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Hoban Washburne came to Private Sam Dash the way that most new acquaintances did in his fifties: as a flight school mentee. Sam's utility flying days were mostly over; sure, he could step in on any spaceship he would ever find himself on, but nowadays he stuck to short solo exhibition flights. He'd take the latest model of tiny fighter up in atmo and do a few loops while his colleagues told the visiting engineers and officials that the man up there was Sam Dash: the hero who'd emerged from the terrorist attacks and civilian evacuations on Silverhold back in 2476. It still gave him that rush that flying always had, but Sam was getting tired of the hullabaloo and politicking. Helping the next generation through flight school was more satisfying and felt more tangibly useful.
And so Sam's first impression of Washburne was a folder full of high school grades and amateur flying stats and an essay detailing why this young man wanted to be a pilot.
"Here. Hoban Washburne," Dean Hawkes said as he handed the folder over. "He's got good marks but every teacher he's ever had has said he can be a bit of a class clown. Dash, I'm giving him to you, seeing as he's got an ADHD diagnosis."
"What does that have to do with giving him to me?" Sam asked.
"Well…you've made a career for yourself in piloting and teaching despite your own struggles with the disorder. You can guide him in a more personal way."
Sam had not ever been diagnosed with ADHD. He'd never even had a doctor or a teacher suggest it, but he supposed that the dean had certain ideas about how pilots were supposed to act, and Sam was more than willing to admit he was a bit more lackadaisical about the day-to-day of his job than a few of the more celebrated teachers.
Washburne had good grades; nothing astounding but no failures either. He was dedicated and by all accounts an easy man to get along with. But what struck Sam was the fact that even just from the info on file, he could tell that Washburne was a born pilot.
It did not happen frequently, but sometimes a student would come along and it would be clear that they belonged at the controls of a spaceship, that they would have no hardship spending long stretches of time in the black and that the piloting lifestyle would do nothing but nourish them.
Washburne would flourish as a pilot. Sam knew it.
But that didn't mean that the road there wouldn't be a rocky one.
"It isn't his fault," Sam said during Washburne's second year in the program for what felt like the fiftieth time. "Washburne's brain is wired differently than most. I still firmly believe that his natural talent makes up for however distracting he may be in class."
"It's a liability."
"How? You'd think these people who want to pilot enormous spaceships for a living should be able to ignore outside distractions."
"Washburne should be able to focus."
"He gets excellent grades. He has a knack for flying."
"Listen, Dash. Can you get him to accept going on medication?"
"He's already on medication."
"Well, surely he can get recommended for higher dosage, right?"
"Discharge him from the program if you're so worried," Sam snapped. He knew they wouldn't. They hadn't discharged the candidate three years prior who'd attacked a fellow student at a party being held in an official campus building, and that had made the news cycle of the entire system.
"He has such potential," Dean Hawkes said. "But he needs a nudge. His infractions are not serious but they are many. I'd like to see him in here next Friday after he's finished with his hours."
"Yes, sir."
"We're not aboard a cruiser anymore, Dash."
"'Course not, Hawkes."
Washburne showed up well-groomed to his meeting, which apparently was a welcome change from how he'd been attending class for the past two months. He stood there stoically while the staff explained to him that he was doing so poorly that there was no way around it: he would have to repeat a year.
"One extra year?" He asked.
"If you're lucky. With the way some of the classes are structured, it's possible you're looking at two if you don't shape up. We're keeping you in the program because we do know what you're capable of, Washburne. You have potential. And we understand that your disorder affects you in ways that make your experience far different from that of your peers."
Washburne's face went through an entire lifetime's worth of emotions in that moment.
"I understand," he said after a moment's consideration. "Thank you for giving me a second chance."
Washburne didn't just fail the program that year. He scored so badly that instead of making him sit a few of his classroom exams just to confirm the failing grade, they put him in classes with the students a year below him just so he could get to know the people he would be spending most of his time with come the next school year.
"I've seen your high school scores and your amateur flying evaluations," Sam said during their end-of-year advisor meeting. "I know you can manage how your brain works. You wouldn't be in this program if you weren't able to sort yourself out."
"It's hard for me," Washburne said. "Uh...my ADHD makes it difficult."
"If you can pull yourself together, you can be out there in the thick of it," Sam told him. "You'd be an ace pilot; I just know the Alliance would send you out on the best missions. The higher brass would all be tearing their hair out trying to decide which battle needed you the most."
