When Keith was two, mankind discovered the ruins of a civilisation on Mars. The ruins held technological wonders, centuries of scientific complexities and an incomprehensible amount of information about the universe.

And so Keith grew up in a world that looked upwards to the stars, dreaming of distant galaxies and nebulae far bigger than anything the mind could hold. Cities grew taller, trains faster, and their planet just seemed to spin just that little much quicker with all the advancements. There were talks of deep space missions, teleportation, time travel. Anything was possible.

When Keith was ten, he met Takashi Shirogane, someone who should honestly be a senior, another classmate in their specialised aviation stream, but who became a fellow dreamer, another skywatcher on smokey nights. Then Shiro became someone who could fly as fast as he could, work as hard as he could. Only they could twist the plane in motions that left their instructors dizzy and their peers in wide-eyed envy. He was competition, a good sport, a friend.

“You were born to fly,” Shiro had said, looking at the simulation playback with a proud smile.

Keith shook his head, “We were born to fly.”

Then at fifteen the visitors started coming, dressed up in black suits and holding clipboards that could could visualise data in seconds. They observed him from soundproof glass and one-way mirrors, talked to his instructor, set him aside for further examination. Physical, psychological, emotional. Hope was in the air. An expedition to the edge of the universe. Or perhaps a mission to find extraterrestrial life. Only the best of the best could go.

“A pity,” they had said, on the other side of a door half closed. “The best pilot of them all, and too young.”

“Surely the rules could bend to accomodate...”

“Even seventeen is stretching it. Fifteen is just …”

And so when Keith was fifteen, Shiro was chosen, and he was left behind.

The first three messages come in the middle of the night, phone singing in the unique ringtone Keith had set for this particular person. He shoots out of bed and leaps for it, fumbling to turn it on.

>> The launch went well. I’m doing fine. Miss you.

>> There is more darkness than I expected.

>> I have seen the moon.

Keith smiles, pushing his fringe back.

<< I know. Don’t send meaningless messages.

He sends it, thumb tapping <ENTER> on reflex. Like he was replying any other message. As if this one was not destined for a destination like the moon. His phone dings.

>> I wish you were here

Keith stares, thumbs hovering just above the screen, mind blank.

He stares until the cold seeps into his feet and he feels the moonlight tingling on his neck. He looks up, and sees it’s wide, white face standing alone in the night sky. Somewhere up there is Shiro, staring down at the blue sphere on which all of human history has taken place. Keith has seen pictures, knows how small and insignificant their world is against the vast emptiness of it all. He wants to be up there, wants to measure his mortal life against celestial eternity. Wants to be everywhere in the universe except grounded.

A yawn creeps up his throat and he lets it escape, tears prickling the corner of his eye. It’s two o’clock and he has class at seven.

His phone is still on, lit by messages from outer space. There’s a thousand mundane topics gathering on the tip of his fingertips. The new cafeteria menu. The homework due tomorrow. The incompetency of the new barber on base.

It takes 1.5 seconds for light to travel from the Moon to Earth. That’s at least 1.5 seconds between Shiro sending his message and Keith receiving it.

By Mars it would be 4 minutes. By Pluto. 8 hours.

In a few months, even a day’s lag will turn into a luxury.

(Keith does not dare to imagine anything beyond that.)

So that night he takes a fully charged phone to bed, typing on his side until his shoulder turns to stone. He sticks his feet out when he starts to overheat and turns up the brightness when he grows sleepy. He rolls over every time an arm cramps and continues typing out thought after thought, story after story, sending these feeble radio waves to chase after a boy shooting away from Earth in speeds Keith cannot even begin to comprehend.

He can pull a sick day tomorrow.

Graduation comes easy, like Lance falling in love, like Pidge hacking a machine, like gravity pulling down old satellites. It’s disgusting how mundane the final years were without someone to keep him looking over his shoulder in a sprint, how pathetically lethargic the lessons were without a score chipping at his own on the leaderboard, how meaningless his successes were if he couldn’t turn around and say hey Shiro guess what —

<< I graduated. he writes, when his veins are full of champagne and the silent night seems unbearable. He stares at the message until it sends, then continues staring until the screen times out. He turns it on again twice before he remembers the last reply took two weeks to arrive.

