saints and soldiers » klance

17: Heaven Help Us

And would you pray for me
Or make a saint of me

He didn't go to dinner that night. He wasn't sure if he was expected to after having attended breakfast, but he thought Lance might be looking for him anyway.

That thought alone was almost enough to make him go.

Almost.

Instead, though, he curled further into his windowsill, pressed against the cold glass. There was an unforgiving sort of comfort in it, in returning to this tiny corner of the world he had secluded himself- trapped himself- inside. He wasn't good enough to be living in the real world. He wasn't worth anything. It was safer here, where he was out of the way and out of sight and out of mind. It was better that he stayed here, where he couldn't hurt anybody and nobody could hurt him.

His thoughts wandered, as they'd been doing so often over the last week, to the dank concrete corner he knew so well. Forty-seven cracks spider-webbing through dark-stained concrete walls and floor, the smell of dampness and mold, the spiderwebs in the fall, the water seeping through the cracks in the spring, the stifling, thick heat of summer permeating the walls themselves. The heaps of junk and trash and long-forgotten things piled around him like the ghosts of what people could have been or used to be or rejected from the start, like monsters lurking and waiting to pounce. The worn-down padding of a cheap dog bed, stained and filthy and cloudy with dust and stinking of mildew.

The only place he belonged.

He thought of the unlocked front door, and the gun hidden beneath a stack of useless, empty papers on a desk.

The bedrooms that looked like they hadn't been touched in years, encapsulating lives whose presence had been gone for a long, long time in faded band posters and dusty comforters and a vanity with a broken mirror.

The medicine cabinet inside a rarely-used bathroom standing empty, while the cabinets across from it stored dozens upon dozens of bottles of pills hidden years before Keith had arrived.

The smell of cigars permanently ingrained into jackets and slacks, a tip glowing bright orange as smoke curled through the air and harsh breathing kept soul-shattering silence at bay.

The glint of gunmetal through the haze of sickly-sweet smoke.

The cracking of a hand against his face.

The taste of blood on his tongue.

Collapsing into a dark corner with a wounded arm cradled close to his chest, woken an hour later by tearing wood and rough screaming and brass knuckles against his skin and his clothes torn to oblivion.

Large, callused hands shoving him into a darkened garage, rusted metal scraping at his skin as he fumbled for the corner.

Closing his eyes and finally, finally, rest, if only for a few hours, to get away from his dry, bleeding hands and bruised skin and the cuts across his face and his aching body.

Yes, maybe he really did belong in that corner.

No one came to get him for dinner, which was both a relief and a disappointment. Though he'd wanted to see Lance- and even Shiro and Pidge and Hunk, to his surprise- he wasn't sure he could or should.

If there had ever been anyone in his entire life that he didn't want to drag down with him, it was already Lance.

Keith shook his head at himself, gazing down at the street. He had only known Lance a few days; the urge to protect him, to keep him safe and out of Keith's own helpless path of destruction baffled him, but he didn't know how to- didn't actually want to- get rid of it, so he just left it alone.