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At first, they don’t talk much. It’s not that Keith doesn’t want to talk to his mother, but once he finishes asking her all the questions he’s had his whole life… he doesn’t know what else to say. He’s not much of a conversationalist, and neither, apparently, is his mother.
The quiet between them is sometimes comfortable, when he’s full and laying comfortably with the creature he can’t help but think of as a space dog curled up next to him, dozing off, and he catches her eye and she gives him a gentle look. Not quite a smile – she rarely smiles – but a softening around her eyes that he instinctively knows is a mother’s love.
Sometimes, though, the silence is oppressive. There’s nothing they can do but wait and hope that eventually they will reach their goal. He doesn’t really think there’s a chance of being rescued from here and there’s nothing to distract himself from the knowledge that they are very likely to die here without anyone knowing what became of them.
It’s hard to measure the time properly here, but he thinks it’s been about a month when he wakes up to hear his mother humming to him. It’s a familiar tune… his father had been a terrible singer, but he had recordings of plenty of music that he’d played for Keith when he was young. He’d fallen asleep to that song more than once.
He opened his eyes, and Krolia stopped humming immediately. He almost wondered if she was embarrassed.
“I know that song,” he said, sitting up, “Dad used to play that album to put me to sleep.”
“Your father liked to have music playing whenever he did any kind of work. He said it made the work go faster,” Krolia looked downward, her face sad, “I remember the tunes, but not the words.”
Keith hesitates for a second, feeling awkward, but shrugs it off. What’s she going to do, laugh at him? Even if she does, he thinks he’d like to hear her laugh. He takes a breath, and starts softly.
“Have you ever been on the road between holds,
when the sun falls away, and the darkness turns cold,
and the moon will not rise ‘til the night has grown old
and the only things left are the stars?”
She looks surprised as he starts, then smiles, and joins in partway through. Encouraged, Keith ends up singing the whole song, his mother joining in at some parts. Probably just the bits she remembers. When he’s done, he feels momentarily awkward again, but she’s looking at him with such love and affection he just smiles back at her.
“The Galra don’t really… have music anymore,” she says, “I’m told we used to, before we lost the homeworld. When I came to earth, I thought it was so strange, the way your father always had recordings to play. He said it was a human thing. When you were born, and you wouldn’t sleep, he told me that you were half human, and you needed lullabies.”
She laughs softly, “He was right. Even if I just hummed, you’d fall asleep so much more easily.”
“Is that why you were humming just now?”
Krolia shakes her head, “No. I was just… remembering. Thank you, for reminding me of the words.”
Keith reaches out and takes her hand. She squeezes his fingers. He thinks maybe he’d like to hug her, but doesn’t know if they’re quite there yet. His mother. She loves him, but she’s basically a stranger to him, and he knows that right now he definitely loves the idea of a mother more than this woman who actually is his mother.
He wants to love her, though. Sometimes, as a kid, he’d hated her for leaving him. Even more after his father died, and he was sent to the foster home. For the last ten years, he’s had no family. (Well, there’s Shiro, and the other paladins, but they’re not what he’d spent half his life longing for and he knows it, as much as he loves them.) He wants his mother to be his family so much it makes his chest ache to think about it.
Impulsively, he wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer in a half-hug. It’s a little awkward, they’re not used to it, but he’ll take it.
“Keith,” she says softly. She hesitates, then asks, “Do you remember how the one about ‘over the hills and far away’ goes? I think of that one a lot.”
Keith laughs a little, “Which version do you want? That song was on three different albums dad owned.”
He ends up singing all of them, and a week or so later, they’ve made their own version of it.
It’s still not always easy for them to talk, but now, when the silence becomes oppressive, they have a way to fill it. It makes the time pass more quickly, just like his father used to say it did, and it helps make them more comfortable with each other.
Keith still has no idea when or if they will ever escape this place. But if he has to be trapped here, at least he’s trapped here with his mother.