Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dying felt like being ripped apart.

It felt like falling, standing still.

Euphoria and a deep well of sadness.

It felt like memories - memories of morning grass, bright sun, love-cooked meals and Christmas candles. Everything he would miss, every moment he'll never get, every person he hasn't seen, every pair of eyes he'd drown in if he chanced to say goodbye.

Death haunts his every moment. His footsteps fall with knowledge that the ground is flimsy wrapping-paper, colorful but insubstantial. Holding something precious and easily lost. Purple lights trace their way behind his eyes, and he readjusts to moving. His muscles are new, his senses are new, the weight of artificial gravity leaves him aching.

When Shiro speaks, his words scratch. His voice itself is fine, but he knows - this isn't his body. When the mind goes long enough without words or sounds or touch, it boils. He jumps at sudden sounds - living is a disturbance compared to the empty calamity of the longsleep.

In his dreams, he is dead again. His mind remembers death, freezes his body, he can't move his fingers, and he's trapped in the purple-black abyss - formless, floating.

Intimately knowing death is a burden.

Slowly, he forgets it, his memories shed like cobwebs. Small parts of him don't forget, though. Purple lights send him reeling. Standing in the Black Lion is like crouching in his own bones, his rib-cage stories high, his femur the length of a valley, his spine the ridges of a mountain. There he resides, kicking up dust from when he settled beneath the Earth, or among the stars, or wherever his once-body resides. He imagines himself rotting in an alien field, his eyes crawling with maggots. He sees the ivy that writhes around his fingers and the animals that make their home below his scapulae. A raven, or a vulture, or whatever dark-feathered, croaking creature his final resting place has, builds a nest beside his open jaw. Butterflies drink his blood, spiders catch their prey.

It's alarming, it's comforting, it's disturbing.

But he'd rather decompose on land, below a birch tree, melding with the forest floor, or amidst sand and hot wind, perhaps floating face-down in the water, rather rot on a planet than in space where he would freeze and float still, alone.

It's lonely, thinking of his body. He misses it, mourns it's loss, despite it's flaws. His new body may be healed, nearly whole, but it's not his. He doesn't know every inch of himself anymore, his eyelashes are wrong, his fingernails grow faster than they used to, his eyes are dry, he blinks more often, and he's not missing the canine tooth he lost in a bike accident when he was thirteen. He speaks differently now, around the place where the gap used to be.

Death is hard to shake.

Chapter Text

“Do you have anyone waiting for you, Shiro?”

“I...I hope so. I don’t know.” There’s sadness in his voice when he replies, the edges of his words tinged with cherrysweet hope. The word tastes like wild grapes and feet sinking into sand, twin rings and summer wine.

“Who?”

He swallows, feeling the shadow of lips on his mouth, “I was engaged - technically married. We signed the paperwork before we had a ceremony. We broke up before I left but...I don’t know. I still care.”

Allura smiles gently, and he can see disappointment in her eyes. He could always sense how she felt, he noticed the lingering touches, the wide beaming smiles and the press of her thigh against his when she sat next to him, too close to be friendly. He tried to let her down gently, but he’s always been too kind, and she never quite understood.

“Who was she?”

“I - no, um.” He fixes his gaze on the horizon line. They’ve stopped on a pink-sanded planet, their minds and bodies in desperate need of a day on solid ground. In the distance, he can hear Lance swimming in the crystalline water, Keith’s grumbles of frustration, and Pidge’s sarcastic quips. Hunk watches the clouds - strange purple apparitions - and the vibrant birdlike creatures in the sky. There's warmth in that. Familiar violence replaced by fleeting moments of peace. They're all tense, beneath the veneer of relaxation. They wait for the next attack, bayards at the ready. Krolia is, unofficially, on guard, dagger in her hand. They can't afford to let their guard down, even on a largely uninhabited planet in an empty solar system, in a quiet corner of the galaxy.

“Who was he?" Allura tentatively tries a different route, seeming to understand her mistake. It surprises Shiro, but he doesn't know why. Of course kind, gentle Allura would be soft and polite. He doesn't know Altean customs regarding marriage or sexuality - why ask and suffer disappointment or worse, hatred? He can't help but feel juvenile, childhood insecurities brought back the moment he was thrown into the unfamiliar culture.

“Yes, he. His name - he was Adam. Another teacher at the Garrison.” Saying his name, his mouth forms every word for devotion, he pictures his eyes the colors of springtime beauty, his laugh the sound of smiling rivers and giggling wind chimes.

He lives in amber, a crystallized snapshot of honey mornings, sipping sugared coffee from their shared mug in the staff room and tacky valentines chocolates on the kitchen counter. One knee sinking into green grass, hands around a ring box, question stolen by lips and the word yes brushing his mouth.

“And...there was a breakup, I assume?"

Shiro speaks in jagged starts and stops as he struggles to form a response, “I - yes. I was sick. Very sick,” he can see worry rise in her eyes and rushes to reassure her, “I’m fine now - I think. I hope. But. The Kerberos mission was dangerous, for me. More so than anyone else. It hurt Adam, that I only had a few years left of...I had dystonia. It’s a neurological disorder. There’s no cure for it. My muscles, basically, contracted against my will. There’s a drug that would make my muscles relax, but the symptoms were progressing. In a few years, my control over my body would have deteriorated. A lot. Adam was upset that I chose to spend my last functioning years away from him, in space.”

A decade after his diagnosis, the knowledge has faded to a distant throb. But even though his body is responsive now - even though he doesn't twist and twitch - it's still a lingering presence, a lilt to his posture. It clings to the way he moves his arm, the way he sits purposefully still, relishing in the knowledge that, yes, is clone body is different.

In the weeks before he died, he ran out of medication. Without the muscle relaxants, his writing grew shaky, is piloting no longer error-free. He limped when he walked, his feet shuffled, and his spine began to bend. He died, though, so there was a price to pay. He has sleep paralysis now, as if his mind forgets that he's alive. When he lets his thoughts wander, he's suspended in the abyss of the Black Lion, awash in purple, floating, incorporeal.

He can tell she's trying to process that - Shiro, war-hero, former pilot of the Black Lion. Twisting away at the whim of misbehaving neurons.

"And this...dystonia. You're alright now?"

Shiro exhales softly, "I hope."

"Well, you have Altean technology now," in the wake of bad news, Allura becomes a tactician, planning rather than facing, "we can help you, Shiro. Whatever you may need."

"Thank you, Allura."

"What was it like, if I may ask? Dying, that is."

That's a different question than the one he's expecting, the one he thought was prying at her mind. The hard-to-miss so you're gay? question. That one would be far easier to answer.

He chews on his cheek, contemplating how one responds to that question.

"It felt like my mind was spinning away. I lost all of my senses, one by one. I couldn't feel, then I couldn't hear, I couldn't see or smell or taste. I remember being overcome with sadness and realization that there was no going back from that point."

"But you came back."

"Yes, but, not for a long time. Being trapped in the Black Lion was terrifying. Coming back was just as frightening as dying."

It was a sudden awful flood of sensation. He still feels it, like every part of his body is on edge and he is so very aware of every grain of sand that shifts beneath him, the cool air that fans across the back of his neck, the pressure of Allura's gaze, the scent of the ocean - not quite salty, more sweet, like a nameless candle or a long-brewed wine. It's almost overwhelming, clogging his nose. The brightness of the sun filters through purple clouds, and the wash of color sends his mind back to the too-recent past.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Thank you for bringing me back. It'll just take some adjusting."

A moment later, she asks a new question, "What was Adam like?"

He can't help the sigh that escapes his lips and the warmth that flowers like orangeblossoms in his chest, the colors of yellow and sunlight and reflections on glasses.

"We met when we were seventeen, a year before we were promoted to Junior Officers. We studied together in the library, almost every day. We had a lot of classes together."

He remembers their dancing attempts at flirtation - going on walks among the gardens, sneaking into the hanger at night, Adam surprising him with coffee before class, Shiro dropping everything in a moments notice to catch the train into town with him. Their lunches, their 2 AM study sessions.

They burnt popcorn in Adam's dorm room once, after a late night of preparing for a written Astrophysics exam - he still doesn't understand why it wasn't multiple choice - both of them starving, and the dining hall was closed. He remembers their bubbling laughter with the small rebellion of being awake after curfew, the simple excitement of breaking a rule despite their perfect records. When the popcorn came out smoking, they nearly set off the fire alarm. Tip-toeing to the well-ventilated laundry room was their only option. They laughed, perched on the humming washer, elbows knocking together.

So many saccharine moments, memories he rewatches through glass, "I proposed to him one night, when we snuck into the greenhouse to drink."

They were twenty-two years old and tipsy, starry-eyed, passing the bottle back and forth as they celebrated the mere miracle of their existence. Shiro had the weight of hope and a ring in his pocket. They crowded against each-other in the corner, knees knocking, shoelaces dragging in the dirt. They whispered promises back and forth. They laughed brazenly, danced in the sweet smell of flowers and manmade vegetables. When they moved to leave, leaning together, foreheads brushing, Shiro sank to one knee and barely had a chance to ask the question before Adam breathed yes.

Chapter Text

Arriving at Earth - coming home, although it seems too gossamer-flimsy to be home now - is the sound of boots thudding on metal, feet sinking into sand, and sunshine-sweet reunions. Tears on cheeks, freckled hands, arms and shoulders and hugs.

Is strange, being back on Earth. He never realized how heavy gravity is or how strange the air tastes when it’s not filtered through the Castle’s purification system.

Shiro stands back. Watches, swallowing bitterness and stopping himself from looking for a once-familiar face. He leans awkwardly to one side, tilting off-balance, his body's lack of stability a wry mirror of the hurricane beneath his skull. He shakes the correct hands, arranges his face into a dignified mask, and cuts back the waves of dizzying panic that sweep across him when he meets them all, all of the leaders of the last stronghold. And he isn't among them. He has to force himself not to look, not to seek him out. He swallows back hope, because he's learned not to hope. Good luck no longer comes his way.

Each reintroduction is dizzying, a chorus of "Welcome home, Lieutenant Shirogane" - is this really home? Can he have any claim to Earth, when it's been so long that every footfall treads the balance between daydream and nightmare?

They’re all given keycards to their quarters. The rest of the paladins roll their eyes, scoff at the normalcy of it - there’s something strange and juvenile about going back to dormitory rooms. Like exploring a hotel as a kid - running from the vending machine o your clean room, sample-sized soap, and white sheets.

Hunk and Lance are giggling, giddy that they’re roommates again and they’re on Earth. Shiro watches their excitement, glad his paladins feel more at home on Earth than he does. That's okay, he decides. He always knew space was for him, always felt that pull towards the stars and the gas and rocks so far out there. That blossomed in his heart, the yearning to escape this planet. Even with Adam, even when he was caring for Keith, even when the doctors told him his muscles were abandoning his mind - he wanted to leave with every once of his body, he wanted to get off of Earth. Space was a different sort of home. Adam thought Shiro wanted to prove himself, but that was wrong - he just wanted to stop searching Earth for a home when he knew the rest of the galaxy had so much more for him. The rest of the universe, as it turned out.

The Junior Officer passing out the cards won’t meet his eyes, slipping it into his palm with his gaze firmly on the floor. Shiro recognizes him - he was one of his students, a bright young man with dragonfly-round glasses. He was always so sweet and kind, and Shiro wishes he was somewhere safer. Shiro reads the address on his keycard, giving his former student a nod of thanks.

Unit 250 in the Staff Quarters.

Nostalgia floods through Shiro when he reads the address, nostalgia and bitter regret. He should have stayed on Earth, shouldn't he? So why doesn’t he really, truly regret leaving?

“Excuse me - Holt?” He calls the older man, ready to explain the mistake - they broke up, Shiro and Adam did. Holt knows this, he can get Shiro a new place.

The man turns to him, and when he meets Shiro’s eyes, he can see grief and guilt in the corners of his eyes, “Shiro. I am so very sorry for your loss, young man.”

“What? No - no, they gave me the wrong card,” there’s fear rising in his throat now, “See, this - this is Adam’s place. We separated, when I left for Kerberos. You know that.”

Samuel’s face collapses and he motions for Shiro to follow him as he leaves the debriefing room.

“Sam, what’s going on?” Shiro asks, and the panic won’t go away, the fear and the regret and the bone-deep terror that sinks into his marrow, he can’t shake it. He tries to cling to his leaderly persona, stoic and strong but it falls from him, thin and fragile and easily broken.

“During the first attack, the Admiral sent out a group of our senior fighters to defend the Garrison. I told her it was too dangerous, but she went through with the order - “

“Please stop,” Shiro mutters through grief-gritted teeth, eyes squeezed shut as if it could block out the world.

“I’m so, so sorry Shiro. Adam was one of them, he’s - “

Shiro looks up, pleads, "Shut up. Please, Sam. Don't - don't say anything." His hands are shaking now, he wills them to still but they won't (it's just like before, everything is happening again and he can't stop it, can't stop the shaking). He takes deep, shuddering breaths as his fucking world collapses, smoldering around him. But when he opens his eyes, the walls are standing, Holt has tears on his cheeks and Shiro is alive, and Adam is - Adam is . . . not?

Holt gathers him in a hug, warm and fatherly, "I tried to stop Sanda from giving the order, Shiro. I wish - God, I wish had done something."

Shiro collapses against the older man, trembling. He tries to form words but they won't come, he can't force them past his throat. And beneath the sadness is anger, simmering and dry-hot. He feels small and young.

"I can't go back there, Sam." He pictures their apartment, gathering dust. Adam's scent lingering on every surface, memories waltzing across the floor like specters. He pictures the Garrison, and the Admiral, and the man she sent to his death, "I can't stay here."

"We can figure something out."

"No," Shiro steps back, swaying a bit as he regains his senses after the blackout of grief, tries to pull himself together and amass that white-hot anger into something tangible, something he can act upon, something that can power him, "I can't stay here."

As he walks down the corridor, Sam calls out to him, but Shiro breaks into a run, feet thudding on the too-clean floor, a floor that's really bloodied, guilty, this whole place is guilty.

He finds the Admiral in a meeting. The other paladins are there - Lance and Keith passing angry notes, Hunk scoffing at their reactions, Pidge texting (or possibly - probably - hacking) under the table. Allura is listening, queenly.

“Fuck you, Sanda.” He growls, a sob half-consuming his voice.

Admiral Sanda turns to him from where she stands at the head of the conference table, “Lieutenant. Welcome back.”

“It’s your fault he’s dead,” Shiro launches himself at her and is blocked by security, batons held against his chest. One has a taser out in an instant, crackling threateningly. He stumbles forward, pushing them away. They resist for a moment, but a second later the men fold. They’re scared of him. He tries to send a piercing glare at Sanda but tears blur his eyes and he can’t quite see her, “You sent him to his death.”

Sanda merely steps back a peace, precise and unbothered.

“Shiro?” Allura asks, “Are you alright?”

“She killed Adam. It’s her fault he’s - gone,” he says without tearing his eyes from Sanda. That breaks him, cracks his voice and lets the tears spill down his face. He hasn’t felt this much pain before, this all-consuming agony.

He hears Lance whisper something and is quickly shushed.

Sanda narrows her eyes, “I did no such thing.”

“He’s dead. You killed my husband and you expect me to just - just - what? Let it slide? You want me to sleep in the fucking bed we shared, in the same goddamn house we held our wedding reception! And he’s dead.”

“That is no-one’s fault, Lieutenant.”

“I quit, okay? I’m done. The Garrison can continue without me.” He strides towards the door, head bowed.

Allura stands up, hand against her heart, “Shiro, wait - “

He turns to her, “You hate the Galra because they killed your family?”

“Well - yes.”

“I hate the Garrison because they killed mine.”

When the others are distracted, eyes wide and confused, he slips away. He goes looking for Adam's quarters, but finds them gathering dust. There’s a death certificate on the dining table. Adam didn’t have any living relations, but Shiro is listed as his spouse.

He collapses at his old dinner chair, closing his eyes. He can’t stop the sobs that rise in his throat, he can’t stop the way his shoulders shake.

Shiro can feel the presence of the past. The bustle of making dinner, standing in the kitchen, singing along to the radio while Adam pressed kisses against his neck, glasses bumping Shiro’s jawline.

He feels the brush of air as the memory of Adam sits down across from him, ring finger gleaming. He remembers their quiet wedding, sitting at this table, the officiant passing them the papers. Keith was there, and a few other friends who’s faces are blurred in Shiro’s memory.

But he remembers the joy, the sunny afternoon warmth, and Adam’s bright, smiling face. Nothing will ever, ever live up to that, no emotion, no feeling will match that power. Death was a void, despair, loneliness, but even then - he did not experience it with the same intensity that he experienced his simple, beautiful, perfect wedding.

Only one thing can match that, and it’s sitting at that same table, body wracked with sobs that claw their way up his throat. Joyous moments, swallowed up by grief. He feels hollow, consumed. With his vision blurred by tears, he can ignore the emptiness in the room and imagine Adam’s presence but he can’t fix the fact that his ring is there, in a little plastic bag, with a splattering of red blood. It’s horrifying and disturbing and Shiro can’t help that he takes it out of the bag and slips it over his ring finger, can’t help how it brings waves of sadness that just won’t stop no matter how hard he tries to control himself.

He has to escape, has to leave the stifling pressure of his memories that cave in, collapsing onto his shoulders. They leave him Atlas, doomed, holding up the world he left and the last traces of the man he married.

He searches for somewhere to be still and alone. He needs silence, he needs to clear his mind.

Eventually, he finds Adam, a photograph in the Memorial Centre. He presses his forehead against the metal and imagines the warmth of his husband responding, but he can't quite conjure the details of his face.

He finds himself on his knees against the wall of photos. He's shuddering with sobs, hand clenched around the ring that bites into his palm, glimmering crystal drawing blood.

Shiro lost his ring when - well, when he died. He lost it at the same time he lost his body.

When he speaks, he thinks Adam might hear: "I didn't expect things to be - to be good, but...I didn't expect the worst. I would have been happy even if you never spoke to me again just - just be alive. Please. Fuck." He pauses, leaning back, eyes squeezed shut, "I saw so many amazing things, you would have loved it. There are aliens out there, and they're....they're wonderful. I saw so much goodness out in the universe, and each time, I saw reflections of you. There's bad, too. So much of it. And you being - gone - that's...the worst of it."

He pauses, choking on a sob, "I know what dying is like. I died too," he smiles wryly, bitterly, "We just missed each-other, you and I. We never got the timing right, did we? We fell in love too young, got married too late, broke up too soon. If only we could have gotten death right."

He hears a soft, uncertain footstep and looks up, eyes red-rimmed, streaks of tears marring his face. He looks hollow, and feels it too, no light behind his eyes. He sees blue boots - Lance. When Shiro shifts to stand up, there's emptiness in his bones.

"No, no," Lance mummers with a gentle sweep of his hands as he slides down against the wall next to Shiro, "I'm sorry for interrupting and I don't want to pry but - who did you lose? Adam, right?"

"I'm sorry you had to hear that," Shiro begins, and Lance shrugs, concern in his eyes, so he continues, "My husband died." There's a prick of fear at my husband, and all of the sadness comes back full-force when he says it out loud, says that Adam died.

Lance grimaces, leaning his head against the wall and looking up, “Fuck.”

Shiro is instantly defensive, “If you have a problem with me being gay, then - “

His eyebrows shoot up and he turns to Shiro, alarm lining his face, “Oh, my God. No. Me? I’m not - I’m not homophobic. I mean, I didn’t know you were gay but you don’t know I’m bi, so we’re even.” He pauses, taking a deep breath and twisting his fingers together anxiously, “Not like that’s the point. I just - do you need a place to crash?”

Shiro feels winded by the barrage, struggling to catch up, “You - what? I - no, I think I can get the Garrison to reassign my housing. So I’m not living back at Adam’s place.”

“I meant so you aren’t alone. I - I can’t pretend like I know what you’re going through, but - I understand a bit of it. Dying . . . it fucks you up." Lance takes a deep breath after he says that, "Just - Shiro, don't forget that we're all here for you. You're not alone, anything you need just - just ask us."

He tries for a grateful smile, but he knows he looks broken. So he hangs his head and presses his lips against Adam's ring, and cries and cries and cries into Lance's arms, sitting on the floor at Adam's memorial, wishing he had done everything differently. And his tears hit the ground, and he tastes blood, and Lance is rubbing calming circles on his back and it's all coming down around him, and he doesn't know what t o do, and it's so hard to be strong when every pillar of his has been burnt.

Chapter Text

The bright fluorescent lighting washes out the dining hall, reflecting off metal counters in a jarring display. It’s empty, too. No bustle or clamor of voices - just the humm of machinery and the occasional footfalls of guards patrolling the corridors outside. There’s something sad about it, Shiro muses as he stirs his tea. He’s committed to not falling back asleep, not after the nightmares and the freezing and the malevolent presence in the corner of his room and his mind.

Most nights the other paladins won’t let him sleep alone. Lance has taken to inviting him over for dinner and insisting that he spends the night collapsed on his worn futon.

Tonight he was alone and the walls were too tall and the room closed in on him the moment he shut his eyes.

So he sits in the dining hall, sipping black tea and trying to shake the cobwebs of fear from his memory.

There’s a voice behind him, soft, inquisitive, “I figured you’d be here.”

