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When Kolivan went up to the observation deck, he hadn’t expected to find anybody else up there. After all, it was the middle of the base’s night cycle, so nobody should have been up except for the guards who patrolled the base. They came through the observation deck periodically throughout the night just to make sure none of the initiates were up past curfew.
How in the Void had Keith managed to evade them? He was only coming up on his fourth name day, and from Kolivan’s own observations, he wasn’t that good at being sneaky. Yet here the cub was, standing up on his tip-toes in front of the large windows and trying to look outside at the solar flare. Kolivan quickly checked the time again—it was far too late for a cub to be up and out of bed.
Slowly, so as not to scare Keith, he approached and stopped beside the cub. However, Keith appeared to have gotten too caught up in his watching to notice Kolivan—while his hearing might have been less attuned given he was only half-Galra, he was usually rather observant for a cub. It was only when Kolivan cleared his throat that Keith spun around, attempting to hiss in surprise.
If Keith had had any body fur, Kolivan was sure the cub would’ve puffed up like a baby pyja… and perhaps squeaked as well. Cubs squeaked a lot.
“What are you doing out here so late, Keith?” Kolivan began patiently, trying to keep his voice soft as he crouched down beside the cub.
Keith shuffled his feet, averting his gaze to the floor. “I dunno…”
Kolivan wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about taking care of Keith specifically, having only cubsat him one or twice… but he did have enough experience with cubs in general to know when one was upset about something.
“Do Thace and Ulaz know you’re up here, little one?” Kolivan asked—it was a rhetorical question, of course. Thace rarely let Keith out of his sight. Seeing as Thace hadn’t launched a base-wide search to try and find his cub, Kolivan doubted that Thace was even aware that Keith had disappeared. Given the time, Thace and Ulaz were probably asleep and hadn’t noticed Keith managing to slip out of the room.
Keith didn’t even try to lie—not that he ever lied. Instead, he meekly shook his head and kept his gaze trained on the floor. “Am I in trouble, Van?”
“No, of course not,” Kolivan assured him. “Is something wrong, cub? Were you having trouble sleeping?”
“A little…” Keith said. He seemed to be incapable of stilling his fidgeting hands.
Kolivan’s ears twitched as he tilted his head to the side. “Why?”
“Thay said Mama isn’t coming back…” Keith whispered. Without waiting for Kolivan’s response, he turned to look out at the flare again.
Kolivan’s gaze softened. He was reminded of the many times he had found Thace up on the observation deck doing the same thing as he waited for his sister—Keith’s mother—to come back from missions. He wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to articulate it correctly, and he didn’t want to accidentally upset Keith if he could help it. So instead, he remained awkwardly crouched on his toes beside the cub, waiting for Keith to indicate he was ready to go to bed. Kolivan would return him to Thace and Ulaz’s room then—hopefully before either of them noticed their cub had disappeared.
“Did Mama look like Thay?” Keith asked, raising one of his still very tiny hands up against the glass.
It took Kolivan a moment to realize that Keith was asking if his mother looked Galran, rather than Terran, more like Keith did. His ears twitched and perked up at the cub’s question—now this was a conversation he knew how to have, seeing as he had already given it to Antok back when Antok was a cub.
Kolivan sat down heavily with a soft groan, happy to finally get off his feet—his knees had begun locking up. Then, he opened his arms and Keith tumbled into his lap. Kolivan shifted, allowing the cub to get comfortable before he began speaking. “You know, when Antok was small, he used to worry about looking like his mother too…”
Keith frowned. “He doesn’t look like Ev—”
“I meant his birthmother, cub, not his foundmother,” Kolivan corrected him gently as he smoothed a hand over Keith’s messy headfur. “Antok is half-Galra, right?” He waited until Keith had nodded before continuing. “You are half-Galra too… just because you’re not purple doesn’t mean you’re not Galra…”
Keith still didn’t look convinced, kneading his tiny fingers into the fur of Kolivan’s arm—and he had never been more thankful that the cub did not have tiny, needle sharp claws like most cubs did.
“Our only membership requirement is that you have Galra blood,” he said—it was slightly more complicated than that, but for the purposes of cheering up Keith, Kolivan was going to keep this simple. “Antok is half-Galra, but he passed his trial—”
At the mention of the trial, Keith’s entire body perked up—expressive, as cubs often were. “Laz says you fight! How many people did Ani fight!? So many? A hundred? A thousand?”
Kolivan was silent for a moment, trying to withhold his frown. That wasn’t the point of the trial—but if it got Keith to listen, so be it. “Yes, little one… he beat up so many people,” he said. Then, he leaned down to bump his nose against Keith’s temple, earning a soft laugh in return as the cub batted at him.
A deep purr rumbled in Kolivan’s chest as he sat up straight again. “Maybe one day you’ll beat up so many people too…” he finally said, carefully running his claws through Keith’s headfur as the cub settled in. His purring continued until he noticed that Keith was getting drowsy and beginning to nod off. Carefully, so as not to disturb the dozing cub in his arms, Kolivan pushed himself back to his feet and made for the door.
“Come on, little one... before either of your fathers realizes you're missing.”