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It’s cold on the day Adam starts referring to Takashi in the past tense. It’s a regular winter’s afternoon, and Adam talks about Takashi in a classroom full of kids who have probably never seen him in person and probably never will.
“Language is a very important thing, the nuances and intricacies of it all are what drives society forward,” Takashi said once. “Context, meaning, the history behind words- We follow journeys on what it means to live, and language does the same, tracking how we live, how humanity lives.”
“You’re so pretentious,” Adam said, with a smile. “What happened to being an ‘actions speak louder than words’ person?”
“Like I said, context,” Takashi shrugs playfully before sighing, and they both picture a very familiar scowl.
“You mean Keith’s actions are always louder than words,” Adam teases, and Takashi flicks his forehead.
Adam remembers Takashi talking about his original plans to move east when he turned 18, to pursue a joint honours degree -was it English Literature and Philosophy- flouncing about at some Ivy League.
At first, Adam thought that was a terrible idea, but now he imagines Takashi, wearing a terribly bland scarf and reading glasses, thousands of miles away from Sam Holt, and his insistence on bringing Takashi’s idealism all the way to Kerberos. Wearing a scratchy wool sweater vest, drinking overpriced coffee, Takashi could’ve been thousands of miles away from Adam and his weird obsession with the stars, and his ability to catch falling things. Takashi wouldn’t rise or fall in New York, but stagnate in the comfort that comes with reading about adventures, and not being in them. He’d be alive, and that would be nice.
Sometimes don’t quite work out the way you want them to.
Adam has always prided himself on being a man of science, but now he knows that it’s better to have a big heart than a big brain. He is grateful for that lesson at least, because his own heart is overflowing with the love he has for Takashi. It’s been keeping him warm most night, a reminder of why people say life is a precious.
Sometimes things don’t always go the way you want them because today his brain wins a solid victory, in a class full of teenagers who have only seen Takashi on a screen. Adam hates that they will only get to hear about Takashi in hushed tones, a wind light enough to scatter leaves of gossip in the Garrison dorms.
Adam stares blankly at his students and says, “In terms of distance, Officer Shirogane was one of the first to reach the ends of our solar system-“
He suddenly chokes on air, and an overwhelming guilt launches itself from the back of his eyes. It’s like he’s back in that damned office again, with the blinds half shut and Iverson’s gravelly voice plainly saying it was a pilot error .
Before he knows it, Adam finds himself stumbling out of the classroom and into the hallway, almost bowling Colleen and her bright green clipboard over with his clumsy steps.
“Adam,” Colleen’s voice gently coaxes him back into reality. Adam briefly wonders if she misses being able to look after someone other than herself, and he tucks that thought away for another time. “I’ll take over from here.”
“Missions,” Adam rasps out, struggling to breathe. “They were asking about missions and I don’t know anything apart from Kerberos and Takashi-“
“I’ll take over from here,” Colleen firmly says, placing gentle fingertips on his cheek. “Just take these to my desk, okay?”
Adam nods, and watches Colleen dust herself off before entering the classroom. He walks slowly to Colleen’s office, and the smell of her lavender perfume gently wafts into his nose. Colleen had offhandedly mentioned that her daughter used to douse herself in the stuff when she was younger, wearing her lab coat and Colleen’s protective goggles.
“Hi Adam,” Colleen’s daughter announces. Her eyes are glued to some bits of scrap metal and a blueprint, and her hands move rapidly, as if she was already running out of time at the grand old age of 12. “Could you pass me that wrench?”
“Sure,” Adam replies, impressed with Katie’s plans to build her fifth robot prototype of the summer. He tells her this, because he knows what it’s like to sacrifice normality, safety, in the name of something bigger.
He knows, because Takashi wasn’t the only person on Kerberos, and Katie looks exactly like her brother.
“Sometimes it’s easier to deal with things like this,” Katie says, quietly. “I can blame myself if things go wrong, because I can control the experiments, the variables, the environment-“
Adam sighs, and sits cross-legged on the floor next to her. “You’re very smart, and I don’t say this often, not even at the kids back at the Garrison- But Katie, you have a bright future ahead of you, you’re gonna go places.”
Katie scoffs, “I want to be smarter, and go places now-“ She drops her screwdriver and scribbles furiously on a clipboard, cutting herself off with a choked sob.