He plasters a smile onto his face, forces his lips to move and wills himself to speak, “Couldn't sleep?” He asks, turning around to face a bleary-eyes Pidge. She looks alarmingly casual, he hasn’t seen her out of armor in years, perhaps. All sweatpants and fuzzy socks and red pillow-creases. Her glasses tip, sliding down her nose and she pushes them up with something near a huff of annoyance.

“No,” she replies as she slides onto the bench across from him and steals his mug with all the demeanor of a little sister, “I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

““If it’s about science or robots or theoretical astrophysics, give me a few hours and some caffeine and then maybe - ”

“No, I wanted to thank you.”

“Oh?”

She looks nervous, suddenly, fingers tightening around the handle of Shiro’s mug as she takes a sip then makes a face, “Really? No sugar? You’re a monster.”

He shrugs. It’s futile to argue with Pidge, especially when she’s tired. She gets particularly nerdy, much to everyone’s chagrin. No one wants to talk about cybernetics at 1:30 PM. Or how to successfully encrypt data, or how to break a firewall, or how cool neural circuits are.

“So - I tracked you down because I wanted to thank you. For what you said to me. When you helped me come out.”

Shiro smiles at that, “I was just being kind, Pidge. Don’t thank me.”

She sighs, "I wanted to say the same thing to you. I know you’ve been out for a long time, but we’re all dumbasses so none of us knew, although in hindsight I can see it.”

“Language, please, Pidge.”

“Fuck you, dad. I’m trying to say that you can talk to any of us, anytime you need to. And that - I don’t know. This is. Kind of lame but. I kind of look up to you, Shiro. You’re a hero, and you’re queer, and you’re proud of who you are and that’s - what I want to be, you know?”

He can't help but smile, "Thank you, Pidge."

There's a beat of amicable silence before she starts to speak again: "It's weird being back, isn't it?"

That surprises him - she has her family here, on Earth, everyone but Matt. But she has her parents, and this is her planet.

"This is supposed to be our home, y'know?" She continues, "But it doesn't feel right."

"Without your brother?"

"No, there's just something different. Being away for so long - I don't know. And I think - I should know. Did you know they keep trying to get us to meet with a space psychologist?"

"A what?"

"A psychologist. Who studies how space-travel effects humans. But I don't want to talk to her, even though it's for science and all but. The Castle of Lions became my home and I don't want some psychologist to invade it."

He understands now. And he gets it - after being away so long, Earth doesn't seem quite right. The gravity is wrong, the air is different, and his memories have warped the planet so nothing is exactly what he expected. The colors are just a bit duller than he remembered, the people have lines on their faces they didn't have before. The dust seeps into every crack now, sand and dirt in a thin layer over everything. It gets into his skin, clings to his hair. There aren't any regular janitors anymore, all efforts are going towards fighting the Galra. Occasionally someone will sweep a conference room, but it's a rarity. The formality of the Garrison is fading. Admiral Sanda tries to cling to it, but she isn't really in control - no one is. The people lost control of Earth a long time ago, and the Garrison is losing its last shreds of power.

So yes, Earth isn't how it used to be, and it's jarring. The subtle changes, too, get into his head. Slight layout differences, new personnel, policy changes. There aren't any constants yet.

He misses the Castle of Lions, and he misses space. Even though it killed him.

"I know what you mean, Pidge. I miss it."

She nods, looking down at the stainless-steel table, "Are you really going to leave?"

The question makes Shiro start, inhaling sharply. He has to think a moment before he speaks, has to gather his thoughts and formulate his response: "Yes," he says, "I can't work for Sanda, but I don't want to abandon Earth. I'm going to look for survivors."

"The others will try to stop you, Shiro," she meets his eyes with piercing intensity, and her eyes aren't young anymore. She still holds some of the childish wonder she once had, but there's a wariness behind her gaze, something frayed and tired and a little bit broken. They all have the hollow look of survivors now. "But I get it," she continues, "It was so important to me when I left to find Matt and my dad. I'll talk to them. And if you want someone to go out there with you, I know any one of us would do it in an instant."

"Once I get a new arm I'm leaving."

Pidge looks sad at that, "You are coming back, right? Shiro?"

"Yes. Eventually."

"You can't go out there alone forever."

"I know. I just - I need to get out of here. Don't worry, I'll be back."

He can see that she worries, and she's right to. The city outside - the world outside - is grim and bloody and dry-hot. It's dangerous, he knows, to leave the safety of the Garrison's walls. But he needs to walk and to wonder and to leave this place. He needs exile, needs to gather his mind back together. A solitary existence, in the quiet remains of the skyscrapers and apartments and offices. Among the dust and the bones and the tattered remains of civilization.

Chapter Text

The world outside the Garrison is bleak, desolate, a sand-soaked facsimile of hell - but a cheaper version, a knockoff damnation with cracks and cobwebs and dried blood, brown and flaking off the walls of crooked buildings. Terrifying, but in an empty way. A dried-out husk of a place.

Shiro watches dust settle on the staircase as he climbs up, hand leaving clean streaks on the wooden railing. He's careful not to make a sound, lest he alert the sentries along the road. Outside is bright, high-noon and sunny. Heat weighs down on him, presses under his armor and cloths, sweltering. But he has to climb, he needs a better view, needs to know the best way to get to the next building. If he can just reach the rooftop he’d be able to map the sentry patrol route.

His backpack is too light, once weighed-down but now rattling with once-full containers. Unless he can find food soon, he'll have to head back. The trip will take a few days of walking. But he doesn’t want to go back, he’d rather scavenge for food and help who he can.

Searching for survivors is his excuse to leave.

Eventually he’ll return to the Garrison. It’s been about two weeks now, two weeks alone and soft-footed, silent steps and sprints from sentries. The quiet cadence of words between survivors is a second language of hushed words and questions:

A curly-haired woman with strong eyes and pierced ears: “Have you seen my son? He has brown hair and he’s about this tall.”

A teenage boy, thin and gnarled and wiry, tattooed arms and desperate eyes: “Please, my sister has been missing for months, our parents - Mom and Dad died and. We’re all each other has. Please, can you help me?”

An elderly man, hunched and soft-spoken and shuffling, asking if Shiro has seen his wife. A little girl, pigtails and ratty pink skirts, trying to find her mother. A young woman, all red hair and sharp teeth and fury, in desperate search of her girlfriend.

There’s no way to live among the fog and dust of the end-times.

He knows the others worry about him. The communicator on his wrist occasionally flashes with a message. Something short, concerned, and apologetic. They don't dare call him lest the steady silence becomes disrupted. He can't risk it, although he misses them. But being alone is good, it's quiet and sad but sometimes it's freeing.

The last message he got was from Keith two days ago: COME BACK SOON IT IS DANGEROUS OUT THERE.

He typed back a careful response, something about how he shouldn't worry. Shiro knows it's realistic to be concerned, though.

He doesn't know when he plans on returning but the image of the paladins watching him leave is burned in his mind - they thought with gut-wrenching certainty that he was going to die. Every line on their faces, the trails of tears down Keith's cheeks and the way his face crumpled when Shiro turned to walk away. Lance's twisted frown and too-tight hug, afraid to let go. Pidge gave him weapons and maps and armor, made his arm herself and insisted that lived. Hunk asked him to find his family, expression taunt and distressed.

Because it’s dark and it’s frightening here, and there are bloodstains everywhere. And yet - for some reason - Shiro relaxes when he gets to the second story, slumps against the wall. He twists Adam’s ring around his finger in a nervous tick he’s falling back into. He presses his lips against it and mumbles a wish of goodwill to his husband, wherever he may be. After Shiro’s time in the afterlife, he knows the dead can walk among the living, so he tries to acknowledge Adam’s presence when he can. He knows how lonely death is.

He takes a moment to breathe and considers drinking a bit of water, but he can’t waste it on a moment of relief. He has to wait until night, when the red sentry lights are more visible. Then he can refill his water bottle in a bathroom sink, if it works. And if he sees the light he can flee.

The hallway he’s in is stiflingly narrow, the floor is scratched hardwood and the walls are bare beige. He wanders forwards, slowly opening the closest door. After a second of pressure the handle gives with a soft click and he stumbles into an apartment. It’s dim, the curtains closed. Family photos line the walls - a single mother and her two sons, maybe six or seven years old. Twins, by the looks of it. On their refrigerator are crayon drawings, wrinkled and old. Dust floats through the living room.

Shiro takes a moment to grieve for the family, sending a hopeful thought out to the universe. Then he moves, forcing down his sadness at the emptiness of this place and the questions that spin through his mind - what was the fate of this family?

But the kitchen is stocked, cans of beans and soup and boxes of crackers. There’s molding fruit on the counter, though, and he doesn’t dare open the refrigerator. He finds water bottles under the sink, boxes and boxes of them. The water tastes like plastic, old and warm, but it’s a blessing.

As he’s putting boxes and cans and bags of cereal into his backpack, he hears a frightened whimper and then a sob.

Turning around sharply he reaches for his knife and slinks forwards. It’s coming from a bedroom to his left. The door opens easily, and this room is darker still.

“Who’s in there?” Shiro calls, stepping forwards into the darkness. As his eyes adjust, he sees that this is a kid’s room. With a bunk-bed and superhero posters and stuffed animals. Sad and lonely and lost, like a tomb for long-gone youth. It reminds him of what he and Adam could have had, would have had, if Shiro hadn't left.

They talked about adopting kids, as they got older. Keith was growing up fast and they were realizing how much they loved him. They’d all but adopted Keith, and they saw him growing and changing and learning and it made them want a bigger family.

There’s crying coming from the closet. He can see pair of eyes shine where the door cracks open. Small, young eyes.

Oh.

“I won’t hurt you,” Shiro says, tucking his knife away and walking forwards, “Can I open the door?”

More sobs, terrified and high pitched and awful.

“Okay, I won’t open the door. I’m going to sit down and we can talk. I’m here to help you.” He slides down, leaning his back against the wall. The window is close enough that he can peer below the curtains. Sentries pace the road down below. Menacing machines, red-lit and gun-bearing. Anyone would be frightened.

“My name’s Shiro. What’s your name?” He tries, hoping the kid will respond.

After a pause, a small voice whispers, “I’m Caleb and I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”

“Well that’s a very smart rule, Caleb. Can I talk to you though? You don’t have to say anything.” If he can get Caleb used to him, maybe the child will come out and he can get him to the Garrison, where there is food and medicine and safety. Even if Shiro might not feel safe there.

“...okay.”

Shiro takes a deep breath, “I’m from the Garrison. We’re - ” he looks around the room, noting the Justice League posters and the comic books and the Superman action figures, “ - we’re like the Justice League. My friends and I help people.”

He pauses, hoping for a response. The crying is quieter now.

“How old are you?”

The boy is quiet, keeping his promise to not speak to strangers. So Shiro keeps talking, looking around the room, “Is Superman your favorite superhero? My son’s favorite was Batman when he was your age.” Caleb hasn't told him his age, but Shiro saw the photographs in the hall. Smiling happy family, light and bright and so, so flimsy - easily disrupted perfection. Thin like the world, unstable. Everything is incredibly breakable, he knows this with the same certainty he knows death.

“You have a son?”

“Well - yes. His name is Keith. I - ” Shiro never quite adopted Keith, and Keith is more of a brother to him, but when you cook dinner for a twelve year old and tell him to clean his room, it’s hard to think of him as a thing other than a son. So he follows his own lie )but it's not really a lie, Shiro knows this, it's not a lie), “When he was a kid, he stole my car,” there’s a stiflied giggle from the closet, a nose of surprise torn though the tears, “He really did. He stole my car. He was a good driver too! He’s a grown-up now."

He's so proud of Keith - but it's awful and sad to watch him grow up faster than he should have. No parent should have to see their child go to war.

The sobs have devolved into sniffling, quiet, less deeply terrified. Shiro inches closer to the closet, “Do you want to come out now? I can make us lunch.”

“My Mom always makes me lunch but she’s - she’s - they - and my brother - ” he cries full-force now, awful sobs. When Shiro opens the closet door, he sees the small boy, skinny, all ruddy elbows and knees. Curled against the wall, frightened and sad. It’s terrible to cause such terror, and Shiro shuffled back, still crouched in the ground.

“Caleb? Caleb - I can help you. Let’s make something to eat, okay?”

"Yes...okay," the word comes out as a tiny mouse-small whisper, little and scurrying and light. He slowly uncoils, moving to face Shiro. In the dim light, the tear tracks on his face stand out - bright, reflective streaks. He's thin and small and clearly hasn't been eating enough.

As he guides Caleb to his feet and walks him to the kitchen, disrupting the dust and dirt and sand that coats the apartment, he stifles his panic and dread and sadness. Arranges his face into something leaderly and strong - he is leaderly and strong, he tells himself that, he knows that, right? It's strangely comforting, having someone to help. Now he has a direction to go in, things he understands, it's tangible and reassuring and - it's frightening that he thinks that. Slipping into the mask of a commander, a veteran, a hardened warrior. Shiro can't quite call it a mask, though, and that's the worst part. He's back on Earth and away from the Garrison and he can't bring himself to worry about his own survival, no, he has to find others. Humans are social animals said every one of his instructors in the mandatory psychology classes he took back when he was a student, and he repeated the same information over and over again. It almost explains his mind, gives him an excuse to put others so dramatically ahead of himself.

He just wishes he wasn't this used to war.

Chapter Text

White hair catches firelight in odd ways, creating a flickering reflection in the dust. Hands clutch long sticks, stir the pot of canned chili that warms over a makeshift fire pit. Yellow red flames rise in a shadowy, flickering dance are a risk, and he knows the basement is no safe place to light a fire. But it's warm, and the filing cabinets hold the perfect kindling, and Caleb has been so cold at night that it breaks Shiro's heart.

They're an odd pair - small, lanky, red-kneed and boyish Caleb, hand clutching Shiro's metal wrist. Eyes wide, fearful but growing steady - no child should have to survive the apocalypse. Eventually, the world before will fade into forgetfulness.

It's been a month since he heard from the Garrison. He and Caleb have been hiding underground for a few days, they found an old dusty office building with sofas and food and running water. Leaving would be a risk, so they live in the basement in the dark. Turning on the lights would show up on the electric grid, and the sentries and the Galra would notice. Whispers and firelight become their word, and the occasional warm brushes of sunlight when they dare to climb the fire escape staircase to the lobby are a luxury, with its big windows that would expose their little secret world so easily.

Life gets more fragile by the minute.

Shiro stirs the chili. Caleb twitches in his sleep, one hand fisted around Shiro's tattered pantleg, clinging like it's a lifeline.

And so he stirs the chili, shivers closer to the fire, wonders when he should wake Caleb. Outside, he hears the clanking of the sentries, the metal clipping footsteps, the echoes. He's looked for more survivors, small excursions into the city, or even to other floors of this office building. But it's harder to take risks when that protective instinct blossoms in his chest and Caleb is cold and he is afraid and he cries in his sleep and he misses his mother. The boy only just started to trust Shiro.

The chili is warm now, he pours it into two little Styrofoam cups. He's so, so careful not to spill any.

But his hand's aren't shaking, so that's something to be grateful for.

They don't have spoons - they'll have to drink it.

He gently nudges Caleb, "Dinners ready."

Eyes open, reflective. Bleary slow blinks, processing, remembering.

"Thank you," he croaks, accepting the cup. His hands are cold. His hands are cold. That can't be good. Shiro needs to get more blankets.

Warmth from the chili spreads to his fingers, hot and soothing and alarming. Caleb shakes, shifting closer to the fire and tucking himself into Shiro's side. "Don't get too close, you'll melt your shoes," Shiro says, but it's warm and the only comfort either of them has so they both move forwards.

It's been a few days since they last went upstairs, and Shiro is thinking of relocating. They've been here too long. Darkness, constant darkness, there's no way that's good for a child.

"Can you tell me about the other heroes?" Caleb asks tentatively, still nervous around him but he's letting his guard down.

Smile, nod, "Of course," even though it's awful and sad to think about them. They might be - they might be dead.

It's best not to think about that. But still, he circles his fingers around his wrist, his last message was a month ago.

“Are you friends with Wonder Woman?” Caleb asks.

God to be asked such a tiny, small-voiced innocent question, delivered in a whisper-shaky voice in the cold, dark, damp basement.

"I - yes," Shiro gathers himself quickly, forces himself to reply, "but her name is Allura. She's an alien."

"Wonder Woman's a goddess, so you're wrong."

A small laugh somehow makes it's way up his throat - a laugh. So he continues, "Well, Allura is a princess. She has white hair like mine."

Caleb shakes his head, sipping on his chili, "All aliens are evil, so she can't be an alien." He's matter-of-fact, it's a statement when he says that.

Shiro's taken aback, reeling. Caleb isn't smiling, he's grim and his face is lined with dirt and blood and they're both too thin and tired. Talking, simple talking, about superheroes and aliens and Allura, it's not easy. Easy conversation left the planet a long time ago.

"Keith is part alien," Shiro supplies.

Caleb laughs a barking laugh, like breaking glass, it's sharp and alarming and harsh, "You said he was a good guy."

"He is. There's lots of different aliens.”

A doubtful look shadows his face, and he looks ready to argue - and Shiro can’t argue with him about this, not when the Galra probably killed Caleb’s family. He can’t, not right now, this is not the place to teach a child compassion.

Eventually, Caleb falls back asleep, fingers tangled in the laces of Shiro's boots like he's afraid the white-haired ghost of a man will slip away while he dreams dark creeping dreams. Shiro could melt into the shadows, fade away, crawl to the highest tower and watch the stars and think.

The darkness presses in on him like walls, towering and confining and empty and crowding all at once. Darkness like tendrils of smoke, clogging his senses and he wills himself to sleep, the door is locked and there are multiple cabinets pushed in front of it and he has escape routes planned - it's safe, it's safe, it's safe a mantra in his mind, maybe if he thinks the words enough they'll be true or at least he'll believe them.

Every so often it sweeps him away, the realization. That the world is crumbling around him, buildings standing stoic and sad as tombstones, lost crypts, ancient and dusty like the bones of a beached whale. As far as time is concerned, humanity is but a blink, a small span of two-hundred-thousand years. It's nothing, not compared to death or chaos or nothingness or the life of a star.

And the world is ending - no, it already ended, and Adam is dead, and Shiro is miles away from anyone he loves and he's here, caring for a boy he has no right to be caring for because he can barely keep himself alive.

The tears come of their own accord, he can't hold them back. Mourning and grieving and fuck he's so angry that everything has been stolen from him - his life and his death, his planet, his husband. Hiccuping sobs, he tries to muffle into the crook of his elbow but it's not enough to stop his body from shaking.

Little arms - cold and wiry - wrap around his neck, clinging too-tight, whispered voice in his ear: "What's wrong?"

He can't help but laugh - there's no answer that could cover that.

"Is my mama dead?" Caleb asks suddenly, and then the small arms tighten and they're both crying, they've both loved and been loved and lost.

"We can find her," Shiro says.

"We can find who you're looking for too." He's smart, too smart, sees too much.

"I'm not looking for anyone."

"Is your mama missing too?"

"I - no - my," He pauses, familiar anxiety, familiar fear tightening his chest, it's gotten easier each time he's said this sort of thing since he was fifteen but children are unpredictable and this one needs him to survive, "my - " he twists the ring around his finger, rhythmic, soothing, "He was a pilot, a teacher like me. In the Garrison. My husband. Adam."

"Are we going to find him with my mama?"

A sigh of relief blooms unwittingly, and Shiro’s mouth twists into a smile that wants to be a frown, “No. No, Adam passed away.”

“Do you miss him?” Caleb asks, “I miss my mama and my brother.” He’s crying, whimpering, lost and lonely and sad. Shiro can’t help, not here, in the darkness, a void of questions.

“Yes, I miss him very much. But we’re going to find your mother, Caleb.”

“Thank you,” the boy says in a strained, small voice. “Are they all dead?” Panic clings to his words now, tangling fear and terror and sadness into a horrible knot in his throat, squeezing out words sounds painful to Shiro’s ears so used to silence, “Is everyone gone?”

“No,” Shiro wraps his arms around Caleb, tucking the child’s head into his shoulder, “No, they’re alive.”

Caleb is shaking, trying to hold back the sobs now, “Your Adam and my mama and my brother Johnny?”

He can’t bring himself to answer honestly, “Yes, Caleb. They’re alive and we’re going to find them.”

Hope is a terrible, aching thing, clawing at his lungs and snapping his ribs from the inside. It clots his throat like a disease, tears his mind and makes his arms shake. Hope sends his body reeling years back, back to before this body was grown or built or engineered by Haggar. His muscles remember what it is like to tremble and shake and twist, and that is what hope feels like. The degeneration of the mind, the cancerous erosion. Humans are beginning to resemble the dead cities - stumbling creatures, numbed, seeking the last thrills promised, searching desperately for hope and light and life.

Shiro wants to get drunk; he wants to taste wine and force himself back to the days of warm youth, orange-soaked days and gardens and sweet flowers. He misses the feeling of solid ground, ground that he can trust. The ground here is unstable, collapsible.

Really, though, he missed what he never had. That sideshadow that haunts him, just a few steps ahead and to the right. The could-have-been, the never-can-be, the futile wish for a world where he had made things different.

