Hijacking Reality

Chapter 22

This chapter had a lot of heartbreak in it for me. For some reason I started to reminisce about my grandfather who had passed a few months ago and found myself missing him extremely so I'd like to dedicate this chapter to him. As well as my cousin who very much has gone through another heartbreak of her grandmother passing away and shortly after the building blocks of her life, her parent's, getting a divorce. She is taking it really hard and she deserves to be so very happy. College is also starting for me soon and I am starting a new chapter of my life and hopefully I can move on and become something better than what I can be today. Thank you for the support of my story and all of the reads. It brings me joy and hopefully this story will go on for more chapters to come. I will not leave my boys off with this note because they deserve so much more. Enjoy.

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"Keith," Shiro's heavy and very lifeless arm clenched at the red paladin's quaking shoulder that held his essence of lament.

This vision of Lance and his new lackluster self planted a seed of colorless depression in Keith's life. His vibrant sun kissed skin was pale and sunken from the glass of the healing pod and his hair curled at an unruly length past the nape of his neck. If he were awake Keith would surely be hearing Lance's screams of having a mullet just like his rival. No, more like lover now but that could only go to the extent of Keith standing outside the glass, face pressed against it's clean structure only hoping for something to signify he was alright. It was only a bitter memory of when all Lance would address Keith as a mullet headed loner emo. He'd give anything to have him say those exact words again.

Keith's palm heated the chilled glass and left behind it's mark of fog when it slipped back down to his side. Shiro was nothing more than an alarm clock to Keith. 'Keith it's time to eat. Keith it's time to sleep. Keith you should step away.' And after all of that guidance to make sure he didn't end up sick, he was sick on the inside. So sick that he could puke out all his insides and become nothing more than a dirty carcass. Sick to the point of wanting to stay in bed all day but unable too because of a warm fever, instead because he didn't want to leave pod 2. That would mean leaving Lance.

Scenarios were played over and over in his head that one morning the pod would open letting Lance's weak body fall outside and Keith would then be there to catch him. Keith would greet him with a 'Hey sharpshooter.' or 'Hey beautiful. What's cookin?' Something, just anything at all. Whether it was a pickup line he started wrong or trying to flirt horrendously, coming up with greeting lines gave him a hope that the other half of him survived.

"Keith, Hunk made you some food and I really think you should sleep," Shiro's voice that seemed to be drowning under waves of water sputtered in Keith's ear.

He only retorted with his typical answer, "But what if Lance wakes up? I have to watch and see."

Shiro would reply only with, "You'd be the first to know if he shows the signs."

That's right. If. Shiro was dropping hints that Lance most likely would not wake up because it already had been a week. A week since that disaster of a ceremony. The war was still occurring and even that held no value in his view of what was going on in this bleak and somber world. Allura and the others tried to maintain as much peace as they could and did not initiate any battles. Fighting did not seem to be in Allura's dictionary like it had been for Keith. He just wanted to burn this whole planet down. Burn it to it's rotten core but everytime he stroke a match someone was there to snuff it out, like his oxygen had been when Lance fell to the floor of that chalk destined circle.

Keith's forehead laid upon the glass for a moment, it was something of tradition now for him whenever he left the lonely pod harboror. He closed his eyes and spoke softly in a tone filled with harmony and repetition that Shiro could not bare to listen to for, "The name's Keith."