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“Where the hell are you going?” Keith planted himself in front of the door, tired of chasing Shiro around the house for answers. “You need to go lie down, let me call Dr. Miu. We can figure out what’s going on.”
“The only way I can figure out what’s going on is if I find the logs of our last mission.” There was a wild light in Shiro’s eyes, an obsessive madness that frightened Keith. He’d never seen Shiro so fixated before, he was being irrational as he tore up their home and Keith couldn’t seem to bring him back. He held out his hands, silently pleading with Shiro to calm down but nothing worked.
“What do you thinks on those logs? Nothing happened to us up there, I was there. You’re not making any sense.”
Shiro whirled on him, too desperate to listen to reason. “You saw what I saw, it wasn’t just me. They said it was oxygen deprivation, but it can’t be all there is, Keith. Something happened to me and I’m going to find out exactly what it is they covered up so I can fix it. We’re going to be okay, I just need to do this.”
“Do what?” Keith threw out his arms, trying to drawn his partner close. “Break into Mission Control? Go through Dr. Holt’s files looking for something that doesn’t exist? You’re scaring me, Shiro. Please, calm down and let me help you.”
“No, Keith-” He made to push him away, but Keith caught his wrists, squeezing just once before his grip slackened. If it came down to a fight, there was no clear victor, but neither of them wanted things to end that way.
“Shiro, I would follow you to the ends of the universe. If this is something you need to do, then goddammit, I will help you. Why won’t you let me help you!?” Shiro didn’t want to look at him, but Keith was persistent. He cupped his face with an old familiarity, drawing him in.
Shiro couldn’t look away, but he needed to. Keith was everything right in his life. Keith was sane and safe and everything he needed, and if he asked, Keith would go against all he thought was right if it meant convincing Shiro to stop this madness. Shiro couldn’t let him. He’d barely paused, but it was all the time his doubts needed to whisper in his ear. Shiro knew that Keith would stand by his side for everything, but if this all went south, Shiro didn’t want him to know just how shattered he really was.
He was broken and he knew it. He just had to figure out how to fit the pieces back together again before Keith could see the truth.
He leaned in, and Keith moved with him, meeting him halfway with a kiss that meant too much. He wrapped his arms around his best friend, holding him as tightly as he dared, and he told himself this wasn’t going to be the last time. Shiro wasn’t sure he believed it. When he pulled away, confusion and worry played across his fiancé’s face, but they were underlined by so much hope, it hurt to see. Shiro was sorry. There was just no other way.
“You can’t.”
He closed the door behind him with a snap.
He could make this up to Keith when it was over, he promised himself, trying not to remember Keith’s heartbroken face. They relied on each other for everything, but he had to do this alone. If there weren’t answers, if he couldn’t fix himself, then he couldn’t bear to have Keith know. If he was falling apart, he wasn’t going to take Keith down with him, it was the one thing he was sure of. Saving Keith mattered more than anything else.
Shiro put his hand on the doorknob to Dr. Holt’s office and froze. Mission Control was miles away. He checked his pockets for his car keys and came up empty. How had he…? He’d stepped out of the house just a minute ago, could he have run all the way here. There was Keith’s face, the sound of the door closing behind him, and then nothing. How had he gotten here? He wasn’t even out of breath. A dull ache started at the base of his skull and Shiro groaned, kneading his fingers against his head. None of this was making sense anymore. He must have blacked hour somehow, time slipping away from him as easily as the memories. He really was losing his mind.
Stay focused, he chided himself. All the answers have to be here and then he could go home again, to Keith and his life. Don’t get distracted. He turned the handle and swung the door open.
And was thrown forward.
Keith gasped as his back hit the wall and Shiro swallowed the sound, kissing him breathless as he kept his partner pinned. He broke away to laugh, husky and rough, before lifting Keith up into his arms and letting the smaller man wrap legs around his waist for balance. It was the perfect angle, hips slotted together as he ground down against Keith through the fabric of their jeans.
He already had Keith undressed, nothing but that awful labcoat of his bunched around his shoulders, the one Keith routinely forgot to wear to work, until he’d been written up for a safety incident. His hands dug into Keith’s ass, promising bruises that would last.
“Come on, Shiro before someone sees. Come on come on-” Keith’s voice broke around a sigh, and Shiro dug his teeth into the sharp jut of his collarbones, delighted by the sound and greedy for more. He wanted Keith to feel him every time he moved, loved the distracted way Keith would touch himself over his clothes, fingers digging into an itch he couldn’t scratch. Keith may have been more blatant, but Shiro was no less needy.