It’s no use dwelling on the past he might have had. So he focuses on the present, on soothing Caleb. On feeding them both. I’m taking small steps in the dirt, carrying the boy to the sofa he dragged from the lobby. Shiro stays awake, poking the fire, waiting for the sounds of metal footsteps to signal his doom.

The footsteps never come, and he’s dragged down to dreaming, exhausted and hollow and so goddman tired. Caleb is sniffing, shifting in his sleep, scared and cold. Shiro sleeps on the floor, leaning on the sofa, listening to the soft whirring of his arm.

Chapter Text

After three days in the basement, Shiro ventures outside. He hasn't heard sentries patrolling upstairs for the past two nights, and their red lights flash less frequently than they did before. Perhaps they have decided there's no one left in the city. The orb-like robots still drift through the streets, watching, waiting for the slightest hint of movement. They're harder to spot.

The office building stretches up, ten stories high, and he knows he could climb the stairs and search the upper stories but if he was spotted there, the Galra might find Caleb. He'd rather be spotted in the street of the next building over, leave Caleb safe in the cool, dark basement.

Noises of a gunfight woke them both last night, shouting and shooting and screaming. Pleading, begging. For some reason, not all are allowed in the labor camps. Sometimes the stagnant silence of the day will be punctured by a gunshot. Dissenters are killed with alarming efficiency, quickly executed in the road and left to rot where they died. Those who fight back aren’t given a chance to survive, although death can’t really be worse than building the instruments of your own death.

Some just put up too much of a fight.

It's daytime now, the desert heat bears down on him, so different from the cold basement. The sun, though - he hasn't seen the sun in days. It brings him back to shining days, memories of lazy mornings. Shiro would have woken up tangled in limbs and sheets and sunlight, shared sluggish morning-kisses over coffee and breakfast, languished in the warmth and honey-slow happiness. Bare feet propped up on Adam's legs, sprawled on their couch, he would have graded papers, reading the responses out loud with soft laughs:

"The McClain kid wrote please have mercy at the top of his midterm."

"Keith is trying to bribe me," Adam would respond, waving an essay, "he said PS: Give me an A and I'll do the dishes."

"At least he's no longer threatening you."

But that’s no more. Instead, he’s trapped in a forest of metal and sand and broken glass. He creeps out of the basement, slinking a down the hall towards the exit. Green light bathes the hall, sign flickering in the dim sunlight that filters through tinted windows.

A side door is lying, unhinged, on the ground. Glass shards litter the ground. Shiro steps over it, clenching his fist, ready for something - or someone - to spring out at him. But it’s silent, dusty, dead. Nothing moves except the stirring of sand. A tattered American flag hangs limp in the stagnant air. A testimony to the state of the world.

His boots leave footprints in the sand behind him and he kicks back, trying to cover his path across the road. There’s another building - an apartment resting on a café - just a few short strides away. There might be food besides the canned chili and ravioli he’s been giving Caleb lately.

Each step he takes is paired with a wince, the crunch of sand and dirt and gravel scraping on the asphalt seems so very loud in this husk of a place. His footfalls are soft and slow, and as he steps into the long stretch of road he feels exposed. The intersection is forbidding, there’s no cover and even though there aren’t any drones bussing in the air, one could show up any instant. Nothing stirs. Every breath he takes is deafening, his heart sounds like a broken tin drum. An abrasive noise, rattling.

There's a rusting, dirty red car across the pavement, tipping into the sidewalk. Sprinting, he makes his way over to it in a brief burst of movement. Feet pounding on the asphalt, too loud. Too loud. Harsh and abrupt, a signal to any Galra in the area. Movement means death, and he is moving loudly.

He slides behind the car, crouches, and watches through the window. There's a drone drifting through the air down the road now, a small dangerous orb of metal and wire. Called by his footsteps. It's red light, so much like an eye, blinks and flashes, catching the light. The reflection draws his eyes to the window, then to the inside of the car. Hanging off its hinges, the door is wide open - a slash in the car, grinning viciously. Revealing the body inside. Blood is sprayed over the seat, a bullet hole in the window, and Shiro can't believe he didn't notice the dead woman. Pale and smelling of rot, her face dotted with blood and her head blown open reveal skull and brain and eyeball, squashed like a bug underfoot. There's a rat scurrying in her lap. It's grotesque, sending bile rising in the back of his throat. He leans against the frame, retching, hands on his knees as the smell of death invades his senses. He wonders if somewhere, his body looks like that.

Move, move, he has to get away.

With one last look through the window, (the drone is facing away from him, thank God) he darts to the café, yanking the door open and letting it fall shut behind him as he rolls behind the counter in a swift, fluid movement. Controlled and practiced, he slips back into his training. Scan the environment, load your weapons, stay alert and ready and focused on survival.

And he is, he's on edge and prepared for an assault, gun gripped in his right hand despite the power that his Altean arm holds. It's normal and comforting to wrap his fingers around a familiar, Earthen weapon, albeit a modified one fit to hold up against the Galra machinery. He can relax for a moment, shove his troubling thoughts into the back of his mind.

That is, until he sees the bodies.

Glassy eyes and bloodied limbs and bullet holes and pools of red, dripping from fingers and faces and forms. He thought the body in the car was bad, with her glassy eye and her brain matter (that was her whole life, her whole her splattered on the front seat of the car, her brain, mind, soul, every memory and decision and moment stored away in the so easily destroyed brownish-gray mess). No, this is worse, this is so many people. Old and new bodies mingle together, so many other people had Shiro's idea of searching this place for food. In it's prime, the tall sweeping ceiling, fairy lights, and exposed bricks must have been charming and sweet and homey. Now, the espresso machine has blood on it and he hears someone, someone hacking, and he moves towards them. He spared a glance to the bodies, a quick scan for movement. No weak rise-and-fall of the chest, no stirring breath in cold lips. It’s as still as outside. Dead and hot and stifling.

He glances out the windows one more time and sees that the drone has made it's way far down the road. It's safe now.

So he checks the bodies. Slips his Altean weapon into its holster and shrugs his backpack off, readying the medical supplies. He picks his way over to the closest body, careful not to jostle any of the dead.

It's a woman, young, curly-haired. She looks like she smiled a lot.

Blood forms a sticky coat under her, speckling her face and her nose in a grotesque imitation of freckles. Her eyes are half-closed, face slack, blood not yet dry - she died recently. Must have been during the gunfight.

He's not sure what to do. She's dead, clearly dead, no breath stirring in her lungs. Shiro feels no heartbeat when he presses his palm against her neck. So he takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and sends out a thought to the cosmos, a moment of grief and regret and hope that she hasn't found her way to the void Shiro drifted through.

In her pocket, he finds a wallet. It feels invasive to open it and search, but he wants to - he needs to - know who she is. Who she was.

She's smiling in her driver's license photo, bright and wild-eyed and joyful, somehow. Her name was Julia and she was twenty-one years old when she died on the floor, killed by Galra machines.

Julia.

He pockets the ID. Perhaps, one day, he will meet someone she knew, and he can tell them what happened. Back in the basement, he has a bag of photos and drivers licenses. He has to remember the dead somehow. Someone has to. And someone has to give their loved ones closure.

It seems that the burden has fallen to Shiro.

As he makes his rounds, checking every body for signs of life, he collects. A family photo from the pocket of an elderly man with a pointed nose. A high-school ID from the purse of a young girl, barely sixteen, too young to die.

It takes hours, searching each body.

When he leaves the building it is nightfall and he has found no food. His backpack is weighed down by memories of the dead, not by cans. He recites their names in his mind - Julie and Roger and Mark and Sophia and Jacob and Mia and . . .

But his name isn't on the list, and that's something to be grateful for. Shiro no longer populates the land of the dead, he's not on the casualty lists anymore.

Outside the building the wind stirs, breaks the silence and stillness. It's cold now, sending Shiro's teeth chattering as he sprints across the road and slips into the office. He can't stop running now, careening around the corner, panicked. He feels like there's something behind him, haunting his steps, but when he pauses with his back against the basement door there is nothing but the wind and the sand. His breath hitches in his throat and he forces down sobs.

Caleb is awake when he climbs down the staircase.

"Why is there blood on your hands?" Is the first thing the boy asks, fear already clouding his eyes.

Shiro grimaces and feels dried tears on his cheeks when he moves, "Nothing. It's...there were some hurt people." He can't bring himself to tell the truth of the massacre.

"Did you help them?"

"Yes," he says curtly, wiping his palms along his jeans in a feeble attempt to wash off the blood. It clings to his skin and dries under his fingernails.

"Where are they? Why aren't they with you?"

"They went somewhere else."

"Where did they go?"

"I don't know, Caleb."

Chapter Text

With food running low, their only choice is to travel upstairs. The stairwell is narrow, dark, and smells of dust - old things and leather shoes and nail polish, ink and paper. Once, this was a law office. He keeps a palm pressed flat against at the wall as he walks, his other hand gripping a gun. Caleb clings to the back of his coat, gripping the hem and stumbling when he misses a step.

Every few steps, he stops, quieting his breathing and steadying himself. He listens for others - for metal noises or breathing beside Caleb’s and his own. Footsteps, voices, anything that would signify a threat. But it’s silent, breathlessly quiet.

Shiro pauses at the second floor, motioning for Caleb to hide behind him. The boy crouches, low to the floor, teeth chattering. Only darkness is visible through the small, wire-mesh window of the fire escape door, so with a deep breath, Shiro shoves it open.

He’s greeted by silence, stillness, and reflections on the tall glass windows. A pale ghost of himself stares back, thin and exhausted. Dark circles line his eyes and his once-stark white hair is now a pale, dirty-brown color.

A plaque on the receptionist desk labels it as Mary Lauvette. Shiro wonders if she’s still alive. No dead bodies line the floor, no blood coats the windows or the seats or the floor. Beyond the desk is a hallway, stretching deeper into the building.

Caleb rugs on his sleeve, drawing his attention and pointing to a bowl of candy on Mary’s desk, “Can I have some? Please, Shiro please?”

The split second of innocence is heartwarming and Shiro nods, “Grab the whole bowl if you like.”

“Really?”

“Yes, go ahead Caleb.”

He pulls Caleb further down the hall. They duck into an office to the left. A black blazer is draped over the office chair, and the desk is messy, it seems recently vacated. Except for the dust, he can nearly imagine that the employees have stepped outside for a moment. He can think that there are still people. It’s been weeks since he last saw a living, breathing, heart-still-beating human besides Caleb.

Not since he met a bloodied woman looking for her sister. She limped, leaned against Shiro when they walked. Her name was Clara and she was a teacher before the word went to shit.

She died, though, bled from her wounds and her lungs and coughed up blood, shaking in Shiro’s arms before falling still. It wasn’t peaceful.

Death was just as Shiro remembered it - that violent spiral into nothingness. Clara knew she was dying days before it happened. It was on her mind constantly, and she asked him many questions about it. Comfort was hard to give but he tried, he tried to make slipping away seem peaceful but it isn’t, it never is. It’s ugly and monstrous and terrifying. Mortality is not something to grapple with. It’s something to ignore.

He couldn’t risk burning her body and the dirt is too dry to dig in, so he left her there. Left her body on the dead rooftop garden of a high rise. It was not Clara, not really. The body is nothing but a script and a history lesson, a cave wall painted with the past in missing teeth and tattoos and scars. Rebirth taught him that, his new body is his teacher. But the roof was as close as he could get to the stars, and they are the only comfort he knows.

He misses them. The basement is cramped and dark and stifling.

There's not much to steal from the office - it's professional, the drawers filled with paperclips and business cards. On the coat rack, though, there's a scarf, and the blazer is warm. He passes those to Caleb, wrapping the scarf around his neck and helping him shrug on the blazer. It's comically over-sized on the child, but his shivers subside to a low chattering.

From there they move to a conference room across the hall. The door closes behind him with a gentle click. Chairs are strewn across the floor, the main table overturned. It looks like a projector has been trampled, glass and wires cluttering the carpet.

Shiro's attention is stolen by a noise.

Metal footsteps sound downstairs, rhythmic and cold. Caleb shivers, fear written in the folds between his eyebrows and the tightness that flicks along his cheekbones. Red lights sweep the grounds outside, sending shadows shuddering against the bricks and the concrete. The machines are voiceless, mindless, hunting down Shiro with awful precision. He doesn't know how to hide, where to go, what to do to protect Caleb. This was supposed to be routine - a short excursion upstairs, give the boy a chance to stretch his legs and breathe different air. Get more food. See the sun.

But it's dark now, and they're pinned in the conference room. Only one door, one large window, too high up to jump from.

"Shiro," Caleb whispers, tucking himself into Shiro's side - hiding from the red lights and the drumming footfalls, "they're coming."

Shiro hushes him and drags the boy to the corner. After a moment of struggle and confusion, he complies, crouching down to hide behind an overturned office chair. It's not much protection, he'll be easily spotted, but Shiro needs to do something.

With shaky breaths and staggering steps, Shiro slowly walks towards the door. No red lights have begun to seep from the threshold, but the metal sounds are getting louder. He draws his gun, flicks the safety off, and turns to look back at Caleb as he whispers, "Stay quiet and run when they follow me." It's too dark to tell how the boy responds, but he can only hope Caleb heard.

There's a red light now, making its way under the door. Tinged with purple, it's just enough to send Shiro's mind reeling for a moment, back to the void and the darkness and the floating, no sounds or words or sensations. He drags his mind back, a forceful jerk away from the cusp of death and he's back, feet firmly planted on the ground, Galra approaching. Familiar adrenaline surges through him, sends his bones jittering. Battle - that is something he knows, though. These are steps he can follow, motions he understands. Simple survival, life and death, both of which he is intimately acquainted with.

With a deep, steadying breath, he throws himself at the door, bursting through it. He skids into the hallway. There's barely a moment to register the robots - four of them, heavily armed, no real Galra soldiers there - before he's spinning around in a sharp, abrupt turn. Gunshots ring through the hallway, burning holes in the walls and coming far to close to Shiro. As he rounds the next corner, heading for the fire escape, he whirls around to send out a volley of return fire. Without so much as a pause to see what he hit he continues, lungs heaving. He stops at the fire escape, lurching through the doors and leaning on the wall. Waiting.

This is far enough away. Now he can really be dangerous. He can't help but grin. He hasn't really fought since getting back to Earth.

It's nice, not treating himself like glass for once.

The moment one of the machines pushes open the door he lunges forwards, switching his gun to his human hand and dragging the robot up the stairs. Energy pulses cascade down his prosthetic arm, fizzing and shooting off sparks when they reach the sentry. It flinches, limbs twitching wildly from the overload. Shiro shoots around the body, taking out another sentry with a series of shots to its chest. The red light goes out just as the robot in Shiro's clutches stills. He throws the lifeless machine down the stairs and continues his run, ducking into the third story as one of the remaining sentries fires back. Pain blossoms up his leg and he yelps, careening around the corner and lurching towards the wall as his world tilts. Breathe, he has to breathe. Ragged breaths, but breaths nonetheless. His hand scrabbles at the wound, pressing even as he gasps in pain from the pressure. There's blood, a deep gauge along his thigh. Just a graze. But the pain is clouding his mind and he has to remind himself to move, keep running. In the dim light, he can see drops of red behind him, a trail too easy for the Galra sentries to follow.

He turns another corner and waits. They will follow.

And they do.

He springs out from his hiding place moments before they reach him, slamming his glowing fist into one's face with an awful crunch of metal on metal. It staggers back, face caved in from the blow. The red light is dim and its shots are wild. Before it has a chance to reorient itself he throws another blow, sending it reeling. He follows the movement, his leg weak but the pain seems distant now. Fuzzy in the buzz of battle.

He jams his gun under its metal jaw and fires. The shot would have been brutal if this was a human. Instead, it falls forwards, collapsing to the ground and giving it's companion the space to bust from the shadows, careening into Shiro and knocking him to the ground. A blow heavy enough to crush his skull lands inches away from his face.

In the scuffle, the sentry lost its gun.

Shiro surges up, gripping it around its neck and slamming its head against the ground. Tiles shatter from the impact. He violently bashes it on the floor until its head is a crumpled mess.

Staggering to his feet is a struggle. His ears ring from the noise and his leg is weak. He has to remind himself that it's just a graze, he's not dying, he can't let panic well in his throat.

But it's not that he's scared.

He stumbles down to the conference room, tripping over his own feet and the bodies of the robots. He's able to snag a weapon from one of them - an ugly Galra gun. When he looks down, he sees blood soaking his pant-leg and he sags against the wall at the wave of dizziness that overcomes him.

"It's safe now," he pants as he shoves open the door to the conference room, "you can come out now."

Caleb springs from the corner, barreling into Shiro and engulfing him in a hug. The boy is shaking, not from the cold. He's sobbing, frightened.

"I thought I was alone again," he says, words slurred through tears.

"You're not alone, Caleb," Shiro says, letting his gun drop to the floor and wrapping his arms around the small form.

He sniffles, drawing back with a start as he notices Shiro's injury, "What happened? Are you okay? Please, please, you're okay right?"

"I'll be fine, just a scrape," he draws himself to his feet, grabbing his backpack and moving towards the door with a limp, "we need to get our stuff and find somewhere new to hide, though."

Caleb tails after him, somber now, "Where will we go?"

He has to think for a moment, he hadn't planned that far ahead, "We're going to head towards the Garrison." The word Garrision leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He isn't going to stay at there, he'll drop off Caleb and any other survivors before returning to the city again. Shiro has a responsibility to find people. And he can't be back working for the woman who killed his husband.

With a quiet nod, Caleb reaches up and grasps Shiro's hand, "Are we the only people left?"

Chapter Text

They stop at the basement to gather their things, quickly shoving clothes and food and kindling into their backpacks. Outside, the sun is beginning to rise, bathing the wasteland in pink-orange light.

This is a morning for limping between burnt-out skyscrapers. Blood makes its way down Shiro's leg, leaving a red trail along the concrete, mingling with the weeds. Desert greenery has begun to take over, pencil cacti and pigweed and dandelion crawling in the cracked pavement. A blooming ocotillo stretches taller than Shiro, spindly arms reaching towards the sky. They cling to the buildings, taking over where humans once resided. In the wake of the apocalypse, wildlife is reclaiming the city. The Glara couldn't kill everything. Thorny bougainvillea vines climb the tilted high-rises, flowers bright and colorful. They creep through broken windows, wind around gutters, and drape over rotting balconies. As Caleb and Shiro walk, clinging to the shadows, they see animals. Lizards scurry along the ground, long-eared rabbits dart through the husks of old offices and apartments.

When a drone nears, they climb through a broken window and into the shattered darkness of a hotel lobby. They crouch behind the reception desk and wait.

"Can we stay here?" Caleb whispers, reaching for a glass bowl of peppermints on the desk.

Shiro shakes his head, "We need to get further from the basement."

"Will there be people somewhere?"

"I don't know," he says, shifting with a wince. He hasn't stopped to bandage his leg yet, and the blood is still trickling down his calf. Bouts of lightheartedness swamp his mind.

In the pause, he finally has a moment to examine the damage. Their flight from the basement was quick, a flurry of motion, minds spinning. The pain and exhaustion was pushed to the back of his mind. He pulls out his pocketknife and starts cutting at his pant-leg, blood staining his fingers red where he touches the soaked fabric. After rummaging through his bag for a moment, he finds his now-depleted first aid kit. At least there are enough supplies to bandage the gash. He has to bite his hand to hold back gasps as he pours alcohol over the wound. The sharp, burning pain sends his hands shaking as he places a layer of white gauze over it and wraps bandages around his leg. He could stitch the wound, but he ran out of topical anesthesia weeks ago.

"Are you okay?" Caleb asks.

Shiro inhales a shaky, forceful breath, "Yeah. Just fine. Let's see if the drone is gone."

They crawl forwards and peer over the reception desk. Outside, the road is silent, no gentle hum of drones or sentries. It's safe.

And so they walk north, through the carcasses of buildings. Three days leave their feet sore, blistered, faces and necks sunburned. At night, they shiver, huddled together around a campfire or among the rubble. After spending so much time in the musty basement, outdoor air is a luxury. That fades, though, becomes a stifling, thick presence - hot, weighing them down. Dirt clings to their skin, sweat-soaked faces stained with mud.

But they must escape the inner dregs of the city. When the high-rises give way to suburbs and bricks, they can rest.

“Where are we going?” Caleb asks on the third day. Lunch takes the form of saltine crackers and canned peaches. The fruit is sticky-sweet, dripping down their fingers and drying too fast for them to clean.

“There’s a community college,” Shiro says, crouched in the corner of a half-burned apartment, “we should get there tomorrow.” They’ve almost reached the end of the city. Skyscrapers have dwindled, shrinking every few blocks.

“Why are we going there?”

“It should be safer,” he explains, “and there might be people.”

“People? Aren’t we the only people?”

“No, Caleb. There are more.”

The boy gnaws on his cheek, staring at a tattered calendar on the kitchen wall, “Oh.” The days are crossed off with fading red marker, down to September 7. Someone's birthday. Maybe also their deathday.

“Can we stay here tonight, Shiro?”

