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Chapter Text

David Jacobs frowned at the styrofoam cup in his hand, the too-dark liquid sloshing dangerously close to spilling over the edge as he stalked away from Missions Operations and across the parking lot, en route for a meeting in the Research Center.

To his disappointment, the agency’s coffee station was out of creamer, and a single packet of sugar couldn’t replicate the typical sweetness of his drinks.

With a sigh, he scanned his badge at the door, twisting open the handle as it unlocked with a beep. His footsteps automatically began the familiar trek up three flights of stairs and forty-six steps down to the conference room that overlooked Washington.

No less than a dozen NASA officials were scattered around the room, though few gave David any notice as he took his place at the low conference table, spinning the chair of the dark-haired man beside him.

Benjamin, his best friend from flight school and roommate for a brief period during their respective internships, grinned over at him as his chair turned. “Good morning, Davey,” he huffed, grabbing the edge of the table to slow himself down.

“Morning,” David took a sip of his coffee, waving to indicate the empty space on Ben’s other side. “Is that for our new recruit?”

“Apparently,” Ben shrugged, stealing David’s cup for a drink. “Denton says he’s called Antonio Higgins. Fresh out of NASA’s last class of recruits down in Houston,”

“Must be pretty clever if they’re already pitching him out for missions,” David remarked, surprised. It had been years before Ben or David were even considered, and even now, they were lucky to be here, just months out from being dispatched to the International Space Station.

The astronaut was, allegedly, only a few years younger than them, but that meant a world of difference in their field. He was lucky, or talented, not that the difference mattered much.

“Fancy seeing you two,” their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a redheaded woman taking a seat to David’s left. “No sign of the newbie, then?”

“Not yet,” Ben answered as Katherine Plumber sat down, taking David’s cup out of his hands and drinking a sip.

“Seriously, did you two just forget there’s a coffee machine downstairs?” David huffed good-naturedly as she handed it back to him with a smile.

“Is that our guy?” Ben ignored David’s lighthearted annoyance, nodding toward a blond who had just walked through the doorway and was scanning the room. He lifted a hand in greeting, catching the attention of the man, who walked over with an awkward grin.

“Sorry if I’m late, I got lost on my way up here. I’m Antonio Higgins, by the way,” The newcomer signed as he spoke, seemingly not quite sure of his words.

“You’re our flight engineer, right? I’m David, missions specialist. Nice to meet you, and good to see you already know sign,”

NASA had started requiring their astronauts to learn ASL several years back, citing its usefulness if their on-board audio comms failed.

“Yeah, I’m hard of hearing,” Antonio answered, tapping his ear to indicate the hearing aid David hadn’t noticed until then. “I thought the committee was going to reject me over it, but, well…here I am,” he bit out a laugh, taking the seat next to Ben.

Ben and Katherine both swapped introductions with Antonio, before the astronauts started trading theories over the details of their mission, and what kinds of training would take place over the following months.

The rest of their day was spent in Washington, in countless briefings with NASA’s higher ups, before the group was allowed to retire to the quarters that had been arranged for them—namely, a couple rooms at a hotel downtown.

Everyone had piled into an Uber together, David leaning up front to give directions to their driver. He was sitting between Antonio and Katherine, with the redhead half-asleep, leaning against David’s shoulder during the late-night drive.

When they arrived outside the hotel, David shook her awake. “Katie, we’re here,” before they all piled out of the Uber and inside with their limited belongings. Ben checked them in, then they filed into the elevator, Katherine blearily punching the button for their floor.

The three guys were set to be sharing a room, so they bid Katherine goodnight as they reached her room before continuing on to their own.

“Looks like we get to share a bed, Daves,” Ben wolf-whistled with a grin, nudging Davey as they filed into the room, furnished with two queen-size beds and a small desk in the far corner.

