Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’

Leonard Cohen, Anthem.

 

Abeyance

The sky is split in two. The nineteen rings of the most recent addition to Voltron coalition—called Home by its citizens, and IKS-I by the rest of its galaxy—bisect the sunset in a thin line of light. Supposedly the rocks and icicles orbiting the planet make for a beautiful sight from the planet’s surface.

  Unfortunately, the royal capitol lies exactly at the equator, where they are reduced to near invisibility. The planet’s star sits just to one side of the rings, casting one half of the city into shadows.

  Keith knows it’s pretty. The novelty begins to wear off, however, the way it always does; in the hands of Lance.

  The Green, Yellow and Red Paladins hop between the light and dark halves of the main road, endlessly amused. Never mind the parade in their honour happening at that exact moment. Lance walks backwards for the sake of his friends, pulling a different face between each jump. Apparently the fact that he’s facing awayfrom the sun anyone doesn’t bother Hunk or Pidge, who cackle each time.

  Keith grits his teeth around an order to stop fooling around. (He sounds more like Shiro every day. Safe to say, it’s terrifying.) He glances at his mentor instead, who waves at the citizens and throws smiles left and right. Although Keith has to be begrudgingly forced to participate, he can appreciate that parades always put Shiro in a good mood. Unlike Lance, who just likes the attention, Shiro likes to see the people he saves. Puts everything in perspective, or something.

  Not that he’s piloting these days.

  ‘If they’re gonna parade us around their entire city, they could at least put us on floats,’ Keith mumbles. He doesn’t really mean it; a walk through town is humiliating enough.

  Shiro hisses through his smile, ‘They weren’t exactly planning to be captured by the Galra and freed all in the same day.’ He follows Keith’s line of sight, deflating a little. ‘They’re just having fun. Let them be. It’s—’

  Keith rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t say it.’

  Shiro raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t pause. ‘It’s about balance. Being a leader means doing what’s best for your team, whether that means pushing them or giving them some slack.’

  Keith kicks at the yellow dirt, pressed hard by foot traffic. He lets Shiro move away from him a little bit, feeling more sullen than guilty.

 Keith knew the moment Black came to life under his palms that he wasn’t replacingShiro. Those were impossible shoes to fill. He just did his best. Sure he made it up as he went along, but the team was always there to fill in his blanks.

  Maybe in their panic to form Voltron again, he’d forced a connection with Black and severed Shiro’s in the process. Why else wouldn’t they be back to normal by now?

  Instead of relief that their leader is back, the team has to deal with an imbalanced power structure. No one likes taking sides, and they shouldn’t have to.

  But suddenly Keith can’t stand down. He speaks up before he even thinks about it—and he did that before, but his now voice carries more weight. Whether he likes it or not, he can’t voice an innocent opinion anymore. Everything out of his mouth is an order from one of the Black Paladins.

  He’s taken up a few new nervous habits.

  Allura clears her throat as she catches up with him, shielding her eyes from the setting sun with an armoured wrist. ‘Are you alright, Keith?’ His eyes cut to Shiro, then to Lance, who is pointing rapid—fire finger guns to either side. The corner of her mouth hitches up. ‘I know you’re not exactly fond of the parades.’

  It’s a conversation they’ve had before. ‘It feels like all we do these days is parades.’

  She smiles, taking that as permission to nudge herself closer his side. Together they take a step to the right so that her face falls into shadow, and her hand drops back to her side.

  This is new, too. Leading the team together gave them the chance to grow closer. It’s not a friendship Keith plans on taking for granted. ‘You forget that we also destroyed a Galra fleet today. That isn’t nothing.’

  ‘You’re right. I just—’ He sighs. ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’

  As if on cue, his stomach rumbles. Allura laughs softly. ‘You haven’t eaten all day. Maybe that’s why.’ Keith can’t help but smile too. They’ve had their differences but getting over them has been one of the best parts of being bumped up the ranks. When it comes down to it, Allura is really nice.

  He wonders if she knows for a fact that he hasn’t eaten all day, or if she just means that their battle overlapped with lunch. In truth, he’d been feeling off since the moment he’d woken up. It started as a pinch behind his eyes. He figured headaches were a Black Paladin thing, but the tightness quickly migrated down his spine. His limbs had been so heavy he considered a trip to the med bay, concerned he wouldn’t even been able to fly if they were attacked. Which, of course, they were, but not before he could solve the problem The Keith Way. The uncomfortable sensation had started fading a couple of hours ago, but only after he’d been in the training room all morning working it off.

  He catches Lance’s eye. His stupid pantomime is replaced by a sour look. Allura must see it too, because she takes a step out of Keith’s reach with nervous smile, folding her hands in front of her. ‘Not long to go, now. The palace is just up ahead.’

  She isn’t wrong, although calling it a palace is a little generous. The various leaders of the continents had gathered here because of the central location, not its grandiosity. The stout building pales in comparison to the beauty of the sky it governs.

  When Keith tilts his head just so, the line of light almost looks projected from the statue at the palace’s entrance, maybe the most detailed structure in the entire city. It’s made from the same yellowed stone as everything else on this planet. Even the locals—helpfully named ‘Us’ and ‘We’ according to their hosting King, and nicknamed Iksies by Lance—have a uniformly yellow skin tone. The monochromatic planet is hard on the eyes and makes for a very boring parade. Unsurprisingly, the locals are particularly taken with Hunk.

  An Iksi in what can only be hundreds of layers of flax—coloured chicken wire stands at the base of the statue, explaining the significance of its facing the mountains but pointing at the rings and whatever else. It also demonstrates for Hunk and Lance how to rub the stone King’s knees for good luck. Pidge has to jump to reach. Keith follows their example, grazing the smooth leg with the barest of fingertips.

  ‘Welcome,’ the wire—clad alien says, staring directly at him. Allura thanks it, but without even acknowledging her, it blinks one beady eye at Keith. He realises belatedly that it’s supposed to be a wink, but he’s ushered inside before he can really question it.

  Lance is spreading his habits around the universe with every stop.

  The native aliens spend no time or architecture on unnecessary aesthetics. The doors open immediately into a hall with a large floorspace but a short ceiling. Shiro’s fringe drags behind him as he walks. Keith smirks at the sight.

  The species are rather short, built almost like otters, but bald and with ridiculously long arms folded by three joints. Four of their elbows almost graze the ground. Not the best—looking aliens Voltron has freed so far.

  Each of the local King’s children grab a Paladin’s elbow, except for Shiro. Presumably there aren’t enough kids to go around—he laughs graciously and walks beside the King instead—but Keith doesn’t miss the flash of something in his eyes. 

  The hand wrapped around his elbow tugs gently. He glances expectantly at the face attached to it, but the child simply grins up at him with dark eyes and rounded teeth. He returns the sentiment with a closed—lip smile, quickly looking away. He never really got along with kids, his age or otherwise.

  ‘I’m called Princess Prosper,’ she says after a moment. Keith schools his frown. The translator sometimes decides that names rooted in meaning should be switched to English along with everything else. Whatever her real name is, he’ll probably never know.

  It’s habit by now to address people by their title alone.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Princess.’

  (That’s part of the diplomacy training Coran had forced upon him when they collectively realised their new Black Paladin, Voltron’s front man, had no idea how to speak to people.)

  ‘And you, Paladin—?’ She bares her marble—teeth in amusement when he just nods.

  ‘Oh. Um, I’m Keith.’

  Her weird elbows bending backwards and forwards as she giggles.

  The table looking over the room is raised enough for the royal family to slip their short legs beneath, but their human guests have to sit cross-legged.

  Even though Keith is easily double the princess’ height, he has a severe disadvantage in arm length. The princesses either side of him make up for it by dumping various fruits in his plate, staring him down until he takes a reluctant bite of all of them. Each one is drier than the last. Alien food has a tendency to disagree with Keith—even the dehydrated meat the Blade serves, which is ironic and unfair—so most of the food near Keith is claimed by his hosts. Apparently Iksies are vegetarians, and their selection somehow tastes dusty and spicy at the same time. A recipe for constant coughing.

  Down the table, Lance throws his head back to catch a chunk of something fleshy. He grins smugly at the Iksi princess beside him, who is yet to stop clinging to his arm. Keith resolves to ignore him.

  The King claps his hands together, mercifully helping Keith avoid whatever the princess on his right is trying to shove down his throat. The hall grows quiet, the crowd assembled turning their dark eyes on their leader. Most of them are foreign dignitaries of some kind, but a number are also businessmen according to Allura. Apparently capitalism runs fairly rampantly around IKS-I.

  Everyone but the hosting royal family eats off small clay plates in their laps, though, so luxury isn’t on anyone’s mind.

  ‘Friends,’ the King cries, his tinny voice rattling in the silence. ‘Today has been confusing!’ Someone down the table snorts. Probably Pidge. ‘When the Galra descended on our people, we thought our centuries of freedom were over at last, let it not be so!’

  ‘Let it not be so,’ the congregation agrees softly.

  ‘Yet, where our forces failed,’ he shoots a vicious glance at someone in the crowd, ‘Voltron prevailed! To show our gratitude, we present a gift to each Paladin.’ The crowd splits in a crooked line, allowing a short procession to make their way to the table, each alien laden with a bundle of thick cloth.

  They had at least been warned about this. Allura had said it was unnecessary, but the King hadn’t backed down, insisting Home return what Voltron had given them.

  There’s a room on the Castle dedicated to the junk they get as thanks from various planets. Only Pidge keeps absolutely everything in her own room.

  ‘To they in black.’

  Keith and Shiro swap a glance over Princess Prosper’s head, neither moving. They haven’t quite figured out who gets which title yet. It can make for some embarrassing toasts.

  Luckily, the first alien steps right up to Shiro. He has to lean the whole way over the table to take the gift from her hands. He folds back the first layer to reveal a small, circular blade, almost like a pizza cutter. He bows his head to the Iksi who passed it to him, then to the King. To Keith, he mouths, ‘Pizza?’ Keith shakes his head in bewilderment.

  ‘To cull our fields,’ the King says in way of explanation. The crowd hums in approval. ‘To they in red.’ Keith has the foresight to climb to his knees before reaching to take his gift. His is mostly fabric, inside a small, smooth tile, yellow all over.

  ‘To trade for prosperity.’ Down the table he goes, Allura receiving a comb with more holes than teeth, to maintain order, (she frowns at that, touching her hair self-consciously); a tall bowl for Hunk, to collect the fruit of his labours; and a splinter of clay for Pidge, to guide those in need.

  When they get to Lance, the King pauses dramatically. ‘Finally, for they in blue.’ The alien holding it struggles with his bundle. It’s bigger than any of the others, balanced along the whole first segment of his thin arms and threatening to tip off completely.

  ‘That’s not…’ Princess Prosper murmurs. She ducks the questioning look Keith sends her way.

  The whole thing shudders as the Iksi passes it towards Lance’s outstretched hands. The whole table leans forward to catch a glimpse of the mystery gift, the princesses tittering softly, and he has to kneel to see over the heads. Lance’s eager face drops to confusion. Allura gasps beside him. He blinks up at the King, who smiles expectantly. With a quick glance to the rest of his team, he tucks the bundle against his chest.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Pidge exclaims from his side.

  ‘Holy shit,’ the crowd echoes hesitantly.

  ‘For the longevity of blood,’ the King exclaims. He turns back to the Iksies gathered. ‘Voltron will live on forever. They will save a million such as our Home. Let it be so.’

  ‘Let it be so,’ the hall murmurs, dipping their heads.

  Keith has to lean almost flat against the table to actually get a good look at Lance’s gift. His jaw drops.

  Lance, brows furrowed, bounces a baby in his arms.

  Like, a real life, human baby. It’s little brown face pokes out of folds of grey fabric, button nose and all. Allura is already whispering harsh words in the ear of the King.

  A hand falls on Keith’s shoulder. He whips around to see Shiro, his face reflecting the confusion that Keith feels. ‘Sit down.’

  Keith must be in shock, because he complies without so much as opening his mouth.

The leaders of the planet resume their feast, mumbling quietly as the Paladins and their hosts duck into a room to the side of the hall. They crowd around Lance, peering curiously. Pidge slaps Hunk’s hand away.

  Keith wastes no time on wondering if and jumps straight to why. He rounds on the King the moment the doors separate them from watchful eyes. ‘What is this?’ he hisses, making to grab the short creature by the collar of his robe. Shiro is immediately between them.

  ‘Keith,’ he says warningly.

  Pidge interrupts loudly, ‘Where the heck did you get a human baby?’

  The King glares at Keith around Shiro’s hip. ‘It was given to us, to give back to you.’

  Allura steps forward, gently patting Keith’s breastplate as she passes him. A small but firm encouragement to stand down. ‘By who?’

  The King sniffs. ‘By one of your own.’

  There’s silence as the team processes this.

  ‘You mean to say,’ Allura begins slowly, ‘A human gave you their child? To gift to us?’ He nods.

  The question is unanimous. ‘Why?’

  ‘You didn’t think that was suspicious? Just went along with it?’ Keith demands.

  ‘There are other peopleout here?’ Hunk cries.

  Lance shushes him violently. ‘You’ll wake him up!’

  Hunk winces. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘People don’t just give away kids,’ Pidge says firmly. For one tactless second, Shiro looks in Keith’s direction. He pretends not to see. ‘Especially not as presents. Especially not this far from Earth!’

  The King tips his head to the side, looking for all the world like a hairless puppy. ‘Earth?’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Okay, that’s enough! This isn’t constructive.’ Shiro looks at them all one by one. ‘Your Highness, whoever gave you this baby—’

  ‘I didn’t personally receive the child.’

  Shiro sighs, his diplomatic air waning. ‘Could we speak to whoever did, please?’

  The King regards him with suspicion, but nods to one of his kids, who ducks back into the hall. They return a moment later with an Iksi Keith recognises; the one in chicken wire. Its folded arms flap by its sides. Keith can’t help but be reminded of Lance.

  Shiro repeats for the Iksi’s sake, ‘Whoever gave you this baby made a mistake. It should be with its family. Do you have any idea who they are, or where they are now?’

  The alien glances at Keith. ‘Gone, I should think.’

  The hairs on his arms prickle.

  ‘What did they look like?’ he asks bluntly, earning a stern look from Shiro that he promptly ignores.

  The alien shrugs, eyes on its bare toes. ‘Like you.’

  The Paladins groan collectively. Allura takes over, wearing her winning smile. She crouches in front of the alien and adopts the cadence of someone speaking to a very, very dumb child.

  ‘We need to find this baby’s family. It’s not right for us to have him.’

  The King steps forward once more. ‘The man and his ship left vargas ago.’ He adds under his breath, ‘And after all the trouble we went to, to switch the gift last minute.’

  ‘Switch the gift?’

  The King rolls his eyes—Lance’s influence again, probably. Surely that isn’t a universal gesture. ‘We assumed it was part of your usual ceremony. One of your own came down as soon as the last of the Galra fell, in a ship that could only be credited to your party. He told us it was of the utmost importance that the one in blue receive the child. We’d picked out a suitable set of rings already, too.’ He leans towards Keith, borrowing Allura’s You’re Pitifully Stupid voice. ‘To symbolise the never—ending rings around our planet.’ Keith could have strangled him then and there. He bares his teeth. The King recoils with a scowl.

  ‘They just… left?’ Lance asks quietly, frowning at his charge. The King nods solemnly.

  Shiro cracks his knuckles, a nervous habit that goes back years. So he has no idea what to do, either. ‘Your Highness, would you mind giving us a dobosh?’

  The King huffs in disbelief, but nonetheless stalks obediently back into the hall. His children slink after him, shoulders hunched, arms flapping.

  The moment they’re gone, the team explodes.

  ‘What the fuck are we going to do?’

  ‘Is no one else freaking out a little?’

  ‘Guys, we need to—’

  ‘We can’t take it with us,’ Keith says firmly. The others close their mouths, blinking at him.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ Lance raises an eyebrow. ‘You think he should stay here?’

  Keith feels his body preparing for attack. His fists clench of their own accord. ‘Yes.’

  There was a moment when it seemed like the fragile partnership he and Lance had sutured with quiet shows of support and duct tape could last. In the flimsy state the team found themselves in upon Shiro’s return, they both dutifully ignored how their arguments became less friendly and more numerous. Before they knew it, they were both back to trying to prove themselves to Shiro.

