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Sometimes he lets himself listen to the silence. Sometimes he can fall asleep without choking.
It's always the same dream - a foreign planet, an empty hall with tall white arcades, and muted melodies of bells echoing behind him. Every time he hopes to catch a whisper, to turn around and see those steel-grey eyes, but every time it's the whiteness staring back at him until it swallows him completely.
During the day he occupies himself with searching and analyzing, building theories on sand and carving his promises in desert stone. He promises to never give up. His corkboard is stabbed with pins and nails linked together by red threads and loose conjectures.
Sometimes Keith takes his speeder deep into the dunes and flies so fast that he hears the earth rumble beneath him and feels his grip weaken, half-hoping for the wind to take him. Keith knows there is no way for him to get higher than the thin blue edge of the sky. He lingers under the weight of the atmosphere and regrets the day his anger cut him off from that tiny possibility of diving deep into space, far from Earth. Closer to Shiro.
After long, hard months, the stillness of white arcades starts haunting him in waking hours. Reality seems more like an old memory now while each dream brings him closer to feeling something familiar, something good. He starts to believe that Shiro is hiding somewhere behind those columns, laughing gently along with the celestial bells. The hum resonates with Keith’s whole being.
There are nights when he can't sleep no matter how badly he wants to. Climbing the roof of his father's old shack, he dares to stare back at the darkness above him, but it doesn't swallow him, not like the gentle white in his dreams. It is so far away that he could lose his voice screaming and still go by unnoticed, unimportant. The universe decided to devour someone else. The universe is plain damn cruel.
Sometimes, engulfed in his uselessness and grief, Keith lets himself cry.