Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shiro opened his eyes to darkness. Littered by a thousand tiny stars, it sprawled as far as his eyes could see. Had he fallen asleep on the bridge? It wouldn't be the first time. He went up there sometimes on the nights when he couldn't sleep - or those where he woke shaking from some horrific dream - and he would look out into the vastness of space and remember that he was free.

But this, he realised, was different. The ground under his back didn’t feel like the marbled floors of the bridge. It fact, it didn't feel much like ground at all. He tried to lever himself up to sitting and let out a small breath of surprise when his hand touched something akin to a particle barrier. It was neither cold nor hot - the sensation was barely there. He looked over his shoulder and found that the stars stretched below him too, below this odd illusion of a floor. He could see his hands, and they, like the rest of his body, were transparent and tinged a soft purple.

Do not be alarmed, my paladin.

The Black Lion’s words were all-encompassing; a soft murmur that came from no clear source.

You are safe.

“Why did you bring me here?” Shiro asked. The astral plane was just as he remembered it: a foreboding void that curled itself around him protectively. The Lion wouldn’t hurt him, he knew that. He trusted her implicitly after all of their battles together, but she still held power he couldn’t even begin to imagine the magnitude of. It inspired as much awe in him now as it had that first day he stood before her hangar, the roars of her four siblings shaking the ground around him as she judged his worth to fly. The Lions could be a deadly force. He was glad they was on his side.

A purr, like thunder. I did not want to lose you, the Lion said.

Shiro rose to his feet. It was easy, now that he knew where he was. Movements were as simple as thoughts here. And speaking of his thoughts, he couldn't help but remember where he had been last. The battle against Zarkon’s mecha was something of a haze in his mind, a cacophony of battlecries and fear and the fierce determination of his teammates. He was so, so proud of them - the cadets who had saved him, the Alteans who had awoken to their world destroyed, his friends, who had fought by his side, and who he had come to think of as family.

He remembered phasing through Zarkon’s ship, the mecha designed to rival Voltron in strength, and he remembered their minds crossing on this very plane. For a moment he had lost himself, his thoughts ensnared in Zarkon’s drive to defeat, to destroy, to tear down those who opposed him, to restore what he wrongfully believed to be his. He had known, for just a few seconds, what it was like to be Zarkon. He never, ever, wanted to feel like that again.

He remembered the Black Lion’s mind running parallel to his, her body and will an extension of his own. Amid the chaos of Zarkon’s fleet, he had taken back the black bayard, Zarkon’s bayard, his bayard, And then there had been pain, electricity coursing through his body as Zarkon tore at the Black Lion both physically and mentally.

The last thing he remembered was the bayard finally in its slot. Afterwards, his world had erupted into light. He figured that must have been when he’d passed out.

Around him was the soft hum of the Black Lion’s quintessence, purple like the Galra, purple like his own. Shiro pinched his eyes closed and took a deep - utterly useless - breath. With no physical body, he had no need to breathe, but in this place it was all too easy to remember Zarkon’s claw-like hand around his throat, to remember what it was like to suffocate at the core of his very being. Right now he was alone. Right now he was himself. He didn’t know why he was on the astral plane again, but if he wanted to find out, then he couldn’t lose ahold of himself.

“What happened to Zarkon?” he asked the Lion.

He is gone, she said decisively. You are with me. You are safe.

Shiro nodded, just once. That was an incredible relief, both on a personal level and for the universe as a whole.

“How long has it been since then?”

By your time, two spicolian movements and four quintents.

It had been over two weeks? He had been asleep for over two weeks?

I apologise, continued the Lion. I would have liked to wake you earlier but I did not want to risk you any further harm. It was not easy for me to bring you here.

A pang of guilt throbbed through him. The last time he had been in a healing pod for any significant period of time - following Sendak’s attack on the castle back on Arus - he had awoken to worried faces and hugs a little too tight to be truly comforting. His friends couldn't afford to worry about him now on top of their other more pressing concerns. Zarkon may be defeated, but the work of Team Voltron was far from over. There would be alliances to form, coalitions to build. He needed to wake up - properly, in the physical world - as soon as possible.

My paladin… the Lion sounded regretful. He had never heard her sound like that before. I was able to save your quintessence, but I am afraid your body was lost.

Shiro opened his mouth. Closed it. His body was- but that meant-?

My old paladin knew the Lions well. He knew how best to exploit our weaknesses, and he used that knowledge to attack you directly. Once I understood, I withdrew from Voltron and used my remaining power to save what I could. I only apologise that I could not do more.

“The others,” Shiro said softly. “Are they okay?”

They are alive.

He looked down at his transparent form, at the hands that he now knew had defeated Zarkon. Death had been chasing him ever since day one of the Kerberos mission. He had come to terms with that, but given the choice, he would survive all his battles and grow old helping to save a universe much bigger and more beautiful than he could ever have dreamed of. Still, if his life was the price they paid for removing Zarkon from power, then he supposed he could make peace with that. It was a fitting end to his story, to die as the true Black Paladin. Much better than dying in the arena or restrained to a metal table.

He wondered what his friends were doing now. Though he didn’t want to, he couldn’t help but think of them finding him motionless in the Black Lion’s cockpit.

There was no body. They are unaware.

“They don’t know that I… that I died?” Those words were so difficult to say.

They do not want to give up on you.

“They think I disappeared.” It was a statement, not a question. He thought of Keith, of their late-night conversations about what happened after Kerberos. He had abandoned Keith again - unintentionally, of course - but it was still abandonment, and Keith had had enough of that for a lifetime.

He thought of the other paladins, how they had come to trust him. How he trusted them. He hoped they didn't blame themselves, for in the chaos of that battle what more could they have done? But he knew they would; in their place, he would. Logic rarely mattered when it came to grief.

But he was alive - maybe not on the physical plane, but still alive in soul. There had to be a solution, some way he could get through to the team. Since leaving Earth he had encountered no shortage of difficult situations. He had looked death in the eyes - in the arena, with Haggar, as Voltron - and every time, no matter how improbable, he had found some way to come out on top. This would be no different. He just needed it figure out how.

There is someone in my hangar, the Black Lion said suddenly.

“Who?”

The Red Paladin. He visits me often.

A projection of the inside of the Black Lion’s cockpit shimmered into existence just a few feet away. Keith hovered in the entrance, wearing his trademark red jacket and looking like he hadn’t slept for days.

“Hey, Black,” Keith said, resting a hand against one of her walls. Quieter, he added, “Hey, Shiro.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

No. I have been unable to tell him. The Red Paladin does not share our connection. He cannot understand me in the form of words, much like you cannot speak to his Lion.

Keith sighed, leaned back against the wall. “It’s been a rough day. Allura says we need to find a new Black Paladin.” He slid down the wall, continued resentfully, “It’s logical. I know that. We need Voltron and we can’t form Voltron without the Black Lion. But I hate the idea of someone taking your place.”

Keith rested his head on his knees, stayed there in silence for many minutes. Shiro lay a hand against the projection, wanting nothing more than to reach through its filmy surface and pull his friend into a hug. Shiro had come to terms with the thought of death a long time ago - with everything he had been through, part of him was amazed he hadn't died sooner - but he never imagined he would be around for the aftermath. That was the point of dying, after all. He appreciated that his friends were mourning - he got that, he really did - but it was infuriating to watch them suffer when he wasn't actually gone.

“You always said you’d never give up on me,” Keith muttered into his knees. “Wherever you are, I won’t give up on you.”

“I know,” Shiro said, and although he knew Keith couldn’t hear him, replying provided a sense of solace.

Adjusting to life on the astral plane was downright weird. In his year with the Galra, Shiro had grown used to long stretches of time with only his thoughts for company. He wasn't alone this time, nor was he a captive, but Shiro had never taken well to confinement and it didn’t take long for the sameness of the astral plane to start wearing on his nerves.

Still, the Black Lion was there to comfort him whenever the similarities got too much, and Keith visited them regularly - often at night according to the Lion. Sometimes Keith would fall asleep against her paws. Sometimes he would just stand in the cockpit, face distant, lost in thought. And sometimes, he would talk as he had on that first night. Though his words fuelled Shiro’s homesickness, made its constant pull swell into a deep longing, Shiro looked forward to his visits.

In the Galra prisons, he would bide his time with exercise. A healthy body was essential if he were to survive the gladiator battles, essential for escape. He had tried that here, but it wasn't quite the same when what counted for his body was merely a figment of quintessence, and he couldn't feel the burn of his muscles or his body weakening without use. He was simply putting himself through the motions for no gain. Though that was frustrating, it wasn't all bad. What passed for his body here couldn’t feel pain, so for the first time in over a year he was without the constant nagging ache where his prosthetic fused to skin. Nor did he need to sleep. If he let his mind fall quiet, all sense of time fell away from him and he entered a restful state of no thought. He didn't dream; time simply passed without meaning. It was almost nice. With little else to do, he let himself drift.

Days passed. His consciousness resurfaced at the Black Lion’s familiar rumble.

There are multiple people in my hangar , she said. The other four paladins, the princess, and her advisor.

Shiro’s quintessence drew together, assuming the shape of his body. His eyes flickered open and he turned to the projection of the cockpit. It was currently empty.

“Do you know why they're here?”

The Lion did not respond. Shiro got the impression she was mulling something over. Through the projection, he watched as Allura sat down at the controls. She took a shaky breath, then reached for the levers.

Oh. That's why they were here.

When you were injured following your battle with the witch, you named the Red Paladin your successor. I am aware that you meant what you said.

“I did.”

He does not wish to be my pilot.

Allura sighed. She rose from the chair and left the cockpit. A minute or so later, Pidge took her place. Then Hunk. Then Lance. Each in turn sat behind the controls, some fidgeting, some uncertain, some talking to themselves or prodding uselessly at lifeless screens before beckoning the next candidate in. Shiro and Black watched silently, waiting.

Keith was the last to enter the cockpit. He lowered himself into the chair, his face lined with unhappiness.

“I know you wanted this for me, Shiro.” He took the levers in both hands. “But I’m not you. I can’t lead them like you.”

He is a good choice. If it is what you desire, then I shall accept him.

The dashboard lit up a bright purple. Keith’s eyes flew open in horrified shock, just in time to witness the displays flicker to life.

“Please, no.” He pinched his eyes shut, as if willing the lights to dim before his audience in the hangar caught on.

There was no need to breathe on the astral plane, which was a good thing right now as Shiro knew he would be holding his breath. His thoughts raced in pride, tinged with a hint of guilt. He wished Keith could see the leader Shiro saw in him, wished he could tell Keith that he didn't have to become someone he wasn’t to fulfil this role. He didn’t have to be Shiro to lead; he was a leader in his own right.

And he wished he could tell Keith that this was only temporary. Even if it didn’t feel that way right now.

The projection shook as the Black Lion clambered to her feet. Her spirit surged around Shiro, around Keith still frozen in his seat. Shiro could see five tiny figures staring up at the Lion through the screens. Their faces were painted with mixed expressions.

Then the display tilted upwards as the Black Lion accepted her newest paladin with a deafening roar.

Chapter Text

Keith did not return to the Black Lion the night after being chosen, nor did he return the night after that. Four quintents passed until he was left with no choice.

“This one’s for you, Shiro.”

They were under attack, of that much Shiro was certain. Who exactly their attacker was, or which planet they were defending, was still unclear. The Black Lion had awoken when Keith entered, dashboard lights casting his strange purple shadow around the cockpit. His expression was one of reluctant acceptance as he took the controls and guided her out of the hangar flanked by the Yellow and Green Lions, briefing the team over the comms. Despite the circumstances, Shiro couldn’t help but feel proud.

“Where’s Lance?”

Now that Pidge mentioned it, Shiro was yet to see the Blue Lion. That, and Lance was being uncharacteristically quiet. Usually battles were full of his enthusiastic commentary.

