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Keith’s world changes with the announcement.
The halls hum with excitement over the disclosure of the Garrison’s most recent mission, but the stray words would never distract Keith as much as his bright eyes, grin stretched wide to accommodate the pure happiness radiating from his person. He’s the most beautiful he’s ever been, and it takes Keith’s breath away.
Takashi.
It takes a few weeks for it to settle in, the realization of what this means crawling past his ribs and making a home under his sternum. Kerberos is so far away, farther away than mans ever gone and the idea of giving Shiro up to the stars twists his heart in ways Keith had never anticipated.
Keith’s worried, tries to hide his worry because he knows this is all Shiro’s ever dreamed off and the overwhelming want to feel happiness for him becomes drowned out by the ache that’s developed in his heart. It feels like a supernova blast in his heart, the intensity of the blaze knocking his ribs and sternum from place and lighting his lungs and the surrounding tissue aflame, leaving charred remains in its wake.
He’ll be with the stars, but not with Keith.
Cadets are allowed to watch the Kerberos launch from a safe distance away, uniforms straight, shoes polished, and a strong salute following take off.
Shiro pulls some strings, pulls Keith from the cadets and got him placed closer up, where family, crew, and instructors reside to talk to them before leaving. Keith’s not sure what move he had to pull, what reason he gave, but the promise of being near him one last time soothes the ash storm in his chest.
It’s awkward, standing around officers he hasn’t gotten the chance to meet and launch crewmembers that are busy explaining any last minute details to family members. They’re waiting on Shiro and the Holts to return from putting their suits on, everyone holding small conversations except Keith, who sticks to the back and uses his spare time to salvage himself in the aftermath of the supernova.
He pilfers through the wreckage until he’s managed to press three ribs carefully back into place with more focus than he’s had with something regarding himself in weeks. He wants to be whole again, wants to remain intact for the man who’s become his shelter. He’s got enough to worry about without having to act as damage control.
It’s then that they make their return, boisterous voices of fellow officers pulling Keith from his inner mantra of focus, focus, focus. It’s then that Keith manages eye contact with Shiro from across the room, because of course the first thing Keith would notice is Shiro. He’s unsure of when it’d started, unsure if there was a set time, or if his mind adapted over the days, months, years they’ve spent by each other’s side.
He’s beautiful. His tuft of black hair falls over his eyes as they light up with the purest expression of joy Keith’s ever seen before they make their way across the room to each other, drawn towards the other’s gravitational pull that seems only active towards them.
They meet in the middle with a grasp of hands before pulling the other towards them, Keith’s face pressing into the hard material of Shiro’s suit while Shiro noses at his hair, other hand placed protectively on his back. It’s then that another realization hits him, an out of body experience that forces a soft gasp through his lips and a stinging behind his eyes.
Shiro’s become more than a stranger, more than the only man who would approach the abrasive first year cadet all that time ago. More than a friend, more than family in it’s simplest form. He’s become Keith’s all, the closest thing to home.
His grip tightens on Shiro’s shoulder, hard enough that he can still feel the materials pattern as he watches the ship leave in a blaze, eyes wide and lips parted with his unspoken confession.
Takashi.
Keith’s world changes with the announcement.
Pilot error punctures Keith’s chest, skewers his heart and slowly pulls, watching as the muscles that were supposed to keep it in place disintegrate. His breath escapes through the hole left in his chest and suddenly it’s too much, always too much, and he just needs to breathe, let me breathe.
Waking up an orphan had been quiet, empty and full of an understanding no one had expected from him at such a young age.
Waking up homeless was loud, raging anger; a never-ending fire that blossomed in the pit of his stomach and scorched him through and through.
The Garrison only allots so much time for grieving until their sympathetic glances and quiet understanding turns to something rotten.
It takes Keith days to pull himself from his bed; days to relearn how to direct his blood flow around the growing hole of his chest. The days are tortuously long and silent in his room, but night feels like dying before his time, his irrationality blaming the stars for all that he’s lost. They look down on him, taunting.
We took him. He’s with us, now. He’ll never be yours.
It’s a special form of torture, to have what you admired for so long bring you to the one thing you’ve ever loved, only to take it away.
It’s not your fault.
He knows they’re lying, knows there’s more to what they’re telling him. He knows pilot error is bullshit; he knows Shiro better than any of them.
He knows his faults, knows this isn’t one of his faults.
Anger boils over to action, action watches as confrontation strikes.
Keith’s fist aches in the aftermath, distracts him from the severity of what he’d done. It’s not until expulsion is being barked into his face that it settles, stone cold in a way he’d never been. He leaves the Garrison as he’d arrived: small bag of his belongings, turmoil boiling under the surface, alone.
