not doleful

Shove the stick to the left, throwing the X-wing into a sharp roll, and Tycho should feel the pull of the manuever even with the intertial compensator, but there's nothing. The simulators at Milliways are incredibly rudimentary; no simulated motion or even comm chatter. It's not flying. It's playing.

Still, it's as close as it comes to the real thing while Bound, and so Tycho is tucked behind the black curtain of one of the simulators in the recently (poorly) repainted room, determinedly vaping TIE Interceptors.

Tycho doesn't remember entirely. Just fragments, images, sounds.

Graceful rounded edges of a shining white marble building, pink flower petals slowly drifting to the ground, a flash of long brown curls and bright brown eyes and a curve of a smile, laughter-- She's close and her hand is sliding up his side "Keep talking pretty like that, flyboy, and I'll see what I can do" and green eyes hold his until the last possible second, when they're too close and her face shimmers out of focus and mouth comes in-- Running neon orange and silvery-white up ahead and he curses and ducks back behind the relative cover of the wall, blaster bolts flashing past right in front of his face, and wait just "WAIT" dammit! and her cry of pain stops his breath-- The craft is pulling against him, stabilizers gone, astromech shrieking, sweat stinging his eyes as he yanks the stick back as hard as he can, staticky voices buzzing over the comm; he levels out just in time to whip through the cloud of debris that was once Rogue Seven-- Laughter and overlapping voices on the holo "You were right, Tych, i-" "-nd really, she should have slapped him for wh-" "-there're no Ewoks, though; a definite overs-" "-ou say 'yub yub' I'm going to stran-" and then static, and he shouldn't but he sees the explosion, sees his home ripped to pieces, sees the brand new asteroid field floating in the black and this isn't right they weren't there it's not how it went--

A boot to the ribs, another to the face and he's spitting out blood and teeth but he can take a beating and he's snarling up at them and then they're hauling him to his feet unmindful of the broken arm and dislocated shoulder and there are straps and webbing and agony at his temple and there's something not right driving into his head, digging deep into his thoughts and his memories and ripping them all out and the open air burns-- Choking and gasping, every breath a knife in his ribs his chest his head and the hand is flinching and touching the bruises on his face, the huge gash in the side of his head and he shouldn't be here; he tries to tell him to leave before he's found but he can't speak, can't do anything but bleed, and he's torn away and he can't lift his head but he can still see him writhing and screaming--

Boots ringing out on a cold metal floor "I'm so sorry, Colonel; the mission went south" and there's a body on a slab and he can't look but no life now, no green eyes; the face is a black smoking crater, silvery-white hair fanning out on the cold metal table.

Tycho doesn't remember his dreams entirely. But he remembers enough that he's sitting on the edge of the bed now, all of the room's lights blazing. He reaches for the chrono on the bedside table, struggling to control the shaking of his hand. 0320 hours. Great. More than a week it's been now since the nightmares started, and he hasn't had a single night's respite since. He sleeps in snatches when he can; he doesn't think he's had more than two hours of rest in any given 24-hour period.

They've never been this bad before.

Tycho Celchu isn't a man to dwell on the past, consciously or otherwise. He's had his share of nightmares about the past, about the deaths, both real and fictional, of loved ones and friends, but never like this. Never to such a point that he avoids sleep like the dark side, that he wakes up heaving for breath, that he carries a feeling of unease with him all day. He has a general idea of what's causing them: being Bound. Being useless. Worrying over Winter. Missing the squadron. So his subconscious drags up old days, dogfights, nonexistant firefights, Alderaan, Lusankya, highly feasible deaths, and people. His family, old and new; his parents his sisters his brother Nyiestra Winter Wedge Wes Hobbie Gavin Corran Inyri Ooryl all Rogues, past and present.

He digs the heel of his hand hard into red eyes, and he wonders if this is how madness starts.

It was the most ordinary of ordinary days. That was what Tycho Celchu would remember later.

There were no dogfights, no missions, no patrols; not even a meeting with superiors. Just a day of running some sims, mostly for the benefit of the two new pilots, and then calling it quits with the reminder that the Rogues had to report in bright and early the next morning to gear up for an extended tour of duty. They rarely remained on Coruscant for long, and this stay was no exception to the rule.

His pilots had scattered, as fast as possible for the most part, leaving Tycho with a grinning Wes and less-grinning Hobbie, who had persistently invited Tycho to get drinks with them. It had taken some talking on his part to convince them that he really wasn’t going to go, and more to convince them to leave. Then, outside the briefing room, he had been respectfully ambushed by Ooryl, and after the Gand’s concerns had been heard and addressed and he’d been sent on his way, Tycho had gone to his office and filled out forms and all sorts of things for the journey ahead.

All in all, it had been a tiring day of nothingness, and he used that as a feeble excuse to himself when he decided he couldn’t take anymore, uploaded a group of forms to his personal datapad, and left.

It took long enough to brave the horrors of Coruscant traffic that by the time he reached his building, he had planned out exactly what he was going to do—walk in, drop his stuff, take a shower, and fill out the last of the requisitions in the comfort of his own tiny apartment. He took the repulsorlift up to the 52nd floor and gave the door his name, and he told himself that Winter wouldn’t be there, but he felt a pang of disappointment just the same when the door hissed open.

He stood there a moment in the doorway, then lightly shook his head and stepped all the way into the undisturbed apartment. It had been five months since he’d last seen Winter; far too long. But those were the breaks of being involved with her; once an Intel agent, always an Intel agent. And of being a member of the most famous, needed fighter squadron in the New Republic. You know. That too.

Tycho spent a long time in the shower, letting the jets massage muscles that ached after hours cramped up in simulator cockpits. Winter had been asked to take on a top-secret mission by General Cracken himself, which Tycho wasn’t even sure he was allowed to know. If something was important enough to call Winter away from her duties with the Organa-Solo family, it wasn’t going to be resolved easily or quickly; he would just have to accept the fact that Winter wasn’t here.

Tycho threw on fresh clothes and left the steamy fog of the cramped room, and was still toweling his damp hair dry when he sat down on the sofa and flicked on the comm. He fed in the last number that he had been given to contact Winter, and he wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer.

“Hello. I haven’t heard from you in two weeks, so I thought I’d leave you a message.” His mouth opened and closed a few times, and then he smiled faintly, ruefully. “Everything that I think of to ask, you can’t answer. Things are going well with me and I hope you can say the same. We ship out tomorrow; it looks like I’m going to miss you.” He paused again, glancing away for a moment, then looked back. “I love you. Hope to hear from you soon.” He ended the transmission.

It only took a moment of sitting on the sofa, looking pensively around the tiny room, for Tycho to decide that he didn't want to stay in the empty apartment. Mind made up, he picked up his commlink and wallet and slipped them into pockets. He pulled on his favorite jacket, thinking all the while. Maybe he would comm Hobbie and see where he and Wes were, after all.

Tycho stepped into his boots and hit the button to open the apartment door.