The Bigger Picture
Commission for @randomlifeunit
Rated: teen
Warnings: depictions of child abuse
Pairings: none
Word Count: 2,427
Summary: Keith is being plagued by nightmares that are causing him trouble sleeping.
Keith shouted himself awake, sitting bolt upright. Sweat trickled down the sides of his face and his chest heaved with hard breaths. Nightmare. Another one. Realizing this, he breathed a sigh and ran a hand through his damp hair. It’d been like this for almost a week now. He didn’t know why. He supposed he had… trauma, (the word was hard to even think), but why had he been having recurring nightmares for this long? What was triggering it? Stress, maybe?
Unsure, Keith flopped back down onto his bed, rolled onto his side, feeling grumpy and tired. He was unsure of whether or not he would get back to sleep now. How could he? When he closed his eyes, he saw it on the backs of his eyelids…
---
“Keith, you get back here!”
Keith didn’t listen to the man shouting that. He never wanted to listen to him again. His face was smarting, blood rolling down over his cheek. He wiped at it, looked at in shock.
Then he shook it away, kept running. Hopefully no one would run after him.
After a time, he stopped, leaned against a tree, breathing heavy. He looked around for a few moments, making sure he was safe. The only thing that could possibly bother him was the sparrow hitting a nut against a rock to break it open. So, Keith sat down hard in the detritus of the forest floor, and for the first time in a long time, he cried.
---
“Keith. Keith! Hello in there!”
“Yeah. What, what?” Keith asked, realized that he’d completely zoned out. It was Lance’s voice he heard over the comms.
“I asked you a question,” Lance said.
Keith rubbed a hand over his face. God, he was so tired. “Can you repeat it?” he asked, his voice coming across as grating. He hoped it didn’t sound too irritated.
“Do you think the Galra know we’re coming?”
“That’s a question for Shiro.” Why had Lance bothered asking him? He was feeling terribly irritable today from the nightmares and lack of sleep, and if no one really needed anything from him, he was fine with that. He knew it wasn’t good to go into battle on lack of sleep, but he had no choice. The Galra had been amassing in a specific star system and they had to get there before their influence grew too large.
“Ok, moody,” Lance responded. So he had heard the irritation in his voice. Great.
Then, over all the comms: “Has anyone else noticed that Keith’s moody today?”
Lance, come on. Seriously? Keith gritted his teeth.
“Isn’t Keith always moody?” Hunk asked.
“Guys, now is not the time to discuss this,” Shiro said. “Stay focused.”
Thank you, Shiro, Keith thanked him wordlessly.
The comms went silent, and Keith was left with his thoughts.
---
“Why is there a bruise on your arm, Keith?” the teacher asked him. She’d pulled him aside to privately talk to him, and Keith had thought it would be about his failing grades, but instead it was something else.
“I ran into a doorway,” Keith lied easily. Lying was something he was getting very good at, especially with his current living situation.
The woman looked at him skeptically, eyebrows raised.
“It’s nothing, okay?”
“You’d tell someone if something was going on at home, wouldn’t you?”
Keith swallowed, looked away from her. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”
“Alright. You may return to your seat.”
---
The battle went well. The Galra hadn’t stood a chance against Voltron when it was fully formed, even with Keith as tired as he was. He was just happy to get back to the Castle of Lions. He was going to shower, and then go right to bed.
Or, those were his plans until Shiro pulled him aside. Keith’s armor was already half off, baring the black suit underneath.
“What is it?” he tried not to snap it, but was afraid that it came out sounding that way.
“You weren’t as quick as usual today,” Shiro said. “Slower reflexes and response times. I’m just checking that you’re okay.”
Well, Shiro was someone Keith could be honest with. At least a little bit.
“I’m not sleeping well,” Keith told him.
Shiro’s face drew down in sympathy. “Any particular reason why?”
Keith shrugged. “No idea. Insomnia, I guess.”
Shiro put a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “You’d let me know if something was going on, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Keith couldn’t meet him in the eye. “Yeah, of course.”
---
“You useless piece of shit!” Keith wished the words were the part that hurt the most, but it was the fist that came raining down on his back. “You were supposed to do the dishes, not break them!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It was an accident!”
