Chapter Text
Debris.
Shards of metal littered the area like airborne sand in a desert storm.
Keith lit up a sector of space with his searchlight. Everything looked silver; there was no way to discern what was debris and what could be Shiro without combing through every ounce of footage at 10⁴ times zoom. And he would; but right now, he saw nothing.
"Take us home, Red."
He'd been going out for weeks, analyzing every piece of visual data and scanning hundreds of thousands of kilometers of space junk. Lately, Keith had had to spread out his search range; the battle's direct three-dimensional volume only covered a portion of how far the ship remnants and other wreckage had traveled. Shiro could be on any one of those remnants, drifting among the asteroids in the belt a hundred kilometers from his current range. (He could be dead.)
But that was irrelevant until Keith found solid evidence.
He patted Red's leg on his way out of the hangar and silently thanked her for putting up with him. She got restless more often, temperamental as she was, but she still let him fly her to the same part of space every day just to sit still and analyze camera footage.
Walking into the common area, he quickly shuffled away from where Pidge and Hunk were working and looked for food. "How's the search coming?" Coran asked with his usual boisterousness. Keith winced at the noise but Hunk and Pidge didn't look up from their computers.
"Not well," Keith replied shortly, grabbing a bowl of plain food goo from the counter and curling up in the corner of the sofa.
"If anyone can survive the depths of space mostly intact, Shiro can!" Coran loped over and made a move to put his hand on Keith's shoulder, but ended up resting it lightly on the back of the sofa. "He would find a way," he said, softer. "Leaving the team...I don't think he could do that."
"It doesn't matter what he can or can't do. I will find him." Keith abruptly stabbed his spoon into his food goo and took a large bite.
Coran frowned a little and walked away. Since Coran knew about Keith's search missions, Allura probably knew as well, and it was only a matter of time before he'd be on the other end of her pitying stares. Being a part of a team like Voltron meant knowing everything about everyone: the castle was too small and there were only seven people (six now). Not to mention, the freaking telepathic mice gossiped. Mice were not supposed to gossip, period. Few secrets stayed sacred for long, point, the few days it took everyone to learn Pidge's relation to Sam and Matt. But he wouldn't be able to stand Lance's jokes and Pidge and Hunk's overbearing nature and Allura's goddamn pitying stares, so he kept his mouth shut. Hopefully, Coran would do the same.
It took nearly 45 minutes for Hunk to look up from whatever complicated engineering problem he was handling and notice him with "Well, look who's back. There's leftover food goo-"
"Yeah thanks, I had some." Keith motioned at Hunk with his empty bowl and stood up to put it in the sink.
"We have a diplomatic meeting with several members of the Alliance tonight. You might want to put on a more pleasant expression," Pidge said bluntly, pushing their glasses up.
Keith groaned. "I'm not useful there."
"You're telling us, we are very aware of how bad you are in any conversation involving tact," Hunk replied, wincing as Keith turned a death glare on him.
"If Voltron needs me to fight, I'll fight."
"This is a different battle," Pidge said with a sigh. "The more planets that trust us and listen to us, the easier it will be to take on the rest of the Galra Empire. We can't fight by ourselves, the odds are too risky even having the lions and the castle backing us up. Rebel sects like the Blade of Marmora ensure that we always have some backup for our frankly insane plots."
"And it also means less chance of us floating frozen and alone in the vacuum of space," Hunk added. Keith closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath.
"He didn't mean it like that," Pidge said, briskly grabbing their laptop and dragging Hunk bodily from the room. "The dinner is at 1600 vargas. Try to be civil, Keith."
He'd shouted at all of the people at the table. Of course, he had. Keith slumped face-first onto his cot and screamed into his pillow.
Keith had told the truth; what else did the leaders want? Voltron needed five paladins, there were only four, ergo, Voltron couldn't form. The most powerful weapon in the galaxy didn't work and Shiro...well, he wasn't coming back. Everyone had to learn to fight for themselves, including him. Keith wanted to live in the world where finding and saving Shiro was a matter of simple search and rescue, but that world only existed inside his head. The rest of the team had moved on, Voltron needed to move on. He was the last one left clinging, clinging to Shiro as much as he always had, as much as he had when the Kerberos mission failed, as much as he had in a new place, on a new planet where only one person knew all of him, his past, his present, his tentative future. Shiro was the first person to know his Galra heritage, the first person to care about him and trust him and confide in him and Keith wanted to hold on to that.
