Chapter Text
The breeze was light and airy as it crossed Lance’s cheeks. He smiled into it and lifted his face to better feel the light touch of the air. His eyelids slid shut. Leaning back, he pressed his hands into the solid wood which he sat upon. All around him, the trees swayed and rustled calmly as the wind teased them and the birds swooped from branch to branch. The sun caressed his face through the trees, warming his skin softly. His lungs couldn’t take in enough air, expanding ever further on every fresh breath he took. The forest was like a medicine, healing Lance’s mind and soul, freeing his body from all its pain.
There was a feeling in the air that Lance couldn’t name, but it was peaceful and reassuring, as if the darkness that had held the town in chains for so long had finally been vanquished. Lance having nearly forgotten what it felt like to be relaxed instead of on edge constantly, relished in the newfound release that had settled Lionsville.
“I’ve been thinking…”
Lance lazily opened his eyes and lolled his head to the side. Next to him, Keith was gazing off through the trees, not at anything in particular. He absently swirled his glass bottle around. It was moonshine that Keith had made himself from various materials that he had collected from the mountain, as well as what Shiro’s shop was able to supply him with. Keith thought that regular alcohol was a little gross, but Lance thought Keith’s moonshine tasted like hand sanitizer, so they both left the other to their drinks.
“That’d be a first,” Lance answered, a grin pulling at his face when Keith paused his sentence to raise an eyebrow at Lance.
“Ironic, coming from you,” he muttered back, his lips quirking.
Lance giggled before poking the toe of his shoe into Keith’s calf. “What were you thinking?” he asked.
Keith smiled and tilted his head back to peer into the sky as he answered, “I’ve been thinking that I should get a job in town.”
At that, Lance’s smile morphed into a look of surprise. He pushed himself up and leaned forward. “You, getting a job? Why? I thought you liked living off the land.”
Keith shrugged a shoulder. “Everyone knows I’m up here now, so I’m not exactly hiding anymore. It’s also because Shiro offered me a job and I think I should take him up on it. I should join society again.”
As Lance stared at his boyfriend, lounging on the roof of his shack in the back of a mountain, overlooking the town through the scattered evergreens, he saw genuine peace. It wasn’t just the town as a whole that felt lighter, Lance realized, it was the people as well. The air breathed because the people of the town were finally able to stop holding their breath. Keith, who always was a fire and always would be a fire, blinked like a candle. His eyebrows weren’t drawn together in anger, his jaw wasn’t set in determination, his muscles weren’t tensed in defense, his eyes weren’t widened in panic. Keith was relaxed and he was happy.
“That’s great,” Lance laughed. “It’ll be good for you to have some friends instead of lurking on the mountain all the time. Are you going to finally get a phone too so I can stop doing rituals in the woods to summon you?” he joshed, tucking his legs in and pressing his palms into his ankles.
Keith huffed out a laugh and shook his head, amused. “Shut up, you make me sound like some kind of cryptid,” he chuckled.
“You kind of are, though,” Lance countered. “I’m just supposed to walk to the mountain and call your name a few times. What do you call that?”
With an exasperated groan, Keith relented, “Fine, I’ll get a phone.”
Tittering, Lance scooted across the flattened roof of Keith’s house to rest his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he cooed.
Above him, Keith clicked his tongue. “Yeah, you’re welcome,” he muttered.
Keith knew that Lance was just teasing him, that was mutually understood in their relationship, but Lance really was grateful that Keith was willing to get a phone. Not only was it difficult to contact Keith when he didn’t have one, but it would improve Keith’s life to have one, Lance was sure. If there was ever danger on the mountain, Keith could call for help. He could keep in touch with Shiro better. He could have Pidge and Hunk’s numbers and they would be more than willing to send Keith memes. That was an important one since Keith had missed memes while he was hiding on the mountain for so many years. He’d missed a lot actually. Keith was somewhat of a relic, frozen in time.
“Seriously, though,” Lance hummed, “I think a job would be good for you. Pretty soon you’ll just be part of the mountain.”
“I was starting to feel like it too,” Keith replied. “I really noticed it recently. It’s like… It’s like I’ve been hiding from life for so long that I wasn’t even living. You live like you’re dead for long enough and eventually you forget what you are. I think watching you graduate made me realize that I’m… just letting my life pass me by.”
Lance, who was listening intently, shuffled closer. He pressed his face into Keith’s neck and planted a loving kiss on his collarbone. “You don’t have to let life pass you,” he said quietly.
Keith, leaning back on his one hand and swirling his moonshine in the other, sighed at the gentle kiss that lance administered. “I know that now. I want to do something with myself.”
