Kani is still curled up crying when Magini slips into her room that evening. 

She sits down on the bed, eyes watering, and does what little she can to comfort her friend. (It isn't enough. She left them both, chasing her stupid dreams of space, and now - now -)

Thrana didn't want a funeral. She wanted her body to be burned, with little ceremony. 

Calu arranges it, supported by her still-living partner. She looks haunted, in a way Magini has only ever seen on actors. 

(In a rare moment of social acuity, Magini notices Kani avoiding Calu specifically. She wonders what happened there, but can't bring herself to ask, not now. Kani will tell her when she's ready to).

(she won't, actually, but it's an understandable mistake for Magini to make)

 Kani isn't surprised that Thrana's family isn't there, besides a  younger sister who lives nearby. She wonders if her parents even know she's dead. (She's always hated Thrana's parents, ever since the hospital days started. She wonders distantly if Calu even told them).

When people start telling stories, they're all about - the things Thrana did for the people she loved. Kani thinks about the note, about everything that she learned in the week before it happened, and feels - empty. hollow. 

(she's shaking, fingernails digging deep into her palms). 

Time passes. Ami takes care of Kes from a distance, studies with Nuadh, tries to avoid getting too lost in the weeds in online conspiracy boards. She lets her grades falter and her social connections wilt away, and none of her teachers or friends really blame her, though they keep checking in on her, asking gently if there's anything they can do to help her. (She wishes they'd stop. She's fine, and the pity in their faces is starting to make her sick. She's nothing like her father.) 

In the moments she stops to plan out further ahead than her next week (study plan, what to cook, keeping a calendar for Kes - she hasn't had to help them with homework scheduling like this since -), she makes quiet plans for what she'll do once she gets into the Garrison - a list of teachers to try and network with, promising leads, things that she thinks might have happened.

A few months in, once it becomes clear that she's truly committed to this plan, Nuadh asks her quietly what she'll do after she finds what she's looking for. Ami - doesn't know how to answer that. Doesn't like thinking about it at all, actually.

Xi looks at her with that same look of pity that she's growing to despise, and changes the subject. Mercifully, xi doesn't ask again.

School gets out for the year. Kes has gotten back on their feet - they found an interesting summer job with their boyfriend, who Ami is so grateful to for sticking with them this whole time. They're still hurting, of course, but therapy has been good for them. Every small smile and joke they make helps reassure her that everything is going to work out. They're going to be okay. This is going to work out. She's doing a good job. 

Nuadh declares her more than ready for the placement, so she switches to studying the fundamentals she'll need once she's at the Garrison proper. She also spends a bit of time reviewing what she remembers of Matty's social circle - especially the people who he know who are still at the Garrison. It hurts, more than she expected it to, but it feels kind of good, too. She wants to be able to remember who he was, not just - how she lost him.

When the time comes, polar-sky-snakes comes through. Her meticulously-selected notes are right there where she needs them, and she aces the placement test (...she makes a few mistakes on purpose to avoid actually acing it. They determined that would be suspicious, and she needs to stay as under-the-radar as she can).

She pays PSS their due, plus a little extra. She packs, buys a few new things for she'll need there, and spends a hefty chunk of her share of the life insurance to hire someone to feed her dad for the next year, since she won't be around to do it. And then - she leaves.

In August of 2405, Ami arrives at the Garrison with a confident look plastered on her face, and to her mild surprise, she finds it's not just a mask. In her heart, she feels like - she's done with the hardest part. She's been working for this for almost 8 months now, and now she's here, in the place that took her brother from her, and she's going to find out why. She just needs to be smart, be patient, and follow the plan. 

She arrives at the transfer orientation 5 minutes early, ready to take notes. 

Orientation begins with a speech from Commander Iverson, the senior Garrison officer in charge of the cadets at this base. The eyepatch must be new; he doesn't have it in his staff photo in their orientation bundle.

"You've all worked hard to get here," he begins, without any preamble. "The standards for testing in as a transfer are even higher than the regular admissions tests. Just by sitting here, you've proved you're among the best of the best. But don't think that means you can relax. You're a year, two years, some of you even three years behind your new classmates." (Ami, testing in as a senior, is in that last group.) "Our standards are high for a reason: you're gonna have to be the best of the best if you're ever gonna catch up."

His one good eye sweeps over the assembled students. "Welcome to the Galaxy Garrison Academy, cadets. The real work begins today." 

gulp

Ami gets settled, starts her classes, and immediately gets hard confirmation she is, in fact, in over her head. She realizes she needs to make friends for the simple reason of needing people to do homework with, or she's going to flunk out before she can get the answers she need.