  The pendulum swung right back to where they started. Keith got used to gearing up for fights again.

  Lance shakes his head. ‘We are not leaving him here alone.’ The eyes of the team spring after each volley. They’ve gotten used to it again, too.

  ‘That’s not what I mean. If his parents look for him, they’ll look here. And if it’s a trick—’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘If it’s a trick,’ Keith repeats, voice stony, teeth aching under the pressure of his clenched jaw, ‘We won’t fall for it.’

  Lance huffs, turning his eyes skyward. ‘I cannot believe you.’

  Then he spins on his heel and shoves his way into the hall.

  Keith glares daggers at the door long after he’s gone.

  Allura twists a long piece of hair between her fingers, her cheek sucked between her teeth. ‘I’m going to—’ She gestures after Lance and follows him slowly, head ducked.

  Keith has the urge to throw something, so he starts to pace.

  ‘Keith—’

  ‘What?’He rounds on Shiro. ‘First you want me to look after the team, then you shoot down everything I say? What do you want, Shiro?’

  He juts his chin up, and that’s when Keith knows he isn’t going to bend on this one. ‘He’s a human being, Keith. We can’t leave kids behind.’ He takes a step forward, and for one horrible second he looks so intimidating, all broad shoulders and hard eyes, that Keith thinks he’s going to—what? The impulse to flinch away is jarring. ‘I thought you of all people would know that.’ In a flash, he’s following the others.

  Keith unpins his nails from his palm. What the hell is wrong with him?

 His chest heaves for a few seconds before he gets a hold of himself.

  Patience yields focus.

  He breathes out. Deflates.

  Hunk and Pidge watch him silently, visibly worried and calculating respectively. He drags a hand across his forehead and down his cheek. Wipes the anger away like sweat.

  It’s replaced by guilt. He scrapes the toe of his boot through the dirt floor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says quietly.

  Hunk melts in relief, but Pidge pops an eyebrow. He slides his eyes to the side, refusing to meet her gaze. It never ceases to bother him that she’s got ten times his emotional maturity, despite her age.

  ‘For blowing up,’ he concedes.

  Pidge pats him on the head before he can dodge her. ‘‘Atta boy. Come on, let’s go solve this shit.’

  They fall into step either side of him, and he feels just a little more stable.

The others aren’t so easy on him.

  They leave, for one.

  Pidge notes their empty seats with a hum. ‘Guess we’re going now.’

  The King storms after them when they leave the hall—as intimidatingly as he can, being about three feet tall—shrieking about how rude it is to leave so suddenly, threatening to call off the alliance, etcetera. His little legs scuttle desperately to keep pace with them. Keith turns to tell him that they’re not leaving leaving, just temporarily relocating to a different part of town to further discuss the baby issue, when Red takes flight. They all stop to gawk a little.

  Pidge rests a hand on his elbow. ‘Breathe.’

  Hunk exhales through pursed lips in a long raspberry, the noise echoing the engines.

  The Lion shoots for the Castle, pale as a ghost in the darkened sky. To the King practically blubbering at his feet, Keith asks, ‘Can we orbit your planet for a minute?’

  He blinks his round eyes up at Keith, mouth flapping open and closed. ‘A—minute?’ he repeats, unsure.

  Keith nods. ‘Thanks.’

  When he charges on, his team follows. The King watches them go helplessly, confused into nonaction. Keith counts it as a success.

  Pidge smirks. ‘Might I say, your diplomacy skills are just,’ she kisses her fingertips and tosses her hand in the air, ‘Bellissimo!’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Keeeeeith?’ His eyes swing to Hunk, then back to the road. The careful tone trips him up; Hunk doesn’t speak to him like that. He grunts in response. ‘Are you—alright?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Ah, well. In your own words, you kinda—’

  ‘Lost your shit.’

  ‘Pidge! Those aren’t his own words. Blew up.’ His sharp look softens as he turns back to Keith. ‘So?’

  Keith considers it. Lance isn’t his right--hand man anymore. Not the way that he was. Shiro is hurt, and Keith can’t fix it. He’s been through so much, he’s allowed to hurt, but it doesn’t change the fact that it sucks. Keith wants to help him, but he doesn’t know how, isn’t patient enough to break down the walls Shiro’s built back up. In the meantime Keith is going walkabout every second day on missions for the Blade.

  Who is he kidding? He’s not there for his team at all, and he has the audacity to take his frustrations out on Shiro? The one person making sure they all live through this with their sanity intact?

  Shiro is struggling. Allura is holding the team together with her bare hands. Hunk and Pidge are powering through the worst inside discourse the team has ever faced. Lance offered to step down.

  Voltron is falling apart, and he can’t do anything to stop it, except—

  He realises Pidge is on the verge of running to keep up with his stride. He slows a little.

  ‘Shiro should be flying Black again by now.’

  He sounds more miserable every time he says it.

  ‘I think they both disagree with you there.’

  She’s right, unfortunately. They’ve both said so.

  Well. Black implied it by shutting Shiro out. Keith still isn’t convinced that wasn’t a fluke engineered by the haste to form Voltron again.

  He comes to a stop, his eyebrows knit together. ‘Pidge, remember when you were gonna leave to look for your family?’

  ‘Uh, yeah?’

  He lets out his breath through his teeth. ‘Do you think if you went, the Green Lion would have just—picked someone else?’

  She fidgets. Keith recognises the flash of possessiveness in her eyes. He remembers how uncomfortable it was to digest that Red, who by all accounts is practically his soulmate, was being shuffled along to Lance.

  He just doesn’t feel that way about Black.

  The guilt caves his chest in, but he knows he’d give him up in a flash to have Red back.

  ‘Um, maybe? You think Allura could have flown her, too?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just seems like in desperate times, they don’t really care who flies what.’

  His question goes unasked, but he has no doubt they hear it.

  Why not take back Shiro?

  Pidge looks at Hunk for backup, but at that moment Blue shoots into the sky. It’s odd watching Allura pilot her; she doesn’t flip or barrel roll or try to make the Lion dab. She looks strangely stiff in her majesty.

  Like a princess, rather than a high schooler.

  (Not a high schooler anymore, a small part of his mind reminds him. Their grade would have graduated by now, everyone officially moved into their respective flight streams and being assigned real missions.)

  He shakes his head. Shoves on his helmet. ‘Never mind. Let’s chase them down.’

  Hunk snaps his fingers. ‘Hate the “never mind” game.’

  A minute later, they’re in the air.

Keith hits the ground running when Black’s ramp touches the ground. Shiro is waiting for him in the door to the hangar. He feels bad, and he knows he needs to apologise, but not right this second.

  He needs to clear his head, needs to think about this, or he’s going to get overwhelmed and start yelling again.

  ‘Sorry Shiro, I’m going—’

  ‘Is this the best time for training, Keith?’ He opens his mouth to protest, but Shiro shakes his head. ‘We need to deal with the baby. Coran found a few more clues about where he came from.’ His tone implies that Keith shouldn’t argue, and because he’s afraid to piss off Shiro more than he already has, he doesn’t complain.

  He follows begrudgingly. His stomach rolls a little when he realises that he’s walking behind Shiro like a dog, though he doesn’t make an effort to move next to him. This is the chain of command, right? ‘The bridge?’

  ‘Mhm.’

  Keith breathes deep. ‘Shiro, I’m really sorry.’ He looks over his shoulder, patient as ever. Keith just shakes his head. ‘I don’t hear what I’m saying until I say it. It’s just—’ He trails off.

  (—just that the team is teetering on the verge of whole.)

  (—just that Keith can deal with sentries and ships, but he’s never had to care for anything like this before.)

  (—just that even though they got Shiro back, even though they’ve all made it this far, he’s more scared now than he’s ever been.)

  The corner of Shiro’s mouth hitches all the way up. ‘I know. It’s not an easy situation. We can only try to do what’s right.’ He throws an arm around Keith’s shoulders, dragging him in to ruffle his hair. Keith squirms, but the thing about mechanical Galra arms is they’re reallygood at headlocks.

  ‘Jerk,’ he growls, muffled by Shiro’s armpit.

  He laughs. ‘Sure.’

Keith didn’t know Coran is such a terrible singer, but today has truly been enlightening. No wonder the baby is screaming its lungs out. Coran’s (presumed) lullaby gets more aggressive the longer the baby cries. Even Lance is slumped low in his chair, head in his hands. His heel taps the ground with the speed of machine—gun fire.

  Keith heads for him first. He looks up when Keith flicks the arm of his chair, his face a picture of agony. Keith smirks, but it quickly twists into a frown. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lance shakes his head. ‘I know. It’s okay.’ With a wry smile he murmurs, ‘Bad day.’

  He follows Keith’s line of sight, then blinks at his knee like he hadn’t noticed it was moving. It slows significantly but doesn’t stop. He looks down at his hand, suddenly fascinated by his fingernails.

  Keith looks for Allura next. She catches his eye and waves dismissively, continuing her pacing.

  Coran seems to be applying the Swing It Violently Side To Side ‘Til It Shuts Up method. ‘Humans sure are a strange bunch. What language is he speaking?’

  Shiro gently but firmly wrestles the poor kid away from the violent Altean. ‘He’s just crying, Coran.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ He peers down at it, hands folded behind his back.

  ‘What did you find?’ Pidge asks. Shiro nods at the control panel. Keith heads for it, but Pidge beats him to it. ‘Oh, shit!’

  ‘Language,’ Shiro says mildly, bouncing the kid to no effect.

  Oh, shit, Keith agrees silently. Pidge turns the knife over in her hands. The dark pommel shines and the purple Marmora symbol glows, but the blade itself almost absorbs the light that hits it. It’s definitely luxite.

  More startlingly, it looks exactly like his own.

  He tries to remember if that’s normal. He doesn’t know. Despite his efforts, he still knows next to nothing about his heritage.

  ‘So, you’re a Galra baby,’ Hunk coos, wiggling his fingers, completely undeterred by the baby’s constant screams. ‘Maybe we should start a club.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Pidge agrees, ‘Maybe we could call it something like the Blade of Marmora. Just an idea, criticism is welcome.’

  Hunk dutifully ignores her sarcasm. ‘What’s the note say?’

  Keith hadn’t noticed it before, star struck by the facsimile of his knife, He didn’t even know paper existed in space. It’s probably not fair to assume every planet is populated by hologram wielding geniuses, though.

  Pidge snatches it up, and he stares at it over her shoulder. It takes him a moment to realise it’s not in English. The words hurt his eyes, the letters trying to rearrange themselves into something readable before his very eyes. Every time he blinks, the page looks different. The meaning is in the back of his mind, on the tip of his tongue.

  Pidge huffs, unsatisfied. ‘Coran, the translator sucks. I’ve got nothing.’

  He squawks, ‘Don’t blame me, it’s the Lions’ translator! But don’t blame them, either. They can’t be expected to know every language in the universe.’

  Allura plucks it from the Green Paladin’s fingers. ‘I can read it. It says, ‘Lance,’ underlined. Quite aggressively. ‘He’s family. Back in three quintants or dead, details,’ um.’ She looks up. ‘I don’t know the meaning of this symbol, but afterwards it says ‘danger’ and ‘eats goo’.’

  Keith tugs it back gently. He scans it again. Sections of letters jump out at him, and the déjà vu sensation is still there, but totally lacking comprehension.

  Lance, suddenly beside him, snatches it away. ‘It says my name?That’s max levels of creepy. Who—wait.’ Squinting, he shakes it like something might fall out. ‘Huh. Weird. It’s in Spanish.’

  ‘Spanish?’ Hunk echoes, brows furrowed.

  ‘Spanish,’ Lance confirms, no trace of doubt in his voice. ‘It says what Allura said, but it doesn’t say quintants. It says days. Also, that symbol is an equals sign. Details equal danger.’

  ‘Is there an alien species who speaks Spanish and measures time with days?’ Hunk muses in Coran’s direction.

  The advisor hums. ‘Besides humans? Not that I know of. I suppose we canexpect the Lions to know every language in the universe, after all.’

  Lance puts the letter back on the console, and motions to Keith’s hands. When had he taken the knife from Pidge? The edge is nicked in places, but it’s still undoubtedly sharp. He’s gripping it so tightly, it’s lucky he hadn’t taken his gloves off yet. He places it on top of the letter.

  ‘Blue and Red probably learnt it from me, right? Like, absorbed it from my brain? That’s why Allura can read it.’

  It makes sense to Keith, disheartening as it might be. Is his connection to Red really so weak that he isn’t getting new information from her anymore?

  ‘Black should know Japanese, then!’ Pidge points at Shiro. ‘Say something in Japanese.’

  ‘Um. No?’

  Pidge whips around to Keith, grinning expectantly. ‘He said no,’ he reports faithfully.

  There are stars in Pidge’s eyes. ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Okay,’ Allura lifts a hand to put a stop to the tech rant before it can gain traction. ‘What do we know? This baby was specifically delivered to us—’

  ‘To me,’ Lance corrects, ‘It says my name right there.’

  ‘By an anonymous, Spanish speaking, day measuring, human-Galra hybrid,’ Hunk adds.

  Pidge faces the ceiling, squinting. ‘The Iksi said it was a man, although that might be a translation issue. Surely the gender binary doesn’t exist on every single—’

  Lance interjects, ‘So maybe a man, who looked human, in one of our ships.’

  Allura balks. ‘One of our ships?’

  ‘That’s what the Iksi said.’

  ‘Did they?’ Her fingers thread through her hair. ‘Coran, would you check the hangar, just in case?’

  They wait quietly for him to tap out a command. ‘All ships accounted for, Princess. Except for the one Number Five rigged to explode, of course.’

  ‘Accident,’ Pidge grouses for the millionth time. She nods to the blade on the console. ‘They’re also related to the Blade.’

  ‘Maybe.’ The attention of the room falls on Keith. He shrugs. ‘I’m just saying, a baby with a knife isn’t evidence. It could be stolen. Or loaned.’ It’s as weak an excuse out loud as it was in his head.

  Still, Shiro nods. ‘He’s likely, but not definitely, related to the Blade.’ Keith makes sure his sigh of relief is silent.

  ‘Maybe not for long,’ Allura says quietly, twisting her hair in loops around one finger. ‘The note says his parents might be dead in three quintants. Days?’

  ‘It also says they’re coming back,’ Shiro points out.

  Pidge snorts. ‘If they’re not dead.’

  ‘So, what? We’re on babysitting duty? They couldn’t have found anyone else to watch their kid?’

  Keith shakes his head. ‘We’re missing something.’

  Even the baby is quiet for a moment. Maybe he can feel the tension building. His cries become gasps.

  ‘We should keep him ‘til his parents to come back,’ Lance says.

  ‘There’s something weird about this,’ Keith counters.

  ‘Yeah, no duh. But he’s a baby. What’s he going to do?’ Keith taps his arm, glaring at it. Lance scoffs, ‘He’s not a bomb. Or a shapeshifter. Or a spy.’

  Those thoughts had definitely entered Keith’s head. They only sound stupid in Lance’s voice. ‘You don’t know that.’

  The kid bursts into a second round of wails, setting off groans from the entire team. Lance throws his hands up, narrowly missing Shiro’s head. ‘I do know that the Galra don’t speak Spanish. What does it hurt to wait around for a couple of days?’

  ‘It hurts if it’s a trap. It hurts the planets we could be saving right now.’

  ‘Oh, you have got to—’

  ‘I don’t think the Galra are beyond this kind of thing. They do enslave entire races and blow up galaxies just to annoy us,’ Pidge points out. ‘We should contact the Blade and ask if they know anything.’

  ‘They’re not exactly great at keeping track of their members,’ Lance says haughtily, sticking a thumb in Keith’s direction.

  ‘Good idea, Pidge.’ Shiro shoots a warning look at Lance, then Keith. ‘We’ll call Kolivan—’ He pauses, stiffening. Lance raises an eyebrow beside him, but otherwise he shakes it off too quickly for anyone to react. ‘—first thing in the morning and see what he knows about this. For now, I think we all need to—’ The baby cuts him off with an ear-splitting shriek. ‘Rest,’ he finishes weakly.

  ‘Just.’ Lance muscles his hands around the baby’s back. ‘Give him.’ He practically tosses it over his shoulder, nuzzling his cheek into the top of the kid’s head, murmuring in what must be Spanish. His cries quiet almost instantly.