“My Lion’s not responding to me,” Lance groaned.

That...wasn’t good. That really wasn’t good. But Shiro barely had time to think about the implications of a three-Lion Voltron before an unfamiliar voice pervaded the cabin.

“Attention, paladins of Voltron. This is Prince Lotor, son of Zarkon, emperor pro tem of the Galra Empire.”

A son? Zarkon had a son? Shiro could see his own shock mirrored on Keith’s face - clearly the team hadn’t known either. In the aftermath of Zarkon’s death, he had wondered if the Empire would fall to anarchy, or if another dictator would try to claim the throne before Voltron stepped in to aid the transition to an age of peace. An heir had never crossed his mind.

“Surrender now, or you will be destroyed.”

He gave them little time to think. Mere ticks after the transmission cut out, a swarm of Galra fighters descended on the Lions. Keith rammed the levers forwards, sending the Black Lion into a sharp U-shaped dive beneath an oncoming fighter. It exploded above them, victim to the Yellow Lion’s laser beam.

He bared his teeth and rounded on the next one, moving the levers too far and too hastily so that his shot caught the fighter on the tip of its wing but did little else. It retaliated by shooting directly at the Lion - a shot that Keith barely avoided. The Lion lurched forward, the fighter, along with several others, now hot on their tail. Shiro watched with bated breath, his hands twitching with the urge to reach through the projection and take the control levers from Keith’s hands. This battle could not have lasted longer than a few minutes - but so much was going wrong in so short a time.

“Guys, I’m having trouble here,” Keith admitted. “These controls don’t respond like the Red Lion’s. I need some help.”

“On it!” Pidge called.

The relief was short lived.

“Keith- Keith!” Shiro yelled, pointing uselessly at a fighter just out of his line of sight.

Keith, of course, did not hear him. The Black Lion took a direct hit and lurched violently to the side, throwing Keith against the armrest. Breath left his body in a sharp huff and his grip on the levers slackened.

Shiro barely processed this before a sudden pain ebbed around him; a muted ache, like sensation returning after time in the cold. It caught him unaware and he yelled out in surprise.

I am sorry, my paladin.

“Don't be,” he forced his discomfort down, berating himself for distracting his Lion over something so unimportant. This wasn’t a real body; pain could do him no harm. “Focus on Keith.”

“Hunk, look out!” Pidge yelled over the comms. There was a grunt and the distant sound of an explosion. “Keith, are you okay?”

“Fine.” He pressed a hand against his side and winced. “Lance, get out here now!"

The Lion took another hit. This time, Shiro braced himself, but even still he couldn’t suppress a hiss of pain. Was this how the Lions felt every time they fought?

We do not experience pain as an organic being does. Mechanical failures are of greater concern. I had not considered that you may be this affected during battle, but with my body storing your quintessence-

A blast from Lotor’s ion cannon. Shiro fell to his knees, the end of the Lion’s sentence lost in a throb of pain. She tumbled head over heels backwards through space, an open target for further attack. Shiro could no longer see the inside of the cockpit, but he fought his way through nausea to concentrate on his team’s voices.

“Keith!”

"It’s charging up again! Hunk, shield Keith. I’m gonna try take out that cannon!”

“Roger that. Keith, you good?”

“I’m okay, but we can’t fight this guy alone.”

“You won’t have to!” Lance yelled. The grin on his face was audible, accented by the sounds of manic button pressing, laser beams targeting ships, and above all Lance’s whoops of delight as he came to the team’s rescue.

“Is that-” Pidge started.

Hunk laughed in disbelief. “The Red Lion? Lance, dude, how did you manage that?!”

Lance? The new Red Paladin? Shiro had to admit he hadn’t seen that one coming.

Yet somehow it seemed right. The Red Paladin was Voltron’s right-hand man - and more than just physically. By nature, Keith was not a people-person. With the exception of Shiro himself, who couldn’t fill the role for obvious reasons, Lance was probably the person Keith spoke to most. He was, after all, the catalyst for this whole adventure. Lance had been the final piece to Keith’s puzzle in the desert - without him, they never would have found the Blue Lion, never would have left Earth. Sure, they drove each other up the wall sometimes, but Lance’s easygoing attitude made him near impossible to actually dislike, and beneath their petty rivalry was a real sense of trust (which Shiro was sure they’d both deny furiously if asked).

They were undeniably a good team.

The battle raged on - the remaining paladins of Voltron versus Zarkon’s supposed son. Their voices merged into one incomprehensible sound, the specifics lost on Shiro, whose mind was no longer working fast enough to follow what was happening.

He was exhausted. Frustrating, really, when he had done nothing but observe, but in the midst of the fight, the Black Lion had no way to protect his quintessence from the blows she took, and Shiro had no way to aid his team. That last shot from the ion cannon had really taken it out of him; it took a conscious effort now to remain connected to his surrounding, and his form was weak, unsupported by the Lion.

“Keith, what should we do?”

Keith’s response was cautious, the kind of caution that accompanied a new position, but the others listened and he sensed approval from the Lion.

There was nothing more Shiro could do.

In the comfort of knowing his team was winning, he allowed himself to fade.

My paladin?

Pinpricks of light against a purple haze. It was not quite like waking; his quintessence pulled together and Shiro simply started to exist again - no fuzziness, no fighting the pull of further sleep. Simply nothing, then sudden full consciousness.

The Lions didn’t sleep, so even when resting he maintained some level of awareness. This was the closest he had been to actual unconsciousness since dying, and macabre though it sounded, he was grateful for the break. It wasn’t refreshing in the way that sleep was, but it was nice not to have to think for a little while.

“Hey, Black.” Shiro spoke quietly. “How are you?”

The Lion purred with relief. I am alright. Any damage I took has since been fixed. I am more concerned about you.

He lowered his body to the not-quite-ground and looked up at the stars. They weren’t a sky he recognised. He wondered if they were the stars above Daibazaal, the birthplace of the Lions.

“I’m fine,” he said. “A little tired from those hits we took, but fine. It’s not like I have to worry about dying any more.”

The Lion seemed unimpressed. Even still, I do not wish for you to suffer.

“There’s nothing we can do about that.”

It wasn’t as if she could stop fighting. They needed the head of Voltron, and like hell was he going to let a little pain get in the way of the Black Lion when she’d only just returned to the fray. It was the least he could do while the others continued to fight. And speaking of the others...

“Is everyone okay? How did that battle end?”

The prince retreated. We pursued him for several vargas, to a gas planet whose magnetic fields severely inhibited our sensors. The team were divided in their opinions, but at the word of the Red Paladin, we entered the trap. I can sense you worrying, my paladin, but rest assured that everyone is fine. The Red Paladin’s determination is admirable, but pursuing a skilled opponent in such treacherous conditions, against the recommendations of his fellow paladins, was not. He has the potential to be a great leader but he needs to work on his camaraderie.

Shiro nodded. That seemed like a fair assessment, though he couldn’t help but worry at the Lion’s words. What if naming Keith his successor hadn’t been a good choice? What if it put the team in danger? It was irrational - he trusted Keith, and the Lion herself had acknowledged his potential - but the urge to step in remained. The team trusted Shiro’s judgement, partially because they were used to him and partially because by Garrison standards he was their highest ranking officer and command fell to him by default. Their ranks were kind of redundant now, but after years of rigorous military training, he seriously doubted any of the others would just forget that Keith was no more qualified than them. He was just a cadet. An ex-cadet; Keith had never graduated.

But Shiro couldn’t step in, and even if he could, Keith would never learn with someone always hovering behind him. He’d had a similar conversation years earlier, in his cadet days, when Iverson dragged him into his office after a particularly bad round in the simulator - “You may be a good pilot, Shirogane, but you’ll get nowhere if you insist on doing everything yourself.”

Teamwork couldn’t be taught; it had to be learned. That meant listening to people, mediating, finding a compromise. Keith could do all those things - he just needed time to adjust to the role.

It took some time, but they were able to form Voltron and-

Shiro frowned. “I thought Lance was piloting Red?”

Correct. The princess took his place. It was largely due to her that they made it out so quickly.

If Voltron Lions could smile, he was sure she would be doing so. Allura often spoke of how she looked up to her father. She told his stories with a distant smile on her face, and though she never said so, it was clear from the passion she had for their fight and the longing in her voice whenever she spoke about the Lions that she wished to pilot one. And the Blue Paladin, the heart of Voltron? It was a fitting role for the one who had brought them all together. He would hold no resentment if someone new joined the team, but Shiro was glad the new order consisted of people he knew. It made him feel less guilty for the hole his absence caused, and if his new observer role granted him time with the pilots then he was grateful it was time with his friends.

“Good,” he said. “Did they defeat Lotor?”

No, he retreated again. Instead of pursuing him further, the Red Paladin decided that the team needed to rest.

A good call, Shiro thought. Pushing too hard could work when you were only responsible for yourself - when you knew your own limits and how dangerous it was to stretch them - but it wasn’t the kind of decision you should make for other people unless you absolutely had to.

They fell into a comfortable silence. A few minutes passed before Shiro asked, “Did you know that Zarkon has a son?”

Yes, said the Lion. I am also aware that they are estranged, and have been for quite some time.

That would explain why Shiro had never heard of him. He would have thought Zarkon’s heir would come up at least once in the arena prison gossip mill, mentioned in passing by bored guards or a fellow prisoner telling stories to pass the time. But he had never heard of a Prince Lotor. Was he similar to his father? Probably not, if they didn’t talk. Maybe he saw the fall of Zarkon as an opportunity to take the throne and implement his own regime? Shiro thought that most likely - the question was whether he, too, seeked to conquer and destroy.

Well, if attacking Voltron had been his way of making an entrance, then Shiro doubted he was much of a pacifist.

My paladin. The Lion interrupted his musing. She spoke cautiously. I am picking up a most strange signal. I do not know quite how to explain it.

Shiro levered himself upright. “Strange how?” he said.

At first, I thought it was you telling me that it was safe to wake you from your rest state, but you are now awake and it only grows more insistent. The Lion paused. I do not understand.

“Black?” Shiro could feel her confusion. She was rarely anything other than calm outside of battle, so that change was enough to put Shiro on edge. “What’s wrong?” he nudged.

It is like you are calling for me.

He glanced down at his form. “I’m right here.”

That is why I do not understand. I can sense that you are in danger - but I know that is not true.

"Could it be Keith?”

No. He is different to you. I would know if it were him calling me.

“Maybe it's a Galra trap,” Shiro said, remembering how Zarkon had wrestled control from him by calling out to the Black Lion during battle. Zarkon was dead, but he wouldn't put it past Haggar to recycle his tactics. Haggar had always liked ‘improving’ the things she saw potential in.

No, the Lion insisted, distress edging its way into her tone. It is you.

The astral plane flickered.

I must go, she said suddenly.

“Where to?”

The Black Lion did not answer. Instead, she rose to her full height and roared, shaking the hangar around them. Shiro threw his hands over his ears. It did little to dull the noise, which was less sound and more vibration, the world around him fraught with her anxiety. He could feel it catching, the stomach-sinking feeling that something isn't right.

She roared again, more insistently. My paladin is in danger!

“Black, I’m safe. I’m right here-”

“What is it? What's wrong?” Keith threw himself into the pilot’s chair. He fastened a gauntlet as he ran, his helmet under one arm.

The Lion paced circles around the hanger, her tail whipping back and forth.

“You want to go out?”

The Black Lion roared again, claws scuffing against the hangar floor. Keith’s eyes widened.

“Okay, okay. We can go.”

She was out the airlock before it had even finished opening, hurtling through space with minimal input from Keith. His face was twisted in anxiety, and something else, something hopeful.

Oh. Oh no, he didn’t think…?

“Keith!” Pidge’s voice crackled over the comms. “What are you doing?!”

