*Can't believe I'm jumping back into the fanfic world. Voltron bit my fangirl heart hard. I'm pretty rusty with fanfiction so any discrepancies are mine and I apologize. I'm always a sucker for angst and I hope you are too.
Enjoy,
Spockologist
His room is cool and dark. The faint light emanating from the power outlet in the corner is the only thing grounding him in reality. As he watches, the pure Altean glow starts to ebb and flow, growing to a menacing purple around the edges. Shiro inhales sharply and the color again fades to the innocent white light.
He has come to loathe the night. As a child, he had loved to look up at the stars and imagine his place amongst them. Now, he has seen the darkness in their depths. The deception behind the tranquil starry sky.
There is no such thing as a peaceful, silent night. Not anymore.
Alone in his room with no earthly provisions or keepsakes to distract him, the memories of the Galra come back to him. He hears Haggar's laugh, the marching of the droids. The quiet hum of the sleeping ship becomes a roar and he does his best not to scream along with it.
Shiro is not the man he was before the Kerberos mission. He is not the star struck cadet from his Garrison days. He is a monster. Their champion. A mutated thing that the Galra used and cast aside. He hates the constant reminder of their influence in his arm. He can feel the energy pulsing through his fingertips. It's a hungry sort of power, always begging for him to give in and lose control.
Control is the one thing he has left.
The scurrying of the mice past his door send him bolting upright. Part of him wishes they would climb into his room from the air vents. The other part of him wishes to be alone. He is the team leader and leaders don't show weakness. How could he instill faith in Keith or Pidge if they saw him breaking down? No, this was a burden best carried alone.
Shiro's human hand runs through his hair. These past few months have aged him. It's not just the white hair, though heaven knows he hates looking in a mirror, it's the emotional toll of things. The weight of responsibility he feels towards everyone and everything. Physically, he's dealt with worse- he lost an arm, didn't he? But the stress of caring for everyone, of being a paladin when he can barely be himself is what he finds most difficult to deal with.
It's easy to cast these fears aside during the day when he's distracted by Lance's antics or the latest addition to the coalition. But at night, alone in the dark with his thoughts and the silence,
He rarely sleeps.