Chapter 4: Coming For You
Magenta light flared. The hangar flickered in another domino effect of blossoming light. Keith heard the crackle of energy and couldn't help but glance up at the towering heights of the hangar looming like a viciously glaring spotlight above them. Distant as it was, he could see the bolts of lightning electricity brought to violent life spark and dance around the face of what could only be a laser.
Shiro's grunt, his vocal pants, snapped Keith's attention back towards where he stood further along the bridge. Breath stuttering to a halt, he watched as Shiro's arm burst into light itself, every inch of it flooded white-pink as though burning hot. Its radiance was so fierce that Keith could only squint, taking an instinctive step backwards despite the distance and the wreckage that lay between them.
Swirls of light in particles of visible energy swept around Shiro's arm. With a wrenching sweep, he swung it overhead, the arc of its motion leaving a trail of afterglow in its wake – but Shiro didn't move to strike the ground as he had before like Keith half expected. Crying in an outburst of agony, he staggered, lurched, and crumpled to his knees, lightning-struck hand slamming into the ground in a thundering, cracking smack.
"Shiro!" Keith cried, staggering a step towards him.
Shiro didn't hear. That, or he didn't care. Head bowed, teeth bared and eyes squeezed shut, he cried in an outburst of pain and ferocity and, hissing anger exhaled with each pant. Before Keith could even consider leaping to his aid, that hand spilt a pool of white-pink light into the floor beneath it that burst into a beam of energy, shooting through the thick metal.
The blast exploded with deafening force. It cracked and groaned, reverberating as it sliced upwards with Shiro's wayward lurch. Keith barely had a second to throw himself to the side of the bridge, colliding into the railing, as that beam of energy sliced a perfect incision down the very centre of the hangar. The entire floor upended and tilted beneath him; had he not grabbed the railing, Keith was sure he would have been flung over the side.
Beneath the bridge, something exploded. A little closer, something snapped with a brutal tearing crack. Smoke erupted into the air, and the crumpling, rumbling sound of stone blasted loose reached Keith's ears. Hanging onto the railing for dear life, Keith struggled to retain his footing and haul himself upright.
A glance over his shoulder saw the back end hangar, the tail of the bridge he stood upon, fracture before the precise slice and tumble into shards of shattered pieces. Below, behind, even above - it was falling down, falling around him, around them, but that hardly mattered. For the moment, it wasn't important, and even less so when Keith swung his gaze back towards where he'd last seen Shiro. His eyes widened.
Shiro was no longer on his knees. He was no longer gasping, and though his teeth were still bared, it was in a visage less pained and more a semblance of his previous cruel sneer. Keith caught only the beginning of the gesture as Shiro began to raise his lightning-struck hand from the cracked and fractured floor, fingers curled into white-bright claws. It was all he had time for before instinct demanded run!
Keith turned. He fled. Charging towards the end of the splintered bridge, he took a flying leap and flung himself into mid-air just in time to duck the beam of white-hot light as thick as the bridge itself blasted after him. he flipped, spun, twisted into a roll, and crashed into the distant ledge, the clone-lined ledge that he'd started upon and somehow circled all the way back to. Keith only just managed to roll to his feet, to turn and cast a split-second glance towards Shiro, before Shiro's distant figure raised his hand once more and shot his beam of destructive light in a second blast.
Again, the hangar was sliced into pieces. It split like butter beneath a hot knife. Smoke erupted and the floor dipped as it groaned and tilted. Keith threw himself along the platform bridge, unable to spare even a glance towards the clones in their pink-lit capsules, silent and more dead than asleep.
Another shot. An explosion. And another. Another strike and the rumbling avalanche that followed.
The floor tilted again, twisting, unhinged. It twisted too far, even, and mid stride Keith found himself flung from his feet and sliding down the floor that had become a vertical wall instead. A cry was torn from his lips, and it was all he could do to keep a hold of the knife still clasped in his hand and to slide down the floor rather than be thrown away from it.
What followed happened so fast that Keith couldn't have acted had he the thought to do so. It was too fast, too desperate, and as he crashed into the poor excuse of a floor at the bottom of the pseudo-wall, the groaning weight of a falling – beam? Wall? Capsule? – tumbling towards him demanded every muscle leap into action. All but blinded, he was on his feet, was throwing himself into midair once more, leaping towards what had to be the lowest floor of the hangar that was little more than a suspended disc at the base of the primary column.
Metal beams tumbled around him as he fell. Shards of shrapnel, fractured pieces of walls, shattered glass from broken capsules – Keith barely noticed any of it in the crazed flurry of his tumble. He didn't know where Shiro was, could only hold hope that he wasn't above him, wasn't even then raising his hand to shoot that destructive light once more. Soaring through open air, Keith stretched his reach into an arcing dive.
