Chapter Text
Jake’s childhood house was only a thirty-minute walk from an airport. He had known that since he was seven and tried to escape punishment. (It failed, his father dragged him back. He never tried again).
He always found it ironic that freedom was so close and yet so far.
The walk through the town of his adolescence brought up memories Jake didn’t realize his brain still held. Some of the trees he hid under during storms had been cut down in the decade since he’d last strolled the cracked sidewalks.
The sign on Jerry’s restaurant had been modernized. Gone was the faded burgundy and tan. It had been painted over in an electric blue that practically glared at him from the opposite sidewalk.
The yellow house on the corner of his street was no longer yellow.
So many changes.
Had he changed?
Many of his colleagues would argue that “Nah, Hangman? He’s always been that way.”
But he had been Jake once, hadn’t he? Sometime before he ever left the town and became someone new he had just been a boy. An unloved boy with a heart of gold born too late to have a real chance at a family.
And then, long after his heart had frozen over, he had a choice of who he wanted to be within the Navy. He could have stayed next to Javy’s aircraft, watching the instructor leave them in the skies. Or he could have dropped down, left Javy on his own, and got a lock. To him, it was an easy choice. He trusted Javy’s skills and knew he’d be fine. The praise he earned validated that.
It wasn’t his fault his squadmates took that as a declaration of solitariness.
“Man, are you just gonna leave us all hanging like that?”
“Ha, Hangman.”
And thus, from the ashes and ruin of an unfortunate adolescence, Hangman was born.
Hangman: the aviator who would never give a shit about anybody. The guy that would leave you in his rearview mirror without a second thought if it meant he’d be on top at the end of the day.
If that’s what they needed to think to try and fly faster, try and keep up: Jake “Hangman” decided 4 years ago that’s what he would give them.
It was actually pretty easy to act the part. He had plenty of practice acting differently than he felt after years of hiding bruises and welts and scrapes. Plastering a smirk on his face was light work in comparison.
He wasn’t ever any good at the friendship thing, anyway. It was probably for the best.
Sometimes it got lonely, always being on the receiving end of dirty looks and sharp remarks. But he had Javy. And try as he might, Javy wasn’t leaving his side. It wasn’t all that bad, then.
So Hangman rose through the ranks, earned his praise, and Javy was always just a step or two behind him. Jake hoped with everything in him that Javy would still be there waiting if he made it out of this job alive.
And yet, as Jake stood outside of his childhood home–no, house. It would never be home–he felt a decade younger. If he tried hard enough, he could hear the ghostly sound of a bottle smashing two feet above his head and slicing his still-chubby cheeks open.
The fourteen steps it took to the wooden door felt like walking into battle without a weapon.
For the bandages, he told himself. For the woman who had sparse moments of kindness.
The door swung open before he could even raise his fist to knock.
“I’ll be damned,” the man on the other side said in a familiar raspy voice. “You had the guts to show up. Color me surprised.”
Jake swallowed and steeled himself, staring just to the right of his nightmare in physical form. “Sir.”
“What’d I say about that sir crap? This ain’t the military, boy. You’d do good to remember that.” Jake’s father wobbled as he brought a bottle to his lips. His exhale resembled a wheeze more than breath. “The fuck you doing just standing there?”
Wordlessly, Jake took a step inside. Everything was the same as when he’d left. From the crack in the kitchen counter down to the discolored carpet, everything resided in its place. Three cases of beer still resided next to the couch. He almost wished things had changed. If they had, it would be ten times easier for Jake to stay in the present.
The old wooden door closed with finality. It took everything in him not to flinch at the lock clicking into place.
Unbeknownst to him, Jake’s phone relentlessly vibrated in his duffle bag.
“Your room ain’t the same. When I realized you’d left for good, we trashed it to hell.” The old man cackled and coughed. Jake pointedly ignored the sickening sound to the cough. “Shit, we must’ve spent 6 hours in there.”
“I’ll go to the motel,” Jake replied tonelessly, feeling a bit of hope nestle between the ghostly ache in his ribs.
“Nonsense. Sit on the couch, and share a beer with your old man.”
Jake thought he’d rather do just about anything else.
And yet he sat.
Silence filled only by his father’s gasping breaths left Jake’s thought’s reeling. He felt the absurd urge to break down in hysterical laughter thinking of himself sitting on a couch next to his abuser, killing time waiting for the funeral of his other abuser.
It was both a fantasy and nightmare.
Jake Seresin Sr. uncapped the beer with his teeth and handed it to Jake with a vicious grin. For a second, Jake could only stare at his father.
The years had not been kind to him. Wrinkles had formed deep crevices in all areas of his skin. And not the type that indicated a happy life with many smiles. Rather, ones that displayed unhealthy habits. His frame had become wiry with malnutrition.
He looked every bit like the life he chose to live in.
With a start, Jake realized that traumatizing past aside, he would win in a fight against his father. While Jake Sr had aged unkindly, the academy had whipped Jake Jr into shape.