“Yeah? You want to cuddle?” Davey snorted in reply, picking one of the pillows up off the bed next to the window and gently hitting Ben with it. “I’m not above pushing you off into the floor, you know,”

“Uh-huh. I’m gonna shower, I feel like a zombie,” Ben told no one in particular, gathering his things from his suitcase before disappearing into the bathroom.

Antonio sat down on the opposite bed, letting his suitcase fall to the floor. Davey abandoned his own suitcase to join him, sitting cross-legged on the edge.

“Want to come downstairs with me? The hotel has a little 24-hour cafe I saw when we came in,” Davey offered hopefully, his attempt to try and get to know the other astronaut a little better.

Antonio considered it for a moment, and, despite the exhaustion behind his eyes, agreed. “I think I might kill a man for a waffle right now, honestly,”

The two wandered down the hallway and into the elevators, stopping only to invite Katherine to join them. She didn’t answer her door, though Davey was less than surprised. “She probably fell asleep as soon as she hit the bed,”

By the time they reached the cafe, Antonio had learned of Davey’s twin sister, who happened to be married to Katherine. They didn’t realize they had been speaking of the same Katherine until Sarah had brought her to a family event some years back. Katherine claimed to have been aware the entire time, but neither really believed her.

Antonio and Davey sat at the only booth in the small restaurant, crowded into a corner next to the hotel’s floor-to-ceiling windows.

“So, how’d you end up in Houston?” They’d ordered their food, and been brought mugs of hot chocolate to keep away the December chill. Antonio was curious about the other astronaut, who had talked more about his family than himself.

“I went to college for space science right out of high school, just trying to see what stuck. Scored an internship with NASA down at the Flight Research center in California,” Davey paused to take a sip of his drink before continuing. “Couldn’t shake the urge to see more than the sky, so I threw my name in for the next pool of candidates. Everything’s been a bit…high-stakes since then,”

Antonio nodded his understanding, fidgeting with the handle of his mug.

Some minutes later, the waitress returned with two plates of waffles—blueberry for Antonio, cinnamon for Davey—and they ate in the cafe as the night ticked by, quiet in favor of simply signing back and forth.

The next day came far too early, Vanguard’s crew up and ready to go long before the sun.

“Why did we have to start training at 5 o’clock in the morning?” Antonio’s hands fumbled sleepily as the party crowded into an elevator, headed for NASA’s Astronaut Training Center.

“Good question,” Katherine replied, swiftly pulling her ginger hair back into a ponytail. “Which nobody but Denton has an answer to,”

Settling into a comfortable silence, the elevator slowed to a stop three floors later. The doors slid open to reveal none other than Bryan Denton, their boss and the Director of NASA’s Vanguard Space Program, with his phone cradled between his shoulder and ear, balancing a tray of coffees in one hand and a dangerously thick binder in the other.

“Need that much caffeine to make it through the day, sir?” Ben grinned, shifting closer to Katherine in order to make room for the man.

Denton looked up at that, stepping into the elevator with a quick grin for the four astronauts. “If it isn’t NASA’s brightest! Good morning—the coffee’s to share, I thought you all might be dead on your feet,” he said, handing the tray to David before finishing the phone call he’d been on in a few rushed words.

“Thanks,” David passed a cup to everyone before taking one for himself. “You thought right. I might be even more tired than I was during candidacy, honestly,”

The others nodded along, mumbling their agreement. Ben and David had gone through their two years of training as astronaut candidates together, and Antonio had only just finished his the year prior, Katherine being the most seasoned as she’d graduated a handful of years before, back when Ben and David were still in flight school.

“What are we doing today?” Antonio looked expectantly at Denton, signing as he nodded towards the binder of files in his hand. “Please tell me we don’t have to read that. Just looking at it gives me a headache,”

Denton laughed, taking a sip of his coffee. “No reading required. We’ll be down in the SVMF—” he broke off with a quick sigh after receiving a blank look from everyone but Katherine. “The Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. Care to explain, Katherine?”