He was lucky. Just lucky. Lucky enough that, with the force of what must have broken a finger or two, he struck the lip of the disc-shaped floor and latched on for dear life. His knife, flung from his grasp, soared end over end across the platform, but Keith didn't see it land. He was hanging, panting, and with sweat dripping down his face it was all he could do to cling to the last lifeline that was given to him.
His body felt impossibly heavy as he hung from the lip. Exhaustion gripped him, but with a heave, a struggle of straining muscles, Keith hauled himself from suspension up onto the floor. He was aware of the entire length of the capsule bridge tumbling past him into empty space, but only detachedly. Panting, collapsing onto his back and wincing as his fingers protested their sudden release from grasping, he fought against a bout of dizziness.
But only for a moment. Just a moment was all Keith spared to lie sprawled, half-defeated, before urgency demanded he roll over and search for his knife. A turn of his head and he caught sight of it, embedded tip-down in the metal floor barely twenty feet away. Relief battled against Keith's exhaustion. Heaving himself onto his belly, onto hands and knees that trembled with the effort, he crawled towards it, reaching, desperate.
He hurt. Everything hurt. The fall, the adrenaline that had torn through him at Shiro's killing shot, seemed to have intensified ever spasm of pain. Keith doubted he could stand if he wanted to – but he didn't need to. If he could just reach his knife… If could just grasp his weapon in order to defend himself…
The effort was too great. Too great to do with any speed. An arm's length away from his knife, Keith peripherally caught sight of Shiro plummeting through the air towards him. In a moment of crumpling defeat, all he could do was slump to the ground in a groan. Forehead pressed against the cold metallic floor, Keith squeezed his eyes closed as Shiro landed in a solid, echoing thud barely a body length away from him. He drew a ragged breath as Shiro's footsteps clunked towards him. His fingers twitched as the sound of Shiro's sword hummed to life, and then –
Desperation. The same desperation that had him fighting. The same desperate need that demanded his screaming muscles act demanded of him again. Keith grabbed at his knife with frantic speed, and as Shiro's sword arced towards him, managed to raise his weapon and fling himself backwards enough to catch its full weight.
He was panting, or maybe that was Shiro. Keith wasn't sure. He could only feel the quivering protest of his abused fingers as they clung to the hilt of his knife, could only see Shiro's hardened face, frown fierce and eyes manic with their foreign light. His arms trembled with the effort to hold Shiro's full weight above him, off him, the force of Shiro's attack pinning him to the ground as he loomed over him.
"Shiro, please," Keith gasped, almost sobbed, yet the grief that tore through him was more for Shiro than for himself. For what they'd lost. "You were my brother. I love you."
Through the shaking of his arms, the sobs that were nearly voiced and shaking him just as much, Keith saw Shiro's face contort. His frown didn't retreat, but it twisted as though he was afflicted by a muscular spasm, and just for a fraction of a second the weight of his forceful attack eased.
Only slightly, however. Only for a second. A beat later and he was leaning forward once more with redoubled force, his own sword trembling with the strain. "Just let go, Keith," he growled through his teeth. "You don't have to fight anymore."
Keith winced, squeezing his eyes closed. His arms quivered with the strain, yet he seethed with the need to thrust away, to resist, to win just as he'd won so many battles in the past. I'll never stop fighting, Shiro. Not for you.
"The team's already gone," Shiro said, low and fierce.
Keith flinched. The words struck him like a blow and he cringed before them. His arms shook violently, faltering. No. No, I have to stop this. They're not gone, they're not, and I have to stop –
"I saw to it myself."
Enough!
Pain and rage, hatred and a resurgence of that desperation, tore through Keith. He cared. He cared so damn much – for Shiro, for the team, for the fight to end. He wanted it all. With an aching scream that tore his throat, that overwhelming feeling pulsed through him and it swept aside his weaknesses.
His eyes stung, and he heaved his knife upward. His cheeks burned as though slapped by the shock of his motion, and he thrust Shiro off him. With a lurch of overwhelming strength, a fierce swing not of his knife but of his conjured Bayard, Keith severed Shiro's glowing arm straight through the bicep.
Shiro bellowed. Flung backwards by the force of the thrust, the strike, and his own flinch, he lurched away from Keith, staggering in retreat. Crumpling, he hunched upon himself. He grasped frantically at his severed limb, fingers shaking. Cries and pants, the wavering totter of footsteps clanking on the metal floor, stuttered from him as he fell to his knees in a jumbled heap.