Jake wished he could feel satisfaction at the fact. At the realization that, finally, he had won out in the end. He had risen from the low point of his upbringing. But he found he couldn’t. Because although he knew he had finally grown into his long frame, he knew all it would take was one fast movement from the man beside him before he’d become paralyzed with fear. His triumph wouldn’t last more than one jab to the stomach.
“You know,” the elder man began. “Out of all of you, I wouldn’t have expected you to be the one to survive.”
Jake closed his eyes.
The memories of his brothers had long since faded. Little glimpses here and there of shared smiles and booming laughter. Jake never grieved for them because he barely had any memories to grieve for.
If anything, he grieved the most for the lack of memories as opposed to the already existing ones. Some part of his subconscious longed to one day reconnect with those who shared his DNA. To have that pipe dream ripped away from him before it could truly take shape left him perpetually missing something crucial. It felt like chasing after ghosts.
“Justin and Julian are still out there,” Jake eventually responded. Justin was the second oldest, off to the marines like their father by the time Jake was six. Julian enlisted in the army not long after.
Jake never bothered keeping track of their whereabouts, but he knew his father would have contacted him if they’d burned in.
“I’m sure they’ll join the others soon.”
“What, and I won’t?”
The older man chuckled. “No,” he replied into his bottle. “You won’t. You know why? Because you and I, we’re one and the same. We’re meant to shoot to kill and watch everybody around us leave for good.”
Jake shook his head feverently. “I’m nothing like you.”
He wasn’t. Because Jake cared. Even if the emotion was somewhat foreign, he’d been around Javy enough to know that he at the very least felt it. He had dreams; ambitions. He condemned violence. His words could cut like knives, but he’d rather stab himself than lay a hand on somebody for any reason besides defense. Deep in Jake’s bones, he knew he would never lay a hand on his children one day if he ever had any. He would end the cycle of abuse integrated in his family tree.
And yet, as he stared towards the cracked mirror—from being shoved into it years ago, he remembered—Jake realized with a start that he and his father were sitting the same way. Feet slightly apart, heads tilted to the side. Even their goddamn bottles were held loosely in their hands in the exact same way. Dread filled his blood like lead.
Some realization must have shown on his face because from beside him, his father cackled. “You realize it, don’t you? You may have left, but you can never escape who you are.” Bony fingers jabbed two inches to the right of his heart. “We share the same instincts, you and me. Always have, always will.”
Not for the first time since reentering his worst nightmare, Jake longed to have Javy beside him. Javy would knock some sense into him about the bullshit being spat at him. He’d set the record straight with no care for consequence. And Jake would be thankful for it.
But the fact of the matter was that Jake was alone. He was tired, he was weak. So he let the words settle within him like seeds in a flowerpot. And in sync with the man next to him, he took a long drink from his beer.
And then another.
And another.
———
The next morning, Jake sluggishly pulled on one of his newer suits. He decided against wearing his blues, choosing to blend in the background for the day.
He walked out into the kitchen and was surprised to see his father lucid at the wooden counter. After the amount of beers he’d consumed a mere six hours ago, Jake assumed that getting to the funeral on time would be a struggle. But the man looked every bit the military man the town assumed he still was. Not a single follicle of hair was out of place and his suit was barren of wrinkles.
There was no controlling the glossiness of his eyes or the sunken texture of his cheeks, but it could be played off as grief or his old age.
Jake’s father nodded in greeting above a suspicious-smelling coffee mug. A glance at the clock read 0815 hours.
“Time to face the music, eh?” His father finished his beverage in a single gulp and unsteadily stood up.
Without responding, Jake walked towards the car that had seen better days. They drove to the funeral home in silence. There, his father gripped him by the shoulder and reintroduced him to people with a wide smile as if his dead wife wasn’t ten feet away in a wooden box.
Countless people thanked him avidly for his service while others simply offered their condolences.
Throughout the mass, Jake found his mind wandering to what he’d be doing if he was back on base. 11AM meant wheels up. Somewhere, Rooster and Coyote were probably doing a dogfight. Maybe other members of the squad were glad to not have him in the way anymore.
Jake only felt a pressure in his throat when it came time to lower his mother’s casket in the ground. Around him, people’s faces who were no longer recognizable were downturned in sadness. Even his father had pinched features. Twin graves containing his brothers were on either side of her resting place. The area was clouded with death.
One day, Jake would probably join them. He’d be left perpetually in the vicinity of his abusers and their counterparts. Maybe, if he was lucky, someone seeing their relative would stare at his name and feel sympathy. Maybe they’d place a lone flower on his cracked tomb and pray to their god that he made it to the afterlife okay.
But then they’d go about their days, the memory of the sad looking gravestone fading as they moved on. And he’d stay there, pollen collecting and covering his name until no evidence of his existence remained.
Jake Seresin Jr, frozen in time forever.
The rest of the funeral dragged on slowly. The Texan heat made sweat fall on his forehead and neck until he was half-tempted to unbutton the first few buttons of his suit. Just as he began to, his father finally staggered away from the freshly dug grave and towards the car. The man didn't even bother to gesture for Jake to follow, inherently knowing that Jake would (he was right).
