“Nick!!!!!”

“AJ, wake up!” I woke up being shaken by someone saying my name. My heart was pounding incredibly fast and I was wet in cold sweat.

“Dude, what’s going on?”

“Huh?” Where I am? Jeff was in front of me and he looked extremely worried. Was I dreaming? 

“You were yelling,” he said walking away from me and taking a seat on his bunk.

“I was? What was I saying?” I felt the urge to ask, probably because part of me already knew the answer. I had gotten up immediately but had yet to regain full conscious of my surroundings, being still in that state of mind in between dreaming and awareness.

“You were saying the name of one of your cousins.” Jeff stopped looking at me. I knew he was acting like trying to rest importance to what he had just said but only because he was worried too, that was Jeff to you; the tough act wasn’t really an act or more like it was a bad act.

“Which one?” I closed my eyes waiting for the answer.

“Nick.”

I knew it. I felt a pressure inside my chest and took a seat again on my bunk. Jeff's eyes were probably fixed on me again but I kept staring at the floor.

“Do you remember what were you dreaming?”

“Not really, but I’m not sure it was a dream.” I was beyond being worried, I was scared.

“Is this like that time the first year when you woke up yelling Kevin's name and almost decided to go back?”

“I don’t know,” I said finally looking up and noticing that his eyes were still showing how worried he was.

He smiled trying to cover it up what he was thinking once again. He knew all the questions were making me nervous so he stood up. "Want some hot laudean?" He said leaving the room not even waiting for my reply. A couple of minutes later he came back with a cup of the dark hot liquid that I gladly accepted.

Jeff was a great guy. Almost four years had gone by since I had left the guys and we had really become family. He had been there for me every time I had needed him, and I had learnt to accept him as family. We still hadn’t found his sister, Michelle, but it wasn't like we haven't achieved anything during all those year. Working by ourselves wasn't as rewarded as working for the rebels but we had managed to do our part of the job too. We had killed some empire soldiers, destroyed some ships and in a way helped the rebel forces - not like they were going to thank us either way, and not like it was a big help since they were really losing all battles and the resistance to the Empire was getting smaller every day.

Now we were on Palmiery on the left side of Lacoon. Our ship, the third we had had in all these years, was a complete disaster and we were looking for the easiest way to get spare parts without buying them. People called it "prey on" or "wulturing" which supposedly was a Sargon word but I had my doubts considering that it sounded so similar to the English word 'vulture', which I remember was this horrible creature on Earth that would feed itself from dead bodies. And that's exactly what wulturing was, going to a planet near a battle field and look for recently fallen ships to steal from them.

"I saw an explosion on the west land. Are you for it?" Jeff asked me as on cue and I nodded but I stood there without even attempting to move a muscle.

“Are you really okay? Do you want to talk about your dream? He asked me from the door and I shook my head and finally followed him.

We left the ship and my dream behind us and walked all the way there without sharing another word, lasers on hands and as cautious as possible. Half an hour later we arrived to the wreckage scene. Would have gotten there sooner having a land vehicle but the not only the last catalytic converter but also the brake master cylinders of ours had fulfilled their cycle and now we were in desperate need of new ones.

Small parts of the fuselage where the first things we noticed when arriving to the wreckage. It was clear after just one look at the scene that there wouldn't be survivors.

"This thing is a mess" Jeff said aloud. "I don't think we will find too much of worth."

I took a couple of steps to what he was pointing out when I felt a shiver.

"What is it?" he asked me noticing it.

"I think something is wrong. I have this weird feeling." I said, finally seeing the ship in full view and noticing it was an assault ship.

Well, that's it, I thought. It was a rebel ship. Every time I saw one I would think about my brothers.

Inside the cockpit the two pilots were dead, or at least it seemed that way. The copilot was a skinny red haired who for some reason looked very familiar, although I was sure I hadn’t met him before. The pilot was a big blond guy who was all over the steering wheel. I stayed there staring at his back for a moment. He wasn’t breathing but my eyes were glued on him. I blamed the blue uniform for the awkward feeling I was getting, it was the same uniform that Kevin and Howie used to wear.

"AJ, they are dead." Jeff told me from where he was in the storage part of the ship. “You can’t help them anymore. Give me a hand here.”

I turned around and was about to walk out of there when I heard a moan.

"Did you hear that?" I said going back my steps. "One of them is alive."

Jeff stuck his head in the cockpit. "There is nothing we can do."

"We should see." Jeff was shaking his head in reply when I felt another moan.

"It’s the pilot," I realized walking to him and turning him around. His face was full of blood from the injury in his head but the first impression I got was that he was very young, probably in his early twenties which was too young for a pilot. Maybe for that reason I kept staring at him.

"Are you helping him or not?" Jeff told me still standing in the same place.

I nodded and tried to get him out of his seat but his body has gotten stuck in some way. I moved him and noticed that part of the control panel has stabbed him on his side. I carefully got the metal out of him and finally moved him to the floor. It didn't seem to be a deep injury since I had been able move him right away without too much blood or anything else coming out but I wanted to be sure it was really superficial otherwise moving him even further would probably kill him.

I stretched him out on the floor with Jeff’s help and started to unbutton his jacket to get a better look at the damage. I hadn't even gone through the second button when I got paralyzed noticing what was hanging from this guy's neck. It can't be. I grabbed the medallion and there wasn’t any doubt left, it was mine… my mom’s medallion.

“Nick?” I muttered. Looking at his face again and cleaning the blood from it with my hand.

“Nick?” Jeff repeated.

"Oh my God, it’s Nick" I uttered, now completely sure and looking at Jeff in panic. "We gotta help him."

