Valentine does feel slightly guilty about being excited to go into space. He’s never really gone anywhere, seen anything, lived a life outside institutions. Space is this big unknown adventure that’s full of possibilities he can’t even begin to imagine.

Gee, from what little he’s said, has only recently become orphaned so maybe his life was better before the program. Maybe it’s easier for him to look backwards rather than forwards.

As part of his master plan for getting placed on the same ship together Valentine nags Gee into letting him take a look at his coursework. Gee is super judgmental and unexpectedly bitchy about it. He gives Valentine the stink-eye and says that he knows what he’s up to, that Valentine isn’t nearly as sneaky as he thinks he is.

“Okay, but are you going to help me or not?” Valentine holds out his hand, expectant.

“I said I would, just take the damn thing.” Gee hands over his tablet.

Valentine scans through the available documents eagerly, then lets out a disappointed huff as he sees that it’s just a bunch of really dry engineering texts and manuals on talisman creation and basic warding that he’s already read on his own time. There’s also a couple texts on field medicine but he figures that if anyone is ever depending on him instead of an actual doctor for help they’re probably gonna die anyway.

“Not what you thought it was gonna be, huh?” Gee says with only a hint of smugness.

Valentine rolls his eyes. “I’m trying to skip ahead a few classes so we don’t get separated. Don’t be a dick about it.”

“You sure you want to be on the same ship? Knowing my luck we’ll end up being the first to accidentally fly into a black hole or something.”

“Okay can you seriously not say shit like that? It’s bad luck! Besides, it wouldn’t be the first, it’s already happened. It was like…the ninth? I think?” Despite the efforts of the staff at the facility to limit outside information Valentine knows just enough about the fates of earlier expeditions to keep him up late at night if he thinks about it too much.

“Oh well wouldn’t want to jinx it, sure. You know our chances aren’t that great right?”

“No, seriously you can shut right the hell up anytime now.” Valentine really doesn’t want to focus on the infinite number of things that could possibly go wrong, as most of them will be outside his ability to control.

Gee just laughs at him.

“Just keep your shit together until we get out of here, okay?” Valentine feels like all he ever does these days is try to extract promises from Gee so he doesn’t do something crazy.

Gee shakes his head, dismissive.

“If we get separated and that’s a big if because I’m going to catch up, I will come find you, okay?”

“Yeah okay, sure.”

“Don’t you fucking patronize me,” Valentine snaps. Gee’s doing that thing where he gets lost inside his own head again, drowning in his own pessimism. Valentine can’t stand it.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Hey, going a few ships after me is probably a good thing. Look what happens to the people that go through stuff first in this program.”

Valentine’s too shocked to respond. He’s sure Gee didn’t mean anything by it but it cuts surprisingly deep all the same. Valentine knows exactly what it’s like to go first. He wishes he could forget.

He manages to summon up a wry smile that’s at odds with the twist of pain lancing through his heart. “So instead of a black hole they’ll just have run out of good planets.”

“That’s the spirit!” Gee says with a mocking smile and a thumbs up.

“Yeah, well,” Valentine shrugs. “You’re a horrible influence.”

The top classes start to receive their ship assignments. They are introduced to their crews and start going through their final rounds of enhancements. Their glowing eyes are creepy as fuck, but also kind of cool. Valentine wonders what his eyes will look like when it’s his turn. He wonders what Gee’s eyes will look like.

If Valentine wasn’t running out of time before he definitely is now. He’s been harassing his advisor weekly, trying to see if there’s any way he can test up or out of his classes. His concerns get brushed aside and he gets handed busywork under the guise of extra instruction, in the hopes of distracting him. Too bad he’s already read through all the supplementary materials he can get his hands on.

He knows that there’s a danger of pushing too hard and too far but he just doesn’t have any more time to be tactical about it. So he pushes and pushes and won’t take no for an answer and finally his advisor stops giving him the standard bullshit non answers.

“Your academics are not the problem,” they tell Valentine with a patronizing look over the top of their glasses. Did they practice that in the mirror? Who even wears glasses any more? How pretentious can you get, Valentine thinks. “The classes are set up in a very specific way, accounting for a number of variables.”

“Like what?”

His advisor, who up until now has never had a hard time looking him right in the eye as they rattle off the usual excuses, looks down at their hands which are folded together on top of their desk. “Your academics are the only reason you haven’t been failed from the program outright,” they say at last.

What.

They pull up Valentine’s record on their monitor and take their time reading through it even though by now they must have the damn thing memorized. It’s clearly a stall for time. They remove their glasses and begin to buff the lenses against their shirt. “The plan, such as it is, is to wait and see if your physical condition improves. Ideally we’d give it a few more years but at this point I’m not sure we have that long as we are approaching the end of the timeline for the program.”

Ah yes, adult speak for if you don’t get assigned to a ship soon then it’s not happening at all.

They clear their throat then take their sweet time taking a sip from a mug that Valentine’s pretty sure is empty. “What I can offer is an early …dismissal from the program, if you’d like.”

“What like put me out of my misery?” To say that he’s shocked would be an understatement. The last thing Valentine expected today was to be offered a chance to be put down like some sort of sick animal.

His advisor chokes on air. “What?” They manage to ask, eyes watering as they can’t stop coughing.

“You know,” Valentine mimes shooting himself in the head. “Isn’t that usually how people leave the program?”

His advisor stares at him in unadulterated horror.

“…Were we not supposed to know?”

“Fucking hell,” his advisor manages at last. “I was offering you a chance to live out the rest of your life as you choose since there’s little point in staying here if you’re not going to finish out the program. I wasn’t offering to have you killed.”

Valentine shrugs. “It’d be nicer than watching everyone else fuck off to space, leaving me to die with all the other rejects who didn’t make the cut.”

His advisor groans and buries their face in their hands. “I’m trying to give you as much control as I can over your own life, can you at least pretend to be grateful? Also, language.”

It’s crushing, the realization that not only will he be separated from Gee but now it’s looking like they won’t even have the opportunity to meet up later. Because Valentine will be dead, along with all the other poor fuckers who don’t have a ride off the planet.

Fuck.

“I’m not giving up,” he swears, pushing his way up out of his chair to loom over his advisor.

They just sigh and shake their head. “I wish you luck,” they say. “You’re going to need it.”