I’d left the conversation.  I couldn’t leave the aircraft, but I’d left the conversation, turning my attention towards the take-off and initial flight maneuvering.  The limited AI James, although I wasn’t entirely sure what Titan meant by that and why he was different than Apex, could have handled all of the flight controls, including the entire flight home.

They didn’t get it though.  If an AI was in charge, then who really was in charge? Who bore the responsibility for the flight?  Titan? As the programmer of the AI?  Someone had to be in charge, some person had to be aware, in command. Even if all he did was sit there and watch the colored buttons blink.

I knew all of that; would have offered those up as the points in any debate.  Down deep, and not even so deep at the moment, I could acknowledge the real reason, at least to myself.  This is where I still felt Bridgette.  I certainly had never been more than an indifferent pilot, not because I didn’t work at it, I worked at everything I’d been assigned, but she had been a pure flyer.  She could fly anything.

I’d never felt more pride than at her commissioning, when she put the wings and uniform on for the first time outside of university and flight school.  It hadn’t taken much, at least not for me, to make sure I was there to be the first to salute the new flight officer.  Even if I’d been using a cane to help walk from one of my wounds. 

I didn’t understand how Bryce and Brant could be so…indifferent to finding her. In Australia, Bryce had seemed energized, at least when the memories of home infused him. Brant though, seemed willing to accept the minimal evidence that she had died somewhere in the southern United States on assignment. The missing status is what was driving me insane, and frankly its what made me understand to a very small degree what Mum had gone through. Even if officially we had been dead, supposedly, she never gave up hope. I guess I was a failure there too, as my hope was dimming, and the distractions of a broken life were taking precedence. What did it say of me if I let them?

I saw Bridgette in Olivia. I knew that I shouldn’t, I didn’t need no damn book like Henri kept stating to know that such comparisons would end badly. It wasn’t even the outward appearance, as blindingly similar and beautiful as Olivia was to Brij at that age. But I didn’t know Olivia, not really. And yet, I did.  The look of peace she achieved on one of those damn bikes, when she guided the speedboat through the ocean after a few minutes of instruction.   That was one of the few things I could see, where she dropped all her defenses.   It’s hard to describe what I saw, not peace, not energy, not eagerness, or none of them alone.  It was an amalgamation of all, the utter fusing of someone who’s entire being is focused and directed towards a single objective. I used to see that in Brij all the time. Once, long ago, I saw it in the mirror. Maybe that memory was flawed too.

I looked down at myself as I sat there.   I’d dressed in the Ghost Venom uniform before we’d prepped for takeoff.   Some of the team had regular clothes on, but not me.  Oh, no, not me.  This was a fucking mission, even if it was the return from one.  Even if it had been familial support of Whitley, what was hopefully to be a peaceful mission.  Like that ever fucking happened. Was I Ghost Venom, the super HomoCon, that what? Helped people? Hurt them?  Took a beating so the Alliance could take out the enemy? Who was the enemy anymore anyway? More and more it seemed like the enemy was within. Was he Ghost Venom without the uniform? 

Or did the identity slide off with the armored clothing?  Who was he underneath?  Brett Oliver Anderson?  Who was that?  The sixteen-year old kid who dropped out of high school and convinced his mother to allow him to run away and join the army? The twenty-year old who met the most amazing woman and asked her to marry him.  The twenty-two year old rising star in special forces who had already been wounded three times, and deployed to war or security zones half a dozen times?  Or the super soldier that had no true memory of an unknown amount of missions and experiments.  Who was that person?

Or maybe I was Oliver Smith, security consultant and demolitions expert.  Did that count as an identity? A man who had no friends, just employees.  A man who had an empty apartment with stale food and dusty furniture?

Or maybe I was the brother who rescued a brother, but failed to dig deep enough to realize that another brother and sister were still alive to be rescued.  A broken soul who abandoned his siblings to the fate of an unknown experimentation and, well, I really couldn’t allow myself to think about what they did to them to “mold” them. 

Or the son who abandoned his parents, leaving death and despair when a simple phone call might have alleviated some of their pain.  A call that might have prevented his death, some solace to the woman who raised me.  Who protected me, who let me go when I needed to go?

A man who thought the love of his life had died, and left his daughter with a “father” who had been grooming her for more experimentation.  Did it matter that I hadn’t even remotely known the truth?  That I didn’t want to break up the only family she had known? A man whose memory told his daughter had a sister, but in this weird alternate life where memories weren’t memories said she didn’t.

A man who couldn’t protect his family, his lovers, his child?  Who was too afraid to tell his daughter the truth, who couldn’t bare to see his lover in a coma for weeks, not again.  Who sought solace in the arms of the daughter’s mother, the love of his life, the one he could still feel inside.   A man who betrayed one love for another?  Or was each action a betrayal of the other?

What kind of man was that?

A man that wore so many masks that he didn’t know which one was on anymore.  A man not fit for duty. A man who didn’t deserve happiness.  A man who hid his self, who hid his appearance, who hid from life.  That’s the man I was.

Who wanted to be around that kind of energy?  How could I protect them, all of them, any of them, from all the enemies that wanted to hurt them.  How could I protect them all from myself, the pain that came from being near me, the pain of knowing me.

Once, long ago maybe, I thought I could do it all.  I could do my duty. It defined me, and everything else was built around that pillar, all of my strength of will. 

Now…now though, what was duty, what pillar could I hold onto as all of the mistakes of a broken past came to weigh upon that will, and I was afraid.  Afraid that I couldn’t help anybody, that I couldn’t pick up the pieces.    

Henri was right.  I didn’t know how to be a father.  She was wrong though too.  Reading a book wasn’t going to fix that.  Whitley was also right when she’d yelled at me that I was so worn down by regret that I couldn’t function.  Not really, not as a human being.  Sure, I could go out and fight, and die if necessary.  I could always do that. I always did do that.  The risk never phased me.  But, now, now, it did.  I wanted to be around, wanted to be part of Olivia’s life.  Of Shawna’s.  Of Amelia’s.  I wanted to live with my mother, my brothers, the family of the Alliance.  Was that too much to desire?

Yet, terror gripped me as I sat in that seat.  I couldn’t lose anybody else.  No more friends, no more family.  Certainly not my daughter.  I know that is what drove my anger at Bryce, an anger that still burned a few days later. 

I was lost.  And I didn’t really know how to ask for help.