He had to put it down.

He had to put it down.

They needed him. They needed him more than ever.

He didn't want to be needed anymore.

He couldn't put it down.

It shook in his hands. He could hear his own blood.

There was a knock at the door.

"Shiro?"

It was Lance. Shiro took a moment.

"Come in."

He was carrying a tray of goo and a juice box.

"Thought you might be hungry," Lance said.

He should have been, but he wasn't.

"Thanks."

"You, uh… you doing okay?"

Shiro really didn't know how to answer that.

Lance sat down beside him.

"It's not your fault, you know."

Shiro clutched the knife.

"He trusted me."

Lance looked over at him.

"And he would still trust you now. You didn't do anything wrong."

There was a difference between doing something wrong and not doing enough. A very slight difference.

"I promised I would be there for him. No one else–" he stopped.

"And it meant everything to him," Lance said. "That's why he wanted to be there for YOU."

Maybe if he had meant less, it wouldn't have happened.

"Hey, look, Shiro. We all love you. We all would have done it."

"Well, I never wanted that," Shiro said.

"Yeah, well… I wish I knew how to fix any of this."

"It's not your job to fix anything."

"And it's not YOUR job to fix EVERYTHING."

Shiro looked down.

"Please, Shiro," Lance said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Let somebody love you for ONCE."

All his life he had tried to deserve it. He wasn't about to deserve it now.

He didn't want to cry in front of someone who looked up to him. But he was never one to get what he wanted.