#shiro week

[spinji]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22868533/chapters/54821833

[mitzoco]

Inbetween.

Late entry for Day 4: Astral Plane for @blackpaladinweek

[katwarrior]

Shiro Week Day 1: Chosen/Crowned

Allura crowning Shiro as her prince consort after the war. :3c

@blackpaladinweek

Background filter

[shoutydraws]

Nov. 24 - AU Day: If he had lived

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

@blackpaladinweek

[crookedaceofdiamonds]

Shiro Week Day 4 - Astral Plane

Song: Hurts Like Hell, by Fleurie

Also for my Regret prompt on my Sheith Card.

@voltronbingo

@blackpaladinweek

[araniellart]

Shiro Week - Day 3 - Break/Mend (or more like “fixing”?) He’s sooo done  @blackpaladinweek

[devilcult]

day 1 time/space

i tried to do a bit of both uhh its not too good but i fuckin tried

@blackpaladinweek

[headspacedad]

Shiro Week: day 2: original

day one   day two   day three   day four   day five   day six   day seven

Ryou bonus

“No way.  You’re not serious.  ....  You’re serious?!  That’s - Shiro, that’s Kerberos!  That’s  - the mission to end all missions.  An assignment like that? - that’s for top of the roister.  Newley or Mikhaylovich or Matta’ll grab that spot up.  They’ve got seniority and a hell of a lot more missions logged.  I mean - yeah.  You’re Io’s hero and all but - Kerberos is for the top tier.  No offense!  We’re just too young.  We’ll get our chance.  Somewhere even better than Kerberos.”  The pat on his shoulder was meant to be consoling.  “Give us ten years and you’ll see!” Except Shiro didn’t need consolation. 

Because he was going to Kerberos.

Brin wasn’t wrong.  The list of potential pilots for the Kerberos mission was very small and it read like the Garrison’s Who’s Who list, all top level names of pilots that had proven themselves time and time again.  Gehrig - first astronaut to Europa.  Larson - first to navigate Saturn’s rings.  Newley - hero of the failed Venus mission.  Kerberos’ pilot was going to be what the mission hung on. It wasn’t the piloting itself.  It was never the piloting itself.  It was the ability, in that desperate moment when, against all hope and prayer, something went wrong, to keep a level head and turn a potential disaster into a miracle.  That was what would make or break a pilot’s career.  It was about so much more than simply steering a ship, pointing it in a direction and making it fly there against solar wind and space debris and gravitational pulls.  That part did take skill and Shiro knew he had that kind of skill in spades.  That wasn’t bragging.  It was just proven fact.  But being the pilot of a mission was more.  It was about knowing how much fuel there was left in each of the separate tanks at any given moment and how the weight of it would effect the spin of the ship when something knocked it off course and how to use that to right it and set it back on course, all mathematically and instantaneously in your head in case the ships’s computers had been knocked out.  It was about knowing instinctively when the ship’s vibrations were off, long before any alarms sounded or lights flickered.  It was about being the difference between an empty death lost in space and spinning out of the solar system on the eternal way to Proxima Centauri as lost astronauts and a successful mission.  It was that split second of knowing your ship so well you knew when something went wrong and having the level head and knowledge to set it right before anyone else even noticed.  The pilot of the mission to Kerberos would carry the full weight of the success - or the failure - of it on his or her shoulders.

Deep space pilots were so much more than just the person that held the stick and pushed the buttons at the right time.  It was why they still called them ‘fighter class’ even though there were no wars in space to be fought.  A throw back to older, riding the hair’s difference of a trigger time. 

Kerberos already had a big name attached to it.  Commander Samuel Holt.  The top of his field and a lifetime of space experience under his belt.  A man Shiro personally looked up to and admired for his steady wisdom and positive outlook on even the darkest situations.  The Garrison would select a pilot that could match him.  And that was a lot of experience to have to match up to.

Shiro stood in front of potential pilot roster list that was posted on the break room wall and he read the names of people he considered his own personal heroes that had already signed up for trials for the pilot spot for Kerberos.  It made his mouth go dry.  If he wanted the pilot’s slot, he was going to be competing with the best the Garrison has ever put out and none of them, not the more experience pilots, not Shiro, were going to hold back during the trials.

Maybe he was Icarus.  The thought, not for the first time, whispered to the back of his mind.  Too young to realize there was a limit to how high he could fly.

Maybe he should take Brin’s advice and wait his turn.  There would be other missions.  There would be other flights.  He was young.  He still had plenty of time.

The stars weren’t going anywhere.  They’d wait for him.

That night, sitting at his desk with just the glow from his computer screen against his face and the warmer, gold glow of a single lamp his roommate had left on on her way out at his back, Shiro hesitated - and then clicked the send key that submitted his own application to the Kerberos roister.

The stars were calling for him.  And Kerberos was closer to them than anyone has ever been able to come until now.  Shiro would keep flying until his wings melted out from under him.  He didn’t know any other way.

@blackpaladinweek