And before him, Keith rose. That blast of force, of power, froze the objections and protestations of his exhausted limbs. It let him stand, let him straighten without even a waver. But it didn't smother the heart-wrenching pain mercillesly sucked at his chest as he watched Shiro writhe in pain.
I'm sorry, he thought. I had to do it. I have to bring you back.
If causing Shiro that much pain was the only way to do it, then… then Keith would. He had to. He knew it was the right thing to do when Shiro, his Shiro, collapsed to his knees and dragged his head upwards to face him. His features were contorted, his stare haggard, but in a different way this time.
"Keith," Shiro whispered, voice hoarse. This time, it was uttered in a quaver of his own desperation.
The hall was thick with the sound of applause, still ringing in a resounding echo of approval that only gradually faded into respectful silence once more. Everywhere were people, thick in a crowd of dutifully attending trainees, families beaming with pride or tight-lipped satisfaction, pilots, and instructors. They stared towards the slightly raised platform at the very front of the hall, barely a single person blinking. None moved to disrupt the proceedings but to applaud in wordless congratulation when appropriate.
But not Keith. Keith didn't clap, and not because he was being difficult. Not because he was making a point of being rebellious, or because he thought that the graduates on the stage didn't deserve it. It was an exasperating procedure, the graduation, and one that Keith considered only one more attribute of the Garrison that conflicted with his own understanding of what should be deemed necessary, but it happened whether he wanted it to or not. There was no escaping it, no avoiding attendance. Keith stood in watchful muteness like every other trainee.
But he didn't clap. He couldn't. Not when the commander and principal sidestepped along the line of waiting graduates and extended their hands respectively to their next candidate. Not when they paused at one graduate in particular.
"Shirogane Takashi," rang out across the hall in a clear, crisp announcement that beamed with as much pride as the smiling faces in the crowd. "Congratulations on your well-deserved success. You have done the Garrison a great service with your commitment."
The words were the same as those offered to each of the graduates standing at sharp attention and extending in either direction to where Shiro stood tall and straight himself, his graduate beret affixed and gaze trained stoically and directly ahead of himself. But at the principal's words, a hint of a smile touched his lips. From where Keith stood, when the hall erupted with enthusiastic applause, someone even whistling their approval from the back of the hall, it looked like it might have widened just a bit.
Which it likely did. Someone like Shiro... When the crowd screamed his name and their love of him even without verbalisation, he wouldn't deny them acknowledgement in the form of something like a smile. It wasn't who he was. That crowd… To Keith's ears, they clapped just a little louder than they had for everyone else. He knew they did. Everyone loved Shiro, and even had his own family been absent, there was a wealth of adoring attendants to take up the baton of congratulations.
Shiro accepted the principal's words. He shook the hand of the commander, replied with his oath to the request for service and commitment asked of him, and snapped to sharp attention once more as the hall erupted a second time and the principal and commander edged along to the next graduate. That second time too the applause seemed to last just a little longer, and Shiro offered his thanks with a real smile and the very slightest forward tip of his head.
Keith swallowed thickly as he stared up at Shiro. His teeth were sunken so far into his bottom lip that he was sure he'd long ago broken the skin, but he didn't care. Hands clenched tightly at his sides, not unwilling but unable to join those around him in their applause, he stared and felt a weight tighten around his chest.
I'm so stupid, he told himself, just as he had for days leading up to the event.
It's not like it changes anything, he reminded himself, just as Shiro had told him repeatedly, as though he'd known Keith's thoughts and the confusing riot of emotions that he couldn't explain roiling through him.
He's not even leaving the Garrison.
He'll still be… still be here.
It doesn't change anything.
Nothing will change.
Nothing will change at all.
Nothing will…
No matter how much Keith coaxed himself into accepting his own reality, it didn't help. That Shiro was only graduating, that he would simply become a fully-fledged pilot, and that though his residency would be outside of the dorms, he would be easy walking distance away located in an alternative wing of the Garrison. All of the pilots were. That was what happened. Always.
But it didn't help.
The other part of Keith felt Shiro's graduation like a punch in the gut, except that this one couldn't be as easily ignored as a real one. He felt that Shiro was in motion. That he would be leaving, if only a little bit. That he would go on missions, undertaking jobs and fulfilling tasks that would take him away from the Garrison far further than the easy couriering missions that the seniors were permitted to tag along to. That other part of Keith couldn't help but stare up at Shiro and wonder why all he could see was a pile of heaped dirt, a poor excuse for a headstone, and a farmhouse that seemed so completely abandoned despite that it had housed two people only a day before.