The redhead had brightened at Denton’s words, clearly excited as she recognized the day’s plans from her time at the Space Center. “They’ve got simulators of the shuttle, flight and mid-decks, and stations, to get us used to the layout and operation…right?”

She glanced at Denton for confirmation, and the man nodded in agreement. “Along with that, we’ve also got another simulator to mimic the spacewalk environment, so David and Antonio, you’ll get a chance to test that out,”

The two aforementioned astronauts shared a look of excitement as the elevator slowed to a stop once more, the doors opening to allow the party to spill out into the hallway. “Follow me, caffeine addicts,” Denton told them, ducking through a door and down the stairwell.

“Caffeine addicts?” Ben echoed with a snort as they followed Denton through a short maze of hallways, stopping twice to scan their badges at secure-access checkpoints.

Eventually they reached their destination—what was essentially a warehouse—all waiting on Denton’s orders with excited gleams in their eyes. ‘Alright, everybody, this is the start of three months of practical training. Most of the time there will be a few staff from Missions Support to help run the simulations, but you’re on your own today, so try not to break anything,”

The Vanguard astronauts spent the next several months falling into a routine: up before the sun, taking turns on who made their coffee before heading over to the SVMF, spending the day training—launch simulations, test flights, and the like—and leaving long after the sky had darkened.

“Buttons, you coming?” Katherine called, unable to bite back a grin as the dark-haired man was struggling to extract himself from one of the facility’s test spacesuits they’d been using that day. Davey took pity on him and went to help, while Race mumbled something about “animal enrichment,”

None of them could quite remember when the nicknames had entered their regular vocabulary, but Buttons’ began sometime after he’d woken up late and buttoned up his shirt with the wrong holes, not realizing anything was wrong until he walked into the kitchen to say good morning to the others.

Race’s—Antonio’s—name was given to him by Katherine, as the youngest astronaut always woke up with a spring in his step, a boundless amount of energy the other three could only hope for. “Like someone let a dog loose on a racetrack,” she’d commented one morning, halfway through her third cup of coffee, receiving nothing but a bright grin in return.

Names that were just for them, hidden away from the now-constant public eye, made them feel less like coworkers and more like family, too. Which could only be a good thing, seeing as how they were going to be in close quarters for months on end.

Even at this point, over two months into their training, they should’ve wanted nothing to do with each other as soon as they were released for the evening, but so far, this wasn’t the case. The party spent almost all of their evenings together in the small common room attached to their living quarters, watching movies and making dinner and arguing about scientific studies for hours on end.

With launch day looming over them, NASA’s headquarters had been nothing but a chaotic whirlwind for the last weeks, so the astronauts had elected to have another movie night in the hopes of relaxing somewhat. Race insisted they watch The Martian, saying it would “prepare” them for any situations they could encounter.

Everyone could see the youngest member of their crew was beyond nervous, and none of them were eager to deny him any hints of comfort, so they piled onto the too-small couch with bowls of popcorn and watched the movie together. When it was over, both Katherine and Buttons retired to their rooms, leaving Davey and Race in the living room.

Race had fallen asleep at some point, despite being the one to request the movie, so Davey covered the astronaut with a NASA blanket and brought his laptop into the living room, sitting criss-cross on the sofa.

The better part of an hour passed before Race jolted awake, biting out a gasp as he woke up, seemingly in unfamiliar surroundings until his brain adjusted. “Hi,” he hummed sleepily to Davey, blinking at the dark-haired man beside him. “Sorry I fell asleep,”

“That’s alright,” Davey offered Race a fleeting half-smile, looking up from the computer screen as he signed back at him. “You probably needed the rest, anyways. It’s not like any of us are sleeping all that well,”

“You’re telling me!” Race agreed with a stiff chuckle, stretching his limbs in turn before settling back underneath the warmth of a blanket. “So…”

“So?” Davey prompted, raising an eyebrow at the blond as he waited for him to continue.

