His hand is different. Beneath the blood flowering from torn skin she’s dabbed clean are knuckles that are much bigger than she remembers, fortified from fighting. That’s what happens with hands that hit. They’re riddled with silver-soft scars—some reopened that Honey dresses with a roll of gauze. Her ministrations are gentle and slow as she turns his hand over (was it always this much broader than her own?), but her gentleness isn’t entirely selfless: she’s counting the discolorations that span his skin; there are so many.
Here is a pocked sickle on the soft part between fore and thumb: teeth. She hopes not his own. She wishes not anyone’s. She rotates his hand, palm up–there are calluses beneath each finger, rough beneath hers, and here are sprays of crescent moons, dug in between his head and life lines, one splitting his fate line in half. Honey covers it, turns his hand over again.
She’s listening of course, head bowed to focus, head bowed because she can’t dredge up the courage to look at him, not yet. Her chest is still uncomfortably tight. His fist had been in the wall, eye wide and determined, and Honey grapples with the sudden knowledge that this isn’t a part of him she has ever known. She’s only ever been privy to the after, the hollowed out devastation, not the anger, not the Shiro that lashes out. There are many sides of him she doesn’t yet know.
There are no answers. Her first instinct it to tell him you can’t think like that but what good will that do? Telling him it’s okay to not be okay had been lip-service. Honey clips the gauze in place. She absently rubs back of his exposed fingers, lifts his hand and kisses the back of bandage. It won’t help him. It doesn’t help her either, but he deserves tenderness—every last bit of it she has to give.
The knot in her stomach doesn’t ease.
“Give them time,” she murmurs. Her gaze is a bit reserved when she finally looks up at him. She doesn’t want to defend the Garrison—their inaction makes her seeth, but…Honey takes a breath, runs her hand up Shiro’s forearm. Is she self-soothing by touching him? She stops.
“It’s all we’re really allowed to give them. They’re still grappling with the meaning of your return. Your arm, your memories.” Honey sweeps Shiro’s bangs aside, cups his cheek, “Whether they think you’re a liability or not lands very low on their pyramid of importance right now. This—” she taps his metal arm with a fingernail “—is making our lab rats work overtime. I’m—I’m not trying to rationalize their actions. I’m just trying to explain. Okay?”
Does she think their energy is misdirected? Yes, and as pressing as those worries feel now, others are noisier.
“Let’s deal with today. Right now.” Her touch lands, feather-light, on the back of his bandaged knuckles. “This. Let’s deal with this. You—hurt yourself.” And in spite of her cresting fear she presses on, “Why? I mean—” a soft breath. “Shiro, what do you need?”
There’s blood smeared across the plaster crumbling from the wall. She’ll clean that up too, in time, and it’ll be as though it never happened. When she asks what do you need? she’s not looking for reason. Reason didn’t make that hole.
Silent as Honey responds, Shiro listens. He does think that whether or not they see him as a liability in the future, however near or far off it may be, is important right now, but... what she says makes sense. The Garrison doesn’t know what to do with him, but he has information that they want ( that they need, the Galra are bound to come for them eventually--- ) so... they’re unlikely to do anything drastic while still working to understand everything. That’s enough to allow him a little more space in his chest to breathe. For right now, anyway.
Eyes drawn back down to his now-bandaged knuckles as she continues, Shiro still doesn’t speak. This... He doesn’t want to focus on this, doesn’t want to think about it at all. Stopping himself from thinking had been the point of causing himself pain, however irrational and anger-fueled the decision had been.
“ I-- ” He begins, and then he stops. ‘I don’t want to talk about this’ is what he wants to say, but... his own comfort isn’t the only thing that matters here. Honey’s is too, and Honey has a right to understand, or... to at least know why he’s done this. Why he’s acted in a way that’s nearly habit for him but considered unhealthy and not normal by the rest of society. Especially when she sounds so... afraid. Swallowing hard, as if to swallow down his arguments and his own fears, Shiro casts a glance up toward her face, though he can’t hold it. He certainly can’t make eye contact.
“ I just... needed to stop thinking. I needed to get out of my head and stay in the present. My head wouldn’t-- it wouldn’t stop, and I got desperate and-- ...angry. ” Does that even make sense? It’s not exactly normal to have no control over your own thoughts, not to the extent that he’s been struggling with it today. How does he even explain what he’s been experiencing? The intrusive memories and thoughts, those feelings like this is just some dream, like he isn’t actually back on Earth--- Eyebrows pinch more closely together, and his fingers flex in Honey’s hand as he fights the urge to ball them into a fist.
“ The pain is grounding, sometimes. ”