Shiro looks up, squinting at the sky through a tall window. The roads have been clear today, and this building promises food and warmth and security. It’s tall, stretching up at least ten stories - at this point, it’s small compared to the work of the main city streets. “Okay,” he says, “we can stay.” With his limp getting worse by the day, Shiro needs a moments rest.

A door to his left promises a master bedroom. He stumbles over the threshold, bumping into the doorframe as his leg goes unsteady for a moment. A mattress, a pillow, and even blankets adorn the bed. He can finally allow himself to collapse.

When Shiro dreams, he smells meadows and spring sunshine. Flowers facing the brightness, lazily stretching towards the sky. Chrisp warmth, dewy fields, and it's him and Adam, sprawled among the wildflowers., and it's so vivid. Detailed down to the reflections in Adam's glasses, the smell of grass, and the sharp, clean air.

But the air is foggy, stifling, and it smells - like grass, invading his senses. His eyes water, skin burns with a cold intensity, jerking him violently from his sleep. Caleb is coughing, curled on his side, and yellow-white fog curls throughout the room, weaving and swirling, thick and heavy and he can't breathe.

Fear shoots through Shiro, the gas and the fog and the smell and the way it sits heavy in his lungs. He tries to tug his shirt over his mouth and nose but it's not enough. He shakes Caleb awake, throwing their things into bags. The Galra must be trying to kill off the rest of the humans with chemicals. He doesn’t know how they found him.

It's starting to burn his skin.

Caleb shivers as he's dragged awake, sputtering and hacking, shaking with the weight of his coughs. As he slings his bag over his shoulder, he lifts the child and carries him, wrapping his coat around him to protect Caleb’s skin from the gas. Shiro’s eyes are streaming as he lurches from the master bedroom. There's a staircase, in a hallway just around the corner, he can get upstairs and hopefully escape the gas.

It's still dark. He moves as fast as he dares, hugging the walls. The gas freezes his skin, leaving blisters and lesions and burns, blossoming pink and red and grotesque on his face and arms. Caleb whimpers.

They make it to the third story, struggling to breathe, lungs aching. He recognizes the gas as he watches it gather and sink below him, yellow and swirling like mist. Phosgene. It's heavier than air, sinking slowly.

Higher, travel higher, climb the stairs - the only way to safety. The sentries must be confining people to the highest floors of the buildings or forcing them outside, smoking them out. Caleb rolls out of his arms, stumbles to the ground and starts walking. Struggling, swaying, tears streaming down his eyes.

"What's - " he coughs, abrupt like a marionette, " - what's going on? Shiro?"

"Cover your face," Shiro gasps, "we need to keep going."

"I can't - " another cough, " - breathe."

Wordlessly, Shiro pushes him forwards. If there's the right supplies upstairs, he can make masks.

Leaning heavily on the wall, they manage to hobble to the fifth floor. Shiro’s metal hand leaves deep gouges in the wood, sharp and splintering. His knees give out when he reaches the end of the staircase, leaves him curled on the ground, slumped against the door. He coughs and wrenches himself to his feet, forcing the door open and pushing Caleb into the clean air. The boy stumbles through the closest door, falling against a faux-granite counter-top. Shiro retches, clawing at his throat with desperation. The gas sits heavy in his lungs, leaves him coughing up yellow tendrils.

They stagger further into the apartment, where there are no more windows and it’s dark once again. The living room is dramatically unlit. Someone might have lived here once, after the end. Huddled among the memorabilia of the dead. Opened cans litter the floor, used bandages are piled in the corner and there’s a heap of blankets pressed against the wall. No-one is here anymore. Shiro wonders why they left.

He finds clean fabric and two-liter bottles, cleans them out in the kitchen and sits on the floor, passing Caleb duct tape and telling him how to make a gas-mask. Back at the Garrison, he taught emergency survival lessons. There was always something surreal about teaching children how to make a tourniquet. Now, though, he shows Caleb how to cut the plastic containers to the shape of his face, stuff the fabric into the nose as a makeshift dust mask. They clean their faces before they tape on the bottle, sealing it against their skin.

It’s uncomfortable, but they cannot risk inhaling any more of the gas.

He leads Caleb in the kitchen to wash off, tells him to scrub his skin until he can’t smell the freshly-cut grass scent of the phosgene. Shiro sits outside, scratching at the blisters and scabs that have formed on his unprotected arms.

Soft steps in the shadows steal his attention, a flicker of movement in the dark. Then the flash of a blade and it’s pressed against his neck, threatening to draw blood, and some form is crouched over him, dangerous and poised and ready to kill. The person - he assumes, hopes, that it’s a human and not a Galra - wears a Garrison-issued gas-mask. A civilian could only get one of those by stealing it from one of the Garrison's people. Shit.

Voice muffled, they whisper, “Move and I cut your throat, Galra.”

Shiro sputters, twitching back, “I’m human,” he says slowly, raising his hand to the light, “I’m not purple, see?”

“Why’s your hair white?” They say, leaning closer, “Huh? Care to explain that?”

“I don’t - ” Shiro tries, “I’m not Galra.”

The figure shrugs, grabbing Shiro’s hand in a too-tight grip, “Where’d you get that ring?”

“It’s mine.”

“Bullshit. You stole that,” they yank the wedding ring from Shiro’s hand, violently twisting his finger, “Wanted to sell it? Get some money? Money doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I - no - it’s mine. Please. Give it back,” Shiro pleads.

He hears a scoff and the person clenches Shiro’s - Adam’s - ring in a two-fingered grip, “At least you’re not purple,” the person says, “are you alone?” The theif is missing fingers, Shiro realizes, two fingers on their left hand.

Silence.

“Don’t even think about lying.”

“I - no,” Shiro says, inching his right arm, his metal Altean arm, up from where it’s twisted behind his back. His captor is still distracted, watching as the ring catches light. It’s heartbreaking, some lowlife thief who probably killed a Garrison officer to get that gas-mask admiring Adam’s wedding ring like it’s nothing more than a rich trinket. They slip the ring into their pocket. The hand is bruised and bloody, missing all but pointer finger and thumb. Their middle finger is an ugly stump, cut off at the joint. Injuries lace up their side, sleeve tattered, half-healed wounds scabbing over along their wrist. An exposed sliver of skin along their neck reveals burns and lacerations. There’s evidence of a fight everywhere, tattered clothing, the way they lean just to the side, slightly off balance. A limp.

Perfect.

Shiro slams his fist into the thief's face, sending them sprawling, knife flying from their grasp. It’s a mad fight - fists and fingernails and sharp pointed elbows. He rolls on top of the thief, straddling their waist, they twist and kick, knocking Shiro off and scrambling for a grasp, fingernails leaving bloody scratches along his arms. Shiro launches himself at them, elbowing their face and forcing their head against the cold tile floor. They croak painfully as Shiro snakes his arm around their neck, thrashing when he applies pressure and they can’t breathe. Kicking out desperately.

“Please,” they mutter, fingers curling around Shiro’s arm, “I - can’t,” they twist, trying desperately to roll over. They’re weaker now, and Shiro doesn’t want to kill someone.

Their hand scrabbles on the ground and for a moment, they manage to get a grip on the knife. They slash upward, narrowly missing Shiro's eyes. But their movements are slowing now, all energy spend desperately writhing against Shiro's choke-hold.

He doesn’t want to, he can’t, but - but this is a theif, someone who stole a gas-mask from the body of a Garrison soldier, stole Adam’s wedding ring. They could kill Caleb.

But killing is hard, and Shiro leans back, releasing the chokehold.

“Thank you,” they say, panting, retching. Shiro doesn’t stand.

“Who are you?”

“No-one. Just a person, trying to survive. Same as you.”

“We’re not the same,” Shiro growls, “I’m not a thief.”

“You stole th - “

They’re interrupted by a small voice, “Shiro?”

“Go back to the kitchen, Caleb.“

“Please don’t hurt people,” Caleb sounds close to tears. But he listens, scampering back into the kitchen. He hears a click as the door locks shut.

“Shiro’s dead,” the thief growls, eyes flashing behind the dark lenses of their mask, “who the fuck are you.” They roll over, bucking up and staggering to their feet. Fists collide with Shiro’s stomach and he falls back, retching and wavering before throwing a kick at the thief's head. It sends them spinning, but they move with it, ducking under Shiro’s punch and slamming into his shoulder. He’s pinned against the wall again, a gun - a gun now, they have a gun - pressing into the side of his head. Cold and metal and threatening.

“If you shoot,” Shiro says slowly, “the sentries will hear.”

“I know,” they growl, “and I don’t care. Tell me who you are.”

“I’m no-one,” he says, throwing the thief's words back at them.

“You’re not no-one,” he can hear rage and grief building in their voice, angry and lost and on the verge of letting go and shooting. They could send Shiro’s brains splattering against the wall, push him back that precarious step into the afterlife. Black purple abyss, floating free and formless. “You stole my fucking ring and now you’re impersonating Takashi. Who is dead.”

“Caleb,” Shiro calls, “Caleb you need to run.”

The thief is mad, wild, each word sending confusing pressing into Shiro’s skull and it’s not safe. Not safe for Caleb or anyone and especially not safe for Shiro. He can’t think about it. Can’t face those words, who is this person and why is it so hard not to hope? It’s nobody, a ghost, a wraith of the past coming to slit his throat or send a bullet through his forehead. There’s something wrong, something wrong, sending Shiro’s head spinning as he tries to understand why this thief is making hope rise in his chest.

But - no. This is a thief, a madman, missing fingers and limping and bruised, eyes shining. Ready to shoot Shiro and guarantee the end of their own life too. He has to think that.

“Shutup,” the thief says, “who are you.”

“I’m Shiro. Please, I’m not lying.”

“Shiro died years ago.”

He sighs, each breath fogging his mask, “I’m alive, alright? Who are you, then?”

Who are you, who are you, who are you?

When the thief speaks, every word is a snarl, “If Takashi lived, I’d have known. I married him and he went off and died. I know he’s dead.”

Shiro’s head slams against the wall, and for a moment he thinks he’s losing consciousness but, no, the tattered remains of the world are still there and there’s ground beneath his feet and there’s Adam, pressing against him with a gun to his head. And it’s all so much, the stinging tears streaming down his face morph into a sob that wrenches from his throat.

“Adam,” Shiro says thickly, “Adam,” he relishes in the name, gold and silver syllables, “please, don’t shoot me.” He slides his hands up and the thief, the thief named Adam, slowly lowers the gun with shaking hands. Shiro slips off the mask, wincing as the tape peels from his face. And Adam is doing the same, and Shiro can’t breathe and it’s not because of the yellow gas five floors below. The air is sharp and painful but, God, this is Adam. Adam’s bruised and bloodied face, tan and freckled and his lips and his eyes.

“They told me you were dead,” Shiro continues, his voice unsteady, wavering, out of control and Adam, he can see Adam. Right in front of him, eyes open wide like he’s afraid that if he looks away Shiro will melt into the shadows.

Adam presses his forehead against Shiro’s, dropping the gun and whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I could have killed you, Takashi - “

His name is sweet and spills from Adam’s lips sotto-voce. Hushed and soft like a prayer.

“I’m sorry too, Adam,” Shiro says, sticky tears on his cheeks and Adam is crying too. Adam nods, and all Shiro can think about is that he’s breathing Adam’s air and feeling Adam’s arms and they’re both alive, finally, and it’s the end of the world, the timing isn’t perfect but. God, they’re both alive. Even if the city isn’t, even if Earth is crumbling to dust, at least Shiro’s little world is rebuilding itself.

Bruises mar Adam’s face, cuts and gouges and all of the painful movements that were Shiro’s advantages moments earlier become alarming.

“What happened to you?” Shiro murmurers.

Adam smiles a sad, wry smile, “I survived, somehow. What happened to you, Takashi?”

“I didn’t,” Shiro says after a beat, and Adam’s eyes widen, “but I came back.”

“I...” The other man stammers, his nose brushing Shiro’s and his arms threading around his shoulders, grip tight like a lifeline, “What’s happened to the world?” He buries his face in Shiro’s shoulders as Shiro wraps his arms around Adam’s waist. It’s familiar and comforting but tinged with desperation.

“I don’t know, Adam,” Shiro says softly, “I don’t know.”

Adam tips forwards, not giving Shiro a chance to respond, pressing his lips against Shiro’s. Sweet and sad and soft, once chaste but turning desperate with the moment.

Chapter Text

With Adam's lips against his, Shiro remembers. Everything he's been trying to forget since he left Earth, everything he's washed his mind of since they told him Adam died.

He remembers crying on the floor of his quarters, curled between the mini-fridge and the desk. Boiling over with fury and confusion, trapped energies forcing their way out and into the world. He couldn't reign it in, couldn't stop himself from realizing what he already knows.

How do you forget a person?

It's not that he wanted to forget Adam. He just wanted to - move on. Force down feelings. He'd always hated them, hated the bubbling of childish crushes and like-likes. It was easy, at first, to teach himself to ignore them - little-kid Shiro on the middle school blacktop, lying before he even knew what he was doing. Lying became habitual, he lied to himself about the way his chest twisted when Adam - Fuck. He didn't want to admit it to himself - that he was confused, that -

He didn't want to name it. Naming it would make it real.

He wondered what his family would say. If they knew he was -

Well, that's one thing he'd never know.

It became real, though, pressurized in his chest where he locked it down and pretended the stretches of tension weren't there.

Obviously, that didn't work. Turns out you can't forget a person. And even in this new body, muscle memory has him pulling Adam closer.

He remembers going on walks in the Garrison greenhouses. Weaving his way though raised beds of dirt and plants, sneaking out to the gardens after hours - Adam always in tow. They talked, rich words and rich earth and bright smiles in the glow of heat lamps and distant fluorescent lights. He first came out there, sipping too-hot tea cross-legged on the ground, fingers digging into soft grass. Anxiously twisting in the shadow of a pomegranate tree. Adam's knee bumping against his as the other boy reviewed computational neuroscience notes.

"What're you thinking about?" Adam had asked, concern flooding his features in time with the embarrassment that pooled in Shiro's chest.

Shiro responded with a question: "Could you ever hate me?" The lemon tea scalded his tongue as he took a nervous sip, staring resolutely at a folded mimosa pudica to Adam's right.

"No," Adam said automatically, setting down his notebook and inching forwards. It felt like he was invading Shiro's senses, an all too welcome presence, legs brushing.

"Okay," Shiro said, taking a deep breath, "Okay," sixteen years old and fucking terrified, "I - " he swallowed, looking everywhere but Adam, breath hitching, "I don't think I like girls."

Adam just nodded.

"I'm," the words stuck in this throat, "I'm gay, Adam."

Again, he nodded, leaning forward to whisper, "Me too."

Their first kiss was unglamorous, the awkward press of lips over psychology homework, hands floundering and pages falling to the floor. Despite knocking noses and grinning too much to really kiss, inexperienced and young, it was something like now. A perfect fit found by chance, part desperate and part joyous. A reunion, even then, before they really knew -

Adam pulls back now, hands still wandering under the hem of Shiro's shirt, "You're alive. You're - alive. They told me you died." He seems frantic, fingers searching for wounds that aren't there.

Shiro blinks, confused for a moment. Dazed from the pressure of Adam's body and the feeling of his fingertips raking along Shiro's ribs. Adam invades his senses, clouds his mind, it's fucking impossible to focus through the sheer elation. It's the counterbalance to every moment of sadness, the strife of the past few years tumbles down - forgotten dust. All things pale and fade into the background now that Adam - Adam, Adam, Adam - has returned.

"Well," Shiro swallows, knees knocking against Adam's as he peels himself from the wall, "I guess - " he doesn't know how to explain everything that's happened, "I didn't die then. When the Galra captured me."

The other man narrows his eyes, ghosting his fingers along Shiro's scar, "You move different now," he says, "you're different."

All he can do is nod wordlessly. Every flaw in this new body of his feels exposed, the once-missing tooth, the steady hands now gripping Adam's waist, the hair and the way he's slightly taller without the twist of his spine. Adan trails his fingers down to grasp Shiro's hands. His eyes widen when he feels the metal.

"We can't - " Shrio forces himself to remember the gas and Caleb and the sentries that are probably thundering up the stairs, "We need to get Caleb to safety."

"The kid?" Adam asks, and Shiro has so many questions it's nearly impossible to drag himself away. Adam's bloodied hands grasp at Shiro's shirtsleeves, leaving faint red marks.

"Yes. Caleb. I found him."

"Another kid? You found another one." Laughter bubbles up in Adam's chest, an impossible smile gracing his face through the dirt and grime and blood.

"I - yes. Sure."

"Oh, my God," Adam mutters but steps back and flicks on a flashlight, "You haven't changed, Takashi."

It hits Shiro in the chest, the idea that he hasn't changed. "Adam - please don't think I'm the same. I can't do that to you."

Adam's face softens in the brightness of the harsh flashlight, "You might be different now, but - " nervousness flickers across his features for a brief moment, "the man I loved - you're still here."

Loved. Past tense is a dagger, a punch, a wound in his gut that leaves him aching, "Do you still love me, Adam?" He asks as he begins to walk, brushing past the other man and stepping down the hall. He needs to find Caleb but he needs to talk to Adam but he can't look at Adam.

Loved. Loved. Loved.

It traps him.

Adam seems taken aback by the forwardness of Shiro's question. Shiro is afraid, afraid that Adam will say no. He was gone for such a long time, and they ended things when he left but - but he still hoped. When he thought of Earth, he thought of Adam. When he thought of happiness, hope, home. All of the bright things in the universe. Adam was the center of the light. And Adam is spending too much time thinking about the question, and they're both such different people - Shiro wouldn't blame him if he said no. Even though the walls of his world would crumble again, at least Adam is alive.

Shiro really isn't the same. Change happens to all but it's hit him especially hard, stole his arm and his face and his life. Time is a thief, snatching his body and forcing him into a new form where his footsteps aren't right and his hands don't work the same. He tries to lean into shakes that aren't there.

The silence makes Shiro desperate, sends fear clawing at his throat, "Please. I understand if you - "

Adam looks up now, darting a few steps forwards to catch up with Shiro's quick pace, "I wanted to hate you. I wanted to stop thinking about you. But - Takashi, I couldn't," he's crying now, soft sobs as his shoulders shake, "I loved you, and you left and I despised myself for still caring. Sam, he told me you were alive but I couldn't face that."

"I wasn't alive," Shiro interrupts, going still, swallowing nausea, "you were right, and you can - you can hate me."

That stops Adam in his tracks, "I don't - you - please don't say that."

"It's true," Shiro says, trying so hard to be stoic but something awful is curling in his lungs, "I wasn't alive."

"No - that's. That's not true. You're here now. This is real. You're real."

"I am, but - " He sighs abruptly, unable to meet Adam's eyes so he tips his head back and stares at the cracked ceiling, "I wasn't, for a long time."

"Don't - "

The tension builds in Shiro's chest, the darkness is flooding his mind and his vision (blotting it out like cotton-balls stuffed in his brain), so he lunges away from Adam, he has to get away and stop this awful pressure, and he yells, "I died! Alright? I died. Nothing - nothing about me is the same. Not anymore. This - this fucking body isn't my skin and it hurts. So please. Hate me. But don't think I'm the same."

"I don't know what happened to you, but I could never hate you, Takashi," Adam says, reaching out to brush his hand against Shiro's neck (just like years ago, whispering frightening words in the garden). His eyes are soft now, concerned, any anger melting away to be replaced by - what, sadness?

That hurts Shiro.

"I want to tell you everything," Shiro says in a painful exhale, the anger melting with his breath, "I want to. But. I don't know how. I don't know how to think. This isn't my brain or my body, it doesn't work like me." He talks fast, tripping over his words. He can't stop the flood that spills from his lips, "I - there was a battle, with Zarkon, and I just remember everything was so loud," an awful cacophony of sound, discordant metal-on-metal and gunshots, the Black Lion's panic rearing in his mind - "and, and then everything was cold, and numb."

"I - I don't. Did it hurt?" Adam asks, barely able to force the words up his throat with the sobs that wrack his body.

A burning, sizzling pain, frying every cell in his body, wrenching at his bones and tearing him apart, yes it fucking hurt. Everything raw and exposed, flesh sparking and boiling, crackling energy, and - "Do I have to answer that?" Weariness claws at his bones, rears behind his eyes and drags at him. It stuffs his mind with thorns.

Adam looks glassy, fragile, Shiro could shatter him with a touch. He ghosts a touch over Shiro's face, fingers threading through his hair (welts line his skull, purple-yellow smudges of color), nose pressing against Shiro's neck and he holds him bruisingly tight. Shiro can't see his eyes but he knows they'red red-rimmed. Quit sadness eats at them, they clutch each other like they can pressurize, immortalize, this moment - it's awful and messy but they're together, they got the timing right.

"I'm so sorry I left," Shiro says, he can feel Adam's breath against his neck, harsh and desperate, "I can't - I can't ever make it up to you but I - I don't know. I couldn't shake you, Adam."

"Do you regret leaving?"

"No - "

"You - fuck - you. You died, Shiro."

"I regret how I left but I don't regret leaving. I helped people, helped the universe - I saw the universe! It killed me but it was beautiful, so. I don't regret leaving Earth. You, though - I'll never stop regretting leaving you."

Chapter Text

Soft padding footsteps and a small voice steals their attention, "Are you a ghost?"