The car reeked of cigarettes. Likely the fault of the woman residing in a casket 20 meters away who was always partial to a carton of Malburos. Thinking of her, Jake allowed himself a fraction of a moment to grieve. He allowed himself a moment to grieve for the woman who had probably been wonderful once. The woman who at one point had been young and bright and happy. He grieved for the woman who could have had a better chance at things if she hadn’t picked the wrong man to love.
Then the father of a flask being tipped backwards from the passenger seat brings him back to reality, and he wordlessly turned the key in the ignition.
The ride home was silent. A helpless feeling of unease made its way up his spine when he saw his half-drunken father stare thoughtfully out the window. Jake Seresin Sr. was only ever thoughtful about one thing, how to inflict the most damage on his son.
So it shouldn’t have been surprising, then, when his father took all of three seconds to tackle Jake to the ground as soon as they walked in their house. But it did surprise Jake, his breath getting caught in his throat. Enough so that his father was able to get several hits in, each more forceful than the last.
“Stupid…goddamn…fuckup…should’ve…killed…you…when…I…had…the…chance”. Each word was spoken with a hit, and Jake felt fire all throughout his face by the end of the speech.
It was then that he wished he could find the strength in himself to fight back. But he felt simultaneously 12 and 24 at the same time, caught somewhere in the middle. His bones had filled with lead somewhere between the flight from Top Gun to here while his stomach braced for the inevitable kicks or punches. He didn’t give his father the satisfaction of knowing he was in pain
Instead, he thought of how much he’d rather be on base then. Up in the skies, Javy right behind him. Hell, maybe Bradshaw would feel like cranking up the speed if he was there right now, finally offering Jake a true challenge. The clouds would be whizzing by and Javy would be shouting the locations of other aircrafts over their radio, and Jake would feel euphoric getting tone while his classmates failed to do so.
In reality, all that whizzed by were his father’s heavy fists and the familiar bite of his class ring. Back in the day, Jake could have sworn the thing was perpetually tattooed between his ribs with how often the two met. Now they met again like old friends.
Accepting his fate, Jake allowed himself to go limp on the faded wooden floors. Some part of himself sickeningly welcomed it. The pain everywhere sucked, but it was like making up for lost times. Six years worth of blows delivered in one sitting. This was the penance for his sins.
Abruptly, Jake’s father grabbed his shoulders and lifted his upper half from the floor. Then he stilled. Jake opened his tired, bruised eyes to see the man who once resembled him uncannily staring back at him with an unknown emotion. “The fuck you doing just laying there? You that much of a pussy that you can’t bother to defend yourself? You used to. Or try, at least.”
“I used to be stupid.” Jake slurred tiredly.
Without the constant onslaught of blows, he began feeling the pain really set in. The feeling was unpleasant, but not unfamiliar. He mentally began cataloging the worst of the injuries and was relieved to find that none of them would keep him from the sky whenever he made his way back to base.
Jake’s father dropped his shoulders and stood up. Delivering one swift kick to the ribs, the man stumbled away. “Get the fuck out of my house before I pull my rifle on you.”
The words took a moment to set in, his tired and probably concussed brain struggling to comprehend the words. Then he felt the bizarre urge to laugh. The one time Jake had the strength to defend himself, he didn’t. And his father chose that time, out of all times, to walk away.
The sound of bottles clinking brought him out is his thoughts. Jake began the tedious process of picking himself up from the floor and learning to walk amid the pain from the upper half of his body.
Without a word to his old man, Jake headed to the old wooden door and grabbed his duffel bag. He just put his hand on the handle when the raspy voice of his father had him looking back.
“I lied before. You’re gonna end up like all your brothers if you keep doing what you’re doing. That, or just like me.”
Jake pointedly ignored the second half of the statement for the sake of remaining sane. “And I’m sure that’d be the best day of your life, dad.”
His father only hummed in response, turning back to his vice of the night-bud light.
When nothing else was said, Jake stepped out into the searing Texan sun and started the trek towards the airport.
Once there, he grasped any energy possible to smile at the frightened-looking lady behind the front desk who unashamedly stared at the bruising he knew covered his face. Privately, he was pretty sure he was more purple and blue than tan skin by that point in time. Still wearing his now rumpled suit with his hair askew, Jake did them both a favor and ignored her impolite staring. “Maam, I’ll take the first flight you have to Miramar, or somewhere nearby.”
He visibly watched the girl snap herself out of her trance, regaining her professionalism. “That’s not until 7:15, sir. Is that alright?”
The clock just above her head read 1pm.
“Fine by me,” he said, handing her his card. “May I ask if you’ll still be on shift then?”
The poor girl looked confused, but she nodded hesitantly. “I’m here until 9.”
“Fantastic. Well I’m going to collapse in that chair over there.” Jake pointed to a mediocre-looking chair 20 meters from the desk. “And there’s a good chance I will pas—fall asleep. Would you mind waking me up if that’s the case?”
Again, the girl nodded with a wince on her face. “I can do that. But do you need medical attention? Because I can—“
“No, no need. I just need rest. Thank you though.” And then, with a close lipped smile, Jake staggered to the chair and promptly passed out.