“We’re all going to be living together for a really long time, but um, I guess I feel like I don’t really know that much about you. Like, personally,” Race clarified, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. “I mean, I’m sure we’ll get tired of each other, but until then…might as well have something to talk about,”

Davey closed his laptop, moving it to the coffee table before snagging the side of Race’s blanket, shifting closer to drape it over his own lap. “What do you want to know?”

“You’re not from around here,” Race signed, more of a statement than a question. Davey nodded in confirmation, biting out a soft chuckle

“Can’t quite drop the accent, I suppose. New York. Manhattan, specifically,”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Race replied, a teasing glint alight in his eyes. “Chicago. Well, the suburbs, at least. Could’ve always been worse…though I suppose Texas is probably worse, isn’t it?”

Davey shook his head, mouth quirking up in a smile. “Oh, I don’t know, I think Houston has a bit of southern charm, don’t you think?”

“There is nothing charming about two hours of traffic every day, Dave!” The other astronaut quipped in reply, nudging Davey’s shoulder with his own.

The pair continued in lighthearted conversation, broken only once when, sometime after midnight, Race’s almost near-constant smile faltered slightly as Davey made some mention of the mission.

“I’m kind of nervous,” he admitted, hands trembling in the air as he paused for a moment before continuing. “What if I mess up?”

“We’ve been practicing for months, Racer. You know what you’re doing, and you’ve been great. It’ll be alright,” Davey signed back, tilting his head to study the blond.

Race shook his head, biting his lip as he answered. “It’s not just a simulation anymore, Dave. The entire world will be watching us, waiting for us to go up in flames or something,”

“it’ll be alright,” Davey repeated gently. “The rest of us have been at every launch they’ve had over the last few years, and it really isn’t all that different. Except, um, I guess we actually get to leave Earth’s atmosphere…”

Race didn’t reply, fidgeting with the corner of the blanket for a long moment. He exhaled a breath through his nose, and when he looked up at Davey there was the faintest gleam of tears in the astronaut’s eyes. “Sometimes I still feel like that seven-year-old kid who wanted nothing more than to see the stars,”

Davey draped an arm over Race’s shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting gesture, detailing his previous encounters with NASA’s missions.

After several minutes Davey returned to his original spot on the couch so he could sign again, not wanting to wake the others by speaking too loud. The pair continued in idle chatter, only realizing how long they’d been talking when Davey’s alarm started going off on his phone, the Doctor Who theme song cheerily announcing it was time to wake up.

“So much for rest,” The dark-haired man mumbled, clicking the button to shut off the sound. “Sorry to keep you awake. We both might need some extra caffeine today,”

‘I got a nap, at least. The same can’t be said for you,” Race’s lip curled up in halfhearted pity as he stood, folding up their blanket. “Guess we’ve gotta go to HQ today either way, though,”

Davey mumbled in agreement, standing to stretch quickly before wandering into his bedroom down the hall to change.

Two hours later, the crew took their normal route down to the SVMF, but were met by Denton at the special-access door, talking rapidly into a cell phone. Whenever he spotted them, he ended the call quickly, offering them a welcoming grin. “Morning, caffeine addicts. We’ve got some interviews today, and NASA’s letting some reporters come in to get some footage—I know, Katherine, I’d rather they weren’t here either, but it isn’t up to me,”

With no shortage of grumblings, the astronauts were sent over to the Research Center for what Denton told them was their “main interview”. There were far too many people in the conference room they were herded into, far too many cameras and watching eyes, but it seemed there wasn't any choice in the matter.

They should've all been at least somewhat used to publicly by now. It's not as if new astronaut candidates are chosen every day, so each had their fair share of media coverage in the past, but it was far more direct this time, far more personal than any would've liked.

Luckily, they were set to interview as a group, with no discussion of undergoing what would’ve been practically an interrogation if done on their lonesome.

