Thread by @warpspeed_chic

Do you ever think about how Keith spent a year staring at the sky, wondering whether Shiro was out there, whether he was alive, whether he was dead, whether he was spaced or killed or suffocated in a tin can with no air, whether it hurt, whether he suffered....

.... Just thinking about Keith, trying to figure out how to both grieve and hold on. Because we know he held on, we know he kept the faith, we know he looked up at the stars and said, 'no, you will not take him from me.'

... but you gotta believe that there were nights where he thought it might be easier to just let go, to stop, to put down the torch and try to move on and probably people who told him that, if he stood still long enough to listen.

And I wonder how many times he told himself this would be the last time he'd go out and try to find the Lions, this would be the last time he'd look at the sky and wish on every falling star that Shiro would come back and how it didn't matter, because he'd keep looking anyway.

I wonder if he found temporary solace in a bottle, or someone else's skin, or only in the emptiness of the desert.

Did the burn of liquor ease the ache in his chest? Did hands in the dark serve only to remind him what he never had? Did he rage against the stars themselves?

What was he doing that night Shiro's ship broke atmo and streaked across the sky like just another falling star? Was he watching? Had he turned away in another attempt to try and let go?

We know he was looking and waiting and hoping, but the cost, oh the cost.

I ache for this lonely boy out in the desert, sleeping in a house full of his dead father's things, having lost everything he dared to dream to have, and still, so fiercely determined...

... so sure that all he had to do was push further, work harder, look deeper, and he'd find Shiro, whole and hale and unbroken.

The expression on Keith's face when he finds Shiro in that tent is imprinted on my heart...

... the cautious awe, the careful disbelief, the softness. Keith loved Shiro, even then.

As many times as it takes, he said, and that was not just a promise then, it was a promise forward and back in time. Always, he should have said. Always.

Good morning, I was sad about Keith last night and continue to be today.