  Hunk wrings his hands. ‘It would make sense if it were a Blade member.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first Marmoran to bang a human.’ Pidge looks pointedly at Keith.

  He crosses his arms. ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, but we do know they’ve had contact with Earth. And, like, they’re always going on dangerous missions, which explains the three days thing. And they know us, kind of. They just want their kid to be safe.’

  ‘So they leave it with the first alien who comes along, hoping he’ll pass it on to us? To Lance? You don’t think it’s weird that we happen to be in the area at the exact moment of a Galra invasion for the first time since Arus?’

  Hunk holds his palms forward in surrender, and Keith forces his body to relax its defensive stance. Hunk politely waits for him to exhale before he continues. ‘I’m just saying, I could close my eyes and shoot in any direction and I’d probably hit a Galra fleet. They’re everywhere these days.’

  ‘We must find Lotor,’ Allura mumbles distractedly. The mood sours considerably, the way it always does when they remember how far off winning this war they are. It’s another reminder that they really don’t have time to play Babysitter’s Club.

  Shiro’s face softens considerably as he looks around the room, understanding of his team’s needs in a way Keith never is.

  ‘Okay team,’ he says, smiling kindly at Allura when she blinks herself out of her daze. ‘That’s enough for tonight. There’s not much we can do right now. We’ll regroup tomorrow.’ Arms folded, he nods towards the door.

  Permission, finally. Keith stops bouncing on the balls of his feet and makes for the training deck.

  ‘And sleep, Keith,’ Shiro calls after him. He rolls his eyes.

  Time to kick the shit out of some training bots.

Allura finds him sitting on the mat in the middle of the room, elbows on his knees and face in his hands. His Paladin armour probably wasn’t made to wear for so many hours straight. There’s still dried sweat under his flight suit from their battle earlier in the day.

  ‘What’s the time?’ he asks innocently, deactivating the bayard laying by his feet. Based on the vaguely pissed look on her face, he must have been in here a while.

  ‘One.’ Castle time is confusing, and there’s no easy way to compare it to Earth hours, but one in the morning is late everywhere.

  ‘You don’t have to check on me. I was about to go to bed.’

  ‘I’m sorry Keith, but I’m afraid I don’t believe you.’ She offers him a hand and yanks him to his feet. With a nod down at his bayard, she says, ‘You may need that.’

  He barely has time to question it before she’s coming at him with her own weapon, the whip lightning—fast and just as scorching. He jumps backwards, automatically summoning his sword into his right hand. Allura makes a startled noise, flicking her wrist to bring the whip in from the other direction. He draws his knife in his other hand, catching the length of her whip and looping it quickly around. When he runs out of blade, he allows it to extend into sword form and lunges. Allura ducks the blade, retracting her bayard as she swings around him and letting it lose again in the same movement. The tip catches his arm with a muted sting.

  ‘Are you going to tell me why you’re pushing the team away?’ she asks nonchalantly.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Not going to tell me, or not pushing the team away?’ A blast of magic leaps from her hand. Keith’s surprised evasion is sloppy. She bares down on him again. ‘I thought we moved past dishonesty a while ago, Keith.’

  ‘I’m not pushing anyone away.’ He nearly bites off his tongue. Rolling and talking is a bad idea. Good to know.

  ‘So you would tell me, or someone else, if there were something on your mind?’

  She raises a delicate eyebrow, unflinching as he takes the opportunity to charge her. She steps out of the way, and his momentum sends him barrelling past her. He spins on his toes, swords already thrown out to block the impending attack. Except it doesn’t come. She simply places her hands on her hips.

  ‘Someone like, say, Hunk and Pidge?’

  He frowns. He doesn’t even want to know what they were thinking, going to Allura. ‘Hunk gossips, and Pidge overthinks everything.’

  He springs back towards her. She snaps her arm, sending her coiled whip soaring. It cracks heavily against the ground, sparks flying from the contact.

  ‘They deserve more credit than that. And so do I.’

  Keith tries to twist his sword around the length of her weapon again, but she throws her weight backwards, sending him wobbling towards her. He brings his bayard up as a last resort, stopping just short of the seam between her neck and shoulder.

  His triumphant smile stops in its tracks as she taps the softer material near his waist. He looks down at the tip of a wicked blade.

  He gapes at her. With a smug curl to her lips she says, ‘You’re not the only one learning new tricks.’ She can’t hold the devilish look; it melts into a beam. ‘By the way, how long have you been able to summon your bayard from such a distance?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was an accident.’

  ‘And I see you’re utilising your Marmoran Blade as well.’

  He shrugs. ‘Just in case.’ In truth, he’s not great at duel—wielding. His bayard doesn’t form a traditional sword, and the different grips make a bigger difference than he’d thought. It uses completely different muscles than his Marmoran blade, and even his ambidexterity can’t help that. 

  He inspects the new bayard form in her hand. He thought it was a dagger, but at second glance it looks more like a spear, the majority of its grip tucked under her arm. She lifts it for a better look.

  ‘It’s an Altean glaive,’ she explains. ‘The favoured weapon of my mother.’

  He offers her a sad half-smile. If she blinks a little quicker, he doesn’t plan on bringing it up.

  Losing a family is a terrible thing to have in common, but it’s certainly pretty binding.

  ‘You surprised me,’ he admits. ‘You’re getting a lot better.’

  ‘How kind,Black Paladin.’ The sarcasm overshadows the pride in her voice, but not by much. Keith figures she must have learned that from Lance.

  He exhales. ‘Thanks, Allura.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  He bumps her shoulder the same way Shiro does to him. Maybe it wouldn’t mean much to the others, but neither of them are naturally very tactile. It’s taken an unbelievable amount of time to get even this close.

  ‘Fighting a real person is a lot more tiring than fighting the gladiators,’ he explains. ‘Their moves are predictable after a while. I’m just about ready to collapse now. So, thanks.’ She bows her head. He spins towards the door, glad to have at least partially distracted her from the real reason she came looking for him, and they both pull up short.

  Lance rests against the doorframe, arms folded, face sour. ‘What’s going on here?’ he asks, evidently trying to keep his voice light and missing the mark by lightyears.

  Allura takes a conscious step away from him. Keith rolls his eyes as hard as he can. He’s getting pretty sick of these not—subtle not—lovers’ spats.

  Allura looks at him for help.

  ‘We were sparring.’ The words come out flat.

  ‘He was falling asleep on the training mat when I came in,’ Allura jokes weakly. They sound like people in an infomercial, and Keith can’t wait to leave.

  Lance squints suspiciously. ‘Right. Well, I was just checking. Something woke me up, so.’ Allura stops in the doorway beside him, still wearing her peace-keeping smile.

  Keith is too tired for peace keeping.

  They all know damn well that the training deck is too far to hear anything less than an explosion from the bedrooms, but Keith is honestly so, so tired of fighting with Lance about stupid shit.

  So he says nothing.

 He wakes up reeling.

  The covers tangle around his feet and he trips as he shoots out of bed. It takes slamming his shoulder into the floor to realise where he is. He stares at the ceiling and taps dits and dahs on the floor until his chest stops heaving so much.

  He can still feel the suck of oxygen from his lungs. The sharp edges of floating debris cutting into his fingertips, even through the thick material of his gloves. His back drips sweat, whether from fear or the heat of the explosion that catapulted him from the ship and blew Regris to bits, he can’t be sure.

  He rubs his eyes furiously to expel the image.

  Someone screams, barely muffled by his door. His heart leaps back into his throat because he’s alive but it opens and there stands Shiro with the baby.

  He frowns, gently brushing aside the baby’s kicking feet. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Yoga,’ Keith snaps. ‘Knock, next time.’

  Shiro’s mouth tilts in amusement. He coos in the baby’s face, ‘Someone woke up on the wrong side of the floor today, huh? Yes, he did! Yes he did!’

  Keith kicks himself free of the blanket. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  ‘Leave the attitude here,’ Shiro says coolly. ‘I don’t want to fight again today.’ The door slides closed behind him. Keith tucks his knees into his chest, his brain screaming hurt hurt hurt even as he tells it to fuck right off.

‘Active Blade members don’t have offspring,’ Kolivan says firmly, his face projecting his usual brand of blank alongside a touch of disapproval.

  ‘The baby suggests otherwise,’ Pidge whispers. Lance huffs in agreement. The kid is back in his arms. Apparently only he can keep it quiet.

  ‘Is there any way someone could have had a child in secret? Or at least know who it belongs to?’ Shiro asks tiredly.

  Kolivan might be considering the question, but the projection could also be frozen. It’s hard to tell. The Paladins wait patiently nevertheless. ‘It might be possible to identify the owner of the Blade. But our members are spread thin trying to locate Lotor, so unless one of the few present at the base recognises it, we cannot help you.’ His face shifts minimally. ‘Keith, we’ll require you for a scouting mission a movement from now.’ Keith opens his mouth to accept, and Shiro opens his to argue. Kolivan beats them both to the punch. ‘If the child does belong in our ranks, it is important that it be returned here safely, so it can be properly raised in our ways. His human blood will hold him back enough as it is. The sooner we overcome it, the better.’

  The projection zips closed and Kolivan is gone.

  ‘He’s such a dick,’ Pidge mumbles. Keith’s scowl softens, which he figures must have been her goal.

  Lance covers the baby’s exposed ears with his hand. ‘Language! Leo’s at an impressionable age.’

  ‘You already named it?’ Keith asks, exasperated.

  ‘Him,’ he amends.

  ‘And after the Titanic guy, no less.’ Pidge shakes her head.

  ‘After everyone’s favourite man-sicle.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  Hunk raises his hand. ‘Shouldn’t he have a more Galra-y name?’

  ‘What, like Keith?’

  Hunk lowers his hand, nodding. Keith glares.

  ‘Don’t get attached, Lance.’ Allura’s columns rise to meet her palms. ‘We’ll return him to his family as soon as we find them. If we can’t, he’ll have to go to the Blade.’

  ‘Ha! Fat chance!’

  Allura folds her arms. Her columns descend again. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Lance says, like it’s obvious, ‘We can’t leave Leo with the Blade. Kolivan isn’t really the fatherly type. Plus, he’s human.’

  ‘If we don’t, we’re taking away the only family he has.’

  Lance shoots Keith a venomous look, twisting his body away like he’s shielding the baby from a physical attack. ‘It says he’s family right there in the note!’

  ‘Whose? Yours? How the hell would—’

  ‘Dude,’ Pidge says. ‘Human? Blade member? Voltron’s family? Maybe he’s yours!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A cousin, or something!’ She snaps her fingers. ‘Case closed!’

  Keith just gapes at her, bewildered.

  Hunk cuts off the argument before it can get progress further. ‘Look, I don’t know about that, but this doesn’t have to be complicated. The note says his parents or whoever will be back in three days. What are they going to think if they show up and we’ve kidnapped their—well, kid?’

  ‘They’ll think he’s with the Blade, where he clearly belongs.’ Keith gestures to the knife on the console.

  ‘Okay, well, if there’s other humans out here, I’d like to know.’

  Lance nods. ‘Me, too.’

  ‘Keith isn’t wrong.’ Lance squeaks, scandalised. She shrugs. ‘They do have a pretty obvious connection to the Blade, so they’ll at least have a starting point.’

  ‘We don’t want to send them on a wild goose chase for their own kid!’

  Pidge groans. ‘It’s—that’s not—Lance, it’s only a wild goose chase if they’re not actually chasing anything. Or they’re going in the wrong direction.’

  Keith adds, ‘They left him with us in the first place. They asked for it.’

  Shiro steps forward. ‘Hunk is right. Someone needs to be here if they come back.’

  Allura, who was in the process of coaxing her podiums upwards again, groans and throws her hands up in defeat.

  Keith rounds on him, desperate now. ‘Shiro, this doesn’t feel right.’

  Maybe it’s the residual effect of his weird headache yesterday making him extra unreasonable. Maybe it’s purely selfish—but somethingin Keith is screaming at him to get answers about that knife.

  So he spirals. ‘If it’s a trap, we’re playing right into the Galra’s hands by staying here. And if this kid really needs help, doing nothing isn’t going to help!’

  Lance snaps, ‘Why are you so desperate to abandon him with any alien who will take him?’

  He groans in frustration. ‘I’mnot. You’d know that if you’d listen to what I’m actually saying!’

  Shiro’s brows pull together. ‘Keith.Easy.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It’s embarrassing to be reprimanded in front of the entire team. More than that, the fact that Shiro even feels the need stings.

  He’s got a problem with stepping between Keith and his issues. Like Keith isn’t old enough to handle them himself. Like he hasn’t been leading the team himself for months.

  Face scrunched, Keith storms towards the console. He swipes the knife off the bench, and when he turns around, Shiro has his right hand activated.

  The room stills.

  Keith’s heart pounds, his eyes trained on the purple fist raised and ready.

  Shiro’s face goes slack with horror. The purple heat fizzes away as fast as it appeared.

  ‘I—’

  Keith cuts him off by holding the knife higher, voice on the precipice of steady and broken. ‘The Blade knows who this belongs to. Whether they’re dead or alive, Kolivan can put the kid where it belongs.’

  Lance’s fingers tighten around the baby’s back. Keith thinks he might just crack his teeth, or cry, or both, because it’s all going wrong, nothing is coming out the way he means it, no one gets it—

  He moves to put the knife back down when a familiar tingle runs from his fingers into his palm and up to his elbow. He blinks at the fully--formed sword in his hand.

  Pidge bursts, ‘What the fu—’

  The sword clatters to the ground. Keith steps backwards, shaking his hand like it bit him.

  ‘Should he be able to do that?’ Allura demands.

  Keith shakes his head.

  All eyes swing to Shiro. He can’t seem to lower his hand, rubbing his wrist hard enough to bruise were it real flesh. He seems caught off guard by the attention, his eyes swinging dizzily around the room like he’s lost. ‘I—I don’t know.’

  ‘We should ask Kolivan when we get to the base,’ Pidge suggests, grinning meekly. ‘I think he owes us a couple of explanations.’

  Shiro cracks his set of real knuckles. ‘Okay. We need to, um.’

  Allura saves him. ‘Pidge, you’ll have to stick around in Green. Keep the cloak on, in case this is some kind of trick.’ Her gaze meets Keith’s, a flicker of support alongside a command to be civil. ‘Hunk, you’ll be with her.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Okay, Princess.’

  ‘The rest of us will go to the Marmoran base. If there’s any sign of activity here, contact us immediately and we’ll wormhole back.’

  Hunk nods. Pidge slumps.

  Lance whines, ‘Can’t I—’

  ‘Only Red can get to the base,’ Allura reminds him. ‘We’ll need you.’

  He bounces the kid, biting his lip.

  To Pidge, who is pouting, Allura say, ‘Get going immediately. We need to get to the Blade as fast as possible so that we don’t miss the window to pass safely between the black holes.’

  Pidge turns to Keith, almost like she’s asking permission. He looks back at the sword, still lying where he’d dropped it.

  In the end, she shuffles out of the bridge behind Hunk only after Allura promises to update them on whatever they found.

  Keith scoops up the sword once more, holding it by the blade. It shrinks under his fingers.

  Shiro takes a step in his direction. ‘Keith, I—’ 

  He knows it’s the wrong thing to do, that he needs to own up to his actions, but he can’t look at his brother right now. He walks past him and through the doors.

  (Three guesses where he’s going.)

Tucked into the very corner of the training deck, Keith unsheathes his own knife. The new one is a little more worn, a chunk missing from its pommel, but besides the scratches they’re identical.

  He picks up each one, testing their weight like that might make a difference. They activate in unison, extending into the exact same sword. If it weren’t for the dings in the new blade, Keith wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

  He tucks his knife away with a sigh and is immediately glad he did when Lance comes storming onto the deck. He stops short a few steps in. When he spots Keith, he blinks in surprise.

  Keith’s face warms. Being caught folded up in the very corner of one of the biggest rooms on the ship probably isn’t very leader-ly. He leaps to his feet, picking up the second blade with the movement. It tries to extend automatically, and he glares down at it.

  ‘What’s up, Lance?’

  ‘Don’t what’s up Lance me.’ He points an accusing finger. Drops it. ‘We’re just worm-holing. Allura told me to make sure you didn’t have a sword out, ‘cause you’ll probably skewer yourself if you do.’