But he had to push Shiro to the back of his mind. Keith knew it was better than letting Shiro's memory take full control.
He couldn't afford that.
Voltron was leaderless and someone needed to pilot the Black Lion. Keith hoped someone else took up that burden; he would rather Pidge or Allura or (hopefully not) Lance, but he himself couldn't replace Shiro, not with decades more experience nor talent. He only would if there were no other options.
"Time to face the music," Keith murmured to himself.
He sat up and ran a hand through his hair. Maybe he'd flip through some of the new footage and try to convince Coran to alter his cameras, increasing clarity in the imaging. He'd ask Pidge or Hunk, but...better not.
Keith spent the next several vargas staring at his laptop, periodically enlarging sections of an area to examine the detritus and determine what were Galra or human remains and what was just drifting metal. Many Galra sentries and soldiers were frozen in space, their ships ripped to shreds around them. Blades of Marmora were more difficult to spot due to their unobtrusive looks, mostly, the black uniforms. Just a thin layer of armor between each Blade and the vacuum. Keith shuddered. The Paladin suits were stronger, but not by much. Shiro had to have survived by the skin of his teeth.
He also searched for dying, but functional ships with enough oxygen to sustain a single pilot. If the engines didn't work but the oxygen supply was mostly unused, Shiro could have latched on to a ship and waited for someone to find him.
(Unfortunately, most Galra fighter crafts were piloted by sentries or piloted remotely. The odds of a nearby ship having the capacity for oxygen...)
Keith's vision began to blur. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. One sector not cleared meant Shiro could be gone for good; any stone left unturned meant the slow end of the remainder of Keith's sanity. He'd never considered himself fully stable; his "abandonment issues", as the Garrison's psych evaluation proclaimed, did him no favors. But Keith had had a good thing going with the Paladins, with Coran and Allura, and with Shiro laughing and living after every official statement said Kerberos was a lost cause. Losing that now, Keith didn't think he'd be able to live with himself, much less everyone else.
One more sector, and then he'd sleep for a couple vargas. One more sector.
Just...one...more...
Someone was shaking him.
Keith lashed out with a hand, pushing whoever it was out of his space and grabbing his knife from his belt. "Keith, it's Coran, you're safe, alright?" the person said.
He looked up and immediately lowered his knife. "You caught me off-guard."
"Would you like me to knock next time?" Coran asked amusedly, but with a serious undertone.
"I don't like to be touched."
Coran nodded. "Knocking it is. Everyone's meeting in the hangar to try out the Black Lion. They sent me to get you. I had a feeling you wouldn't have received Lance very well."
"No, I wouldn't've." Keith stood up and rubbed the back of his neck. He must have slept on it wrong. "Shall we?"
Pidge waved to him as he walked in and Hunk handed him a bowl of food goo, glaring at him until he took a few bites. Allura nodded his direction and Lance asked what the hell took him so long, to which Keith replied by threatening to interrupt Lance's daily moisturizing routine. He slept sparingly enough that it wouldn't be hard to pull off, anyway. Lance scoffed. "So who's getting this party started?"
Allura took a deep breath and stepped forward; Lance stepped back and put up his hands in a placating gesture. "Makes sense. I would always choose you too." He winked and she looked startled, then scoffed at him and entered the lion.
She spent a few dobashes in the lion, Lance getting more and more anxious with each one. Keith tapped his foot impatiently rather than kicking Lance in the shin with it. Eventually, Allura returned, shaking her head and crying a little onto Coran's shoulder. Keith knew how much piloting a lion meant to her, if only because her father had helped build the ships. If he had a chance to be a part of his father's work again but failed in some unknown and inexplicable way, he'd feel hopeless too.
