- 2
The first time he said it, he knew it was too late. The L curled on his tongue, and the You had come to his lips in a whisper.
He'd meant to said it before. He should have. The air was compressed and dense. Humidity from his own blood made mist in his cell. He was breathing his own hurt.
Everything was pain. All the time, at every waking and sleeping hour of this cursed existence. He should be numb after all. He would be if it weren't for the recent loss of his arm... They had took his arm away! He had hoped… didn't know what at this point. It was in vain. But he'd wished that maybe, just maybe, when the witch realized he was not good enough, she would sacrifice him.
Shiro knew the pain of that confession alone, was too much for him to bear. But this last time had crossed a line.
Admitting this was a little better than to keep it bottled up.
He'd meant to get himself killed so many times in the arena. Not in a way that would make it obvious for it to raise suspicion.
They were silly things. Mistake any rookie could make and stuff that all his training and own surviving sense were completely against off. Letting himself stay in the stone floor too long after a beating. Grab that weapon that he wasn't really good at. At the end, what made him snap of it wasn't the confidence to ge back home. Maybe in the beginning. Now, he knew better.
But the faces of Matt, Sam, their family. How they needed them alive and as safe as he could get them… nothing else mattered.
Shiro's stump jerked and he grunted.
That was a lie. There were (one) people that he didn't let slip into his mind. Not even when he felt so close to giving it all up. But they lived on his edges and made it hard to breath.
He prefered to think of the Holts. It was safer. Better one broken promise than two.
Like this, the suicidal thoughts remained in check, their only anchor, his disease.
Now, embarrassed and weeping in his cell, his brain was completely gone with pain and Shiro left himself slip. His one hand covered his face, muffling the sound of snotty nose and closed his eyes.
The one he'd been blocking, locked like him in the cell of his chest finally got away and got a hold of his mind.
"Promise me you'll come back"
"Of course I'll come back, Keith"
"Promise it"
Shiro had laughed. That brat knew him too well to his own good.
He looked at his impervious face, infinit eyes of all that was night and what layed beyond. Suddenly he wasn't the gangly, sixteen year old he met anymore. The baby face remained, but seventeen looked good on him.
A tiny smirk at the side of Keith's mouth started to waver at Shiro's lack of actual response.
"I promise"
The next day, Shiro would leave to camp for the next four days and then, the fifth, to Kerberos.
This was going to be their last interaction. Until...
A knot in his throat clenched his pharynx, but Shiro pushed the words free.
"You need to promise me something too then." Keith's hair was getting long. "Remember what we talked. Finish pilot training. Make your dreams come true-"
"-not matter what" finished Keith, and smiled.
They hugged and Shiro thought to say it then. Keith had become his only friend and he was going to miss him. Shiro didn't have hope to come back anyway.
And still, something in him stopped him.
When I come back. He already knows it anyway.
Shiro let himself rejoice in that one vision. Delusion, he already knew. But there, grounded in Keith's arms, surrounded by warm, everything was possible.
Shiro left himself rejoice in that one vision. Delusion, he already knew. But there, grounded in Keith's arms, surrounded by warm, everything was possible.
I promised after all.
Laying on his cell, alone and cold of sweat, his empty eyes fixed on the dark hole of ceiling he muttered, broken, words that should have been said that last goodbye. There was no one there to hear them.