“The Black Lion wants to show me something.”

“Better be something important,” Lance mumbled. “I need my beauty sleep. I do not need to wake up to the outer space equivalent of an noisy cat trying to get into your room.”

“Lance-”

“I’m serious! An entire fleet of Galra cruisers makes less noise.”

"Do you know where the Lion is taking you?” Pidge interrupted. It sounded like she was running.

“No.”

A pause, the rushing sound of the bridge door opening. Her next words were cautious. “Do you think it could be…?”

Shiro winced at the hope in her voice. Whatever the Lion was so concerned about, it wouldn't be him. His body was gone, disintegrated the moment Zarkon flooded the cockpit with electricity during their battle.

“I hope so,” Keith said quietly, and something lurched inside Shiro’s chest.

The Lion slowed to a drift, head tilting left then right then left again. Suddenly, light flooded the cockpit and a string of numbers appeared across the main display. Coordinates.

Keith drew up a map of the area, frowned. “There's nothing there. Just empty space.”

With no input from her pilot, the Lion lurched forward. Stars flew past the cabin, so fast that they could be mistaken for other ships. A multifaceted expression crossed Keith’s face. Please let this be real, it said. Convince me this isn’t another false lead.

The map zoomed in as they approached their destination, gaining detail. A small illustration of a ship appeared. Keith’s breath hitched. Shiro’s heart broke. No amount of hope could change the fact that he wasn’t onboard that ship.

“Hey, Black,” he muttered, “is there really no way for you to tell him I’m here?”

The Lion did not answer.

They slowed as the ship came into view, a Galra ship, one of the standard fighters, with its lights dimmed and engines inactive. It made no move to attack the Black Lion. She purred as they drew close.

“We found him,” Keith whispered, and the comms erupted with sound.

“What?”

“Keith, man, are you sure?”

“Send us your coordinates-”

“Is he okay?”

“-coordinates received. Preparing the teludav now!”

Every second that he spent aligning the Lion’s jaw hatch with the Galra fighter seemed to drag on for hours, and Shiro didn’t want to watch, didn’t want to witness the inevitable disappointment when Keith entered that fighter and realised he’d been mislead, but his eyes were fixated on the cabin as if by glue.

When Keith left the cockpit - at a run, before the jaw hatch even closed - Shiro was left in the dark. Seconds passed, then minutes. Shiro tried to imagine what Keith was doing. Was he sitting motionless in the cockpit of the Galra fighter? Was he angry or just numb? What had he found, what had the Lion deemed so important that she-

The cockpit door slid open. Keith entered, half-carrying and half-dragging a barely conscious person in a beat-up spacesuit. Long, matted hair obscured their face. Keith lay the person down beside the pilot’s chair, knelt down beside them, brushed their hair out of their face. The front, Shiro noticed, was white.

He reached up to touch his own white tuft, brow creasing in confusion.

Keith muttered something that Shiro couldn’t hear, then dazedly climbed back into the pilot’s seat. Shiro craned his neck, but he couldn’t see around the seat enough to view their face. A desperation clawed at him. He needed to see, needed to know why Keith kept looking back at this person with tenderness in his eyes.

A sickening feeling was creeping up inside of him and he needed to be proven wrong.

He couldn’t move. Hands, rough and uncaring, held his head still as he tried to shake off the nodes attached to his skull. He didn’t try to reason with his captors. He’d learned long ago that they couldn’t care less about what he wanted - only the outcome mattered. He doubted they would care even if he died. If anything, it would merely disappoint them, and if his will to survive and escape and prevent these atrocities from happening to any other person wasn’t so strong, then maybe he’d die just to spite them.

The guards stepped away as a robed figure entered the room, accompanied by a wave of cold air. Instinctively, his chest began to hammer. No, please, no, not her. Anything was better than her - he’d take ten arena battles, starvation, sleep deprivation, the days where they investigated the limits of his body, tests of how much pain would render him unconscious - anything was preferable to this.

“Hello, Champion,” she said mockingly, coming close enough that he could see the shine of yellow eyes beneath her hood. Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. “We shall be trying something new today.”

He met her eyes, trying - failing - to keep his fear from showing through.

“Initiate Operation Kuron.”

And his world erupted with pain.

Shiro gasped, clutching at his head. He stared down at the figure on the floor with their white hair and their scarily familiar physique and a right arm that hadn’t thinned due to malnutrition while the left one had.

No. No, it was a cruel trick of his mind, a coincidence. They couldn’t have- Haggar couldn’t really have-

Keith drew up a navigation pane, began to steer the Lion back to the castle. Finally, he clicked a button on his helmet and spoke.

“It’s him,” Keith whispered. It sounded like he’d been crying. “It’s Shiro.”

Chapter Text

Shiro watched as the Black Lion returned to the castle, as the other paladins and Allura and Coran crowded into the cockpit around the barely-conscious man. Their voices - cacophonous and emotionally charged - were drowned out by the ringing in his ears, the voice in his head which screamed this is impossible!

But so were alien empires and robot space lions, right?

Keith shooed them back out, “Give him space,”, and Allura hoisted the man up into her arms. Shiro could see, now, that although his cheeks were hollow and facial hair had grown in, a familiar scar bridged his nose and he had Shiro’s same dark eyes. He looked vacant. It reminded him of the sole time he had seen himself fight in the arena - a Galra commander whose computer he accessed had been watching some kind of recording of previous arena matches. He had seen himself on the screen and pressed play out of morbid curiosity. He didn’t remember the fight, which was against a towering scale-covered alien who roared for the Champion’s blood. A new-looking prosthetic arm hung motionless by his side, a dead weight as he wielded a sword in his weaker left hand. The man on screen was deadly pale and staggering, but even still he fought with an intensity and apparent bloodthirstiness that Shiro wished he could forget. It didn’t help that Shiro knew it was all fake, that the fire in his eyes came from desperation and the burning desire to live , not a drive to kill, because it didn’t look that way on video - didn’t look that way to the crowds - and with it came a foreign sense of not recognising himself.

Looking at the clone brought up the same welling sickness. Allura carried him down the ramp and out of the hangar, out of Shiro’s - out of the Lion’s - line of vision. The lights went dark, the projection fading to black, and still Shiro didn’t move, didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what he could possibly say.

He was furious beyond words. It was bad enough that his team still searched when he couldn’t be found - of course, if possible, he still planned to make it back to them, but he didn’t even know if he could, let alone where to begin - but they had reorganised their team to fill his absence; they’d formed Voltron, they were starting on the long path of recovering from his death but at least they’d started.

And now to find a clone of all things? It was just cruel.

More than anything, he was terrified for their safety. This clone… it may look just like him but who knew what commands it had? They would trust it for its appearance while it fractured them from the inside out, destroying in Shiro’s name while Shiro could do nothing but watch. The thought instilled a helpless dread in him, like someone had shot his quintessence through with ice.

No, he chided himself, shaking his head as if to dislodge the thoughts. Don’t you dare think that way. With time and careful thought he could find a way to get through to them. Patience yields focus. He was a survivor; it was in his blood. Or, well, his quintessence.

He turned away from the projection and settled down a small distance from it. Not that things were any different ten metres away, but the movement helped him think.

“Black?” he tried.

Silence. He was about to accept that she still wasn’t talking to him, that he was on his own for a little while longer, when she said in a very controlled tone, I do not understand.

Her words were like light through storm clouds.

How can he be you when you are you?

“He isn’t me.”

His quintessence mirrors your own, the Lion insisted. You were calling for me. I responded to you.

“Responded to him. He isn’t me, Black.”

His unease swelled into something more desperate. The Black Lion had to believe him, had to be able to see past the face fooling the rest of the team. Without her he was alone, alone indefinitely in this strange place so far from his family among the paladins. He was alone, and the purple hue of the astral plane was so alike the dim lighting in his old cell, wasn’t it? He could almost hear the scraping of those rust-coated hinges which sent vibrations through the floor and roused him from a sleep that was never really restful-

He startled at the sound of a gun, cocked and aimed where he lay prone on the floor. Unnecessary. All of this was unnecessary. Really, what did they think he was going to do? He could scarcely stand unsupported, let alone put up a fight with his centre of mass thrown so off-kilter by this  thing they’d attached to him.

He was their Champion, wasn’t he? Why would they impede him like this? His arm would have healed. It hadn’t been that bad a fracture - he’d recovered from worse, even without the healing chambers.

“Ost!” the guard barked. The cell-block was beyond range of the translators, but he’d picked up enough of the Galra language to understand the command: “Get up!”

Weak from infection, the thought of standing made him feel sick. He pretended not to hear and was met with a metal-tipped boot to the ribs.

“Ost! Vim!” Get up! Now!

He spluttered as air returned to his lungs, levered himself to a kneeling position. The room lurched as if at sea, and his vision swayed just as violently. The guard muttered something he didn’t understand, then, frustrated with his lethargy, dug their claw-like fingers into his shoulder and wrenched him upright. The skin seam, tender and infected where it fused with metal, screamed in agony.

For a moment he blacked out. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged along by the neck of his shirt down a purple-lit corridor. He gasped, left hand rising to loosen the fabric around his throat. The guard flashed him a sick smile, and he couldn’t translate what they said next, but among the many words he heard one that made his feverish body flush cold. “Vrepolis.” Arena.

They expected him to fight like this? Sick from the food he couldn’t keep down, barely recovered from a surgery he hadn’t even needed? Stadium chants echoed down the corridor. They must be within range of the translators now, for he could hear his slave name among the cacophony of spectators hollering for blood.

His blood. He was going to die.

“This should be an interesting match indeed,” sneered the guard, casting a sidelong glance at his metallic arm.

“Please, I can’t-” he started to say, but the guard simply tossed his body to the ground as carelessly as one might a heavy sack. The gate clanged shut behind him.

He could see blood-stained arena sand through the portcullis at the front of the holding cell. In the final precious minutes before it slid open, minutes where the announcer hyped up the fight to come and the crowd took bets on whether Champion could maintain his winning streak, he wondered why he continued to fight. He hadn’t seen Matt and Sam in months. Any familiar faces from his earlier days as a gladiator slave were now dead, and since becoming the witch’s pet project, he was kept in solitary confinement. His chances of making it back to Earth grew slimmer every day, and besides, the Garrison weren’t searching for him. They had probably announced him dead - what else were they to think when the crew of the Kerberos mission fell silent?

The portcullis rattled skywards.

No one was coming to save him.

The crowd roared. He forced himself to his feet and reached for the sword propped against the wall.

He would probably never see his home, his friends, his family again.

He stumbled forwards, clutching the sword in his left hand. His opponent loomed before him. He couldn’t even see their face.

He was alone. He didn’t want to die alone, lost to those he cared about, never to see a friendly face again, never to warn his home planet of a threat so much larger than any of them could have imagined, of a world so strange and scary it was like one of the sci-fi stories he used to love had sprung from the pages and drawn him in. He wanted to live - but living was a losing battle.

Paladin!

Shiro screamed at the sudden intrusive voice. It echoed around his skull until he could think of nothing else, a haze of noise from a different time. The arena faded away, grains of sand becoming a sky full of stars, his sweaty prison uniform to paladin armor. His outstretched hand was clutched around thin air now, not a sword. He let it fall limply to his side.

Paladin?

Shiro flinched without meaning to. Reality was still establishing itself. I am sorry, said the Black Lion. I did not mean to scare you.

“No. No, don’t be sorry,” Shiro rasped. He focused on her words, letting them tie him to the present moment. Black Lion. Astral plane. Talking about that clone.

...right.

Nausea clawed at his chest. He didn’t need to breathe, but he did so anyway. In for five, hold. Out for five, repeat. If he had a physical body, his heart would be pounding out of his chest, muscles shaking with the urge to run. Even without that, his senses seemed enhanced, on guard against these demons that they couldn’t locate - the ones that resided within his mind.