Lance spent half a varga in the damn lion. Any reason to compete with him, Keith thought bitterly. Shiro wanted Keith to be the leader, Lance had to immediately prove why he was the better choice. Keith was far more occupied with Shiro and the Kerberos mission through his Garrison years than his supposed rivalry with another pilot whom he'd never met and honestly didn't want to challenge. But Lance saw it as a personal affront and despite their impressive teamwork the past few months, they still butted heads over the dumbest shit. It was exhausting and frustrating.
Lance came out once Coran dragged him out. He attempted to comfort Allura, who subsequently actually kicked him in the shin and stormed out, Lance trailing behind her exaggeratedly holding his bruised leg. And all's right with the world, Keith thought to himself.
Hunk walked in and walked right back out, shaking his head.
Pidge apparently couldn't even reach the controls inside the lion due to their slight figure, which was very unfortunate in Keith's opinion. He trusted Pidge the most to lead Voltron, besides Shiro, because Pidge was intelligent and logical and always kept their cool. Pidge had a different style than Keith, who jumped into everything with both feet, or Allura, who focused on preservation and peace ahead of investigation and battle. Rather, they thought systematically and with safety in mind, but still accomplished tactical goals precisely. Shiro had had a relationship with the entire Holt family prior to Keith coming into the picture, therefore Shiro must have known how valuable Pidge would have been on a team.
And yet, he still insisted on Keith as the leader of Voltron.
Coran tried the lion as well, knowing that only Keith was watching him. He soon came back out, looking disappointed, but he shook it off and nodded to Keith. "I wish you the best of luck." He paused. "Shiro was rarely wrong, especially about you. Trust his judgment, for his sake and our sakes and your sake."
Keith frowned and scaled the stairs into the Black Lion. He remembered flying it, hijacking it to save Shiro's life. But their bond, if it had even formed, was not recognizable in comparison to his bond with Red. That, above all, proved that the Black Lion could distinguish between life-or-death scenarios and destiny scenarios. The Black Lion knew her shit and was incredibly loyal; she stayed connected to Zarkon despite ten thousand years of hibernation, knowledge of his terrible deeds, and Zarkon's corrupted quintessence. Shiro wouldn't be any different, and since Shiro was dead and Zarkon's connection was fully severed, the Black Lion wouldn't be able to hold a new connection for another, logically, ten thousand years.
This was so futile. Why did Keith see it when no one else could?
He perched in the pilot's chair and reached for the controls. "I know you wanted this for me, Shiro. But I'm not you. I can't lead them like you." Keith gripped the controls tightly. "I would give anything to have you back. Anything."
The Black Lion's screens flickered and for a brief moment, Keith was incredibly terrified. But the controls locked and the screens shut down and the Lion became as immobile as it had been with all the other paladins.
Keith let out a long breath of relief.
He left the hangar and walked as slowly as he could to the lounge. They could survive with four lions; they'd been surviving for months now. He'd keep searching for Shiro, and everything would go back to the way it was.
The Black Lion would remain unoccupied.
"What happened?" Hunk asked, attempting to shove another bowl of food goo into his hands. Hunk had this strange notion that Keith needed to be fed constantly. Lance escaped it, despite being a freaking bean pole, Pidge ate on a very specified schedule (with alarms on their computer and everything), and Allura and Coran were deemed fine because they'd already survived ten thousand years, apparently.
Sometimes Keith wondered if Hunk worried about him. Not in the parental way that Coran had, but maybe he did.
"Nothing. The Black Lion didn't want any of us." Keith took the proffered food goo and whatever spices had taken salt and pepper's places on the table.
"How can that be?" Allura thought aloud. "The Black Lion hasn't had the occasion to know many other people throughout our travels, so if the Lion was to choose, it would choose someone it knew through proximity."
"Zarkon could have reformed the bond," Pidge said critically. "We have no data confirming his death, in fact-"
"Can we forget that for a bit?" Lance interrupted. "I'd rather not imagine that scenario. 'Destroy civilian targets,' Zarkon will order, 'no, that goes against our code of honor,' Allura will protest, but 'TOO BAD, I'M THE LEADER AND I SAY VICTORY OR DEATH!!!!!!'" Lance paused. "That last part has about six exclamation points after it."
