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Shiro pulled of his helmet as soon as they were all back in their respective hangars. They were battered, tired, worse for the wear, but alive nonetheless.
He sighed and let his head fall into his hands, unable to keep it upright any longer. His shoulders slumped forward, eyes closing of their own volition as his body began vetoing his own commands. He needed to get up, he needed to talk to them to apologize, but his eyelids were just so heavy . He just needed a minute, just a couple minutes of rest, oh god even the word, the thought of rest was delicious in his mind and he was so, so close.
A jolt of electricity thundered behind his eyes, making his vision go white and purple, filling his ears with the sound of an explosion. He lurched out of his seat, trying to get away from the outburst of sensations that plagued his brain.
Now standing, he tried to rub the drowsiness out of his eyes. Shiro knew that if he let himself try to rest again, he’d only be hit with the bolt of pain a few minutes later.
He didn’t know how to face them after the stunt he just pulled. He had a single job; all he had to do was keep his head on straight. He couldn’t even do that right; his brain wouldn’t let him.
If not for Keith—
He couldn’t let his mind go there, but it was so hard to control. He was constantly nauseous, right arm cramping under the strain of not existing anymore. Sometimes he didn’t even remember where he was, what he was doing, and when it happened on a mission…
It was his greatest fear articulated into reality. He had to watch as they got hit, time after time again, and his body, his brain, his mind belonged to something else entirely. He had to watch Katie sustain hit after hit on her lion’s armored back and he couldn’t do anything about it. His mouth had tried to speak, leaving him floundering for words like a beached fish; his consciousness had refused to supply any.
He was just so tired . He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, really slept. The few hours he’d gotten were so infested with nightmares, mixed with memories in such a way that he didn’t know where reality blurred into something even more monstrous.
They were going to hate him. Hell, they probably already did. He didn’t really know what they’d said on coms, sounds a constant haze that he had to fight to catch. He’d know soon enough.
Shiro disembarked black into the cavern, white and glowing blue. Keith was waiting for him.
Keith was leaning up against the workbench, arms crossed and mouth pinched. He looked up when Shiro came into view.
Shiro tensed, waiting for the onslaught of accusations he assuredly deserved.
“Shiro, are you okay?” Shiro was caught off guard by the tone, gentle in a way Keith so rarely was. He was ready to be yelled at, to be shut out, to be accused, kicked off the team, but this?
This was so much worse.
Shiro scoffed.
“I know I messed up. You don’t have to walk around it—”
“Shiro.”
Shiro looked up to see something like genuine worry in Keith’s face, open, and so very un-Keith.
“You look like shit,” Keith continued.
“I put the team in danger, I feel like shit.”
Keith nodded.
It was at that moment that Lance and Hunk decided to make their entrance.
“What the hell happened, Shiro?” Lance started, throwing his arms up in confrontation, and just like that, Shiro’s eyes were once again glued to the ground.
Hunk, entering behind his friend, grabbed Lance’s shoulder at the sight of Shiro.
“Pidge is in a pod, she’ll be fine in a couple of hours.”
Shiro let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, nodding in response to Hunk’s reassurance.
“Shiro,” once again, Shiro was startled at how gentle his friends were being, “you need to tell us what’s wrong.”
He tried to respond, to tell them what was going on between his ears. “I’m… I don’t… It’s like…”
“I can’t,” he took a breath, “breathe, it’s like,” he stopped, then yelled in frustration. He was flopping around on the sand, choking on his words. He started shaking with the effort of speaking.
“Shiro,” Hunk interrupted, “when was the last time you slept?”
He sagged as the words hit him, hit the air, and it clicked in his head.
“I don’t know ,” he sobbed.
Lance’s hug caught him off guard. Shiro sighed into the contact for a moment before Lance pushed him away and fixed his eyes on Shiro’s.
“You know we can help, dumbass?”
“Yeah,” Shiro wiped his eyes, “I do.”
The three led him, slowly, down to their equivalent of a living room and Shiro fell asleep for the first time in a long time to the soft sounds of his family, melting into pillows, into dreams that weren’t filled with blood and monsters, but with them.