“Like, what?” Lance asked, grinning.
“I don’t know. I want to help people, but I also don’t want to leave the woods.” He paused. “I think I want to fly a helicopter,” he mumbled.
Lance laughed suddenly, pulling away enough to meet Keith’s hazy, half-drunken gaze. “You could do that. No one is stopping you,” he encouraged.
Keith beamed, revelling in the idea of being a pilot. “I’m gonna be a STARS air ambulance pilot,” Keith decided. “Flying, helping people, and mountains.”
“You’d be a great STARS pilot. I’d let you rescue me from the woods any day,” Lance agreed. He pushed himself upwards to kiss Keith’s lips, drawing the tipsy boy’s attention away. When he pulled back, he could see the haze over Keith’s eyes clear slightly. The loving quirk of Keith’s lip whenever Lance was close was enough to make his heart sing.
It had been awhile since the case had come to a close. The court date for Sven Holgersson had come and gone, gaining massive amounts of attention from all over the country, all over the world even. Lance and Keith had attended it, as had everyone else in the town, and Lance found there was nothing more relieving than seeing the real killer come to his justice instead of watching Keith take the fall for what he didn’t do.
Lance went up the mountain a lot more after that. As a matter of fact, the entire town began to visit the mountain more often. There were flowers, wreaths, laurels, stuffed toys, and all sorts of cards decorating the graves of the two young girls that had been found on the mountain. The police were using dogs as well as Keith’s own knowledge of where everything was on the mountain in order to track down the bodies of the other girls who had gone missing, if they were even buried. All in all, though, the forests didn’t seem nearly as dark and the mountain felt like renewal.
Keith had been allowed to keep his home in the woods even though it was unconventional and difficult to get to. Lance frequently visited Keith in his cabin in the woods, helping him to fix it up after it was ransacked by the police, and improving the decorations around the place until it felt like a home that someone could live in instead of a shelter that someone could survive in. Shiro also came by often, more than thrilled to be able to hang out with his cousin at reasonable hours and not in secret. It meant that Keith could use the shop doors rather than crawling through the windows.
Something that Lance had also noticed was that whenever he took Keith into the town or invited him into conversations with Pidge and Hunk, Keith seemed wholly confused for a split second whenever they addressed him or whenever he said something and they responded. It was as if Keith had forgotten that he wasn’t dead to the world like he once was. There was a unsure light in Keith’s eyes whenever it happened. He enjoyed having people who could see him and hear him, he enjoyed interacting with people again, he enjoyed not being the intangible secret that Lance kept from the world, but he didn’t quite know how to handle it yet. Lance would guide him.
There were a lot of apologies that were owed in the town. Adam, firstly, apologized to Lance for freaking him out in the woods that day, as well as to Keith for accusing him of murder. Matt had to apologize for the way he had yelled at Lance and for slandering Keith’s name. Lance apologized right back to the both of them for being as rude as he was. The police apologized for arresting Keith wrongly, but Keith wasn’t too concerned about it since he was more worried about the fate of the town than himself at the times of it happening. Lance apologized to his mother and sister for racing around and solving murders on his own. That was the only apology that didn’t go over because Lance had gotten quite the earful for nearly dying in a grave that night. Overall, though, the town was on good terms.
The clinic wasn’t shut down, but it also wasn’t completely operational. A new doctor was needed, and in a town so small there was only one doctor, it was going to be awhile before they were able to find one. Until then, the nursing staff were working diligently to fill in for the loss of Dr. Holgersson, although they seemed to do just fine, more determined than ever to make up for all the damage that monster had left in his wake. In fact, they had even looked closer into the autopsies that had been done on Romelle and Allura and found that Keith’s knife hadn’t been used to murder Romelle at all. It seemed to have just been thrown into the grave after her in order to frame Keith. Dr. Holgersson confessed to finding it by the waterfall after murdering Acxa and knowing that it belonged to Keith, who the town was already against. He figured he had the prefect someone to take the fall if the bodies were ever uncovered. He admitted to all the murders, including the attempted murder of Krolia Kogane.
All the changes in the town were so natural, but somehow so out of place. It felt surreal to watch as life continued on after the devastating loss of so many girls. Lance felt like everything should have paused, forever unable to move forward without the victims, without Allura, without Romelle, but nothing did stop. The crops still needed harvesting the next day, Shiro still planned his wedding with Adam for the following year, Pidge still prepared for the science fair that Daibazaal hosted every year, Hunk still practiced his cooking to be accepted into a culinary school, Iverson still yipped at Lance when he saw him, Sal’s diner still sold milkshakes, and the police still responded. Nothing was really all that different, even after everything had changed.