Allura rolled her eyes and Hunk jumped in with "Yeah, that was unnecessary, I already have nightmares about what would happen if you were our leader."
"I'm deeply offended by that," Lance replied, holding a hand to his heart and closing his eyes, an exaggeratedly iridescent tear falling.
"Is anyone else seeing the glowing blue aura and white roses exploding around him? Or is that just what the outside people are seeing?" Pidge asked, pushing up their glasses.
"Fourth wall breaks aren't allowed here," Hunk muttered. "Also, what's with the Mori/Kyoya aura but Tamaki-style roses?"
"The aura is likely due to Lance as the pilot of the Blue Lion." Pidge nodded decisively.
"Could we remain on topic or has the topic devolved past the point of no return?" When no real answer came, Allura vacated the room dazedly, saying she was headed to check the crystal's matrix. Keith finished his food goo and left the room as well. There were still vargas of footage to analyze.
Suddenly, an alarm blared in the corridor. Keith ran to his station; how could they be attacked already? Every screen on the bridge flashed red and frantic Altean script burst over Keith's console.
"The Black Lion is gone?!" Allura booted up the castle's defenses almost out of habit before actually reading the warning message. "You said no one bonded with it!"
"No one did," Keith answered. "Could the Black Lion have bonded with Zarkon again?"
Allura shook her head. "That bond was broken by Shiro's willpower in the Black Lion's mindscape. Zarkon's bond is forever severed."
"Are you sure?"
She hesitated.
"Allura. Are you sure? Could it be Shiro instead?"
"The lions evolve on their own. I can't say what the Black Lion could be trying to accomplish given the parameters we are living in."
Keith wanted to shout at her, but no one would gain anything from that. "Can you track her trajectory?"
"I can try." Allura pulled up several screens, each turning up ten, twenty blank maps of the surrounding space. "The Black Lion seems to have disappeared."
"Check again."
"I'm checking every speck of data we have," Allura snapped. "The Black Lion has left our field of vision. But there is a strange energy emanating from the hangar."
"Follow it!"
"Keith! I can and will remove you from the bridge." She typed a flurry of codes into the castle and a streak drew itself through Keith's monitor.
"What are these readings?" Pidge asked as they stepped onto the bridge. "I've never seen anything like that."
"So the Black Lion's gone and there's a trail of mysterious breadcrumbs leading to it? Since when are we on Zarkon's cruiser pre-battle?" Hunk asked, getting louder and talking faster with every question. "Are Zarkon himself and his creepy witch lackey around the corner and waiting to scare us?"
"Not helpful," Keith sniped.
"I understand that the Black Lion is the only remnant of Shiro you have left, Keith, but alienating your teammates will gain you nothing, especially not Shiro back to you," Allura retorted icily.
Keith folded his arms. She could believe what she wanted.
Allura's icy tone shut down any other communal conversation for the next few dobashes as Pidge, Hunk, and Allura combined their different devices for tracking the lions' whereabouts.
"Hey, guys! The lion's back in the hangar!" Lance shouted, pointing at his console. Everybody pulled up the image he was viewing.
"We lost a huge metal lion and then it reappeared?" Hunk put his face in his hands. "Sometimes I think our line of work causes health problems, like how many heart attacks I get every week."
"This isn't really work, we don't get paid for it." Lance leaned back in his chair. "If only. Hey Coran, did you have jobs on Altea?"
Keith stood up and stormed off the bridge. They all brushed it off like it was nothing, but Keith couldn't accept that. They treated Shiro like a relic from the distant past, and his lion like a vessel for Voltron's use, for the entire galaxy's use. Shiro was more than that, his legacy had to be more than that.
He took deep breaths as he walked to the hangar. Patience yields focus, Shiro always said. Keith had always been shitty at patience, but he could focus. He had to focus.
The Black Lion looked like she had scarcely moved.
Keith banged his head against her leg. "You scared us. You scared me. Maybe Hunk's right about the heart attacks."
She sent an image of a circular beam of light, then a Galra ship, then a corridor leading to a cell, then Shiro, looking battered and unshaven. "I don't know what that means," Keith sent back to her.
