Little Men

January 1985; Somewhere over the ....

You were a thousand miles into the Atlantic when the aircraft rutted violently against your controls. Barely a shiver in the airframe at first, like a deep sigh running through the metal bones of the 777, then unloading at once. You felt it beneath your hands, fingers curled around the yoke, a pulse of tension radiating from your own chest. And you thought that perhaps the bottom of the ocean was where you belonged. There was a darkness there, a pressure so strong it would stop your body from behaving like a biological machine and turn it into a mangled physics experiment. The same coexisted inside you, where your heart was splintered, half of it belonging to your mother and half of it to Cami. A darkness you couldn't smooth away. Somewhere back there, among the rows of passengers dozing, sighing, and flipping through their lives, he was sitting. Your father. A man you’d never truly seen—not beyond the stories your mother whispered in moments of quiet fury. A man who had given you nothing but a sickness that curled in your gut when you remembered where you came from. The man whose rage marked you. You didn’t know his seat number, didn’t want to know. The knowledge that he existed in your cabin, breathing your air, was enough to make a grown man sick. And you thought—you knew—that if he walked up to the cockpit door, if he knocked, if he leaned in with some pathetic excuse or a father’s smirk, you would open the door and wrap your hands around his throat. You’d feel his pulse flutter against your fingers, fragile and real, and you would squeeze. You let autopilot hold the course, let the gentle hum of the engines seep into your bones, pretending for a moment you were something better than what he left behind. A clean slate. But there was always a stain, that borrowed darkness, his gift to you. No matter how high you flew, you couldn’t outrun it. And then she drifted into your mind, the girl with eyes like sky break, a voice like gentle rain. The girl you had never touched - could never touch - because she was flawless in ways you would never be. She’d smile at you with that easy grace, unaware of the shadows clawing inside you, oblivious to the storm you kept locked behind your ribs. You thought of her seeing you for what you were. The quiet, steady pilot with a monster curled around his heart. If she knew, if she saw even a hint of that darkness, she would recoil. She’d wish you out of the sky, wish your plane would disappear into the ocean without a trace. And maybe she’d be right. The horizon stretched before you—a line you couldn’t cross, a future you didn’t deserve. You swallowed the air in shallow breaths, felt the press of your father’s existence. Outside, the clouds thickened, gray swirling into black, and the gentle tremor of turbulence returned. The seatbelt sign blinked on. You flicked the intercom switch, cleared your throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re passing through some rough air. Please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened.” Your father’s life was in your hands. All their lives were. You looked at the yoke, the screens, the clouds ahead—and wondered just how far you could fall before the darkness took over. Why was he still alive. How did he deserve to be alive, on what grounds exactly? You could push the controls forward. Put the nose into a dive. Select full thrust. Increase bank angle to 45 degrees and stall the plane. Keep putting in fatal commands while your FO tries to right the plane until the dual input-dual input sound warning starts to ring out through the cockpit. You squeezed your eyes shut, just for a moment.

The stick trembled beneath your fingers, the aircraft groaning. You loved this plane, and like in any other reciprocal relationship, it not only loved you back, but supported your every decision.

You could do it. A simple motion. A nudge of the yoke, the push of a throttle, and gravity would take over.

You opened your eyes.

Outside, the storm coiled tighter, windshear slipping along the fuselage.

The intercom crackled as your first officer, blissfully unaware of the war inside you, mumbled something about altitude adjustments.

You barely heard him.

A breath.

Another.

Then—

The master caution blared. A harsh, shrieking thing.

Your FO jerked upright. "Jesus—what—"

Your hands moved, instincts taking over before your mind could finish what it started. The turbulence sharpened. Wind punched the aircraft broadside. The nose dipped.

"Pitch up, pitch up!"

You corrected without thinking, muscle memory overriding the dark pull at the edge of your mind. The aircraft stabilized, shuddering in the air, and for a moment, all was still.

Your FO exhaled, dragging a hand down his face.

"That was a bad one. You okay?"

You nodded, throat dry.

"Yeah," you said.

Because it wasn't your hands that tried to kill them.

It was the storm.

At least, that was the lie you would tell yourself.

Something in you had hesitated. Had listened to the alarms, had heard the raw panic in your FO’s voice, had responded like the pilot they had trained you to be.

Why?

Why had you stopped?

"Captain?"

You forced your expression into something normal. Professional. The storm was beginning to ease, the worst of it passing.

“We’ll be clear in a few minutes,” you said. “Keep an eye on the readings.”

He nodded, rubbing his temples. “Didn’t think we’d get rocked that hard. Thought for a second we were gonna—” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

You didn’t respond.

Instead, you reached for the intercom. Your voice was calm, steady, everything it should be.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the turbulence is subsiding. We’ll have a smooth ride the rest of the way. Thank you for your patience.”

You let go of the button.

The lie sat heavy in your mouth.

Because the storm wasn’t over.

It had only just begun.