Adam nods, “I get it, but don’t compare yourself-“
“I don’t care about that at all,” Katie snaps. “I’ve never... I just need to get better.”
“Come on,” Colleen shouts from the hallway. “We can’t be late, Katie.”
And true to her word, Katie spent the next couple of years with the same desperation, trying to find something beyond the words pilot error, until she got caught up in her search, her insistence that there is nothing that can’t be answered, and followed her father and brother down the same path.
Adam takes a deep breath and places himself on Colleen’s desk chair, tapping his foot on the carpeted floor with anxious energy for the next few minutes.
Colleen eventually comes back, gliding into the room, as gentle as lavender, and places a couple of steaming mugs on her desk.
Adam blinks in confusion, and he deeply inhales the scent of hot chocolate, and he says, “Huh.”
“I always used to make these for Katie and Matt when they had a bad day, or night- Or anything really,” Colleen explains, amused with Adam’s confusion. “You know Keith stopped here once.”
“Hm,” Adam replies, grabbing a mug. “Thank you.”
Colleen exhales, watching Adam carefully. She begins, “You’re very good at compartmentalising, you know? At first, during the worst of it, I admired you for it, I admired how you could keep a logical perspective on things, and keep yourself going despite... all this.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Adam says quietly, the sweetness of his drink reminding him of how sugary Takashi would take his coffee.
Colleen shakes her head, crosses her arms, and says, “You’re good at sorting what’s useful and not useful in your life, and Shiro was always there to make sure you didn’t get too carried away.”
Adam snorts.
She laughs a little sadly when she says, “You haven’t checked in on yourself, have you?”
Adam rolls his eyes, trying to control the way his hand starts to shake. He’s never liked confrontation, even if it’s out of concern. Takashi was usually the one who could navigate flawlessly through these types of conversations. “I don’t have time to.”
“We’ve offered you time, Adam,” Colleen sighs. “There are so many people who are willing to help you- They know they don’t know what we went through, but allowing yourself to grieve is not useless.”
Adam grunts, swirling his hot chocolate around in his mug. He fruitlessly argues, “I can’t leave my job, or these kids alone now, Colleen. Takashi certainly wouldn’t.”
Colleen firmly says, “There’s only so much influence a person can have on someone else, Adam.” She places a hand on his knee, and her eyes well up with tears.
Adam doesn’t respond.
“I could’ve tried harder,” Katie blubbers, her hands gripping the fabric of her dress so hard that it crinkles and creases under her grasp. “We could’ve tried something-“
“There’s only so much we can do to convince someone to stay,” Colleen murmurs, the black of her own dress stained by rain and her daughter’s tears.
“So even if I changed the variables, they still would’ve gone in that ship,” Katie mumbles, looking up at the sky, and Colleen squeezes her hand, looking back down at her, hoping she can at least keep her daughter close to her.
“Sometimes you do everything right, Katie, and it all goes wrong,” Colleen says, wrapping her arms around her daughter, shielding her from the rest of the world, “Sometimes things happen because they do, and we have to accept that.”
Colleen’s almost scolding him when she says, “Moving on doesn’t mean everything else goes away with it- The memories, the feelings, all of that stays with you no matter how hard you try to get rid of them.” She laughs, “Believe me, I’m still finding random robot parts Katie’s hidden about the house, and Matt’s always had a habit of leaving pens in random places around the house in case inspiration struck!”
“As if I could forget anything about Takashi,” Adam mumbles into his mug.
“You can’t rush this, or ignore it,” Colleen patiently says. “Do you think it’ll be any easier in the end? Do you think what you’re doing will reap the results you want?”
“Sometimes things go wrong and I just have to accept they’ve gone wrong,” Adam says, and Colleen tuts at his stubbornness. He ignores her and insists, “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“Not like this, Adam” Colleen says. “This isn’t what that means.”
“But there’s nothing else I can do,” Adam admits.
“You’re still alive, aren’t you? Concentrate on that by giving the same the devotion you’ve given to Takashi to yourself, and that means being kinder to yourself.”
Adam sighs, “I don’t even know where to start.”
”You can try talking to someone, that’s a good place to start,” Colleen says.
Adam finally agrees after a few moments, and he leaves Colleen’s office with a new phone number in his phone and someplace to go at 2:30pm on Wednesday, where he’ll keep talking about Takashi in the past tense, because language is important.