Any last traces of anger melt from Shiro, retreat back into his chest and he swallows down the lingering urge to push Adam against the wall and mouth his neck until their bodies melt together, "Caleb," he says, turning around, fingers still snagged on Adam's belt loops, "No, I'm not a ghost." He crouches, painfully breaking from Adam's air, "It's okay."

"You told the man you're dead. What - " the boy takes a scared step forwards, twisting his shirtsleeves anxiously, "what does that mean?"

"I'm alive, Caleb, don't worry."

"Am I dead too?"

"No, no, we're all alive," he knows they won't be for long, though, not unless they can escape the gas, "C'mon, we have to get to the roof."

Adam clears his throat uncomfortably, "I can take you there. I - I know the way. I've been staying here since...for a while."

Shiro still has so many questions, so many things he wants to say but survival has to come first. And they have to escape the gas, even if that means trapping themselves on the roof of the highrise. It's a shitty plan, he knows that, and he's more scared of dying than ever before. Because now - now there's nothing waiting, no-one else in the abyss. It's good to have a real reason to keep going, someone to break him out of the muted, numb autopilot he was stumbling through. He feels sharper now, his bones ache less, he's aware and burning and the cold air doesn't hurt as much as it used to. Grounded firmly as he is.

So he nods, ignores the questions, and says to Caleb, "This is Adam."

"But he's dead."

"No, I was wrong."

Caleb falls silent, contemplative, and Shrio doesn't have the mental energy left to explain how that misunderstanding happened. So he gestures for Adam to lead the way.

It's silent the walk up, their climb fading from madcap to exhausted. Instead of bursting through the door to the top floor with quick feet and gasping, angry breath they sag against the wall, choking on the poisonous air that still lingers in their lungs. Feet dragging, weary. Shiro leaves streaks in the dust from his limp as he leans on Adam, footprints a mess of stumbling. Adam's support is welcome, but what he needs is the nearness - he's desperate to remind himself that Adam is alive, presses into his side, and his husband - his husband, who is alive and here and not dead, just as alive as Shiro and maybe more - does the same.

The first door to their left leads to a studio apartment, wide and sprawled-out with tall windows. They're quick to drop their bags and close the blinds, terrified that the Galra's eyes may spy them even up here. Eventually, the sentries will climb the steps, follow Shiro's blood and footsteps. But until then, they can sleep.

"Do we have food?" Caleb asks, still eyeing Adam with suspicion.

Shiro nods, wincing as he crouches down to dig through his bag for something that might pass as a meal. Adam slides down the wall, sits with his back against the door. It's a protective gesture, he's the first line of defense, the first roadblock for the Galra. Shiro recognizes the tension in his posture, the way his vision darts around the room.

"Adam," Shiro murmurs as he passes a can - pinto beans, lentils, something like that - to Caleb, "Let's try to get some sleep," he says, reaching out a hand and drawing Adam to his feet as he stands, "We need rest."

Adam nods. They tangle together on the futon, some sort of muscle-memories slotting their sleep-addled bodies together with the same ease they had years ago. When he closes his eyes and ignores the old (and the burning skin and the wound on his leg and the hollow space where his arm once was), he can return to their apartment. Imagine a different night, anything but this one, where it was warm and comfortable and Adam's head resting on his shoulder wasn't the delicate novelty it is now,

Adam could shatter, fall apart, drift away in the wind. He wants to be desperate, press against the other man and pull him upstairs, somewhere quiet and private, some hidden corner in the dark for them to tangle together. Once, they had summer mornings, a shared bed, flirting in the kitchen, stealing kisses in the hallway - a perfect time, impossible now.

So he settles for laying in the dark, begging for sleep. But every moment of sleep is stolen, that falling feeling and the numbness that overtakes him a terrifying reminder of death.

If someone knew that same darkness, had it mapped out in their mind, behind their eyelids, perhaps it would not be so hard. After this much time in the burnt-out city, he rarely yearns for the easy companionship of the Paladins, but now - he thinks about death, and he thinks about them. Lance said he died. Does he too wake up shivering, sobbing, forcibly wrenching his mind back from the afterlife?

With the darkness slinking forwards, closing in on him, he needs to escape. He's so close to the sky, the outdoors - just a short flight of stairs. His body burns to look at that expanse, he wants to lose himself in the sky and remember the sublimity of the cosmos. With Adam alive, Shiro's mind is muddled - thrown back to years ago, he can't wrench himself from the past.

The elation trickles away and he's scared, a terror that reaches into his mind and twists, pressurizes his skull with that dull worry. It presses at his eyes, curls around his muscles and wrenches at his bones. He can't shake its presence. They missed their chance to have a life, the time of candy-coated evenings, sharp and sweet and sacred, the temple of their home and their bed. Gone now, they can't have it back - not in this ruined world.

If he can see the sky, he can pretend that there's a different planet waiting for them.

Softly, quietly, he slides off of the futon and pads down the hallway, quietly opening the door and stepping up the final flight to stairs to the roof.

The ground stretches out seemingly miles below him, far away and he feels like a god, watching the world sprawled at his feet. It's stagnant, some dead world, a husk of a city. Still, it's godly up here, imagining the remaining life below. This wasteland - a kingdom of rats and dead-slumbering children and aimless survivors, slinking through the scraps. With the concrete of the roof leaving grainy imprints in his palms he can imagine that the cold still air is now cold still air he shares with Adam, and everything is less frigid now. Something curls in his throat, some victorious scream - he wants to celebrate, to yell, tell everyone that the one person he'd give everything to is back, he's alive, and Shiro's veins feel shot through with crackling electricity. He has to tell someone - he has to tell Kieth, he would understand, he could help them somehow. So he taps a message into his com device - ADAM IS ALIVE. It flashes for a moment and sends.

With all the lights of the city off, he can see the sky. He wants to take Adam to space, escape the gravity of Earth and find some remote planet with pink-sand beaches and looming trees, no metal skyscraper forests or lumbering sentries, not a touch of purple-red lights.

"What're you thinking about?" Adam sounds bleary, tired, recently dragged out of sleep as he stumbles towards the edge of the roof with a moth-eaten blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Desert nights are fucking cold. "Nice sky."

Shiro nods, drawing Adam down to sit next to him. They invade each-other's space, tangle their legs together and drape the blanket around themselves. It's nice, to feel like one entity again.

"Would you come with me," Shiro asks as Adam leans back against his shoulder, curls of brown hair tickling Shiro's nose, "if I left again?"

Adam swallows, absently reaching up to adjust glasses that aren't there. His bloody hand makes Shiro's chest ache, twists his gut painfully - it's shared agony now, and Adam wryly says, "What, Earth still boring?"

"Earth is too much - look at it, it's a fucking graveyard."

"We'll rebuild, Takashi, we always have."

His name sounds sweet and soft, a pet-name on Adam's lips, but - "Would you come with me?"

Out in space, somewhere, among the stars, is his body, frozen between planets or crumbling to dust on some distant, dusty world, sand-swept. It's the pink-beached world, his bones ache to find it, the pull of his own body. Some desperate part of him hopes he could get it back, that Allura could force his soul, his essence, mind, spirit, back into the body. Because they're tied together, his mind and that cold corpse. He doesn't think he'll know peace until he finds it. At the very least, he could bury it - bury himself.

But if Adam is on Earth - if Adam won't come with him - he can't leave. Not again. As much as the swirling nebulae and gas giants claw at him, he can't leave Adam.

"Would you leave if I stayed?" Adam asks, moving to face Shiro, cross-legged, hand pressing against Shiro's cheek. Adam's hand leaves bloody marks on Shiro's skin, some macabre claim to Shiro's own mortality

"No."

Adam contemplates that for a moment, the says, "I think, then, I would go with you."

"Thank you," Shiro whispers, pressing his forehead against Adam's, "I'm sorry I left."

"I'm sorry I left, too. I'm sorry I let you leave."

The other man tips forwards, pressing a chaste kiss against Shiro's lips with a soft smile, "You're alive," he murmurs, awe and wonder in his voice.

"So are you."

"My husband is alive," he laughs softly for a moment, breath warming Shiro's lips, "Do you know how many fucking army widow support groups there are? They're very depressing, and very straight."

"I didn't stick around long enough to find out. After Sam told me you died, I left."

"I tried to. Leave, I mean, after you died. Sanda wouldn't let me," he pauses, seems to drag himself back to reality, "You're alive now," he presses another kiss against Shiro's lips, "and we need to get you a new wedding ring."

Chapter Text

Starting mid-morning, bombs fall in the city limits, staining the sky smoky orange. They obscure the horizon, but from the roof, Shiro can hear metal and gunfire. There’s a battle happening. It's not quite at its height, but it’s taking a toll on the city. Something is tearing its way through the desert, he can taste it in the smoky air. A pull towards the fighting aches through his bones.

"The fighting is getting worse," Shiro says, curled at Adam's side as they watch bombs drop in the distance, jarring vibrations shuddering them to the core.

Yellow-orange light illuminates Adam's face in brief bursts, a violent parody of summer sunrises. The hues match, but the lines and scars on his face do not. He turns his head to face Shiro, pressing his nose into the other man's white hair. The residential high-rise they're squatting in has running water - a foreign concept at this point. They're finally clean, dirt scraped out from under their fingernails and hair soft once more. Shiro could drag his fingers along Adam's scalp, feel the soft curls that now brush his earlobes and tickle the nape of his neck. There's something glorious about the closeness of their bodies right now, it makes Shiro yearn to press chest-to-chest and mouth-to-mouth, catch his hands on Adam's belt-loops and leave bruises on his perfect collarbones.

On the blackened roof, smoke in the air, explosions shaking the sky. They'd be like gods.

After the third bomb wrecks the air, too close and too hot and too loud, Shiro drags himself to his feet. There's new urgency in his veins as he says, "They're getting closer." Adam nods, tightening the blankets draped around his shoulders as he stands. He can smell the smoke, harsh and invasive. He cam smell Shiro's stolen soap, lemon and grapefruit.

"Can't we settle?" Adam sighs, sounding bone-weary, exhausted. They both are.

Caleb sleeps below, wrapped in layers of blankets and sweaters and anything that might bring a little bit of warmth to his small frame. It's nearing winter. Dry cold sweeps through the city.

Shiro shakes his head, grabbing Adam's mangled hand by the wrist as they walk downstairs, climb through the maintenance hatch on the roof. He can't help but treat Adam like something fragile and precious, he's so bruised and bloody, he shakes in the wind and his ribs show though his once sunshine-warm skin. One day he'll tell Shiro how he survived, how he dragged himself through the desert or the forest or wherever his ship crashed. He wonders what happened to Adam and why he's quiet now.

Well, Shiro is quiet too. They've both suffered alone and been left with scars and missing pieces.

Adam nudges Shiro's shoulder when they reach their floor, "I know you don't want to hear this, but we need to go back to the Garrison."

"I think I burned that bridge."

"You team still cares for you."

"You don't even know them, Adam," Shiro says, no bite in his words - just a sigh, tired of this same discussion. He can't go back there. He can't face his team again, not after how he left. If he goes back, it will shatter the fragile peace of the endtimes. No more tangled bodies (alive, breathing as one) or scavenging the rubble in search of a wedding band for Shiro. If he leaves here, if he returns, the tightness in this body will come back and his skin will break and his steps won't fall correctly.

Of course, only the Garrison can send them back to space. Not like they would anymore.

"I know Keith," Adam says, "you weren't the only one who raised that kid."

Shiro grits his teeth, "Keith hasn't spoken to me since I left."

Adam shrugs, tilting back into Shiro's space like an orbiting body, "He's your brother, Shiro."

"Well - "

"Don't - don't do that. Don't discount yourself from his life. You're his brother, and - and his father, and everything to that kid. He hasn't given up on you or forgotten you. None of them have."

His eyes are drawn up to meet Adam's against his will and he has to say, "You really think we should go back?"

"I don't think we have a choice, Takashi."

They find Caleb curled on the floor, a comic book open on his lap - stolen from an apartment on the third floor - and a half-eaten can of tortellini heating over the fire. Despite the food in the high-rise, they're still trying to ration what they can.

"What're you reading?" Shiro asks, sitting next to him and peering at the cover.

"Batman," he says, holding it up to show Shiro and Adam the cover.

Adam sits down too, reaching out to stir the cans of food over the fire. They're lucky they haven't burned the place down by now.

"Batman is Keith's favorite," Adam says, giving Shiro a meaningful look, "Keith is our - "

Caleb rolls his eyes, pushing the comic book from his lap. The colors are faded and the pages brown. It's a Golden Age relic. "I know," he says.

"We need to find Keith, actually," Shiro says gently, "We need to go to the Garrison. We'll leave tonight." Adam nods, pressing his nose into Shiro's neck. He's cold, Shiro can feel his light shivering and the chill of his berry-red nose. It reminds him of the times when they were teenagers, evenings spent on petty pranks pumping washable red hair dye into Commander Sablan's shampoo. They made a mess of the staff showers, left giddy with red staining their clothes and faces.

Or, perhaps when they snuck into the gardens after class for a snack. Shiro stole pomegranates from bushes and trees and hid with Adam in the overgrown gazebo, fingers covered in sticky red juice. Slow, sweet early-fall afternoons.

Fuck.

Adam look up at him like he knows.

Caleb just nods, reaching for the tortellini can, scraping the last dregs of sauce and noodles from the bottom with a mangled plastic fork. He's quiet, sunken back into his shell and Shiro wants to scream. Instead, he says: "We'll leave tonight."

One last evening in the half-safety.

"What if they're dead?" He whispers to Adam as Caleb crawls to the mattress in the corner, can and fork in his small hands.

Adam humms softly, a comforting sound that yanks at Shiro's gut, pulls the floor out from under him. That's the sound of comforting Shiro during panic attacks that turned his knuckles white and made him bite his lips until he bled. The sound of sympathy among cracked pencils and ripped papers when he can't fucking write. The low rumble of good morning and goodnight and I'm sorry. It's the sound of Adam massaging Shiro's twisted muscles or helping him off the ground when his legs fail. The sound of breakfast in bed on a bad day, of crying at home when he orders his first cane. The sound of Adam's sore throat after screaming at a man in a pickup-truck who honked at Shiro for crossing the road slowly, wearily, feet dragging and ankles twisting. The sound of Adam's tears as he drove, barely held back but Shiro still saw them, still sensed them even as Adam hummed, a brief low sound of comfort.

Somehow - somehow - those were the easy days. That rock-bottom was false. The neurologist's office wasn't the worst thing to happen, the medical bills weren't actually hell.

No, maybe hell is now.

Maybe hell is Keith and Lance and Pidge and Hunk and Allura being dead. Maybe hell is standing with Adam in a military cemetery.

"Don't," Adam murmurers, "they're safe, Takashi. We're safe. You're safe and here and I love you."

Shiro humms in response.

And Caleb eats his meager dinner and Adam kisses Shiro's jaw and Shiro - Shiro stares out the hole in the wall, the blown-out chasm in the window, and thinks about bombs dropping on the Garrison.

Chapter Text

When darkness falls and the bombs drop louder than before, they creep from the tenth floor. They brush cobwebs from the doorways and stutter down the stairs. The fourth floor smells - it's sticky and rotting, like cheap dime-store perfume mixed with some awful stench that makes bile rise in Shiro's throat. The stench of bodies (a family, dead on the second floor, bloated and white and wriggling with maggots and maybe that's what Shiro looks like now). Caleb scrunches his face and pinches his nose, coughs, scratches at his skin, the memory of gas and danger lingers in blisters and lesions.

Silent, stay quiet. Shiro prays. Prays for no red lights, prays that he won't make a sound, prays with every shuddering explosion that his friends - his people - are still alive. He's never been religious, it's hard to in this age of space and stars and aliens. But after dying and coming back (gasping, breathing in air and sensation and pain), he can't deny - something, there is something. Perhaps the only gods are people.

So, he is not a praying man, but he is a hoping one. Although that is difficult too. He hopes for something just left of the worst, because, at this point, that's as good as it can get.

Well, he knows there's no heaven. There's only darkness and thick purple and the deep rumbling of the Black Lion, reverberating in his misty shadow-skull. There might be hell. If there's a hell, he might be in it now.

Hope.

That's the best he can do - or the worst? Doing - that's better than hoping. So he will do and save and help and hopefully - hopefully, maybe, just maybe, he'll survive.

Down, no voices, creeping to the first floor. The darkness engulfs their shadows and mold grows on the walls. Water drip-drip-drips from a leak in the ceiling, forming a puddle that reaches out to the once-lush lobby carpet and freezes. Adam shivers and pulls Caleb close, tightening his grip on Shiro's hand. Death hangs in the air. They haven't ventured past the fifth floor in days, and without the height of the roof they have sea-legs, rubbery and confused. Shiro steps through the rubble, pulling Adam and Caleb behind him. His robotic arm humms, it whirrs and it clicks and it stutters.

Walking in the open air is dangerous - they stick to the edges of the sidewalks, crouch among crashed cars and hug the buildings.

Desert rainfall begins at some point after midnight, leaving a layer of frost on the ground and chilling Shiro to his core. Caleb's teeth chatter violently and Adam shakes, thin and small with a too-big coat fluttering around him like a wild shadow. They run through the streets, yanking open doors, searching for some place with a roof intact and a floor that isn't consumed by rot.

In the end, Shiro pushes Adam and Caleb behind him and punches through the window of the public library. Glass scratches against his robotic fist - it's an awful sound but the only pain he feels is the collision echoing up his shoulder. He sweeps aside glass and helps Caleb through the windowsill.

Inside, it's too dark to completely make out their surroundings but he can see shelves toppled over and books shredded into kindling. Even without electricity it's warm, untouched by rain or frost. Adam kneels down and pulls a flashlight out of his backpack. The light flickers and sputters out, but after shaking it, it bursts to life and illuminates the room.

Shiro's never seen an empty library. At the Garrison, the hallways and corridors were packed with books and students, studying and sleeping and, in Shiro and Adam's case, kissing in the fourth-floor anthropology section.

There weren't many anthropology students at the Garrison.

But the library was never empty. It might have been creep and depressing, full with students cramming for exams as it was. But never vacant. There's something disturbing about it.

Caleb, though - his eyes light up and he runs for the comic book section, leaving Adam and Shiro to trail after him.

"What happened to his family?" Adam asks as they walk hand-in-hand past broken MacBooks and crushed CDs.

Shiro bites his cheek, considers how to respond, and says, "They were taken to a Galra camp. Or killed. I don't - I don't know. Who knows who's alive and who's dead at this point?" It's a question, but he says it with wry humor.

Caleb sprints to another set of shelves deep in the library, arms laden with Superman comics, colorful and blessedly dry. Although the idea of burning books is awful, Shiro takes a moment to envision the beautiful, warm fire they could make here. Simple luxuries at the end of the world.

So he clears out space in the center of the room, dragging shelves and chairs across the carpet. He finds a metal filing cabinet behind the librarian's desk and carries it to the little circle, pulls a lighter out of his pocket and starts a fire.

Warmth.

Adam holds his hands out over it, shivering. Shiro presses his nose into the other man's neck and peels off his too-big waterlogged jacket and drapes it over a shelf near the fire. Adam leans back into the touch, shivering in a not-unpleasant way.

"Let's dry off," Shiro says into his hair. Adam chuckles and glances around their corner of the library for a moment before turning. He misses Shiro's mouth in the darkness, lips ghosting along his cheek before finally meeting teeth and tongue.

With a smile pressed against Adam's mouth, Shiro pulls him closer by the beltloops and leans in as Adam unzips his windbreaker, wincing as the bloody stumps on his hand brush the fabric. The jacket falls to the floor, leaving Shiro shivering in a sweater and a thin t-shirt. He steps back, drawing Adam closer to the crackling fire as he kicks of his shoes and slips Adam's pull-over off, biting back a moan when Adam's mouth finds the place just below his jawline.

He's just realizing how many fucking layers they're wearing. It's inconvenient, he thinks as Adam knots his fist in Shiro's sweater, pushing him back back back against a teetering bookshelf. He wants skin on skin. Shiro pushes back, hands reaching up under the other man's shirt and he can't think about how he can feel Adam's ribs when his knee is pressing between Shiro's legs like that. His senses are invaded by Adam and his breath is stolen by Adam and he's alive and here and swallowing the moans that make their way from deep in Shiro's throat.

With the electricity shooting through his limbs and pulling at his gut he feels grounded in his body for once, the muscle-memory of Adam reconciling the two bodies he's lived through. Whispered mutterings of "Takashi" and questioning hands on belt-buckles and how far are they going to go because Adam Adam Adam Adam is here and pressing him against a bookshelf and fumbling with the hem of his shirt.

Something in the air snaps, breaks the quiet heat and Adam stumbles back, tripping on a discarded book. Shiro can't quite place what it was, what broke them apart but he's searching the dark and smoothing his shirt when a scream rips through the air and shapes emerge from the shadows. He has to blink past the arousal that fogs his mind but - shit -

Caleb squirms with a gun against his head and Adam leaps forwards, rolling and throwing himself at the attacker, fists flying and Shiro wants to laugh breathlessly because there's something fluid and beautiful about Adam in battle. Off to his right, Caleb runs back into the shadows and Shiro grabs a book from the ground, advancing on the tussle but there's more.