  Keith opens his fingers, and the knife falls to the ground. He looks at Lance for approval.

  The Red Paladin bites back a smile, eyebrows raised. ‘Okay. That works.’ The ship gains speed, rumbling beneath their feet. ‘Jeez Princess, don’t give us a tick or anything.’

  He sprints for the wall behind Keith and presses his back to it. Keith follows suit, familiar with the awful gut--sucking sensation of the wormhole and not looking forward to smacking his face on the ground when the Castle picks up speed. At the last second, he slams his boot down on the knife.

  The pressure pushes his hands flat against the wall, and he wishes he were in his chair on the bridge. The sensation is uglier near the middle of the ship, for some reason.

  Beside him, Lance starts shuffling his way up the wall, cackling. ‘Oh my god,’ he wheezes. ‘Keith, look! Spider—Lance, Spider—Lance, does whatever a—aah!’He only drops a few feet as they exit the wormhole and slow down, but he lands with his arms covering his face.

  Keith tilts his head. ‘You done?’

  Lance rubs his tailbone, pouting. ‘Not even a little sympathy?’

  ‘Not even a little.’

  Grumbling, he tugs at the knife beneath Keith’s boot. Flicks an unimpressed look upwards. It’s a beat of awkward eye contact before Keith realises he should lift his foot.

  Lance holds the blade under his nose, turning it over and over in his long fingers. ‘You know anything about this, Kogane?’

  ‘Wouldn’t I have told you if I did?’

  ‘No,’ Lance says flatly. ‘So, do you?’

  Keith almost tells him. His fingers dance backwards, grasping for the hilt of the knife at his hip. But he remembers Lance’s sharp glares. How Shiro overrules every decision he makes. He presses the traitorous fingers into a tight fist.

  ‘I don’t know any more than you.’

  Lance nods, though he looks like he doesn’t quite believe him.

  He’s smarter than he’s given credit for.

Shiro catches him in the kitchen that afternoon. Catches because he’d purposely avoided the team during breakfast and lunch, not excited to spend any time with them after whatever—that was. He jerks guiltily halfway through filling a bowl of goo.

  ‘Keith.’ Shiro smiles, relieved. ‘There you are. I’ve been looking for you.’

  He shakes the last drops of goo from the hose rather viciously to stall turning around and meeting his brother’s eye. ‘Are we headed to the base?’

  ‘Not yet. The passage won’t be safe for another couple of vargas. Actually, I was hoping we could talk.’

  Keith turns slowly, then gestures to the table. Shiro follows him there and sits across from him. He seats the baby on the table in front of him. It peers up at Keith with curious eyes framed by long lashes, making grabby hands for his spoon as he lifts it to his mouth. Shiro holds it in place by the waist.

  He chuckles. ‘We fed him a couple of hours ago. I had no idea babies ate so much. We should be thankful the note said he could eat goo—Coran went looking for formula we supposedly had stashed away and it looked bad.’ Keith nods, staring intently at his lunch. Shiro sighs. ‘Keith, we both know what happened is not on. It’s not an excuse, but lately I’ve been—’

  His fingers tap the baby’s suit. It must be an old one of Allura’s that Coran dug up—a soft blue dress with a line of silk—like material winding around the arms and a trail of spit gathering on the front. How such a small mouth can produce such a solid gush of saliva, Keith will never know. His goo tastes sour on his tongue.

  ‘Jumpy,’ Shiro finishes finally.

  ‘I know. And you have every right to be. I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up. I’m sorry,’ he mumbles.

  The silence following is uncomfortable at best, each Paladin lost in his own world. The baby breaks it with a whine, stretching across the table as far his little arms will allow, lip wobbling. Shiro slides him across the table to Keith. He rears away from the approaching kid, taking his bowl with him. The baby whimpers in response. Shiro laughs.

  ‘He’s just a baby, Keith. He doesn’t bite.’ He slides him a little further, nudging him with the very tip of his fingers. ‘That we know of,’ he adds as an afterthought. ‘Don’t let him fall.’

  Keith holds him loosely to stop him tumbling onto the floor. His mouth falls open expectantly, so Keith scoops a little bit of goo onto the other end of his spoon. The kid doesn’t close his lips around the spoon, and the goo dribbles down his chin. He blinks huge blue eyes up at Keith, tongue smacking uselessly at the roof of his mouth. Keith tries to scrape the goo from his face and neck, somehow making an even bigger mess.

  ‘I think he likes you,’ Shiro says, beaming.

  Keith leans side to side. The baby’s eyes follow him, mouth still hanging open. He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. He won’t stop staring at me.’

  ‘It’s a good thing,’ Shiro promises through a yawn. ‘Actually, would you mind watching him for a little bit? Lance was with him all night, and I’ve had him all morning.’

  ‘Wait, Shiro, I don’t do—’

  ‘Of course you do. Coran can probably handle any questions you have.’ He stands up, power walking for the door. ‘Thanks so much, Keith!’

  Keith stands up to follow him. The baby grunts when he tries to lift him; he lets go immediately in fear of breaking him. ‘Shiro!’ he calls desperately, to no avail.

  This is a bad idea.  

  The kid stares up at him, pushing his tongue over his bottom lip. ‘Right,’ Keith huffs, ‘food. I can do that.’

  The kid’s face doesn’t change, but Keith gets the distinct impression that he doesn’t believe in him. It’s probably the slightly raised eyebrows. There’s something judge-y in his eyes, too.

  ‘You’re as bad as Lance.’

  Even though the thought was his, the comment takes Keith by surprise. The kid doesn’t care. He must be feeling impatient, because he grabs the spoon as soon as it’s within reach and helps jam it into his mouth.

  Keith sits back down so he can aim better, a little nervous about stabbing straight through the back of the kid’s throat with the force of his spoon—guiding.

  Half a bowl of goo later, both he and Keith have green covered hands and clothes. Keith tries to drag a cloth from the other end of the table towards them with the toe of his boot, standing on one leg and completely stretched out so he doesn’t have to let go of the baby. He might not be jumping at the chance to babysit, but letting him somersault to his death is a little over the top. Since Shiro put that image in his head, he’s been a little paranoid. He nearly lost it when the baby flipped onto his hands and knees and tried to scuttle away.

  The cloth is just out of reach, almost purposely so.

  Keith slides back into his seat with a growl. ‘Probably Lance,’ he tells the baby sourly. The kid blows a raspberry at that. Keith frowns miserably, though he can’t help but agree.

  His charge apparently feels the need to lighten the mood. He slaps his hand in what’s left of the goo, flicking it across Keith’s cheek before he can move to stop the destruction. He gurgles happily at the result. Keith grabs his little fist before he can do it again.

  He doesn’t dare look at the wall behind him. He assumes the worst.

  ‘No,’ he says as sternly as he dares. (Which isn’t very. If the kid cries, Keith will give up altogether.)

  ‘O!’ The baby grins. He only has his front four teeth. He gives Keith the impression of a demonic rabbit, his tongue folded and pushing through the gaps.

  Keith pulls a glob of green out of one of the soft hairs hanging partway down the kid’s forehead. ‘Who the hell are you, kid?’ He wipes a thumb down one of his cheeks, trying to scrape the food goo away. The baby reaches for his face too, mimicking the stroke with a grubby hand down Keith’s right cheek and a soft gurgle. ‘Where did you come from?’

  He blows a raspberry, immensely proud of himself. Keith gives a short exhale through his nose, less a sigh than a puff.

  The idea entered his head the moment he saw the Marmoran Blade, though he had tried to shove it away.

  They’re not so different.

  He doesn’t want to think like that. Doesn’t want to put his guard down and miss something important just because they’re probably both orphans. He can’t afford to put blind faith in him simply because both their parents were assholes.

  He winces at the thought. He doesn’t hate his parents. Maybe when he was younger, but not anymore. Probably. And he doesn’t know the whole story behind the kid’s, so maybe it’s too soon to judge properly.

  It’s hard not to be defensive of someone so defenceless, though. That’s kind of his whole job.

  ‘Where are your parents?’ he asks softly, fiddling with the baby’s tiny covered foot. ‘Hopefully Kolivan doesn’t make you do the Trials to find out. I wouldn’t put it past—’

  ‘Da!’

  His brows furrow. ‘What?’

  Laughter bubbles out of him, and he repeats, ‘Da.’

  ‘Dad?’ Keith guesses. ‘Who is he?’

  Kolivan, his mind supplies. He shudders. Lance hadn’t lied; Kolivan isn’t the fatherly type. Just the thought of him trying to be nurturing is uncomfortable.

  He gets no answer. The baby simply stuffs his fist in his mouth and sucks, back to staring.

  ‘Uh, Keith?’

  He jumps. Lance somehow managed to sneak right up beside him.

  ‘How long have you been standing there?’

  ‘Only a second.’

  He feels a surge of embarrassment with a chase of relief. ‘Please take him.’

  Lance taps his chin, humming theatrically. ‘Well, I could, but I do have a lot to do.’ He meets Keith’s gaze, unimpressed by the desperate puppy eyes. ‘When did “it” become a “he?”’

  ‘We got a lot closer the third time he spat food on me.’ He lifts his hands slightly, pushing the baby slightly towards Lance without actually picking him up. ‘Please.’

  Not even trying to disguise his amusement, Lance tucks his hands under Leo’s little armpits, completely unfazed by the goo squelching under his fingers. He lifts the kid up high and gains a squeaky laugh in return, only slightly muffled by the fingers in his mouth. ‘Imagine that, Leo! The infamous Black Paladin, asking for help. Never thought I’d see the day.’

  ‘Funny,’ Keith says flatly.

  Lance nods. ‘Well, until you change a diaper, I have every right to make fun of you. Two vargas ‘til lift off, by the way, in case you want to look all pretty for purple knife daddy.’ Keith makes a noise of disgust. Lance shrugs. ‘We don’t judge, do we Leo?’

  Leo blows a bubble of spit over his knuckles. Lance smiles like that settles it.

  ‘Two vargas.’ He backs towards the door. ‘By the way, you got a little—’ He swipes a finger down one cheek. Keith moves to wipe it away and stops short, seeing the back of his hand also covered in the stuff. Lance cackles through the doorway and all down the hall, the baby echoing him with high-pitched giggles.

Chapter Text

Imago

In Keith’s opinion—not that anyone asks—Lance’s first flight between the blackholes which bookend the Marmoran base goes as well as expected, considering the extra pressure of an over-crowded cockpit, including a baby who apparently isn’t fond of space travel.

  He looks a little windblown when he stumbles down Red’s ramp. It’s because Allura yanked on his hair to ask him to slow down.

  Kolivan waits with arms crossed in the cargo dock, the only hangar tall enough to accommodate even the smaller Lions. His expression betrays nothing but mild disdain as they approach with the noisy kid.

  ‘Thank you for meeting us,’ Allura says with practiced politeness. She’s still not entirely comfortable around the Blade. Keith is pretty sure she offered to hold the baby so she doesn’t have to shake any hands.

  ‘I do have business,’ he says coolly, ‘so if we might resolve this—’

  ‘Baby?’ Lance offers. Keith shoots him a glance that says be cool. Lance presses his lips into a line.

  Shiro passes forwards the knife. ‘Any idea who it belongs to?’

  Kolivan inspects the blade, running a claw down one sharp edge. ‘No. His scent is mingled too much with that of your team.’

  Shiro falters.

  Lance mumbles, ‘That’s not creepy.’ By which he means it very much is.

  ‘He means the knife,’ Keith tells the Galra, his cheeks darkening. Kolivan doesn’t have the capacity to feel embarrassed, but if Keith can feel the judgement rolling off his team, he likely can too.

  ‘Ah.’ Kolivan shakes his head. ‘Unfortunately, no. We’ll have to ask the other members during the meeting.’ He passes it back to Keith, who quickly hands it off to Shiro. He earns several odd looks for the urgency. ‘We can pass the child around, too, in case anyone recognises it.’

  Lance looks increasingly offended. To stop the impending argument, Keith blurts, ‘Kolivan?’

  The Galra is already half turned to leave. He raises a furry eyebrow.

  ‘Can Blade members activate each other’s weapons?’

  Galra faces aren’t easy to read, but Keith has had more practice than the others lately. He notices how the Blade’s yellow eyes flicker towards the knife in Shiro’s hand. ‘No. They’re tied to blood. Elsewise, anyone could steal and make use of them.’ Far too evenly, he asks, ‘Why?’

  Keith holds his flat gaze. ‘I was just wondering.’

  Kolivan waits a beat before he nods sharply. He makes to leave again, and Keith falls into step beside him, waving the rest of the team back.

  ‘If I did, what would it mean?’

  ‘It would mean that you are tied to that blade by blood.’ Apparently sick of being tailed, he adds, ‘The meeting commences when the scouting party docks. Make yourself useful until then.’

  ‘Of course.’ Keith snaps to a stop, shoulders tense, allowing the leader to move off. He turns watches Kolivan wind between the slim ships the Blade uses to transport goods. Even their cargo ships are light and flexible, quick to slip away. One Blade nods in his direction, although their mask is up so Keith doesn’t recognise them. He nods back anyway.

  The team watches him walk back expectantly, and he watches his feet. When everyone has waited in silence for a few milli-ticks too many, Lance prompts, ‘So?’ 

  ‘What?’

  ‘So,’ Shiro says, ‘what did he say about you using the knife?’

  A cold rush of guilt slides down Keith’s back. Why is this all starting to feel like his fault? ‘That I have to be related by blood.’ His eyes flick to Leo. ‘To him. Or whoever it belongs to.’

  Lance’s jaw drops. ‘Wait, so, like, Leo isyour cousin or something? Pidge was right?’

  ‘No,’ Keith says quickly. ‘He doesn’t even look like me.’

  Lance leans into Allura’s space to get a closer look. ‘I dunno. He kinda has your eyes.’

  ‘Maybe having human blood in addition to the Galra half is enough,’ Allura suggests.

  She’s frowning like she doesn’t believe it, but Keith knows a lifeline when he sees one.

  ‘Right. Plus, he’s Spanish.’ 

  Lance corrects quickly, ‘Uh, no. He speaks Spanish. Actually, he doesn’t even do that—his parents do. He could from anywhere.’ His face lights up. ‘Maybe you’re Cuban, little Leo!’

  ‘Here’s what we know,’ Shiro cuts in. His voice is solid, familiar; the only thing holding together Keith’s sanity. ‘He’s some part Galra. He’s definitely human. Whoever had him last speaks Spanish, and measures time in Earth units. And he’s related to Keith, by whatever definition, confirmed by the note and the blade.’

  Keith closes his eyes, just for a second. He just needs one second.

  Lance hedges, ‘Uh, Keith?’

  He shakes his head, dizzied by the motion. ‘It can’t be my mom. The Iksi said it was a man who dropped him off. A human.’

  Shiro places a hand on his shoulder. ‘Your mom’s not human, Keith. But your dad is.’ Keith’s had snaps up, and he rushes to clarify, ‘Maybe his dad is too.’ To the team he says, ‘Nothing’s changed. All we can do is wait to see if anyone recognises him or the knife and go from there. If we find a connection to Keith or his family, that’s just a bonus.’ He turns to Keith. ‘Are you alright with that?’

  And what can he say to the Shiro who raised him, who was captured by the Galra twice, who has nothing but Keith’s best interest in mind?

  He nods slowly, face a brick wall to dam the conflict in his head.

  Lance puts his hands on his hips. ‘So, should we—’

  Keith pulls aside a passing Blade with wide white spots dusted over his forehead. ‘Do you know when the scouting party docks?’

  The Galra frowns, obviously displeased to be torn from his work. ‘No more than forty doboshes.’ Keith lets him go with a grateful nod.

  With slow steps backwards he instructs the team, ‘Be back here in thirty doboshes. Don’t be late, and don’t get lost. Kolivan asked me to go help out with something, so I’ll meet you here.’

  ‘Keith!’ Shiro calls in protest. He just tosses a wave over his shoulder, already escaping. 

Keith makes for the training deck. Just to mix things up.

  The Blade of Marmora have a very set style of attack—namely, don’t engage unless absolutely necessary. Combat is practised exclusively with other Blade members; the light-and-sound-sensitive bots wander a set designed to hone stealth.