His belt clattered when his jeans hit the ground, and Keith bucked against him, hissing obscenities with kiss bruised lips that parted so prettily when Shiro yanked him down. He slid down the wall, holding on to Shiro’s shoulders as his legs were spread, dragged low just enough, just the right angle for Shiro to slide his cock into his sloppy wet hole, taking him to hilt so fast Keith couldn’t even think. Shiro pulled him up by the hair, watched him writhe and moan, eyes glassy with need. It was good. It was so damn good but… “This isn’t right.”
“Stop talking and fuck me.” Keith demanded, breathing hot against his ear and Shiro groaned, dizzied by the feel of him. It felt like there was a fire burning in his skin, air almost too heavy to breathe and all his thoughts scattered every time Keith made that quiet, eager growl. Sweat pooled down his back as he drove him into the other man, licking past pink, parted lips.
This wasn’t right. “I-I was supposed to be doing something.” Shiro tried to put the words together, but Keith curled his nails into Shiro’s shoulders and spurred on each thrust with his heels.
“Yeah, me!” Keith huffed, drawing Shiro back for another lingering kiss. “Come on, before someone finds us.”
Pain lanced through Shiro, ache shooting up through his arm and his grip faltering. It was too loud to think, the dull whine of insects deafening over the rustle of the leaves as Keith called out his name. All he wanted to do was surrender to the way Keith’s body could make him feel, stop thinking and just lose himself.
“I have to-”
Something was breathing down his neck, shadows stalking towards him and he couldn’t move with Keith wrapped tight around his body. What was he supposed to be doing?!
“I love you, Shiro. Shiro? Leave me. If you don’t, we’re both dead.”
“NO!”
The shout shattered reality like glass and Shiro covered his ears, skull splitting from the strain. He stumbled back, unsure if the scream that chased him was his own. What’s happening to me?
“Shiro?” A steady hand on his shoulder sent everything shuddering back into place and he blinked bleary, unfocused eyes on the man in front of him.
“If you don’t figure out how to get that bow-tie on, we’re going to be late.”
“Late?” Shiro felt stupid and slow, barely able form his mouth around the word. He stepped back, the edge of the bed hitting his knees and he sat down hard, cradling his head in his hands. The pain was so bad he couldn’t think, a sharp pick breaking through his skull in time with every beat of his heart.
“I told you we should’ve eloped.”
Keith’s brow furrowed with concentration as he gently batted away Shiro’s hands to get a better look at the offending bow. He treated it with the same focus he gave quantum physics, or a particularly stubborn engine, only to give up a minute later, cursing under his breath. With a decidedly petulant huff, he plucked off Shiro’s bow-tie and tossed it aside, before doing the same with his own. “There. The dog can keep his.”
The accusation held a playful lilt. Even if he was keyed up and anxious, Shiro didn’t think he’d ever seen Keith so happy. I can keep you, Shiro thought helplessly, taking in his brand new tux, and sleeked hair, the sound of a party just outside their home.
Then he met Shiro’s eye. Whatever he saw in his face stopped him in his tracks. “Shiro…?” He reached out to squeeze his shoulder, and as Shiro watched, he could see his features closing off with a soldier’s detachment, shielding his emotions but even that said too much. “You sure about this?”
“I don’t know what’s happening to me.” Shiro’s voice broke and Keith was at his side in an instant, hands wrapped tight around his own.
“Hey, it’s okay. If you’re not ready to do this, then it doesn’t change anything.”
“Keith-”
“Listen to me, Shiro.” Keith leaned into his space, reassuring and solid. Real. “I know you’ve been having a hard time lately, but I’m here. We’re a team, we always have been. I’m your right arm no matter what we face and if you’re not ready for this, then we’ll wait. It doesn’t change the fact that I love you and I’m not going anywhere.”
This was real, it had to be. It was everything he thought he wanted and what he never believed he could have. Shiro dragged his fingertips down Keith’s jaw like he was trying to memorize every inch of him. They were supposed to be happy, this was the official start of their lives together, why did it feel like he’d already missed his chance?
“You are beautiful.” Shiro didn’t know why he hadn’t said that more. It would never be enough. All he had to do was take Keith’s hand and walk through the door. All he had to do was say yes.