Not for the first time, he wished the astral plane wasn’t so damn purple.

You are distressed, mused the Lion.

“I’m fine,” Shiro said, aware of how unconvincing that was.

You were pleading with someone.

He ran his hands through the longer layers of his hair. It wasn’t real, of course, but the illusion of touch initiated by him and not his memories was welcome nonetheless. “A guard,” Shiro admitted. “At the arena.”

His Lion growled a low seething growl, the kind of growl that reminded Shiro she was part of the universe’s greatest weapon.

“It’s over. I’m fine.” The reassurance was for himself as much as her. Before she could press any further, he changed the topic. “Can you sense the- the clone from here?”

The word was sour on his tongue. Something about speaking out loud gave things a new weight, a reality that he wished this situation didn’t require. The Lion seemed similarly troubled in her response. I do not understand how you have split in two. It is paradoxical. I sense you are here though I sense you are away. I hear your voice though I know you are unconscious. You are dead yet you are alive, your quintessence in two places at the same time.

Shiro imagined it was like wearing two unconnected headphones that were playing different songs at full volume - they were distinct, and the brain knew it should be able to separate them, but unless you focused the sounds blurred together into sheer overwhelming noise.

You are scared, she said. A statement, not a question.

There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”

Why?

“They’re inviting a Galra spy right into the heart of the coalition. He could hurt the team, bring Voltron to the Galra, undo everything we’ve fought for, and I can do nothing to stop it.” His vehemence surprised even him. Being impersonated was disconcerting enough in concept, but thinking of the implications somehow managed to make it even worse.

You would not hurt your team.

“He isn’t me! Our quintessence may be similar-”

Identical.

“Okay, identical, but we aren't the same person, Black. Please, tell me you can see that.”

She fell into silent contemplation. Shiro felt his panic rising again and began to pace, counting ten steps before each turn. It gave his mind a distraction, his not-body a perceived outlet for anxiety. The last thing he needed was lose control of himself again - but being trapped in a place nobody knew about where no one saw him for himself, where no one would listen and he had no control over what happened next… nothing scared him more than that.

The Black Lion had to believe him. She just had to.

At last she said, You are certain there is reason to suspect him?

Shiro nodded.

Then I shall trust your judgement, paladin, for I sense your fear and I do not wish you to be scared. And he could tell she was still conflicted, but she was choosing to believe him and for now that was enough.

“Thank you,” he said, feeling very drained. “Thank you.”

“Hey, Black. I wanted to thank you for coming to my rescue. For a moment there I… I didn’t think I was going to make it. I don’t remember what happened. One minute we were fighting Zarkon, then the next I was back there. With the Galra. Lance tells me it’s been nearly four months. I have a lot to catch up on.”

The clone ran his metal hand over the inactive screens. He wore a cryopod suit with a warm hoodie pulled over it. Shiro had picked out that hoodie on a trade planet shortly after they left Arus, when the castle’s heating system had failed and Coran needed time to fix it. Shiro always wore it when he left the cryopods. They were wonderful technology - they’d saved team members’ lives on many occasions and he would be the first to admit they couldn’t do without them - but the cold and the confinement dredged up memories from the pits of his brain that left him shaken inside. The hoodie’s warmth helped drag him back to the present moment, a reminder that he had control over what happened to his body now.

He hadn’t told the others, mostly because he tried to avoid the pods wherever possible but also because he hated admitting how much they bothered him. He doubted any of them had picked up on the hoodie routine. But the clone had.

Something about that was deeply unsettling.

“I hear Keith is piloting you now. That’s good. I did ask him to, after all.” The clone leaned back until his head touched the headrest. He stared vacantly up at the ceiling, sighed, “I suppose that’s why you aren't talking to me.”

At this angle, Shiro could clearly see the clone’s face - his face. The clone’s hair was tied back in a rough ponytail, though some of the shorter strands at the front had come free. The Garrison insisted men keep their hair short (Hunk was pushing the line, and if not for the headband and just how plain nice he was, then Shiro doubted Iverson would allow it), and so Shiro had never grown his hair out, sticking instead to his trademark undercut. The long hair wasn’t a bad look, though. The clone’s clean-shaven face was creased in thought. He looked  hurt  by the Black Lion’s silence. Unexpected from a Galra spy; the rest of the team were absent - so why maintain his facade?

“Shiro?”

Both he and the clone turned to the door. A soft thrum pervaded the cabin as Keith crossed to the clone’s side.

“I thought I’d find you here,” he said.

“Keith.” The clone rose from the chair. “How was training?”

“Good. We went through some drills to prepare for tomorrow. Took out a Level Four for the first time since Allura became a paladin.”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“Attacking a Galra outpost the Blade told me about. We’re hoping it might lead us to Lotor.”

The clone nodded in approval, though he didn’t say anything.

Keith’s expression shifted and he slapped him lightly on the arm. “Seriously, Shiro, don’t run off like that. Not without a communicator.”

Though his tone was jovial, a soft voice crack betrayed a very real and very deep fear. Shiro’s heart twinged.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t plan on taking so long.” The clone sighed, gestured around the cockpit. “The Black Lion’s quiet. She wouldn’t even let me in at first.”

Keith’s brow furrowed. “You only just got out of the pods. Maybe she’s giving you time to recover.”

“Maybe.” He sounded unconvinced. “Or maybe now that you’re the leader-”

“No.” Keith’s voice was harsh, final. Then, quieter, he said, “She wants you back, Shiro. I can sense it every time I fly.”

The Black Lion hummed in agreement, eliciting a gentle smile from both her paladins. Keith gave the clone a pointed look as if to say ‘I told you so’.

“We’re taking the rest of the day off to celebrate beating that Level Four,” he said. “I think Lance said something about milkshakes. You coming?”

The clone faltered.

“They miss you, you know.”

Shiro missed them too, more than he could possibly articulate. Missing them was constant, but the pain of separation flared at the thought of lounging around in the common room. It was simple things like that, things he didn’t even realise he missed, that hit hardest. Lance’s homemade milkshakes, the unique but not unpleasant flavour of cow milk mixed with Altean sweeteners. The squishy common room benches, which had enough room for everyone to sit apart, yet somehow he always ended up with Lance’s legs across his lap or Pidge nestling into his side.

“I… Maybe later,” said the clone, and perhaps it was spiteful, but if Shiro didn’t get to enjoy those things then he was glad his clone wouldn’t be there either.

...okay, it was definitely a little spiteful. But Shiro hated everything about this situation, and with good reason. He hated that someone else was talking to Keith in his place, hated how open Keith was with this stranger who he didn’t know was a stranger, hated how helpless he felt confined to watching. At least his clone wasn’t ruining things yet - though he had no doubts that was only a matter of time.

No, no, he wasn’t going there, not now. He would find a way to contact the team before anything bad happened. He had to.

“I’m tired,” the clone stressed. “Go without me.”

“Okay,” Keith said reluctantly. “I’m walking you back to your room, though.”

The clone didn’t argue with that. He followed Keith towards the cabin door, pausing just once in its frame. “See you later,” he said to the empty room.

Goodbye for now, the Lion rumbled in response, though only Shiro could hear it.

And as his footsteps grew quieter, Shiro found himself weighed down by loneliness and with more questions than ever before.

“Come on. Come on!” He moved the lever to and fro but the cockpit remained dark.

I sense urgency. Are you sure this is the best course of action? The Black Lion did not sound happy about their predicament. Shiro could feel how she burned with the urge to light up and join the others speeding towards the mountainous planet ahead. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel the same way.

“I’m sure,” he said.

The clone cast his eyes over the blank screens and inactive buttons, as devoid of life as any Earth ship.  He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

The crackling of the comms channel; Lance’s frantic voice. “Shiro, where are you? We need you right now!”

The clone’s grip tightened, fabric of his new copy of paladin armor creaking slightly under the pressure.

He is hurt by my inaction, the Lion agitated.

“I know,” Shiro muttered in an attempt at consolation.

Every passing second seemed to raise the pressure in the cockpit, the tense waiting game stifling its atmosphere as it neared conclusion. Conflict played across the clone’s features. His shoulders hitched as he let out a shaky sigh - then his hands relaxed and fell away from the control levers.

“Keith, I’m going to need you to lead this mission.”

“What- What is it? What’s wrong?” Keith stammered.

“The Black Lion isn’t responding to me.” If he was trying to hide his disappointment, he was doing a terrible job of it. He looked every part as useless and frustrated as Shiro himself felt.

Guilt nagged at Shiro. He shoved it down beneath his long list of worst case scenarios. The clone was a Galra spy. Though he had shown no signs of self-awareness, it was far too dangerous to let him fly the Black Lion. Shiro was protecting his team; he wasn’t about to let his own damn self-pity get in the way.

“It looks like you’re her true paladin now.”

“I’m coming down.”

The clone nodded, already making his way to the door in reservation.

The Lion was aglow before Keith even sat down, darting eagerly out of her hangar to catch up with the other paladins. Her relief was palpable.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, landing alongside the other Lions behind a craggy rock formation. “Shiro, are you there?”

“Yes.” The clone replied, a feed from the bridge popping up in the corner of the Black Lion’s main screen.

“Okay. Then listen up, everyone.” A decisive look crossed Keith’s face as he slipped into the leader’s role.

Their plan was simple: infiltrate the base, retrieve Lotor’s comet, get out undetected if possible. (Shiro still wasn’t quite sure of the comet’s importance; it must have been something they’d established on the bridge, but if the team thought it was important then he’d take their word for it). In order to be as discreet as possible, they were parking the Lions here and going forward on the speeders. Though Shiro was disappointed not to be accompanying them on their mission, he trusted they would be fine without him. It was a strange feeling - nostalgic and proud and lonely all at once.

“-got it?” Keith ended his speech to a chorus of agreements. He glanced at the feed from the castle. The clone nodded in approval. “Then let’s go.”

“Good luck,” Shiro said, grimacing as the clone said the same thing with the same inflection not five seconds later.

He lost access to the comms channel as Keith left the Black Lion. The speeders grew smaller and smaller in the Lion’s display until all that remained were five lines of dust pointing to the horizon.

Only then did Shiro look away.

Chapter Text

The mission did not go as planned. At least, Shiro figured that was why Keith returned to the cockpit frazzled and shouting about Voltron.

...so much for ‘get out undetected’.

They lurched off the ground in pursuit of an unfamiliar ship. Though it had the classic purple-grey colouring of the Galra, the similarities ended there. The front wasn’t hooked like a Galra cruiser, nor was it small and angular like a fighter drone; instead it was streamlined, adaptable, with two mechanical legs that twisted through space as if made of rubber. This, he realised, must be Lotor’s ship - and even though Lotor was on the opposing side, Shiro had to admit it was impressive.

Less impressively, its front was illuminated by the telltale glow of a charging laser beam. In the pilot’s seat, Keith tensed - but the ship sped away from the Lions without so much as hesitating.

“He’s going for the castle!” Pidge called.

Sure enough, the comms cut out for a moment, stifled by the sound of deconstructing matter as Lotor’s weapon ripped straight through the particle barrier. Shiro blinked in shock; yes, the particle barrier needed a little work, but he’d never known it go down after a single hit.

“Whoa- whoa, did you see that? The intensity of light needed to form a laser that powerful is off the charts! I wonder how he-”

“Not the time, Hunk!” Lance interrupted. “He left them out in the open! He didn’t even give us time to form Voltron first! That is not fair.”

“What do you want me to do, ask him to put his attack on hold?” Keith grumbled. The others fell into formation either side of the Black Lion.

Coran’s voice crackled through from the castle. “We can’t take another hit like that!”

That much was obvious. Lotor’s laser was already recharging. They needed Voltron and they needed it fast.