"I know," Washburne said. His face was blank.
"Do your best next year, kid."
"Yes, sir."
Washburne flunked the next year too.
It baffled Sam, honestly. And it was a little embarrassing, too. Washburne had been handed to him to mentor because everyone believed that Sam would be able to guide him and mold him into the kind of pilot that the 'Verse wanted to see in the skies in 2507.
There was another disciplinary meeting, but they acknowledged that they'd promised they would give him a second redo year and he was appropriately sheepish. Sam kept quiet, offering a pat on the shoulder in lieu of a final meeting. He didn't know if there was anything he could say. Washburne seemed to get the memo.
Apparently he spent the summer working as a fry cook. He didn't provide details and Sam didn't press for them.
That next year at the institute was also the unofficial ninth year of the ongoing war and in this unofficial ninth year of the war, strategy began to change. Sam, as a preeminent small craft and skiff pilot, was called in to his first official strategy meeting in twenty years just to tell them that he agreed: it wasn't worth wasting so many pilots on small craft fighting. Better to have them on cruiser management teams or battleship shifts or doing cargo transport. The Independents were fighting in the black or on the ground, not in atmo, but they did seem to have quite a lot of missiles and were taking out expensive spaceships and skilled pilots at a frankly alarming rate. The era of dogfighting that had built Sam's own reputation was over.
"It's messy to have more than one Alliance skiff flying above a planetside battle," Sam told them. "They're as likely to kill each other just as they are to do damage to the Independent forces on the ground."
Policy changed almost immediately and so did the student body. A few who were genuine daredevils quit, heading for fighting on the ground or pivoting to extreme sports. Sam was glad they were gone--that was never a good reason to pursue the career. Some expressed frustration that there would be so few opportunities in that specific type of flying.
In the end, Sam did not pay much attention to what was going on with most of the other students, because Washburne's scores suddenly pulled out of the wild tailspin they'd been in for three whole years and started soaring. He was pulling ahead of his new peers in ways not seen in the program before. His hours logged went up. His grades turned around. He joined the acapella men's choir with his newfound free time and drive.
"You got your act together," Sam said, clapping Washburne on the shoulder at the end of the year. "I'm proud of you, kid."
"Finally got my groove back," Washburne joked.
He graduated two years later, all his past transgressions forgiven with the balm of the new leaf he'd turned. Sam was finally able to watch his longest-running mentee walk across the stage; six years wasn't exactly a lifetime but it was highly unusual, and seeing Washburne shake Dean Hawkes's hand felt like taking off a g-suit after a 96 hour atmospheric flight mission. He was handed his diploma and then Washburne reached up into the sleeves of his graduation gown and tugged on something that soon had a cacophony of tin cans on twine tumbling from under his robes and clattering to the ground behind him. He flipped his stole over, revealing that he'd written FINALLY FREE on both tails, and as the rest of the class either tried their very best to maintain disapproving looks or openly whooped and clapped, he waved his diploma in the air and clanked noisily across the rest of the stage, drowning out the dean's attempt to call Julia Willmington to collect her diploma.
Julia was still laughing as she shook the dean's hand and posed for her photo.
Washburne was called in the very next day for disciplinary action.
"Do you know why you've been asked here despite having finished the program?"
"I have a bit of an idea," Washburne admitted.
"Is that right? Why don't you go ahead and tell us what you think the issue is."
"The tin cans at commencement."
"Do you understand that this is a serious institute, Washburne?"
"I do, sir."
"Do you regret your actions?"
Washburne choked back a laugh.
"Uh. No, not really," he admitted freely. "It was pretty funny."
Hoban Washburne spent his first year as a licensed pilot and the last year of the war piloting relief ships as punishment for his commencement ceremony prank.
"If you'd just made a bit of effort, maybe got on more medication and stuck to a good behavior streak, you would have been doing atmospheric fighter pilot work four years ago," Sam told him when they met up for drinks once the war was over. "Maybe set to head a cruiser's management team by now, after the policy change."
"Yeah. I know."
"You've figured out how to manage it now, I hear. No real complaints from your superiors. Though some of them say you're a bit of a chatterbox."
"Yeah, they can't keep me quiet for very long," Washburne admitted. "But relief ships is serious business."
"More serious than your certification?"