Even so he barely falls asleep that night, eyes darting open whenever his phone buzzes, only for it to be a half-dream, velleities from his imagination leaking into reality. Unfounded hopes that dissolve like smoke once his consciousness clears.

Keith gets recruited immediately by the military. He’s out of training and into a combat plane by week two. By week three he the youngest pilot to break the sound barrier and ushered into a mission brief for low Earth orbit. He gets to shake hands with the President and rub elbows with astronauting legends and smile civilly until his lips crack. He is nominated for an award for Outstanding Excellence as a Young Person and wins.

When he arrives home after the ceremony there’s a new email from Shiro.

>> Congratulations!

For a second there was a semblance of normalcy. His heart dances, he pulls out his other hand to reply how did you know and —

Then he sees his last message.

Then the reality of it all hits him.

Keith laughs until he cries.

<< Thank you. Though coming first isn’t as satisfying when second isn’t you. I’m joining the military because they have better planes and I get to fly them every day. I’m officially the fastest man on Earth, Mach 4.2 is the new world record for a manned aircraft.

<< Where are you now?

When Keith turns twenty-one, Shiro is still seventeen.

Pidge does the math, announcing words like high velocity and time dilation as she plugs numbers into a calculator. Lance laughs at his face. Hunk gives him a crash course on Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity. Keith pelts the calculator at Lance.

Hunk lingers behind as the others leave one by one, polishing more wine glasses than Keith remembers using. Lance likes to drink directly from the bottle, and Pidge doesn’t drink. He’s also throwing concerned looks at Keith whenever he thinks Keith isn’t looking.

“What,” Keith bites, alcohol igniting his temperance.

“Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Hunk falters in his polishing, “You’re … not waiting for him, are you?”

“Of course not,” Keith throws back, too quick to be truthful. Saliva gathers at the back of his throat, thick enough to weigh on his tongue.

“He wouldn’t want you to.”

“I’m not waiting for him,” Keith affirms.

“Good.” Hunk looks down at the wine glass, “Because it’s going to be a long time. And waiting would be bad.”

“Bad,” Keith agrees intelligently.

He’s not waiting for Shiro. He’s not. Keith Kogane doesn’t wait. He’s been moving up ranks faster than a monkey climb trees and ticking off childhood dreams like groceries.

It would be bad to wait. Silly. Especially when every second for Shiro was ten for him, then twenty, a minute, a day. He is travelling through time as fast as Shiro is travelling through space and the faster Shiro goes, faster the difference between them grows. It’s the law of the universe.

But it doesn’t mean it hurts any less when someone leaves your life. Some things are harder to get over.

Keith opens the hidden closet and takes out the whiskey.

>> We’re passing through Alpha Centauri. It’s all numbers out here so we’ve been naming planets as we go. We ran out of relatives and friends and pets so we’ve started going through Star Trek episode titles. I haven’t used your name yet, saving it something different, maybe a dust cloud?

As a high altitude pilot, Keith has seen many beautiful things.

He’s seen the northern lights from above, dancing, swirling above the Nordics as if all the world was their stage. He’s seen lightning spreading like scars over the Pacific, heard in his mind the deafening thunder and felt the electricity thrum in his memory. He’s chased bushfires across Australia and tornados across the plains of America. Japan is like a green dragon stretched across the ocean, sacred Mt. Fuji a mere bump on its skin.

It’s something to impress Lance with, and something else entirely when he comes home to messages like —

>> I have seen stars die.

And suddenly everything he’s done in the past week shatters to dust. In his emails, Shiro describes stars colder than a cup of coffee, and planets where the wind blows so fast it rains sideways. He describes planets that used to be stars, stars that burned too brightly too fast, or those who had a twin that exploded and swallowed their atmosphere, leaving behind a corpse made of pure diamond.

Keith follows the press releases, buys prints of the official photographs. Snapshots of a lightning bolt longer than the Milky Way, or of the horrifying darkness of a black hole, rim haloed with tendrils of light. He tapes them to his wall and they keep him company on rainy evenings when the window blurs the city like wet glitter, laptop opened with drafts of emails too difficult to send.

Keith thinks of his world, thinks of Shiro’s, and tucks his thoughts away for another session at the bar. He wouldn’t want to waste the few precious kilobytes explaining his life, stress the already fragile connection with his idle chatter. Not when it’s shared by important scientists and engineers ensuring the survival of the crew.

