"Did I do the right thing?"
There's a hollowness in Keith's voice as the whispered question fills the bunk, absent of his usual confidence. It's been hours since they returned from their mission in search of scultrite – a relatively simple adventure by their standards, if the last few months have been anything to go by – and Keith lays on his bed, black flight suit still clinging to his body. As he speaks, he raises a hand in front of his face, spreads his fingers apart, and curls them stiffly into his palm, as if he's expecting them to transform into something monstrous, alien.
Sighing, Keith drops his hand and rubs his eyes hard enough to see splashes of color, green and yellow and blue, against the blackness of his closed eyelids. When he finishes, the world is blurry, and he takes a moment to blink it back into place before looking at Hunk with wide, expectant eyes. Silence bubbles in the room again and with each tick, it gets bigger and bigger, suffocating the two in the tiny space. It's then, someplace among that overwhelming quiet and Keith's expectant stare, that Hunk remembers that the other teen is looking for a response, something to go by that's real and tangible and certain, unlike so many other things – patience, people, identity – in his life.
By the time opens his mouth to answer, Keith sits up and sighs, shaking his head.
"Nevermind. Forget I asked."
An expression crosses his face, one of sadness and hurt as his jaw goes slack, realizing that he won't get an answer from Hunk, realizing that yes, he has in fact violated some sort of social norm in bringing this up. The awareness, heavier than lead, sits on both of their hearts: Keith as he realizes just how alone he is, and Hunk as he registers just what his failure to answer has done to the other boy.
He sits with his knees folded to his chest for a long while after, forehead resting against his knees, staring at the blanket as he runs a finger across it in chaotic, messy lines, never once making eye contact with the larger boy. Closed off.
Hunk holds his headband in his hands, twirling the strip of fabric around his fingers and back again, unsure of what he wants to say. He knows what Keith wants to talk about; it's on both of their minds, after all. He's just not sure if he's the right person for the job.
He has to say something though, right? Something would surely be better than nothing. So he opens his mouth. Even still, he can't bring himself to address the question directly. So he starts from the beginning.
"What do you mean?"
A flicker of relief crosses the smaller boy's face, and his frown starts to prick back up into a smile. But then exasperation sets in and then a pointed, seething anger.
"You know damn well what I'm talking about, Hunk," he says, practically hissing the words.
It's different from Keith's explosive, stress-induced malice from the other day. There's a harshness in the way Keith says Hunk's name; it seeps through the space between them like acid, but it's not directed at him. No, it's to somewhere else, for someone else, an entity that Hunk can't even begin to conceptualize but feels all the same. It's anger and frustration at the world, at the universe, at the stardust for aligning things in just the way they have. It's ambivalence and anxiety about what's to come, about whether or not Hunk will give him the time of day and listen to what he has to say.
So Hunk does.
"Okay." he says, lowering his voice to a whisper, ears open for any wandering eavesdropper outside. "The Galra that you saved."
Keith breathes a sigh of relief and nods, jumping into his thoughts before he even realizes he's doing so.
"I couldn't just leave him there."
It's the truth, or part of it, anyway. The way he explains it is simple: the sight of the Galra, trapped in layers of glass and metal more claustrophobic than a coffin, something inside him stirred. Visions flew in and out of his mind, visions of thick, yellow acid suddenly bubbling up and tearing right through their skin without so much as a trace left behind. Of pained screams vibrating along the Weblum's fuschia and gray organs, making them shiver. Of the utter silence that would follow and how, in just seconds, the world would have forgotten both of them.
Hunk can practically feel the stomach acid crawling up his arms as Keith explained his thought process, his age-old queasiness threatening to reappear from the rock it had hidden under for so many months. But Hunk can't be distracted here, can't show this sign of weakness, not when Keith, more vulnerable than him, needs someone to hear him out.
It's then that Keith's words from earlier cross his mind. That they couldn't just leave people to die because they were Galra. He thought of how many soldiers they had slaughtered in battle, how many corpses they had left behind. But this case had been different. They hadn't entered the Weblum looking for a fight, but to scavenge for supplies instead. They had time to think about their actions, had time to plan out whether or not fighting that one lone soldier would have been worth it.
"Well, it's like you said earlier, right? That we can't just leave people to die because they are Galra."
"But letting him rot would have been the best choice. It would have been for the good of the universe." Keith hesitates before adding, "It's probably what Allura would do."
Hunk shakes his head. "Forget her. You're you. What would Keith do?"
Keith stares at Hunk slack-jawed, unsure of how to answer. Hunk seizes the opportunity to squeeze in next to Keith, sealing himself in the space between the wall and the other boy's hip, putting an arm around his shoulders and crushing him against his body.
"I think Keith would, one hundred and ten percent, destroy anyone that deserved it. But in that same token, I also think that he wouldn't kill someone if the situation didn't necessitate it in the moment. It's one thing to kill someone in battle, but it's something completely else to leave someone to die a long, drawn out death. It's," Hunk takes in a deep breath, afraid to say the next word, "Torture. And that's not something you do. It's not something that any of us do."
Keith leans into the hug hesitantly, as if he's ready for Hunk's display of affection to crumble into deceit, mumbling quietly about something that can barely be recognized.
"I just…it's not just that." Keith bites his lip nervously, turning to meet Hunk's gaze with a watery film over his eyes. He blinks it away before he continues, a quivering feeling threatening to thunder through his throat and spill out the emotions that he'd spent the last several days bottling up. Hunk waits patiently; Keith will speak when he's ready. But when he finally is, he can hardly summon the words to explain himself. What would happen if he chose not to fight or finish them off? Would they attack him, or would they be able to do something besides fight?
"I wanted to see if things would be different." The urge to add I don't even know why dances tantalizingly in his thoughts, but Keith shakes the lie away before it reaches the front of his mind. Because he knows exactly why he did it. He wanted proof. Proof that maybe their enemies had some level of humility or dignity, of respect.
There had been so many questions, so many scenarios, that had been swimming through Keith's mind in that moment. Questions that didn't necessarily have answers, scenarios that weren't necessarily a possibility. But he had to entertain at least one of them for the sake of his sanity, to find some sort of solution to his dilemma.
Bitterness paints his face as he remembers how the answer to that dilemma appeared before him, taking the form of a gun pointed at his head, and his face contorts into disgust. Hunk shakes him gently, reassuringly, running his thumb across Keith's arm as he sways the silent boy. Keith grips the yellow paladin's forearm, squeezing until his knuckles turn white, riding out the day's events as they resurface, replay, and repeat. The bile rises in his throat again. He imagines himself and the lone Galra soldier being burned alive in a pit of stomach acid. He saves them, over and over, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the other will diverge. Every time, every fucking time, he's wrong, and the barrel of the gun is pointed at him.
But then the bile comes back. The loneliness of death, the hypothetical pain, the sheer terror of being dissolved alive. The answer to his earlier question floats among all of it, visible in the sea of bile, and he reaches in-
It's an eternity before Keith speaks again.
"I don't regret it."