#shattweek2018

Shatt Week Day 7: Cuddle/Earth

 I’m always a sucker for a happy ending and kept promises….

@spacepalladins Heheh you were right! You get the prize of gay! (Sorry I took a while! These watercolours took a while!) Bonus beneath the cut!:

Shatt Week Day 6: Replacement

I love the prosthesis headcanons about Matt….. It would be really cool if they matched….

@voltronweeks‘s shatt week day 7: cuddle. 

Shatt Week Day 5: Kerberos

Pairing: Shatt (Shiro/Matt) (if you squint, it’s my intention behind the scene but feel free to imagine otherwise or read as a character study) Rating: Teen and Up Word Count: 835 Summary: After a time, they never take him out of his cell. He’s kept only in darkness, and kept alive against all reason.Time has no meaning, no substance. He’s thought about scratching lines on the wall, but he has no idea where one day ends and another begins. He has no idea if anything he remembers happening to him is even real. Sometimes he doubts he himself is real.

Notes: For @voltronweeks​ Shatt Week, Day 6: Replacement/Galra. I’m using replacement by looking at the consequences for Shiro of being replaced by Kuron. 

Not sure how to warn for this, but it’s pretty full of dissociation, so if reading that is something that can trigger a dissociative episode, please don’t read this one.

Read on AO3 or below.

Life has long since become an endless cycle of darkness, broken only by a brief and blinding flicker of light as the slot in the door of Shiro’s cell is opened to allow a pitiful excuse for food to be pushed in. In the beginning there had been more breaks. Bright rooms, poking and prodding. Alien contraptions placed on his head for hours and hours.

After a time, they never take him out of his cell. He’s kept only in darkness, and kept alive against all reason.

Time has no meaning, no substance. He’s thought about scratching lines on the wall, but he has no idea where one day ends and another begins. He has no idea if anything he remembers happening to him is even real.

Sometimes he doubts he himself is real.

He has a vivid image in his mind of himself, lying on a table, opening his eyes and sitting up. A vivid sensation of a hand reaching out to touch him, the other him touching him, before harsh command caused that other him to collapse back onto the table.

Some days, in his endless darkness and boredom, he thinks it was him, and that he had some kind of out of body experience. Maybe that’s what they’d been doing to him, experimenting, forcing him out of his own mind.

Or maybe he’s just gone mad.

Snatches come to him sometimes. Memories? Dreams? Whispers. Talk of a replacement. A clone. Kuron.

A crazy dream. Or maybe the darkness is the dream. Maybe he died long ago and hasn’t realised it yet. Maybe if he figures it out, the door will open, and he’ll be allowed to pass over to something surely better than this. Something familiar and soothing. Earth maybe.

But then sometimes Earth is what feels like the dream. Like a feverish hallucination of a life that never happened.

Maybe he’s always been in darkness.

***

Time carries on without meaning, the darkness lifts only for those moments during which he’s given food. He gave up talking to his captors a long time ago. They never respond.

He supposes they don’t need to. If there’s some copy of him out there. An improved model. Possessing both natural arms perhaps. Possessing a sane mind for certain. A replacement that’s better than the original in every way.

Or maybe his guards aren’t real. Maybe there are no walls. Maybe it’s just endless darkness and his mind created the walls to keep him from wasting energy wandering endlessly in the dark.

He’s long since lost the ability to know dreams from reality.

***

One day, or maybe night, the light builds and his stomach grumbles on. It’s been a while since he’s been fed, he thinks. He can’t really know for sure. Maybe he only dreamed he hadn’t been fed for a while. Maybe the hunger isn’t real. Just something his mind creates to distract him from the nothingness.

Kind of it, he thinks, but surely there are nicer distractions it could conjure up instead.

But the light isn’t only coming from the open slot in the door. It builds and builds. In spots that get larger and larger in the vague outline of a rectangle.

There’s a sound, he realises. Like something heavy striking the door. It seems to be buckling at the edges. The light is streaming in.

He watches from the imaginary wall he’s propped up against, wondering what his mind is going to conjure for him now. Or perhaps what they are going to conjure for him now.

Is he even awake?

Is he even alive?

In between those thoughts, the heavy thud of something hitting the door increases in volume. Seems to double.

Moments after he’s pondering his existence again, the door gives, and light floods the room. Bright and blinding. His eyes burn but he doesn’t look away. He lets them burn. It makes him feel more alive. It makes the dream seem real in the way only pain can anymore.

There are figures framed in the doorway, and it takes time for his eyes to focus.

He knows those faces. Somewhere deep in his memories, or maybe his dreams, they’re there.

Keith. Matt.

The step into the room, and they seem so real. Wearing clothes he’s never seen before. Clothes he’s not sure he could imagine from nothing. Clothes that have probably been planted in his mind by them.