Nothing will change, he tried to remind himself, but Keith knew it was a fallacy. Everything changed. It always did.
And when he's gone then I'll just go right back… Swallowing the sickly feeling that rose in the back of his throat, Keith lowered his gaze to the shoulder's of the boy standing before him. He couldn't watch anymore. He couldn't watch as Shiro swelled with pride in his accomplishments just as he should be allowed to. He couldn't listen as the graduates further along the line, one after the other, were congratulated just as Shiro had been, and he couldn't raise his hands to dutifully applaud. Even if he'd wanted to, they didn't seem able to lift from where they hung limply at his sides. All Keith could do was stand still and silent, staring at the boy in front of him, and then he couldn't even do that anymore.
Tucking his chin, Keith turned and ducked along the narrow aisle between standing students. He ignored the hisses and murmurs of annoyance, the eyes that followed him and that he could feel pin his back with a glare. Keith didn't care. He barely noticed them as he ducked from the attentive crowd and strode on silent feet towards the back of the hall and the promise of escape.
A part of Keith knew he'd be scolded. A part of him knew that it would make work for Shiro, because Shiro had a habit of stepping forth in his defence. But those parts couldn't seem to care at that moment, and even when he broke into a run in the last few steps of his escape, lurching past a frowning teacher with mouth opening to draw him to a halt, Keith didn't care.
The sounds of applause as another graduate was congratulated chased after him, and another part of Keith couldn't help but think it was well-timed; he could imagine much of a same response with a different kind of satisfaction greeting his eventual expulsion from the Garrison. He knew it would happen. Knew it. That eventuality felt abruptly far closer than Keith had expected. And, he suddenly realised, than he wanted it to be.
Keith didn't really know where he ran to. He didn't return to the Garrison dormitories and the shoebox of a room he shared with a classmate he barely knew the name of. He didn't head to the Garrison itself at all but instead found himself flying across the dusty, deserted grounds without looking back, his crisp Garrison uniform all too constrictive in the afternoon heat. He'd shed his jacket before he left the shadows of the building complex and discarded it without a thought a second later. Lost or otherwise, he couldn't bring himself to care what happened to it.
There wasn't truly a way to escape the confines of the Garrison. It was utterly isolated; a marked stretch from the nearest town, as much to ensure an absence of distraction to its students as to enable privacy and space for air traffic, it would take more time than Keith knew he could commit to make a break for real escape. His father's old house was even further away, and though a piece of him ached to return to it's empty rooms, a larger piece of him wished to be as far away from it as possible.
Keith's breath grew heavy far quicker than it should have when he finally ground to a halt at the craggy edge of a hill. Gasping, he edged towards the lip and, shielding his eyes, peered beyond at the stretch of nothingness spreading before him. Absolute nothingness. The promise of nothing.
Breath stuttering, Keith scrubbed his eye with a fist. It burned slightly, though from the dry, dusty air, the blinding sunlight, or something else he wasn't sure. It was uncomfortable in the afternoon heat, but Keith didn't shrink away from it in search of shade. All he could manage was to drop onto his haunches and then, as his breathing slowed with a series of haphazard hitches that he couldn't prevent, onto his rump with a puff of sand.
Keith sat. He stared. He didn't want to think, but what crossed his mind was the same thoughts over and over again, that same nagging voice whispering of the very decline from the height that Keith had been perched upon for the past year and hadn't even noticed he stood upon. His attention had been too focused upon Shiro. And now Shiro was…
Now he was…
And Keith would be…
Sinking his teeth into his lip once more, all Keith could do was wrap his arms around his knees and drop his chin onto them. He didn't want to move. He didn't want to go anywhere, he abruptly decided, and definitely not with the prospect of facing his classmates in the mess hall for dinner, or his roommate should he return to his dormitory.
Keith sat, and he thought the thoughts that wouldn't leave him alone.
He sat, and he felt the feelings that were too jumbled to make any sense of.
He sat, and he stared at nothing yet somehow everything, for that everything presented itself before him whether he wanted to see it or not. Dirt graves and empty houses. Different houses filled with too many people and presided over by bored carers. The sharp contrast of his afternoons spent in the hangar, or the times when Shiro coaxed him to the table with his own senior classmates and the friendless of those seniors in spite of the frowns and mutters it triggered from those in Keith's grade.
He barely noticed when the sun began to fall. He watched as it oozed down the horizon, but he didn't really see it. It was only when a shiver trembled down his arms that he even noticed the abrasive heat had died to something almost cold.
That was when Shiro found him.
"Hey."
Keith didn't move. He wasn't sure if he couldn't shift from the position he'd been in for hours or if he didn't want to. Not that it mattered.
