scars of our love

the day keith hears the news is hot, a sweltering heat that builds and builds and builds until it's all you can focus on and your skin is burnt and boiling. and unfortunately for keith — or maybe fortunately—, the anger coursing inside him doesn't feel too unfamiliar. he paces through the hallways in a haze not much different from the mind-numbing experience one gets from heat exposure, and his focus is blurry.

it's blurry when he bursts through iverson's office doors screaming and yelling, looking for a fight because "pilot error is the most bullshit thing i've ever heard and everyone knows it." he knows shiro was a fantastic pilot, the best pilot garrison had, actually. so he also knows that they blamed it on shiro because of his illness, because that's always easier, isn't it? the injured and diseased are always the scapegoat, aren't they?

it's blurry when he throws all his belongings in a backpack, body numb yet bursting with adrenaline, desperate to run from the memories of a man he'll never see again and from the lies of peers that never deserved his attention or respect in the first place.

and it continues to stay blurry as the days pass, each blistering hour blending painful memories of red and blue and every other hurt imaginable—fusing and merging until he is nothing more than a bleeding page of watercolor, far too destroyed and ugly to even look at. even as keith drives through the bitter desert nights watching the stars above, stars that will forever haunt him because are you up there? will you ever come back? are you alive? do you remember how we used to sneak up to the roof and point out every constellation— every far away flame that we childishly hoped to touch?

and keith's foggy mind already has the answers supplied, because what other answer could there be that isn't "no" ?

eventually, it's too much— too much emotion. so much emotion begging to be released, pulsing through his veins and seeping out every pore, screaming and writhing with unexplainable force in a body that's much too fragile to contain such a thing. so he stops. keith pauses one afternoon and lays under the sun, absorbing every ray of overwhelming warmth and letting that be all he feels. he sweeps through every corner of his mind and empties all he finds— sweeps because it's the only thing he knows how to do. sweeps because this anger will boil forever over a person he can never touch— what's the point of feeling if all I can feel is rage?

and then he finds a shack.

the tally marks etched on the bedroom wall mark two weeks.

fourteen whole days of busying himself with pointless tedious tasks to fill the gaping void slowly expanding inside him.

constructing a small garage from scrap wood and metal scavenged from long rides across the horizon to house the stolen garrison bike. taking a day-trip into town to purchase paint so keith could color all the walls a "soothing eggshell coffee," or whatever else the hell that means. and on the late nights when terrors plagued keith's rest, leaving him restless and disconnected, he filled page after page of lined paper with the same question, resulting in a three-journal stack gathering dust in some corner.

really, keith believed himself to be doing quite well in this whole avoidance situation.

but there was always a breaking point.

always.

keith awoke quaking, blood pumping through his body furiously, preparing for a battle that didn't exist. in his distorted desperation, his need for validation and quiet comfort, keith blindly reached across the bed— believing beyond reason that there'd be strong arms to clutch— but he was met with empty sheets.

and a new type of desperation set in— the type he's been suppressing for weeks— the type where your lips trembled and your rib cage feels compressed and every bone in your being feels so unbelievably hollow and alone that a deep-rooted loneliness spreads through each nerve.