Paladin. Shiro startled at the sudden address. The Lions drew closer still, each gaining an ethereal glow as the Lions drew energy from their paladins. I am unsure of how this will affect you.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I was last time.”

You were not conscious last time.

“I was fine, Black.” He wasn’t going to let his situation affect Voltron; of this he was adamant. “Just do what you have to do.”

The display screen was now fully tinted purple, the transformation process only a shout away. Shiro could feel the Black Lion’s readiness, energy gathered like tension in the legs of a cat preparing to jump. Keith set his jaw.

“Form Voltron!”

When he piloted the Black Lion, Shiro would lie back in his chair during transformations and allow them to wash over him, his eyes closed in focus as his consciousness became one of five. The sensation was as overpowering as it was invigorating, a blur of colours, of shifting shaking metal and mounting adrenaline. In this state, he felt in total control of himself. Like he was invincible, like there was nothing he couldn’t do - and at the same time, horrifically exposed, like a single wrong move could send him crashing down. It was pure elation and pure mortality all at once, and that, he supposed, was why Voltron had five paladins. They balanced each other out, ensured any individual’s weakness was compensated for, any poor decision questioned. They made each other strong, their strive for freedom built around trust.

It came as no surprise that experiencing transformation from the astral plane was just as intense. It started with tremors as Black’s legs retracted and clicked into place, then the brash sound of metal on metal - so much louder here than from her insulated cabin - as the four limbs of Voltron slotted into place. The not-ground gave way and he rose, like he had helium instead of blood, through an ever-expanding void. As the Black Lion focused her quintessence on Voltron, Shiro lost visuals of the cockpit. That didn’t matter. He didn’t need visuals, not when the Black Lion, the head of Voltron, let him feel everything as if he were Voltron itself.

He could feel her reaching for her siblings, their thoughts like whispers all around him, snached away before he could decipher any meaning. Accompanying this was the familiar tugging sensation of the mental link which allowed the paladins to coordinate their actions as Voltron. Even with their quick alliance and mutual fear of imminent death, it had taken time for the paladins to get used to the link. A constant mental effort was required from each of them - unity in their intentions and a willingness to collaborate were the glue that held Voltron together - but once established, they could share thoughts faster than words could ever convey. Shiro was, for all intents and purposes, eavesdropping, and he found that trying to listen in was like standing with his ear against a closed door.

He floated atop a lake of shared thought, glimpsing the fight through whatever snatches of information he could draw from the barrage assaulting his mind. The team wasted no time in engaging with Lotor. Draw him away from the castle , their thoughts agreed, loud enough to make it through to him.

A surge of energy as Keith used his bayard to form the sword. Though wielded by Lance in the Red Lion, he drew on Keith’s experience in order to fight with the unfamiliar weapon in a back-and-forth between their minds that for once was wholly harmonious. They rounded on Lotor, Pidge parrying a blow she couldn’t even see but that Keith could. Allura, drawing on Hunk’s familiarity with piloting a leg, adjusted her thrusters to compensate for the blow. Their thoughts passed Shiro by, their heads full of more noise than he could possibly hope to process. Connected in the Voltron link, processing wasn’t an issue. The team reacted to each other’s minds as subconsciously as their bodies to the need to keep breathing.

Determination, the need to be faster, catch up with him before he gets away flooded Shiro’s world with an intense redness. It spiralled inwards as resolves aligned, strands of quintessence tightening to a streamlined fuel that pumped through Voltron’s mechanical veins as they accelerated after Lotor.

-cargo ship is getting away. The teludav-!

His own voice, sharp and cold and commanding. As if mocking him for his hope, this was when the chinks in the new team’s armor became apparent.

But the comet ship-

Rebuttal; one united mindset unravelling as the opposition of two leaders tore at Voltron’s synergy like a verbal knife.

The astral plane shook. Whether it was the physical nature of the fight or a manifestation of the plane itself, Shiro couldn’t say. He felt shouting, but the more he strained to make sense of it all, the more he felt like someone was wrapping his head in a blanket of static.

What do you want us to do? screamed the darkness.

Keith’s quintessence was coiled like an angry snake, reacting on instinct to what it classed as distraction . Pidge’s boiled beneath the surface, gathering data before she weighed in; Hunk withdrew at the first signs of an argument, Lance bounced between points of view and Allura, so new to this, was near unreadable. Their indecision became a creeping paralysis, a disease that desynchronised Voltron’s body and stripped Shiro’s understanding down until all he could hear over the static in his head was five - no, ten - voices calling in unison: Who is in control?!

It was inexplicably frustrating. Shiro wanted nothing more than to step in and aid their decision. He wanted to lead - that was his job , after all; he was the Black Paladin and he was good at it - but no, he was stuck in this damn void unable to do a damn thing. Even Kaltenecker was a more useful member of the team right now. At least Kaltenecker existed on the physical plane.

Uncharacteristically silent in the face of conflict, the Black Lion turned her attention to Shiro.

My paladin , she said, the unhappiness in her voice evident. Her paladins were fighting and she did not know whose side to take. What would you do?

Though he didn’t like admitting it, Shiro agreed with his clone. Lotor, from what he had seen, was far more calculating than his father. Losing him now would not be ideal as it would give him time to plan his next move, but there would be other opportunities to deal with him. Voltron was far too large a threat to the Galra Empire for him not to attack again - and any time he spent scheming was also time the team could use to prepare their defence.

However, if Haggar got hold of that teludav lens? Shiro knew all too well that, with nothing more than her bare hands, Haggar could do frightening amounts of damage. He didn’t even want to think of what she would do given priceless Altean technology.

In the buildup to their final battle, Zarkon had pursued them across the universe in a relentless game of cat-and-mouse that chafed on the team’s morale like the grains of arena sand that always found a way into his prison jumpsuit. Supplies ran low - they hadn’t wanted to risk stopping lest they lead the Galra to an unoccupied planet - and there were never enough hours of sleep between blaring alarms. Without the few vargas of (relative) respite after each wormhole jump, the team would not have had the energy to make it through that fight. Next to Voltron itself, the teludav was one of the only things they had that the Galra Empire did not. Shiro wanted to keep it that way.

The Black Lion hummed in thanks. Independent to her pilot, she turned for the Galra cruiser. At the same time, Keith instructed her after Lotor.

Voltron froze. There were impacts, so many impacts, from every direction imaginable, reverberating all around the astral plane. Shiro blacked out for a second as his quintessence dissipated along with the Black Lion’s in order to hold Voltron together.

In many ways, however, this was a blessing in disguise. The team’s thoughts realigned - we need the shield, defend, defend! - granting them enough energy to move again. They swivelled to avoid the worst of the blasts, the remaining ones striking the shield with dull thuds. Shiro fought his way back to awareness through layers of fatigue. He could feel tension building among the team like a charging ion cannon. They couldn’t afford to sit out in the open like this. They needed to make a decision, stat.

He caught echoes of Keith’s voice from behind that mental door. Green-streaked quintessence gave way to yellow as Voltron’s shoulder-gun materialised, and though he wasn’t corporeal - didn’t even have his projected form right now - he got the distinct stomach-twisting feeling of falling as Voltron lurched to the side and a laser passed so close to the head that Shiro felt his Lion’s alarm. The shoulder-gun dispersed and Voltron fell back a few metres with the force of a nearby explosion. The whole incident took less than a single tick.

Yeah. This was a Keith plan, alright.

The next shot did not miss. Thoughts crescendoed to screams, stadium-loud, and Shiro’s consciousness flared in agony as electricity coursed over Voltron’s metallic surface and through whatever it was that he was and his knees hit the sand as the electric rod made contact with his spine, because this was the price, the price for refusing to kill, and when he didn’t rise and they shocked him again for his disobedience, even then it was still worth the pain so long as nobody innocent died-

Confusion was a bright blue spear through the heart of his memory. He startled back into the darkness, panicking only for a moment before he remembered where he was and how important it was to stay calm. He could not afford to distract the Black Lion. Easy, you’re okay, he told himself, his not-body aching like a strained muscle. The paladins are okay.

He hoped the paladins were okay. The others shared Lance’s confusion, though without context he couldn’t tell if that was a good or a bad thing. Had they gone after the teludav or the comet ship in the end? Had their mission been a success? Why the hell had Lotor been attacking a Galra base anyway? Wasn’t… wasn’t he the Emperor now? It didn’t make any sense. Was there something he was missing? Probably. There always was, these days. He made a mental note to question Black later, when organising his thoughts felt less like trying to pick a lock with a handful of limp spaghetti.

He no longer had any perception outside of himself, his mind too drained to sustain the necessary connection. His efforts at restoring it were futile. When he felt Voltron disband mere seconds later, when the mind-link fell away and the lake of thoughts dried up to a puddle containing just him and the Black Lion, he let out a mental sigh of relief. He no longer needed to try. The danger had passed. He could let himself rest.

He would need it for the days to come.

Chapter Text

Keith slouched against the doorframe, not quite daring to sit in the pilot’s seat. He must have come straight from the training deck. His skin was covered in a light sheen of sweat, his cheeks were flushed, and his jacket was nowhere to be seen.

“Why?” he said in a breathy voice, “would you reject Shiro and keep me? There’s no way you think I’m a better leader than him. You saw how bad that last mission went.”

Keith, in Shiro’s opinion, was not giving himself enough credit. Whilst recuperating, the Black Lion had informed him that if not for Keith’s quick thinking, the ship carrying the teludav would have almost certainly got away. Stopping that was a huge success. Teludav lenses were so hard to find that it would set the Galra back by movements .

But Lotor had escaped, and Keith wasn’t the kind of person to dismiss something like that with a shrug and a ‘better luck next time’. He stopped at nothing to achieve his goals, and while Shiro admired his persistence, that type of one-track mind only led to greater frustrations those times he fell short. It had been the focus of many a conversation back at the Garrison, when less-than-perfect flight scores or social bluffs became outbursts. It did no good to let irritation mount; you had to refine it, let it aid you, turn it into fuel for something positive. Patience yields focus.

“We both know how strong your bond with Shiro is,” Keith continued. “Is this-” he gestured at himself, “-because he’s still recovering? Is it temporary?”

The Black Lion didn’t respond. Keith’s expression grew increasingly strained.

“Aaargh, see! You won’t even talk to me!” His heel thumped against the wall behind him. He then sighed, his posture losing some of its tenseness. “This is stupid,” he muttered.

Shiro agreed. He hated seeing Keith in so much pain, especially when there was nothing he could do about it. No monster to face down, no planet to save - just his own unfortunate circumstances. Frankly, he would prefer a monster. At least fighting was a known element. More than anything, he wanted to rest a hand on Keith’s shoulder, draw him into a hug and tell him that everything would be okay. He wondered if the clone had offered any comfort. Probably not, he thought somewhat bitterly. Why would a Galra agent care about the wellbeing of the enemy?

He didn’t understand what their plan was. The clone had infiltrated the team. He had been among the paladins for quite some time now. So why had he made no move against them? The Galra didn’t do tact, preferring to operate on the basis of ‘brute strength beats all’, and as such Shiro had fully expected the clone to turn on the team as soon as he recovered. That he hadn’t suggested he was a sleeper cell, waiting (whether he knew it or not; that was an unsettling possibility) until the right moment to strike. Which meant Shiro was on a timer. He had to find a way to alert the team before he became their own undoing.

Why, though, were the Galra changing tactics? It must be Lotor, Shiro reasoned. Haggar was involved too - the phrase Operation Kuron lurked where his mind grew dark - however Lotor was the only new factor, and from what Shiro had picked up he was far more cunning than his father. But if Lotor was the Emperor, then why had he attacked a Galra base? Shiro asked Black, but she didn’t know any better than he did - or the other paladins, for that matter. There were too many unanswered questions for Shiro’s liking; questions that kept turning themselves over and over in his mind. It was a good thing he could function without sleep, because he wouldn’t be getting a lot of it.