Desert nights burn worse than the scorching sun during the day. He’d always been fond of the quiet, but out here, it feels closer to silence, closer to aching pressure that keeps him awake at night.
The silence takes sentience some days; it’s presence too large and too looming. It fills the beaten shack and shoves him back, back, back into a corner where all he can do is sit with his knees against his chest and heave.
It rains on clear days, out here.
He’s been in a constant state of grief since he woke up to a silent home, woke up to a missing father, woke up alone in a world that held nothing but disdain for him.
This feels different, though. He’s long since had time to adjust to a life alone, can’t remember what it was like to live any other way. When he had come to the Garrison, experienced one of his first real friendships, he should’ve known that it would’ve crashed around him. Life hadn’t been gracious and giving to him before, so why would it start now?
Having Shiro ripped away from him felt like losing part of his soul.
His birthday comes and goes in silence.
It’s been so long since he’d cried in self-pity, long since he’s done anything other than silently grieve over the life he lost.
He wakes up a year older, but feels so much smaller. He lays on the shabby couch in the shack all day, can’t force himself up to go out to the desert or cross the room to his food supply. He lies there, replays the last two birthdays he’s spent with Shiro and allows himself to mourn all that was taken from him.
Keith turns eighteen, becomes an adult under the same stars that watched him become alone.
Keith turns eighteen, but Shiro’s not here.
Keith turns eighteen, but he’s on his own.
The first time Keith hears it, he’s sure he’s gone mad.
The silence of the shack tears him apart most days, leaves him weary as the bags under his eyes grow. He’s trying to find purpose, trying to find meaning in the little life he has left.
He feels hopeless, feels like everything he’s done has been in vain.
It’s harder to force himself to leave his makeshift bed these days, harder to pretend that everything is going to be okay and the universe is only taking a break for now, will realign itself someday soon and bring back what he lost. Harder to pretend that there’s life waiting for him after this: harder to pretend that he can move on from this.
Keith thinks that if Shiro could see him now, he’d be disappointed in the wasted talent that makes up his being.
He’s wallowing in these thoughts, eyes burning with nothing to speak for their pain. He’s past the point of crying now, past the point of anything; he lies on the couch and closes his eyes, signs his will and offers himself to the desert around him.
It appears then; a soft breeze that hits the shack, holding more of a melodic tone than wind should, shaking the loose shingles and blowing sand against the window. It picks up in intensity, resembling one of the sand storms that have happened a few times since Keith left the Garrison.
The melodic tone turns to a hum, too purposeful to be an offspring of the wind, reverberating through the shack and into Keith’s mind. He shoots up, hand on the unknown blade and heart beating frantically. It’s been so long since he’d seen or heard another person that the note sounds like a threat, causing his skin to prickle in cold fear as his eyes scan his dark living room.
The hum gets louder, and combined with the sand pelting the shack, it’s deafening. It’s too much, everything’s too much; Keith’s hand slips from the hilt of his blade to cover his ears, tucking his head between his knees as a choked sob forces it’s way from his lips.
The sound tearing through his throat halts the sand storm, halts the hum and leaves the house in an eerie silence. Keith’s nails are digging into his scalp and this is it, this is what insanity feels like.
There’s a flicker in his mind, calm aura nestling next to his brain. Keith feels himself unwind around it, breaths becoming deeper and tension escaping from the harsh lines of his shoulders. He lifts his head slowly, first glancing through the window bed his couch to find the setting sun that had been present before the storm has been replaced with the soft blue hue of night. He turns back towards the inside of his shack, the contents of it basking in the color, illuminated in a way.
Keith snakes a hand through his hair, shaky breath escaping before it catches and curls into manic laughter at the situation.
He’s lost his mind; something’s calling him, and he’s lost his mind.
Keith follows it. He has nothing to lose except what little is left, and he uses the hum of energy as a reason to get up, to keep moving.
Shiro’s back.
Keith has the larger cadet - Hunk - help him pull Shiro from the bike and into the shack, kicks the door open for the three of them. He handles settling Shiro on the couch, hand lingering on the side of his face. The bandana around Keith’s neck feels like a hand now, choking every emotion from Keith because he’s here, he’s home.
The three cadets are talking to each other, rushed whispers in the background as Keith settles on the side of the couch. He brushes the tuft of white bangs from Shiro’s eyes, gaze settling on the scar carved across his face.
His thumb brushes over his jaw before he turns towards the window behind the couch. The early morning sun is rising in the distance, battling with the night sky for dominance. Keith’s eyes slide up, rests on the stars that still twinkle down at him.
They gave him back.
They gave Shiro back, and Keith will never let him go again.
Lance laughs when Keith first explains the presence that he’d been feeling in detail, preparing for their trek to the desert cavern he’d been frequenting since he’d first felt it.
