Work Text:
so listen to the darkness, listen to the patterns
listen to the breathing sea
listen to the colors, carry them inside you
they will bring you back to me
in the breaking light
- "the breaking light," vienna teng (x)
*
Like many nights in the past year, sleep eludes him.
He’s learned not to resist it. When he finds himself unable to drift off, his mind still processing the day’s events at the speed of light, he knows not to lie there in the dark with his eyes wide open and the threat of the Galra still at his back. It’s like an ever-present knife to his throat even in dreams, and his waking hours are no different.
That’s another thing he learned in the last year: how to live with the feeling of being watched.
Shiro wants to know if his mind is his anymore, whether his thoughts are his own or someone else’s. He needs to know if his memories are real, or if the witch planted them in case of his escape.
The buzzing thoughts drive him from his bed. By Earth standards, they’re uncomfortable at best and too rigid at worst. A glance into Lance’s room on the way out confirms that someone, at least, finds Altean bedding to their tastes.
He makes his way to the hangar, where lights were blown out hours ago. In the gloom, the lions’ eyes still glow with a faint light. Unnerving, alive. Shiro doesn’t mind it so much as he does the dark, but flipping the lights back on would just draw someone down here. He doesn’t want to have to explain himself, and he’s aware that he wouldn’t make very good company with so much weighing on his mind.
Despite appearances, his lion is the easiest to find. The crest of crystal blue along its jaw is like a beacon for Shiro but his steps are still careful and measured. Lance’s lion is somewhere to the immediate right and Keith’s to the left; all it takes is one stumble to create sufficient noise to wake the rest of the crew. Allura’s mice look oddly sharp for rodents, and there’s no telling what lies within the walls of the castleship.
At the base of a front leg, Shiro cautiously sinks down to sit. Unsurprisingly, the paw of a sentient war machine is makes for an uncomfortable seating arrangement, but what causes him true discomfort is the heat at his side, an inhale of breath.
“Who’s there?” he ventures. In the silence, his voice is like a rock falling from a great height.
He half-suspects Allura. Despite knowing nothing of Alteans or their physical needs, it’s reasonable to assume that, after ten thousand years cryogenically frozen in a pod, neither Allura nor Coran will be sleeping anytime soon.
A more familiar voice responds. “No, Shiro. It’s me.”
Shiro lets out a near-inaudible breath of relief. “You could have said so when you heard me come in here.”
“Thought you were doing a perimeter check,” Keith says, close to a taunt. “You did it every night at the garrison.”
“That was different,” Shiro mutters, though he chuckles. He was usually one person short for nightly head-counts, and it was always his task to retrieve Keith from the simulator or the rooftop, and sometimes even the empty cafeteria where he could be found idly drumming his fingers along the tabletop. “Your dorm did fall under my responsibility.”
“You never got me in trouble.”
“Why would I?” Shiro asks. “You never did anything wrong.”
It’s too dark for him to be certain, but Keith seems to shift towards him. The edge of his shoulder brushes against Shiro’s.
“Absconding is still against the rules,” Keith points out. “And I did that plenty.”
He takes comfort in Keith’s voice. It’s a familiarity, a grounding point, and he wasn’t afforded many of those inside the Galran prison. Something about the relative quiet around them and the isolation of the hangar lends a softness to Keith that rarely shows itself otherwise, one that Shiro appreciates all the more when it does.
It means Keith is at ease. With that knowledge, Shiro knows he is safe.
Here and now, there’s no harm to be done to him. No one is hovering over him with needles, there are no blood pressure monitors, no spells. He’d take the screaming of the crowds and the bloodshed of the arena over witchcraft any day of the week if it meant he didn’t have to hear the witch chanting in his head every waking minute.
Keith sounds apprehensive. “Shiro?”
“Sorry,” he mutters, grateful that the dark means Keith can’t see the sweat gathering on his brow. His thoughts tend to spiral off rapidly without his noticing, and the fact Keith notices that his attention wanders is mildly troubling. “I just… It’s been a really long day. A lot of things to think about, and even more to process.”
The thoughts are invasive. They never stop, never let him rest. Today his head was quiet in the lion’s cockpit, and that’s where Shiro thinks he could spend the rest of his life. Undisturbed and unfettered to any cause so much bigger than him.
“Reminiscing might not be helping.” Keith’s hand closes over the back of Shiro’s neck. To some it might be a minor comfort but to Shiro it’s like the sun clearing the clouds on an overcast day. “Are you going to be okay with all of this? It’s asking a lot of us all, but especially you, Shiro--”
Shiro has to smile at that. “Don’t worry about me. Besides, that’s my line.”
Keith gently cuffs him upside the head. “I’m not the one who just barely made it back to Earth alive.”
“We’re not on Earth.”
It’s sobering to hear aloud. From his own mouth it sounds like a death sentence. Allura might have a more diplomatic way of saying it, but that’s the heart of the matter. He was barely home for five minutes before the universe decided to swoop in and remind him it wasn’t done with him yet. What’s getting chewed up and spit out once more? Shiro knows better than the rest of them that he has almost nothing left to lose. The Galra robbed him of an arm and his faith. All that mattered in the first place slipped out of his hands the moment the Kerberos mission went south.
He lost sight of Earth from the warship, and that was when he realised he might never see home again.
It was Keith that consumed his thoughts then, and it’s Keith that threatens to overwhelm him now.
“I know,” Keith says. “And who knows when we might be back.”
Shiro reaches for Keith’s hand where it rests still on his neck, almost uncertain. It’s pliant in his own, and he smoothes a thumb across the back of it with a rueful smile.
“Has that sunk in for you yet?” Shiro wonders at length. “You’re right. It could be a long time before we see home again if we take this on.”
He knows Keith is smirking by the teasing note in his tone. “Saving the world has a nice ring to it.”