smile from his face, the look of someone that has given chase and finally cornered his quarry.

What he sees isn't the look of an angry woman that was upset because he'd chosen to do what he had to do. The girl before him is a wreck, a mass of painful emotions the depth of which he can only guess at. Her arms crossed across her torso, as if trying to hold herself together from falling apart.

If he'd seen that expression on Amelia's face, all those years ago, he might have told the GTI to find someone else to go in his place.

Despite the intensity of pain, of anger and hatred on her face, he doesn't stop, doesn't bother to keep his distance. Instead, he walks over to her, before she can run again, before she can try to flit out of his sight with that strange power of hers.

Strong arms wrap around her to pull her close in against him, a warm embrace meant to do nothing more than hold her together in a way that she might not be able to accomplish herself, unable to understand who could have ever left this woman behind for another pursuit. His eyes meet hers as he holds her close, hands moving over her back with slow, tender smoothness as he simply waits to see if she's going to try to run again.