  The objective is to pocket a small device on the other side of the room and get back to the starting point without alerting the guards. It was challenging the first time because it was so different to training on the Castle, but after a few run-throughs it starts to look the same. Keith has found a path that doesn’t engage the bots at all.

  Today he leaps straight over the first wall of crates and smack bang into a bot.

  It cries out in warning, a wretched beeping noise instead of a voice because the Blade has no flair for realism or theatricality. He lets it chime, simply holding it off until more bots arrive. As the wave of reinforcements surge around the corner he disables the first.

  The Paladin armour, advanced though it might be, was designed ten thousand years ago. It’s built to protect in battle, but it limits his movements. The Marmoran suit shapes itself around his body, lets him turn and swing and whatever else. He doesn’t have to think about what he can do, just turns his mind off and fights purely on instinct.

  He hacks through opponents until his shoulders ache and his hair sticks to the back of his neck. They aren’t programmed to be particularly difficult enemies, but it’s still satisfying to hit something.

  He lunges for one of the remaining bots in a sloppy dive that just barely manages to incapacitate it. The move leaves him stumbling, however, over the broken ankle of another. There’s a blaster at the nape of his neck within a second. The simulation ends right there.

  Keith gets a glimpse of the wreckage before the bots pull themselves back together. It’s incredibly creepy to watch, their limbs sliding over the floor to reform Frankenstein bodies. He figures they must be magnets or something, but it’s still the stuff of nightmares. They march past him to reset the level.

  He taps his helmet. Two angry red clock faces appear in the corner of his visor, one counting sixty doboshes in a varga, the other twenty vargas in a quintant. It takes a second for his brain to adjust to the alien devices, and then he taps to dispel them. He has time for another round.

  He’s about to command the level to start when, muffled by the wall between them, a deep voice murmurs, ‘You are not meant to go through that door.’ Keith strains to hear the rest of the conversation but only picks up mumbles. A moment later the voice stresses, ‘I really wouldn’t recommend it.’

  The door slides open anyway, revealing Lance. The Blade member Keith asked to deter members of Voltron who might come looking for him slinks away.

  ‘Y’know, I’m not sure these guys like me very much.’ He puts his hands on his hips, helmet tucked into the crook of his elbow. He’s ridiculously tall at the top of the stairs. Keith fights his automatic response to stand level with him. ‘You’re a hard guy to find.’

  ‘Take a hint,’ Keith puffs, the rush of air bouncing around his helmet and displacing his fringe.

  ‘You wound me.’ His eyes sweep over the room. From the top of the stairs, Lance can probably see the entire thing. ‘Sweet training deck. How many of these have you got hidden away?’

  Keith adjusts his grip on his blade. Since he can’t take his bayard on missions for the Blade, he tries to practise without it. ‘Allura already gave me a lecture, if that’s why you’re here.’ He sends him a pointed look, because of course, Lance already knows that.

  ‘Okay, skipping the small talk. I dig it.’

  ‘Lance—’

  ‘No, no, no. Something’s up, and you’re better off yelling at me than embarrassing yourself in front of your Marmorite buddies.’ He curls his fingers in a come-at-me gesture. ‘I can take it.’

  ‘Nothing’s up, Lance. I just want this whole ordeal to be over with.’

  ‘Ordeal? You mean babysitting for a total of one day?’ Keith nods solemnly. Lance rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. ‘Unbelievable. Hordes of Galra soldiers and he doesn’t blink, but pass him a kid and he loses his nerve. I thought you’d be excited.’

  ‘What the hell do I have to be excited about?’ He wrenches off his helmet. It’s clear Lance doesn’t plan on leaving him alone. He won’t be able to fit in that second round after all.

  Lance takes that simple act as an invitation to drop to his ass with terrifying speed, long legs stretching down several stairs. ‘I mean, your family is kind of coming together, right? Maybe a brother, maybe a cousin? Maybe your mom?’

  Keith sets his jaw stubbornly.

  With a dainty roll of his eyes, Lance pats the step beside him. Keith crosses his arms. He pats more aggressively. Keith huffs, but makes his way over. He puts his helmet in his lap, swiping at a smudge on the visor with a gloved finger.

  Lance waits so patiently it’s almost infuriating.

  ‘Look,’ he growls finally, ‘Say this kid is my brother, somehow. That means my mom dumped him with us on purpose.’

  ‘Okaaaaay?’

  ‘So,my mom knows where I am.’

  He scrubs the smudge a little harder, but it just slides across the surface like a living thing, always out of reach but never disappearing.

  Lance takes a moment to mull it over. ‘Ah.’

  Keith slams his helmet on the ground between his knees. Lance shifts beside him.

  ‘Maybe she can’t really get to us. Maybe she’s in danger, or being watched, or she hasn’t had the chance?’ They’re empty excuses and he knows it, based on how his fingers start to loop together. ‘Well, the note says she’s coming back, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Or she’s dead.’

  Lance slides closer so he can put his hand on Keith’s shoulder. The weight of it on top of his armour is stifling. Keith was never claustrophobic until he reached the vastness of space.

  Keith doesn’t really make plans—that’s kind of his thing—but for once there’s no immediate action to be taken. No fight or flight, just questions that need careful deliberation.

  Is he supposed to leave Leo here, the way hewas always dumped wherever was most convenient? Then they both lose the only family they have.

  Or they take him, and, what—become the world’s worst foster parents? Nearly die every second day? Practically put an innocent kid on the front lines?

  Keith of all people knows that good intentions don’t translate into ability.

  Even if he does have the teeniest, niggling urge to protect this kid, he has also methimself. Some people are doomed to fail from the get-go, and, well, what positive family structure does Keith have to use as a foundation?

  Lance gives him a half-hearted smile. ‘You’re thinking pretty loudly.’

  He rests his cheek on his palm, the utter exhaustion of the emotional rollercoaster finally catching up with him. ‘None of us are qualified to raise a kid in the middle of a war.’

  Keith can’t even pick him up.

  ‘To be fair, none of us were really qualified to fight in the war, either,’ Lance says gently. ‘It’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out, and if she comes back, we won’t have to.’

  Keith looks at him through his fingers. ‘Lance, how can I trust her not to abandon him the second she gets the chance? It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  No matter how much either of them want to deny it—it’s pity that paints Lance’s face all soft and blue.

  ‘There’s one thing I can promise you, cross my heart and hope to die.’ He speaks slowly to emphasise his point: ‘Parents are really, really dumb. Like, okay—do you remember in middle school when suddenly everyone had a phone?’ He nods, although it’s a distant memory from a different life. ‘I begged my mom for one too. We couldn’t afford for everyone to have their own phone, but I didn’t get that then. Anyway, for my birthday she got me one of those kid mobile things. They’re like walkie-talkies, with just one button that calls one number. I couldn’t tell the difference, but my friends made fun of me for ages. I told her I hated her for that.’ The corner of his mouth tugs up. ‘I was kind of a brat.’

  Keith isn’t a hundred percent sure they’re comparable situations, and it must show in his face.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. My point is, she was doing her best. Sometimes parents make bad choices when they’re trying to do the right thing. Good intentions, and all that. But they can get better. They learn.’ With no small measure of hesitance, he says, ‘Like Hunk said, wherever she’s going is dangerous. Maybe she just wanted him to be safe.’

  (It sounds like something Keith’s dad used to say before he died. He’d come home covered in soot and ash, make ramen, and drag Keith out to sit in the back of his truck and catch the end of the sunset. As the inky night smothered the last signs of day and pinpricks of light appeared in the sky like bullet holes, Keith would ask where his mom had gone. His father’s face would melt into something longing, and he’d launch into a story about how kickass or strong or crazy his mom was. Keith would listen quietly, though he’d always heard the story before.

  Although passionate, his parents’ love story was pretty short.

  When he’d finished his noodles and all the warmth had leaked from the metal truck bed he’d ask, ‘But where is she now?’

  His dad would smile every time. ‘I’m not sure, buddy. Somewhere important, probably.’

  ‘When’s she coming back?’

  ‘Aw, kid.’ He’d tug him into a hug, eyes on the stars. ‘She left to protect us. You know that.’

  ‘Is she in the army?’ A kid in his class had an uncle in the army.

  ‘Something like that,’ his dad would say. ‘She just wants us to be safe, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he’d lie. And he’d nod, even though the desert was filled with scary noises and the gaping hole where his mother should be made him fill anything but safe.)

  ‘Keith,’ Lance says, in the same voice his father would use, reeking of promises he can’t keep, ‘we’ll figure it out. We always do.’

  ‘Okay,’ he lies.

  Lance picks up his helmet and tips it so he can the visor from the inside. He taps the outside, squints at the clock. ‘Uh, that’s thirty doboshes, I think. We should go, right?’

  Keith considers opening his mouth. There’s a lot he could tell him. 

  The fact that he said thirty doboshes instead of forty because he didn’t trust that no one would get lost. That he figured he’d need to reserve time for hunting one of them down. That he’d figured it would be Lance, actually.

  Let’s stay here a bit longer, he imagines saying. Sorry I’ve been weird lately, I’ve just felt completely out of place and I don’t think I can do it anymore—I’m thinking about leaving Voltron, is that okay with you? It’d be a weight off my shoulders, but only if Black will stop being a dick and let Shiro back in. 

  ‘Keith?’

  ‘Sorry. Yeah.’ They stand together, and for a second just look at each other. Keith shoves his helmet back on to sever the eye contact. ‘Let’s go.’

  He pushes ahead to lead the way back.

They find the others standing by Red’s nose. Keith refrains from asking whether they went exploring, fearing the answer. Kolivan won’t be happy if they’ve messed with any of the Blade’s operations. Not that Shiro or Allura seem particularly capable of accidentally ruining anything in so little time. Leo, on the other hand...

  ‘This way.’ They scramble after him. He pretends not to notice Lance shake his head in Shiro’s direction before he falls in step with Keith.

  Even though they will have docked in the other hangar, it’s clear the scouting party has arrived. Blade members never seem to rush around, but they do move quickly. They slip by like shadows, localising somewhere on the upper levels. Keith flows with their movements, nearly leaving his team behind a few times because they insist on ducking and weaving between Blades instead of just moving with the crowd.

  The Blade holds a base-wide meeting once a movement, although there are always teams still out in the field. They’re usually short (the Galra don’t waste time with unnecessary fanfare) and therefore cover very little. Voltron is lucky not to have missed this one.

  Kolivan announces that a few teams will be diverted from their regular missions to investigate a possible trade route Lotor might be involved in. No one protests, of course.

  He finds Keith’s face in the crowd and nods. He takes Leo’s blade from Shiro, scampers quickly through the Galra in front of him and passes it handle first to Kolivan. He in turn holds it high.

  ‘Team Voltron is seeking the owner of this weapon.’ He hands it to the Blade closest to him, then gestures to the team. Allura and Shiro stand straighter under the weight of the eyes on them. Lance winks at the hulking Galra by his side, who leans away. ‘If anyone recognises the child with the Princess, or knows who it’s parents might be, please come forward.’

  Shiro clears his throat. ‘We have reason to believe they may be female.’

  The meeting is silent as the knife is passed from Galra to Galra, confused glances swapped in its wake. A few members approach Allura to inspect the child, but all shake their head in the end.

  The further around the room the knife goes, the more panic starts to set in. He curses. Even if someone did have a kid, they’d probably keep it secret. Sex isn’t really a hot button topic around here.

  But then why give Leo the blade?

  ‘Kolivan.’ Keith snaps to attention, blinking at the Blade member stepping towards him with the knife. The four circles on their mask seem to watch him. ‘I’ve seen this blade before.’

  Kolivan dismisses the room.

  Keith flags down the team before the gathered Blades can bury them. Lance catches up to him first.

  ‘Hey,’ he hisses over the noise of the scattering Blade members. He grabs his wrist, and Keith almost rips it away. ‘We’ll figure it out,’ he promises. Keith nods numbly.

  The group steps into a small room that might be purposely designed for secret meetings. The lights are dim, and the walls press them closer together than anyone wants to be.

  Kolivan closes the door behind Shiro. ‘Riag. Tell us what you know.’

  The Blade who identified the knife removes her mask. She’s obviously strong, but also one of the oldest members Keith has seen. A stripe of fur down her nose and chin, as well as the high, stiff hairs at the tip of her ears is white at the roots.

  ‘Whose knife is it?’ he demands.

  She looks down on him with pupiless eyes. ‘I know who it belonged to, many deca-phoebs ago. But she lost it while she was undercover. Where it has been all this time, I do not know.’

  He resists the temptation to shake her. ‘Who is she?’

  Riag turns her head, her ears twitching. ‘Krolia. We called her Lia.’

  Shiro motions for him to continue. He catches Lance’s eye as he turns back to Riag and pauses, pleading. Lance waves to grab her attention back from the wall. ’Do you know where she is now? If this baby could be hers?’

  ‘She’s been undercover for years.’

  ‘Any idea where, or—?’

  ‘We don’t make it our business to know every individual’s mission here,’ Kolivan says gruffly. ‘Save for within the database, there’s likely no trace of her.’

  Lance continues, ‘Could we check—’

  ‘No.’

  Keith protests, ‘But it’s—’

  ‘It couldn’t be her child anyway,’ Riag snaps. ‘She’s a professional, and more than that, she’s undercover.Even if it were in her nature to chase frivolous desires, she wouldn’t have time to traipse over half the universe to get pregnant, let alone on your dirty planet.’

  Keith grits his teeth, but Lance bursts, ‘Wait! You know our planet? I thought only the Unulu had been out that far.’

  She nods, grimacing. ‘Earth. It’s part of the system Lia and I were assigned to under Zarkon’s command.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’ Lance squeaks.

  ‘Zarkon?’Shiro demands, brows pulled low over his eyes. There really isn’t enough room in this closet to have a fist fight, although Keith isn’t sure he would blame him for trying.

  ‘We were undercover,’ Riag spits. ‘Are you familiar with the Blade of Marmora at all? We spend most of our lives pretending to work for Zarkon.’

  ‘What was the mission?’ Allura asks.

  Riag looks the Princess up and down. Shiro and Lance both stiffen by her side, but she steps forward with her head held high, Leo sitting on her hip.

  ‘Zarkon was sending search parties to the furthest reaches of the universe to find Voltron.’ Allura inhales sharply. ‘Our job was to ensure he didn’t find it, and report back if we did. As you already know, the parties only managed to find the Red Lion.’ Her mouth twists. ‘The Emperor knew your father well. It was only a matter of time before he found his Lion.’

  Keith thinks of nights in the desert. Of living no less than fifty miles from Blue his entire life. His father watching the stars and promising that his mom had left to protect them both.

  He tries to blink away the pounding in his head and the drop of his stomach, to no avail.

  He tastes the name on his tongue. Lia.It could pass for human.

  His fingers find Lance’s elbow and hold tight as he catches his balance. How long has he been standing beside him? Lance searches his face for less than a second before turning back to Riag. ‘The Blue Lion was on our planet. She never reported that?’

  ‘She never found any Lion,’ she repeats.

  ‘Is that when she lost her knife?’

  Riag dips her head in confirmation.

  ‘I used the blade,’ Keith blurts. His grip tightens on Lance’s arm. ‘I activated it.’

  Kolivan heaves a long-suffering sigh, like he knew all along. He probably did. Riag’s eyes widen. ‘You used Lia’s blade? But that would mean—’

  ‘She’s my mom. She has to be.’ He teeters slightly, but Lance’s shoulder is there to push him upright again.

  ‘But the knife was with Leo,’ Shiro pipes up, pressing his pinkie into his palm with his thumb until it pops. ‘How is it with him? Whose do you have?’

  All eyes turn back to him expectantly. His foot shuffles back in minute retreat. Lance must feel it. He shoots him a quizzical look.

  Heart pounding away, he draws his knife from its sheath behind his hip. Riag takes it from him. A blade in each hand, she growls, ‘What is this?’

  ‘My—’

  ‘It is not! This is Lia’s blade.’ She waves it in front of him. Lance pulls him backwards, glaring daggers.

  Kolivan takes them both from her. ‘I saw for myself that Keith can activate his own blade, so I do not doubt its authenticity.’ He hands them both back. ‘Show us.’

  Like on the training deck, they activate in unison and form identical swords.

  ‘Impossible,’ Riag gasps. ‘They’re the same blade!’

  ‘They just look similar,’ Keith protests. Shiro’s eyebrows jump to his hairline, disappearing under his white fringe. His heart migrates to his throat—Shiro knows he already knew.

