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Keith is alone.
He grips the little communication device given to him by the Blade and smiles down at it. On the screen, he watches his old team on stage performing for a crowd. He smiles as Allura awkwardly tries to pretend to be him. He snickers at how incredibly uncomfortable Shiro looks. It is endearing how Pidge rolls her eyes, knowing exactly how stupid they all look. Hunk is some eye-roll worthy stereotype of himself and Keith rolls his eyes for him too.
He holds his breath a little bit as Lance dances onstage, the only one truly getting into it, at home in front of the lights and cheering crowds. He looks, in a word, magnificent. Of all the aliens holding up signs for their favorite paladins, Keith would probably be holding a Lance one. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone.
No matter how uncomfortable any of them look with the situation, Keith can still see how much fun they are having together. It is an experience they are sharing together with sympathetic looks and casual touches that reveal just how close they are. Just how much of a team they are.
Keith knows that, with Shiro, Voltron has soared to new heights. Their growing fame and battle prowess are a testament to Voltron taking its place as the defender of the universe. The rightful leader is now in his place and Keith can tell how much more relaxed everyone seems even from a small device screen. He imagines how smoothly everything must be running now, how everything must be clicking together like it should.
Without him.
It makes him happy at the same time as sad to realize that he is not only not meant to be the leader, but also not meant to be a part of the team at all. They had all easily said goodbye to him without even one person asking him to stay once Shiro had taken over again. Once Shiro took over, he was just an expendable part of the team. The one that didn’t quite fit in. The one that never really fit in.
And now, they are closer than ever. Happier than ever. Working together better than ever.
No one had even tried to contact him or speak to him since he left, but why would they?
They have everything they need at the Castle. They have everyone they need at the Castle. They are a family, a unit of trust and love, an unbreakable bonded group.
Keith’s own blood family didn’t even want him. Why would any other family be different? Why would he think for a moment that he could be a part of that unbreakable group?
It isn’t completely unexpected for Keith. Getting closer to them, forming bonds, becoming close friends with Allura and Pidge and Hunk, feeling something else for Lance…it had been scary rather than comforting.
Because it made him feel vulnerable. Because he didn’t want to get too attached. Because, eventually, Keith knew that they would reject him. That this happy, glowing family before him on the screen was never meant to be his permanently.
His feelings are validated with every tale of Voltron’s success, with every passing day that he misses them desperately, but they just shine brighter and brighter, together.
Without him.
He is in a better place now for someone like him. Kolivan said it himself. Individuals do not matter in the Blade. Only the mission. His life doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he performs the jobs given to him. That he does what he can to help protect the closest thing to a family he has ever had, even if they are basically strangers to him now, smiling on camera and probably never thinking of him.
And it is fine. This is what Keith is used to. It feels safer to lose himself in the Blade, safer to be somewhere that is at least honest about how little he matters. He is a soldier. He is a tool. He isn’t family. He isn’t even a friend.
He is generally good at what he does too. Once he stops letting his emotions get the better of him, he rips through missions like they are nothing.
It is easier too when he realizes that he doesn’t matter. He can take risks. He can push himself. He can put himself in danger because ultimately it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. If he dies, then he died for a good cause. His death would mean something because he died trying to save the world. His life would be forgotten very quickly. But he would know that, with his last breaths, he had helped save the entire universe, even if the universe didn’t know.
And that is fine for someone like him.
So he works toward that goal. He takes risks. He pushes himself. He doesn’t hesitate. He is careless with his life, but he gets results.
He suppresses the desire to try to make friends with the Blade members he sees regularly.
He tries to embrace the hours upon hours of silence and loneliness he experiences sitting around in his room by himself in between missions. It really isn’t so different from being alone at the shack or even alone before he entered the Garrison. Being alone seems to be his natural state, just punctuated with brief, temporary times where he is not.
He tries not to think of the Castle where these times between missions would be filled with friendly smiles and eating together and sparring. With Pidge and Hunk and Allura and Coran.
With Shiro and his ability to know what Keith needs to hear or, sometimes not even words, but rather just a hand on his shoulder.
And with Lance, who he had grown to adore. Who could always make him smile. Who tried to comfort him and support him despite not even really liking him.
Since Shiro’s return, Lance had gone back to treating Keith like normal, like a rival, even a disappointing rival, like they never bonded, and that hurt more than Keith wants to admit.
But, it isn’t like, even in a million years, even in the wildest of chances that Keith could have hoped for anything else from Lance.
Or from Voltron.
They had found their true team, together. And Keith’s rightful place is sitting in the dark, alone, watching them on a screen, simultaneously wishing he could be there and also knowing that he would probably just ruin it if he was.
Watching them is just some comfort to hold onto before going on a new mission that he knows he may not come back from. That he sometimes wishes he wouldn’t come back from.
He wonders when they would even find out or how they would feel. He knows they would be sad. He doesn’t think any of them would be devastated though.
They had let him go so easily before and they would again.
In retrospect, the decision to sacrifice himself for them is so immediate that Keith cannot even really call it a decision. Of course he would. Of course he would sacrifice himself a million times over for them. So that they can be together. So that their family can survive. So that they can grow up, grow the Voltron family, fall in love, save the universe, have kids. He sees their bright futures so vividly that it hurts and, for him, only a dark path that is going to end in dying alone anyway.
So it isn’t a decision so much as a given.
And he would do it again, in a heartbeat.