They lay their hands on him, gently, warmly. He hasn’t felt another’s touch for so long he can’t know that it’s real. Matt’s crying. If Shiro reaches out, he can touch his tears. Warm and wet. They feel so real that Shiro almost wants to cry as well. Or maybe he already is but that detail isn’t important for the dream. Maybe he’ll wake in the dark in mere moments, with a wet face, all alone.

Shatt Week Day 4: Garrison/Copiloting

There’s a reason that Matt never practiced piloting for the Kerberos mission.

Pairing: Shatt (Shiro/Matt) Rating: Teen and Up Word Count: 878 Summary: Matt wants to go back to Kerberos, for closure, and Shiro has no reason to deny him. Until he does.

Notes: Contains PTSD and Mild panic attack. For @voltronweeks Shatt Week, Day 5: Kerberos/Reunion

Read on AO3 or below.

There’s a noise in Shiro’s ears. It’s like old tv static, or the blended buzz and rattle of a dying refrigerator. His heart is racing, and he can feel himself break out in a sweat under his suit. Each step feels harder and harder, like there's something pulling at him from behind. Somewhere around his middle, making him want to hunch over and retreat.

He hadn’t expected to react like this. He should probably say something, but Matt is staring around with wide eyes as his footsteps crunch the uppermost layer of ice on Kerberos’ surface. He needed this. Closure. Shiro had thought it was a waste of time, but he’s always willing to do anything for Matt, so agreeing hadn’t been hard.

If only he’d been more prepared for his own reaction.

He hangs back a few steps behind Matt, trying to slow his breathing and calm his expression. Everything started here. All that pain and suffering. All that it had put everyone at home through. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to get back inside Black and return to the castle. To go to his room and hide under his blankets like a kid. That always made things better as a kid.

“It’s so still,” Matt says, his voice coming in as a breathless whisper over the comm in Shiro’s helmet.

Shiro focuses on his voice, lets it echo in his mind. He takes another step, keeps his eyes fixed on Matt’s back. Watches him move forward so easily. Watches him get further ahead, and then realises he’s stopped moving himself.

In a moment of selfishness, with his hands tightening into fists, he finds his voice. “I can’t.”

Matt turns at once, sharply, skidding sideways a little on the frosty ground. His eyes are wide as he sweeps his gaze over Shiro.

It makes Shiro feel open and raw. He shouldn’t have agreed to this. He should have said something earlier, when just seeing Kerberos through the viewport had set his heart racing.

Matt moves closer, his footsteps crunching the crusty frozen earth. He doesn’t stop when he reaches Shiro. He takes his hand and continues past him, pulling him along without a word.

Shiro grips his hand tighter than he should, relieved Matt took his left hand and not his right. He would have probably broken his bones. But he can’t stop himself from continuing to react even with Matt’s comforting grip. He can hear his own breathing becoming louder and louder. His stomach sinks with how pathetic he is for ruining Matt’s closure. He should have kept his mouth shut.

As soon as they’re inside Black, Matt touches the nearest wall and closes his eyes. Shiro glances around rapidly, taking in the familiar surroundings, using his free hand to rip off his helmet and let it fall to the floor. It doesn’t help him breathe like he thought it might.

Beneath his feet, he hears Black roar to life and take off. It doesn’t even seem strange that Matt somehow got her flying.

Matt lets go of his hand long enough to pull off his own helmet, and then his gloves. His hands slide over Shiro’s cheeks, and then Matt’s a warm presence in front of him, pressing their foreheads together.

“Breathe, Shiro,” Mat murmurs. “You’re okay. I’m okay. We’re gone. We’re already out of sight of it.”

Shiro shudders and slumps against him, shifting his head to the side and burying it in Matt’s neck, feeling the comforting tickle of his hair and the smell of that shampoo Lance made for him.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, sliding his arms around Matt’s waist and clutching at his back.

“No,” Matt says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I should have checked in when we landed. It’s okay. I went there. I saw what I needed to see. I didn’t need to stay any longer. Put it from your mind. Just focus on breathing.”

Shiro squeezes his eyes shut. In all of Matt’s silliness since he’s been back, he’d forgotten just how serious he can be. Just how easily he can read Shiro and know what he needs.

Slowly, they slide to the floor as Black continues to fly them back to the castle. Shiro can’t bear to show his face, and keeps it pressed to Matt’s neck as Matt holds him, gently rubbing at the back of his neck, right where Shiro feels most tense.

“We’ll stay in the hangar as long as you need,” Matt says softly. “No one needs to know why, or we’ll say it was me.”

Shiro’s breath hitches on a sob, and he doesn’t even try to hold it back. Not with Matt.

After a time, he can feel them land. Can feel Black powering down. Matt doesn’t even twitch. His fingers still rub gently at the base of Shiro’s skull, and he just keeps breathing slowly and loudly, giving Shiro a pace to follow.

@voltronweeks‘s shatt week day 5: reunion.