Fic © Silverfox Characters © WEP Written for FlashFiction Challenge 2007

 
 
A/N: I had to cut 287 words to fit the contest, but none of the contents have been removed completely only style and mood might be affected.
 This interpretation of April is the result of a long ago discussion with another fandom member. I am no longer completely sure, 
but it was most likely Anny. I got this idea after talking with Ele about one of her fics, so special thanks to her for inspiration.
 
 
 

Under the Cowboy Hat

When Colt puts his hat over his face they think he's asleep, or daydreaming of sparsely dressed girls. They are wrong, but he prefers them to be.

Under his hat Colt can hide his worries, because cowboys don't worry about problems not immediately on hand and when a problem is immediately on hand they are too busy dealing with it. Cowboys are cool, superficial and easy-going. Or at least that's how Colt wants others to see him. No need to worry them.

Colt knows he will be fine no matter what happens. He'll deal with it. He's been through a lot and has always adapted.

When he hides under his cowboy hat and nobody can see his face Colt worries about other people. He worries about his people like any good Star Sheriff should, about the future of Cavalry Command after the war. In peace there is no need for this many soldiers and too many of them have never learned anything else.

Sometimes he worries about the Outriders who are so desperate for conquest and wonders whether humanity too is headed in that direction. He worries about Jesse Blue, because he sees in his eyes that Jesse is really just a lost boy who made a big mistake and has no way back. Jesse keeps playing his part and he plays it well, but Colt knows all about playing a part and hiding your feelings, even when done without a hat.

Most of the time he worries about his team-mates and friends.

He worries about Fireball, because of his idealism and enthusiasm. Yes, Colt takes at least as many foolish risks as Fireball, but he does, because somebody has to do it and, if he is killed, he has no family to miss him. Better it's Colt, if one of them has to die and the rest can go home to their families.

Fireball is such a child. He believes that he's immortal, trusts that he'll survive anything. Someday he might not. Or sooner or later Fireball will have to face reality, to realise that people aren't perfect and Cavalry Command's high ideals are too often just words on a piece of paper. It could destroy Fireball's faith in humanity forever and Colt worries about what it will do to him.

April is a similar case. Colt knows she doesn't mean to be flirtatious, to flutter from man to man, but she's always dreaming of that perfect love you only find in the cheap romance novels she loves to read. She's a Star Sheriff, a soldier and engineer, a grown woman, but also this foolish girl looking for her knight in shining armour in a world soldiers, traitors and spies. The only knights here are gigantic robots. There's nothing shiny about soldiers fighting a desperate war.

Strangers think her a slut and sooner or later someone will use her, break her heart just as she has done to so many others. Or maybe she'll cling to Fireball, marry him and live with the illusion of perfect love until it shatters and ends in divorce and tears. April'll never find her dream and she might drag Fireball into her big disappointment with her.

Those are small worries, though. There are thousands, maybe millions of dreamers who get disillusioned everyday. They grow up and move on and deep down he knows that April and Fireball will, too. It's just because they are his friends and he doesn't like seeing them get hurt that he worries about them.

Something bigger weighs on his mind everyday and it gets worse, because he is the only one that sees cause to worry about Saber. Sometimes he wonders whether everybody has gone blind that they don't notice Saber is destroying himself trying to kill off his emotions, suppressing them, cutting himself off until even his closest friends can't tell what he's feeling, don't know when he's hurting.

Colt isn't even sure Saber realises it himself anymore. He has no idea when it started or whether there is still a way back Saber could find. It scares him that this has been going on longer than he's known his friend and that he doesn't even know the real Saber well enough to be able to offer help. He wants to reach out, pull him back before the dam breaks and all the suppressed feelings drown Saber, but Saber won't let him get close enough, won't let him in.

Fireball is so much closer to Saber, much more likely to be taken seriously, but his idealism blinds him. He only sees Saber as an idol to imitate, not a normal person in need of help. That wouldn't fit his picture of Saber or Cavalry Command.

April who's known Saber for so long should have noticed, but she is not a very perceptive person and perhaps she was too young when it started and the process too gradual. It is even scarier to think it might have started in Saber's childhood.

Are his parents they so estranged that they don't see? Colt has never met them and cannot tell.

There are other parental figures in Saber's life. Commander Eagle and General Whitehawk are his superiors as well as mentors. He'd have to listen to them, but they turn a blind eye, refuse to see a problem, because Saber is too useful and they can't afford to unbalance him. Only the balance is already lost.

So the ones who could help do nothing and Colt can't get through the wall Saber has built around himself and when Colt takes his hat off his face he laughs, smiles as if he has no care in the world and stays close to Saber whenever he can, because someday soon that wall is going to break and somebody will have to catch Saber when he falls.

And whenever he hides under his hat Colt worries that maybe even the best psychiatrists won't be able to put Saber back together once he breaks.