“Go clean that up now!” The fist finally stopped. Keith didn’t straighten though, remained cowering where he was. He didn’t move. “Now!”
“Y-yes, sir.” He went to go clean up the pieces of ceramic on the floor, accidentally stepped on a piece. He yelped as it slashed his foot, leaving blood on the white tile.
“Serves you right,” the man said, shaking his head. “You better clean that up too.”
Keith knelt down to clean up the ceramic pieces, doing his best to ignore the pain in his foot. “Yes, sir.”
---
“Keith, that’s an order!”
“Yes, sir,” Keith said to Shiro over the comms without flinching, without stuttering, even though those words had a bad connotation. The academy had trained him to call his commanding officer “sir”, and he had to think about that rather than… him. Yes, Shiro was his commanding officer, and he would never cause him harm.
Keith had argued about an order with Shiro, not quite understanding it, but now he was taking it anyway. He pulled the Red Lion around to complete the maneuver, the words “yes, sir” ringing in his brain.
---
Keith couldn’t sleep. If he did, the nightmares would come, and they were just getting worse. Stress. It had to be stress. All of them were stressed with how much the Galra were pressing, and they were trying their damn best to take care of it.
Keith felt ridiculous that the nightmares were so bad. Okay, he’d had a messed up upbringing, but hadn’t a lot of other children? What made him so special? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s what his foster father would tell him right now, that he wasn’t special, that he meant nothing.
And right now, Keith believed it, believed all of it. All the words his foster father had ever said to him in anger were playing on repeat in his head. He was useless, worthless, a screw-up, nothing. His performance on the battlefield had shown that. He wasn’t a good pilot. Sure, he could blame it on the sleep deprivation, but how much of it was that, and how much of it was really him? Just how bad was he at what he did?
The nightmares were a mix of fragmented memories and horrible things his imagination could conjure up, things that hadn’t even happened to him, but that his subconscious saw was close enough, so it tormented him with it.
Keith felt embarrassed, stupid even, but he was afraid to sleep.
So, he laid down on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
Until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Heaving a sigh, he sat up, looked around his room, and then left.
The castle was dimly lit at night, not completely dark just in case people were to wander its halls. People like him. And… someone else. Keith heard footsteps ahead of him. Curious, he began to follow them as quietly as he could. Then, the footsteps stopped. He entered a room with a fountain, saw a familiar figure sitting there in front of it. The only light in the room was coming from the center of the fountain: a cold blue light that hardly lit up anything.
Keith carefully made his way over. “Hey,” he said quietly to Shiro, not wanting to startle him. Shiro didn’t seem entirely surprised to see him, so he must have sensed him coming.
“Hey,” Shiro responded. He patted the spot next to him. “Come sit.”
Keith did, put his chin on his hands, stared at the fountain for a while.
“Why are you up?” Keith finally asked of Shiro.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Shiro responded. “Had a nightmare.”
“About?”
Shiro lifted his prosthetic arm. The metal shined a little in the blue light.
Keith nodded in understanding. That must have been so hard, waking up with a piece of your body missing. He couldn’t imagine how that had felt. What was his trauma compared to Shiro’s?
“Why are you up?” Shiro inquired, looking pointedly at Keith, wanting a straight answer.
But… maybe Shiro could understand.
Keith looked at his prosthetic again. Or… maybe not.
“Insomnia,” Keith answered.
“Still?”
“Yeah.”
“If you told Coran or Allura, I’m sure they could find something for you to help you sleep,” Shiro said.
Keith shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
---
Keith felt weak. He hadn’t slept in two days. They were about to go on a mission, and he was sorely needed. He had to do this. It didn’t matter how much sleep he hadn’t gotten.
Finished with his breakfast, made by Hunk, he pushed himself up from the table with his arms and stood. His knees shook.
“Keith, are you okay?” Pidge noticed there was something wrong first. She was the more perceptive one out of the Paladins.
“I’m… I’m fine.” He cleared his throat. “Fine.”
He took a step away from the table, no longer using his hands to support himself.
And he promptly collapsed onto the floor. He grunted with the impact.