"I was looking for you before. No one knew where you went."
Shiro's crunching step edged up behind Keith, then to his side where Keith could see him only from his periphery. Yet he still didn't move. Or couldn't.
"Are you okay?"
From his tone, Keith knew that Shiro understood what was wrong, even if Keith didn't entirely know what it was himself. It annoyed him suddenly, that Shiro would know even before Keith did, but that annoyance faded into the resignation that had settled upon him throughout the dragging afternoon.
"Congratulations," he said, hating that his voice sounded so dull but unable to do anything about it. "You're finally a proper pilot. I bet everyone knew you'd make top of the class."
"Keith," Shiro began.
"Did you have to do a speech?" Keith's fingernails sunk into his forearms but he couldn't otherwise bring himself to move. "I didn't see. Sorry; I left. I wasn't feeling well."
"Not feeling -?" Shiro's tone spiked, abruptly louder. "Are you okay -?"
"I bet it would have been really good." The niggling pain of Keith's fingernails was grounding as he dug them in deeper. "You're heaps better at speaking in front of a crowd than I would be. People actually listen to you."
Shiro didn't say anything this time, so Keith's voice, his string of meaningless words that he hadn't even considered before speaking them, faded into silence. He stared at the orange lip of sun that was all that remained of the day and shrugged off the urge to shiver once more.
Finally, as the sun sunk to little more than a sliver of reddish glow, Shiro sighed. Dropping to a crouch, he settled alongside Keith close enough for their shoulders to touch. Keith wasn't sure whether he wanted to lean into him or draw away so settled for stony stillness.
"You know," Shiro said slowly, "nothing's going to change."
So you keep saying, Keith thought.
"I'll still be around. Even when you can't see me, it's not like I've disappeared."
But it will feel like it.
"And sure, I might be a little busier, and I might have to leave the Garrison sometimes, but first-year-outs never go particularly far, and we don't get our first big missions for at least a few years at the earliest. No intergalactic travel just yet, I promise."
Shiro chuckled, leaning slightly into Keith's shoulder as though he expected Keith to do the same in return, but Keith could hardly think to do so. His smiling muscles felt not broken but absent entirely. The echo of Shiro's voice rung in his ears like a promise of future disappearance.
Everything changes eventually.
Slowly, Shiro's chuckles and querying hums faded, and any hint of amusement died with it. But he didn't lean away from Keith's shoulder. Rather, raising an arm, he dropped a hand atop Keith's head in such an unexpected gesture that Keith couldn't help but glance sidelong towards him.
Shiro wore a small smile, but there was no hint of merriment to it. He nodded slightly as Keith met his gaze. "I'm still here, Keith," he said. "I'll still be around, even when I'm working. You got that?"
Keith didn't reply immediately, but at when Shiro gave a gentle scrub of his hair, an equally gentle rock into him as though to coax a response, he nodded. "Yeah," he said lowly. "I got it."
"We'll still hang out."
"I… I know."
"And even if I'm busy, you can still always visit me." Shiro's smile grew a little as he tipped his head. "Provided it's outside of class hours, of course. You'll just have to be the one to come and get me sometimes, do you think?"
Of course Shiro would somehow manage to slip Keith's academic responsibilities into the discussion. Keith wasn't surprised – or at least not by that. What did startle him slightly was his other words.
I can… go and see him. Keith blinked, frowning down at his knees. I could. He always comes to pick me up from my dormitory, or after class, or from the mess hall. I could just... just go and see him.
It didn't feel like a foolproof plan. Keith felt like he was missing something, some key point, and the thought that niggled like a gnawing gnat in the back of his head still muttered that it would only be for a little while. That Keith would more than likely be headed back to the home with it's detached carers within a few years - within a year, even - and that he should just accept it and leave before he could get expelled. It would be worse to be kicked out than to walk away.
But for the moment, the flurry of thoughts and emotions battling in his head and belly respectively seemed to take a pause. Beneath the weight of Shiro's hand still rested warmly atop his head, Keith nodded. "Alright," he said. "Then don't you forget it. I'll be coming to and get you, okay?"
He wasn't looking at him, but Keith felt Shiro's smile widen into a beaming grin. He felt it like the radiance of the vanishing sun, and even if Keith didn't know how long it could all last, it made his words worth it.
A/N: Sorry for the late update! I'll try and be a bit more efficient next time.
Thank you to the lovely people who have shown me so much kindness and support with their reviews. I can't thank you lovelies enough. You give me the nudge to keep posting (which sounds bad, but it's totally true). So thank you all so, so much!
