Chapter 1
Keith was in his room after another long day of training. Today was a little different than the others. Mostly because the gapping darkness that always seemed to lurk in the back of his mind had been more noticeable than usual. So when Keith started to feel like he was losing control of the darkness he trained harder. Keith always tried to keep busy when the darkness decided to act up. Keith had trained from 5am till midnight, only stopping when it was time to eat. He didn’t think that anyone had noticed the fact that he had done this. Usually everyone put it off as him wanting to be the best, to beat Lance. Lance whom everyone thought that he had a crush on. While Keith did think the boy was attractive he was way to self centered for him to think about in anyway other than a friend. While Keith was thinking about all of this he got ready for bed. Finally settling down on his bed Keith’s mind went blank. Silence really didn’t help the darkness or ‘Galra’ as Keith liked to call it sometimes. Since it was around 12:30 at night the castle was as still as a ghost. One of the down sides of Keiths nocturnal sleeping habits was that silence was like a cloak wrapping around him most of the time. Reaching under his bed Keith pulled out the ipod that was stashed there with all of his favorite songs downloading onto it. Putting in the earbuds Keith set it on random and laid back to enjoy the music.
Bleeding Out by Imagine Dragons was what started to play. Smiling Keith turned up the volume so that it drowned out whatever noise that might have been sounding.
“I have to reach into my heart just to find that its still beating….” Keith song. Ever since this song had came out it had been a favorite of Keiths. Nearly every time it came on Keith would start to sing. Because of this and how loud the music was Keith didn’t hear the knock on his door nor the sound of it opening. Keith played two more songs before he felt calm enough to try and attempt sleep. As Keith opened his eyes he saw a smirking Shiro looking at him from the desk.
“What are you doing here?” Keith asked startled, all thoughts of sleep forgotten for the time being.
“Well you were acting weird today and I haven’t been able to get your attention whenever I could find you so I decided that i would wait till you were settling down before i paid you a visit,” Shiro did a little shrug as if to say what else was I supposed to do?
Although Keith knew he had been acting a bit weird he couldn’t help but get defensive. It was a habit he had had since his time in the foster system. “What makes you think I was acting weird?”
“Oh I don’t know how about the fact that you were completely withdrawn from everyone. You trained nonstop for the whole day. Not to mention that you didn’t even snap at Lance when he called you Molliet. Those reason enough?” Shiro asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I didn’t think you guys had noticed.” Keith mumbled as he got up and put his ipod back under his bed.
“Of course I noticed.” Shiro commented sounding a little hurt which confused Keith.
“Don’t you mean that of course we noticed?” Keith corrected.
Realizing his mistake Shiro blushed and made noises of agrement. Collecting himself Shiro asked, “So are you going to tell me why you were acting weird?”
Keith bit his lip debating this. On one hand it would be nice to tell someone about the gaping hole of nothingness and depression that had been slowly growing for weeks now. However Keith was afraid that if he told someone that they wouldn’t understand or worse say they do and then use that information against them.
Almost as if Shiro could somehow guess his thoughts he said, “Hey you know you can trust me right.” The way he said this so sweet and caring tore at Keith. Years of being careful on how to act and keeping the ‘galra’ at bay were making it hard for Keith to come out and say what was on his mind. The look that Shiro was giving him though made it hard for Keith not to feel like explaining everything. Except that even when trying to explain his feeling to himself Keith couldn’t understand them.
“It’s hard to explain. Even when I say it to myself it sounds crazy. So most likely it’s just me being over stressed.” Keith improvised his answer, adding in a little bit of truth and lie to make it were it would satisfy Shrio. Or at least he hoped it would.
Shiro looked at Keith for a moment before nodding. “Ok. We’ll leave it at that but I wasn’t kidding about what I said. You should know by now that you can trust me and tell me anything I won’t judge.” On that note Shiro got up and left the room.