How about this slightly younger girl who sits near the back of their shared classes? She seems like she's taking good notes and asking interesting questions, when she isn't exhibiting some achingly-familiar withdrawn-tired-distracted behaviors...

Oh... the moment Ami starts paying attention to her, she's reminded so much of Kes that it almost hurts. Is she okay? Does she need help?

She catches her after a class where the poor girl was really struggling, smiling kindly at her.

"Hey - are you doing okay?"

Kani!!! I made a new friend today!  I think I made a new friend today at school??

-okay actually she did basically all the work (not surprising), came up to me after class and apparently noticed I was sad?

 Her name's Ami, and she reminds me of Thra is really kind and thoughtful and cheerful I think you'd really like her.

We helped each other with homework and she suggested we both say a little bit about what was on our mind, it was really sweet ;-;

I hope you're doing okay getting enough sleep hanging in there.

Sorry again I couldn't be home for the summer. I just - my advisor told me that dropping out of the internship after I'd already applied could make a really bad impression, and - I miss you.

(A/N: strikethroughs in chatlogs represents text that Magini edited after sending.)

(As Magini has grown to expect, the only response she gets from Kani is a belated scattering emoji reacts -  😭s, 🫂s, and a 💙 at the sweet part.)

Ami likes Magini. The poor girl reminds her so much of a mix of Kes and Mat - is someone who Ami is very comfortable with caring for and about. 

They quickly fall into patterns really familiar to Ami - Magini loves teaching people and isn't bad at it, and more importantly, she isn't the type to get suspicious about the weird gaps in Ami's knowledge. With her help, Ami is quickly getting up to speed on the basics that Nuadh couldn't cover. And in return, Magini eagerly drinks up the kindness and praise that Ami long ago learned to generate on autopilot, in the early days when Kes was struggling so much and the parent-shaped hole of person absolutely on your side / in your corner  was something she could tell she needed to fill.

And she listens, as Magini tells her what happened to her friend Thrana (and the hurt and sadness about not being let in), and how much she misses Thrana and Kani both. Holds her, as she cries about them, and tells the poor girl it's not her fault at all.

(It doesn't even register to her that she might be doing something bad or wrong, keeping Magini in the dark about her own struggles and plans in much the same way the younger girl's friends had. Why would it? Ami isn't on the brink of collapse like either of them were, she's fine. She just needs answers. And there isn't time for her to dig into it right now. Even with the help she's getting, she's on a clock before she just can't keep up with the work, and she needs to find out what happened to Matty before then.)

She's no hacker, so her plan for trying to learn more is finding out which teachers are the best vectors / easiest to befriend as a student and going from there. To do that, she's befriending TAs by showing up to TA-run tutoring hours, asking for help, being grateful and sociable and interesting, and seeing what she can learn.

Adam always finds that his tutoring hours are popular this early in the academic year, when a new batch of teenage girls develop giggling crushes on their attractive twenty-something TA and before they discover that he (a) takes his work and their studies very seriously, and (b) is gay. 

So it takes him a moment to notice that this teenage girl is Ami Glass.

(All of Ami's teachers and their TAs got an email at the start of term. Yes, it's that Glass, yeah, she's his little sister, maybe be careful about using Kerberos as an instructive example in your classes, etc. He made a note of the name and face.)

...okay. This is fine. He can be normal about this. He's a professional. Kerberos is not going to come up and therefore his complicated feelings about it are irrelevant. 

"Glass, right? What can I help you with today?" 

Okay! Game face! "Hi! I am kind of struggling with this homework assignment and would love some help with these problems?"

(She's picked out ones where she feels like her gaps in knowledge are noticeable but not confusing. Confusing people is dangerous - when smart people get confused, they prioritize learning more.)

And then she rereads his holobadge, has a visible flash of recognition, and -

- looks at him with a sad expression seems so out of place, on her young face, and says softly  "...I'm so sorry about what happened to Shiro."

Well there goes that plan. 

wait what the fuck why did SHE SAY THAT that was NOT THE PLAN abort abort ABORT

with a face much more familiar to Adam (embarrassed teenager who just said something she instantly regreted), she blurts out "-augh, I'm sorry! That was very inappropriate of me, it's just - I'm Matty's little sister, and - he kept me up to date on his social life, when he called home, and - your name came up a fair bit. He really respected you." 

"...thank you. And—I'm sorry for your loss, as well. I considered Matt a friend."

More Takashi's friend than Adam's, even before Matt took Takashi's side in the breakup, aaaaaand the rest of that train of thought can go in the Feelings Box. 

She should stop talking about this, he's clearly sad and also they literally just met, but she - doesn't want to -  "Thanks. It's - space travel is dangerous, right, the 3 of us knew something like this could happen. But I -" 

She sighs. "- did he ever talk about what happened with our mom?"