<< Stay Safe. Remember to look after yourself.

(I miss you he types into a draft he will never release.)

<< I bet you miss coffee he sends instead.

He turns twenty-five somewhere over the Pacific, crossing the international date line from yesterday into tomorrow. His co-pilot laughs and goads the squadron of marines in the back to sing him happy birthday. Keith smiles grimly and wonders if this is the closest he will get to time travel.

It’s been ten years.

<< Hey Shiro guess what, Lance got married. I was convinced he paid her but they look happy together. I wish I could send you the pictures, but they have to wait. Hunk’s making an album of everything, to help you catch up when you get back.

>> Haha yes I miss coffee. And a lot of other things, ordinary things I didn’t notice until they’re gone. The sound of rain hitting the umbrella. The smell of spring after a cold winter. The feeling of relief when you catch the last train. I miss those more.

>> Are you doing okay?

Keith eventually gives in to Lance’s needling and goes on a blind date. The man is handsome, tanned, and very very leggy. He’s a hard ass corporate litigator with a mirroring wit that could sharpen knives. Keith almost lets himself be endeared until the topic turns to space exploration, and he watches the conversation drop into the “mm”, “ahh" territory of polite affirmation.

And then there’s the aeronautical engineer who shares his passion for space flight and efficient shuttle design but there’s just that little something missing. Or the astrophysicist whose words are full of stars but their heart is anchored to the earth. Keith doesn’t have high expectations, really, despite what the accusations say when he turns down the offer for another evening. He doesn’t care about a minimum salary or height. He’s not like Pidge who wants an intellectual match, or Lance who thinks with his eyes.

Just, a spark. Something to get his heart going. A spark is all he needs because Keith is full of dry kindling and he wants to burn. He wants to feel the exhilaration of a free fall when they kiss, earth tipping over into sky and mind blown by the roar of a supersonic gale. Wants to feel the pull of gravitation whenever they step into the room, the natural drift of attractive forces that work on even the largest of things. Wants to love like a photon running across the vacuum of space for a solitary receiver on the other end of the universe.

He chooses with his heart and his heart wants to feel the thrill of helpless breathless weightlessness when he falls. Like when he chased the curvature of the Earth until the sun rose in the west. Or perhaps the satisfied quiet after a job well done. Like those nights with Shiro when they would rewatch practice footage together, comparing their flight times, judging the accuracy of their manoevers, pinpointing mistakes overlooked by the best of their instructors. Making game plans for tomorrow.

He thinks of a farewell smile and the parting warmth of a hand clasping his shoulder.

He knows that by the time they meet again, Keith would’ve spent more of his life without Shiro, than with. But somehow a few short years was all it took for him to leave an impression deeper than time could heal. Keith still saw his face in a crowd, when faces swam together to produce the one on his mind. Shiro was there when he forgot his umbrella on an overcast day, old whispers chuckling at him, wishing him good luck, offering to share.

Perhaps it was inevitable, when everything was so bright with Shiro, that the years after could not compare, like the echoes of the Big Bang still resounding billions of years after its occurence, tainting every radio communication with its presence. Perhaps it was inevitable, that Shiro became the yardstick against which he measures the world.

Perhaps I am in love with a memory.

Keith digs the flesh of his palms into his eyes until he sees white.

<< I’m doing well. But some days I want to punch you. You know I’m not good with words.

<< I’m a godfather now. I have no idea why Lance thinks this is a good idea. Children terrify me.

<< When will you come back?

At twenty-seven he transfers back to the Garrison and applies to pilot the mission to terraform Mars.

The interviewing lieutenant laughs nervously when he opens Keith’s file, full classified information way above their clearance level and a referee list that could be a NASA board meeting.

Keith gets up, and the man shoots him a desperate look as he scrapes his chair back.

“The interview Kogane?”

“Not necessary,” Keith performs a barely acceptable salute, “I look forward to hearing from you.”

He leaves the door open on the way out.

They reject his application.

Instead they send a welp with half his experience to terraform Mars. Humanity’s Hope! the tabloids read, praising the kid to highest skies.

