3 days later, their mom disappeared.

They never found out what happened - no note, no car to trace, no camera footage, nobody at her work or any of her friends knew anything. The search lasted months, but ended in failure. 

Her dad - couldn't handle it. Didn't know what to say to her, or her siblings. Stopped going to his work, stopped reading their mail, eventually stopped leaving his room. It was probably the not knowing that got to him, Ami thought privately - the sheer uncertainty. Did she leave them on purpose? Did she want this? Was she okay somewhere? If they had just done something different, would she still be there? 

If she was good enough, would Mom come back?

She did what she could to fill the void. They didn't really have much of an extended family (both parents were only children), and Matty was so busy at the Garrison (and he couldn't leave, not now, not when he was so close to achieving his dream), but he took some time off and started skipping on sleep, to help her with the paperwork she couldn't do on her own. Together, they got the family unemployment money, cancelled a bunch of their subscriptions, and found a cheaper (and smaller) place to live where she and Kes could both take transit to school.

She had already been helping mom with cooking - now she made all the meals. She made sure Kes stayed at least slightly on task in school, with a combination of bribing them with their favorite foods and threatening to tell Matty. She went through the mail and made notes and got Matty's help figuring out which ones were important. She made doctor's appointments, troubleshooted the laundry and cleaning robots, and bought the groceries that were cheaper not to get delivered on Tuesdays and Fridays on the way home from school. 

And if her grades suffered, if her social connections wilted, if she cried herself to sleep some nights, well - she knew her dad and her older sibling were crying harder, hurting more, through the walls her room now shared with theirs. And someone needed to take care of them. 

Time passes, simultaneously at a horrendous crawl and an unimaginable blur. 

Matty graduates, and goes straight into the space program. He's busier than ever, but has more money to send home. He finds and pays for a tutor for Ami and Kes, a friend of his named Nuadh who was in the communications program until xi transferred out to go to a normal college, where xi'd have more free time to take care of xir parents.

Nuadh is funny, kind, and a great teacher and motivator - Kes stops failing most of their classes, and Ami's grades make a heroic upswing back towards respectable. Her teachers (well, the ones who know a bit about happened - she doesn't really talk about it) are a bit impressed.

The hole in her heart still defines her life, of course, but - she gets enough sleep most nights, she's feeding the family and handling the chores without any trouble, she hasn't missed a bill or a doctor's appointment or a major homework assignment in weeks, and - she can live like this. She can make this work. She smiles, now, when Matty tells her he's still worried about her, and does her best to reassure him, too.

When Matty is announced as one of the crew on the Kerberos mission next year, Ami is 15 and happier than she's been since she fell asleep with him under the stars. After an hour-long call with him where she makes him tell them everything he can (not much! it's classified! yes, his friend Shiro is going to be there, yes, he'll be sure to tell him that she said he has to take care of Matty for her, yes, he knows she's so proud of him and that he's the BEST ASTRONAUT EVER), she goes out to dinner with Nuadh and Kes, a rare treat.

She even bothers to tell her dad the good news, knocking on his door and speaking loudly and clearly through it, though he doesn't respond. (She shouldn't be surprised. It's been 3 years. He's just Like This, now. She just thought...)

She leaves the box of takeout she grabbed for him when she walks away. She knows that it's not as spicy as he used to like his food. She doesn't care. If he wants something different, he can ask. 

Another year goes by. Keskel graduates high school (wearing tacky class of '04 merch) and gets into a college across the country with their best friend. They're going to be roommates, and want to go into AR interface design together. Ami is proud, and (though she hates to admit it, even to herself) even more relieved; without Kes around, the cooking and cleaning will be easier, and she can finally have a room that doesn't share a wall with Dad's.

The Kerberos mission leaves on schedule, that summer. Ami and Kes fly out to say goodbye and watch the launch. She tells Matty that she loves him more than anyone in the world and is so proud of him, and tells Shiro (who she now knows a little bit, mostly from their video calls) to keep him out of trouble. She cries a little, but they're mostly happy tears. 

He slings an arm around Matthew's shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll get him home safe. I promise." 

(They're joking, lighthearted, but there's something sincere in it too.) 

She makes him shake on it, and then pulls them both into a tight hug, not trusting herself to speak.

The launch is incredible. She's never seen anything that bright or loud in her life, not even close. She watches the rocket until it's a speck in the sky, and stays in the friends-and-family viewing area for hours, listening to the very limited status updates that are cleared for the public, only leaving the 2nd time Keskel threatens to drive off without her.

