The White Paladin

part I: before the stars

Shiro is eight, and the cosmic void is pitch black and endless, with only distant stars glimmering oily on the firmament. His valiant white spaceship tears through the vacuum fearlessly. He's approaching the asteroid field, and a lesser pilot would stop or slow down – but Shiro speeds up at the sight. The fighter swirls and rolls around its horizontal axis, its tails flickering nimbly as he zips his way through the obstacles, until a huge asteroid with a narrow gaping chasm rises over him, and he focuses –

"Takashi! I told you not to run indoors!"

"But muuuuuuum! I'm a pilot!"

Shirogane Shizuka turns on the light. The cosmic darkness disappears to reveal a spacious living room. A collection of pillows is strategically scattered across the floor in the form of an obstacle course. Shiro groans at the light; the neatly folded paper plane is almost in the crack between the frames of the paper screen. "It's too late to be a pilot, sweetheart."

"It's never too late to be a pilot!" proclaims Shiro proudly. "I'm gonna be a pilot until I die!"

A small grimace goes through Shizuka's face, but she covers it up immediately. She walks up to her son and scoops him in her arms with ease – no small feat, as Shiro is big and sturdy for his age, but so is Shizuka. "Very well. Incoming signal, officer. You're being called in to the headquarters!"

"I don't want the headquarters!" Shiro flails in her arms, and they play-wrestle for a short moment, but there's just one way these conversations end.

"Is that insubordination, officer?"

"I have a mission to finish! An asteroid belt-"

"-can wait. You need to refuel and clean up the ship before the mission continues."

Shiro makes a face. "One day, I'm gonna fly a ship that never has to refuel!"

"One day, I'm gonna have myself an obedient son. But today neither of us is getting what we want." Shizuka props him up, kisses his black mop of hair, and then unceremoniously throws him over her shoulder. "Dinner, Takashi. "

"But muuuuuuum-"

"You can take the ship with you."

Shiro brightens up slightly. Shizuka crouches, and, strung along her back, Shiro reaches out for the paper plane on the floor. They both head to the kitchen, making engine noises.

-/-

Shiro is nine, and spending the summer with his father in Japan. Mum and he fly in to Tokyo together; then Shizuka is staying over at grandma's, and Shiro and his father take a plane to Hokkaido. They have a small country house in the mountains there, and it's their own little tradition that each year they go there for a couple of weeks. Father doesn't like Tokyo very much.

Once Shiro is passed over to father, the first couple of hours are always awkward. Shirogane Takeo clears his throat and says something quiet in Japanese; Shiro blinks without understanding.

"Does she not talk to you in Japanese?"

"We talk both. It depends. You're just being quiet!"

Takeo sighs with a little sad smile. "You're so grown now. Every time I see you, it's like you're a different person. My little boy…"

Shiro gives him a reassuring pat on the hand, feeling slightly strange at the intense, quiet focus his father watches him with. "I'm still the same, dad."

"Look at you. You're so big in the shoulders! Does she still send you to those martial arts classes?"

Shiro puffs his chest proudly. "All the time." But then he flattens slightly as there is no immediate joy in his father's eyes, just concern.

"At the garrison? Are they very violent?"

"Sometimes," he says, and Takeo sighs again.

"I didn't want that for you, Takashi. Your mother and I… we both just want you to be happy, it just seems like we can never agree on how. But violence is never the way."

"I know, dad."

"There's a difference between knowing and understanding, love." His father's eyes are intense as he stares into his own. "Your mother works for the American military. I wanted you free from the shadow that casts, but… if this is the least I can do…" He trails off, and Shiro doesn't quite know what to say. He keeps silent.

After a moment, Takeo shakes off his reverie. "We're going to have a nice retreat, son."

"Yeah! Like every year."

His father nods with a smile that crinkles his eyes in a sad, sad way, and Shiro wants him to say something else so he could understand the source of this sadness – it must be more than him practicing karate and capoeira at the garrison, surely? – but he doesn't. They talk about school instead.

But it's all forgotten when they reach their little house. Hokkaido in the summer is beautiful. It's so different from the desert too, in the mountains the rains come suddenly and without a warning, and a couple of times they are caught on the hiking trail by torrential rain. They laugh it off. His father, wary and silent in the city, becomes a different person in the mountains; he laughs freely and talks to him about herbs and plants, insects and animals they see around them. Shiro listens to the rhythm of the mountains, the shuddering of leaves at the sudden blow of wind, or the quiet buzz of a bumblebee; the mountain air fills his lungs with air that is so different than the air of the desert, full of light and freshness and life. One day, he finds a little clear volcanic lake just off a small cliff, and a sudden fancy passes over him to dive –

His father spots him as he is shrugging off his underwear at the top of the cliff. "Takashi! What do you think you're doing?!"

"I'm flying!"

"You're- you're not flying, you're about to hurt yourself! Don't move!"

"I'll be fine, dad! I can do it! I've done this at the pool!"

"Takashi!"

Shiro jumps –

and he's flying, he's flying, the wind swishes in his ears and for a split second he feels so wild, so immensely free, that the world shrinks to a brilliant speck of joy.

Then he crashes into his father.

Takeo had jumped immediately below him, with the timing Shiro could only describe as absolutely perfect. He cradles his son into his arms as they both tumble headfirst into the water, and only now can Shiro see that the rocks are sharp, they're porous and scratching and harsh, and there's red in the water, and for a second he can't realise why –

Takeo drags them both out of the lake. He's bleeding. Damping Shiro's fall tossed him straight into the sharp rocks.