Keith was watching him hesitantly, those old walls slowly starting to build around him brick by doubting brick. They’d spent years breaking them down, but Shiro could see how afraid he was at losing a family again. Of being left alone and abandoned like everyone else had always done to him.
“I’m so sorry.”
I’m not leaving you behind again.
Somewhere, Shiro couldn’t stop screaming.
“I want this, Keith. I want you, I just can’t, I can’t -” Shiro was begging, but he didn’t care. His pride meant nothing when Keith looked at him like that, hopeless and resigned. Keith hadn’t pulled away yet, but his gaze was distant, every nod mechanical. Shiro never wanted to be the one who hurt him, but he already had, and he didn’t know how he could fix this or if he’d ever get the chance. He kissed Keith like it was going to be the last time, and this time it really might be.
“I have to go I have to…” He trailed off, out of breath and shaking. Heat burned behind his eyes, tears blurring his vision, and Shiro turned to run. The worst part was that Keith let him.
Dr. Miu’s office was across town. Shiro didn’t remember how he got there. He didn’t remember her tweedy secretary letting him on, or the traffic down Main Street. He didn’t remember getting in his car, or the sun on his side as he drove. He didn’t remember leaving his house. The empty chunks of nothing were slowly swallowing his mind, time running out in missing minutes, hours, days.
The office was empty as he stepped through the door. It was eerily quiet, like nothing existed beyond its four walls, like nothing ever had. In the center of her room, on the coffee table between her desk and the plush couches she entertained patients on was a laptop.
The screen flickered with static, but with every step he took, the picture focused. He was staring down an endless cavern, on an unfamiliar planet, running from alien foes. When he looked at his hands, they were covered in blood that wasn’t his own.
“You can’t outrun them, I’m weighing you down!”
Shiro crept closer, mesmerized by the flickering screen. Darkness drew in around him like the rest of the world faded away into nothing, the only light coming from the laptop as he watched. It played like a movie, two Paladins fighting through a blindingly green jungle as shadow creatures chased them down like prey.
“I’m not leaving you behind again!” It was his own voice coming from the speaker, tinny and distorted as he bent closer to watch. Keith clung to his back, face twisted in pain and blood oozing from wounds pierced through his armor. He looked back fearfully, as if waiting for the alien beasts to attack at any moment and Shiro could see the smaller version of himself grit his teeth against the inevitable. They were going to die, there was no way they could outrun the hunters and help was too far away.
“Shiro-”Keith gasped, but Shiro refused to accept death. Not here, not when they’d fought so hard. Their desperate scramble stopped short on a cliff’s edge, a rotting tree stretching across the gap. Their only hope of escape, if they could make it to the other side and keep the beasts from following, they might just survive.
“It won’t hold us both.” Keith said, sweat-slick hands clutching at Shiro’s shoulders and trying to hold on.
“No.” They were going to make it, they had to make it. With their armor damaged, their rockets spent, and their communication systems down, they couldn’t rely on the Altean technology to save them. They only had each other.
“I lost you once. Please Shiro, please, I can’t do it again.” Keith’s voice cracked and Shiro felt his heart break with it. I should have told him. Strange how those regrets came bubbling up at a moment like this when he should have been terrified for his life. I should have told him before I left for Kerberos. Why didn’t I just tell him? Why couldn’t I say how I felt? I could have made time, I could have kissed him then. I could have come back and said I love you.
I have always loved you.
“Just don’t look down. We’re almost there.”
Shiro inhaled sharply. Knowing what happened next didn’t make watching it any easier. Their makeshift bridge splintered and broke, and Shiro flinched as Keith screamed. They hit a rocky ledge with a sickening thump. He only had one moment, but Shiro scrambled for purchase, slamming his metal hand into the rock formation. It was enough to slow his fall as Galra tech flared to life, and he grabbed for Keith with his other hand. The red paladin screamed as his shoulder twisted, pain dulling his thoughts. Shiro watched as his eyes turned glassy, his face red with exertion.
He could feel his metal grip slipping. The angle was all wrong, and the rock beneath his hands slowly crumbled under the pressure.
“Let go, Shiro.” Keith whispered, so faint Shiro thought he’d imagined it. “One of us has to make it.”
“Keith, stop, I’m not going to-”
“You were always my best friend. I’m sorry.”
