"It's not your fault, Shiro." Because for all Keith can be oblivious sometimes, he can recognize apprehension in Shiro's eyes. It's been there since the fight. "It wasn't you. I know you'd never hurt me like this..." The scar on his cheek is not the only thing in his body that stings, but his brother is already feeling guilty as it is, and Keith's not adding to that. "Please, Shiro..."
It’s not the right word, not really, but it holds up well enough to describe how the edges of things don’t want to adhere to the way Shiro knows they probably should. The way that sometimes the words around him fuzz into nothingness or the moments when this body is so present with its heat and its weight and colors bleed from shape to shape until the world is so viciously real that he, himself, feels – less than. Ticks and dobashes, hours and days, are even in their pattern so it’s his own hands and own mind that cannot keep them anchored to the present and while nothing, nothing is more of a gift than this ( light, warmth, solid ground, physical sensation ), it is also – perhaps, maybe more of gift than he can hold with these hands. This hand.
Except. There’s Keith. A fixed point, a star burning through the void-nothing darkness. A hand, a voice – his little brother, so alive that Shiro finds he can do little else but allow himself to remain captured in his orbit.
Existing at his side, things – if they don’t make more sense, they at least make more. More felt. More understood. Overwhelming sensations can be swallowed back or sorted through. And, piecemeal, shards of memories begin to fit together at their jagged edges. Things the he whom he was probably lived ( a desert stretching out in every direction; the glowing gold of a lion’s eyes ), things seen from both at a distance and with these own eyes, all at once ( words he can’t and can remember forming with these lips; a single directive, whispered in this ear ). It takes – time. Days, maybe. Weeks, maybe. But larger swaths come and see him rocking to his knees in the middle of the night, in desperate search of a bathroom when his mind remembers ( metal crawling up what is left of this arm, Keith’s face, Keith’s voice, Keith’s fighting and never stopping and a single directive – end this ) –
It takes Shiro a moment to hear the words out, to look down at his hand where it has arrested its movement, maybe seeking out what Takashi Shirogane would have done a life or two ago ( a hand on the shoulder, an apology, a word of thanks, pride ). He realizes, in that moment, that this has become familiar – reaching out, stopping, stilling and letting the distance stand because he can’t feel it but he can, with whatever set of memories he carries, the look on Keith’s face and the knowledge like a living thing under his skin –
( because he has, before. because it’s always victory and death, never or. )
Apologies burn in the back of his throat – gratitude. Worry. Shame. Something desperate and aching. Every good thing that Keith deserves and Shiro does not, everything that can’t really fix what he ( which he – it doesn’t matter ) has done. But. There’s Keith’s voice here, now, in the present too – please. And one feeling that eclipses everything, everything, everything else.
One more hesitation and Shiro reaches out, his hand ghosting against Keith’s shoulder before curling around his back and pulling him in, hand splayed against the back of his head as if to guide it towards his shoulder, and for the briefest second the desire sparks for another arm to work with, if only for the sense of completeness in an enveloping hug. But this is what he has – who he is – and it doesn’t stop him from pulling Keith close. ( from thinking that yes, he could hurt him. but he chooses not to, for however much he can choose. )
❛ – I love you, Keith, ❜ Shiro murmurs once he has curled himself around his brother, conviction winning against guilt. ❛ Always. ❜