Keith was staring down at his knife, rubbing his thumb over the wrappings Shiro knew concealed its Blade of Marmora insignia. “I’m a liability,” he said. “Shiro was wrong. Allura should be doing this, not me. People listen to Allura.”

“People listen to you, too,” Shiro muttered. He’d seen (well, more like observed, really) the fight against Lotor, and the other paladins had followed Keith brilliantly up until that clone interfered.

Keith’s eyes were fixed on the opposite wall. “I’m leaving tomorrow. My first real mission with the Blade. We’re smuggling a package of some kind onto a cruiser headed for Central Command. Kolivan won’t tell me what’s in it, but it seems important.”

Shiro’s eyebrows shot up. Keith had been training with the Blade of Marmora somewhat regularly ever since discovering his heritage, but Kolivan had assured him - and Shiro, as Keith’s commanding officer - that earning their trust would take a whole lot more than merely living through their trials. Keith had taken that news about as well as he took any sort of rejection. He’d thrown himself into his training, learning the rules of the brotherhood, their strategies, the pros and cons of their armor compared to the paladin armor, and teaching himself to duel-wield his Blade and his bayard.

Shiro didn’t agree with how the Blade ran their operation - he would never prioritise a mission over the lives of his teammates - but if Keith wanted to train with them, then that was his choice. It was something that was entirely Keith’s. Answers to a past full of question marks. Who was Shiro to take that away from him? Not to mention, the Blade were invaluable allies, and Keith never let Blade work take precedence over Voltron (much to the chagrin of Kolivan).

So of course Shiro was proud to hear that Keith had earned mission clearance, he really was, but it could not have happened at a worse time. Keith’s mind could be a fragile place. It had taken years for Shiro to help him believe in his own importance, to teach him that he was worth more than what the kids at school said behind his back, than the mother who abandoned him, than the note in his file reading ‘discipline issues’. Shiro would take on Kolivan himself before he let the Blade’s mentality drag Keith back to his old self-destructive outlook.

Keith Kogane mattered. He had a team of friends who loved him like family, relationships far deeper than his distrusting child-self would have believed possible. Even now, he had trouble accepting what he had. He tilted the knife and watched the band of light it reflected about the room. His eyes were full of things he wouldn’t speak aloud unless prompted. It hurt not to be able to ask; not to give Keith the opportunity to talk through what he’d otherwise bottle up. Irrational, given his lack of any say in the matter, but Shiro couldn’t help but feel he was letting Keith down.

“I’m proud of you, Keith,” he said to the projection. “Good luck on your mission. I hope the rest of the team do something nice for you before you leave.”

Previous experience suggested they would. Hunk leaped at any opportunity for a celebratory dinner, and the moment Lance and Coran got involved things would veer towards party territory fast. And Keith, for all his awkwardness, didn’t hate parties as much as one might expect. Shiro had the memories of that night on Arus - the part before everything had gone to hell - to prove it.

Keith, of course, did not hear him. He stayed a while longer, deep in contemplation, and when he left it was without looking back.

Keith’s mission was a success. He returned after a few quintents, tired but uninjured, and though he didn’t visit the Black Lion in person Shiro trusted her when she said she sensed Keith’s quintessence back on board the Castle of Lions.

Days passed and Keith still didn’t visit. Shiro figured he was busy. That was fine. After all, running Team Voltron was no easy job.

The clone visited a couple of times. Always, he would sit in the pilot’s chair and stare blankly at the dark viewscreens. Always, the Black Lion would ask Shiro to accept him. Always, Shiro would say no.

Keith left the castle again. He did not take his Lion. Another Blade mission, Shiro presumed.

He wondered why the team were being so quiet. None of them were the type to sit around idling when there were countless planets still under Galra occupation, and he didn’t think his perception was so whacked that he was losing his concept of time or forgetting things.

The Black Lion assured him that was not the case.

My siblings are more active than I , she said. The Red Lion recently returned from a solo mission to a lava planet, and the Blue and Yellow Lions are currently at the Coalition headquarters on Olkarion. It appears Lotor has all but vanished.

That wasn’t reassuring in the slightest. One of the first things Shiro had learned in the arena was that if you hadn’t received a blow in a while, the next attack your opponent made was bound to strike hard and unexpected and target to any weaknesses you’d let show. Those same tactics had often worked in his favour against less intelligent opponents. Whatever Lotor was planning, he was certain there would be more to it than a simple battle of strength. Waiting for Lotor to show up was like feeling breath on back of his neck when he knew there was nothing there. He hated being so out of the loop. If only he knew what the team knew, or what strategies they discussed in their end-of-quintent debriefings… Sitting with his thoughts would be less exasperating if he weren’t missing half the facts.

By now, being trapped in the astral plane was more than simply wearing on Shiro’s nerves. He was bored out of his damn mind. He couldn’t switch off like this, one of the downsides of having a problem-solver’s brain. Every time he tried forcing himself into a rest-state, the thoughts that whirred just below the surface of his mind startled him back to consciousness. With that option out, there was nothing to do besides sit and think - something Shiro had never been good at and, following Kerberos, something he opted to avoid wherever possible. Distracting the darker parts of his brain got harder as time dragged on and as grateful as he was to have the Black Lion to talk to, he missed being around his family. He missed physical contact. He missed being part of a team and all the camaraderie and in-jokes that came with it. He missed feeling like he had a greater purpose than trying to figure out how the hell to get back to them.

Back on the castle, this would be about the time he headed to the training deck in order to wipe the floor with a couple robots and get the agitation out of his system. He was in the middle of envisioning one such sparring session in time-killing amounts of detail when the Black Lion alerted him to a presence in her hanger.

Fight sequence forgotten, he scrambled up from the floor and over to the projection. Finally, his day was getting some variety! He was eager to hear the voice of another person - he wouldn’t even mind if it was the clone.

The visitor wasn’t one he expected.

Pidge leaped up into the chair, landing with the sharp whoosh of the seat compressing. She drew her legs up so she was cross-legged and said, “Something’s wrong with Shiro.”

The world, full of such restless energy mere seconds earlier, seemed to freeze.

“Wait,” Pidge amended, “that sounded rude. What I mean is he’s acting weird. Irritable, like he’s stressed about something - well, more stressed than he usually is. He’s being distant and every time we try to get him to relax a little he says he can’t join us. He mentioned this headache, but Coran looked him over in the med bay and all his scans came back fine. Oh, and Shiro never yells - except for that one time with Slav, but like, same, honestly - and yesterday he snapped at Keith over some dumb training thing. At Keith! Something’s wrong. ”

As she spoke, his creeping hope blossomed into a full adrenaline rush. Trust Pidge - attentive, detail-focused, brilliant Katie Holt - to catch on to the clone’s behaviour and question it further. That the clone acted different enough for Pidge to notice was a weight off his shoulders he hadn’t even known he was carrying. Their safety no longer depended solely on finding a way to contact them from a whole other plane of existence. That, and he got a grim satisfaction knowing Haggar’s version of him wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t be replaced that easily, not even by her.

Pidge was still rambling. “-plus, you won’t let him fly. What’s that about?” Her head bonked against the headrest. “I know you can’t answer me,” she sighed, “but I needed to talk about this. I needed to let someone else know. I don’t want to bring this up with the others until I have more evidence, like actual concrete evidence. Shiro has… Shiro’s been through a lot. No one expects him to act like he hasn’t. That’s why I wrote the changes off at first. He won’t talk about his time - either of his times - with the Galra, but I know they were bad and I figured he just needed some time to readjust. But he’s not as unreadable as he thinks he is. It’s been eight whole spicolian movements since he returned and if anything he's gotten worse. And he won't talk about it because he’s stubborn as hell.”

Shiro snorted at that. Pidge had a point, he wouldn’t deny that, but he owed a lot to his stubbornness. His refusal to die was the only reason he survived his year in captivity. And what kind of a leader would he be if he bothered the paladins every time his head hurt or his arm played up or he had a bad day? Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with his problems, but what was the alternative? Why talk about his missing year when the subject made everyone uncomfortable? They couldn’t stop the past from happening. They could only pity him, or worse, be horrified at the things he’d done.

I disagree , the Black Lion said, but it was with the tone of someone who’d had this conversation many times before and knew Shiro wasn’t going to budge.

The fingers of Pidge’s right hand drummed against her knee. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to come in here and shit-talk your paladin. I just worry about him sometimes. I think we all do.”

Shiro’s heart clenched. He hated when the team worried about him.

If your friends did not worry about you, then the Green Paladin would not have noticed that something is wrong with your duplicate. You would not want that, would you?

Shiro opted not to respond to that question and in response Black Lion nudged his mind in a smug manner. She knew she’d won this one. He was grateful for the distracting ping of the tannoy system, followed by Allura’s clear voice.

“Everyone to the bridge. We are soon to arrive in the La’vir quadrant.”

“I think that’s my cue to leave,” Pidge said, unfolding her legs. “And hey, Black? Whatever’s going on, Shiro will make it through. He’s strong like that. And I’ll do my best to help him where I can.”

A soft and quiet rumble, the most a Lion could do for a paladin who wasn’t her own. Pidge smiled and patted the dashboard.

Despite leaving him with more questions than she had answered, their ‘conversation’ quietened his mind enough for him to rest for the first time in quintents. Her certainty made him feel less alone, a warm blanket around his shoulders even after she left. Thankfully, the Black Lion was not called upon during this time.

When Shiro came back to himself, it was with a renewed energy. There had be a way to contact the living world from the astral plane - he refused to believe otherwise - and he was going to find it.

He started to plan.

Being in the astral plane, Shiro deduced, really wasn’t all that different to dreaming. In both cases, he retained his consciousness but existed outside his physical body in a realm with its own (often nonsensical) rules. He had an image of his body, which he could use to interact with the realm if he so desired, but its understanding of the laws of physics was loose at best, and it was best not to think too hard about how you could do things common sense said you shouldn’t. As with a dream, leaving the astral plane meant waking into a physical body; the destruction of Shiro’s body meant Shiro couldn’t leave. That was a little demoralising - as he had no idea how or where he could acquire a new body nor how he could convince his quintessence to fuse with it - still, there was nothing he could do about that right now, ergo returning to the physical world was out.

And if he couldn’t reach through to the physical world, then they’d just have to come into the astral plane.

The first time Shiro had entered the astral plane, it was because Zarkon dragged him in against his will. That was promising; it spoke of a way in for the other paladins. He had been in the cockpit trying to strengthen his bond with the Black Lion at the time. Zarkon hijacked that bond with the intention of fighting Shiro to the death - possible because Black had two paladins, her mind indirectly forging a connection between theirs. It was a situation she found herself in once again. Obviously Shiro did not wish to challenge Keith, but if he could replicate what Zarkon had done, draw the Black Lion’s other paladin into the astral plane… that should work, right? He should be able to talk to Keith like Zarkon had talked to him during their fight. He could warn Keith about the clone - and let him know he was still alive.

In theory, it was a simple plan; the hard part was establishing the connection between Keith and Shiro. Zarkon had drawn Shiro in only with the assistance of druid magic. Replicating the process with just his own quintessence would be no easy feat.

But Shiro was nothing if not determined. The next time Keith entered the cockpit, Shiro let himself float beyond his not-body through the Black Lion’s vast mind in search of Keith’s quintessence.

Paladin? she enquired. The mission is complete. He has departed my company.

Shiro jolted back to himself. All details of the past- the past however -long-it-had-been fell from his memory like the first five minutes of wakefulness. He succeeded in putting himself into a meditative state; he did not succeed in reaching Keith.

On the second attempt, Shiro made a greater effort to ground himself. As he felt himself fading, he called on memories of him and Keith from before Voltron, racing their hoverbikes across the desert, all-nighters in the Garrison library, late-night chats about the adventures to come… For all the talk of distant moons and extraterrestrial worlds, they never could have imagined the reality of their future.

