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It wasn’t really fair to say that it had been a rough day, every day for the past 3 months had been rough. Everyone at the Garrison had spent the “appropriate” amount of time mourning and then life had carried on as normal. The Kerberos mission had turned into a training exercise, and Shiro had gone from the prodigy pilot and Garrison’s shining star to a footnote on a presentation and the reason for an additional 6 weeks of pilot training for all extraterrestrial missions farther than the ISS. It made Keith dizzy and sick to his stomach every time someone mentioned it. How was he supposed to just move on like that? Like Shiro hadn’t been half his reason to get out of bed in the morning?
He was curled up on his bed with Shiro’s jacket draped over him like a blanket. His laptop was laying on the bed next to him, email open and filtered to display only the messages Shiro had sent him. He’d never deleted a single one. They started out pretty mundane; reminders of class projects that were due, simulation training dates, when upperclassmen tutoring hours were. After a few months they’d turned more friendly; interesting articles that made Shiro think of him, praise for high scores on simulations and exams, invitations for sparring. After that they’d turned sweet and a little flirty; “You’re gonna do great on your test today!”, “I can’t wait to hang out tonight, I’ve been looking forward to it all week!”, “I saw you in the hallway in between classes this afternoon and just wanted to say... NICE.” Keith’s eyes misted over with tears and he had to blink them away before he could continue. Shortly before Shiro had left for Kerberos they’d finally admitted their feelings for each other and the (now nearly daily) emails had gotten sentimental and tender. Keith had two that he’d flagged as important and read too many times to count.
“Hey baby, sorry I didn’t wake you up this morning before I left. I know you haven’t been sleeping very well lately and you looked too comfy to bother. (yes I did take a pic, it’s my new phone background :P) We should go out for a ride tonight, I’ll bring a blanket and we can watch the stars together. I made a list of stuff I won’t be able to do while I’m on the mission and I want to show it to you, there’s a few things I’ll need your help with. I hope you’re having a good day and I can’t wait to see you tonight <3”
“Keith,
I’m going to miss you so much. I promise I’ll take a million pictures and make a private log for you every night after my mission reports. I left the key to my bike in your desk drawer so you can go out to our spot whenever you want while I’m gone. I attached the trajectory we’re going to follow. I know it’s silly, but I was thinking maybe you can use it to look up at night at where I’ll be and know I’m thinking about you. I know it seems like a long time, but it’ll be over before you know it. By the time I get back, you’ll be a senior cadet and you’ll get to start tagging along on LEO missions and doing the really cool stuff!
I could write an entire book about how much you mean to me and how much I wish I could take you with me, but I have to pick you up for the pre-launch tour in 7 hours and I should probably get to bed. I hope you know that every day with you has been the best day of my life and I already can’t wait to get back to spend the rest of them with you.
All my love,
Takashi”
Keith’s hand shook as he held his index finger over the delete button. At least once a week he found himself here, tears streaming down his cheeks, unable to bring himself to get rid of any of Shiro’s messages, no matter how hard he tried. He lowered his hand and hugged the jacket tightly to his chest. Just as he was about to close his email and try to get some rest, he noticed an email he hadn’t seen before. It said it was from Shiro, but the subject line was blank. When he clicked on the message, the body of it was blank as well. All it had was an attachment with a series of numbers as the filename. Keith’s eyes narrowed in confusion, but he decided to open the attachment anyway.
A waveform opened in the software for one of his communications systems classes. Had someone used Shiro’s email to send him their homework somehow? What would be the point? He hit the run button and watched as the time marker moved across the waveform. His eyes widened as he saw the cursor blip in several spots. This must be that weird quantum whatever thing Shiro had told him about the Holts using! He pulled out the flashdrive Shiro had given him that had a program for decoding the message. Maybe Shiro and the Holts made it to Kerberos and they were stuck there somehow? He could still be alive…
While the program was running to decode the message, Keith went back to his email to see if he’d missed anything when he opened it. There was nothing else. Just the attached waveform. He double checked the timestamp and his blood ran cold. It had been dated the exact day Shiro was supposed to touch down on Kerberos. The day before he’d heard the news about the crash during his lunch break. His pulse was thumping in his ears. How had he not seen this in three months? He clicked back to the decryption program when its icon flashed green on the taskbar. It had been such a short message. Only 5 words. J U S T L A N D E D I M I S S Y O U.
