Avalon

•21•

Above and Below

***************************

Being stuck on a huge spaceship and being in pain and other problems tend to annoy the Lieutenant Noel Allison. And one of those days was happening just as he was finally sent out with Cloud team in his first Ranger flight. Being a Fleet pilot has always been his best decision and he knew enough piloting starting choppers all the way up to military shit and now spacecraft in ten million forms, shapes and designs.

For some awfully shitty to understand level Noel had no freking way to know how he was always getting this good at stuff in such speed.

Well for one, he kept going back to his early days when he was stuck in a dark place among other kids of barely age to recognize letters. They got very fierce and bone deep military and otherwise intensive and very wide training. So basically by the time you got out you were trained as hard as possible to survive the worst you possibly could and still come out unscathed.

Noel knew Nate wasn't like him in this. That guy took in rather differently and also never let the past fully return. But he did.

In ways that usually were known only to him he managed to pull up those involuntary training kicks when situations became dire and always won over. Unlike Nate who mostly trusted his own street instincts and reactions he never knew where came from. He was also different in a way and just Noel knew what that meant. It was something he was born with and he witnessed it long enough to tell there gotta be a pattern.

But there used to be the other boy who was the same.

But they couldn't really remember him all that well. He always hid in shadows even more than Nate. But the other boy had a talent their group noticed when they were older to actually understand it to a level.

He was really talented in things and remarkably similar to Nate. It made Noel suspicious however it kinda went away when they met Samara and some other part of life began. And naturally Noel put it aside and swept it under the carpet until recently.

A blip notified the pilot he was called out to his duty. So he downed his meds and rubbed his face over and walked his way to the docks. Time to show off.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

This was in a way pretty usual occurrence for somebody like Neal ponder over the usually most exciting thing in his professional life despite everything. And for people like Peter most worrisome time of their career.

What made it so excruciatingly strange was that Neal never actually showed his old excitement nor any of his usual signs of being happy to visit the event full of stuff that once used to be his only life. Therefore it left Peter off kilter.

He noticed others from the original team saw the same and used every moment to watch Neal for any signs of something wrong.

Honestly Peter too was worried and indeed noticed signs of something absolutely wrong with his friend.

It's never been like this and even when things went all ways crazy with Kate's death and Neal's struggle with all that and everything else it still was different.

Now all they could openly see was the certain sadness in the cerulean blue orbs and occasional shakiness in his soft voice or nimble fingers. And if that was all they could catch it only meant inside the man it was ranging dark beast of emotional turmoil and all the other crap they were left to imagine.

Not that they didn't try to show the man any care or friendly shoulder. Actually Peter knew Neal knew they still cared for him just the man was his usual self. Or maybe he was just the opposite?