More figures, lurking, and Shiro stills because they're all fucking armed to the teeth, guns and bats. Blood cakes their faces and their eyes glint with animistic desperation. Adam is forced back towards Caleb but the circle advances on Shiro.

"We don't want trouble," he says, palms up. Firelight flickers off his metal arm.

"How much's that worth, you think?" Someone asks, voice all harsh syllables.

Someone in the crowd shrugs, tapping a kitchen knife against his thigh as he thinks.

Adam growls, fury lining his words as he says, "How - how much is what worth?"

He's ignored by the shadows, they prowl forwards and sweep Shiro's supplies off the ground, his food and his weapons and his backpack.

"Think we could get it off?"

"Make good money that way."

"Someone'll want it."

"Where you think he got it?"

"Fuckin' army man or some shit."

"Let's sell it."

"Probably a weapon."

"I want it."

Shiro backs up, looking for an escape but a woman - their leader, perhaps - catches his eyes with a wicked grin that splits her face like a scar.

"Mine now," she says, flipping her knife to a backhanded grip before springing forwards. He moves a split-second faster, though; catches her across the shoulder with a book and settles in stance, fists up.

They've formed a circle now, leering and laughing. These are real thieves, humans turned to sharp-toothed monsters. Adam charges forwards but is thrown bodily to the ground. No backup, then.

The woman spins her knife dangerously and lunges, ducking below his flurry of punches and stabbing wildly. Shiro backpedals, grunting in pain as her blade makes contact, slashing along his rib cage. There’s no precision - she’s clearly untrained, a sloppy fighter. He gets her with a kick, twisting his body to the side and lashing out with his foot. She’s persistent, lunging after him again with blood spotting her lips. Her blows are furious, unpredictable and messy. But he’s got the upper hand, he knows what he’s doing and takes her by suprise with a well-timed uppercut that slams her head back.

She recovers fast and he’s bleeding now, swaying.

He throws his body to the right, twisting and slamming the metal arm into his foe. The woman drops, falling against the wall with blood on her forehead. She snarls, breath rotting and awful. Shiro staggers back, rubbing the bruises forming along his jaw and feeling rough stubble beneath his fingers. There's a dent in his arm from the force of the blow.

She pulls herself off the ground and launches at him. He manages to scramble away for a moment and he slams a kick into her ribs. In the moment before his foot touches the ground one of the others darts forwards, quick and silent he grabs Shiro by the collar and throws him to the tile floor, and then there's someone else kicking him. Snarling and growling and choking on blood he gets in a solid elbow to someone's face - the pressure sensors in his arm register the breaking of their nose, satisfying and gut-twistingly awful. But then there's more of them, slamming blow after blow at his face and, fuck he tries to block them, twisting and sheltering his head but he's pressed on the ground and he feels his teeth break when she gets a good shot in and his head slams back. An awful cracking noise reverberates in his skull and pressure grabs at his arm, yanking and pulling. He can't feel pain but he feels the snapping wires echoing through his shoulder, feels the metal grinding down on his stump as his shoulder is twisted in it's socket. Agony draws a yell from his throat and Adam screams something, holds Caleb and glares at the gun trained on him, but she doesn't stop until there’s a snap and a burst of electricity that stings him to his core.

He shudders and screams and feels crackling racing out from his shoulder.

The pressure is gone and his body tilts to the side, pain reverberating through his body as the woman stands up and steps back, spitting blood on the floor by his face. He tries to breathe and sputters, blood making its way down his throat and bubbling up which each exhale. He feels around his mouth with his tongue and spits out a shattered tooth.

Standing up sounds like an awful task so he stays, curls on his side and tries to stop the spinning. There's a gunshot in the distance and yelling and swearing and someone crying. He hears blows and tries to stand because that's Adam's voice yelling, filled with anger and fear and desperation and he needs to rally himself. If he could just pull together. Get his arm and his legs to work and his ribs to hurt less, maybe the ground would stop tilting. But when he presses his hand down and pushes up, tries to stand, he collapses. Shoulder slamming into the ground hard enough to make him cry out. He's got to - he has to - has to help, do something. He rolls to the side. In the distance - yes - blurs of fast movement and red and another gunshot as he grunts and tries to stand but he's shaking and falling again and he feels vomit rising in his throat as the world rolls -

Fuck, it hurts. Swallowed by the aching and the bruises and the dizzying spinning darkness -

The tile is gone, there's a cool hand on his face and the bite of frost on his eyelashes as he opes his mouth to speak.

He hears rain.

Panic pulls at the fog in his mind but his eyes can't focus and he's laden down by something that tugs his body to the ground and makes his arms shake like rubber when he tries to sit up. His ears ring.

" - can't carry him any further," he hears a voice say. He groans and tastes blood and feels bruises stretching across his face.

"Takashi," the voice says through water and cotton and mist, "you're awake. Hey," he can't quite open his eyes but hands skim his face and ghost over bruises, gentle and scared and searching for damage, "sweetheart, Shiro, can you hear me?"

His lips are dry and cracked and bloody. Opening his mouth to speak hurts, sends pain lacing through his jaw and it turns into a guttural groan. He can’t - he can’t quite place the voice. His mind stumbles for a moment before - Adam. Right.

Adam humms softly, carding his fingers through Shiro's white hair and Shiro feels the press of lips against his forehead before Adam says, still distant despite the closeness of his body, "You're okay, Takashi, we're safe."

Safe. Safe is good. Adam's fingers in his hair is good. His head spins when he finally pries his eyes open but it's useless because Adam's face blurs in and out of focus in double and he feels ill when he sees the purple bruise that marrs his husband's right eye.

Something must have changed in his expression because Adam shakes his head, the motion making Shiro close his eyes again to ward off dizziness, and says, "No, I'm fine. How do you feel?"

All he can muster is a moan in response. He feels blood on his face, damp and crawling down from his lips in a trail of red. Adam cups Shiro’s check gently. He can feel the chill of his wedding band, a comforting reminder that makes its way through the hazy pain and the way the ground waves like water beneath him.

Confusion and sickness rolls though him and he tries to speak but his mouth hurts and his face is swollen. His teeth grind on raw gums and flakes of bone.

Adam, he wants to say. The sound comes out thick and distorted, a garbled attempt at speech.

“Shh,” Adam murmers, there’s fear and sorrow in his voice, “Takashi - don’t strain yourself.”

He grunts in response, and Adam keeps talking, hands moving from Shiro’s hair to his lips to his chest, smoothing along his shoulders, there’s something frantic about the motions as he says, “Caleb and I are safe, sweetheart. We’re almost out of the city. We’ll - we’ll be fine. You’re alive - fuck. They, they hurt you. Bad. I was worried - ” He breaks off, and even with his eyes half-open he can see the grimace on Adam’s face.

"They took everything," Adam says, anger boiling in his eyes and the flare of his nostrils, "they fucking took everything. All our food and supplies and my fucking gasmask."

He can't quite form a coherent thought yet past the ringing in his ears. Exhaustion pulls at his eyelids and nausea spins in his stomach. But the panic in Adam's voice - that's sharp and clear like the dread building between his shoulders.

Shiro tries to reach out and grasp Adam’s hand but his arm isn’t moving correctly and he grimaces, straining at his nural interface. He can’t register pressure or space or movement, can’t sense the weight. Something is wrong, it flares in his mind and sends a painful crackle down his spine, out from the implant tucked in his motorc cortex.

Distantly, he feels his body spasm.

“No, no, no,” Adam mutters, and Shiro bites back the pained noises that scratch at his throat. He can hear Adam talking, hands on Shiro’s shoulders and grounding him as some force makes his body writhe and he feels sharp jolts screaming through his body, cell to cell to cell, lighting him on fire.

“Takashi,” Adam says, “stop, please. You’re - you’re hurting yourself. It’s not. It’s not there, sweetheart.”

He stills, and it stops. What’s not there what’s not there what’s not -

Adam’s hands, on his neck, and Shiro manages to whisper hoarsely, “My - arm,” a weak broken-off attempt at speech.

“I tried to stop them,” Adam mutters and Shiro can hear tears in his voice, “I’m so - I’m so fucking sorry, Takashi, I tried but they - I thought they were going to kill us. I’m sorry. I’m - I can’t - Shiro, please.”

Oh.

Oh.

Chapter Text

Adam tilts his head up with gentle fingers and helps Shiro brings the spoon to his lips, bloodied hand wrapped around Shiro’s purple-yellow bruised wrist. The soup burns as he swallows, it’s cold at this point but it stings his mouth where he’s missing teeth (two, he thinks). Adam whispers soft sounds as Shiro sputters, coughing. It makes his body ache.

“How are you feeling?” Adam asks gently.

When Shiro tries to speak his voice comes out slurred and thick, “Tired.” It’s all he can manage to say.

Everything around him us unfamiliar and he can barely open his eyes long enough to make out a slice of blue sky, the red of bricks, and color spinning around him. The whole world is spinning.

He turns his head just a fraction, slumps over, and vomits. Bile sings his throat and his gums and his body wavers as his shoulders shake. When he spits, he sees brown and blood through the black spots swimming in his vision. He tilts to the side. His ears ring and it won't stop. Distantly, he feels the burn of frustration but it slips away, he can't grasp onto anything. Adam's hand, though, shifting him to the side and a sympathetic noise and a humm that washes out the pain for a brief moment.

When he cracks his eyes open, everything rolls.

"Hey," Adam murmurers, cleaning Shiro's face with something soft and damp, "It's okay. Drink this." He presses something against Shiro's mouth and he parts his lips, relishing the coolness of water.

He's not sure how long he was out for after - after - he struggles to remember the details. Blood and screaming and pain so loud it clotted his mind and jolts of electricity, sharp and all-consuming. Whatever happened then, it's faded to the background behind the agony and fear. He wants to ask Adam but he can't form words right now. And he's so, so tired.

"Adam," he tries to start but he can't hold on to speech, it falls back to the broken corner of his mind.

"Can you open your eyes?"

It takes him a moment to process the question, but he manages. Adam's face swims into view, distorted and muddled with black but it's there.

"That's good, sweetheart. Try to keep your eyes open. You can't fall asleep.”

He wants to nod, to confirm somehow, but if he moves his head he knows he'll vomit again so he opts to grunt out a mangled, "Okay."

"You have a concussion, and - well, I don't know what happens when a neural implant disconnects, so. Takashi, you have to rest."

But - they have to get to the Garrison. They have to go. Find the others - what are their names, who does he have to find - yes. Keith. Allura. The Paladins. He tries to grasp onto that thought but the pain drags at him and pulls at his eyelids. Think of Adam's hand. He draws all of his senses to that point and ignores the lingering taste of vomit and the aching that consumes his body.

"Can you," he tries to say, swallowing and wincing at the swelling of his cheeks and his tongue, " - distract - " he tastes blood and can't quite form words correctly, "the pain, Adam. I can't - "

His husband shifts forwards, pressing his face into the side of Shiro's neck and he can feel the brush of soft hair and Adam speaks, "Do you remember the greenhouse? With the pomegranate tree and the the sunflowers?"

Shiro tries to nod, yes, he remembers it through the dizzying confusion. The giant greenhouse where he -

"You proposed to me there," Adam says, and Shiro thinks he can hear tears clouding Adam's voice, there's fear and sadness and desperation there, "I don't - I don't know if you remember, right now, but you were so scared. Your hands were shaking."

He was terrified.

"I can't believe you thought I'd have said no. That's not - no possible. I could never say no to you."

He didn't want to saddle Adam with his disability. Didn't want his husband to become his caretaker.

"We drank Cocobon Red Wine at midnight in the grass. The ring box was blue. It was a tungsten ring, silver and black. We kissed in the garden until the sprinklers started. I - I lost the engagement ring, in the crash. Guess they didn't recover it."

The crash. So, that's what happened.

"When they shot me out of the sky I thought about you. I thought - thought that maybe I'd see you soon. I guess I was right, in a way."

Tears prickle in Shiro's eyes and he tries to lift his hand. He can't quite see but he feels Adam's palm scrape against his, fingers still sloppily bandaged.

"I'm sorry," he tries, chest aching and collapsing, spinning.

Sorry that he left, sorry that he died. Sorry that he never made it back before now, before the end of the fucking world. If he'd gotten back to Earth before things went to shit, maybe everything would be different. He's sorry he fell in love and sorry he got married and sorry he's here now, leaning on a broken wall in a broke building with his body shattered and falling apart.

He can't make his lips form those words, though, so he just says Adam's name as he grips his hand with weak fingers.

"Do not be sorry," Adam insists firmly, pressing his lips against Shiro's hand then his wrist, a gentle brush against his collarbone speckled with watercolor bruises, his neck and his jaw and his lips.

"It - hurts," Shiro sputters, "to talk."

Adam hushes him with another gentle kiss and says, "I can talk for both of us, I think. I can't stop thinking anyways. About - well, everything. There's nothing I wouldn't give to get it all back. We'll get there, though. Back to our apartment and our bedroom and our coffee machine that always broke. We can - we can renew our vows. I'd like that. I want you to be my husband again, Shiro. I guess - I guess I'm proposing to you this time."

Shiro wants to scream yes but all he can do is tilt his forehead against Adam's and squeeze his hand and whisper, "Yes, forever, Adam." His head spins and his body hurts and his mind strains against the ringing and the blurring. Despite the ache in his chest and his bones, he lets Adam invade his senses again and he thinks of sunlight and wedding rings. It's all he can do to ward off the pain. Echos of the beating clamor in his skull, fist after fist after foot. Guns and screaming and it's so hard to stay awake.

He's jolted awake a moment later, "You can't sleep, Takashi."

"'m fine," he tries, fading.

Again, shaking his shoulder. Just fade, sleep. He needs to let his mind rest. Even if Adam is scared.

He doesn't dream.

At some point, Adam wakes him again and whispers something, then he's gone, and Shiro is sinking back into velvet darkness.

In the morning, Adam is gone and Shiro terrified. When he opens his eyes he is cold and alone and dizzy and he has to do something. He can turn his head now without everything spinning and going back. Bile isn't rising in his throat but his head hurts like hell, an invasive sort of pain that clogs his mind and turns the bright, white sunlight into something to be feared. So he closes his eyes and focuses on the ground and the wall and he drags himself up. His arm shakes and he grunts in pain and his teeth grind down on raw gums. He can't quite breathe right. He can't get his legs to cooperate and his limbs feel numb, distant. If he could just get his knees beneath him, he could crawl -

Shiro's arm stutters and collapses and he strains to reach out with his left arm to brace the fall but electricity crackles down his spine and he swallows a sob as he collapses. Bruised cheek meets hardwood floor. Fuck.

Time to try again.

This time, lean on the wall. He pushes himself against it, tries to slide up. Breathe. In, out, in, out. Pain rips through him. Don't listen to it, ignore the neurons. Take control. He gets his knees beneath him, leans on the wall. Close, he's so close to standing.

He has to stop and heave cold breaths, press his palm against the grainy wood and focus on the texture, draw his mind away from how the world rolls and bucks and spins below him. Okay. He's close.

Off-balance and dizzy and eyes-shut against the pain, he manages to force himself to his feet. He can't quiet stand up straight so he stays hunched over, leaning heavily on the wall with shaking limbs. One step forwards and everything sways. Legs threatening to buckle, he lurches towards a bench, one of many, and pulls himself forwards. Step by agonizing step. By the echos of his footsteps and the colors dancing along the walls, he thinks he might be in a church. An old one, damaged an falling apart.

Churches have always scared Shiro. He felt unwelcome, like he was on the verge of being spat on. In the Garrison, he had churchgoing friends and students in Bible Study. Must were kind and supportive but some looked at him through slitted eyes. God, he thought his chest was going to collapse when his students found out about the engagement.

So. A church.

He stumbles down the edge of the room, clinging to the pews. Each step is agonizing.

"Hey, hey, hey," he hears Adam's voice say, fast footsteps then gentle hands pressing on his shoulders and guiding him to sit down in one of the pews. It takes him a struggling moment to identify Adam.

"Where - " he tries to ask and swallows, resigns himself to speaking, "where did you go?"

"Just looking for food, Takashi."

"Thought you - thought you left."

Adam shakes his head and strokes Shiro's hair, "No, Takashi. You were sleeping and you seemed fine so I left Caleb to watch you - " he mutters something to the side (to Caleb?) and then presses his lip to Shiro's forehead before continuing, "it's okay."

Okay. Okay. That's the best he can ask for. But his shoulders shake and his ribs hurt when tears force their way from the dark spot in his chest that he's been trying to ignore.

"It hurts," he says, voice hitching. He doesn't want to be weak but - but he can't walk right. his head spins and his body is broken. Shattered in pieces around him, flesh bursting with blood and bruises in a mockery of the pomegranate and red wine stains that once speckled his lips.

Chapter Text

Adam finds running water in the basement of the church. He helps Shiro limp down the wooden staircase, a white-knuckled grip around his waist when dizziness overcomes him. Step by aching step, slipping and stumbling.

The basement is cold and musty, pipes running along the walls, concrete floor chilling the air. Large cracks run along the ceiling, letting hazy light into the otherwise dim room. It makes the fractures glow and Shiro wonders how many bones are broken in this room and in this body. His wrist aches and swells and his blood trickles from his nose.

Adam drags a stool to the corner by the water spigot and Shiro all but collapses onto it, legs shaking. The water is cold against his face as Adam cleans his wounds, rough cloth on bruises and cuts. It's deliciously numbing, leeches out the pain from his purple-spotted face and split lip.

"How does your head feel?" Adam asks softly, tipping Shiro's face up and wiping blood from his lips.

"Better. Less dizzy now," Shiro says, reaching up to weakly grip Adam's wrist. He needs to be anchored or he'll tip over. It's easier to talk, though - less like he's moving words through molasses and foam.

But everything is happening in starts and stops, abrupt, leaving Shiro with wiplash. One moment upstairs, sleeping, the next he's in the basement under cold water. He thinks Adam said it's the concussion, but reaching back to remember sends waves rolling in his gut, swirls of confusion and lights and sound.

Adam, talking, he has to listen - "Good, good, good." Holding a conversation is hard, he has to think and work through each word, struggle to understand. He wonders if he can read right now, when everything is so blurry and sounds mold together in a jumble of noise.

"Is Caleb okay?" Shiro asks, wincing as a twinge of pain runs up his jaw, spearing into his temples. The migraine makes what remains of his right shoulder twitch, sends a crackle of electricity down his back. His implant tugs at pistons and wires that aren't there.

Adam nods, "We're all safe."

"Your face - " Shiro starts, blinking at the bruises that curl around Adam's left eye. He knows something happened to Adam too, something with gunshots and screaming. It was in the background of the pain and chaos that tore at Shiro.

Adam shushes him, "I'm fine, sweetheart. Don't worry."

"But - what - "

He sighs, leaning back onto his heels as he speaks, the hose danging in one hand, letting water pool around his feet, "They were beating you, and I tried to stop them. I got one of their guns and shot one of them but - but they hit me and threatened to shoot Caleb if I kept fighting. It's my - it's my fault this happened. I should have stopped them. I'm sorry, Takashi."

"No - "

"No?"

"Not your fault, Adam."

The other man just shrugs and stares at the floor. When he shifts to look up at Adam, the stool teeters to the side and threatens to collapse. It's as off-balance as he is.

The hose is still running.

"Adam," Shiro says again, reaches out despite the way his body protests, and latches onto Adam's wrist, "listen. It's no-one's fault. Especially not yours."

"Who do we blame, then?" He asks, still not looking up. Shiro wonders how he's managing without his glasses. He wonders how many times he's ran into a door-frame like he used to at night in the apartment, stumbling to the kitchen for a glass of water. He wants that back, want to be woken up at three-o'clock AM by strings of swearing in the living room. He wants arguments and yelling and Adam red-faced and angry because raising a child is a two-person decision, Takasi! or desperate, crying, you'll fall again if you don't use your cane, sweetheart. Shiro wants to bicker over how to properly make coffee. Anything but gritting his teeth in pain, seated on a stool in the basement of a church that was once full of people who probably hated him.

Well, at least he gets the irony of that.

Shiro's lungs ache and he tries to summon the anger and rage he had just days ago but he can't tap into that drive, whatever force one spurned him onward is draining now like bloody water in the church basement, "Blame me. Blame me for not getting here soon enough."

"What - no - " Adam is looking up now, meeting Shiro's eyes with fear and concern and some sort of pain that Shiro can't quite place.

So he continues, "I died, and we didn't get to Earth on time. I could have stopped all of this." He's not self-pitying, he's just - honest. He's honest.

He doesn't want Adam to comfort him about this because he knows he's right. Voltron failed Earth, Shiro failed Earth.

"You are so - insufferable."

"I'm - that's, what, a twenty-something point Scrabble word?" He strains to catch up with the conversation but it melts away like sand trickling between his fingers.

Adam sighs, "You don't need to - to, blame yourself for not sacrificing enough. You fucking died, the universe can't ask for anything more than that. We deserve a break, Takashi. A - just - a fucking retirement plan. Cash in on that 401(k)."

"What's the Garrison's retirement plan?" He can't help but ask, pulling Adam forwards a step and trying so fucking hard to ignore the pain that spikes through his body when he tries to move his right arm that isn't there.

"I don't know but don't they owe us a few death gratuity payments and, like, survivor's benefits?"