Pidge tries to reason with Keith, tell him that however long he’d spent alone in the desert – wait, really? A year out here? – has taken its toll on him, that things like ghosts or spirits don’t exist.
“It’s not a ghost,” Keith says, fists and jaw clenched tightly. A year of solitude may have worn down his social skills, may have made him a bit rougher on the edges, but he knows that the presence isn’t a product of his time out here. It gave him purpose to find life after death; it brought him to Shiro. “It – it’s real. And I think everything I’ve been talking about is connected.”
“Uh huh. Why should we trust a drop out? For all we know, you could’ve gone crazy out here and you’re leading us to our deaths!” Lance tuts, crossing his arms and leaning forward slightly.
“Why would I -,” Keith starts, voice teetering with anger as he takes a step forward, before there’s a hand on his wrist. He whips around to see Shiro and the anger starts to fizzle out slowly as the other’s presence reins him in. Shiro’s always been the best at calming Keith down, and it seems a year apart has down little to diminish that fact.
“Keith,” Shiro starts, and his voice sounds like Keith remembers it, but now it’s missing the tilt it’d get when saying his name, lost the energy that flowed with each word. It’s stronger now; each word is thought out, holds purpose. It threatens to displace the still healing ribs, and even now Keith has to slide a few vertebrae back into place in its aftermath. “Are you sure about this?”
A moment of silence, a hesitance that has nothing to do with the question, then:
“More than anything.”
The insanity of their situation doesn’t hit Keith for days, not until he has time to sit and breath, to welcome the silence that had haunted him for so many months.
Shiro had come back. There’s something lingering, something that’d imprinted on him from the traumas he’d faced while at the hands of the galra. He’s not the same, not yet whole, but he’s back and any presence is enough for Keith.
They went to the stars, both of them. Met some other Garrison kids, some aliens, and a handful of mice. Practiced, fought, and rested, over and over in the short time they’ve been in space. Met more aliens, different species from different planets from vast places. It’s enough to excite and terrify Keith all at the same time.
It’s hard, readjusting to life with others after being in solitude for so long.
He can tell Shiro’s going through the same struggle. The pacing, the far off looks, retreating into ones own mind, either unaware of those around them or too aware of them. It’s very surreal, sometimes, to wake up in a bed and walk into a real kitchen, to always have some form of nutrition on hand. Weird to exist in an area with another person, weird to accommodate yourself for others.
They haven’t had many opportunities to talk. Even when they do, when the castle ship is quiet and all signs of danger have been absent, Keith finds himself with heavy feet, stuck five feet from Shiro’s door with no ability to move forward.
He spends his nights alone, no longer having the nerve to sneak into Shiro’s room like he did at the Garrison. Sleep is fleeting, and nights spent staring at the ceiling of his room feel far too similar to the ones he spent as a kid, teenager, and fresh adult for comfort.
The walls aren’t as thick as you would expect for a high tech ship, either. He knows about Shiro’s night terrors long before it’ll ever be mentioned, can hear the heavy breathing and scared gasps from his position, his room being the only one next to Shiro’s.
He spends his nights thinking, the acoustic of Shiro’s voice acting as background noise as Keith rethinks anything, everything; rethinks his purpose and place, his usefulness and function.
There’s so much weighing them down most days, he wish they could both let go.
The trip back to the castle is torturous. The Trials of Marmora suit sticks to him with sweat and blood, and the throbbing pain from his shoulder has shown its presence in the absence of adrenaline.
The worst part is the silence that fills Black’s cockpit. Shiro’s long since run out of words of reassurance for Keith, long since run out of ways to tell the team, long since run out of ways to understand this. His silence says more than his words, in Keith’s mind, and each second they spend speeding through space twists from it’s form and into a hand, inching forward towards Keith’s neck until he’s sure the only thing waiting for him at the castle is a casket.
Shiro’s gone.
Shiro’s gone.
Shiro’s-
Again.
I can’t do this.
The thought fills Keith’s mind the night after the Black lion had responded to him. He threads his hands through his hands and pulls, tries to ground himself. He squeezes his eyes shut tight enough for bursts of color to appear behind his lids, and he can almost see a familiar face’s outline in the splotches.
He curls into himself, elbows caging in his knees and he releases the haggard breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
It’s all too much. Keith isn’t the born leader Shiro is, was. He doesn’t hold the same authority, the same respect, the same temperament. The task of leading Voltron should’ve never been given him, sentient lion robot’s opinion be damned. How can he walk down this road, when even Shiro stumbled?
It takes a while for things to settle. For everyone routine to realign, reshape itself around the gaping hole in their lives until it almost feels normal, almost feels right.