  Kolivan shakes his head. ‘Our blades are unique in both forms. Members carry one blade each, in all cases. Somehow, these are one and the same.’

  ‘So Leo is, what, alternate universe Keith?’ Lance proposes, tapping his lip with one finger.

  ‘I’m not Spanish!’

  ‘He might not be either,’ Lance reminds him, ‘and it’s an alternate universe.’

  ‘Well, how did he get here?’

  ‘Lotor’s ship?’ Shiro mumbles to himself.

  Keith cries, ‘What?’

  ‘It is made from the comet,’ Lance muses.

  Allura bounces Leo distractedly. He plays with her long hair, unbothered by the yelling or the sight of huge purple aliens. ‘You believe Lotor travelled to an alternate universe to learn an Earthen language and deliver a perfectly healthy baby Keith to us? For what purpose?’

  ‘A trap,’ Lance proposes.

  ‘Wha—I said it was a trap from the beginning!’

  ‘Everyone, calm down,’ Shiro commands. Riag curls her lip, exposing the throat-tearing canines most Galra boast. She backs off at Kolivan’s signal, still simmering.

  A quiet ping echoes from four helmets. The team all open the communication line; Coran is already yelling.

  ‘Pala… better …et back here quick smart, I’ve received a… Green Lion!’

  Allura speaks quickly. ‘Is everyone alright? Coran?’

  ‘…ture! …cess?’

  ‘Quiznaking blackholes,’ Allura hisses. To Kolivan and Riag she says, ‘Thank you for your help, but we must be going.’

  ‘If you do not find the child’s parents, I would appreciate you bringing him back. Along with the blade.’

  Allura nods, jaw set. She turns to Keith. ‘Back to Red.’

  ‘Keith,’ Kolivan interjects, ‘I’ll see you back here in a movement.’

 He leads the way back to the hangar in a daze. As they enter Red’s cockpit, Lance tugs gently on his hand. ‘I have to fly,’ he says.

  Keith’s forehead creases. He looks down and sees that his hand is still latched onto Lance’s elbow. He pulls it back quickly, shoving it into a fist beneath his armpit.

  He makes to leave, sit somewhere private in Red’s body. She’s small, but there’s a few small rooms they use to store rations for longer missions in each Lion. Shiro stops him with a hand flat on his chest.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us you have the same blade?’ Keith shakes his head. ‘It’s not good enough, Keith. I understand this is hard on you, but you cannot lie to the team. Ever.’

  Keith nods quickly, trying to move past again. Shiro steps in front of him. Hewants to scream what do you want from me?but they’ve been there, done that.

  ‘Blast off,’ Lance shouts. The sharp tug of momentum allows Keith to duck under Shiro’s arm. Within a tick he’s behind a slammed door.

  Shiro only asks him to come out once before he sighs and moves off.

  The closer they get to the Castle, the better the signal. Allura shoots off a dozen questions.

  Coran only answers one. ‘Yes. They said someone is on IKS-I to pick up young Leo.’

  ‘Who?’ Shiro asks.

  The line crackles for a moment, silent. Then a soft ding and tiny lights in the corner of Keith’s visor alert him that ALLURA and CASTLE are no longer on the same communication line. He listens to Lance and Shiro breathe for a moment, and then they’re gone too.

Keith doesn’t remember a lot of what he’s been taught. Most of what he knows he learned on his own, living in the desert and dodging bullies. What little educational material he retains includes fun tidbits like this: Spartans, revered for their strength and loyalty to their home, would throw their own babies from cliffs if they were too small, sick, different. He knows, thanks to a boy who’d been in the home far longer than him, that rats and rabbits eat their young. Lions, too, if they’re not happy with the ones they have.

  ‘Why didn’t yours kill you?’ the boy had sneered. ‘Would’a saved me the trouble.’

  He doesn’t know a lot about Galran culture. They’ve been around for so long, conquering and policing and enslaving the majority of the known universe, that he doubts they have much left.

  But he wouldn’t be surprised if they stake kids to mountains by the ankles, too.

  Why wouldn’t he descend from baby-abandoners on both sides? Serial baby-abandoners, if Leo really is his brother. 

  In his head his mother has always been a monster. Even when his father looked up at the stars, pulled him close, and promised she was out there protecting them, Keith thought only a real monster could leave their family the way she had.

  It didn’t really become easier when he realised she was literally an alien; he’d stopped separating people from beasts when he was much, much younger.

  It gave him room to think worse things about her, though. Worse than if she was a drunk or if she was young and scared and wanted more out of life than a baby with a man in the desert.Now he dreams of rats that gnaw on smaller rats and wonders if she ever noticed how perfectly her canines would fit in the notch of his throat. Now he wonders if she thought she was doing him a kindness, disappearing instead of just killing him.

  His mother left and his dad ran face first into a fire.

  What does that say about him? What kind of animal instinct is stitched into his genes? ‘Your family’s coming together,’ Lance said. Of course he wouldn’t get it.

  Galra don’t have family. They have organisations, missions; friends if they’re lucky, like Riag. Friends they don’t hear from for years, either because they’re dead or missing or just because their entire race was built to invade the useful and vacate the useless.

  Keith knows for sure, now.

  It’s in his blood. He was bred to make use of his situation as long as he can bare before moving on.

  He was always meant to leave.

He emerges just before they reach the Castle to find his team looking extremely troubled. Lance glares at the console as he flies, a startlingly Red-Paladin-esque trait Keith had never picked up on before. The second Red touches the ground, Allura dumps Leo in Lance’s lap and sprints towards the bridge.

  ‘She wants us to wait here while she wormholes,’ Shiro explains, all traces of his earlier anger smoothed into a muted expression of regret.

  The air in the cockpit is stifling, everyone lost in their own thoughts and none of them inclined to share. Keith notices Lance white-knuckling the arm of his chair with the hand that’s Leo-free with a swelling sense of foreboding. It’s so starkly opposite his usual nervous habits—movement, always movement—that the skin on his arm prickles. All his instincts scream danger just from the actions of his team. Their stress is thick and humid and choking, though Keith isn’t doing much better.

  No one seems to want to speak, much less explain why Keith was quite obviously excluded from their previous conversation, so he muses, ‘This isn’t Red’s hangar.’

  ‘Green’s,’ Lance explains, although the amount of tech junk piled against the wall is proof enough.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Closer.’ Whether he means for the Lion to dive into from the base or for Allura to run for the bridge, Keith doesn’t know. Ever after all his time aboard, the Castle geography is a little hazy.

  The ship’s plunge into a wormhole is marked by the swoop of his gut. The sudden pressure isn’t so bad inside a Lion, for some reason. Shiro takes half a step sideways, but otherwise none of them waver.

  As they come to a stop, Shiro looks at him. ‘Are you okay?’ Keith nods, smile barely there.

  Lance turns in his chair, mouth agape. ‘Um, tell him!’

  It’s as much an order as Keith has ever heard come out of his mouth. Directed at Shiro, no less.

  ‘Keith—’

  ‘I know, Shiro,’ he interrupts quietly.

  ‘It’s not your mom.’

  He blinks. ‘Oh.’ He feels calmer, somehow. Sadder, but also relieved. ‘Who is it, then?’

  Shiro inhales. ‘Don’t freak out.’

  Because that isn’t anxiety inducing at all. ‘Shiro.’

  ‘It’s you.’

  He opens his mouth. Closes it. ‘Me?’

  ‘Pidge said they saw the Black Lion and figured you’d come back, for some reason. You weren’t responding, though, so they pinged Coran, who confirmed Black was still in the Castle. They figured it was a trap, illusion, something, so just followed until he landed. Then you, but different, came out. They thought you were a “half-assed clone”,’ his face scrunches, ‘or something. Apparently, you kicked their asses very kindly. Her words, not mine.’

  ‘Me,’ Keith repeats.

  ‘He says he’s from the future.’ Shiro winces even as he says it.

  ‘Me. From the future.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Lance.’ Allura’s voice is crisp over the comms. ‘Down to the surface as quick as you can, please. Coran and I will follow.’

  ‘Got it, Princess.’ The Red Lion is shooting back into IKS-I’s atmosphere before he even thinks to ask, ‘Shiro?’

  Leo is settled into the crook of a new arm, Keith watching him warily all the while. 

  Guess they’re not meeting their mom after all. 

  He imagines Leo responding with that judgmental eyebrow lift, did you really think that was how this was going to go? You’re a bigger idiot than I thought, Food Goo Guy.

  And, well, he supposes he deserves that. No matter what he tells himself, his life is a never-ending mission to quash a hope too tiny to catch.

‘They’re here,’ Lance says upon landing, springing from his chair. They’re all looking out the same window, so it’s an unnecessary announcement.

  The Green Lion is stubbornly dark, her head held high and her eyes revealing nothing. Black sits regally beside her. Keith reaches out automatically for answers and slams into a mental wall and a warning growl. He retreats, bewildered and distraught. Black makes no move to comfort him, staying stubbornly silent.

  Lance takes the baby as he strides from the cockpit, cradling him between his shoulder and long fingers. Shiro guides Keith after him with a hand hovering over his shoulder blades.

  Lance pauses on the gangway, brows almost touching in the middle, and says, ‘I think you should get out your bayard.’ Keith can’t even process why, the shock is sinking so deep into his bones. He feels chilled and thawed all at once. ‘Keith. Bayard,’ Lance says, more firmly this time.

  Although distantly he wonders when he started taking orders from Lance, he listens. His sword appears in a flash of light, hanging limply by his side but at least available. Satisfied, Lance forges a path across the yellow dirt towards Green.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Shiro mumbles.

  Keith walks after Lance if only because he’s sick of hearing that question.

  The ground is still burnt where the Lions landed the first time, circles darkened under the heat of their jets only a few paces away. Keith acknowledges, fuzzily, that this is the third time at the very least that the other Keith is seeing this place.

  Allura strides to Keith’s side before Green can even lower her head, Coran at her heels. She sees his drawn sword and palms her own bayard. Coran stage whispers over Keith’s head, ‘Did you tell him about the bigger, cooler, grizzled older Keith?’

  ‘Yes, Coran,’ Shiro sighs. Coran sends him a thumbs up.

  If he expects his older self to come down the ramp with a knife to Pidge’s little throat, he’s sorely disappointed. Her voice precedes them, shooting question after question in a burbling stream.

  ‘But how did you get here? What did you see?Did you pick this time exactly, or is it more approximate? Do you remember all this happening? Can we change the future?’

  ‘I’m not answering any of that,’ comes the grumbled reply.

  His voice. Unmistakably. 

  Keith freezes up. He’s heard that everyone’s voice sounds different in recordings and in your head than to other people, but maybe no one who’s said that has ever met their future selves because he’d recognise it anywhere.

  The trio come down at once, Pidge hopping around like a puppy, poking at the other Keith’s armour, Hunk with palms pressed together like he’s praying.

  It takes a nanosecond to sweep his gaze over future Him from head to toe. Longer hair. Taller, maybe wider in the shoulders. The same red armour. A nasty scar sliced from under his right ear to his nose. Every dissimilarity, from his relaxed gait to the rivets in his forehead, Keith sees straight away.

  He’s different, but undeniably the same.

  On the other hand, the other Keith ignores him entirely. He gives Pidge’s resurfacing questions only silence, even when she jumps in front of his face. His eyes fly to Shiro first, then Lance, Leo, Allura, Coran, Red, Blue, the patch of sky where the Castle might be, and then only because he has nowhere else to look, to Keith.

  ‘Keith, look,’ Pidge screeches, despite the lack of space or noise between them. She points, grinning. ‘It’s you from the future!’

  The other Him walks right up to their defensive line.

  Keith snaps out of his mental fog when Lance rears backwards. He jumps between them, sword raised. The entire team shouts variations of Keith what the hell, but at which one it’s impossible to know.

  The other him halts only to raise an unimpressed eyebrow. He moves the tip of the sword away from his nose with one gloved finger. ‘I don’t have time to—if you don’t mind.’ He points over Keith’s shoulder.

  Keith glares at his older counterpart. He hopes his team don’t notice that despite his efforts to return his blade to stabbing position, a single fingertip can hold it at bay. Is his older self on steroids or something? ‘Not a fucking chance.’

  The other him glares right back.

  ‘This is so weird,’ Pidge exclaims, clearly thrilled.

  ‘Look,’ the other Keith growls, ‘Could you just—’

  Allura steps forward and officially takes control of the situation. She doesn’t ask Keith to stand down, though, for which he is grateful. ‘We’re not handing over anyone or anything until we get an explanation.’

  His older counterpart drops his hand. The movement throws Keith off balance, flicking his sword point into the ground.

  ‘You’re not getting one,’ he promises. ‘Sorry.’ This sounds less sincere.

  ‘Why?’ Pidge whines.

  ‘Because I was kindly informed by you exactly how many different ways I could destroy the universe by playing around with time. Now just—’

  He moves to step around Keith, but he tracks his steps, staying between him and the kid.

  His counterpart opens his mouth. Closes it.

  Keith doesn’t consider any consequences but the immediate.

  The moment he gets too close, Keith swings. The team take up their protests again.

  Except before he can bring the sword down it phases out of existence. His fingers tingle in its absence, closing into a fist around empty air. The sword rematerializes in the other Keith’s hand as he sinks into a fighting stance. The Red bayard is in his other hand not a second later, and Lance yelps indignantly.

  The team gapes for a moment, then fumble for their own weapons. Keith draws his knife and extends it, too.

  The other Keith’s line of sight is drawn to it immediately. ‘The knife,’ he says. ‘You want proof I’m you? Give me the knife.’

  ‘I’m not handing you a weapon,’ Keith scoffs.

  He waves the Black and Red bayards. ‘I didn’t need you to.’

  ‘So weird,’ Pidge says dreamily. Hunk drags her back out of the line of fire.

  ‘Give him the knife.’ The other Keith’s eyes snap to Shiro. His mouth presses into a flat line, a signal Keith can’t begin to decipher even when it’s on his own face.

  So, as he always does in overwhelming situations, he looks to his brother. Surely if this is as stupid as he feels it is, Shiro will agree. If he isn’t just paranoid and freaking out, he won’t make him hand over the one link he has to his family to the most suspicious being they’ve met during their entire space odyssey. He tries to tell him with his eyes exactly how stupid this plan is.

  Face as deliberately searching as Keith’s, Shiro simply nods.

  The bayards zap away as he hands Leo’s knife to his older self, holding it by the very tip of the blade so as not to brush his fingers. The caution appears to be mutual, the other Keith pinching the pommel between his fingertips despite the room between them. 

  Which is fair since, likely, most things are mutual between them.

  The moment Keith lets go, the other Him activates the blade. Sure enough, it stretches into a familiar sword. He shrinks it back down and hands it back. ’Happy?’

  ‘Not really,’ Keith says, and he sounds suitably miserable.

  ‘Look, Big Keith,’ Lance starts.

  ‘Don’t call him Big Keith,’ Keith pleads over his shoulder at the same time the other Him threatens, ‘Do not call me that.’

  ‘We can’t trust you.’ He tucks a squirming Leo higher up on his chest.

  ‘I just proved who I am,’ he growls, ‘and I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘Explain quickly, then,’ Shiro offers.

  Lance asks suspiciously, ‘Who is Leo to you?’

  The other Keith blinks. ‘Leo?’

  He shakes his head and scoffs, ‘You don’t even know his name!’

  He tilts to look around Keith. ‘You called him Leo?’

  ‘After everyone’s favourite man-sicle, yes.’ The older Keith twists his mouth to forfeit a smile. ‘Now explain!’

  His face switches from soft to stressed in less than a tick. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then we can’t hand him over.’

  He bares his teeth, but he doesn’t look at Shiro. Instead, he looks at Keith.

  Meeting your own eye outside a reflection is a singularly terrifying experience. Maybe more so than usual for Keith, whose eyes have always been steely and furious and positively overbearing.

  ‘Trust me. I just.’ His fingers flex, still reaching out. ‘I want him to be safe.’

  The Blade used Keith’s father against him during the Trials—that still brings a bitter taste to his mouth. He knows that no-one is above manipulation when they really want something, but—

  Very few people can quote his dad back to him. It’s a distant memory, sure, but it’s important.

  He goes to say I do, but Lance gets there first. ‘Duh. So do we.’

