Five Degrees

The ground walked here is a wonder
It ceases never to hunger
And all things nature's given
She takes all things back from the living
I've walked the earth and there are so few here that know
How dark the night and just how cold the wind can blow
I've no more hunger now to see where the road will go
I've no more kept my warmth
Than blood upon the snow.

The sun shone, the birds sang and there weren't many places where they had perfected the secret art of making tea as much as they had in what had once been England.

Even the winds were mild today, but none of that mattered because Fangs Jovic's best friend had just put a knife in his back.

"You're doing fucking what?" He had to speak with a hushed voice, since the streets of New London weren't exactly scarcely populated. It wasn't like he could have anticipated these news when he had taken the call, after all. Rift, on the other side of the secure satellite connection, stayed silent. Fangs could only hear him breathe heavily.

"Fangs Jovic?" A young boy with deep purple skin came up to him, barely sixteen by the looks of him. "Can we take a selfie?" Fangs cringed, but his game face came on. "Sure, kid. Here, let me, my arms are longer. Like this? Great." The kid left, stars in his eyes. Fangs' face slacked again.

"Don't make me repeat myself, man." Rift finally said. Fangs pinched his nose. "Wait a second." He scanned the nearby rooftops, finally settling for a roof terrace down the street. His stomach dropped, then the wooden planks softly creaked under his weight. A quick look around told him whoever lived in this house had no interest in using the pool here right now, and that was enough for him. The crowd's white noise faded to a murmur up here. Much better conditions to have his heart ripped out.

"But why? Think you're not up to the task any more? You're Rift fucking Wal-" but Rift interrupted him.

"No, I'm not!" he shouted. "At least.. not any more." He sounded more defeated than ever before.

The realization dawned on him already, but he still had to ask. "What.. what do you mean?" The world started spinning around Fangs. He had to sit down. A nearby pool lounger helped him out. 

"Black Juggler rejected me today." Rift spat out, his voice equally full of disdain and desperation. "At first I had the techs run diagnostics, you never know, right? But all systems were fully operational, so.."

"So try again. The Conclave can't afford to lose you." After a while, he added: "I can't afford to lose you." It had always been the four of them, always. Even after they split. Always. There was no way in hell Rift just.. dropped out. 

"What the fuck do you think I did? For the last six hours? They only pulled me out three tries after the techs told me the next time would end in a stroke!" Of course. Rift, under all his smooth talking, had always been a pigheaded bastard. 

"Shit, man." Everything seemed slightly off, like the world had been tilted a couple degrees. Fangs faintly remembered the Conclave shrinks telling him that was called dissociation. Maybe it was this step out of himself that helped him understand something terrible about the situation. Fuck, I'm being such an egomaniac about this. 

Softly, he asked: "Who else knows? Inertia, Jeanne? Have you told Neara yet? What about your kids?" He of course knew the answer, but he didn't know how else to be there for his friend. "I.. I don't know how."

That was tough. Rift and Neara had always lead by example, and Fangs knew a lot of their relationship was based on them being among the best in their respective disciplines. 

Silence grew unbearably loud while both of them were searching for words. Breaking it again took all his resolve, but finally Fangs came up with a proposal. "What about going to Cape Town? They've been wanting us for years, but High Command always turned them down. Maybe you can force their hand."

Rift mulled it over for a moment. "I don't think I'm cut out for teaching. I couldn't even.." Now it was on Fangs to interrupt the other pilot. "Don't drag your kids into this. That's different and you know it. For us, work comes first. It is what it is. If you'd had the time then, you'd have gotten it right for sure. And now you will, that's what I'm saying. If you put your all into this, you can become a great teacher, I know it."

"You managed even despite it all. You did the same work and your kids don't hate you." Rift didn't mean it as an accusation, but that didn't stop it from coming out that way. "Yes, and where did that get them? Purged from Conclave records, that's where. Too far, and not the point." Fangs retorted, much too aggressively.  The only one going too far here is me. "Sorry, I'm.. still too worked up."

"No, it's my bad. I shouldn't have mentioned them. This shit is on me, all of it. Your kids got nothing to do with it." In a desperate attempt to keep his friend from spiraling, Fangs hastily asked the first thing that came to his mind. "How are they, anyway? The triplets told me Daphne passed fusion evaluation last week? Congrats!" A desperate noise, more cough than laugh, told him that had been the wrong thing to ask. How do I keep fucking this up? 

"Fuck if I know. It's not like they voluntarily talk to me." I could have seen this coming. "Did you try recently? I mean, really try." Again he knew the answer, but it had to be said. 

"Not really, but Dion watches all my interviews, and it's not like there's anything going on in my life except for that, so what are we supposed to even talk about?" Forebears help me, I'm going to strangle him. "Maybe ask them about theirs? Their lives, I mean? The triplets yapped about Dion spending some time in Middle America, and word is Daphne has a fling with her camera man. And that's just what I know about." 