“The Vanguard rocket will launch from the Kennedy Space Center next Thursday, December 2nd, carrying commander Benjamin Davenport, pilot Katherine Plumber-Pulitzer, missions specialist David Jacobs and flight engineer Antonio Higgins, all of NASA. The crew will be sent into orbit to begin their four-month mission on the International Space Station.”

Everyone else glanced back and forth between the cameras and the interviewer, while Race watched an interpreter standing just off-screen as the reporter continued. “People have started calling you the Vanguard Four. How do you feel about that?”

After a look shared between the party, Buttons spoke up with a crooked smile. “Well, the Director of the Vanguard Program—our boss—Bryan Denton usually just refers to us as “Caffeine Addicts”, so it’s a nice change of pace,”

The so-called Vanguard Four spent the next week in a chaotic whirlwind of more interviews, last-minute trainings, and an ungodly amount of meetings before the fated day arrived.

Launch day was uneventful at best, going so smoothly it could’ve almost been called boring. Despite his earlier concerns, Race and the rest of the crew did exactly as they were supposed to, without a single mishap to be spoken of.

Later, the papers would say it was some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Chapter Text

Three months into their mission now, and Davey was almost convinced that time passed differently on the Space Station.

It had taken a couple of days for their bodies to properly adjust to the foreign environment, but now the crew considered themselves well-acquainted with existing in the stars.

Now, they were gathered in one of the Station’s countless laboratories, having what Buttons was insisting on calling a “Meeting of the Minds,” despite everyone else’s complaints on the name.

“So far, this isn’t very exciting,” Katherine offered, pulling out a notebook to keep track of what they discussed per NASA’s request.

“Yeah, I haven’t seen a single alien,” Race signed, grinning brightly as the ginger rolled her eyes at the younger astronaut. “I didn’t think groundbreaking research was going to be this mundane, though,” he added swiftly, shoulders lifting in a shrug.

“Well, you know, it is pretty hard to break the ground when you’re in space,” Davey signed back before his attention returned to focus on a messy stack of highlighted papers he was combing through.

“Did you just make a joke?” Buttons blinked at the dark-haired scientist, taken aback. “The lack of natural oxygen must be damaging your brain cells or something…never thought I’d see the day,” he added, half to himself.

Davey looked back up, meeting Buttons’ eyes. “I think living with you is what’s been damaging my brain cells, actually,”

“You’ve been living with him for, like, a decade,” Katherine cut in dryly, shaking her head to dismiss the pair. “You know what, nevermind. Can we focus, please?”

“I can only promise you five minutes of undivided attention,” Race replied, letting his hands drop onto the table.

Buttons raised an eyebrow at Race, but left it alone, hunting down a sheet of paper from his bag. “Alright. How’s the garden coming along, Dave?”

Davey had been put in charge of starting what NASA called a “space garden”, being exactly what the name implied. The crew already on the ISS had set up several greenhouses before the Vanguard had arrived, leaving Davey free to plant several dozen fruits and vegetables.

If successful, the garden would be a welcomed addition to the mundane food options onboard the Station, while also serving as a valuable resource for botanists across the globe. Growing produce with limited, controlled gravity had been attempted in the past, but never among the stars, so many scientists were waiting with rather bated breath.

Race, though it was far from his field of expertise, had been asked to assist, though most of that was simply writing down the changes Davey made and the effects it had on the plants. He’d been thrilled when Denton gave him the assignment, before practically begging the director to allow them to bring along a cheeseburger to put in one of the greenhouses as well, a request that had been denied immediately.

“Well enough,” Davey told Buttons, pausing to nudge a few of the papers towards the commander. “Greenhouses B and C aren’t lending…ideal results, but a few of the plants in A should have produce soon,”

“Any concerns the artificial environment will render them inedible?” Katherine’s eyebrows raised with a note of curiosity, leaning over Buttons’ shoulder to study Davey’s reports. “I say we make Benny try the first one, just in case,”

Davey laughed, nodding at Race. “No way to know until we try. Sorry to run, but I’ve got a few more tests I want to do today. Mind lending a hand, Tony?”