"Wait - do you still have the money from when I died?"

Adam frowns then says, "Do you still have the money from when I died?"

"Does that even count?" It hurts to talk, but, Christ, did he miss this. The easy banter, it's been so long since he had this and his heart hurts somewhere deep and painful but it's overshadowed by the hazy comfort of Adam, talking, joking.

"It fucking should! They better keep giving me survivor's befits, cause, with our combined benefits, and death gratuity, and the retirement pay we can just, stop working when all of this shit is done."

He laughs, a harsh sound that quickly falls apart into a fit of coughing. Oh - right. The levity melts and Adam stumbles forwards another step, dropping the hose and kneeling at Shiro's side, hands on his chest. Blood spots Shiro's lips as he wheezes. His chest and his lungs and his ribs hurt with a cacophony of sharp stabs and dull aches that take up the vacant spaces between his cells with pulsing red. He can't - he can't breathe.

"You're okay, you're okay, you're okay," Adam murmurs, "deep breathes. You're okay."

He has to concentrate on breathing, time his jagged inhales with Adams because he can feel the edges of panic worming their way into his mind, blocking out everything else as he struggles to get his shuddering body under control. It's okay it's okay it's okay but no, it's not okay it will never be okay, because everything is sand and dirt and blood. And he's so cold, deep in his bones something is pulling the warmth out from his body like a fucking parasite.

It's overwhelming.

Waves roll through him, angry waves that tear at him and send needles piercing his spine and out through his shoulders, inching up the back of his neck.

"Breathe."

Breathe. Breathe. Breath. He sucks in breaths of cold air. Heaving.

"Takashi - Shiro - sweetheart, can you look at me?" Adam shifts closer, and Shiro is acutely aware of every inch of his body, the ground beneath is feet and the sound of Adam breathing and the feeling of his wrist in Shiro's grip.

He opens his hand and tips back, looks at the roof of the basement and thinks of how many pounds of dirt are over his head. Adam rubs at the crescent-moon marks that dot his skin.

Shiro wonders if anyone ever buried his body. He thinks about how much six feet of dirt weighs. Maybe there are flowers and grass and footprints above his head. He wonders what the pressure would feel like on his chest, if it's anything like the weight he feels right now as sensations floods back and - pain returns to his limbs as he resurfaces. There is so much blood, sticky and itching and he needs to get it off.

"I hurt you?" Is the first thing he asks, brushing his fingers along the angry red marks on Adam's wrist.

"No - no, Shiro. It's fine. Are you - "

"I need the blood off, Adam. Please, it's burying me."

Adam helps him shake of his shirt and jeans. His clothes are dried onto his body, stuck to his skin with blood and red scabs. He's left shivvering again in thin boxers, barefoot. There's blood mixing with the water now, leaving red-pink trails in the concrete that slowly crawl towards a rusting drain. He ducks his head under the hose and runs his fingers through his hair, shakes out the red until he can see white strands at the top of his vision. He watches dirt clear from his skin. Adam makes sure to avoid the cords and metal on his right as he sweeps the hose over Shiro's body.

"You have new scars," Adam whispers almost reverently.

That's one thing they got right about his clone body - almost every scar, from the angry sliver gashes along his rib-cage to the numb places on his left knee and the pockmarks that dot his temples. Of course, they're not all there.

"There used to be more," Shiro says, tracing a curved mark on his thigh, "they missed a few."

Adam makes a questioning noise, so Shiro continues, "I lost a tooth when I was a kid, but it's still here. And, there was a scar on my thumb - really thin, barely there - but I guess the Galra weren't able to match it. When they cloned me."

He doesn't want to think about how the scars got here, what this new body had to go through. Shiro can't dig up the memories.

"No tattoos, either," Shiro continues, "I guess no-one knew about those."

Adam ghosts his fingers over Shiro's rib-cage and raises the hem of his sweater, twisting to show tan skin and sharp ribs and below the purple-yellow bruises, faint text: "I am the love that dare not speak its name," he says, "When you died - I - wanted to carry you with me."

He remembers getting it done, eighteen years old and barely out of the closet. There were more, after that - stick n pokes done on the floor of his quarters, the bite of art on his skin. A pomegranate on his upper arm (lost, now, torn off by the Galra), the Garrison logo on his chest. Shiro bows his head, clenches his fist and feels more out of his skin than ever. Something crawls below his flesh, itches, a lost feeling that won't fucking go away.

Adam looks down at the water, at the blood running down Shiro's body, and frowns, "You're - Takashi - you've lost a lot of blood."

Shiro leans back, out of the spray of the hose as Adam leans down to stop the water, "Everything is. Still fuzzy, I guess. And cold."

His husband sucks in a sharp breath, gritting his teeth as he turns around to rummage through a bag he brought down to the basement with him. He turns back to Shiro with a bottle, and a sewing kit, "Take this," he says, passing Shiro the bottle - he can't quite read the label through the haze of his vision but it feels like liquor, and when he uncaps it with shaking hands, he smells something distinctly alcoholic. Oh.

"I really don't need - "  but he looks at the blood that's welling from his wounds and rethinks that. He's not sure how long it's been - maybe days, maybe hours since he was beaten on the cold tile floor. His head still hurts. His body still aches. Scabs haven't formed yet, so it can't have been long.

"I found some stuff when I left," Adam fiddles with the string, threading the needle and gripping it between thumb and forefinger of his right hand, "We both taught field medicine. We know what we're doing."

He sounds like he's trying to convince himself more than anything.

With a deep breath, Shiro tips the bottle back and takes a deep swig, recapping it and letting it fall to the floor when his arm aches from the movement. Fuck, he's going to need a lot of stitches. This'll hurt. He waits a moment for the warmth to seep in and for the floor to tilt a little more than it already is. Deep breaths. Prepare for the pain. He closes his eyes, thinks that maybe if he doesn't see the needle threading through his skin he can pretend that it's not happening. He's already full of hurt anyways.

But - no - he feels Adam's hand on his chest and the distinct bite of the needle. It draws a pained gasp from him, despite the sluggishness of the alcohol. He thinks he's swearing now, he's not sure if it's English or Japanese or any of the other languages he speaks. It could be a string of fucking Russian for all he knows, he can't quite reign in his words. Just - just focus on the ceiling. He looks up at the worn rafters and the crosses and some distant part of him wants to laugh but more pain is pulled into his body, the sharp sting of the needle and the tugging movement of thread through flesh. When he looks down, he sees blood on Adam's hands and red on his thighs. He didn't realize one of his attackers had a knife.

It stretches on for so fucking long. Hazy agony, blurry vision, he fumbles for the tequila bottle but Adam pushes his hand back and says, "Concussion. No. I'm almost done."

"Fuck you," Shiro manages to grit out, a bit of anger burning in his gut but he knows Adam is right.

Eventually, after far too much time, Adam steps back and swallows, tilting his head to the side nervously. God, Shiro hasn't seen that anxious tick in a long time. He misses the small movements that only he knew. Like how Adam's deep breath and the slight shift of his shoulders mean he's okay with the work he just did, he's decided that the stitches are good enough but the movement of his head means he's worried.

Being able to read someone else's body is good.

"I'm sorry that hurt. Are you okay?" Adam asks, taking another step back. Shiro nods.

Adam passes him a navy blue bed-sheet for a makeshift towel and turns his back as Shiro dries off, eliciting a soft chuckle from the other man as he dresses. His hair is damp, hanging in now-gray strands in-front of his eyes. Idly, he thinks that he needs a haircut.

He takes a deep breath and lurches to his feet, stumbling against Adam with a cry of pain that grinds at his bones. Adam catches him and together they climb up the stairs, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip.

Chapter Text

Thundering footsteps signal Adam’s return from another evening spent searching for food and medication. There’s something frantic this time, the thud of running feet in worn sneakers is panicked and off-kilter, stumbling with aching urgency. Adam’s face swims into view, sweat-drenched and panting in the low light of the church. It forces Shiro into the present, drags him from the half-asleep daydream state.

Black bleeds into the sky through a jagged hole in the roof, dark ink-blood and little shattered stars. Purple flashes on the other side of stained-glass windows. Adam's breathing sounds scared.

“Something is - “ Adam starts, gasping, bent over, one hand on his chest, “ - Shiro, something’s happening.”

Hearing Adam call him by his last name snaps Shiro into attention. He's heard fear in Adam's voice many times throughout his life - from hospital beds to cockpits to sterile airlocks and, yes, in the corner of a collapsing church. They're all different types of scared, and this isn't hospital-bed-fear. This is running fear, blood-on-teeth fear, adrenaline and bricks and bruises fear.

Shiro struggles to his feet, still leaning heavily on the wall, “What? Adam, what’s - “ Despite the panic pumping through his veins he still has to forcibly push through layers of fog to focus his eyes and really think.

To make the connection between the smell of smoke and the purple - what is it, why does it trigger that lurching in his gut, how is it bathing the sky like a terrible sunrise -

He’s cut off by the ground shaking, the creaking of the church. The windows shatter, sending colorful stained glass flying. Shiro smells burning and electricity and something alien, sharp and sour and dangerous. He careens to the side, falling to the hardwood floor with an awful thunk. Ribs and shoulders and bruises clash angrily against the ground, ripping open scabs and stitches. It takes him a crackling moment of painful electricity to remember that, oh, he’s missing his right arm. He presses his plan against the wounds and feels warm, sticky blood. Fuck. When he winces, he feels the pull of a split lip and tastes the salt of blood. There’s a ringing in his ears, persistent and painful, blotting out everything but he sound of his breathing and there is cotton and blood in his mouth.

Adam kneels on the ground in an instant, pulling Shiro to his feet with anxious fervor. He presses a firm hand against the worst gash and swears low under his breath.

Below his feet, the ground squirms and sways, sends his body tilting again. At his side, Adam supports his weight, one arm around his waist and the other a gentle pressure on his chest where his lungs heave. Shiro’s sure he can feel the discordant beating of his heart - it’s loud enough in his own ears.

“Steady,” Adam whispers in the same voice he used to when Shiro struggled to stand, years ago, twisted in an MRI pod. It sends something sharp and cold through Shiro’s chest, sliding right between his ribs.

Caleb scrambles from where he crouches in the corner, running his fingers through the dust to make smiley faces on the ground. He darts to Shiro’s side, latches onto his hand and looks around with wide eyes.

“Shiro? What happened? Are you okay? Please please be okay Shiro.”

“They’re fighting - “ Adam winces, leaning back and wiping sweat from his forehead, “ - Voltron and the Galra. I think the Garrison is evacuating the planet. There’s - there’s this, this purple light in the sky. We need to leave now.”

Shiro nods, stumbling forwards to tug Adam towards the wide-open double doors, “Just - start walking. Caleb, get your bag.” The child nods and runs to his pile of blankets, returning with a backpack over his shoulder and comics clenched in his small hands. Adam helps Shiro limp out the door. His legs wobble with each step and he can’t get his body to move in a straight line when everything sways in his hazy vision.

“The Galra,” Shiro says in ragged bursts of speech, “they destroy planets they can’t conquer. We need to get to the Garrison.”

“We won’t make it there on foot” Adam bites out, worry lining his face. Sand and pebbles crackle underfoot as they walk. Heat blooms behind him, the scalding heat of distant explosions. Shiro tries to place himself behind Adam and Caleb, tries to be a shield but Adam nudges him to the side with an affectionate glare.

“Are we going to die?” Caleb asks bluntly, gripping Adam’s elbow.

Shiro takes a deep breath and insists, firmly: “No. We’re fine. We’re fine.” But - God, are they really? His knee buckles, and he presses his weight against Adam, forcing himself forwards. Another step. He can make it.

Children once played in these streets, he thinks as they pass an elementary school. SLOW SCHOOL ZONE. The marquee board flickers weakly. An empty playground collapses on the blacktop, kickball walls knocking over and abandoned backpacks shuddering in the wind of explosions.

Purple streaks like lightning illuminate the sky. Violent bursts that leave a terrible glow. Shiro has to squeeze his eyes shut against the color, it’s the color of death and fear and helplessness. His ears ring. He stumbles when he walks.

After a block, Shiro’s legs are weak and his head fucking spins. He doubles over to kneel in the pavement, dry-heaving, forehead grinding against sand. Tears leak out of his eyes, running down his face and everything fucking hurts. One palm pressed into the ground, he tries to steady himself but everything is moving and swirling and when he cracks his eyes open his vision flickers, twisting. He can’t stop the dizziness that boils in his core. Adam wavers like a fun-house mirror. Distorted and nauseating. Shiro swallows and rests his forehead on the pavement, sand clinging to his cheeks and eyelashes, stuck to blood and sweat. Something ferociously sour and stinging rises in his throat and he spits out bile, coughing. Adam rubs gentle circles in his back and distantly Shiro can hear Caleb crying.

He drags his head up, slumps against Adam, digs his fingers into the sand and says, “I don’t think I can walk much further.”

Adam presses a fluttering series of kisses against Shiro’s temples, buries his face into the crook of Shiro’s neck and inhales deeply as purple lights flash and explosions shake the sky. They can hear metal grinding and when Shiro looks up, Adam’s hair brushes against his chin and he sees Voltron through the clouds. Flashes of green, red, yellow, black, blue.

“They’re alive, at least,” Shiro breathes, and Adam’s shoulders shake, “We’ll - we’ll make it. Just. Help me up.”

“Don’t make this worse, sweetheart,” Adam murmurs, wet teeth scraping on Shiro’s collarbone as he speaks.

Tears burn in Shiro’s eyes again and he feels Caleb curl at his side, slipping a small hand to slot against Shiro’s palm, “I don’t want to die again, Adam,” Shiro says.

The planet shakes. A building crashes down, sending up plumes of dust. Shiro closes his eyes against the chaos and the nausea in his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he says, kissing the crown of Adam’s head as his husband clutches him, shaking, “I love you so fucking much, Adam.” His chest aches.

He tips up Adam’s chin and presses a teary-eyed kiss against his mouth, gross breath and blood be damned. He needs to feel Adam’s lips before he dies for the second time.

Adam speaks through hiccuping sobs,“I love you, I love you, I love you. Sweetheart, my whole life and - and, if there’s anything after, my whole death I’ll never stop.”

There’s nothing after there’s nothing after there’s nothing after. Just black and purple and loneliness. Death is simply nothing. The end of the road.

It drags a sharp sob from Shiro’s throat and he curls down to protect them, protect Adam and Caleb and that’s his world, right here in the dusty streets of a fucking ruined Earth.

“We can’t,” Shiro says, “please. Help me stand. Adam. We can make it.”

He’s lying, the Garrison is miles away but he has to do something.

Adam exhales shakily, “Takashi, sweetheart, please.”

Adam always loved pet-names. Called Shiro honey and baby and sweetheart in soft, quiet moments. Always sweetheart. There was sir and captian panted between sheets and skin and thighs. Words whispered in kisses along the curve of Shiro’s spine.

Sweetheart.

He was the only one to call Shiro by his first name.

Shiro presses his face against Adam’s cheek, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die.”

Adam breathes shakily. The sky matches him with terrible blasts. Shiro wonders if this is how the dinosaurs felt, watching a meteor lurch towards their planet. He wonders what it’s like to go extinct.

All of the humans. Gone, wiped from their tiny little planet. He thinks he knows how Allura feels. When he looks at Adam, he understands her rage. How could any creature be cruel enough to take this from him?

Caleb cries.

Shiro pushes Adam back. He falls against the sand with fear in his clenched jaw and Shiro says, “Just run. Please.”

Chapter Text

“I’m not gonna leave you,” Adam bites out, glaring and scrambling forwards in the sand, batting aside Shiro’s outstretched hand that warns him to stop, get away. Save yourself. He's too weak to fight back when arms go around his shoulders again. He thinks he might be shaking. When he looks down at his hand he sees double. Two twin palms, red-knuckled and blue-veined. There's dirty and sand and blood caked under his fingernails.

He tells himself to conjure anger that doesn't exist, to throw it in Adam's face like a weapon. And he is mad, but not at Adam, not really. He's furious at the fucking universe, at ever God, at the Galra and the Alteans and the humans and himself.
Use that.

“Fucking go!” Shiro yells with his last ounce of energy. He sees his own blood splatter Adam’s face when his shout collapses into a cough. Voice breaking, he tries to shove Adam away but halfway through the movement his core gives out and he collapses, bracing himself with his elbow against the pavement. Sharp pain laces up his left side. Pain stabs through Shiro and he groans, curling in on himself. Black spots his vision and he sees two of Adam, wavering before him even though he should be gone by now. There's a soft feathering of fingers on his face, brushing sand and tears from his eyes.

The ground shudders with another explosion, blinding light shooting through the air. It dyes the horizon a chilling purple hue, lighting up the last few hollowed-out roadside buildings.

“Please,” Shiro sputters, scrambling back, trying to put as much distance between himself and Adam as possible, “I’ll be - I’ll be fine.”

Any anger in Adam's face (eyes like diesel fuel, compressed amber) drains with a deep sigh, "I'm not going anywhere without you. Not again."

Shiro's lips are dry, cracked. Anxiety pricks at his core, hot wells of nervousness that hit him deep, somewhere dark and awful. He renumbers what it felt like to curl on the floor of a Galra prison ship, bruised and beaten and crying hot tears. Metal beneath his back, digging into his sharp spine, and beneath that space.

He remembers wanting to throw himself out the airlock.

He remembers losing blood, dizzy on a cold operating table as wrongness overwhelmed his body and he looked to see a raw stump where his arm was. The way white noise crowded in his ears, the way his vision got spotty.

There's white noise in his head now, too. A cloud of buzzing horse flies. Spinning in time with the Earth.

When Adam stands, he pulls Shiro to his feet beside him, taking on all of his weight. Shiro can't quite hold his head up. Spinning, spinning, spinning. He can't get his legs to move forwards the next step. The noise is overpowering and everything is spotty, his vision slips yellow and goes sideways, shadows blotting out the light.

Then he's on his back. Sickness rises in his stomach and he can't see, can't hear, for a moment he thinks he's back in the body of the black lion but - a water bottle, pressed against his lips. It's stale and lukewarm but still the sweetest thing he's tasted. Fingers card through his hair, twisting and twirling the white strands.

Next time he opens his eyes, he's alone. Purple sky above him. There's a gun nestled in his palm. He's cold, shivering, teeth chattering painfully.

Calm hands on his shoulders and he smells gasoline. Adam's voice, whispered in his ear but he can't understand what he's saying. There's worn leather beneath his fingers now, more water on his lips. He can just barely crack open his eyes and see the strained, scared look on Adam's face.

Everything rumbles and it's not an explosion this time.

More water.

Words come into focus, soft singing under breath keeping beat with bombs. Shiro's moving fast, wind running though his hair and drying the blood on his face.

"What - " He tries to ask, "Adam?"

The singing stops abruptly, and he can open his eyes just enough to see flashes - a gas station, newspapers fluttering in the violent wind, a thin trail of gasoline leaking from a pump. There’s a body on the ground.

Adam's hands are shaking on a steering wheel.

"Car - where - " Shiro tries, swallowing, coughing, working to get his voice under control, "What happened?"

Adam turns to look at him, desert in in the backdrop, "I - um - found a car," he smiles thinly, "you passed out. I don't know if it's blood loss, or the concussion, or something else, because I'm not a fucking medic, Takashi, and - you scared me. You keep scaring me, sweetheart. Can we agree to just - " he cuts himself off, hitting the steering wheel in an uncharacteristic burst of anger. The horn goes off half-halfheartedly, and Adam continues, "just - just don'tdie, Takashi, please?"

"You died first," he tries to say.

"No, motherfucker, you died first so please, stop."

Shiro can hear the raw panic in Adam's voice, the way his words skip through his throat like he can't quite reign in his own thoughts.

If he lets his eyes droop shut just so, Shiro can imagine that bloodstains on the window are the sharp red tail-lights of cars. He can pretend that the road isn’t vacant, that the plumes of smoke are morning mist.

The Garrison is miles away, not even a glimmer in the distance. That’s a chilling sight.

He rolls his head to look at Adam, the way his fingers grip the steering wheel, the way the rough fabric of his jeans feels where Shiro’s left hand rests on his thigh. Safe. They’re close to safe. When he closes his eyes and feels the bite of wind on his face, chilling the bruises to numbness, he can right his balance and relax into the car’s rumbling. But the bumps and rocks of the vacant highway keep his eyes open, forcing him from the brink of sleep.

Hair whips in Adam’s eyes, framed by the moon and the blazing fires of the city. Shiro purses his lips and blows white strands out of his own eyes. He wonders how Adam is driving without glasses. Eyes squinted, wheel in a death-grip. Behind them, fire blazes and more explosions shake the ground. The car rolls over shrapnel and Adam winces. Shiro’s vision blurs, Adam fading in and out of focus. His head spins and he feels blood soaking his shirt from a multitude of cuts and wounds that haven’t quite healed. Fresh stitches strained and broken from movement. He’s cold, shivering. Adam catches his eyes in the shattered rear-view mirror and presses his foot down on the gas, sending the car shuddering forwards even faster, ripping across the asphalt and sending sand flying.

Gasoline and blood and smoke overwhelm his senses and steep into his skin.

