Star-Crossed Rivals || [Keith x Reader]

Grief

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You let your tired legs carry you to the lounge as you rubbed the tiredness from your eyes. The day has been really uneventful but you still felt exhausted.

You could already hear Lance and Hunk explain what planet they freed from the Galra today. The both of them have been going on missions with the Blade a lot lately, doing what all of you should be doing right now honestly.

But since Shiro went missing, nothing has been like it usually was. The whole place was just completely disorganized.

You felt it when you entered the rooms and the atmosphere was just... off.

When you all would hang out and talk and suddenly the conversation had a weird pause in it. The pause that happened because you knew Shiro would have something to add in as well in that moment but he wasn't there.

Every morning in the dining hall, everyone avoided looking to the chair that was unoccupied. It was not the only chair that was empty but that particular one seemed more void of a person sitting on it than the others, as weird as that sounded.

When you would stand as a group and there was this unusually large gap between you all that no one wanted to fill, as if waiting for someone to join the circle you were standing in.

You felt it in the way Lance seemed to talk more than usual, probably distracting himself from the grief; in the kitchen where Hunk would spend most of his time when he wasn't on missions or sleeping; in Pidge's hangar where she would hyper fixate on her next mission, finding her brother, as if losing yet another person was just too unbearable so she had to try and fill that space up as soon as possible.

You felt it in your room, where you heard Keith return to his room way past mid night, cursing and complaining that he didn't make any progress with finding him.

You felt it in all the spaces Shiro didn't take up.

Walking by the rooms, it somehow seemed a little colder when you passed his room, although the temperature was even across the whole Castle.

While all of them went about their days in their own way, you did too.

Of course, you offered to look for Shiro with Keith when you could but sometimes he'd even reject the offer. You were confused at first but quickly realized why he wanted to go alone.

It was the time he could properly grieve in private.

You see it in his eyes all the time; When Lance rambled about the most random things, Keith would look at him bitter and when the group came together, he brought up the missing paladin every time he could.

He thought the others moved on already, and he was the only one truly devastated by Shiro going missing. So he goes alone, hiding the extend of the grief he felt in front of you all, as if it would make him look weak in comparison.