His old co-pilot finds his wall of newspaper clippings and prints when picking up clothes around his apartment. He squints at pictures bleached by years of sunlight and the headlines so old he’d seen them reused yesterday. Keith waits for the water to boil while watching the morning sun stretch across the room like a yawning cat, creeping in as it does, day to day.

“You’ve been following this for a long time,” they eventually measure out.

“I have a friend on there,” Keith replies, voice cool.

“You still keep in contact?”

“Now and then.”

“Huh. Talk about long distance,” he scratches the back of his neck, “How long does it take mail to arrive?”

Keith rakes through his brain for an answer, he comes up blank. “I stopped counting. A year, maybe?”

His co-pilot lets loose a low whistle and turns to the wall again, eyes tracing the journey across the universe. “Since when were you this patient?”

Keith pours himself two cups of coffee. “I don’t know what you mean.”

>> That’s unbelievable. Lance, married?

>> Don’t tell him I said that.

Keith gets reassigned to the Education Faculty and dumped on kids half his age (I was that young once, he thinks, heart clenching in his chest). He trains them from terrible to acceptable, teaches them how to survive in low-oxygen environments and how to twist a plane to avoid asteroids. They grow a year older, graduate, and get deployed to the mines on Europa or to plant satelites near Jupiter.

Then the next cohort comes in, and Keith does it again and again, getting older as his students stay the same age. One day he looks at the mirror in the training room and sees the fraying edges of his skin against the fresh-faced bright-eyed boy he has pinned to the ground, the same age as Keith was, when Shiro last saw him.

Time hits him like a freight train.

“Sir?” The student shifts. His name is Akira, and one of his best. The way he rushes into a fight, full of thunder and brimstone, paints a painful mirror into the past.

“Think before you strike,” Keith mumbles out, offering a hand up. “Patience yields focus.”

He wonders why, out of all the dimensions, time has to be the irreversible one.

<< It’s so strange how, for you, we only parted last year.

<< I want to see what you have seen.

In a single night, Keith applies for all the pending space missions. He hopes for the furthest one, so that the faster he flies, the faster time will pass. Perhaps by the time he returns, Shiro would be back.

He’s summoned by the Commander by late afternoon.

“Which one?” Keith asks, right as the door closes behind him.

“Which what,” the Commander looks up, putting down his pen.

“Mission.”

“Attitude Kogane. Watch it.”

“Which mission, sir.”

“None of them.”

Keith stares him down.

“All your applications have been rejected.”

His spine stiffens. “Did I not qualify?”

“That is not the problem Kogane. You over qualify.”

“Then I don’t see where the problem is.”

The Commander sighs, resting an open palm on the table. “We just can’t afford to lose you.”

Fire rises up under his skin, itching and ready to boil over.

“You’re the best pilot we have Kogane,” they continue, “And honestly, we’re looking for someone younger. It’s tough up there.”

Keith bites his lip until he tastes blood.

All of a sudden he’s fifteen again, sitting outside a half-open door with a blinding burning ache to fly starward and never look back. An ache that is drowned by a justificiation as petty as age. Why does it matter? Age is just a symptom of the forth dimension, a scar from all the seconds, the weeks, the years that have carved out his body from clay. Why is he always the wrong age.

He slams the door on the way out and punches the nearest window, shattering it into shards of fractured light. His knuckles are scarlet when he retracts, wild as an Arizona sunset flaring in summer. Wiping it against his cheek, he sidesteps the security that comes running and bolts for the hangars. He jumps into his plane just as the alarms begin to sound.

The engine thrums when he turns it on and he feels it rise to life under his hands, heart rumbling with it. The sky is a bright white so sharp it stings his eyes and pains his nerves but he stares it down, aims for it, thrusts the plane vertical so that all he sees is an infinity made of blue. He rises until the bulk of the Garrison transforms into children’s toys and the horizon of the world fades to the darkness of space. He sees the stars above him, shining like they have something to prove, twinkling like an invitation, a promise to show him sights no human has ever seen, lighthouses that will guide him home. He rises and rises towards the vaster infinity, the infinity made of black pierced with pinpricks of light that could be anything from a satellite to a star to a supernova. He rises until the air chokes in his lungs and his brain pushes against his skull in violent churning. Keith looks up, cranes his neck towards the sky that he has never touched, the boy he has not seen in fourteen years and throws one last, long look at everything he will never have. Then he turns the plane earthward.