"No, it's too late for that." Before Fangs could try reigning him in, he continued. "Fuck it, I'm going to Cape Town. You're right. The academy could use my field experience. Gotta move on somehow."

"Wait, just like that? I.. good for you." He's just juggernauting on. If he stops, he'll collapse. Even now. "I'm sure they're gonna welcome you with open arms. Not every day that a member of the Golden Four retires." Rift scoffed. "May it take many more years until the next one." Right, not that that's any of your business any more. Of course, what they both left unspoken was that in all likelihood none of the others would retire. They would find their ends on the battlefield, at the claws of some unnamed Kaiju stronger than them. And Rift was supposed to go down that way too, not old and fat in a bed, smelling slightly of urine. They were warriors meant to live a warrior's lives and die a warrior's death. Which was why none of this made sense. 

But instead of vocalizing any of that, Fangs heard himself calmly say: "I'll tell Jeanne. You call Inertia. They deserve to hear it from us, not on the news. Present them with the plan, they'll accept it. You know how they are." And Rift, devoid of emotion, thanked him and hung up. 

And then Fangs sat there, on this rooftop in downtown New London, surrounded by almost twenty million metas, and felt incredibly alone. He could blink down to the streets again, take a few selfies with a bunch of kids, make their day, finally buy the stupid scallions the boy from Soho had asked for. He deserved them for last night, but right now Fangs didn't feel like facing him again in this state.

Or anyone else, for that matter. Now that he thought about it, he would probably put them on the windowsill for him, maybe a bottle of liquor on top, and then check on the triplets down in Gravesend wharf. They must have fixed up Echidna enough to spin up the simulator by now. 

"Who the fuck.. Fangs Jovic?!" Shit. The inhabitants of the lovely house Fangs had sought refuge on were apparently planning to use the pool after all. Understandable. But he had been too lost navigating the maze in his head to hear them coming. 

"I'm sorry, ma'am. The streets get awfully crowded this time of the day, and I had to catch my breath for a second. I'll be on my way. Have a great evening and enjoy your pool, it looks lovely." Before the other meta could react, Fangs teleported into a bus that was passing by down on the street. A fine warrior I am. He pulled up his hood and looked out the window, and by a small miracle nobody bothered him for the rest of the ride. If he heard his own name one more time today, he would snap.

And that included the cashier of the supermarket he chose. So Fangs, one of the richest metas on the planet, stole a bunch of scallions and a sinfully expensive scotch worth less than half a percent of his monthly income. If he hadn't met Echidna, he might well have become a thief. And a damn good one at that. 

A thought later he was outside the boy's apartment.. Ian, that was his name. Fangs was sorry he wouldn't be seeing him again, but he deserved better than a brooding old man going on ninety with problems too big for this city. 

From Ian's balcony it took him less than a minute to cover the twenty-five kilometers to Gravesend, a distance public transport would have taken the better part of an hour for. As usual, he scared the shit out of the triplets by popping out of thin air. Wave told him something about calibrations and Fizz carefully requested if Fangs would pay for a fancy restaurant dinner for them today, to which he just wordlessly tossed him his credit card. 

And then he was finally alone with the one he didn't need to explain anything to. Echidna's pilot seat embraced him like a lover, and when his hands gripped the joysticks, he stopped fidgeting for the first time since he'd taken Rift's call. Here he was safe. Nobody could reach him here except for the triplets, and Fangs was sure they'd taken off the second Fizz got his hands on his card. Besides being glad about being left alone for the moment, he didn't blame them. They worked hard every day. They deserved something nice for once.

In the comfortable solitude of the pitch black pilot's chamber, Fangs finally felt ready to call Jeanne. One of Echidna's screens came alive, the one he'd normally receive main visual data on. There was no sound, but the pulsating telephone symbol told him his video call was being patched through. Down under, Jeanne's implants let her know a soulmate was calling. 

Jeanne picked up with a howl, and before he could cut to the chase her words already flooded out of her like a waterfall. "Ayooo, Fangs! What's cookin', good lookin'? If you're calling for a little tryst, I'm gonna have to disappoint you. Smelly Smirnoff is already giving me a salty side eye for even taking the call in the middle of the debriefing, but I'm gonna have to change my mind and if you don't put those puppy eyes away!" Typical.

Despite everything, Fangs plainly had to grin. The 'Smelly Smirnoff'' in question was Juri Smirnoff, highly decorated sixer and Jeanne's commanding officer at the Australian Recon Division, and if her debriefs went anything like his own, he was sitting right across from her, with the rest of her troop filling the other seats at the table. How he'd gotten that name was a story Jeanne liked to tell often and in detail, and if Fangs recalled correctly it had something to do with a bar stool, a pair of walking boots and an obscene amount of vodka, notably of a different brand than the one Juri shared his name with. Fangs had briefly served with him at the ARD. He was a good guy, if a little uptight. Which set him up as a good commanding officer, but also as the butt of a lot of the higher ranked Jeanne's jokes. It didn't help that he wasn't technically able to reprimand her without violating rank. 