Keith smiled one last time, a heartbroken, empty thing before he took the decision out of Shiro’s hands. He screamed as he fell.
Shiro was frozen, shock and horror locking him in place. Above him, the creatures howled and he couldn’t tell if it was the hunters or Keith’s scream or even his own. It echoed around his skull until he felt like it was going to split apart. When the rock finally crumbled beneath his hand, Shiro closed his eyes and let go.
The impact never came. Something caught him, but the image wasn’t clear. Something bit deeply into the back of his neck, he could feel echoes of the pain and rubbed a hand against his unmarked skin as the images on the laptop went black.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Mr. Shirogane.” Dr. Miu’s voice was crisp, stepping out of the shadows and closing the laptop with a click. “I’ve been trying to make sure you never had to go through that again.”
Shiro’s lips peeled back in a snarl, hands clenched tight. “What the hell is going on? What was that? What’s happening to me?”
“So many questions.” She clucked her tongue. “Why have you been so fixated on all of this? You’ve had such a wonderful life, everything has gone your way and you still keep fighting. I don’t know why you aren’t more grateful.”
“Then this is all a lie. None of it’s real!”
“Is it?” Dr. Miu silence him with a single look. “What is more real than what you can touch? What you feel? There is no greater truth.”
“Keith,” Shiro hissed angrily. “What have you done with him? If you hurt him I-”
“Hurt him! We saved him.” An eerie light danced behind the doctor’s eyes as she approached. Shiro’s first instinct was to scream. He couldn’t believe that there had been a time when those eyes had seemed so kind. He wasn’t sure how he kept from running. “Like we saved you. We gave him a chance at a new life, one where his death doesn’t mean his best friend’s survival.”
Shiro flinched like he’d been hit. His knees buckled under his weight, and he struggled to find his voice. Yet, fear almost stilled his tongue. “But why?”
Something flickered across the therapist’s face, and for the first time, Shiro was faced by just how far the creature had gone to disguise itself.
“We are so hungry.” Each word dragged across his skin, slick like oil and just as slippery. “There are too many mouths.” Dr. Miu smiled, pleased by a joke only she - they understood. It made Shiro ill. “Your life for ours. Isn’t that a fair trade, Mr. Shirogane?”
“Let me go!” Shiro flexed his hand like he was looking for a weapon. “Let Keith go, I’m not going to let you kill us!”
“We don't need to.” She laughed, a multitude of voices laughing with her. “You were already dying when you came to us. Don’t you see, we gave you life!” She threw her hands out wide at the darkness, the world shifting around her. “We didn’t want you to suffer. Yes, you’ll feed us all, but we gave you a paradise. We saw everything you wanted that you could never have, and we gave it to you. Years of happiness and decades to come.”
Dr. Miu moved closer and Shiro took a wary step back. “This is a trap!”
“It’s no trap and it’s no lie, we saved you, Mr. Shirogane. You’re still dying, but we can make you feel like you’ve lived a century. All that time together, happy and peaceful. It’s more than you’d ever get out there. Isn’t that what you want?”
Something was crawling through his head, foreign thoughts slithering between his own and he doubled over, clawing against his temples. “Get out! Get out, get out!”
“Or do you want to go back there? Back to a war that’ll see you all dead in weeks.” Her voice seemed to come from everywhere at once and the scent of blood hung thick in the air. Shiro gagged as the invisible crowd chanted for their Champion. Fragmented memories struck like daggers, months of pain and a grinning violet face that laughed as he finally broke.
“Stop.” He could barely force the word passed his lips, but Dr. Miu moved closer and held out her hand. The skin flayed from his arm as Shiro screamed, shiny metal taking its place as she stripped his flesh down to the Galra tech.
“Is this what you want? To be some broken, scarred monster that you don’t even recognize in the mirror?”
His scars rewrote themselves across his skin, the sharp slice of knives, and scalding lasers. The rush of blood spilling over his mouth, the cold certainty he was going to die like this, beaten and bleeding, at the hands of another prisoner.
“To die, fighting a monster that already beat you once?”
Shiro saw them fall one by one, Hunk bravely fighting back a horde to save as many innocents as he could against insurmountable odds, a hero to the very last. Pidge, with one final, brilliant move, showing Zarkon just how much one girl could do. Lance outgunned and outnumbered the smile on his face too wild too wide; he wouldn’t have survived without Hunk for long. Allura standing before a sea of enemies, facing the full force of Zarkon’s cruel anger, the last of the Alteans and the last of the universe’s defenders. She would rather die than let him take her. And Keith, his eyes open and unseeing, body broken at the bottom of a cliff, blood and grime spilled across his armor.