  The older Keith focuses entirely on him, then. ‘Lance.’ It feels like he pours so much effort, so much importance into just that one word, that Keith finds himself frozen. He didn’t even know he could make a noise like that, part desperation and all faith. ‘He’s mine.’

  The team is quiet. Leo wiggles.

  ‘Yoooour,’ Hunk prompts, winding his hand in encouragement.

  ‘Just—mine.’ Mouth curled downwards, he gauges his younger self for a reaction.

  Everyone seems to be mulling it over. ‘Your kid?’ Shiro asks slowly, like he can’t believe it.

  Well, neither can Keith.

  ‘Right,’ Lance chuckles weakly. ‘Keith is scared of kids.’

  ‘I’m not scared of—’ They both stop at the same second, which makes it a thousand times worse. ‘He doesn’t even look like me,’ Keith mutters.

  ‘I’ll show you. Hand him over.’

  ‘Nuh uh, you’re—' Lance stops, his eyes almost glazing over. He turns to look up at Red, IKS-I’s seventeen rings haloing him gently. He snorts. ‘But—' He blinks. Leans his weight on one foot, his other hip jutting out to compensate. ‘Okay, but—' He huffs, glowering up at the sky. ‘I already said fine! Crankbot.’ He steps forward, waving away the team and their protests. Leo reaches for the older Keith, the pair of them smiling ridiculously.

  ‘Hey, kid.’ Leo places a hand over the scar running down his cheek, gurgling happily. ‘You know who I am?’ Leo laughs at him, reaching for the bangs hanging over his eyes. He dodges the chubby fingers expertly, which Keith knows can only be due to practice. He did not have that natural talent earlier, and probably has the bald spot to prove it. ‘Kid, who am I?’

  He sounds a lot like his—their?—dad. That, somehow, is more surprising than Leo’s confident, ‘Da.’

  Keith stiffens.

  ‘Well, fuck me,’ says Pidge.

  ‘Language,’ Shiro and the older Keith say in unison. At least he has the decency to look embarrassed about being such an old man. To distract everyone, he twists Leo in his arms to look at Keith. ‘Who’s that?’

  Leo squints. He garbles some nonsense that only the older Keith can interpret, based on his huffed laugh. He just bounces the kid encouragingly. ‘Da,’ Leo says eventually, although he doesn’t sound sure. He turns back to the one holding him with a distressed noise. ‘Da?’

  ‘Yeah, kid.’

  Leo’s lip wobbles.Keith silently begs him not to cry. The kid starts bobbing towards him, and he realises too late what’s happening. He steps backwards, hands held up in defence. ‘Oh no, I’m good. I don’t need to hold him.’

  Lance jabs a finger between his shoulder blades. ‘Dude, he’s yours.’

  ‘Gotta do it eventually,’ the older Keith says, almost threateningly. Keith gets the impression he’s quoting someone.

  ‘I really don’t—’ Leo is shoved into his chest, and he has no choice but to hold him up lest he paint the yellow ground with the universe’s worst Rorschach.

  ‘No. This hand here, this one—there.’ The other Keith looks him up and down. ‘God, I really was scared of kids.’

  Keith goes to protest, but Lance rests his elbow on the other Keith’s shoulder, leaning heavily. ‘Yup,’ he agrees cheerily. ‘You sat covered in food goo for like, an hourbecause—’

  ‘Thank you, Lance,’ Keith growls.

  ‘Da,’ Leo whispers, shifting in his arms.

  ‘What?’ he whispers back, still glaring at Lance, who sticks his tongue out.

  Leo slaps at his jaw to get his attention back. He glances down. Leo grazes his tiny fingers up and down his right cheek, eyes wide with curiosity. Is he also recalling the food goo ordeal and thanking his lucky stars they both survived it? But the other Keith’s smile drops off his face, replaced with something sadder. He tilts his head, just a little.

  He’s been hiding behind his fringe since he was a toddler, and apparently never stops. The scar is too big to hide with hair, though.

  Keith has never had to wonder how much of this war he’ll share with his kids before.

  ‘Let’s go back to—Dad, huh?’ He chokes on the word and blushes wildly for it.

  A smile lifts the unmarred half of his face.

  ‘Da,’ Leo yawns, arms winding around his neck. The older Him pats his diapered butt, peering at the rest of the team.

  ‘Told you,’ he reports casually, like the entire team isn’t staring with jaws on the ground. ‘He can do the rest of you, too.’

  Hunk is the first one to get his wits about him. Although maybe not all the way, because instead of demanding answers, he squeals, ‘Me, first!’

  The other Keith grins victoriously. He bounces, and Leo is re-energised. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Huk!’ Leo shouts, practically vibrating. Hunk waves, hand over his mouth to stop the outpour of pure joy.

  The other Keith doesn’t slow his momentum, quickly pointing at Pidge. ‘And that?’

  ‘Ga ga?’

  Keith smiles. ‘We think that means “Green”. Sorry, Pidge.’

  She shrugs. ‘Kids are—’

  ‘Gross, mhm.’ He sounds more resigned than annoyed. ‘And him?’

  ‘Taki!’ Leo coos, showing off his four teeth in a wide grin. Shiro melts at Keith’s side, eyes shining.

  ‘You big baby,’ Keith hisses.

  He whines, ‘But—tiny!’

  The other Keith interrupts by walking Leo over to Allura. ‘Who’s this?’

  Leo pauses, looking up at the other Him. He nods. ‘Allura,’ he says shyly. She touches his cheek with her fingertips, feather light. Leo buries his head in the other Keith’s chest.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ He twists him again so he’s looking out. ‘Him.’

  ‘Ra!’ he yells at Coran, who immediately bursts into tears, turning away to wipe his face.

  The other Keith laughs. Genuinely laughs. How he can laugh at a time like this is unfathomable. ‘See? I—’

  ‘Uh, hello? Rude.’ Lance waves to get his attention. The other Keith’s smile fractures, and he quickly replaces it with neutrality.  

  ‘He doesn’t know you yet,’ he says, taking a step back, eyes darting to Keith of all people.

  For what? Help?

  Lance crosses his arms, sending both Keiths a glare for good measure. ‘Oh, nice. Thanks, mullet.’

  The other Him juts his chin forward stubbornly. Keith knows that look—he stole it from Shiro. It’s the Trying to Look Tough face. It makes no sense in this context, and only serves to set him on edge.

 Shiro steps forward. ‘Why all this effort? Why send him back in time?’

  The other Him meets no one’s gaze, staring determinedly at the ground. ‘We didn’t send him so much as bring him.’

  He doesn’t look up, but the collective weight of Voltron’s eyes puts enough pressure on him that he gives a little ground.

  ‘Look, all I can say is that things are worse than usual. If we had a choice, we would have sent him somewhere else. But we didn’t.’ He looks at Lance. ‘I wasn’t lying in the note. We thought that really could be it for us. That’s why I gave him the knife.’

  The knife.

  The stupid, troublesome knife.

  ‘Why’d you address it to me?’ Lance crosses his arms; they kind of look empty without Leo there.

  The other Keith shrugs. ‘We knew you’d be more likely to hold onto him if he had extra ties to Earth. We figured English could be passed off on the translator.’

  ‘Wait, do youspeak Spanish?’

  ‘Sí.’

  Lance gives him a flat look. ‘Everyone knows the Spanish word for yes, you quiznak.’

  He matches the stare. ‘No creo que estés usando esa palabra bien.’

  Lance frowns, then rounds on Keith. ‘Why didn’t you say you speak Spanish?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Is his mom Spanish, then?’ Hunk asks.

  ‘Ha!’Pidge barks. Keith scowls at her. ‘I didn’t say anything,’ she says innocently, shit eating grin on her face.

  ‘Ah, no,’ the other him says, eyes wandering curiously between them all, ‘but I guess she speaks it? His mother isn’t really—we don’t see her a lot, I mean.’

  Keith is annoyed to find he owes him(self?) something.

  He’s not opposed to coming out to his team, but admittedly doing so right now would be under weird circumstances.

  ‘Why didn’t you explain everything in the note?’ Shiro demands, apparently less sold on the story the more the others buy it.

  ‘I know how this sounds coming from a time traveller, but we really had no time.’

  Pidge narrows her eyes. ‘How long does it take you to write in full sentences, Keith? Couldn’t’ve spared six more seconds?’

  ‘No. Would you have believed us, anyway?’

  ‘Hell no,’ Keith confirms.

  ‘Why not all come to us, if you were in so much danger? Hide out for a bit?’

  The other Him shoots Shiro a tired look. ‘When has Voltron ever left anyone to fend for themselves?’

  ‘When you gave little Leo to some random Iksi?’ Hunk immediately backtracks under Keith’s glower. ‘Just saying!’

  He says firmly, ‘We made sure Lance got him.’

  ‘But how did you know he wouldn’t—’

  ‘We knew, okay? We made sure.’

  Lance folds his arms, fingers tapping away. ‘You’ve got more faith in me than I do.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ The other Keith frowns. He hitches a drooping Leo a little higher. His arms are relaxed around his neck, so he must be asleep or close to it.

  There’s a soft beep, and everyone checks their helmets, swapping confused glances.

  ‘That’s me,’ the other Keith says. He puts his helmet back on onehanded, then taps the visor. His eyes race across it momentarily. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says softly. ‘I’m just—no!’ His eyes skirt from Keith to Lance. ‘Yeah, exactlylike I predicted. Mhm.’ He looks down at Leo. ‘He’s fine. You were right about that, miraculously. Hold on.’ He makes eye contact with Keith. ‘Do you all have to eavesdrop?’

  ‘Yup,’ Lance answers for him.

  The other Keith narrows his eyes. ‘Yeah, that’s him,’ he says loudly, deliberately. Lance pouts. ‘Affirmative.’ His jaw tightens. ‘I know. Me too.’ He looks back at Keith, then closes his eyes. ‘Can you give me a dobosh? I need to—yeah.’ His visor slides back up. ‘It’s rude to listen in on a private call, you know.’

  Pidge slides back up to him. ‘Who were you talking to? Was it me? Please—’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not telling. Look, no offence, but I don’t really want to be here any longer than necessary.’

  Shiro unfolds his arms and steps forward. ‘Why?’

  ‘Time travel is unpredictable at best, and dangerous at worst.’ He looks at the kid in his arms.

  ‘Go, then,’ Allura says.

  Shiro sends her a look that heralds an argument. ‘Princess—'

  ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Lance protests. ‘You haven’t given us any advice from the future, Big Keith!’

  Keith groans at the name. Older Him says dryly, ‘Always make salad in a bigger bowl than you think you’ll need.’

  Lance huffs. ‘You been hanging out with my ma, Big Keith?’

  ‘Not te—’

  ‘We didn’t even get an explanation!’ Pidge cuts in. ‘You owe us that much, we’re—we’re us.’

  ‘So you should trust me,’ the older Keith says, glaring now.

  The question sucks the noise from the clearing and snatches Keith’s breath.

  He’s never been on a rollercoaster, but he imagines this is what it’s like. The pressure builds achingly slowly. His stomach sinks and his heart rises. Without his hands on the controls, his eyes on the altitude, there’s only anticipation.

  No one looks at him—they turn to Shiro and Allura and confirm what he knows, lock his future into place.

  He almost feels the teeter.

  Then comes the nose-dive, the adrenaline, the G-forces squeezing him like tissue.

  Shiro takes a second step forward and his older counterpart springs backwards like a rubber-band. The kid in one arm, angled away, he draws the bayard from Keith’s holster again and tosses it over his shoulder. Eyes narrowed dangerously, he barks, ‘I told you so!’

  His tone suggests he’s still talking into his helmet, but Keith feels the weight of the words like a punch to the gut.

  The split-second movements set fire to the cloying tension hovering above their heads, and within a moment weapons are drawn. Shiro doesn’t activate his hand but keeps moving forwards.

  ‘Keith, please—you can’t just show up and take off without explaining. We need to think—to talk about this!’

  ‘I didn’t want to do it this way,’ he answers, voice low and sincere.

  Allura is the first to yelp. A glance in her direction shows her hands are empty. Similar protests rise from everyone. His older self hasn’t moved except to retreat—their bayards have disappeared into thin air. Pidge snarls a curse.

  Keith has a stranglehold on his mother’s blade. Of course it comes down to him and Shiro.

  The choice is ripped from him again.

  The Red Lion lands heavily on the sallow ground, high growl lifting the hair on Keith’s arms.

  Shiro stops. Everyone stops. Except Lance.

  ‘Holy shit! There’s two Reds! Who—is that me in there?’ He doesn’t get an answer; Keith spins on his toes and practically dives onto the Lion’s metal tongue.

  Lance takes after him, shouting, ‘Hey! I just wanna talk!’

  Shiro snaps, ‘Lance! Everyone, to your Lions. We’re not done here.’

  The team splinters, Shiro taking off after Allura and Coran. Lance just keeps waving his arms around, scowling. ‘Get back down here, you coward! Introduce me to me!’

  Red’s amusement rumbles across them. It has the dual effect of heightening Lance’s pitch by ten notches and setting off overlapping complaints from the rest of the team.

  ‘Green isn’t responding!’

  ‘Neither is Yellow!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Allura demands. ‘How is he doing this?’

  Which of course sparks theorizing from Hunk, Pidge, and most loudly, from Coran.

  The Red Lion—their Red, who Keith feels just the barest fabric of connection with since leaving her chair—makes no move to lower her head. She seems to be watching her twin, though her eyes are flat yellow. Keith wonders how much she knows about this—why their Lions would refuse the entire team entry if it weren’t important. If it weren’t true.

  He’s seen Red be caught in tractor beams. She’s been pinned down, injured once or twice. Her resolve has never been shaken, though. Her mind isn’t so easily tampered with.

  (It’s been a year, almost to the day, since he flew her last.)

  The yelling over the comms rises in such volume that he turns back to the retreating Lion. Black has taken flight alongside Red, eyes flaming.

  Pidge gasps, and overhead there’s a rush of air.

  The Green Lion takes her place on Black’s other side.

  Still stomping around, Lance yells over the noise, ‘Pidge! For science, get your butt down here!’

  Blue and Yellow converge on the group from both sides.

  ‘Both Greens are being stubborn. She won’t even talk to me!’

  ‘Same with Yellow.’

  ‘And Blue,’ Allura says sourly.

  Keith reaches out tentatively. Black swats him away almost playfully. Red blocks him completely, so aggressively that he feels dizzy.

  The five Lions rise, eyes blazing so brightly they send chinks of reflected light spinning across the sand. Their formation tightens, Keith’s chest alongside it. He’s never seen it from the outside before. No wonder they get such big cheers.

  Voltron forms faster than ever before, drawing a short, glowing weapon. They cut a circle in the sky, the inside shimmering with stars. It looks like a wormhole, but the border flickers and seeps into the air in the unmistakable colours of the Lions. The red hand salutes the Castle, and they dive through the hole. It bleeds out behind them.

  Just like that.

  ‘They’re gone,’ Allura confirms, voice betraying her shock, her lapse in confidence.

  Pidge growls, ‘Keith of the present and future, I hope you remember this: I’ll never forgive you for hiding the science from me.’

  Coran’s voice is quiet but dual sourced, picked up by both hers and Shiro’s helmet. It bounces around the inside of Keith’s head, pinging off a different nerve with each word. ‘Well, it’s not like we’ll never see them again. For now, should we update the Blade?’

  Shiro sighs. ‘You’re right. Not much we can do without whatever that weapon was. Let’s regroup. We have to come back down to Iksi to make up for leaving early, too. Keith?’

  His eyes are on the ground by Lance’s feet. ‘Hm? Oh, yeah. Sounds good.’

  Keith fills the pause that follows with an imagined lecture. He can pretty much guess everything Shiro wants to say based on his held breath, the short exhale through his nose, the deep breath in.

  Pidge clears her throat. ‘Green is responding again.’

  ‘Yellow, too.’

  ‘And Blue.’

  The Lions lift off, kicking up sand.

  Keith walks forward as if through mud. Bends like he never wants to reach the ground. Takes his bayard in hand. Scoops up the other three—green, yellow, blue— and turns back to Lance, who hasn’t stopped blinking at the empty sky.

  ‘Lance?’ He turns, eyes flitting over at only the last moment. Keith lifts the weapons higher. ‘You have your…?’