The Black Lion projected annoyance to him. "I'm sorry, Red and I communicate better."
There was a brief flash of what felt like Black rolling her eyes. Then, she effectively punched him in the mind with a picture of Shiro, lying in her pilot's chair, battered and unshaven, just like the last clear image. He looked...alive.
Keith inhaled shortly and coughed. "You want me to check on him?"
The Black Lion huffed in his mind.
He ran up the stairs and tripped a few times, almost hitting the door to the cockpit. When he finally got through, he saw
-Shiro-
as if he'd never left. He was breathing, visibly breathing, his torso moving up and down in rhythm.
Keith reached a hand out to run it through Shiro's hair. It was a few inches longer and all black, but that didn't matter. Keith could touch him; Shiro was tangible, tangible and breathing.
"They won't believe this," Keith murmured breathlessly.
Shiro began to stir and Keith yanked his hand away. He stood back as Shiro stretched his arms and legs and tried to stand up. "Shiro? Are you alright?"
Shiro raised his prosthetic arm and lit it up violet. "Shiro, it's okay. You've been gone a few months, but everyone's still here. They'll be really happy to see you."
Within seconds, Keith was pinned to the ground, Shiro's prosthetic held to his throat. Shiro's eyes were narrowed and his stance read: enemy presence detected.
"Shiro, it's me, it's Keith," he protested, moving as little as possible.
"I know who you are, Galra scum," Shiro spat. "Where am I?"
"You're in the Castle of Lions, the hangar. This ship is the Black Lion," Keith choked out. He couldn't reach his communicator. And he was scared, but it felt more like the first few days after the battle when his chest felt like sharp rocks were cutting him into ribbons.
"How did you get inside the Black Lion? What alchemy did you pervert to violate her?" Shiro's hand was beginning to burn him.
"I don't know alchemy," Keith said, his voice getting more panicked with every word. "She let me in, she told me you were in here, that you were hurt."
"She talked to you?"
"She sent pictures and emotions, she can't really talk. She doesn't usually try to talk to me anyway. Please, let me go, let me get Pidge, they can explain better than I can."
Shiro loosened his grip a little. "Pidge is here?"
"Yeah, Pidge is probably in the common area," Keith responded quickly. "I can take you to them."
Shiro seemed to consider that for a moment, and then slowly stood up, still holding his violet hand close to Keith's neck. Keith knew it had to be burnt but shock closed off all sensation except the pain in his chest.
Keith walked measuredly to the common area. Any sudden movement and Shiro was liable to kill him. Shiro was like a rattlesnake backed into a corner, Keith thought hysterically, remembering all the times his dad had told him to never approach enclosed spaces in the desert.
"Snakes feel threatened there and will strike out to find an escape. Never get in their way, you hear me?"
Then why did Shiro leave his easiest escape route?
Pidge and Hunk immediately stood up when Shiro and Keith entered the room, Hunk holding out his hands peaceably and Pidge conjuring their bayard.
"Pidge. What's going on? Why is this creature in the castle?" Keith winced at Shiro's tone. Allura's prejudice had been unpleasant, but this...this felt awful.
"He's the Red Paladin, and I'll thank you to release him," Pidge said sharply.
Shiro shook his head. "There is no Red Paladin."
Hunk's jaw dropped. "Wait, rewind. Of course, there's a Red Paladin, you have him held at hand-point."
"We never found a paladin for the Red Lion, much less a Galra like him."
Pidge blinked and put their bayard away. "What are you doing?" Hunk asked. "He's still got his hand pointed at Keith's neck."
"In Shiro's eyes, he's dealing with an enemy. It makes sense that he'd use the nearest available weapon," Pidge bluntly stated.
"Why are you not freaking out about this?" Hunk made wild hand gestures toward Shiro.
"Release him, that's an order," Pidge barked at Shiro. He reluctantly put his hand down; Keith sat on the floor as gracefully as he could without giving away how terribly his legs were holding him up at the moment.
"What's going on?" Hunk asked.
"I'd also like to know." Keith pulled his knees close to his chest unconsciously.
Pidge huffed. "It's simple. This Shiro is from a parallel reality, and the Black Lion brought him here."