Chapter Text
Nothing was as it used to be. Keith had always been withdrawn but he was becoming more so. People were just always there, and he felt them breathing down his neck.
Keith didn’t remember that night. Not really, but he hadn’t been able to sleep for a week. The darkness kept him awake so he had just sat in the common room with all the light on waiting for the dawn to break before he went back to his dorm room and tried to sleep but never succeeding before his roommate left every morning.
He did try to go to classes but as soon as people saw him they started to send him looks and whisper. At first, Keith had thought that he was just being paranoid but just as he had prepared his own pep talk, he started to hear the same words being thrown around as soon as a group of people saw him. They called him a liar, a snitch. This wasn’t high school and Keith suddenly missed his senior year when people would make a big deal about bringing coffee with them every morning. They had been pretentious but at least it had been better than now when people didn’t care about how childish they acted as they stared Keith down.
Monday turned into Wednesday before he tried to go to class again, but as soon as he saw the crowd of people going into the building he turned around and just walked.
He must have walked for hours when he saw Pidge. The sun was at its highest in the chill fall air.
He saw the moment that Pidge saw him. She stopped for a second and then speed-walked towards Keith.
“Hey, Keith.” Keith could almost see the question marks in her eyes.
“Hey,” he mumbled.
The air was awkward. Pidge was clearly trying to find something to say while Keith was just trying to control himself. He tried to remind himself that nothing had happened today. Nothing had really happened this week. He was just being dramatic.
Keith felt something against his hand and pulled it away as if he had been burned.
“Relax,” Pidge said and barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “I was just trying to comfort you.” She looked away with furrowed eyebrows. “Like Lance has done.”
“Lance asks me before he touches me.” Keith knew how standoffish he looked, but he still couldn’t stop himself from crossing his arms. His right arm was between his left one and his chest arm he could feel the nails of his right hand through his left sleeve.
“Okay, if you say so,” Pidge answered in a deadpanned voice that would have told the story of how little she believed him if her straight eyebrows and half-lidded eyes had failed. “Not like he holds your hand all the time or anything.”
“He always asks,” Keith insisted. “He even checks in on it if he has held it for a long time.”
“Really?” Pidge asked as her eyebrows tried to meet in the middle. It was a love story between two light brown caterpillars that would never truly meet but would try several times a day. At least they had done every time she talked to Keith since that night.
“Yes,” Keith confirmed. “Don’t touch me before asking.”
“Okay.” Pidge studied Keith’s face. “Can I hold your hand?”
“Yes,” Keith allowed her. “But don’t hold it too tight.” He set his jaw and looked away before loosening his grip on himself.
“Sure,” Pidge answered. She still seemed unsure about how she should tackle this situation, but she held his hand as lightly as possible. He could barely feel her skin against his and he knew that he would be able to shake it off his with barely any strength.
They stood in silence once more but this one was a pleasant kind. Pidge was brushing her thumb back and forth Keith’s hand. She did it with a jagged movement, but it was comforting all the same.
“Is this because you have to go to the station later today?”
Yes, his gut told him. “I don’t know,” he said and looked away from her.
Pidge’s thumb stopped moving.
“Do you want to wait in my room until Shiro’s done with his lessons?” Her eyes looked big and innocent as Keith turned his eyes back on her, but he felt safer as he looked at her.
--
“Were you really raped or just regretted what happened?” the police officer asked. His round face could have looked kind, but his stubble and cold eyes gave him a chilling, unfriendly aura.
Keith’s inside lit on fire, but he strangled the flame before he acted rashly. “He tried to… ra-rape…”
“It’s a very serious accusation,” the police officer informed Keith.
Keith would have said something snarky just a week ago but now he was drained and didn’t have the energy to even try.
“You can ruin someone’s life with this,” the officer continued. “Rolf Taylor is a star athlete and his future career will be ruined if this comes out.”
Keith looked down at his hands. One of his hands was holding the other’s wrist while that one’s thumb was rubbing his index finger. He nodded twice before answering, “Okay.”
Keith didn’t really know why he was told all this. Maybe an attempt to guilt him out of saying anything but his friends had already made sure he would say the truth and he would do it for them. He needed to make them proud. They were all that he had left. Knowing that Shiro was at the station helped even though Keith knew that Shiro would only be able to know anything that happened in this room if Keith decided to tell him.
“You can still take your statement back.”
“I know,” Keith said even though he didn’t. Keith didn’t know if police officers were allowed to lie, but it sounded and felt like one. Just listening to this officer made his stomach feel full of rocks and his tongue heavy.
“Are you sure you can live with the outcome of this?” the officer asked.
Keith’s eyes felt warm and he wanted to either hit something or cry. Maybe do both at the same time so he seemed even crazier than he really was.