There’s an executive order for an honourable discharge on disciplinary grounds, followed by a retrieval. Keith sees it coming, reads it when he hacks the system from an Internet Cafe in Tokyo, hears it on the news in Bangkok when retrieval is replaced with arrest.

<< Hey Shiro guess what, I don’t think I can go into space ever again.

<< Hey Shiro are you receiving these messages?

They send Akira to pilot research trip to Kerberos. It disappears five months after launch. Pilot Error, the higher ups whisper.

It wouldn’t have happened if it was me, Keith wants to yell, It wouldn’t have happened if it was Shiro.

One evening, Keith is repairing a car engine for a local mafia boss when someone’s phone starts ringing. It’s strange, because he’s the only one here. No one picks it up, but then it rings again. And again. And then he realises it’s his phone that’s ringing and this is a ringtone he hasn’t heard in years because it is only set for one person and he bolts up and hits his head on the windshield and trips on loose wiring and he’s leaping for it, fumbling to turn it on —

>> The mission is completed. We’re turning back.

>> Keith Kogane, first of his name, finest pilot of our generation, godfather of Lance’s spawn. A fitting title.

>> By the way, I named a supernova after you. It was the reddest thing we found.

>> We are nearing Earth as fast as we can, and I’m picking up all these messages on the way, like fishing bottled letters in the ocean. It’s strange how by the time I read them, the events would be long in the past. It’s terrifying to think of how much I’ve missed. I’m sorry for missing so much of your life.

>> Did something happen? Keith?

>> Keith? Are you okay?

>> There’s something I want to tell you when we meet again.

Keith starts to tap out a reply only to smear grease all over his screen so he pulls off his gloves with his teeth, tasting motor oil and exhaust gas but feeling fifteen and immortal.

<< Shiro. I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.

He turns on the television with his elbow and it crackles and spits static but then the news are on and it’s true, they’re coming back, humans who have completed the longest deep space mission, and there’s picture of the crew, grainy and sandy and sent from beyond the solar system but there he is in the back, smiling like the flash caught him unawares, looking exactly as he did sixteen years ago, Shirogane Takashi.

<< I’ll be waiting.

Keith is thirty-two when the visitors come, knocking on the door of his safe house one autumn evening. They identify themselves only by the coat of arms embellished on the file they drop on his dining table. The same ones on the clipboards he saw as a trainee at fifteen, tracking his progress. The same one sprayed across Shiro’s chest like a prayer in the latest photos.

He offers them coffee, they take water, and leaves it untouched as they stare at each other, two men in black and one Keith with his heart rising into his throat with trepidation.

“I hope you remember Kerberos,” they begin, and Keith’s ears prick, “What happened there was not due to pilot error. That is only a cover-up for what actually occurred. You understand why we can not publicise this just yet. If the Mars discovery thirty years ago was revolutionary, then this discovery would be apocalyptic.” They pause.

“We have reason to believe they were intercepted by an intelligent civilisation far more advanced than humankind, a civilisation that does not intend to come in peace.“

Keith sucks in a breath. He knows where this is going.

“We need people to investigate, defend, fight. We have already deployed several teams, but our newest offensive prototypes can only be piloted by someone with your experience .”

“How long,” Keith asks, and this is the question he fears, “How long will I be gone for?”

“You will be deployed for two years.”

Two years. Two more years without Shiro. Under the table, he clenches his fist. But what is two years on top of all the years that have past, what is two years against a life time.

Suddenly, he stills, and realises there is another question with an even more fearsome answer.

“How many years will pass on Earth?” Keith whispers.

The representatives glance at each other, a question, confirmation, and an answer. “Twenty.”

It feels like the air has dropped twenty degrees. When he breathes in, his lungs are filled with ice.

“What if I decline?”

They take out their tablet, flicking through tabs. “We have one other option. You may know him actually, I recall he was in the Garrison around your time.” They turn the screen around and Keith recognises the face immediately.

Tanned skin, cropped hair, eyes that cried when his daughter was born.

Lance McCain.

The picture floats between them like a gravestone.

“But honestly, Keith Kogane, you are the one we are hoping for because —“ they put the tablet away, “You are the best pilot on Earth and the Universe demands nothing less.”

