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Shiro hates night time. Night means sleep, and he hates sleep too. Because sleep means nightmares and… well, he doesn’t need to elaborate, does he?
He doesn’t have nightmares every night, but he has them enough to completely dread sleep. Shiro tries to keep himself awake, drinking things with caffeine and doing exercises in his room instead of sleeping, but you can only avoid sleep for so long. And when he finally gives into sleep, the nightmares begin.
They are always the same, but somehow manage to be different every time. There are snapshots of real memories, the same memories that attack him as flashbacks when he is awake, memories of being strapped to a table or strapped to a chair or having his ankles cuffed so he can’t run away or being sent into the arena to fight for his life for the sadistic enjoyment of the Galra. And although there is so pain (you can’t feel pain in dreams; this fact is often the only way Shiro can tell if he is actually awake or if life is some weird dream), the dreams are as real as they ever were, complete with the terror and screaming and the overwhelming fear of not knowing if he will be tortured today or not.
Some of the dreams never happened, but that doesn’t make them any less terrifying. And the source of the images that plague his nightmares is unimportant, because he ends up overwhelmed and petrified nevertheless.
The nightmares go on for what seems like forever, but they never actually last for more than a few minutes.
And when they end, Shiro jolts back into reality with a palpitating heart and sweat sticking his hair to his face. He lies on his back, breathing heavily as he stares up at the ceiling, trying to calm himself down, lest he have a panic attack.
And when he has a nightmare, he never sleeps again for the rest of that night. He just can’t fall asleep with all that adrenaline running through him. Not that he really cares, because he doesn’t want to sleep anyway. He hates sleep.