Just landed. I miss you.
They had landed. There was no way it had been pilot error like all of the reports had said. They hadn’t crashed at all. If Shiro had had time to send him that message, then all of the piloting for the first leg of the trip had been done. So what the hell had happened to them? He copied the message over to the flash drive and pulled it from his computer just in case. He threw his uniform back on, stuffed his laptop into his backpack and sprinted to Iverson’s office.
He knocked three times, as hard as he could, and waited in front of the large door. “Come in,” Iverson called from behind it. Keith swung the door open and saluted. Iverson stood, returned the salute, and motioned for Keith to sit down. Keith closed the door and sat down, pulling out his laptop. “Sorry for coming here so late, sir, but I just found something really important that I think you need to see.”
Iverson cocked an eyebrow, and Keith was worried he was about to get an earful for not waiting for permission to speak, but he waved Keith on. “Go on then, it’s almost light’s out, cadet.” Keith wasted no time in waking his laptop up and pulling up the waveform and the decryption again. He thought that maybe he should have been a little embarrassed about the content of the message, but even if they got dishonorably discharged for fraternization it would still be better than Shiro being trapped on a moon at the edge of the solar system with a rapidly dwindling food and oxygen supply. Iverson frowned at the screen.
“Son, I need you to delete this, immediately. That’s an order.” Keith stood up and grabbed the laptop. “What!? No!” Iverson sighed and ran a hand down his face. “What actually happened on the mission is highly classified. You don’t have near the level of clearance to even be aware of that message being able to exist.” Keith shook his head. “No way. You can’t do this! They could still be alive! We have to help them!” His throat and his eyes were burning, but he wouldn’t let himself cry in front of Iverson, not again. Not now.
Another long sigh dragged itself from Iverson’s aching chest. “Cadet, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you what happened, but your friend is gone. He died on that moon, the official reports got that part right at least. It killed me to blame him for it when it wasn’t his fault, but please believe me when I tell you we had to do it in the interest of national security.” Keith’s shoulders fell. A minute ago, he’d been ready to fist fight Iverson himself, along with the entire rest of Command if they’d gotten in the way of saving Shiro. He hadn’t even realized how high his hopes had gotten until they were shattered again. He handed the laptop back to Iverson.
A few clicks later and the message and decryption program were gone from its memory, Keith wished Iverson could do the same for him. The flash drive was still sitting on Keith’s bed in his room so he could (and most likely would) go back over the message a thousand more times, not that it mattered. “Listen, I know you don’t understand, and I know this is hard. The term is over in 2 weeks and despite everything you’re still at the top of your class. Why don’t you take next semester off and come back next spring to finish up? It won’t affect your record and lord knows your simulator scores aren’t going anywhere. I think you could use the break.” Iverson’s voice came through to Keith’s ears like his head had been underwater. He shook his head in hopes of clearing the fog.
“I don’t… I don’t want anything to do with this place. I’m done.” He said quietly. He felt like he should have regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, but he still felt like he was floating and couldn’t bring himself to care. Iverson shook his head and sighed yet again. “I’m sorry to hear that, cadet. I’m going to mark you down as suspended until further notice. If you change your mind between now and next spring, we’ll have a disciplinary hearing for you.” Keith nodded and saluted. Iverson waved him on. “Dismissed, cadet. Someone will be by at 0700 to debrief you on your exit.”
Keith stuffed everything he’d kept of Shiro’s and 2 changes of his own clothes into his duffel bag, along with some basic toiletries and all of the emergency studying snacks he’d hoarded for finals week. He pocketed the hover bike’s keys and stuffed his laptop, charger, the flash drive, and all of his drawing supplies into a small backpack. Making sure the guards hadn’t taken their posts yet for lights out, Keith walked swiftly down the hallway to the garage and sped out into the desert night.