Paladin?

Shiro surfaced from his reverie, unsure who was disturbing him.

I apologise. Once again, he has left.

Oh. Right. Shiro blinked distantly at the swirling nebulae. He succeeded in making himself nostalgic; he did not succeed in reaching Keith. Next time, he told himself, he would need a way to balance his sense of self with the separation that allowed him to travel through Black’s mind. If he mastered that, maybe then he could make the connection.

He waited.

The Black Lion alerted him when Keith once again left the castle. He did not return for several quintents. It was sheer luck alone that Voltron was not needed while he was gone.

His own mind was threatening to smother him once again. Shiro stifled his anxieties, keeping the apprehension at bay by retreating into his happier memories or talking to Black when even those threatened to pull him under. It was only a matter of time, he assured himself. Anticipation was a horrible sickly feeling but it would not last forever. He had a plan - that was progress in and of itself, even if he was struggling to implement it. Keith had to return to the Black Lion eventually, and when he did, Shiro would be ready to give this another shot.

He didn’t get the chance.

“-the supply ship is almost captured. Can anyone get to it?”

When the situation called for it, Keith was not there. He was away with the Blade of Marmora, the tangled threads of his split loyalty ultimately compromising the team. Their frantic voices drove knifes of futility deep into Shiro’s chest.

“There’s too many of them! Do the rebel ships have a shot?”

“I have a visual on them. They’re dead in the water.”

“We can’t do this without Voltron!”

The Black Lion mewled in distress. Keith was nowhere to be seen… but someone else was. Shiro stared down at the cockpit in dismay.

The hardest part of any plan was dealing with reality.

Chapter Text

The clone took a steadying breath, his shoulders tight with anxiety. Tremoring hands reached for the control levers. As they made contact, Shiro felt the clone’s quintessence hovering at the outskirts of the Black Lion’s vast mind.

Like every visit before, Black asked, Shall I accept him as my paladin?

Shiro opened his mouth to say no, but the word died on the tip of his tongue. He felt frozen, cold dread clutching him as their seconds ticked by.

“-can’t hold out much longer,” Hunk cried out. “There are hundreds of these things!”

“We know that! Pidge, you got a fighter on your eight o’clock- aaargh!”

“Lance! Lance, are you-?”

“-’m okay! Where is Keith?!”

The turmoil of the comms channel did nothing to aid his fraught nerves. He was no stranger to moments like these, where time seemed to converge in on him, the voices of potential outcomes whispering in his ear that whatever he did in the next few minutes would dictate the course of the future.

“This is my fight! I want blood!”

Shiro grit his teeth. This was his role as the leader of Voltron, a Defender of the Universe. He had to do what was best for them. He had to make those calls - even when he didn’t want to.

“If you decide to go, don’t expect me to be here when you get back.”

Hard choices were one of the few constants in his life. Here, once again, everything teetered on his decision. Voltron needed a Black Paladin. Keith wasn’t here. And Shiro was the only thing standing in the clone’s way.

“Keith, if I don’t make it out of here…”

Shiro was hit with a pang of irritation - not at Keith, but at himself. He was supposed to be the Black Paladin. He was close enough to the controls that he could practically reach out and touch them - except that he couldn’t, because he didn’t have a body. He was supposed to protect his team, but he was useless in this state. He hated being useless.

“Do you really think a monster like you could be a Voltron Paladin?”

Shiro clamped his hands over his ears - as if that would help when the voice spoke from within. No, no, Sendak had been wrong. He wasn’t a monster. He was a survivor. He was a paladin.

In, two, three, four, five… He counted breaths he didn’t need, anchoring himself to the present moment. He couldn’t afford to panic. Every passing second of inaction led them closer to their doom.

Out, two, three, four, five… Let an agent of the Galra Empire pilot the Black Lion? Or watch his teammates struggle through a losing battle? It was a lose-lose situation.

They need him, Black nudged.

Shiro said, “They need me.”

He can take your place.

“I don’t-” I don’t want him to! He couldn’t finish the sentence; it was selfish and he knew it, to deny the team a Black Paladin when one was right there. He justified it with fear, the bone-chilling fear that his Galra-made copy would hurt the team. That alone meant he couldn’t be allowed to fly the Black Lion. But right now his teammates were screaming over the comms. They were terrified and overpowered and leaderless, and their terror pervaded the atmosphere and built walls that crept in on him and it was all too much . He had to make a choice, but it was a choice he didn’t want to make. Why couldn’t Keith be here? Keith was supposed to be here.

He means them no harm, the Black Lion said gently.

In, two, three, four, five… “We can’t be too careful.”

The Black Lion hummed in discontent.

“I’m sorry. I know it might help, but we don’t know that for sure. It’s too risky.”

The cockpit started to glow. It was so slight that, if not for a subtle shifting of quintessence, Shiro might have written it off as a trick of the light.

“Black…” he started.

Let me help you understand, she insisted.

Shiro’s thoughts stuttered. It was like the the second time he encountered Zarkon in this realm, when they’d phased through each other amid their final fight. Sudden and jarring; a pressure that bordered on pain as his mind became a vessel for someone else’s thoughts. All his senses layered twofold. He was aware of his hands on the control levers and also clenched at his side. He could see the inactive cockpit both around him and from a distance. He could feel a single pulse, oddly soothing to his astral body.

“Please…” a voice whispered. He startled when he registered it as his own. It was laced with the kind of vulnerability Shiro never let the others see. “Please, Black, let me fly again, even if only for today. They need me. I have to protect them.”

He staggered away from the projection.

“Is- is that-?”

It is you. He thinks like you.

He pinched his eyes shut. The astral plane left his sight but he could still see the inside of the cockpit through the clone’s eyes. The comms channel was open on the right, a green waveform oscillating as Pidge yelled directions he couldn’t quite hear. The clone grit his teeth. After a second, Shiro realised his were gritted too.

You are one and the same, the Lion soothed.

“How?” How could that be him? His mind struggled to comprehend it; this dizzying sensation of being himself but twice .

You are entangled. You are both currently present in my mind. His quintessence is identical to your own, thus, you are experiencing what he is experiencing. I merely facilitated it.

That… was not the explanation he expected, but he supposed it made sense. Still, it left him reeling to hear thoughts that could very well be his own, but that he knew originated elsewhere.

“Does know I’m here? Can I talk to him?”

The Lion sounded regretful as she said, You cannot. He is weaker than you, my paladin. You are identical but with one major difference - he is your shadow, not your equal.

So much for that idea. Shiro’s Galra hand was gripping his real arm so tightly that, when he relaxed it, it left tiny impressions of fingernail scratches.

“He… he really believes he’s me,” Shiro breathed.

In almost every way, he is. That is what I have been trying to tell you.

Shiro could not look away from the man in the pilot’s seat. The sight of him still filled Shiro with dread, but it was accompanied now by a new and complicated sort of compassion. He had long suspected the clone to be ignorant of his status - that alone left a sour taste in his mouth - but to feel it, to really see that their minds were near indistinguishable…? Shiro was not broken. He was not the Galra Empire’s to control. He would never readily let the Galra use him, not even a copy of him. The clone, for all the problems he was causing, was just as much of a victim of the Galra as Shiro himself.

“Please,” the clone stressed, “people’s lives are at stake.” The mental link brought wellings of desperation, of fear that synchronised perfectly with Shiro’s own. Someone yelped over the comms and both their faces contorted in frustration. “You trusted me once. Trust me again.”

There was nothing of malice in him - at least, nothing he was aware of. The clone would never hurt the team by choice, that much Shiro now truly believed.

Trust me again.

The clone was at the heart of a situation that Shiro did not trust one bit. But he was unaware - and after looking into his mind, it no longer seemed so lucrative to trust the clone himself. Especially when the alternative was to do nothing.

This was just one fight. He would not act on the Empire’s wishes unless forced. Shiro could watch to make sure nothing went wrong, and if things did go wrong and the clone started to break down mid-battle? Well, it couldn’t be any worse than listening to his team die from the safety of the castle. He knew the clone agreed with him on that one.

They needed him.

“Okay,” Shiro said, his voice so quiet that when the Lion said nothing he wondered if he’d spoken at all. “Let him fly.”

The cabin coruscated to life. The dashboard started to hum, display screens brightening to a vivid purple that illuminated the clone like a deer caught in headlights. His shocked expression morphed into an elation that made Shiro’s soul burn with envy. He snapped out of his wonder, his mouth curling upwards into a smile as he pulled the control levers towards him.

“Thank you,” whispered his thoughts.

They bolted from the hanger, a purple arrow of light straight into the heart of a raging battle. Galra fighters swarmed the other four like angry wasps. Hunk wasn’t kidding, there literally were hundreds of them. There were so many that they could afford to shoot with reckless abandon, and the Black Lion had to duck and roll and maneuver with precision as they entered the fray.

“There’s no way we can beat all these fighters with only four Lions!” Hunk yelled, taking a hit in the far left of their viewscreen.

The Black Lion dived under a fighter. It barrelled into another two behind them. The clone used the free second to tap the ‘on’ button for his helmet microphone. “You don’t have to!”

He was answered by a chorus of voices yelling Shiro’s name. With a grin, he went for the fighters trailing Hunk and obliterated them, hands flying over the controls as if he genuinely possessed months’ worth of flight experience. It was exactly what Shiro himself would do, and he realised quickly that flying with his clone at the controls was going to be a very different experience to flying with Keith. He could predict his every action with startling accuracy, just by thinking of what he would do. A fighter snuck up on their left, and no sooner had Shiro thought duck, turn, activate laser, when the clone did precisely that. His flight style was a perfect replica of Shiro’s own, which was unsettling, but at least it made for less backseat driving.

“Converge on me,” the clone said. “It’s time to form Voltron!”

Amidst the trembling of metal and the gathering of quintessence, the Black Lion turned her attention to Shiro and purred in gratitude. With the mental link established, he felt the immense relief of the other four paladins. What had been a growing sense of discouragement now burned with new hope. These Galra fighters would not best them today.

Instead of letting his consciousness dissipate, Shiro turned his attention away from the battle outside and sifted his way through the layers of the Voltron bond until he stowed close to the Black Lion’s current paladin. He would watch his clone intently, and if anything changed - if his quintessence started to break down or alter - then he would tell Black to disband Voltron. He would protect his team.

And privately, Shiro was curious about his own connection to the clone. He had lost it during the transformation procedure, locked outside the Voltron bond like before, but he had felt it so clearly, that overlap between him and his clone. Black had said their quintessence was entangled. There had to be a way to use that to get a message through to the physical world.

He felt the team cheering. Let’s head back for the rebel ship, their thoughts agreed; they were one step closer to winning today’s battle.

And Shiro was one step closer to his own goal.

Chapter Text

“High Priestess,” the guard said. “We have found a fault in the Champion’s genetic code.”

So that was what this was about. They had roused him during sleeping hours; two of them, silhouetted in the dim corridor light that signified night aboard the ship. He had been dragged to an examination room with no explanation beyond “ost vim” - “get up now” - a command he’d heard so many times that he no longer registered the words as a foreign language.

He couldn’t be bothered to fight them. The sooner this was over, the sooner he could return to his cell and go back to sleep. Sleeping was nice. Sleeping let him escape the Galra ship. Just for a little while.

He had been restrained, held in place as they repeated a number of the tests he’d been subject to the day before. Any attempts to get further information from them had failed; they wouldn’t talk to him except to give commands, and whatever translation software allowed him to understand their speech here didn’t extend to written language. But he had known something was wrong just from the way they walked. Tenser than usual. Anticipatory.

Only one thing made the guards that nervous.

Haggar hummed, eying him up and down. He didn’t like that look. It was cold, calculating. Like he was a particularly difficult crossword. “What kind of fault?”

