Chapter Text
There’s something about meeting your family for the first time, an air that this is supposed to be a happy occasion and realizing that it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. Keith and the Pilot stared at each other, neither truly seeing what they really wanted to.
There’s no loving and doting mother like the image Keith has built in his head, instead an awkward seven foot two purple alien is standing there, wringing their hands more nerves than hug. How dare they leave him, how dare they leave him alone a rock cold and unfeeling, a rock that he never belonged on? How could they leave him with a people that did not understand him? How could they leave him on a world that was only half his? How could they leave him never knowing the love of a mother when they could have given it to him? How could they leave him alone when his father died with no one but his then singular friend for comfort?
The Pilot wants to reach for him, but they cannot they cannot reach for the child they failed. They were not supposed to see him again until the galaxy was free and safe for him to roam. That was their fate wasn’t it. To fail this galaxy and their own loved ones in equal measures. A child or the galaxy had been the question posed to them by Kolivan and the one they had answered with a return to the galaxy and yet they failed it as much as they failed him. Here he stood before them a Paladin of Voltron. A place of honor among the history of the galaxy, a place of hope, a place in history books that will forget the Pilot.
They just sort of look at each other for a while longer than they probably should have. Words failing both of them. Before a bunch of words end up tumbling out of both of their mouths at exactly the same time before anyone could stop them. The Pilot practical as ever, their usual nerves of steel giving way for the Galra underneath. “I shouldn’t have left you. I am a stranger to you, I shouldn’t be a stranger to you but I am one and at this point there’s nothing i can really do about that except try to change the future that we have and I don’t know if I can do that but i can try if that is what you want, I understand if it’s not.”
“I don’t know you.” It’s a simple sentence but they can both feel the weight it carries, years of resentment, years of anger, years of fury, years of hurt. Almost two decades worth of abandonment and in that moment more so than either of them has ever felt towards each other, they are truly strangers in a way that no amount of love or bonding will ever be able to help or heal. “I don’t know if I want to know you. You left me. I don’t know why you left me but you don’t get to just show up and be my mom because you gave birth to me. A lot of stuff happened to me. A lot of stuff that you could have helped me avoid. A lot of stuff you missed out on because you weren’t there. You maybe my mother but you’re not my mother.”
The words should hurt worse than they do, but they’re well deserved and at the end of the day they do not know each other. They’re just two people who happen to share some dna and the universe and the people in decided that fact means more to the world than it ever truly will to them at this point. Besides it was a fair boundary to set. They’re still new to his life, they have no business butting into his business or his dreams like they had been there the whole time. The Pilot is incredibly grateful for Keith’s words in a way. In their mind and in their heart they’re still the mother to the infant that they left on Earth, not the mother of a strong revolutionary leader making real head way in the good fight against the Galra Empire. The fight they had been trying for so many years to contribute to. The fight they had left him over.
It was almost ironic in a way, that the reason they had left him alone on that rock would be the same thing drawing them together with him as an adult. There was nothing but the fight and your life. The Galra motto of Victory or Death echoed dully in their head. He would succeed where they failed, he would lead Voltron to do what they had dedicated their entire life to doing. God in the history of the universe there had never been a being prouder of their child, than the pilot was in this very moment. “I will be no more than what you wish for me to be to you, you are an adult and that’s your choice to make now.”
On the other hand Keith did not share his mother’s glowing internal sentiment. He had almost hoped for a fight, for a chance for them to show that he was truly their child. To fight to be called his mother, something! Not a soft acceptance of his terms nothing at all like the lion he had expected. He had hoped for something. What he was not sure anymore, but it certainly was not this almost placid acceptance of his terms. Where was victory or death? Where was the fight? There had been fight in this person, he hoped there was fight in this person, why else would they leave him? Had they simply not loved him enough to stay when the stars had called?
“Keith.” The word startled him, they had yet to say his name. Avoiding it like the word stung on their tongue. Keith took a step away from them, his heart seizing in his chest, he needed to run away, to leave do something away from this person. It was too much to be around them. “That’s your human name right?”
Keith tilted his head in confusion, of all the things he had expected the Pilot to call him. That certainly was not one of them. “Yeah that’s my only name. Well I guess I’ve got the nickname Mullet if you count Lance nicknames, but I don’t know if that counts as one.”
“It’s not your only name, do you remember, Kolar?”