A few weeks later, she's saying her goodbyes to Kes, too, this time at the airport as they leave for college, on the same flight as their best fr boyfriend, apparently.

The rhythm of her life is easier, now, that the Glass household is just her and the shell that used to be her dad. Her grades get better. She makes a few friends. She has a brief fling with a cute girl, but gets gently dumped when it's clear Ami doesn't have enough free time for any kind of meaningful commitment. She finds herself actually thinking about her future, and not just the bills and appointments and homework of the next few weeks or months. To her quiet surprise, she can see herself being happy there.

Magini Zils has wanted to go to space since the first time she saw a rocket on TV and knew what it was. She loves electronics and especially robots, and she loves taking them apart and has gotten pretty good at putting them back together, sometimes with improvements.

In school, she's distractable and gets told off sometimes for being disruptive, but tries as hard as she can in every class that her parents can convince her might be relevant for SPACE SCHOOL (which turns out to be almost all of them - Magini is kinda gullible, and she loves learning!) When she gets the acceptance letter to Galaxy Garrison, she doesn't stop grinning for weeks. She tells everyone who will listen to her that going to be a SPACE ENGINEER! (She hopes she can make some friends there! She loves her online friends (especially Thrana and Kani), but the other kids at school are mostly just kinda mean to her...)

The Garrison's workload is tough, and she doesn't have as much time to hang out with people online, anymore. She still talks to Kani almost every day and Thrana whenever they're healthy enough to use a computer (...Magini is worried, but Thrana keeps brushing her off when she asks if she can help), but she struggles to keep up with the backscroll in their larger group, which she's a bit sad about on the rare occasions she lets herself think about it. Learning at the Garrison is everything she ever dreamed it would be, and - well, she's friendly with her classmates whenever they talk to her, and some of them will take turns infodumping with her, which is BASICALLY the same thing as friendship, really, and she's having the time of her life! The next two years go by quicker than they ever have, for her.

She's a third year, now, and she's gotten SO GOOD AT ELECTRONICS and also slightly better at socialization! Thrana is healthy enough to have moved back, which is nice, though mostly Magini only hears about them through Kani. (She's so glad she knows Kani! They've been friends for over half their lives, now!)

None of her school friends are in her period for Intro to Control Systems, though, and so when the first group project rolls around, she awkwardly waits for the instructor to assign her a partner from the other kids in the class who can't find one. Hopefully they'll be nice! Good group project vibes are one of Magini's favorite ways of making new friends.

Somewhat predictably, given the social dynamics of high school, this leaves her stuck with the prickly loner emo kid. Keith Kogane is pilot-track, so he's not in all that many classes with the engineering kids, but he has a reputation for getting into trouble in class and picking fights with other cadets. 

His response to being partnered with Magini is a shrug and a, "Sure, whatever." 

Welp! She will... offer to do as much of the work as she can? Prickly loner pilots sometimes appreciate it when you do that, she thinks.

She tries her best not to get into a fight with him - she really doesn't like those. 

However, before the next time the class meets -

Today's the day Matty and his sidekicks crewmates lands on Kerberos! The broadcast is happening - well, not live, the speed of light is real and therefore there's quite a delay (and Nuadh says xi's heard that the Garrison is probably broadcasting publicly with even more delay - all TV stations do that, it gives them more control). 

Keskel is home from college, and Nuadh took some time off, so the 3 of them are in the Glass family living room, snuggled up together on the couch to watch the broadcast. It's a familiar arrangement for them, but things usually aren't this tense. Ami tries not to think about it, but - in her heart, she knows space travel is dangerous.

Everything looks like it's going fine, and Kes is trading wisecracks with Nuadh about a l i e n s (the little twerp is wearing a retro-design "I want to believe" t-shirt, which Ami has to admit is a little funny), but a tense, excited silence falls on the group as the touchdown counter goes down. 

But then -

Moments before touchdown, the camera feeds from the Orfeo cut out. There's nothing but static on all channels, including audio. 

The broadcast cuts back to a Garrison comms officer at the base in Arizona, who says something bland and reassuring about technical difficulties. She assures viewers that as far as they know, the Orfeo is still on course for a safe landing, and Garrison technicians are doing their best to reestablish communications. There is no cause for alarm. 

   "...oh, that's bullshit", Kes says immediately, the shock evident in their voice.

       "How do you figure?" Nuadh doesn't sound like xi disagrees, necessarily, just like xi wants to hear their thought process.

