Phoenix and Ashes by Mercedes Lackey

two-seater instead
of flying solo as usual. Everyone knew that even though Erik crashed more birds
than he flew, anything he aimed at, he hit—he even took down a Hun with a
half-brick, once! He’d crashed his plane as usual; the only things
available were my usual bird, which was having a wonky engine anyway, and the
two-seater. They knew if he was in the observer’s seat, I could
concentrate on flying the bird and he could concentrate on what he was good at.
But if it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t even have been up there
that day.”
    Maya
nodded. “I see why you feel doubly responsible.”
Pilots were
not in such plentiful supply that Erik would not have been up on his own
.
He knew that; he’d been told that too many times. She didn’t say
it, because she must have known that he’d been told it and didn’t
believe it, and he was grateful that she didn’t say it aloud again
because she understood it wouldn’t help. There were a great many things
in this war that people understood, but didn’t say aloud. It was probably
the only way most people kept from going mad.
    But
of course, I’m already mad… or getting there…
    “But
why
were you shot down?” she persisted, as if she knew that this
was where the first crack had appeared in his armor. Maybe she did.
    “Because—”
he swallowed. “Because this time, when I went up, there was someone
I’d never seen before up there to stop me. Bright blue Fokker. Maya,
he
was one of us. He was an Air Master too. And—” he shook his head,
“and I felt something. From
him
. Not his thoughts, more like
what he was feeling. He was—he was in mourning.” He closed his eyes
for a moment, to fight down his own tears. Words were totally inadequate to
what he had felt in that single moment. Mourning? It was deeper than mourning.
It had been self-revulsion, hatred for what the man had been doing, and a
terrible, terrible sense of loss.
    The
Hun hadn’t only been mourning what he had to do—he was in mourning
for the loss of everything he cared for. “He was—” Reggie
groped for words, “flying with sorrow, the deepest, blackest sorrow I
ever felt in my life. And it was because by doing his duty, which was the
honorable thing to do, he was being forced to kill us, who should have been his
comrades. Because his beautiful blue heavens were filled with a rain of blood,
and his beautiful blue wings belonged to the Angel of Death. He knew he would
never, for however long he lived, fly in skies free of blood. His world was
shattered, and he’d never really feel happiness again.”
    Maya’s
fingers tightened on his. “Vishnu preserve us,” she replied, her
voice full of the shocked understanding he had hoped to hear.
    “I—couldn’t
shoot him. He couldn’t help but shoot me. I—” he shook his
head. “I didn’t evade. He got Erik first, then my tank, and then my
engine. He got Erik, and I felt him die, and it was my fault—my
fault—”
    Once
again her fingers tightened on his, but she did
not
say, as so many
fools had, that it wasn’t his fault. “You made a mistake,”
she said instead. “At some point, Reggie, you have to stop paying for it,
and forgive yourself. But only you can decide how much payment is
enough.” Then her voice strengthened. “You were shot down. Your
collarbone and your knee were both shattered, your ribs were cracked, and I
think only your Mastery saved you from worse. Then the Huns came to get you out
before your plane went up in flames. Something happened then, too, didn’t
it?”
    “
A
Hun came to get me out
,” Reggie corrected. “
A young fellow
came pelting out regardless—I suppose our boys must have seen what he was
doing, because they held their fire. He came pelting out, into No-Man’s
Land, over the wire, and hauled me out while the bird was burning. And he went
back for Erik, and
—” he swallowed “
that was when the
shell hit. Young fellow, he couldn’t have been sixteen. Maybe less
.”
He felt