Keith does not answer. The words exhaust him, a mantra reoccurring throughout the years like a thorn. In the silence, he reaches out for the file, fingers flitting over the cover like tired ghosts. Ad Astra, is so the mission christened. To the stars.

You were born to fly, Shiro had told him, so many years ago.

When he turns over the first page, time slows to a still.

<< Forgive me.

They push him into training, far harder than he has ever pushed himself. The regimen is punishing and every day they are telling him you are the best pilot in the world and you will save the universe. He smiles for the press when they introduce him with a list of achievements, each item hammering his coffin nail by nail.

They schedule his launch the month before Shiro’s landing.

>> For what? Keith?

>> I can see Earth now. We are preparing for re-entry. See you soon.

>> Keith? Where are you?

>> Keith?

<< From the thirty-three year old Keith to the nineteen year old Shiro: please don’t wait for me.

The night sky on Titan is strange. Saturn takes up a large portion of the horizon, swirling eddies of orange and cream that reminds Keith of the boiled candies from childhood. It’s rings cleave the sky in two and if Keith squints, he could trace the gaps which separated them. The sky is filled with moons, and it makes the desolate landscape a little less lonely — disfigured Hyperion limping low, tiny Pandora shepherding the outer ring, spinning Phoebe orbiting in retrograde. Just last night, Keith had danced between them, navigating Ad Astra to safety.

Someone steps in beside him and he looks away from the scene. It’s his Captain.

“Allura,” he salutes, “Is it time to go already?”

“Not quite Paladin,” she laces her hands behind her, ”You got mail from Earth.”

Keith nods, turning back to the window. “Thanks.”

“Hm?” She leans over, peering at his face, “Don’t you want to read it?“

“Not… right now.”

“Is something the matter?”

“Nothing.” Keith shakes his head, looking at Saturn’s moons again.

“I hope it’s not a girlfriend…”

“It’s not.”

“A friend?”

“No. I don’t want to read it. Actually, delete it for me, please.” Keith squeezes his eyes shut, refusing to regret the words.

“Oh.”

Allura doesn’t leave. She turns to follow Keith’s line of sight: the dusty cratered landscape of Titan, the infinite moons surrounding them, the empty darkness of space beyond.

“Keith, what do you think of the scene before you.”

“It’s … strange. Unfamiliar,” he confesses, “And a little lonely.”

“Lonely? But the sky is so full.”

“There are no stars,” he points out, “they cannot compete with all the moonlight.”

“Ah,” Allura falls into thought, contemplative. “If so, I have seen something even lonelier.”

Keith turns to her and her smile is full of secrets, but for some reason, it seems to be tainted with a little sadness.

“I have seen the edge of the world.”

“The edge of the world?”

“The place where beyond, space is expanding faster than the speed of light. Behind me was a single star, already dying and flickering. Before me was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a spot of light or a speck of dust or a smige of anything other than pure, unbroken, darkness.” She closes her eyes, “And yet I knew there were stars out there.”

“We will never see them,” Keith whispers.

“No one will,” she replies, soft as the scene before them, “They are shining, glowing alone in the dark, but their light will never reach anyone.”

Allura turns to face him, her eyes are sharp, and now she is his Captain. “Keith, I will not tell you what you should, or should not do, but I want you remember this,” her voice strains, as if the words were never meant to escape her, “Do not take these messages for granted, because there are some places even light can not reach.”

That evening, with shaking hands, he opens the emails from Shiro.

>> Of course I will Keith, of course I will wait, even if it was a lifetime. After all, what is lifetime against the age of the universe?

>> I’ll pass the time by breaking all your records. After I break them all, I’ll come to Kerberos, so stay alive. There’s still something I want to say to you in person.

>> Why do you have so many world records? How bored were you without me?

Keith smiles at that. Maybe it’s gravity here, but he feels lighter, fingertip tingling with possible replies. Mt Olympus on Mars, thunderstorms on Jupiter, the night sky on Saturn. Perhaps Shiro has already seen all these, but even so, Keith opens a new window and types -- 

>> Hey Shiro guess what

After all, at light speed, it is only eight hours from Pluto to Earth. A night’s rest, a day’s work, a message from one heart to another.

>> From the thirty-five year old Shiro to the thirty-five year old Keith: Let’s fly together.