Fake fic title ask game, quoting my friend (with permission): "you don't shed your previous year like a cicada every birthday."
This would be a drabble or ficlet collection for Wolf 359 about each birthday the Hephaestus crew spent up there. All the episodes have precise dates; you can work out what was going on on each character’s birthday. Minkowski’s first birthday in space. alone while her crewmates were in cryo-stasis, piloting the last leg of the trip from the Hermes to the Hephaestus… their first year on the station, Eiffel grouchy that his birthday is dull of Mandatory Christmas Activities, it only occurring to Eiffel to ask Hera if she has a birthday a whole week later, but luckily her birthday is at the end of January so he didn’t miss it… Hera actually celebrating increments of 10,000 hours online because Earth years mean nothing to her… Minkowski learning how it feels when she gets grouchy that Eiffel celebrates her birthday as Star Wars Day…
The Eiffel’s catastrophic 32nd birthday, of course. Eiffel trying to come up with a way to celebrate Hera’s birthday when they’re still on edge after Hilbert’s mutiny, but settling into a ‘new normal’ (this is two days before Let’s Kill Hilbert). Minkowski’s bleak birthday during the s2-s3 break when she has to stave off the conviction they’re all abandoned here to die (she never thought she’d miss Eiffel’s Star Wars jokes). Lovelace’s even bleaker birthday, a few weeks after “Pan-Pan.”
Eiffel’s awkward birthday with Kepler (is he existential about getting another birthday, after coming so close to dying? Would he rather be playing Funzo?) Minkowski’s birthday very shortly before “Desperate Times / Desperate Measures.” Lovelace’s birthday the day after “Constructive Criticism”—she’s in the midst of her grappling with what it even means to have a birthday, yeah, but hey, at least Eiffel isn’t being so Fuckin weird around her anymore and is tentatively trying to make amends by having a fun birthday party. Or as fun as possible under the circumstances. Is she 36? Is she 33? Is she 1 and a half? Hell if she knows.
Eiffel’s last/first birthday in space, on the Urania, nearly home.
It would be a very Wolf 359 collection about how their past is clinging to them, and how they’re handling going forward under the weight of it, and how they’ve changed each year under everything that’s happened.
