Work Text:
“'We are products of our environments,'” Shiro had told him one cold desert night, echoing what the psychologist had said as the stump where his arm use to be twitched, trying to be what it no longer was. A phantom limb, the psychologist had explained. A phantom arm for a phantom of man, Keith had thought as they stared at the stars, the constellations, the ancient stories splayed above them as they laid in the bed of Shiro's truck.
Shiro. Shiro was the product of a country that cared too little about its soldiers and its children, where the lost were never found and the broken never fixed. Tossed into the foster system at ten to look for the family he could never have again, drowning in of the sea of kids just like him and families that never cared enough. Then handed off to the army at eighteen to fight for a country that couldn't care less and shipped off at twenty to Afghanistan where he lost more than an arm and gained nothing for his sacrifice. A defective toy tossed in the trash in favor of the newer, shinier model.
Keith had met him in a foster home in Dallas. Shiro, the oldest at twelve, had taken it upon himself to welcome the new kids, show them the ropes, be the big brother they never had. And Keith, six years old and had only known what is was to be left behind had clung to him like a rock in a stormy sea.
And they had found a semblance of family in each other, brothers in more than blood, clinging to that bond when Shiro aged out of the system and headed to Oklahoma for basic training. When Keith was sent to Phoenix when his fosters couldn't handle his behavioral problems, they held on tighter. And when Shiro was shipped overseas, they felt it pull taut. When he came back, Keith saw it was frayed and he was afraid that Shiro was a drowning man clinging to a lifesaver as Keith struggled to pull him in, the rope wearing thinner and thinner.
Shiro was a product of a country that had failed him, and Keith couldn't fix it, couldn't give his arm back or soothe the nightmares the way Shiro had when he was six and he crawled into the older boy's bunk.
He could only lay shoulder to shoulder with Shiro in the bed of a rusty old pickup as the stars shone above and the cold, dark desert wrapped them up.