“A fatal one, High Priestess.”

Her eyes narrowed, as if he had done this on purpose. “That is most disappointing.”

Maybe, he dared hope, this would mean they finally had to leave him alone. Write him off as a failed experiment. Throw him back into the communal cells, back into the arena. Who would have thought that his genetic code - a death sentence on Earth - would save his life out here in space?

...and who would have thought he’d one day prefer to be in the arena? Shiro’s standards had become so low they were subterranean.

As if she could read his mind - as if she had taken his moment of hope as a personal challenge - Haggar smirked and said nonchalantly, “Continue the project.”

Over her shoulder, the two guards exchanged a look. ”But the duplicates,” one said. “They will share his fault-”

She held up a hand and they immediately fell silent, any further arguments dying on their tongues.

Her eyes never left his face as she said, “This is nothing more than a minor complication. We will proceed with Operation Kuron.”

Clawed fingers scratched along the metal plating of his right arm. She must have noticed how he flinched, how his breath caught, how his body ached to pull away from her.

She smiled. “Give me time, Champion. Before long, I will make you better than ever.”

It was normal for Blade missions to last several days, but this was the first to last over two weeks.

The rest of the team seemed unconcerned, so rationally Shiro knew there was nothing to worry about. He’d missed the conversation in which Keith took on a mission of this duration, that was all.

But that wasn’t what Shiro was worried about, not really. The last time Black sensed Keith within the castle, it had been just hours before he left again. He had friends within the Blade of Marmora - there were names that came up regularly in his talk of training - but as far as Shiro knew he wasn’t close with any of them. There was no way of knowing whether Keith was isolating himself. No way to know whether anyone was doing anything to stop it.

Shiro mentally shook himself; he was probably overreacting. From what he’d gathered, Keith’s Blade missions had the potential to grant them invaluable intel, and, with six active paladins, they could afford to have someone in the field. Keith would be fine. He wasn’t a child any more. He could look after himself.

Voltron’s most recent mission had been to an empty region of space. Pidge had identified major Galra activity there, more than was reasonable so far out from anywhere of importance, so the paladins had decided to check it out. Shiro was yet to work out why, but the clone had been reluctant to go on this mission. Admittedly, the circumstances were suspicious - if up to Shiro, he would approach the situation eager to assist whoever the Galra were converging on, but he would approach with caution. These were the exact kind of circumstances that drew Voltron in like pins to a magnet, and the Galra must know that by now.

They had hovered on the outskirts of the battle. The central conflict was a blaze of laser light and loose debris. Galra fighters swarmed like flies to fresh fruit. They took erratic shots at the enemy ship where possible, but it wasn’t easy; at least ten cruisers boxed the ship in, their hooked fronts leaving little room to aim around. Did Coalition members and refugees really call for such a large-scale attack? From the distance, he hadn’t been able to make out whose ships they had surrounded.

What if it was the Blade of Marmora? What if it was Keith’s mission?

He’d quashed that thought as soon as it entered his mind. No. They wouldn’t send so many ships after a Blade mission. The Empire didn’t even know the Blade existed. If Keith’s mission had been compromised, the Galra would presume it was an isolated incident and deal with it accordingly - as they had dealt with Thace.

Besides, the Black (and Red) Lions would know if Keith was in danger. Keith, Shiro assured himself, was elsewhere in the universe. He was absolutely fine . He had to be.

A squadron of fighters had whistled past, released from the hold of a cruiser fresh from hyperspace. Whoever this was, they must pose a real threat to the Galra Empire to warrant such attention. That meant one of only two things for Team Voltron: a new ally - or a battle on two fronts.

Of course, it had ended up being the latter.

They were returning to the castle now, Zarkon’s transmission echoing around their minds - “From this day forward, my son Lotor is to be regarded as a fugitive criminal of the Empire.” A battle on two fronts indeed…  

The clone was fixated, dissecting every word to try and make sense of the nonsensical. Shiro was still shaken to learn that Zarkon was alive. How? How had he lived? They’d driven the blazing sword into the heart of Zarkon’s mecha. They’d crossed on the astral plane, and he’d felt Zarkon’s life-force wane and fade as if it were his own. He’d been so certain that Zarkon was dead. He’d been willing to accept his own death to ensure it. Now Zarkon showed up mid-battle as if nothing had changed? As if he still ruled the Galra Empire; as if the universe still kneeled before him? It was infuriating.

It was terrifying.

Why would Zarkon order the death of his own son? Weren’t they both loyal to the Empire? The revelation was less surprising to Shiro, who already had the Black Lion’s confirmation that the two were estranged. Still, to hear him say such brutal words was a game changer, a new element in an ever more convoluted war. And not one that would that would benefit Team Voltron in any way.

More so than ever, Shiro ached to put things right. Behind the scenes, the concealed pieces of someone’s plan were falling into place. He did not know what that plan was, nor did he know how it all fit together - the clone, this power struggle, Zarkon’s return - but he had the horrible feeling that time was running out. When Haggar was involved, it was usually already too late.

He  had to warn the others.

The clone didn’t notice they’d landed until Hunk cleared his throat. “Shiro? Are you coming?”

“Make him stay,” Shiro urged the Black Lion.

He already intends to do so, my paladin.

Shiro’s brow furrowed. What was that supposed to mean?

“No, not right now,” the clone said to Hunk. “I need to talk to the Black Lion.”

“Oh, uh, okay,” Hunk faltered, “I’ll, uh, see you later, I guess-?”

The clone silenced the comms. He removed his helmet and rested it on the floor beside his chair, running a gloved hand through his poorly-cut white fringe and scruffing up the parts which had adhered to his forehead. Too short , Shiro thought. And no undercut. Not a good look for me .

The clone closed his eyes and focused. Shiro felt the Lion’s quintessence respond, and immediately knew what he was doing. “I need to talk to the Black Lion,” he’d said; he intended to deepen his connection to Black before the others noticed how weak it was and wondered why.

That strange sense of duality had nudged at the back of his mind for as long as the clone had been in the cabin. Now it strengthened into something more active, mentally extending a hand to the Black Lion.

“Work with me,” his mind urged.

As before, nothing about him suggested ill intent, just a desire to cooperate and recover the bond he believed had been lost. She received him like a remote friend, welcoming and warm but slightly out of sync. They fit together, but it wasn’t exact. It left the clone wondering what had changed.

Shiro meditated on their connection as if using one of the helmets on the training deck. The clone’s connection to the Black Lion was like the background hum of a noisy room, masked until you drew your attention to it. It took him time to attune to it, and more than once the clone had left before Shiro made much headway. Still, with every successful attempt he made progress. With every attempt, he got quicker.

He hoped he’d gotten quick enough. They needed this to work.

The easiest way to locate the clone was to focus on his own quintessence - where it connected to his Lion’s like an adjoining puzzle piece - and then sift through for things that felt wrong, not quite like him , in order to differentiate the person joined in tandem. What was just a sense, a thought, an idea, became a distinguishable other consciousness, something he could observe and - hopefully - influence.

He had tried to make contact with Keith the same way, but the Red Paladin’s quintessence stayed unreachable. It slipped like sand through his fingers whenever he got too close, retreating further each time as if it thought Shiro - thought the Black Lion - was prying. He quickly accepted this method wouldn’t be possible with Keith. There were too few similarities in their quintessence. Something that shouldn’t be a problem with his own clone. ( You are entangled, the Black Lion had said.)

“Something changed while I was away,” the clone said to Black. Alone, his walls went down - he could trust her, his Lion, to listen and tell him the truth. Concerning this, maybe he could trust her more than he could trust his friends. “I don’t remember what happened to me. I don’t know what they did, whether that’s why you feel so distant.”

His breath shook; Shiro felt the tightness in his throat.

“Do you know?” His voice strained. “Do you know what’s wrong?”

Not everything , she said, but of course, he didn’t hear the words.

He sighed, a deep and heavy sigh that spoke of conclusion. “I know I’m not your first choice. And I know you only took me back because Keith was away. I may not know what changed but I do know this: the universe needs Voltron. And right now, it needs me.”

There was no use denying his logic; with Keith on his Blade missions, they had no other Black Paladin. The Lion rumbled in agreement and Shiro felt the clone relax, just a little, at her assent.

And there, in this moment of weakness, Shiro saw an opportunity.

He aligned himself alongside the clone as tightly as possible and let his remaining thoughts coalesce into a single fortified message.

“Can you hear me?”

The clone’s breath stuttered.

Shiro felt it - the shock as tension in his throat - though that could equally have been his own excitement.

There was no time to lose. "You aren't who you think you are.” he started.

“No.” The clone shook his head violently. “No, you’re not real.”

“Please,” Shiro urged. “You need to tell the others to look into something called ‘Operation Kuron’. I don’t know why, but it’s important. It could be the key to all of this-”

“No!” He wrenched his hands free from the control levers as if they were on fire. “No,” he repeated, digging his fingers into his hair. “No, it- it’s not real. Nobody’s there. Nobody’s here.”

His forehead was glossy with a sheen of sweat, and Shiro, who sympathised all too well with his clone’s agitation, found himself feeling strangely guilty for causing such a reaction. He knew it was necessary, that this counted as a success for him. It was just unfortunate that his only candidate for passing on such a message was the person most accustomed to voices in his head.

Shiro knew he wouldn’t believe himself either.

...he filed that under ‘things to unpick later’.

The clone breathed in - one, two, three, four, five - then out, then in again. He repeated this several times, and Shiro felt his pulse slow with each repeat, fight draining from his system as he talked himself down from panic. Eventually, he released the grip on his hair and straightened up. He looked scared, but above all, he looked tired.

It was strange to watch this happen from the outside. Familiar shame welled in Shiro’s chest, as it always did when he returned to his senses following any of his freak-outs. Logically, he knew he had nothing to be ashamed of. Logically, he knew he was remarkably functional for someone who’d been through all he’d been through. But logic played no part in fear, and he was viscerally afraid that one day his haunted mind would get himself and everyone he loved killed.

The clone felt the same; already, he was mentally berating himself. Shiro couldn’t hear it - the clone had broken his connection to the Black Lion the moment he’d taken his hands off the control levers - but he didn’t a psychic link to see the shame on his own face. Pull yourself together, Shirogane. The universe is more important than your mental state.

He shuddered. Just because he understood didn’t mean this was any easier to watch.

“Operation Kuron…” the clone murmured.

Those two words burned in both their minds, too important to overlook. One of Haggar’s foremost projects, he was sure of it. Buried deep down - he was never supposed to uncover it. If only he could remember more…

The clone gazed blankly through the viewscreen at the empty hangar. Shiro wished he would take the control levers once more, wished he could listen in to the other’s thoughts. Would he talk to the team about this encounter?

Probably not, he thought skeptically. Shiro wouldn’t. He couldn’t always trust his brain. Why should this be any different?

He wished he could say that, if their positions were reversed, he would definitely pass on the message - but that would be a lie. He wanted to say he’d made it seem urgent enough for the clone to bypass whatever embarrassments stopped them talking about their experiences - but would the clone agree? Or would he write it off as his brain playing tricks on him?

If he were in that chair - which in a way he was - would he believe a voice he perceived as himself?

...all this clone stuff was really starting to hurt his brain.

Minutes passed before the clone pushed himself up and out of the chair. He reached for his helmet, tucked it under his arm, walked from the cabin in a daze. He didn’t look back, didn’t even say goodbye to the Black Lion. He was exhausted, both physically and mentally. He didn’t want to think about this right now. He just wanted to sleep.

The hangar lights went dark.

Though he didn’t need to, Shiro exhaled heavily just for the sake of it. He rolled back until he lay on the ‘floor’, staring up at the fake constellations he could now replicate with his eyes closed.

Something bad loomed on the horizon - he was more sure of that now than ever before. Please, let me be enough to stop it.