sakura_no_miko

Rating: PG

Pairing: Keith/clone!Shiro,

Warnings: angst, break-up/divorce, unrequited love, depression

Other notes: post-canon, canon divergence, hurt/comfort, clones

Length: 12k

Summary: The safest thing to do, perhaps, is to let the clone die. Destroy the pod, if possible. They can't be sure what they'll wake up.

But Keith is here. That changed everything.

Keith had cared about Shiro - well, who he thought was Shiro, even after. Keith had cared about the clone back then, even knowing what he was, even knowing what he tried to do to their team, their family. Keith had told that clone that he-

It’s doesn’t matter, right now.

Keith is here, and Shiro's not going to make Keith watch him die another time.

So he says, "Wake him up."

Or: Shiro watches Keith and his clone Kuro together, and sees a glimpse of what could've been if he had made different choices.

I’m tired. I was tired? I am being tired?

At any rate, I told myself, today is a well-earned crash night. No archiving, no writing, just lay down and watch silly things on youtube tonight. Take a breather.

And then I read this fic over my lunch break and I kinda wanna cry, ya’ll.

In a good way, possibly? I dunno. My heart got broken, and I’m questioning my life choices, and I’m sitting here writing instead of relaxing.

I should point out, one of my favorite films, that I really can’t watch often, is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s a light sci-fi genre film, where technology exists that lets you erase certain memories. This is very popular among people who have broken up. So the film is about memory, and how we can tend to remember things as being far worse or far better than they actually were. And, in particular, whether it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Come to think of it, I haven’t re-watched that since my last break-up. I may be a masochist. We’ll see.

But this fic — man, if it doesn’t hit me right in the same feels.

The author’s tags say “author not used to writing angst.” Which is fascinating, to me, because this is a perfect little angst piece. I write angst. I read a lot of angst. This might be obvious, but usually angst tends to come either from external factors — I’m dying from an incurable disease, I can’t be with the person I love, society is cruel and inescapable — or internal factors — I’m hate myself, I can’t believe anyone could love me, I feel like my life is useless. (And, yes, depression can be argued both ways — it’s definitely an external disease, but most people seem to see it as an internal issue, so I’m kind of inclined to put it in the latter category.) But quite a lot of angst fics segue into hurt/comfort. I don’t mean this to sound belittling, but a lot of angst gets, ah, “cured” with romance. That’s not true in real life, mind you, but. In fiction. It’s convenient for someone who hates themselves and feels unworthy of love to finally break free of their angst prison by realizing that, yes, someone does love them. Simplistic, yeah, but kind of comforting. Much kinder than the real world, where, hey, shit just happens for no reason and you often have no recourse.

But, ah — Shiro’s angst here is especially delicious, because it’s mostly internal, and mostly incurable, for the same reason — he’s doing it to himself. The trope goes, you torture yourself, sure, but eventually you earn the right to get happiness. That’s the deal. That’s karma in the fictional universe.

But. Now that I think about it, if you’ve spent your entire life hating yourself, feeling unworthy, grasping at things you know are only stopgap measures, things that seem like they should be happy but deep deep down you know they aren’t helping… What would it really take to break that cycle? At what point does someone say they love you and you actually believe it?

Or, like this fic — how easy is it to let yourself stay in that same rut, knowing someone is reaching out, but never willing or able to grasp that hand?

I mean, reading this fic is, in the best way, like watching a trainwreck, because Shiro is so painfully introspective, so self-aware of every mistake he’s making.

I was particularly struck by this scene:

To Shiro, Kuro and Keith are quite the sight, like some picture-perfect future in an alternate reality. And maybe Kuro is what Keith deserves - someone perfect, someone who hasn't let him down.
Someone who hadn’t been scared, someone who never gave up on him.
Shiro returns to reality when Romelle waves her hand in his face, offering cookies and asking how much Curtis likes cookies, so she can set aside some for him. She tells him that the cookies are cat-friendly, that maybe Shiro’s cats will like them, too. Keith argued that cats don't eat cookies but told her to ask Shiro anyway.
He thanks her, and tells her that he’s sure they’d love that. She beams.
They all think he's happy, still happy - with his perfect husband and his three cats - so he smiles.

My god. It’s not even, like, self-deception. Shiro is sitting there, telling himself, you should look happy, look happy, let them think you’re happy, make them think you’re happy.

And damn if that doesn’t cut right to one of the things that happens when you are depressed. I mean, if you’ve seen any of those studies on “millenials” (which I am, coincidentally, so I read too many of them), there’s a recurring theme of us having more mental health issues, us being too obsessed with our images on social media, us not having steady jobs or homes or sex or marriages or kids. On and on. All of it, centered on this idea that everyone seems to be way more unhappy these days, but you wouldn’t know it from all the smiley-happy Instgram posts.

And this scene encapsulates that idea perfectly. Shiro blames himself for not being happy. He blames himself for being scared and giving up.

You know, the same way you might blame yourself for moving back with your parents, or picking the wrong major in college, or going home Friday night after Friday night to collapse instead of getting out there.

Shiro — oh, Shiro. He’s unhappy, he blames himself for being unhappy, he can’t find a way to change his own bad habits, and he falls back on a fragile smile in front of his friends, because the worst thing would be for all of them to know he’s unhappy.

Oh, and the fact that Kuro is younger. Younger, still full of hope and willing to throw his entire life into love and travel.

He doesn’t need to watch how this goes down. He doesn’t need to watch a play-by-play of what could have been- no. What he could have done.
He can’t. He can’t listen to Kuro ask to go with Keith. He already watched and listened to his clone bare his soul, tell Keith everything he felt. He can’t listen to this too.
He can’t watch a version of himself tell Keith that he wants to go, too. That he wants the stars, the universe. That when he imagines himself there, among the stars and the universe, there’s only one person he wants beside him, and it’s Keith.
He had missed his chance.
Now there’s Kuro, and this chance is his, and he’s brave enough to take it.

Am I old now? Am I having a random life crisis? Ah. I remember being that young, ah. My heart.

Um. Actually I have another angst fic I’ve written a rec for. Haven't posted it yet. Trying not to do Voltron every other week, lol. But, another really sort of…refreshing? angst fic is all of our heroes fading. Little more traditional — lots of angst and suffering but a happier ending. Good suffering. I mean, it feels good to get to the end of the fic when the suffering stops.

Oh, actually--I recently read a WIP that was about, ah, not clones, but alternate universes. say the word and i'll part the sea has people swapping places and it's pleasingly angsty as well. Looking forward to where it goes.

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Crossposted to pillowfort