“Not at all. Whenever I let you float off into space, though, just remember it was because my hands were tired from all the note-taking,” Race told him with a grin, standing.

Davey stood as well, collecting the rest of his papers and following Race to the door. “Don’t get into trouble, you guys. You know where to find us if you need anything,”

“Is the most exciting food for us to make really just space salad?” Race’s fingers twitched as Davey caught up with him, the pair wandering side by side through the familiar maze of hallways.

“Next time I’ll tell NASA you offered to butcher the astro-cow on your own, in zero gravity,” Davey joked, swiping his badge at an access door so they could go into his laboratory and start on the next round of experiments.

Race ducked past him and walked over to the shelves lining the left wall, a pleased grin crossing his face as he scanned over the plants. “Space salad is still coming along well,”

Davey responded with a fond roll of his eyes, withdrawing two clipboards from the supply cabinet. “It’s not a scientific study ‘til you write it down, so you better get on that,” he teased, passing one to the engineer.

Race set about his daily routine; checking the temperature of the room, the timing of the automated watering system, and counting how many of the plants were getting closer to harvest.

Davey was immersed in his own project, occasionally talking aloud to himself as he worked. He was facing away from him, so Race could only catch the barest mumblings on occasion, but Davey said it helped him to focus on whatever task was at hand.

After the better part of an hour, Race abandoned his post and sat down at a worktable across from Davey, happy to watch the other work.

“Spacewalk tomorrow, right?” Davey finally tore his gaze away from the task, blinking over at Race, who nodded in confirmation. Davey whistled a short note, carding a hand through dark waves. “Last one of the mission,”

“Better make it count,” Race signed back, mouth twitching up in a halfhearted smile. However difficult the last months on the Station had been, the crew wouldn’t deny it was a bittersweet ending, with their return to Earth set in just under a week.

“Part of me wishes I could just stay here,” Davey voiced Race’s own thoughts, shoulders lifting in a shrug as he continued. “It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? I just…I don’t know, even after all these years, I can’t pretend that I don’t want to see more of the universe,”

“I get it,” Race exhaled in a rush, pausing to rap his knuckles on the edge of the table. “Maybe it’s selfish, but I want to be the one doing all the discovering,”

“The final frontier isn’t meant to be ours, I guess,”

Davey laughed in the moment, words tinged with bitterness, but now, five hours had passed and he was no longer laughing.

The cosmonauts on board had radioed over to call Race away from his post, and while the astronaut’s Russian was by no means perfect, the urgency in their voices were unmistakable.

He brought Davey along, who was miles more fluent, to translate.

Part of Race wished he hadn’t, as if that would be enough to stop the reality now facing them.

A meteor shower—intense enough to be a storm, according to Davey—hadn’t been detected by the Station’s equipment.

Their systems were flawless. Anything worth worrying about was detected by the network, and the Station had no troubles maneuvering away to avoid impact.

But technology wasn’t perfect. Humans weren’t perfect. The result of that was now on track to collide with them, deal damage possibly beyond repair.

The rest of the Vanguard crew were called to join them. Each pretended not to notice the concerns written on the others’ faces.

“The rockets,” Katherine said, with the faintest whisper of hope in her lungs. Maybe they will be okay.

The Station was equipped with two small rockets, what are essentially space lifeboats in the case of any emergencies. It is not an emergency yet, the rockets will have to wait, one of the cosmonauts reminded him.

So they wait. Huddled together somewhere on the port end of the ship, to watch their months of research, years of effort, burn up in the universe.

Davey never believed space to be so cruel.

It was inevitable, really, after the storm left hundreds of holes in the Station’s hull, after the meteors destroyed their oxygen tanks, after the emergency alarms and lights began—evacuate immediately, damage to station detected—after the two cosmonauts and Katherine had clambered into the rocket and sealed the door, waiting to undock—it was inevitable that the other rocket would be damaged, a jagged scar in the side, no better than the ship they were already on thanks to the rapidly decreasing pressure in the ship’s cabin.