“I have to live with the outcome of what he did anyway.” Keith shrugged but it was so painfully fake that not even a blind man would have called what Keith did anything close to nonchalance.
“Very well,” The officer sighed as he leaned forward in his seat and pressed the record button on the device between them.
“Tell me about Friday, September 7, 2018,” the officer said slowly and clearly both as an order for Keith to talk and to tell the device the date it was recording Keith about.
Keith took a deep breath and hoped the punishment for underage drinking wouldn’t be too strict and that it wouldn’t make his words untrustworthy. “I was celebrating my college’s birthday. We went out at about 10 pm and I met this guy, Rolf, but I didn’t know his name then. He bought me a drink and-“
Keith kept talking. The start of the tale wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t too bad before he got to the part where Rolf was dragging him home and everyone they went past just thought he was drunk. The police officer asked a few questions such as the name of the nightclub, which Keith reluctantly gave. He knew that the club would get in trouble for selling alcohol to minors. Even if no one believed Keith.
It all was a panicked mess and Keith didn’t like the look in the officer’s eyes as he confessed to not know the name of the street that he ended up in. The look didn’t change when he explained that he was too affected by the drug at that point. Keith couldn’t even remember how he got away from Rolf. He remembered his phone but other than that it was all just a mess of panic.
Even talking about the parts he didn’t remember was uncomfortable and the police officer didn’t seem like he believed Keith but he didn’t outright do anything wrong so Keith couldn’t complain.
He even thanked Keith for coming into the station before Keith walked back to Shiro’s side.
--
“I don’t want to witness against him,” Keith muttered as soon as he and Shiro came back from the station. They had barely walked through the door and everyone else would meet them as soon as their lectures ended.
“Keith,” Shiro breathed out somehow both rebuking and sympathetically. “You have to.”
“No!” Keith denied stubbornly. He knew how it sounded. Him not wanting to put a rapist behind bars just because he didn’t feel like it but he didn’t think he could do it. “I don’t have to do anything. No one can force me to do anything I don’t want to do.”
Shiro’s fire deflated but he still kept strong. “No, of course not.”
Keith looked away and just hummed in response.
“But Keith,” Shiro waited for Keith to look at him but just exhaled and continued when that didn’t happen. “Don’t you want to make sure that he can never hurt anyone else? Wouldn’t you at least feel safer knowing that he can never hurt you either?”
He would never stop hurting Keith and Keith knew that Shiro knew that. There would always be nightmares of what-ifs and moments that Keith felt trapped and defenseless but Keith also understood what Shiro meant and knowing that his attacker was locked up somewhere far away sounded like a sweet song. It was killing Keith that Rolf Taylor’s parents had paid bail.
“What if-“ Keith started unprompted but needed an encouraging look from Shiro to continue. “What if they won’t believe me?”
Shiro exhaled and his eyes softened from sympathy to pity. “They will believe you. There’s enough proof with just your blood and the phone calls. There’re so many witnesses. But Keith,” Shiro put a hand on Keith’s shoulder, “we really need you to tell what happened too.”
“I already told the police,” Keith mumbled so quietly that it was a wonder Shiro heard it or maybe he just saw Keith’s mouth moving and guessed Keith’s words correctly.
“I know you told them but you being in the court would make sure that you get justice.”
“I want him dead,” Keith answered honestly. “That would be a better justice.”
“Me too,” Shiro confessed with a crazed look in his eyes. “More than anyone would believe but we can’t do that and I would sleep better knowing he can’t hurt you or anyone else again.”
“Okay,” Keith answered. “Okay, I’ll go.”
Shiro’s mouth lifted into a soft and sad smile. It wasn’t happy but it was relieved with Keith’s answer. “Thank you.”
Keith didn’t say that Shiro shouldn’t thank Keith for putting his would-be rapist behind bars nor should he have to convince Keith to do the right thing. Keith just accepted that that was how the world was even though it was so hard just knowing what he had to do.
--
Unfortunately going to court meant that Keith needed someone to represent him. Which Keith couldn’t afford or knew where to find but as soon as he told this worry to the others while sitting in Shiro’s and Matt’s tiny two-bedroom apartment, Lance had gotten a pensive look on his face and excused himself only to return a few hours later telling everyone that he had talked to an attorney. She was willing to at least meet Keith that week.
“Oh, do you have tomorrow at 1 pm?”, Lance asked as if he hadn’t shocked everyone in the room. As if he hadn’t just pulled a lawyer out of nowhere.
“Sure…” Keith finally found the strength to look away from Lance.
Keith heard from Lance about Allura but only barely. She was a cousin of a cousin who graduated from law school in June and needed some cases to her name. Apparently, she came from old money and had therefore agreed to only get paid a symbolic amount. Or apparently, that was what Lance had said when he explained how she would meet Keith in Lance’s and Hunk’s dorm room with all 3 boys present that Friday.
