2019 Voltron Whumptober Collection

14 Tear-stained

Word Count: 1,500

He didn't like this.

He didn't like packing up his things only days after his father's death, he didn't like moving to a 'new home' with 'new parents,' being told by some lady in the office that he had to behave for them because they were going to take care of him since his dad wasn't around anymore.

Because he was dead, she'd said to him, and Keith remembered looking up at her with wide-eyed astonishment that she actually thought it was necessary to get the point across to him.

Of course, Keith knew that.

He didn't need to be told by some grown-up that his Pop was gone.

That he wasn't coming back.

He still remembered the night the fire chief had parked in the driveway, walking up the house with slow steps, fiddling with a dirtied baseball cap in his hands as Keith watch curiously from the window, wondering why he was here and not Pop.

Pop hadn't come home yet.

Where was he?

He knew what happened only after the chief sat him down and told him his father wasn't coming home because he'd ran to an unstable building, and never came back out.

That he- he was dead.

He remembered crying then, demanding that it be some kind of joke, and finally breaking down. There was some point he'd fallen asleep, waking up to find himself in an unfamiliar room with unfamiliar walls, and an unfamiliar bed that wasn't his, being told by an unfamiliar lady that she was his agent that would 'help' him until they found a new home for him to live in, a new family to live with.

He didn't want that.

He wanted his Pop.

But she'd only shook her head, telling him, someone would drive him back to his old house to "collect his things" so he could go to a family that had offered to take him in for the time being.

A- a foster house.

He didn't want that.

He wanted to go home.

But people never listen to a six-year-old, and he never even got just a little time to grieve over the loss of his dad before he was whisked away from his old house, his old town, forced to get along with kids he didn't know and parents he didn't want.

They weren't his parents.

They would never be his parents.

He wanted his dad back.

After a few weeks of living in an unfamiliar house, he got his first true glance of the life he'd be in until he was old enough to legally be on his own. It was an abusive system, that was for sure, and Keith didn't yet know how to handle it (but, he'd learn, wouldn't he?). He only knew what his Pop said to him: that he had to stand up for himself, to not let himself get pushed around.

But that only seemed to get him in more trouble.

He was just a kid.

He- he wanted to go home, to get out of this nightmare of a life.

The people he'd been given to had lied when they said no one in their household was an alcoholic. His 'father' was, coming home at least once every week, breath stinking of whatever he'd decided to drink down from the nearby bar.

But he always came back so- so angry.

Keith had stumbled down the stairs one night to see him pulling a belt on his wife, the woman shoving a fist in her mouth to keep from yelling, most likely for Keith's sake as it came down again and again, and again.