Buttons turned away from the rocket with a swift shake of his head, eyebrows drawn together with apparent concern. “No. That’s a death trap,”

Race carded a hand through his hair, the edge of panic clouding his thoughts. “Maybe we can patch it, or—”

He fell silent, biting his lip as if he already knew the foolishness of his own suggestion. There was no fixing the rocket.

They were doomed.

Evacuate immediately, damage to station detected. 25 percent oxygen remaining.

Davey ignored the shaking in his hands, lightly touching the shoulder of the younger astronaut. Nothing he could say would make this any better.

“Katie, you guys are a GO to undock,” Buttons radioed over the comms into the rocket, falling into a back-and-forth with the pilot that Davey didn’t have the heart to listen to.

Race was staring at him, eyes glassy. “This isn’t how I thought I’d be discovering the universe,”

“I’m sorry,” Davey signed, leaving his hands hanging in the air at a loss for further words. Eventually he sat down on the floor, back against the airlock door. Race joined him without a word.

They shared a bitter silence as Buttons’ conversation with Katherine continued, until the commander manually activated the rocket from the Station’s main control panel, and, despite the redhead’s protests that sounded in the overhead speakers, the ship departed with a course set for Earth.

Evacuate immediately, damage to station detected. 15 percent oxygen remaining.

Buttons joined them, sitting to Davey’s right and resting his chin on his knees while they waited for whatever fate awaited them. Several times they heard Houston trying to make contact—Flight Control to ISS, do you copy—but nobody made any move to the radio panels. It was futile, and Katherine would tell them soon enough.

“Ten minutes,” Davey signed, focusing on his hands as he spoke. “After the cabin’s out of oxygen, we’ll be brain dead in ten minutes,”

It was supposed to be a comfort, maybe, some fleeting hope that a quick death will limit their suffering, but neither Race or Buttons make any indication that it helped at all, and the uneasy quiet returned.

After some minutes, Buttons sat up, catching the others’ attention. “I-I don’t want to just sit and wait for my death.I’m going to, um, try for a spacewalk,”

By his tone of voice, it was clear neither Davey or Race was invited, so they watched on as Buttons clambered into one of the bulky spacesuits, securing his helmet in place.

“Maybe I’ll go and survey some of the damage,” His voice was muffled by the visor separating them, and in record time he was stepping into the airlock that separated space from the main cabin.

“I can come with you,” Davey offered, standing in the doorway to keep the cabin door from closing and ruining his chances. He already knew what Buttons’ answer was going to be, but there was no denying the shreds of hope still clinging to life somewhere in his chest.

Buttons just stepped forward, enveloping Davey in a slightly stiff hug, movements limited by the spacesuit. “Sorry I failed you, Daves,”

“Don’t blame yourself, Ben,” Davey bit out, resting his chin in the space where Buttons’ helmet met his shoulder. “We saw the stars. No one would have known they were going to destroy us,”

“I was supposed to protect you,” Buttons’ voice shook as he spoke. “All I did was condemn you,”

Davey was quiet for a moment, angling his face to bury it in the fabric of Buttons’ suit. His voice was muffled, broken, as he answered. “I forgive you,”

The pair remained entangled together for several long moments, until Davey stepped back, allowing the door to slide shut between them.

There was a darkness in Buttons’ eyes that his best friend did not miss. “Goodbye, Ben,” Davey met the commander’s eyes through the small window in the door separating them.

He smiled, bittersweet, before unlocking the latch and swinging the outer door open. Buttons wasn’t going on a spacewalk. He stepped forward, into open air, and let go.

Race bit back a noise of surprise. “He’s not clipped to the tethers, Davey, we gotta—”

“No. He’s…leaving,” Davey said simply, nodding to indicate Buttons, who was steadily drifting away from the ship as if carried along by the current of some invisible river running through the atmosphere.

