After the successful mission in "Top Gun: Maverick", Rooster and Hangman come to terms with their rivalry, while concurrently dealing with their individual pasts. Maverick continues to wrestle with his own past and attempts to build his future away...
Hangman stared at the walls of his cell, the bars in the window, the stinking toilet that didn't flush properly. He didn't like having to do his business in front of people. His body didn't like it either. This wasn't how political prisoners were treated in the United States, he thought. Not that he knew, but it's what he guessed. If that was what he was. All he knew was that he was a prisoner. There wasn't anybody to speak with here, no one spoke English, or they pretended not to. They didn't speak Spanish, or he could have gotten by. The food was terrible. He was sure it was the leftovers from what the soldiers ate, but only after it was sitting out for a few days. It was bad enough to make him miss the food in the mess hall on the Naval carrier ship.
At least they weren't torturing him. Not in actuality, although there was the constant suggestion that they might. When they brought him here with a hood over his face, half dragging him as he stumbled over uneven and unseen ground, the sound of a tazor sparked in sharp cracks near his hooded ear. They had been shouting at him in a language he didn't understand, and he didn't know how or if he should respond to the shouting. There was the baton they held when they approached him, knocking his knees out from under him when he didn't understand that they wanted him to kneel. Then when they took the hood off, one of the soldiers landed a punch right into his solar plexus. Even though he was ready for it, it knocked the wind out of him, left him gasping. He had fallen to the ground, trying to get some air into his lungs, when he was roughly jerked upright. The other soldiers had to hold that soldier back to keep him from doing more. He realized that the soldier had waited until he could see, so that Hangman would know who had punched him. It was a revenge of sorts.
He thought about the events that led to him being here. He had shot down one of fighter planes that had been trying to target him, and that shot was dead on. He didn't see any signs that the pilot had ejected, the missile hit the body of the plane, and there was no parachute in the sky. But there were other bogies in the air, and his team was fully engaged, so he might have missed it. He had flown as well as he could, which was pretty damn good. Perhaps he could have done that last maneuver better, or he could have done a Rooster move. But in reality, it wasn't that he had done something wrong that got him in this position. He and Rooster had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of ground-to-air missiles.
He didn't know what had happened to Rooster. All he knew was that Rooster's voice on the com had cut out abruptly in the middle of a word, shortly before Hangman himself had been shot down. He had seen the black cloud, the remains of a big explosion in the sky, and the location could only have been Rooster. He hadn't seen if there was a parachute coming down, and the thought that something may have happened to Rooster made his stomach churn. He reminded himself that he didn't know anything at this point and tried not to think about it too much.
He had been in this prison for more than four days. They didn't give him the option for a shower, and he smelled like it. He hated that. But then, everyone here smelled like that, so it wasn't any different. He sat on the bed and tried to commit to memory everything around him, every detail, in case he would need it later. But there wasn't much to remember, and nothing to identify. He could be anywhere in this country. There was nothing to tell him where he was.
So he just sat on the hard bed and tried to meditate. He imagined he was sitting in meditation with Rooster, like he had done so many times before. That thought was enough to shake him out of the meditative state, and he would have been shaken up, if he wasn't well practiced in having firm control on his emotions. But he couldn't help but imagine that he was in bed with Rooster, cuddled up against Rooster's warm lean body, with Rooster's gentle touch and kisses that told him just how much he was valued. It was even better when that gentle touch and those kisses became more forceful, and he became breathless with the attention Rooster paid to every inch of his body.
He tried to force himself back to meditative mind, but of course that was counterproductive. Meditation wasn't about forcing something. Instead, he had to let it all go. Let it go. Let go of fear. Let go of discomfort. Let go of pleasure. Let go of thoughts. Let it all go. Like wisps of smoke, let those thoughts go. Recognize them, and watch them drift off. He'd heard of people who had been prisoners for years. Or were held until they were killed.
Oops, thinking again. Let it go. Worry? Let it go.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Follow the breath.
Wouldn't they have killed him already if they were going to? Maybe they were holding him for a trade. At least he was still alive.
Damn, thinking again. Let go of thoughts. Let them drift away.
Drift away...
Drift...
Then he was up in the clouds, his thoughts drifting off like the clouds around him. He let them go. All that was left was clear blue sky. It was like flying. He let himself dissolve into nothingness.
When suddenly he felt Rooster's touch. No, not his physical touch, not like Rooster's fingers on his skin, but the touch of his eyes. Like when Rooster was looking at him from across the dinner table. Or when he was in the debriefing room, and he could feel Rooster's eyes on the back of his neck, behind his ear, like the touch of a kiss, but without the tickle of Rooster's mustache.
And then, it was like when they were flying together, when Rooster was leading and Hangman was wingman, when it felt like they were practically in the same plane, inhabiting the same space, feeling the sweep and dive of the plane, and the way the air moved the plane. Together. But even with that, he could still feel the focus of his meditative mind. He set his mind to let these thoughts go also.
Only they didn't go. Instead, the feeling that he was with Rooster, or merging with Rooster, only intensified. It would have been frightening, except that it was Rooster, and his heart felt like it was so huge. Like his heart was big enough for the both of them, surrounding them, and holding them in that merged space. He didn't know how long he sat there savoring the feeling. He could have sat there for minutes. He could have sat there for hours or days or milliseconds. Time had no meaning.
But then there came another feeling. It wasn't words exactly. Just a feeling. If that feeling could have been put into words, it was the feeling that Rooster was saying to him, "Be at ease, I'm coming to get you." And Hangman knew. He just knew. Just as sure as he knew when to make a move when Rooster was leading. He knew what he needed to do. He was calm. It wasn't time yet. But soon it would be, and when it was time, he would know.
His meditation was interrupted by the clang of a metal bar, and of keys in the door. It brought him back abruptly to his surroundings, the hard bed underneath him, the sounds echoing off the prison walls, the sounds coming from the locked door now being unlocked. Someone was coming in. He opened his eyes just as the door opened.
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