automatic stop, bradley bradshaw

fifty.

FOLLOWING THE FUNERAL, ALL SKYE WANTED TO DO WAS TAKE A NEVER ENDING BREAK. unfortunately for her, the uranium enrichment site was somehow speeding up its progress. it would now be operable much before any of the pilots and admirals had expected, resulting in their training getting pushed up regardless of where they currently stood. 

skye had, truthfully, been dreading the day that she would have to go back into her jet. for the first time in her life, flying didn't seem like the dream she'd chased for so long. it felt wrong to fly when ice was dead, and when her backseater had just lost her father. 

honestly, skye didn't think that she would be able to fly if maverick had died. her father was the reason she flew. as much as she wanted to say that she enlisted just out of her love for aviation, it wouldn't be fair not to think about maverick. if it weren't for him, she wouldn't have had a love for aviation in the first place. 

losing him, skye thought, would be the deepest pain in the world. even deeper, somehow, than the ache of rooster's rejection, and of him avoiding her. her father was her only family other than katia, and he had always been everything to her.

that was why skye had encouraged katia not to fly the mission.

every single admiral at the base had done the same, only for katia to respond with the same stubborn disagreement. she reasoned that she'd been training for the mission.. she was going to fly it. the admirals disagreed, saying that she was a capable aviator, yet even the best needed a break. not katia.

katia would do absolutely anything to get skye to fly the mission, that much everyone knew. the both of them only wanted the other to be able to succeed; only wanted the other to get everything and more. that was why the admirals had then referred to skye, hoping she could talk some sense into her best friend and wso.

"kat, it isn't a joke." she'd said. "you deserve time to rest, to think. this mission is going to be stressful, and i don't think you need that on your plate right now-"

"would it be too stressful for you?" katia countered. "if you're fit to go on this flight, so am i."

it was true, of course, that neither of them would fly without the other. in skye asking katia not to fly, she was silently telling her that she, too, would not fly the mission. but they were both too determined, and had both worked too hard. they wanted to fly together. 

katia had been stubborn enough, of course, to somehow convince the admirals that she did deserve to go on the flight. the loophole and workaround for all of this was that katia wasn't going to be in the pilot seat. 

with skye in control of most, if not all, of the maneuvers of the plane and of the throttle, it wasn't near as worrisome to think about katia in the back seat. her job in the mission was simply to align her laser with the target, which she immediately insisted she could do in her sleep.

it was a reluctant agreement from the admirals, but it boosted both skye and katia's hopes significantly. maverick still hadn't revealed which of the pilots would actually be going on the mission, and the two women now seemed more likely to be a part of the lucky six.

"wonder who will be team leader." skye had wondered aloud as she and katia were walking out of the admirals office. 

katia shrugged her shoulders, her gaze catching at the photos on the wall. "you know one of them's gonna kill the other, right?" she asked, watching as skye sent her a confused glance. "rooster and hangman. either over you or over team leader.. they're gonna end up tearing each other apart."

skye shook her head. "they're big boys, they'll get over it." she thought for a moment, letting the blonde's words sink in. "it isn't like they have anything to kill each other for over me, anyway."