Everything was different though, just not in the ways that Lance had been expecting. It was the way that Allura and Romelle and every other person hurt by Sven Holgersson would have wanted it to be. It was different in the sense that the town would notice its loss, but it wouldn’t be destroyed or brought to its knees by the loss. Quietly, everyone would heal.
Sometimes, when Lance was on the mountain, he would call out to his friend. Not anyone who lived in the town, not Pidge, not Hunk, not Keith, but the one who he – and everyone else – had never gotten to see before she had passed. He never got a response. Allura had passed on. Lance was happy for her, but he was also somewhat disappointed that he would never get to say a proper goodbye to Allura. He had been hoping to tell her that they had caught the man who had hurt her, if she wasn’t already aware, and to show her the shrine that was made by her grave. He had wanted to introduce her to Keith and to tell her that everyone loved and missed her, although he had a feeling that she already knew the last part.
Even with all the tragedy that had taken place in Lionsville, it was still full of potential. Lance could see a future for himself, for Keith, for all his friends in town. There was a future for the victims too. They got to move on and to pass over into the afterlife instead of being stuck, frozen in time on a gloomy mountain for eons.
As Lance cuddled up to his boyfriend, nudging him and teasing him, being a general nuisance, he felt the happiness swelling in his heart. It was perfect and promising. When he made Keith laugh so hard that he snorted and fell out of his body, forcing Lance to catch his lifeless body, he could feel the ease of life on his face. While Keith’s ghost tiptoed along the edge of the house like a tightrope walker, teasing Lance with the threat of tumbling over the edge, Lance couldn’t help but see new beginnings in Keith’s grin.
Keith gave a last smirk at Lance, raised his eyebrows with mirth in his eyes, then stepped over the edge of the building. He shot downwards, disappearing off the roof. Lance tried not to smile as he held on to the empty body next to him. Spit coating one of his fingers, Lance waited, primed and ready. The second that Keith came back to his human form, his eyes shot open. Without letting the poor boy orientate himself, Lance jammed his finger into Keith’s ear. He shrieked, lurching away from Lance. It sent Lance into another fit of laughter.
And that was what Lance’s freedom felt like.
◊ ◊ ◊
Keith blinked. He swallowed. His throat was dry. At his side, his fingers twitched and tapped along his thigh. Grinding his teeth, he continued to stand there, head tilted back and breathing controlled. His heart pounded on his chest, resoundingly loud in Keith’s head. The only part of his body that wasn’t moving, twitching, fidgeting in some way was his feet. They were bolted to the sidewalk.
“You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to,” Lance offered, kindly squeezing Keith’s hand.
Keith could feel as his eyebrows pinched inwards and his teeth gave a particularly tough clank, aching his jaw with the force. “No, I want to do this. I’ll be fine,” he assured. His lungs sucked in air to clear his worries. The exhale instilled more confidence in him and he rolled his shoulders once. Slowly, carefully, Keith lifted his black boot off the cement and took his first step toward the brightly lit building.
There was nothing inherently unwelcoming about the building that Keith should have been put off by. Instead, Keith felt the pit in his stomach open up whenever he thought about the contents of the structure. In theory, it was an obvious choice to go there. On the trip to the building, it started to feel like a bad idea. Outside, though, that was when Keith realized just how impossible this really was.
Except it wasn’t this that was impossible, he reminded himself, it was Keith, himself, who was impossible. He could have gone in there easily, but his own anxieties were holding him back. What was he scared of? Perhaps, it was the mixture of this being his worst nightmare and his best dream at the same time. It was everything he’d ever wanted, but only in theory. As though Keith never thought he would get to this point, now that he was there, he wasn’t sure what he was even expecting.
As Keith approached the building that so many people regarded as a hopeful, relieving, easing place, he couldn’t help but feel his nerves growing. His hand gripped Lance’s a little bit harder. He was so grateful that Lance was there with him. The strength that Lance gave him in that moment was astounding and it was the only thing keeping Keith from turning around and hopping right back on a bus that had driven the two boys out of Lionsville and into Daibazaal. Keith forced himself to breathe. It didn’t calm the beating of his heart, but it did put him in control.
His hand reached for the glass door, cautiously watching the people on the other side milling about. People in wheelchairs, with crutches, with masks. Children, teens, adults, elders. Patients, doctors, nurses, families. People who looked like they could take on the world in the same room as people who looked like they could keel over at any second.