"I mean…yeah? The relief ships are about people's lives and the end of the war. Of course it's more important than a guy finishing flight school."
Sam supposed he really couldn't argue that.
After the war, Washburne was not offered a renewal of a military contract. He was thanked for his work with the relief ships and told that his attitude did not suit the military. His case went into the end-of-year statistics of the flight school scholarship program review as one of the rare failures. They chalked it up to him being unwilling to manage his ADHD in any sort of effective way.
For some reason, it itched at Sam. He'd seen Washburne those first two years. He'd seen the high school grades and the local hobby flight school's evaluations and the raw natural talent. He knew it had been there. He also knew that Washburne had a formal diagnosis and had, at least at one point, been on some sort of medication to mitigate the symptoms. He'd been a hard worker for those first few classes, had a struggle for the second half of the second year, and then after the meeting with the admins, instead of being remotivated to maintain his schedule, his work had gone into a nosedive.
When Sam looked Washburne up on the licensed pilots' database four years later, he was floored at the info. There were references from huge inter-system shipping conglomerates, passenger flight lines, pleasure cruise companies, emergency small-scale cargo businesses, and captains of private ships whose business was listed as other. There were hours upon hours of verified flying time. There were commendations from the boards of pilot guilds throughout the 'Verse. By all accounts, he was rapidly flourishing in his career in a way he never had during school. Some mentioned he was easily distracted, prone to running his mouth, maybe left his belongings in common areas more than everyone would have preferred. Sometimes he needed an extra push to finish tasks and he could get frustrated during long haul trips with nothing to do. They always noted that this was worth putting up with; he was apparently nothing short of a miracle worker when it came to safety and bottom line and crew camaraderie.
Makes friends with everyone, one captain had commented. And that ain't an easy feat with the crew I employ.
Outsmarted an asteroid belt, another wrote. Don't know how he did it.
Frankly a genius at the controls. The third reference was straightforward with it. I'd fight an all-out alley brawl to get him back on my crew. Reynolds if I ever see you again it's on sight.
As was routine at the end of term, Sam was asked to report on stand out career moves of his mentees amongst the alumni of the scholarship program and for the first time, he brought up Washburne (these reports were usually limited to letting the board know that Wah Chamberlain was still the star of Bernadette's demonstration squadron).
"I would have liked to see that drive and focus during his time here," Dean Hawkes said.
"Well, he's representing himself and this institution well now, at least," Sam pointed out.
Sam wasn't invited to the wedding, but he got the announcement message over the Cortex. Hoban Washburne had married Zoe Alleyne on a Rim planet in some tiny courthouse with a city clerk as witness.
Sam was nosy. He searched up Zoe Alleyne up on the Cortex and was immediately met with mugshots of a beautiful snarling woman with proud eyes and a laundry list of charges. Smuggling. Instigating barfights. Public disturbance. A few manslaughter accusations and unlawful killings.
How Washburne had landed her was beyond him.
Sam let this info tumble around in his thoughts for nearly a week before curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see if he could find any info on the former Miss Alleyne from the more exclusive databases he had access to.
She was career military for the Coalition, valor commendation. Born and raised on a cruiser that now orbited Beylix as part of a debris belt. She'd been in Du Khang and Serenity Valley and rejected offers of full amnesty and reintegration to society via agricultural work stays, instead opting to embark on a life of uncertainty and crime. There was a bit of tracking her last known location but it appeared that she'd become a Washburne and the military database did not know what to do with Cortex-level name changes. She was a born and bred Independent and definitely not the kind of woman who would choose to share a life with anyone who'd ever flown Alliance fighter jets or held popular political opinions.
Sam closed her file in a daze.
You did it on purpose, you crazy son of a bitch. They told you that you wouldn't be flying Alliance fighter jets if you kept being disruptive so you took their word for it and flunked intentionally. Who would have questioned you? None of them ever did; they just chalked it up to your brain chemistry because none of them knew any better and they were glad you even graduated. Was it because you were scared to die at war or just didn't want to hurt anyone or was it because even then you didn't agree with the Alliance's politics?
Does it matter?
Honestly, Sam had to respect it. He didn't know anyone else who'd walked into the flight school scholarship program with a brain not wired to succeed in the culture and walked out with a free education and no contract of military service. Washburne certainly had something that most other entrants into the program did not have.
The fucking audacity.