A pit opened up in his gut when Fangs realized he'd have to rip that beaming smile right off of her face. 

"No tryst, J. I'm not sure the rest of your squad would appreciate you busting your tits out in the middle of the meeting room." Jeanne opened her mouth as if to say she didn't care, but a second look at his face told her she'd better shut up. She'd always been surprisingly insightful, contrary to the image she liked to cultivate. "You might wanna get some privacy for this." 

"Okay." Fangs could faintly hear Juri complain when she simply got up and beelined out of the room, but she just flipped him off. "Suck it, Juri! Better get another two stars before giving me orders!" The moment the door slammed shut behind her, Jeanne's demeanour changed. "So what's the matter, big man?"

Suddenly, Fangs was acutely aware of his own breathing. Very slowly he inhaled, filling his lungs with the air he needed to tell one of his soulmates another one of them had all but died. He told Jeanne everything he knew, which wasn't a lot, and she sat there on a staircase ten thousand miles away and listened, expressionless.

When he was done, she combed her short curls back with her hands, then sighed. "So Inertia was right." Out of all the things she could have said, that wasn't what Fangs expected. Echidna was tightly locked in place at the wharf right now, but somehow his seat and the screen started tilting in front of his eyes. 

"What.. what do you mean?" Fangs didn't like how thin his voice was. "Remember Ottawa last year, how Rift fumbled that one tackle? How he was out of it for the rest of the fight?" Fangs remembered. "Inertia thought it was weird back then already. Rift insisted everything was fine, but they pulled some strings and got his techs to run a few diagnostics. Beginner stuff, not the kind you'd run on established pilots. Turned out his fusion capability was on a steady decline, had been for years. The only explanation was that he'd slowly been losing himself, for god knows what reason. They couldn't exactly send him to a psychologist for it, so they tried talking to him themself. They made some progress, assumed it had something to do with his kids and Neara, but he just wouldn't open up. The boss didn't exactly give up, but if I got it right they at some point figured the best they could do was be there for him. And that's how we got here, apparently." Jeanne spat on the ground. "Tas de merde."

Fangs' vision blurred. "But.. why didn't you tell me? Why didn't anyone fucking tell me!?!?" Jeanne looked at him full of compassion, and he wasn't sure he could take that right now. When she answered, he wished she hadn't, but he couldn't deny the truth in the words. "And what would you have done, big man? Run straight to Neara with it, maybe even to Dion or Daphne. You would have tried to fix it, whatever the price. Inertia was convinced that if there was salvation for Ryan, he would have to find it himself. A forceful push in the right direction would have made him stumble right back to where he was, maybe pushed him over the edge completely. You're like that, and that's a good thing, buddy. We love you for it. But your approach wouldn't have done him any good. Not this time."

There it was. The anger. The immeasurable rage and pain that could only be caused by a loved one betraying him. Ryan had been as good as dead for over a year and he'd had no idea. None. And what was worse was that the others had known, and they've kept it from him like he was a little boy they had to keep the medicine box locked around. How dare they. "I had a fucking right to know, didn't I?" 

"Fangs.." 

"No, just shut the fuck up. I can't fucking believe this. Nine stars, seventy years of service, and you're keeping info as important as this from me? What the fuck? What the actual fucking fuck? And about Rift of all people! I.." 

That was when the realization hit. Jeanne had anticipated this, he could see it in her eyes. I didn't see it. Seventy years of service with him, and I didn't see it. I just assumed.. no, I didn't assume anything. I was way too self absorbed. It was right in front of my eyes the whole time. How long has this been going on? Before we split? I should have seen it. I could have prevented this. It's my fault. It's my fucking fault. 

He was too stunned to speak, didn't even take his hands off the joysticks when the tears quietly started flowing. And then the rest of his body caught up to his eyes, and Fangs Jovic started sobbing uncontrollably. "I'm so sorry."

"You didn't do anything wrong, brother. It's not your fault. We're all in this together, and some things.." Jeanne trailed off for a second. "Some things you can't take off someone else's shoulders. You know that. You know it. Don't beat yourself up." Fangs heard her words, but they carried no meaning. Sure, Jeanne and Inertia were close to him as well. But it was him who had always been closest to Rift. It was his fault, and no amount of consolation could change anything about that. Maybe he would some day forgive himself, but his fault it was. 

Jeanne spent the next few hours with him. She stayed up with him until it was late at night for him and early afternoon for her, even though she had been on a mission all night. They laughed some and cried a lot, and in their own way mourned Rift Walker, the pilot. They still loved Ryan Walker, the meta, but Rift was gone. And clinging to what was left of their little family was all they could do that night.

Every step we're taking from now
Feel the days are passing so quick
I'm feeling timesick
Every curse that is spoken out loud
Is a burden I can't really cope with
Baby I want to quit


Take it from me
Love me when you want
Hold me tightly
You're the only one who cares