“Keith?” Lance called out.
At his name, Keith glanced back.
Lance jutted his chin out at the door and raised an eyebrow in an unasked question.
“Right, sorry,” Keith muttered.
He pulled the door open, his fingers shaking and his tongue feeling heavy in his mouth. With his boyfriend close in tow, Keith entered the spotless, white entrance. He felt so out of place in there, like someone as broken and haggard as Keith couldn’t possibly step foot in such a pristine building. No one came to kick him out though. Of course, they didn’t, that would be ridiculous.
“Do you remember what room?” Lance asked Keith, tugging on his hand to guide him towards the elevators.
Keith hummed and tried to keep his eyes solely on the hand that was steadying him. It was difficult with all the noise going on around him. Keith hadn’t gotten used to being visible in public yet. Court was its own experience that Keith still hadn’t recovered from, but here he was, wandering through crowds of strangers. At least Lance, with his radiant smile and with enough charisma to take on the entire place at once, was there to take Keith by the hand when he was uneasy.
“Yeah, it’s on the fourth floor. Room 415,” Keith answered.
Lance smiled back at him, probably hearing the wavering Keith’s voice as he spoke. Once at the elevators, Lance pressed the button and stood back. Each second that ticked by on the clock above the elevator doors made Keith more and more antsy. He shuffled his feet. Lance, who was prone to moving around a lot when everything around him was still, smooth his thumb along the back of Keith’s hand and rocked back and forth on his heels.
The elevator dinged, opening for passengers. Keith grunted with disquiet, but followed Lance onto the lift anyway. No one else was going up right then and the doors slid shut without anyone else entering. The chattering and clattering of the people on the first floor was cut off, leaving Lance and Keith in complete silence. Keith wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.
“Shiro told me that she wanted my first name to be Yurak,” he blurted. He wasn’t sure why he even said that, but he needed something to fill the space.
Lance guffawed violently, his upper body lurching forward with his sudden laugh. “Yurak? That’s not a name,” Lance argued, grinning.
“Yeah, I know,” Keith grumbled. “The old man was too patient with her though because it’s still my middle name.”
Tittering, Lance leaned into his boyfriend, unable to hide how amused he was by the name. “I can’t believe your name is as ridiculous as it is. Like, all of it. The whole thing is whack.”
“My name is fine! There’s nothing wrong with Keith,” he defended, feigning irritation with Lance’s teasing.
“Well, it’s at least a name. Yurak is… something. The worst part is that you make your name cool. How do you manage that?” Lance questioned innocently, a look of awe and confusion overtaking his features as if he were actually interrogating Keith on the topic.
Keith gave a pitiful expression. “Sorry, trade secret.”
Lance scoffed. “Everything is a secret in your family.”
The doors to the elevator opened on the fourth floor. It felt daunting to even consider exiting. Keith huffed out an aggressive breath and trudged out, Lance following the determined man closely. The rooms for the residents were down the west wing, which was easy enough to find with the number of signs plastered on the walls. Both of them studied the directory, shared a look, and then headed off towards the desk where the nurses would all them in to see her.
Luckily, they didn’t make the desk difficult to locate. Lance approached it, practically dragging Keith into the interaction. It went by quickly, uneventfully. The nurses greeted them kindly. Keith could hear his heart thudding in his ears as Lance said a friendly hello to the lady at the desk and signed himself in. The pen shook when Keith took it from Lance’s hand, signing himself in as quickly as he could. He never let go of Lance’s hand, using his left to write his name in.
With some parting words that Keith barely registered, they both made their way down the hall. As they passed some rooms in search of the correct number, Keith’s mouth decided to open again. “She’s not going to know who I am.” The words were soft, nervous.
Lance glanced at him. “You don’t know that. She might remember you,” he suggested.
Keith stared hard at the number on the next room. 403. “If she couldn’t remember anything else, she won’t remember me.” His teeth were grinding again. He had to quit that habit, it wasn’t good. It was better than twisting his knife around through his fingers, at least. Speaking of his knife, he had brought it. On his hip, Keith had holstered the knife that his mother had given him; the only thing that he had from his time with her.
“Even if she did remember you, you’re not the same person anymore,” Lance’s soothing words filled the hallway, mixing with their clacking footsteps. “Either way, she’ll have to learn who Keith is all over again just like you’ll have to learn about her.”
