Work Text:
“Take care of your father.” Shiro says, voice soft. Matt watches numbly as his friend is dragged away. He's clutching his leg, the smell of iron thick in the air, Katie's smile imprinted on his brain. Shiro has chosen to die in Matt's place, and all he wants to do is cry.
How can he be so brave? So selfless to choose death, so Matt can live? The aliens around him mutter about how brutal and bloodthirsty Shiro is, and all he wants to do is throw himself on the floor and cry.
But Shiro had asked him to take care of his father, to stay alive in his own abstract way. And Matt had too, for him, for his father, his mother, for Katie, and Keith to whom he would have to deliver the news too.
Matt had to fight, had to live, because Shiro wouldn't make it out, he knew that somewhere in his heart of hearts. That the Shiro that went into the arena would not be the same one that walked out, even if he did survive it.
“Get up,” the soldier spits. “We're putting you to work if you're so useless in a fight.”
Matt nods numbly, pushing himself up.
The Empire had taken Shiro. And Matt would take the Empire. Something cold and angry coalesced in his stomach.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he thinks over and over again. I'm sorry I'm not strong enough but one day—one day I'll rip this down, avenge you, because no one else back home can do it.
Matt could go home after.
Dad, I'm so sorry, but you have to be strong too.
The day the rebels pick up Matt, he is all sharp edges and deep-seated anger you only see from the farthest, most rebellious colonies. He's angry, hungry, and willing to fight any odds if it means he's one steps closer to his goal.
He leaves only one message for his sister, carefully planned, sheds any sense of propriety and joins the worst and most suicidal missions and crawls out of them with blood on his cloak and hatred in his kind eyes.
He does not miss a match that involves The Champion of the Gladiator Pits, and then he goes to get himself killed again.
Vrimox thinks he understands. It's always painful to see someone you loved turn to a monster as the Galra bring down the whip over and over and over.
It's been two months and Shiro hasn't appeared on a single screen. Matt's lips have been bitten raw, his nail beds have bled countless times, and his heart aches.
Shiro is dead. And Matt has nothing to show for his efforts except clean socks and a kill count that reaches the sky.
Shiro had been Matt's goal for so long, so often, he isn't sure what to do now. People still need saving, the galaxy is trembling, and everything seems so useless.
He had become someone he didn't recognize, his mother's eyes had become dark, he was covered in wounds, self-inflicted and not, used to sleeping with blood on his face.
His hair was military cut, like Dad's. Matt wanted to throw up every time he saw it in the mirror, but having it be the same short length again only made him want to gouge his eyes out.
He grows it out instead. He thinks of it like a piece of Katie, they both looked so much alike, if she cut her hair short she'd look like him, if he grew his hair out he could hold the impressions that made up is star-bright sister close, in his hair, in his face.
Matt couldn't save Shiro, couldn't find his father, but he could hold Katie close. Could dream of Mom's clever hands, and the sky on Earth. Matt could dream, but it wouldn't give him peace of mind.
Not until the bounty for The Champion was blasted all over the galaxy and he laughed until he cried with relief at seeing Keith on the screen right next to him.