This was the first prompt that made me !!!!! on this whole ficathon bc 'Keith, in the desert' was also the first vld thing I ever wanted to write. That being said, I'm cheating! Bc this fill is actually just the first sentences of the Keith fic I've been writing since, oh, season 6. The longer I work on it/sit on it the longer and more unwieldy it gets :/
The sky is red when you walk out of the Garrison the morning after your fight with Iverson, the rising sun slanting in your eyes and your dismissal papers tight in your fist, and you think you've never been happy inside those walls, anyway, not without him.
You walk away from the Garrison without a glance, without a thought, and the sun is warm on your skin.
The desert is immense and it makes you feel small, when you are miles away from the nearest person, the nearest cadet, the nearest instructor who looks at you like your borrowed time has finally run out and they will finally be rid of you, because without Shiro you are nothing, and a simulator score means nothing when the best pilot in the Garrison and his crew are dead. It makes you feel small, and unimportant, and for once that is a comfort: That you can exist without their prying eyes and the expectations you could never live up to, that you can be free here—free to grieve and to rage and to lose yourself, free to become something else.
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The sky is red when you walk out of the Garrison the morning after your fight with Iverson, the rising sun slanting in your eyes and your dismissal papers tight in your fist, and you think you've never been happy inside those walls, anyway, not without him.
You walk away from the Garrison without a glance, without a thought, and the sun is warm on your skin.
The desert is immense and it makes you feel small, when you are miles away from the nearest person, the nearest cadet, the nearest instructor who looks at you like your borrowed time has finally run out and they will finally be rid of you, because without Shiro you are nothing, and a simulator score means nothing when the best pilot in the Garrison and his crew are dead. It makes you feel small, and unimportant, and for once that is a comfort: That you can exist without their prying eyes and the expectations you could never live up to, that you can be free here—free to grieve and to rage and to lose yourself, free to become something else.