Keith nodded. That was true. Keith wasn’t the same person that he was twelve years ago. A lot had changed. Even in the last few months, Keith felt like he had grown up and matured in ways that he couldn’t have fathomed would happen. He had independence now, he had a purpose, he had strength and courage, he had power that let him take on the world and bravery that let him face the things he couldn’t before. Keith wasn’t the scared little boy that he was at eight. Years of being shunned by his peers, hidden away by his father, taught to fend for himself on the land, in his relationships, and in his understanding of the world, had all shaped Keith to be the man he was today. He wanted to make his mother proud when he met her. That, above all else, was his desire.
415. There it was. The door looked like every other door in that hallway as far as appearances were concerned, but to Keith, it was so much more. He stood there, frozen, just like he was when they had first set foot into the building.
What would he say when he went in there? What would she say? What did she look like? Did Keith, himself, look presentable enough? What if she didn’t want to meet him? What had Shiro mentioned about him? What if he fucked it up? What if she let him down?
His mind was rife with questions and thoughts that all ruled over his actions. It was a haze of anxiety clouding his brain.
“Hey,” Lance asserted.
Keith, drawn in, stared at Lance, the beautiful anchor of strength that he was. “Hey,” he whispered.
“No matter what happens, you’re still Keith and you’re still a force to be reckoned with.” His eyes were unwavering, intense in their delivery. Keith felt it. He dipped his head sharply in response, letting Lance’s energy fill him up.
With that, Keith shifted his hand around in Lance’s hold until their fingers were intertwined and he stepped forward to open the door. It clicked as Keith turned the handle. He sucked in a sharp breath and pushed. The two boys entered, hand-in-hand.
The room was quaint and minimally decorated, only one small plant sitting on the nightstand. The walls were deliberately painted black with a blue stripe tying its way around the room and numerous branching strands of purple. The closet, the bed, the lamp, the alarm clock, and the accompanying bathroom – from what Keith could see – were all standard and unchanged.
That wasn’t important though. That wasn’t what caught Keith’s attention and rendered his heart inactive.
“Hello,” the woman said as she pulled away from her spot by the wall where she had been touching up the purple branches on the wall. “I was told I would get visitors today, I wasn’t told who.” She sounded somewhat unimpressed with the arrival of her two new guests. She set the paintbrush down on a stool that was next to her and rubbed her hands free of ink with a towel that hung from her hip. “Krolia Kogane,” she introduced, extending her hand.
Keith, letting go of Lance briefly, raised his hand in greeting. They clasped each other, shaking once. Keith’s mind was stuck, too stunned by the fact that his mother was right there in front of him.
Her hair was black like his was. She had the same angry tinge about her face as well. Her eyes were purple and so familiar after Keith had glared at the same eyes in the mirror for so many years. Strength and resilience; Keith could feel them radiating off her in waves. He couldn’t remember that about her from when he was a child, but there was a very distinct air about her that Keith admired immediately. Her hair was short in the front, but it twisted off into a long rattail at the back. It worked on her, even though she had dyed a pink streak through the whole thing. Keith’s eyes flicked across her face. There were scars. She had two large stripes of discoloured skin on each cheek, and another along her neck.
This was his mother. She was alive.
Krolia moved to pull her hand away, but Keith didn’t let her. He stepped forward, still grasping tightly onto his mother’s palm. Her guard went up slightly, Keith could see it in her eyes. “Do you remember me?” he breathed.
She stared at him, her face full of suspicion, uncertainty, and absolutely no recognition. “Sorry?” she huffed, her eyebrows furrowing.
“Look at me,” Keith ordered. His voice cracked. “Do you know who I am?”
No longer trying to pull her hand away, Krolia paused. She studied him. Her eyes roamed his face and shifted back and forth, as if she were clawing through her brain to find some explanation for the boy in front of her. Gradually, her eyebrows flattened out and her look morphed from wary to apologetic. “No, I don’t. Have we met before?”
Keith bit his lip and ducked his head. Her hand tumbled from his as he released his crushing grip. The blood pumping through his body was so loud in his ears. Shaking, Keith reached into his holster. The blade glinted in the light of the lamp as he removed it and spun it around. With outstretched hands, Keith offered the blade to Krolia. “You gave this to me.”
She stared at it, her mouth parted on thoughts unspoken. Her hands floated upwards, accepting the knife as if she were accepting a newborn child, and really, she might as well have been. “I… gave this to you…?” she echoed.
“When I seven years old, you gave me a knife,” he reiterated.
Her head whipped up, her eyes widened, her breath sucked inwards.
“What kind of mother gives her son a knife at seven?” Keith huffed, a broken laugh on his tongue.
Her hand gripped around the knife. “Keith…” she whispered.
“Hey, mom.”