Shiro starts to cry loudly. Takeo hugs him tight, his hurt legs splayed gracelessly on the ground. "It's okay. It's okay, son. I promise it's okay. I'd do it for you every time. If I only could."

They shudder and cry together and huddle close for a long time. Then he helps his dad back to the house where they dress the wounds, and then they sit together, meditating.

Shiro is too young to understand, but when he comes back to this memory much, much later, he realises that was the first time he's witnessed self-sacrifice.

-/-

Shiro is twelve.

"Look who's come back from his mystical mountain retreat. Didja work out with those crazy Japanese monks?"

"Shut up, Adam."

"I'll make you shut up."

If there's anything Shiro doesn't like about leaving each summer for a month, it's missing martial practice. They've moved on from practicing each art separately, karate and capoeira and taekwondo, to something that the garrison teachers promise is what proper cadets learn. Shiro likes it better. It feels more natural and less constraining, for someone that has been practicing so many various techniques; and he can freestyle his way from almost any dire straits when he's allowed just to be himself. Except when Adam is concerned.

He's the same age, and also very good. Not as strong as Shiro, but a smidgeon faster. And every time Shiro leaves for Hokkaido, that gives Adam an edge. It just doesn't seem very fair.

They're partnered together – again. They're on the mat, locked in an ugly horizontal wrestle, Shiro's left elbow digging into Adam's chest, Shiro's right arm twisted at a painful angle. Both are gritting their teeth, breathing heavily; neither has the strength to break the impasse.

The instructor calls them out. Adam lets go of him and falls back on the ground immediately, panting. "You friggin' colossus, Shirogane!"

Shiro is lying face down, but he's grinning a tired grin nevertheless. "That was good."

"Must be that secret martial monastery training. Admit it."

Shiro smiles underneath his breath.

"It's not fair," Adam says after a moment, when it's evident the instructor is giving him a break to watch over the other couple of opponents. "You're always so much stronger when you go back. Because you probably have all those shaolin monks to train with you! But if you're not here for me, no-one else is good enough."

Shiro blinks in disbelief. "Are you being nice to me?"

Adam scoffs, visibly embarrassed, and rolls away from him. "Nah. I just said it's not fair."

Grinning, Shiro stares at the white ceiling of the training hall.

-/-

Shiro is thirteen, and he's standing close to the wall, trying to catch as much as he can of the voices from the living room. Youngest… prodigy… wasting potential if not… simulator… His mother speaks in a low voice that he can't discern at all, but the voices of the other garrison officers are better fitted for running drills than for stealth. And what they are saying makes Shiro's heart flutter wildly in his chest. He will be a pilot. A Galaxy Garrison pilot.

If mum agrees.

After a long while they all walk out, and if there's a glimmer of tears in mum's eyes, Shiro can't see it because she immediately scoops him into her arms and gives him a tight, breath-stealing hug. He should feel embarrassed to have the garrison officers see that, but Shizuka doesn't give him time to think that before she straightens up fiercely. "I don't want this for him. But saying no would be just one more obstacle on his way, wouldn't it? And I know very well what my son does with obstacles."

Shiro thinks about asteroid belts, and the cracks in the gigantic chunks of rocks on the way of his glorious white ship. It's not just play anymore. He's been flying the simulator for a year and a half now, and if Shiro knows anything about himself at all, it's that whatever he can't dodge, he'll blast through.

-/-

Hokkaido is cold this summer. They scale the mountain in silence, both deep in thought.

"Takashi…"

He turns his head to look at his father. Takeo wears a sad expression.

"Is that what you want? The military? I won't stop you if you do. I just… isn't there any other path that would make you happier?"

"I'll be a pilot, dad. A space explorer. There's nothing better than that!" Shiro shakes his head. "It's not the army for the sake of the army. It's scouting the final frontier. This is what I've always wanted! Always!"

Takeo turns his face away. For the first time, Shiro sees the lines of age under his eyes. "Has your mother ever told you why we're not together anymore?"

That gives Shiro pause. He thinks about it carefully. "You didn't want to live in America anymore."

"Yes. But that's only part of it. Your mum's dad, Matsuoka Taro… He was an explorer exactly like you want to be. Always spoke about going further than any man had ever gone before. And when he died on Venus…" Takeo's face is still and dark like the sky over the mountain. "Your mother… refused to give up. She threw herself into the space exploration programme. She was living his dream, and forgot about her own. I couldn't just stand and take it."

Shiro is silent for a long moment. Then, when he finally speaks, his voice is quiet.

"But this is my dream. Mum never- she didn't want me to do it. It was my decision all along."

"I believe you, son. But the fact of the matter is, you're not just going to be an explorer. You're going to be an officer. An American soldier." Takeo's face is sorrowful. "Can you promise me something?"

Shiro nods, wide eyes on his father's face.

"Always remember to see the humanity in the person on the other side. Of the chain of command, of the argument, of the gun. The people you'll deal with, they'll want you to reduce you to a cog in that big military machine. But as long as you know to look for humanity… to give second chances… to just be kind… you'll hold on to yourself. Promise me that, Takashi. Promise me that you'll always search for that humanity."

Shiro is fourteen, and his hands are already calloused and strong when he reaches out for his father's own hand. He squeezes it tight, hoping it gives enough reassurance. "I promise, dad."

Takeo takes a deep breath. He holds it for a second, then lets it out in a long sigh – of relief tightly wound with worry.

"Then maybe there's hope for this family after all."