“Keith!” The Paladins were yelling his name, surrounding him. “Keith, what’s wrong?”
“Ughn…” Keith moaned out, unable to find the words. He was too damn tired to. He tried to heave himself off the floor, and then everything went black.
---
Keith awoke in his bed on his stomach. He didn’t know how much time had passed. There had been no nightmares with this bout of unconsciousness. But he hadn’t wanted to be unconscious. There was a battle they had to get to. He was needed!
Keith rolled over, tried sitting up, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him from doing so. He looked up, saw Shiro standing over him, a concerned look on his face.
“Keith, what’s wrong? We ran diagnostics and you seem to be medically fine.” Shiro removed his hand, went and sat in a chair that he’d probably put by the bed. The other Paladins were in his room as well.
“Lack of sleep,” Keith told them honestly. Maybe now was the time to spill it.
Shiro shook his head. “Be honest with me. Why haven’t you been sleeping?”
Keith did sit up this time, and no one stopped him, though he felt dizzy upon doing so. He probably looked awful, pale with dark circles under his eyes. He put his head in his hand. Yep, he had to come clean.
“I’ve been having nightmares. And- and they won’t stop. I can’t sleep because of them. It’s infuriating.”
“Nightmares about what?” Lance asked.
Keith looked to him, then at each of the Paladins. Could he really tell them what was going on? It seemed so small and insignificant, insignificant just like him.
“I… uh… had a bad time growing up,” Keith answered. His mouth was dry. He looked away from everyone, down at his blankets instead. “After my dad died, I was put in a foster home. The man who ran it… he was terrible. He yelled a lot. He liked to use his fists. I wasn’t the only kid there, and we all went through the same stuff.”
“Keith, why didn’t you tell anyone?” Shiro asked. “Maybe talking it out would help.”
Keith looked to Shiro. “Because I don’t want to talk it out. It’s stupid. It’s small and insignificant. We have bigger problems right now than me having nightmares about my childhood.”
Shiro shook his head. “No, we don’t actually. If any of us have problems, we don’t function well as a team.”
Keith just nodded a little. That hurt, but Shiro was right.
Shiro put a palm to his forehead. “That’s not what I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to say is that you matter, and that we care about you. We need you, Keith.”
“But it doesn’t matter. It happened years ago. I shouldn’t be having nightmares,” Keith argued.
Shiro reached out, put a hand on Keith’s knee. “But you are.”
“Why?” He didn’t know why he was asking this of Shiro. How would he know?
“Stress can make PTSD flare up,” he said.
Keith angrily shoved his hand off his knee. “Yeah, but I don’t have PTSD.”
“Uh, dude, you just described trauma to a T,” Lance said. Keith looked around, the rest of the Paladins nodding.
Well, fuck.
“Okay, fine, maybe I have it.” Keith threw up his hands. “But it doesn’t matter. We have to look at the bigger picture here. The Galra are-”
“Keith.” Shiro said his name so softly. “You are part of the bigger picture. Don’t you think that matters?”
Keith looked at his blankets again, swallowed hard, licked his lips. “O-okay. Yeah, I guess.”
“You need sleep, man,” Hunk told him. “Like, really badly.”
Keith rubbed a hand over his face. His eyes felt like they wanted to close. This conversation was exhausting him. “Yeah, yeah I do.” He looked at Shiro again. “What do you do? When you get nightmares? How do you make them stop?”
Shiro chuckled. “It’s kind of funny, actually.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, I lucid dream,” Shiro explained. “So when the dream gets too bad, I picture myself hitting the button for an escape pod.”
“And that works?” Keith asked incredulously.
Shiro nodded. “But only if you lucid dream.”
Dammit, Keith didn’t do that. “Anything else you got?”
“Meditation and tea.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.” Shiro made it clear with his expression.
“Alright. I guess I’ll try that.” Keith rubbed his face again. “But I’m really tired, guys. Can I get some rest?”
The Paladins jumped over each other saying that of course he could get some rest, that he definitely needed it. Keith gave a small smile. These people cared about him. They were his friends.
“Thank you, you guys.”
After each of the Paladins left, Keith laid down, and it wasn’t long before he reached sleep. At least this time, there were no nightmares.