There’s a quiet acceptance that fills Keith, these days.
The team is growing, learning, fighting each day. Becoming closer, to each other and their goal. They help chase his self-doubt, when they can; Pidge’s short clips of encouragement, Lance’s longer heart to hearts he’s become fond of, and Hunks wordless smiles and acceptance when Keith plays his role as leader. It’s still very new and strange, and it fills Keith with anxiety on his better days and something darker on his worst, but you can’t win every war with one battle.
Things are starting to look up, for the war and their lives. The Shiro’s disappearance and the aftermath is still a fresh wound, but each day they’re learning how to stitch it back together.
It’s enough that Keith believes they can make it. It’s enough to reassure Keith in what he knows.
Keith’s hands shake as he raises them to Shiro’s door, breathing uneven.
He’d already stopped by for the night, already had his little reunion, but he’s a coward, a goddamned coward because he didn’t say what he wanted to, what he needed to.
He knocks twice before stepping back, shoving his hands into his pockets as he waits for the door to slide open. It does, and it reveals Shiro, looking the same as he had hours before. He stares down at Keith for a minute before stepping out of the doorway, allowing Keith to follow him in as he resettles into his bed. Keith follows deftly, gut clenching and unclenching as he tries to sort out the jumble of thoughts trying to leave his lips.
He sits on the edge of Shiro’s mattress and just thinks, tries to settle on what he needs to say without saying too much, and god why did he –
“Keith, are you okay? What do you need?” Shiro asks, voice soft in the way it always is when it’s just them. Keith opens his mouth with a start before his breath catches, but even the growing itchiness of his throat and sting behind his eyes can’t stop him from getting this out.
“Shiro–,” He starts, breathes, and tries again. “I… I just…” he huffs quickly, facing away from the man as he lets his fingers travel into his bangs. He pulls, lets the action ground him as he breaths through his turbulence of emotions.
It doesn’t take long for another set of hands, one human and one robotic, to join his. Shiro pulls gently at his fingers until he’s able to coax them out of his hair, using them to pull Keith back towards him, never letting go. He makes eye contact with Keith through his overgrown bangs, eyes full of understanding and sorrow. Keith chokes.
“Thank you,” he croaks, voice raw, “For… for always standing by me, and for… believing in me. When you asked me to pilot black, you… you believed that I could grow, when no one else did. Not even myself.”
“Keith…” Shiro says quietly, and uses his hold on Keith’s hands to pull him into his chest. His robotic arm winds around his back, rubbing comforting circles on Keith’s back as his other thumb does the same on the inside of Keith’s wrist.
Keith relaxes into his hold and for the first time since Shiro had left on that damned Kerberos mission, he finally lets go.
Keith wakes up early the next morning, head cushioned on Shiro’s chest from where’d they’d fallen asleep the night before. He lies there and listens to the steady pound of Shiro’s heart beneath his ear and allows himself to revisit the realization he’d had when he was only seventeen and watching his best friends prepare for space.
He sneaks his hand up, resting it on Shiro’s chest next to his own face, right above Shiro’s heart. It’s then that he has another realization; the feelings he’d developed had never dwindled throughout the year of solitary, the months back together, nor their time apart. As hard as he’d tried, he had never been able to keep them truly buried, never been able to squash or hide them like he’d wished he could. No matter what he did, this is never going to go, and he was realizing he was more willing to accept that than he’d thought was possible.
He tilts his head back to gaze at Shiro’s sleeping face. He remembers the soft line his eyebrows make when they draw together in his sleep from their Garrison days, something he’d never thought he’d get to see again. It’s almost life changing, a revolutionary sight that fills him to the brim with so many emotions, too many, that he dips his head to tuck into Shiro’s neck, letting out a watery breath.
He presses his lips into a tight line as his mind flickers over the crease again, committing it to memory as he had so long ago. There’s so much that he’d missed of Shiro without truly realizing it; like the way his lips tilt down when he has to switch his attention from one thing to another, or how his hands twitch when they brush too close to Keith’s, or how his eyes seemed a little brighter when Keith was around, smiles a little bigger, and shoulders a little more relaxed.
There’s so much that Keith wants to recommit, to relearn and trace and never forget again. He wants to remember it all; wants to understand the meaning behind each movement of eyes and head tilt.
He slowly pulls his head from Shiro’s neck, leaning back to gaze at his face again. There’s a weight behind his eyes as he leans in, tucks himself right under Shiro’s chin and sighs heavily.
“You are never gonna go, again,” Keith whispers softly, pressing a thin lipped kiss to Shiro’s jaw.
Shiro starts to stir under him; voice humming as his hand slides up, reaches Keith’s back and settles there. Keith closes his eyes and relaxes into his hold.