“Is this what you really want? We could give you all this pain back to you.” Shiro’s arm shattered by a cruel tormentor’s need for revenge. They wouldn’t let him go so easily. You could have been our greatest weapon. Dr. Miu stretched out her hand and the mechanical arm was torn from his body as Shiro screamed, sinking down to his knees and retching.
A familiar voice called to him, the same one he’d woke up to for almost a decade, the same one he could spend the rest of his life with. The creature knew his every thought, every fear, and every need. When he looked up into Keith’s face, his eyes burning with a Galra yellow, he knew he’d lost. Tears gathered in his eyes, salt stinging the deep bleeding cut across his face.
“Stop fighting Shiro.” Hands in his hair and he flinched, but they were gentle as they pulled him close, letting Shiro tuck his face into his belly, shielding him from the rest of the world. Keith was always so gentle with him. “Just come home.”
His ruined arm sparked, broken machinery rendering it useless as he wrapped his human arm around Keith. Stop fighting. It would be easy to surrender, fighting was tearing him apart. A perfect world, a long and happy life. Another chance to make Keith smile at him again, to make up for all the pain he caused. What else could he ask for? He looked up into Keith’s fang-tipped smile and shuddered.
The only thing waiting out there was the Galra and death.
Keith was tender as always, soothing away the pain as Shiro relaxed into his touch, letting his eyes slip closed. Tears streaked down his face as he clung to the image of his love, every breath a shaking sob. Gentle pleasure trickled into his system, the creatures rewarding his obedience until Shiro gave in to the feeling. Stop fighting. Would it be so bad to keep this world, even if it wasn’t real? No more pain, no more war. All of those stupid mistakes that he’d made were wiped away. This was the only chance he’d ever have to make things right.
He had lost it all when he’d walked out that door without saying a real goodbye, so confident that he’d come back from Kerberos a hero. He’d been so arrogant then, feeling like he was immortal. It had been too long and he wasn’t the same anymore. He couldn’t be that person that Keith loved after being shattered and put back together with such jagged broken edges. This was everything he’d ever wanted and going back would mean losing Keith forever.
But going back could save Keith. They were dying. Keith was dying.
Bright violet light flared along his missing arm, limb reforming as Shiro resisted the sweet promises and illusions the creatures fed into his thoughts. To save Keith, he turned his back on the thing he wanted most. “I’m sorry.” Shiro whispered and struck, cutting swiftly through Keith’s midsection with a single thrust of his arm.
He watched Keith’s face twist in pain and shock, tears caught on his long lashes. He gasped in pain, drops of crimson splattered across his pale lips. Betrayal and heartbreak, it looked so real etched across Keith’s face and Shiro knew the memory would haunt him for as long as he lived.
The world around them crumbled.
The remnants of a dream clung desperately to his mind, his vision blurred between two worlds, but Shiro was already moving. The first thing he tasted was the heat, the taste heavy and humid on his tongue as sweat caught on his lip. Shadows moved before his eyes, the very ground stirring. Human muscles screamed in protest with every step, but Galra tech was alive with power, always so eager to destroy, no matter who the target was. Shiro would make sure everything burned.
He yanked the creeping tendril from the back of his neck, blood dripping from the wound where the plant had buried itself deep beneath his skin and his vision cleared. He cut through vines as thick as arms, fighting his way to the swathes of red and white armor that stood out so starkly against a backdrop of horror. Keith was deathly pale, and terrifyingly still, swallowed in a pulsing, blood red bloom. Shiro yanked a vine from Keith’s body where the plant had buried itself in his spine and hacked him free. A horrid wail echoed through the clearing as the creature writhed and burned. Shiro didn’t know if it was all in his head.
They could have had a life together. I’m sorry. They could have been happy. I love you.
He cradled his best friend as close as he dared, closing his eyes like he could escape the truth of his wounds. They were dying, the creature hadn’t lied about that. His helmet visor was cracked, but Shiro still raised an unsteady hand to activate his communicator, held his breath against the static on the line. God, let their equipment work this time. Just once.
“If anyone’s out there, please help us. Please, please help us.”
His body shut down and Shiro’s last conscious thought was that he’d killed them both.