Keith really hadn’t had any expectations for her beyond that. He had for a second thought that she would look exactly like Lance until he remembered that she wouldn’t be blood-related to him, and then his thoughts had been occupied with so much else before he could think more about her.
If he had expected anything it wouldn’t be anything like the woman who walked into the dorm room.
Her skin was a warm brown. Her nose was small and sharp, and her mouth was almost as narrow and full as a porcelain doll. Her blue eyes seemed to shine but not as much as her pure white hair that Keith couldn’t imagine was natural but also couldn’t believe was dyed with how fair her eyebrows were.
Allura was simply put beautiful in an eternal way and looked like the American vision of a melting pot of races. She had a mixture of so many features from so many ethnicities that it would be impossible to pinpoint anything to her.
“Hello,” she greeted and stretched out her hand. Keith was so surprised by her British accent that he reacted a moment later than what would be considered normal. “You must be Keith.”
“Yes, that’s me.” Keith nodded. “And you’re Allura, right?”
Allura simply nodded and sent Keith a smile before moving over to Hunk’s bed and seated herself. She threw one leg over the other and collected her hands in her lap.
“I’ve heard a bit from Lance, but I would like to hear it from you, so I know exactly what the situation is.”
Keith wasn’t sure if he felt comforted about her confidence or put out that she didn’t even question if he wanted her to represent him in court. He didn’t even feel like they had properly greeted each other yet. Keith quickly remembered that he didn’t have other candidates and seated himself on Lance’s bed so he would be facing her.
“Can’t you just hear it from Lance?” Keith leaned forward so his face would be hidden behind his hair and he could look down at the hands that he had placed between his legs.
“No, I would rather like to hear it from you. Lance says that you don’t remember much from the assault, but I would like to know what happened before. Whether we have anything to hide or not and if there’s anything we need to make sure that the jury should know. “
It sounded logical when Allura said it, but Keith still didn’t want to. He wished that he could just hide in his bed for a few weeks and come out to everything being fixed. He knew that he couldn’t so he simply folded himself further into his body until his shoulders touched the bottom of his ears.
“Do-do you want us to go?” Hunk asked and Keith could practically feel the vibrations until Keith shook his head.
Somehow without stalling or saying anything Hunk and Lance sat on either side of Keith as he told Allura everything that he remembered from that night and held his breath as Lance continued from the phone call to the hospital. It was surreal to hear about events that he didn’t remember happening but all the feelings from. Just hearing about how he had sounded through the phone made his heart beat faster and breathing became a chore the more he listened.
He had looked at his hands through everything. How he moved his fingers instinctually to self-soothe and how his hands became fists when he had to force something out.
There was a short break before Allura spoke once more and startled Keith enough to sit up straight and look right at her. “You need to go to the station to turn yourself in for underage drinking.”
“What?” Lance exclaimed as both Keith and Hunk were too stunned to say anything.
Allura’s eyes moved over all three faces with no trace of hesitation. “The defender will use everything they have against you. They can still use it against you in this case, but it would hold far less power if you have already gotten your punishment for underage drinking. You will still be punished for it even if you don’t go down and turn yourself in. However, your punishment will be less severe and your word will hold more power if we can convince the jury that you too truthful to lie or hide anything from that night.”
“I don’t know, Allura.” Hunk fidgeted even more. “It sounds very risky to confess to anything like that.”
Allura turned her eyes on Hunk and Keith felt a chill at the look in her eyes. “And how do you suggest we never mention the two drinks that Keith consumed? And prove it wrong if the defender mentions it?”
“I-I I- don’t know…”
” Exactly.” Her eyes turned back to Keith. The frightening look in her eyes was gone but he still froze up as she looked into his eyes. “You will probably get a fine but otherwise a slap on the wrist for turning yourself in. Worst case is that you get a fine and either community service or suspend your driving license for a year.”
She tilted her head as her eyes went up and down Keith’s whole body. It felt like ants crawling all over his skin, but he didn’t say anything. “It will be your first offense, right?”
“Yes,” he mumbled and didn’t use much force behind the word but Allura seemed to have heard and understood him anyway because she straightened up and took a breath that moved her whole chest. She stood up and offered Keith her hand once more.
“I’ll come with you.” She looked to both sides of Keith before zooming in on Keith again. “The other two can come too but we have to leave immediately.”
Keith took a deep breath, swallowed, and took her hand before following her out the door with Hunk and Lance right behind him.
--
Keith got a letter a few days later that said that his license was revoked for 3 months and he now had a $100 fine for underage drinking. He didn’t really need a license at the moment but he liked the ability to. His ability to leave felt like the only luxury he had had since college started and it was now taken away from him.
At least the charge would be dismissed if he didn’t get caught doing anything else illegal for the next year.