Jeff looked at me like I was crazy.

What happened next is still in a blur to me. Jeff told me later that I had practically carried Nick to our ship alone, which couldn't be true since he wasn’t my little brother anymore but a very strong looking man. I do remember acting frantically like doing everything fast would save his life. Good thing the injury wasn’t life threatening because moving him wouldn’t have been the best reaction but I acted on impulse.

And here I was, looking at this big guy that once had been my little brother lying on my bunk and waiting for him to regain conscious. Jeff and I had done everything we could. We have cleaned all his injuries and confirmed none of them were critical. We have applied antibiotics to the cuts and bandaged his ribs which thankfully were just swollen and not broken. I kept staring at him, his cleaned face now fully visible to me. He had gained weight and inches with the years, he was probably bigger than Kevin now and gone where his kids’ features but he was still Nick. I couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize him sooner. I didn’t even want to consider what could have happened if we didn’t hear him on time.

“Please tell me you checked on the other guy and made sure he wasn’t alive too,” I told Jeff without turning around when I heard the door opening and suddenly remembered the other figure in that cockpit.

“Yes, don’t worry, we didn’t abandoned an injured man to his own luck out there”. Thank God.

“You know AJ, he won’t wake up sooner just because you keep staring at him. You need to rest too, bro,” he said, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder before leaving the room.

He was right. Nick had complained and moaned more than once when we were trying to heal him so I tried to convince myself that the bump to the head couldn’t be that bad. It was just a matter of time, I though. But when I turned around to leave the room too, I heard something that froze the blood on my veins.

“Kevin please don’t leave me.”

I walked back to stand next to him and noticed that his eyes were half open but he wasn’t focusing on anything.

“Hey Nicky, is okay, try to rest, little bro,” I told him, stroking his hair and his breathing relaxed.

He came and went between consciousness and unconsciousness for almost a whole day, always calling for Kevin. I spent the night next to him not even attempting to leave him again and finally, after twenty hours he opened his eyes and saw me.

“Am I dead?”

“No, Nick, you aren’t.”

“AJ.”

“Yes, kiddo, the one and only.”

“So you really went bald.” He smiled and I felt like not a single day had passed since the day I left my family.

“You see me for the first time in four years and that’s the first thing you say?”

“I knew you were alive. I knew it,” he whispered, and just like that he felt asleep again.

The next time he woke up I was about to go to the bathroom.

“Don’t leave me” I turned up waiting for him to call me Kevin again in his stupor but he was fully awake this time and looking directly to my eyes. “Don’t leave me, AJ.”

“I was just going to the bathroom, Kaos. I’m not leaving you.”

“Nobody has called me that in a long time,” he said starting to cough.

“Kaos?” I gave him some water which seemed to relieve the cough.

“I can’t believe you are really here.”

“See, that’s what I was expecting you to say when waking up.”

“You are still bald though.” He chuckle and looked around for the first time “Where are we, by the way?”

“My ship. We are in Palmiery, or P36 as the Empire knows this place, the place where you decided to crash. What were you doing playing pilot Nick?”

“I didn’t decide to crash. We were hit. And I’m a pilot, you ass. Is Daniel…?” I allowed him a minute of silence before he dared to ask the question. “Is he dead?”

“If Daniel is the guy who was with you, then yes.”

He sighed.

“I’m sorry kiddo.” He didn’t reply but nodded. “I’m gonna bring you something to eat, you haven’t eaten anything in days.”

“Days?”

“You have been in and out the last two days and I have only managed to give you water all that time. You think you are up to eating something?”

He nodded and closed his eyes again and I knew that when I would come back with his food he would be sleeping.

“Hey Mr. Pilot.” I tried to wake him up when I returned.

“Four years and you’re still a jerk, AJ”

I laughed out loud.

“See I leave you guys and you all go crazy. A captain? You? Captain Nick my ass.”

He took a seat with some difficult and received the tray I offered him.

“Go slow kiddo. It’s just some broth and crackers but still, the first meal after such a long time you have to go careful.”

“That’s something else people haven’t called me in years. Nobody calls me kiddo. Howie still calls me Nicky though.”

Howie. Just hearing Nick mentioning one of my brothers made my heart skip a beat, I thought I was getting dizzy but tried to focus on remaining calm. After a minute I realized what he was saying and found it hard to believe that no one was calling him kiddo anymore. I couldn’t imagine Kevin or Brian not calling him that. We all always did it.

He ate without even looking at me and I become worried again. We haven’t exchanged more than ten sentences in the few minutes he had been awake since the rescue and I was starting to act like time hasn’t passed by, but when he stopped looking at me, when he stopped smiling, I remembered that things were never going to be the same.

“Why haven’t you asked me about the guys, AJ?” he finally asked trying to put the tray on the table next to the bed. He grimaced in pain and brought a hand to his side so I grabbed the tray and while placing it on the table answered without looking at him.

“It’s not like you have been up to chat about anything, Nick.”

“You won’t come back no matter what, right AJ? This was just a weird play of destiny. Now you get news from your brothers, I heal, call for reinforcements to take me back home and we go back to our separate ways again, right?”

“Nick.” I felt ashamed because he was right but I didn’t want to accept it out loud.

“Ask me about our brothers AJ, so we can go back to our lives.”

“That’s not fair Nick.”

“I tell you what isn’t fair, Alex. To abandon your family isn’t fair.”

“You have to understand...”

“He is dead, Alex.” Just like that he spat the words and I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. “Kevin was declared dead in action almost four years ago,” he added a little softer and the minute I heard those words I thought I had died too because the world seemed to disappear in front of me.

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