Chapter Text
Shiro is the first to wake up. He goes to the gym and trains till breakfast, then shower, then again training and teamwork. That’s easy. You can think of it as of another mission; it’s easy to think of it as of a mission when you are in military service. You get used to it.
Even a flying robo-lion is normal. It’s technology, and it can fly, this is also familiar, he was trained for this. He wanted this. To fly in space, to explore, to protect.
What Shiro is not used to are the nightmares, which drive him to the gym; Katie, who looks too much like Matt at the same age; his own weakness.
The morning after Katie’s confession everything changes. Without thinking Shiro makes a detour to her working hall, and finds himself already there. Katie is asleep with her knees pulled up to her chest. Her glasses slid aside, she doesn’t even need glasses. She is pale and looks tired even sleeping. Shiro remembers a different Katie — with long hair, happy and smiling. Katie in dresses, Katie asking for ice cream, Katie, whom they took to an amusement park on her birthday.
She is no pidge, more like a fluffy wet sparrow.
Shiro remember Matt braiding her hair, and Shiro used to tease him for it, and Katie pouted and defended her brother’s honor.
He should wake her up and take her to her cabin, so that she sleeps normally, so that she rests well and stops torturing herself. But will she? A dull nasty feeling, not unlike hunger, is biting Shiro from the inside. He returns to his cabin, takes a blanket and brings it to the empty white hall, and gently covers Katie. Her eyelashes flutter behind the glasses, but she doesn’t wake up. Shiro takes a pen and a piece of paper, writes loosely: “Don’t sleep sitting”. Places it on the floor in front of her.
He checks the hall again after training, but Katie is not here anymore.
They meet at breakfast. She gives him a stiff smile and quickly averted her eyes. Shiro smiles too. They don’t have to talk; Lance, Keith, and Hunk burst into the canteen, and they fill the place with loud and happy noises. Some time ago their life was like theirs, now it’s different, and Shiro cannot say that it’s a bad thing. He just misses it sometimes.
...And he also remembers that while in prison he slept with his face hidden in someone’s hair, soft and fluffy even after many days in a cell.