The commander was calm, too calm, as the distance between them stretched and he became nothing more than a speck in the vastness of the space surrounding them.

Buttons was gone.

“I don’t want things to end like this,” Race admitted to Davey. The pair had, inexplicably, returned to the lab, sitting at one of the tables and surrounded by a garden of their own creation.

10 percent oxygen remaining, the alarms overhead chirped a bitter reminder. They were going to die here.

“Like what?” Davey asked, even if he already knew the answer.

Race looked around at the years of preparation, soon to be nothing but debris floating through the atmosphere. “None of this means anything. We didn’t change the world, Dave. We can’t even save ourselves,”

“We don’t need saving,” Davey’s hands twitched with every word. “This is history, okay? World-changing or not, we’re still making history,”

“Everyone dies at the end,” Race’s body language was nothing but bitterness. “History that no one remembers, right?”

Davey just shook his head in lieu of a response, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his eyes were bright with a new spark. “Dance with me, Race,”

Race angled his head quizzically, eyes narrowed at the other astronaut. “What?”

“We’ll be the first two astronauts to dance in space…um, probably,” Davey stood, reaching for Race’s wrist. “Even if nobody else remembers, it’ll be our history,”

“Okay,” Maybe it was foolish, but Race stood, a halfhearted smile curling at the edges of his mouth as Davey led him to a gap between the shelves of plants.

“I’m not sure if this is a bad time to say that I don’t know how to dance,” Davey laughed lightly, leaning closer to Race so the other could hear him clearly over the emergency alarms still keening on in the background.

“It’s not rocket science, is it? I only really know ballet, though,” Race replied, the grin on his face shifting into something miles more genuine.

There was no music, save for the distant thrum of the Station’s engines and the robotic tone of the alarm, but the astronauts danced, a clumsy spin that was just shy of a waltz, twirling through the wreckage of their mission.

They’re going to run out of oxygen soon, they both know it, but denial is a cruel web they’re both entangled in.

So they dance. They dance to forget, to remember, and to pretend things will be okay.

Nothing will be okay. Not for them, at least.

Davey thinks he can see the stars in Race’s eyes. Hidden behind the sadness, a galaxy is there, bright and defiant despite it all.

They spin until the laboratory becomes a blur, until the plants surrounding them are just flashes of green at the edges of their visions.

8 percent oxygen remaining.

Race’s chest is beginning to ache, air exhaling from his lungs in swift, wheezing gasps, futile attempts to try and steady his breathing.

They are sitting on the floor now. Race’s lips are turning blue, and Davey knows he will be unconscious soon.

“Tell the stars I’m sorry,” Race mumbles, words slurring together. His head is in Davey’s lap.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Davey tells him gently, brushing a thumb over Race’s cheek.

The stars in his eyes are dying, but Davey can’t look away.

5 percent oxygen remaining.

Race is dead. Davey knows, he watched the minutes on his NASA-issued watch, felt the moment Race’s heart stopped beating.

He can see space glittering cruelly outside the small lab window. “Remember us,” Davey bites out, a tear trickling down his cheek and dropping onto Race’s jacket, the body still limp in his lap.

2 percent oxygen remaining.

The stars are silent. When did they become so distant?

Davey will be dead soon, he’s sure of it, can already feel the fog clouding his thoughts and creeping into his lungs.

A lifetime of dreams is fading in an instant. He is going to die in the place that once seemed an impossibility to him.

He doesn’t fight the wave of exhaustion as it floods him, as he falls asleep, a final, broken exhale escaping his lungs.

0 percent oxygen remaining.

The world will not forget them, even if, in hundreds of years, they are nothing but names, sacrificed in their attempt to build a better future. Katherine will not forget them, though she never stepped foot in another spaceship again, haunted by her past.

The universe does not forget them either, as their bodies fade to nothing but stardust, faint reminders of childhood dreams to see beyond the world, discover the secrets hidden at the edges of space.