It's lonely out here. Shiro knows, logically, of course, that there are people left on the planet. But this - watching the last dregs of the city blur by, the desert stretching before him and the sky splintering - this is an empty world. No life to be seen besides the bugs that hit the windshield, small suicides. They're happening everywhere - desert squirrels that dart between the twin yellow lines of the road, birds that swoop before the car like they know, they can feel it in the air. It's all ending and the clock is stepping towards the end for even the smallest grasshopper mouse. Even then, the world is still and quiet and he always thought the end might happen with screaming and crying and last rites. Not a bloody windshield and desert sand and every sensation narrowing down to the determined, scared look in Adam's shattered sunbeam eyes.

Something in the air is wrong. Shiro can feel it, an underlying tension that tightens the air like a nearly-stripped screw. It's about to make everything collapse. He knows with terrible certainty that the silence will shatter any moment. Even though the dizziness and the way the horizon line rolls in his vision, the pressure in the air is there, squeezing at his brain from behind his eye sockets.

The closer they get to the Garrison, the worse it is. Shiro can see his own anxiety echoed in Adam's posture, the tightness of his knuckles and the way he keeps glancing at Shiro from the corner of his eyes. The way he catches Shiro looking and fixes his gaze on the road with frightening intensity, eyes like an oil fire. Even Caleb whimpers, sinking low in the backseat.

Above them, a web of purple creeps over the planet. It's briefly broken but sparks of light - green and red and, yes, that's Voltron.

"I should be up there," Shiro mutters, clenching his fist. Adam drops his hand to rest on Shiro's, lancing their fingers together. It's not enough to hold back the frustration and the helplessness, but it's something. If he hadn't left to find Adam, he would be out there. Even if he was piloting a fucking MFE Fighter. He'd be doing something.

They're almost to the Garrison.

It takes Shiro a shuddering moment (a half-heartbeat, a hitched breath) to see the source of the wrongness, and it's so blatantly obvious he can't help but be mad at himself for not noticing sooner.

"The lights are off," Adam whispers, urging the car faster, foot heavy on the gas pedal, tearing down the highway, "the lights, Takashi."

The Garrison is dark. Unlit. It should be bustling with activity. There should be ships shooting from the hangers. No glowing orange particle barrier, no landing lights - nothing. It's just another black spot in the desert.

The security station is abandoned, gates left open with frightening carelessness. Adam drives through them, skidding to a halt outside the hanger. There are backpacks and jackets and papers littered over the ground, footprints deep gouges in the dirt. But there's no-one there.

A thick layer of dust and sand coats the Garrison.

Adam stops the car outside the entrance, scoring tire tracks along the cement with terrible urgency. He springs from his seat, at Shiro's side in an instance to pull him to his feet. Shiro tries to wave him off, tries to walk, but - that's definitly not happening, he realizes when his legs threaten to buckle the moment his feet touch the ground on their own.

So he's left leaning heavily on Adam, both of them all sharp bones and wiry muscle.

"Hello?" Adam calls out, urging Shiro forwards and gesturing for Caleb to come to his side. He has one hand on a gun tucked into the belt of his jeans, the other a constant pressure around Shiro's waist.

Adam coughs dust, taking a deep breath and yelling again, "Is anyone here?" There's no response and Adam gets desperate, fist slamming on the Garrison doors as Shiro slumps at his side, "Please - please. It's Lieutenant Commander Withers and Captain Shirogane."

Chapter Text

No response. Something akin to panic - still dulled and distant - makes it's way into Shiro's skull.

Adam's voice cracks with wild fear and he drags his fingernails along the chipped door, scoring faint scratches in the once-polished metal, "Where is everyone? Please. Takashi is - is injured."

"Adam," Shiro says, watching blood drip from his mouth and splatter onto the ground, "Adam."

Now his husband looks, hand pausing where his fist rapped on the metal door moments ago.

“They’re gone.”

“No,” is all Adam says, even-toned now despite the film of fear that clouds his eyes, “No, they wouldn’t leave.”

Shiro sakes his head, and it’s not like he doesn’t have faith in the Paladins (they’re the only people, the only things he’s ever really had faith in besides Adam, and look where that got him) but, “I would have told them to leave, Adam. I guess they listened.”

It’s true. He’s glad they left. They’re safe now.

“Someone has to be here. They wouldn’t abandon the Garrison like this. We can make it off-world.” Adam says, more a question than statement, swallowing, glancing between Shiro and the locked door.

Shiro shrugs awkwardly without both limbs, weight falling to one side, “We’ll figure out a way.” He tries to summon encouraging words, tries to access the fire in his blood. He falls short.

But first, they have to get into the Garrison. They stumble along the southern side of the building, searching for any open hatch, door, or window - everything is locked with thick fucking bulletproof glass. Even Shiro’s metal arm couldn’t break that. If he had it. Which he doesn’t.

They round the corner to find the greenhouse in shambles, once tall and majestic now overrun and near collapsing. Shiro’s spent many a night crouched in the citrus orchard (oranges and lemons and tangerines, sweet sticky juice, sugary and sour), and he knows - this external structure is breakable.

Glass shatters at their feet and Adam pushes his way past the metal framing, wincing when his coat snags on a jagged shard. It catches the light like fairy dust or the glitter, illustration on a children's book or laughing faces at rainbow-swathed parades.

The state of the greenhouse is a startling reminder of how long Shio has been gone. He can't help but wonder when they started letting it fall into disarray, when the Garrison's horticulturists and botanists stopped mattering. Birds flutter through the cracked ceiling, darting with unmistakable urgency. Glass crackles underfoot.

This used to be Biosphere 2 for the new space-age.

Tall barnyard grass pokes between the cobblestones, swaying in a hazy breeze. Morning glory crawls up the steel frame, weaving between shattered windows. The greenhouse has been neglected for a long time. He can't quite remember the state of it when he first came back, but - it wasn't this bad. As he walks past bushes and plants catch on his ankles, burrs stick to his clothing, an irritating reminder of how wrong this is.

With the sun rising and chasing away nighttime chills, oozy sunlight trickles through the once-polished glass and sweat beads on Shiro’s upper lip. It’s gossamer and foggy in here, and it only makes the cobwebs in his head worse.

There's multiple sections of the greenhouse. They break through the door and step out onto the main path, but it's no less overrun than the others. On either side of them tower the enclosed glass buildings. What was once a simulated tropical environment is now dusty, the wide leaves of a fiddle leaf fig brown and crumbling. Ferns that once curled along the ground, small spirals and delicate fronds withered and dead.

They pass what used to be a polar climate, perfectly cold and icy. The arid zone is clinging to life, but the food-yielding greenhouses are succumbing to the heat. Rows of corn now bowed and dry, tomato fields haggard and crumbling. Spider mite webs span the herb garden.

At the back door to the Garrison waits a keypad, gathering cobwebs and dust. Adam's hand hovers over the numbers and he bites his lip, thinking, before typing a long string of numbers that Shiro quickly loses track of.

Nothing.

"It's locked," Adam mutters under his breath, punching a new keycode in - but the pad remains dull and unresponsive, "Shit."

Shiro inclines his head back down the corridor, pointing at the Mediterranean-climate garden where a hunched pomegranate tree struggles to survive, roots stretched out deep into the earth. Other plants used to grow there too, soft lamb’s ear and sweet blackberries that scratched Shiro's skin years ago. Plants nearly equipped to the harsh desert - but still, dying.

Adam grimaces and wipes his face with the back of his hand. Sorrow wells in Shiro's throat because this was their corner of the garden, the dead spot they're creeping towards.

Shiro crouches behind the pomegranate tree, pushes aside creeping weeds and for a moment he thinks it's not there but then his fingers brush metal. The maintenance hatch his locked from the inside, but, unless they've fixed Shiro and Adam's break-in, it should open easily with a gentle tug. And it does, a small square section of the ground pulling up, revealing a narrow ladder, and below that, darkness. Adam grins, light coming back into his eyes.

"What is this place?" Caleb asks, ever inquisitive, and Shiro chuckles.

"We came here when we were kids," He says, leaning back as Adam clims down and helps Shiro through the hatch. It takes a fumbling moment for Shiro to follow, struggling to get his legs to cooperate and reach the rung. Caleb follows just above him as they descend.

It's hard work climbing a ladder with only one arm.

At the end of the ladder is another sealed hatch - this one requires a little more work to open.

"Do you remember?" Shiro asks as Adam shuffles further down to barely hang on to the ladder as he pushes at the ground - or, well, the ceiling. It's dark but he can see Adam nod and pull a knife from his pocket, flipping it open and prodding at the edge of the door, hissing under his breath until - finally! - it opens with a gentle pop as the seals disengage.

Adam drops to the ground and gestures for Shiro to do the same. There's a frightening moment of falling before his feet hit the ground, sending shoots of pain up his ankles. Adam is quick to catch him and help Caleb down.

"How did you do that?" Caleb whispers, eyes wide in the low light.

Shiro can't help but grin, and even through the fog in his head he knows and he remembers, "Adam and I used to sneak out to the greenhouse at night."

"Why?"

Now it's Adam's turn to smile, "Because we could."

It's not lost on Shiro that their brief streak of teenage rebellion might be saving their life.

Inside the Garrison it is dark, thin light filtering through blacked-out windows and layers of sand. There's nothing to indicate a fight, no blood or bodies or burned charcoal blasts. But the building is dead, mere bones sunken into the earth on a foundation of fickle cement and metal pipes. Still and silent. This is somehow worse than the stagnant city, because this place was once Shiro's. The city never belonged to Shiro, but the Garrison did. He poured every ounce of his blood into these walls. And for what - a pipe-dream of stardust?

He's stumbling down halls that he once strode through head held high, badges shining. Two-armed and black-haired and not nearly as half-dead as he is now.

"They're gone," Adam whispers as they pass the instructors lodge, pass the coffee machine they used to drink from and the lecture halls they used to teach in, "What happened?"

Everything collects dust in the end.

"They left," Shiro mutters, dragging his fingers along the wall and watching the trail they make in the dust, "Good. They'll survive." His voice sounds hollow even to his own ears, even through the fog and white-noise buzzing he knows how fucking hopeless and broken the words are. He also knows it's uncharacteristic - maybe it's the concussion talking, or maybe it's the doubt that's rooted in his heart (somewhere in the upper right atria, he thinks).

Without really acknowledging it, they head towards the control room. A thin sound echos down the halls, metallic and rusty and, is that a voice?

Shiro can hear snippets of it as Adam urges him forwards faster, stumbling. He knows this voice, Adam knows this voice and he turns to Shiro pale-faced and whispers, "Keith?" He swears under his breath, sharp and angry.

"He should have fucking left," Shiro clenches his fist, eyes narrowing. That dumbass, out to save everyone but himself.

They push open the heavy metal door and collapse into the control room, falling against the wall as Shiro teeters to the side.

And the room is fucking empty. Just as shattered as the greenhouse. Without the air circulation running Shiro can taste dust and metal with each breath. The door was sealed, leaving the room perfectly untouched. Empty despite the thin, staticky voice that is unmistably Keith’s.

“ - PLANETARY CATASTROPHE, WE ARE EVACUATING EARTH. ALL CITIZENS HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO REACH AN EVACUATION CENTER. WE WILL TRY TO HOLD THE GARRISON AS LONG AS POSSIBLE AS WE AWAIT YOUR RETURN, BUT IN THE EVENT THAT YOU DO NOT MAKE IT BACK IN TIME,” Keith’s voice hitches and breaks down, barely concealing tears and Shiro can picture his face, lined with pain and fear and anger, as he mutters under his breath “fuck, Shiro, I - I. I can't do this, Allura. I'm sorry. This is - Shiro, please, there's not much time left. Get off-world.” And the message loops back again, Keith’s voice strong and powerful before he dissolves: “THIS IS A MESSAGE FOR CAPTAIN TAKASHI SHIROGANE. VOLTRON HAS BEEN UNABLE TO CONTACT YOU. IN CASE OF A PLANETARY CATASTROPHE, WE ARE EVACUATING EARTH. ALL CITIZENS HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO REACH AN EVACUATION CENTER. WE WILL TRY TO HOLD THE GARRISON AS LONG AS POSSIBLE AS WE AWAIT YOUR RETURN, BUT IN THE EVENT THAT YOU DO NOT MAKE IT BACK IN TIME, - fuck, Shiro,” his voice breaks again and Shiro pushes it to the background. Tries to compartmentalize the strain in Keith’s words because, that’s his son, his brother, his best friend who thinks he’s dead again. And he might as well be.

“He sounds older,” Adam says though clenched teeth.

“It’s a long story."

It's all Shiro can summon the energy to say. Of course, that answer only serves to make Adam more confused. He shrugs it off and steps up to the console, hands hovering over the rows and rows of buttons, “We can try to reach them.”

Adam's fingers fly across the communications panel, a confused expression overtaking his face because he's not a communications expert, that wasn't his job, but the least he can do is try to open a line with Voltron.

"What's the frequency?" He turns to Shiro where he's crumpled in the captain's chair, white hair falling in-front of his eyes and blood speckling his lips. It's a terrible image, and when Shiro raises his head to meet Adam's eyes, his own are bloodshot with fear and tear-tracks clear dust from his cheeks.

He has to wrack his brain for a second, desperately searching his mind until, oh, right, "It's a, um, it's a quantum frequency. Try - " fuck, Pidge set it, "Voltron sometimes uses 145.825."

Adam punches in the numbers and is faced with static. It takes a moment to start up a de-encryption program, but even then - nothing. He pulls at his hair and shoots Shiro a frantic look, "What else?"

“It’s heavily encrypted, but, um, try 1005.25.”

Adam types in the numbers and runs the decoding sequence, slowly turning a thin metal nob. Shiro can’t quite make out what exactly he’s doing, blurry as his vision is. It’s not like it would have mattered - neither of them know much about communications, least of all Shiro.

He always taught emergency medicine, battlefield tactics, that sort of thing. A bit of astrobiology some terms, and he had to take over an exoplanet ecosystems class once. That was confusing as fuck.

But never communications.

Static plays through the speakers, but - there might be a voice, somewhere, but the line is so fucking encrypted that even Adam' calls of, “Garrison Lieutenant Commander Adam S. Withers reporting, seeking aid," heed no response other than white noise that's starting to grind at Shiro's skull like sandpaper.

It's no use and Adam slams his fist down on the console, leaving a bloody smear across faintly glowing keyboards. A heavy explosion mirrors his anger and the whole room flickers. For a moment Shiro thinks it's in his head, but, no, the scared expressions on Adam and Caleb's faces say otherwise.

"We need to get off the planet," Shiro says, trying to pull himself to his feet but his knees give out and he falls back onto the chair, "We need to - "

He's interrupted by a crackling voice, and Adam is back at the communications panel in an instant, gripping the small black microphone with a white-knuckled fist, "Hello? Garrison Lieutenant Commander Adam S. Withers reporting, seeking aid with Captain Takashi W. Shirogane. I repeat: Garrison Lieutenant Commander Adam S. Withers reporting, seeking aid with Captain Takashi W. Shirogane."

They wait a breathtaking moment in silence, Shiro's sure his heart is pounding loud enough for Adam to hear.

"Hello Lieutenant Commander Withers, this is COMMO Curtis Michael. What is your situation?"

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

As the evacuation vessel drifts and turns, the window moves to face other side of the Galaxy, and - between stars and somewhere in-front of Mars, there is a fleet. For a moment, fear overwhelms Shiro's throat and he's already so tired that he has to concentrate through the numbness to realize that no, those are not Galra ships.

It's a hodgepodge of vessels - the clean white and orange of the Garrison, gaudy bright extraplanetry tourism transporters, the sharp angles of a Russian spacecraft. Something large and blue-white, curved and distinctly Altean.

Huddled together in the freckling of stars - that's what's left of Earth. That's the human race.

There are Galra, of course. Shiro isn't sure what exactly happened, but small bursts of light fire off and Voltron sweeps around the last remains of humanity. Defending them. He assumes the Galra exerted the last of their energy on destroying the planet, because Voltron is picking them off with - not ease, but something close to it.

Shiro shuffles to the small console. The pod is an outdated model, all thick buttons and bright lights. But the distress signal is the same. He presses the large, red square and prays that it'll work. Adam grabs his hand, shaking, and tangles this fingers together. It takes Shiro a moment to realize that, oh, he's shaking too, violent and achy, teeth clenched. He tastes blood in his mouth and remembers the teeth he's missing, the pain in his ribs and his chest comes back and he's just tired now.

Something presses in the corner of his mind, something dark like deep chocolate, warm coffee and tattoo ink. It's oily and slick, twisting by his ears and eye sockets.

He wonders what the Paladins are thinking. How they're still fighting, even now. Dry of all energy, what is there left to save? Yes, the people, but a homeless race. Not quite ready to branch out to the Galaxy.

The feeling in his head grows and he growls, spine twitching.

"Shiro?" Adam asks, but it's not that something is wrong with the thing in his head, it cools the pain, whispers words that have no meaning - just a feeling, soundless sounds. Shiro hasn't felt this in a long time, the connection and the shiro, safe? arm scared please, earth, sorry. help? It's not a voice, just a wash of fuzzy images and sensations, all tinged with worry and sorrow. The thoughts aren't as clear as they were when Shiro was suspended in the astral void, or even when he was the pilot, but it's something even if it does take Shiro a moment of confusion to interpret the not-words.

"It's the Black Lion," he says, squeezing Adam's hand because this is good, even if there's still a fresh tear rolling down his cheek, "He's talking to me."

Shiro closes his eyes, tries to say paladins? adam, me, child, find.

keith, the Lion says in a series of images - memories - and sends a rush of relief and exhaustion that aren't his own or the Lion's. It's all tinged with red-anger and purple on the edges.

keith? Shiro tries to ask and is instantly met with a wash of affirmation. Fragments of memories flood into his mind in hazy succession. Shiro sees himself, tall and proud and self-assured, parental through Keith's eyes. Old, old, fading and blurry memories of family dinners and movie nights and bedtime stories.

find, find, find he tries to say, find me.

He can't summon any more thoughts so he buries his head in Adam's shoulder and subs, awful and ugly and heaving. Adam threads his fingers through Shiro's hair and hunches down, chin pressing against the crown of Shiro's head. He's so warm compared to the chill of space, his breathing so steady compared to the constant whirring of life-support systems.

There is nothing to say, so they don't speak. Instead, they inhale. exhale at the same time, and try not to think.

It's so quiet here.

Shiro wonders if there's food on board. He wonders how long they can survive here.

The Paladins find Shiro drifting past Phobos, spinning in a slow mockery of orbiting. He's jolted out of sleep - when did he fall asleep? - at a loud, metal-on-metal sound and despite the pain he hauls himself to his feet, barreling forwards to protect protect protect. His fist collides with something solid, knuckles scraping on armor.

There's no cry of pain, just a harsh breath and, "Shiro, it's me."

Shiro doesn't have a chance to absorb that because Adam pushes him aside while the fog is still fading, and he's wrapping his arms around a black-haired form, whispering a harsh, "Why the fuck didn't you stop him? Why - Keith, I was. I was so worried about you. Don't ever - don't ever - leave again."

Keith blinks, stumbling back. He opens his mouth to speak but Adam doesn't stop, "First you run away to the fucking desert, then I hear that you're in space?"

"Adam? You're - " Keith staggers, relief dripping from his face as he lurches forwards and melts into Adam's embrace, "You're alive?" Shiro can see his fingers digging into Adam's shoulder.

Adam nods wordlessly, rocking for a moment then pulling back to examine Keith's face, "You're both so . . . scarred." Shiro can see the anger melt from him.

"So are you, Adam. And Shiro - he's - " Keith turns towards Shiro, kneeling to reach a hand out and pull him to his feet, "What happened to you?"

Shiro tries to smile but the movement pulls at bruises and makes his gums ache so he just says, "A lot. How are all of you?"

"Let's get you two to the medbay, alright?" Lance's voice sounds from somewhere to Shiro's left. It's soft and quiet and stricken, unsure of what to say or how to say it.

He and Adam must be a grisly sight, bloody and marred by a Renaissance of purple-yellow bruises. Shiro still can't stand on his own, and Adam limps as he stumbles out of the escape vessel. Caleb trails behind, twisting the hem of his shirt in anxious fingers.

"Hi - um - who's the kid?" It takes Shiro a moment to recognize the voice, and he's terrified it's someone new but - Hunk. Kind, gentle Hunk shuffling to Caleb's side to offer a candy of some sort as he asks, "What's your name?"

"Caleb. Are you one of the superheros?"

"That would be - well, that would be pretty cool. What d'you think my powers would be, Caleb?"

Walking to the infirmary is a blur. They're not on one of the Lions, but this isn't the Castle either and Shiro has no idea where he's going but he leans on Keith and grips Adam's hand and walks. Because this isn't the desert or the floor of a hollow church.

Allura's there too, a hazy streak of purple in the corner of his vision. He can't get his eyes to focus but he thinks Keith looks scared. Through the ringing in his ears he can hear Pidge's voice.

Someone lowers Shiro down onto a hospital bed. The tightness of a tourniquet and a pinpick of pain on the soft skin of his inner arm and signal an IV.

And he finally lets himself close his eyes. Lets the fear and aching terror leech out of his bones.

At least the Paladins are together, standing in one room and they're alive.

Shiro never expected to survive the wasteland.