Dog Days // Sheith

Chapter 7

Space was cold and big and Keith had underestimated both of these factors.

All or nothing had turned out to be exactly how things turned out. The all was Keith, Shiro, Hunk, Pidge and Lance along with Allura all being sent up to the space station and then shuffled into a transport that took them to a small, remote planet that acted as a refuelling base for Galra freight ships.

Less than a month ago, Keith's biggest fear in the world had been the idea that Shiro would never speak to him again after he dropped out of the Garrison; the uncertainty of where he would go and what he would do once he dropped out of the Garrison. Now he was staring down the barrel of his first and only mission; it would either go right and end the war, or it would go wrong and he would be dead. He was refusing to tack onto that thought: and my friends would be dead, too . He had to keep reminding himself that his friends had come of their own free will. He couldn't suffocate under the weight of feeling responsible for them when they were all adults who had offered to help. They wanted to do this. They wanted to do this .

But Shiro hadn't slept through the night since they had left earth and it had never even crossed Keith's selfish brain to consider what would happen to Shiro if he was put back into the situation that had led to him losing his arm, his comrades, his friends. Of course he was having nightmares, flashbacks.

"They say I have PTSD."

"Do you?"

"Sometimes."

They were underground, under the refuelling base while they waited for their transport to arrive. A couple of days, tops, which gave them at least a little more time to familiarize themselves with the weapons they'd been assigned and the suits they'd been given; light weight, easy to move in with boosters on the back for whatever creative uses the wearer could come up with. The helmets had comms wired into them and visors that information could be fed onto, although it wasn't a feature they were likely to use. Keith was going to be the source of information, led by a spy hiding among Zarkon's personal army. They had each been given weapons suited to their expertise in combat; Lance and Hunk were given blasters, one designed for a sharpshooter and the other a tank weapon. Pidge had been given what Keith could only summarize as high-tech knuckle dusters, precise weapons more designed for assisting her in getting her hands into Galra tech more than fighting. Not that Pidge couldn't pack a punch, but her expertise was technology, always. Keith had gotten a shortsword, lightweight but sharp enough that Keith could swear he heard the air split on a downswing. It was a comfortable weapon, he liked it. Shiro also got a sword; one of the few weapons he could use one-handed, his was broader than Keith's, with only one sharp edge. They'd both also been given pistols that holstered against the small of their backs, just in case. But out of all of them, Shiro and Keith were expected to do a lot of close combat; it was their speciality, and if it had to come down to who was going to go toe-to-toe with Zarkon next to Keith, it was probably going to be Shiro. The others were there to clear the way and cover their backs, and they were happy to do it.

There wasn't anything anyone could do to stop Shiro waking up every night in a cold sweat, gasping for breath and trembling, though. Keith had tried.

They had pushed their small beds together so they could comfortably sleep against one another, sharing their blankets and their body heat to fend off the cold of the low-tech underground bunker- Keith never thought there would be a day that he'd miss the Heiress heat- and sleep came easy, had come easy with all the constant movement recently wearing them down thin. It was in the early hours of the morning that Shiro was aggressively ripped out of sleep, his body always reacting so violently to his dreams that it woke Keith up as well. He was used to it now; on the space station he woke up disoriented and panicky, now he knew to keep himself still and calm until Shiro was far enough out of his dream to not react in fear to being touched. Keith reached out for him in the dark, laying a hand on his cheek to draw him in. Shiro went easily, his breathing still short and harsh as Keith pressed their foreheads together.