Chapter Text
“Trust me.” It’s muttered one night by the little scrap of a thing always tasked with bringing Shiro his evening gruel. “I’m going to get you out.”
Shiro has no idea how old the Galra is, but he’s so small that Shiro has to assume young. He’s the one Shiro sees most often, after the guards and the druids, and he’s the only one that Shiro does not hate.
In a sad way, it helps that it’s clear there is no love lost between the boy and his superiors. More often than not, when he comes to Shiro bearing food and water, he’s walking gingerly, or sporting a swollen eye or split lip.
Shiro has his suspicions that tending to him, the Champion, is some sort of punishment. He hadn’t always had someone special to bring him meals. A guard yanking open the door, weapon ready, while another shoved in a tray, to collect the bowls later.
Until Shiro had taken out four guards one morning with just the wooden tray.
The first night the boy had come instead, he’d been alone. Fairly shoved into the room by a guard, the door thrown shut behind him. He’d been shaking as he set down the tray in front of Shiro, ears flat to his head. Shiro had eaten, considered, and then pushed the tray and bowls towards the boy, who had been backed up against the door. Only once the boy showed he was again in possession of the tray and bowls was the door opened to let him out.
The guards jeer each time the door is opened and the boy stumbles in, and half the time he has to catch himself from falling and spilling what he carries… but he never does spill.
He is locked in with him while Shiro eats, and it is horrible that there is solidarity in feeling like a prisoner. But Shiro doesn’t hate him--and perhaps he’s the only person in the whole empire that he does not.
They don’t often talk. Several days after their first meal, Shiro had thanked him for bringing him his rations, and the Galra had nearly tripped over his own feet in obvious surprise. So Shiro had repeated the action the next day and the next. Eventually the Galra had given him a hesitant, you’re welcome. Shiro likes to think that the Galra hadn't scrambled away from him as fast as he had before.
Today is the most Shiro has ever heard him speak. And it comes with the promise of freedom.
“What’s your name?”
The tiny Galra shakes his head. “It’ll be easier to forget me if I don’t give it to you.”
***
Over the next several weeks, Shiro fights and is taken to the druids and rests when he can.
Whenever he is back in his cell, the tiny Galra comes. He still hasn’t given Shiro his name, but Shiro has now heard the guards yell at him enough to deduce that it’s “Yorak” or something akin to it. Shiro’s taken to calling him Yorak in his head, though he doesn’t speak it aloud.
And each time Yorak comes, he murmurs information while Shiro eats. Descriptions of the compound. Directions and routes. Security codes. He’s obviously brilliant and resourceful, making the most of his low rank to learn everything he can. Shiro changes his assessment in regards to his age. Yorak is small for a Galra for certain, but he is definitely no child.
Occasionally Yorak will even talk about himself, a little bit. Shiro looks forward to the times that he does. He started one night when Shiro, exhausted and in pain, had interrupted a detailed explanation on how to unlock a biometric scanner without the right biometrics.
“What’s the point,” Shiro had said dully. “I’m not getting out.”
“You will,” Yorak had hissed.
Shiro had clenched and unclenched his right hand. “I’m tired. And there’s nothing for me out there, either.” The war would go on without him. They didn’t need a broken-down general with nothing left to give.
Yorak had pressed his lips together, ears flat, and looked away.
“I’m sorry,” Shiro had whispered.
“Have...have you ever seen a bumblebee?”
It had taken Shiro aback. “A… bumblebee?”
Yorak had nodded, still not looking at him. “My father said they help make Terran flowers bloom. That they’re little and fat and happy and yellow. And that they make sweets.” He’d sounded wistful.
“It’s called honey,” Shiro’d said automatically. And it had given him pause. He hadn’t thought of anything but his cell in ages. Certainly not of honey, or flowers, or bumblebees.
Not of the little things. Of the good, little things.
“Have you ever had it?” Yorak had asked tentatively. “Honey?”
Shiro had nodded slowly. “And I’ve seen bumblebees.”
Yorak had nodded as well, from where he was hugging his knees, curled up against the door of Shiro’s cell. “If you sit very still, will they let you watch?”
So of course Shiro had had to explain a little bit about how pollination worked, and Yorak had absorbed it all, fascinated. The moment had been broken by the loud pounding on Shiro’s cell door, the guards having lost their patience for the evening.
And for the first time in ages, Shiro’s dreams had been lighter.
It’s an odd camaraderie they have. Shiro eating quietly while Yorak methodically gives Shiro more and more strength to go on.
Shiro thanks him for the meal and otherwise keeps his distance. Sometimes he will offer Yorak a pleasant memory of Earth and… sometimes Yorak will smile.
On too many nights, when Yorak comes to his cell, he’s limping, small body trembling, ears flat to his head, and by now Shiro knows that it’s not because it’s Shiro he fears.
Shiro's been a prisoner for long enough.
He doesn’t ask why Yorak is helping him. I can’t get out, but you can.
***
Shiro is near feral by the time he's shoved back into his cell that night.
His cell is starkly quiet in contrast to the roaring of the arena, so much more still than the horrible buzz of the "medical" room.
The fights are a blur, instinct to survive taking over. Someone else dies by his hand so he can live.
He reeks of death.
The fight hasn't left him. He needs to keep fighting, needs to make someone who deserves it hurt--
The door to his cell opens, and Shiro can hear the jeering laughter as someone shuffles forward. He turns with a snarl.
Leaps--
Yorak doesn't cry out when Shiro tackles him to the floor. Instead he goes quiet and still, like a prey animal hoping to avoid conflict, eyes focused on Shiro.
His breathing is shallow, just as Shiro is panting, and he's warm underneath Shiro's hands. They all are. Warm.
Neither of them move or speak for a long moment. Yorak's eyes flick off to the side, and Shiro follows the motion to see the tray Yorak was sent in with.
It's sitting on the ground, just by the door. As if Yorak set it down as soon as he was inside the cell. As if he knew to get it out of his hands quickly.
"Oh good," Yorak says faintly, from under Shiro's bulk. "It didn't spill."
Shiro carefully moves off of him, going slowly so that he doesn't accidentally push Yorak harder into the unforgiving floor of the cell.
"I'm sorry," Shiro murmurs, once he's given Yorak space.
Yorak shrugs, rubbing at the back of his head. Shiro has to wince-- he didn't take Yorak down softly.
"I understand. You didn't mean it."
Shiro has nothing to say to that.
He goes to get his food, giving Yorak as wide a berth as possible, and this time Yorak is quiet while Shiro eats. Perhaps he realizes that Shiro isn't good for absorbing information today.
Just as Shiro is finishing the last crumbs, Yorak says quietly, "Everyone else hurts me on purpose. You didn't mean to. You weren't trying to hurt me. It's different."
It makes Shiro inhale sharply, makes him wish again for something to hit.
"Thank you for the food," he mutters, because that's all he can manage to say. It's not enough. Not near enough.
And yet, for some reason, this is what gets him a sliver a smile. Barely there and gone again, but a bright balm in a fraction of a second.
Yorak gains nothing from helping Shiro. No... Shiro knows that, if anything, Yorak is being treated worse now that Shiro's taken to talking to him.
But if there's one thing the Galra leadership do not understand, it's the power of empathy and emotion.
They've done all they can to make Shiro powerless here.
But now they've given Shiro someone he wants to protect.