   "Well, this is coming out on a delay, right? And everything looked like it was fine, and you said yourself comms systems have a ton of redundancy. So a total system failure seems unlikely, which means...  Why would they cut it now?"

       Nuadh nods hesitantly, brow furrowed. "But then... why..."

   Keskel turns to their sister. "What do you think, Aim? ...Aim? You with us?" 

-oh. They need her. Time to stop dissociating. 

"Yeah, I don't trust this at all. Something went wrong, and they're not telling us."

She pauses, collects her thoughts.

"Kes, you're down as Matty's next of kin - can you call the Garrison and see if they'll tell you anything they aren't publicly broadcasting?" 

She barely waits for them to nod before turning the other way.

"Nuadh, can you reach out to some of your mutual friends with Matty who work there now, see if they have anything they can share?"

Xi looks hesitant and worried, but also nods.

She - could look at rampant speculation online... that isn't actually the most useful thing to do, though. The 3 4 of them need to eat, and if this isn't resolved within the next, she wants Kes here.

"I'm going to order us takeout, and then - Kes, I'm sorry to ask this, but can I change your flight back to next weekend and work with your partner to get you set up for remote school over the week? I -"

    A series of looks pass over their face that Ami isn't quite online enough to parse, but they nod shakily and then hug her tightly.

She clings back, for a bit, but then lets go. On to the next task.

Keskel calls the Garrison. There's a phone tree, and hold music from Holst's Planets suite, and politely sympathetic junior communications officers who know even less than the Glasses do, having been at work and not watching the news. 

Eventually: "I understand that you're worried about your brother, but while we don't know anything for certain at this point, the best guess of our experts right now is that this is just a technical fault with the waystation satellites, and there's every reason to believe the landing itself went smoothly. Mission control is still trying to reestablish communications so we can get a better picture of what's happening on Kerberos, and you can rest assured we'll be in touch with you and the relatives of the other crewmembers as soon as we have an update on their status." 

Nuadh's efforts don't turn up anything, either.

Ami gets off the phone with Keskel's partner (she's such a sweetheart, she's going to handle everything, she's clearly worried about Kes but trusts Ami to look after them).

The food arrives. They eat it, mechanically, while pouring over the footage and noting places where it seems likely to have been cut and edited.

Kes does actually start looking at rampant speculation online. After a while, they wordlessly walk out of the room, change out of their "I want to believe" shirt, and then come back.

Eventually Nuadh has to go home. Kes passes out on the couch, head in her lap as she absentmindedly strokes it. (The last time they'd fallen asleep on her like this was the first anniversary that Matty hadn't been able to take off. They'd both cried so much.)

Ami falls asleep too, eventually.

The next few days pass in a blur.

The Garrison does, as promised, call them back a day or so after the failed landing. They've managed to narrow down the issue: there's been some damage to the Orfeo's communications systems, and they still can't get any signals back from the spacecraft. There are, broadly, three possibilities the Garrison is considering likely:

1. Something went very, seriously wrong on landing, and the ship was badly damaged. One or more crewmembers might be dead already, or life support systems might be compromised to the point that, even if they survived the crash, they won't live long enough for a rescue mission, which would take just as many months to get out to Pluto as the Orfeo did in the first place. 

2. The crew are safe, and life support systems are still operational, but the Orfeo is damaged enough that they can't make the journey back to Earth. If the crew are in doubt about whether they'd be able to make it back or not, protocol is for them to stay put so they can be found by a rescue mission. (The Garrison is currently putting one of those together, in case of this possibility. The projected timetable is, optimistically, two months until launch.)

3. The crew are fine and are continuing to carry out their mission, with the only significant damage being to communications. The crew might manage to repair the damage, but if they can't do that for whatever reason, the crew are fully trained to take off from Kerberos and fly back to Earth without any further support from mission control. If the rest of the ship is operational, they could still make it home as planned. 

They most likely won't know which of those possibilities is the truth any time soon. Unless the damage is minor enough that the crew can repair the communications system with the tools they have on the ship, it'll be months before there's any confirmation of what happened.

For now, Matthew Glass, along with the rest of the Orfeo's crew, is officially Missing In Action. 

not again

The next time Magini sees Keith, he looks awful. He's hunched in on himself, his lower lip has been chewed bloody, and his eyes are red and have massive dark circles under them. He's even quieter than normal, seeming only half aware of his surroundings unless someone interacts with him directly.