  He pats his thigh. ‘Yup.’ When Keith makes no move to either ask or walk away, he continues like it’s obvious, ‘Maybe you—he?—didn’t take mine because I was the only one nottrying to shoot or stab his—your?—baby.’

  Of course he wasn’t. For all the crap he gives Keith about breaking the rules, Lance isn’t exactly a follower. He contests Keith at every turn.

  Keith shakes his head, rebalances the bayards, and finally makes for the Lion.

  Lance murmurs as he approaches, ‘D’you really think we’ll see them again?’

  ‘They’re us.’

  He rolls his eyes, falling into step. ‘Okay, Mr Science Guy. You know what I meant.’ His face softens, just barely. ‘Hey. You okay?’

  Keith presents him with a quarter of a smile. ‘Long day.’

Chapter Text

Ephemeris

Considering how badly they screwed the team over by sitting on the answers they had all along, the Iksies are pretty demanding. Voltron agrees to stay two nights on their planet, performing various act of charity and rebuilding their ugly yellow houses and parading around and—

  Needless to say, Keith isn’t happy about it. It’s the first morning when he catches sight of the chicken-wire Iksi.

  He leaps from the breakfast table and corners it right there in front of the royal family and the ambassadors and businessmen and whoever else bothered showing up for round two.

  He jumps right into his interrogation, because he has the feeling he won’t be given long to ask questions. ‘You couldn’t have told us the person who delivered the baby was me?’

  Elbows quivering, the Iksi turns up its nose. ‘Evidently,’ it sneers, ‘he’s not. He looks like you, just as I said. He flies a ship much like yours, as I said.’

  ‘Sure left out a lot of the details. Caused us a lot of trouble. You wanna explain that?’

  A hand lands on his shoulder. ‘Keith.’

  He backs off.

Keith wakes up in a burst.

  Everything comes to him at once. The sudden entry of soft light through his cracked eyelids and the sound of his team breathing around him. The ache in his chest as his heart pounds behind his ribs. A rush of air between his teeth, the cold seeping into his lungs. His throat hurts and his cheeks are wet.

  He blinks at the ceiling, afraid to even turn his head. The moon casts shadows around the corners of the room, but he can’t figure out what they’re meant to be. He feels four years old again, hallucinations of predators leaping about in his periphery, darting away in streaks of purple and green before he can ever focus on them.

  Even in the desert he had a clock beside him, and though it seems a little moot on an alien planet, not knowing the time has him reeling in a state between nightmare and reality.

  A few deep breaths later, he calms. Feels stupid. The room is dark, but it’s just a room. The feather-light touch of the alien moon might brush his forehead, but it can’t really reach him from so many miles away.

  His tear ducts aren’t fond of logic, apparently, because they still pinch and leak. A gasping breath escapes his lips, practically a scream in the still quiet of the night. He smacks his palm over mouth, eyes wide. He listens. No stirs, and so he must be safe, except—

  ‘Keith?’

  The burn behind his eyes grows steadily stronger, and his brain chants stupid stupid stupid! He squeezes his lids shut hard enough that the green and purple swirls return in aggressive lashes. He doesn’t dare move.

  ‘Are you awake?’ Lance asks.

  ‘Mm,’ Keith responds, staying wrapped in the layers of darkness like they might protect him from Lance’s never-ending curiosity. He wonders how brightly his tears shine under the moon-shine.

  Lance is quiet for a minute. Long enough that Keith thinks he falls asleep. ‘Are you okay?’ His voice is less a whisper, more a mumble. 

  Keith is grateful he didn’t wake up screaming or thrashing. ‘‘M fine. Go to sleep.’

  Maybe because he wasn’t catapulted into consciousness with the same velocity as Keith, Lance takes longer to tread through the meaning of the words. ‘You sure?’

  Bizarrely and entirely against his will, Keith wishes for his dad. Just for a one-armed hug, or warm noodles sloshing around a styrofoam cup. Just to feel the warmth of a truck bed after a day under the desert sun, cooling together beneath stories and stars.

  He doesn’t answer, just holds his breath until he hears Lance roll over.

No one brings up Leo.

The first day back on the Castle, he hides in his room. The second day, Shiro drags him down to breakfast.

  As in he literally pulls Keith down the hallway by his ankle until he agrees to go.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know how many meals you’ve skipped these last few days,’ he says threateningly.

  ‘Let go,’ Keith hisses, trying not to draw attention to the scene. He kicks, trying to wrench himself free. No one would ever let him forget this. Pidge did end up rigging up those handheld cameras, after all. ‘I’ll come, okay?’

  ‘Peacefully?’

  ‘Yes.’ His heel hits the floor with a bang, but he barely feels it. Good thing he sleeps in his clothes.

  Coran serves the usual viscous green slop, but he does so with flair, setting each plate down with a flourish.

  Hunk, ironically, is the bravest. He clears his throat. ‘Pretty weird that you almost stabbed yourself the other day, huh?’

  The mix of pleading and glowering looks he receives has him stuffing his face.

  After that, Keith glares a little harder at his spoon with every nervous look shot his way. Only Pidge seems to be relaxed, bouncing her eyebrows every time she catches his eye.

  ‘Soooo,’ she sings, ‘did you figure it out, or?’

  His spoon clinks as he rips it from between his teeth. He swallows very deliberately, but her gaze doesn’t falter. ‘Figure what out?’

  ‘Leo.’

  ‘Pidge,’ Hunk whispers, brows cinched.

  ‘Did the visit from our time travelling friend not clear that situation up, Number Five?’

  She leans into her elbow. ‘I would argue that it didn’t, Coran. At least not wholly. There’s a few loose ends.’

  ‘Pidge,’ Shiro warns.

  Keith swirls his cup, watching the water form a little whirlpool. ‘If you have something you want to say, just say it.’

  ‘I don’t.’ She sounds disappointed. Obviously, no one believes her. ‘Do you?’

  Unbidden, Keith locks eyes with Lance. And like he has a hundred times lately, he becomes Keith’s champion.

  How they got here, Keith doesn’t know, and it’s delicate at best, but Lance must see something in his face—the sorrow of finding and losing his family, the defeat of disappointing Shiro at every turn, the toll of the last few days—because he speaks up. ‘There’s not much more to say. I mean, it’s kind of over, right? This is, like, the end of the episode.’ He waves a hand. ‘Theoretically.’

  ‘I would argue that it isn’t, Lance. Do youhave something to say?’

  ‘Enough,’ says Shiro, not in time to stop Keith snapping. He leaps to his feet, and Shiro begs, ‘Keith—’

  ‘Whatever you think you figured out—I don’t care. Keep it to yourself, or don’t—I don’t care!’

  She just blinks at him, mouth open slightly. Shiro glares at him. Hunk doesn’t move his eyes from his lap. Allura puts down her cup. Coran’s expression softens.

  She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose with a finger. ‘I just meant that we don’t have all the details. About why it was so dangerous, or why you didn’t recognise your handwriting, or… I don’t know.’

  The wobble in her voice nearly breaks the scowl he’s soldered on, but Keith is practised at hiding his thoughts. He takes another furious sip.

  Lance opens his mouth. ‘We have more important things to talk about. Like the fact that there’s mangoesin space! I know we’re a little rocky with the Iksies right now, but—’

  Keith makes his escape. He hears someone scramble to follow him and picks up his pace. When he’s through the doors, he starts to run.

  Footsteps pound after him. ‘Keith!’

  Lance, then.

  A hand closes around his elbow and he tears it from Lance’s grip. ‘Stop,’ he all but yells, clutching his arm to his chest. Lance flinches backwards. ‘What do you want?’ It ploughs through him as a sob, but the shame melds with his anger and it comes out more like an angry cough.

  ‘Keith,’ he says softly, sadly.

  He waits, but Lance doesn’t say anything else. He throws his hands out.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lance continues, ‘that we didn’t get to keep him.’

  ‘You wanted to keep him, not me. I’ve been saying that all along.’ Lance opens his mouth. ‘No—you don’t get to just know, okay? I haven’t told you what I’m thinking, so you don’t know.’

  Lance forgets his plea for space in mere seconds and touches his arm again. ‘Tell me, then.’

  Keith shakes his head again.

  ‘Okay, well. I’ll tell you. I’m sad we didn’t get to keep him. I had—haveso many cousins and nephews and nieces on Earth. I miss having kids around, and it felt a little more like home with him here. He even looked a little like my sister, though I guess he had your mullet. I could just pretend, for a little bit. It sucked to hand him over, even though obviously he couldn’t stay and obviously I’ll see him again, and he’s better off with you and the team who want him around and whoever ends up with your emo ass—but I want my family back. I want them back so bad, Keith,’ his fingers tighten, ‘and we’re not even close to winning this war and going home.’

  Keith reaches for the hand on his arm. Lance pulls it away to wipe his face, and then holds it to his chest. ‘Lance.’

  ‘I’m sorry you didn’t find her.’ His lip wobbles, eyes piercing in their sincerity.

  (He knows why. It’s like a reflex, for Lance. It’s like watching a puppy whimper in a gutter. It’s sad to watch, and Lance is a person who feels, and so it doesn’t matter who it is—Lance will always reflect the sadness, the anger, the happiness he sees in the people around him.

  It’s not—

  It’s nothing personal. It’s just who he is.)

  Keith, for his part, feels the last of his anger wash away despite how he stiffens. ‘I didn’t want to.’

  ‘But you thought you were going to.’

  He inhales. Lets the truth out in a breath: ‘Yeah.’ He opens his eyes.

  Lance clears his throat. ‘Y’know, I wish Big Keith hadn’t been so tight on the information. It’d be pretty cool to know the future, right? I wanna be able to tease your future baby-momma the moment we get back.’

  Keith doesn’t know a whole lot about time travel, but for once it doesn’t feel like a slap in the face to talk about making it back to Earth. When, not if. ‘I know,’ and what a strange life he lives, that it feels so odd to be certain about anything, ‘I know I have the team. And apparently a kid.’

  Him. A father. Passing on his fucked-up genes. It makes him feel woozy just thinking about it, the responsibility, the parts of himself he’ll never be able to unwrite that will manifest as something ugly in someone innocent.

  ‘And you speak Spanish.’

  Keith knows a life-line when he sees one.

  ‘Or I know enough to make you think I speak Spanish.’

  Lance laughs. ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe I used Google translate to write the note.’

  ‘No! Keith!’

  He shrugs one shoulder. ‘Guess we’ll find out.’

  ‘No! That’s a time loop! Doesn’t work. No. I won’t accept it.’

  He lifts his hands in mock surrender. ‘Okay.’

  Lance scowls. ‘Don’t say it like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you’re lying. Like you’re going to not learnSpanish on purpose to annoy me—hey! Hey, don’t walk away from me.’

  ‘I’m going—’

  ‘To the training room, duh. I’m coming. You need the practice, anyway. I saw you struggling to fight you, the other day.’

  ‘I was not.’

  ‘Were so.’

  ‘La—’

  ‘Ah, bup bup! Don’t worry. I’ll help you. You’ll be on your own level in no time.’

  He dodges Keith’s headlock, prancing away on his toes. There’s laughter in his eyes.

  Maybe things won’t ever go back to where they were—with Lance, with Shiro, with Keith.

  But they’ll figure it out.

Shiro catches him in the hallway that night. He puts his hand on Keith’s shoulder and tells him why astronauts who can’t get along with their teammates are never picked for missions. That next time he feels frustrated, he needs to find an outlet that isn’t losing his temper on a sixteen-year-old.

  It’s sound advice, Keith figures. He deflates a little, and it’s harder to fill his lungs again under the weight of Shiro’s Galran hand.

Three quintants later, he’s back on the Marmoran base about to be jetted off to the opposite side of the universe. One more quintant, and he’s the lone soldier boarding a Galra cruiser.

  ‘Keith,’ growls Kolivan. ‘Remember, do notengage. You have seventy-five ticks,’ he presses the button on his holo-pad, ‘now.’

  He runs.

Draped across the crouch, ankles crossed over the arm, Keith sucks no less than six water pouches dry.

  Hunk knocks his forehead. ‘Yoohoo. You in there, man? I’ve been talking to you for, like, five minutes.’

  He sits up, blinking away a head rush. ‘Sorry, Hunk. What’s up?’

  He presents a plate of—something. ‘I cooked something special for you. Since you’ve been working so hard, and all.’

  ‘Oh.’ He pulls his hand away from where it’s digging into his temple and takes the offered food. His head pounds again. ‘Thanks, Hunk. You didn’t have to—’

  ‘Shh. Yes, I did. Everyone needs a pick-me-up, now and then.’ He shoves a spoon into Keith’s hand. ‘Now eat. I can’t promise it tastes great, but it is better than goo.’

  The spoonful is halfway to his mouth when he says, ‘Wait.’

  Hunk grins, but it falters in the middle. He’s always been a terrible liar.

  ‘You’re babysitting me.’

  He waves his hands around. Another thing picked up from Lance, Keith assumes. ‘Whaaaat?! No! Noooo! No! What? I would never! No.’

  Keith re-settles his fingers around the spoon so it doesn’t drop from his hand completely. ‘We should play poker some time.’

  ‘Back at it with jokes, Galra Keith.’

  He ignores that only because Hunk cooked for him.

  They both sigh when the food actually enters Keith’s mouth. Hunk plops down beside him with a drink. Keith eyes it greedily, and it freezes before it touches Hunk’s lips. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Did you, uh. Did you want some?’

  Keith nods, wincing with the movement. Why the hell does his neck hurt so much?

  He did get kicked in the chin today, but not that hard.

  Hunk hands him the cup. He means to take a little sip, but the second the cool liquid touches his tongue, he drains the entire thing. He and Hunk both look down at the empty glass.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Hunk seems to notice the silver pouches strewn around them for the first time. ‘I’ll get a bigger cup.’

He doesn’t get a welcome back after his next mission with the Blades.

  Shiro has his fists clenched at his sides when Keith greets him.

  ‘You missed it,’ he says by way of explanation. ‘They’re counting on you, Keith.’

  He nods, head hung low, and promises to apologise to everyone.

Keith doesn’t trip often, but the bodies of the dead litter the field and he stumbles backwards over something that used to be someone.

  He’s lucky he does. It means that instead of slicing through his neck, the officer’s swing catches his helmet under the jaw and flings it off. It hurts, god it hurts, but he’s alive.

  Sprawled on the ground, helmetless, his fingers close around a shin instead of his bayard. The Galra swings downward like he’s chopping wood. Keith doesn’t have time to think, just rolls and hopes he survives.

  The tip of the Galra’s sword bites into the hard-packed earth, and then there’s a shot and the officer follows. He glares open mouthed at Keith, teeth coated with blood.

  Keith gets to his feet. Lance gives him a tight nod from where he’s crouched. Keith opens his mouth in warning, but it comes out wordless and too late. Lance activates his shield as he goes down, narrowly escaping a short knife through the waist. He wrestles with the soldier above him, but his rifle is too big to get between them at such short distance.

  Keith runs.

  He runs his sword straight into the junction between armoured head and armoured shoulder. Whatever he hits must be important; the strike sends blood flying in all directions. The momentum of the swing carries the sword through his ribcage. It makes a quiet ding where it exits the Galra’s back and hits the inside of his armour. He goes limp. Keith doesn’t bother trying to pull it back out, just deactivates the bayard.

  He’s still seeing red.

  Blinking moisture out of his eyes, he helps Lance shove the body aside. He avoids looking at him, scanning their surroundings instead. It’s not a pretty picture, but, ‘It’s over.’

  The hand he runs over his face comes up red. He chances a look at Lance, and his heart promptly sinks.

  Lance is and probably always will be pretty, but he’s outfitted with a grimace and a blood-drenched helmet. He rubs his glove across his visor, squinting up at Keith.

  He has the overwhelming urge to hide, the sudden wave of shame biting in its intensity, but Lance grabs him by the chin. His fingers don’t find much purchase, which tells Keith a lot about the state of his own face.

  ‘Dude, what the hell?’ He opens his mouth to defend his actions, maybe just to ground himself a little, but Lance doesn’t sound angry, more—concerned? Scared?

  Is he scared of Keith?

  He flinches backwards. Lance doesn’t let him go. Instead, his other hand holds Keith by the back of the neck to keep him from escaping.

  Keith promptly dies on the inside. What is happening?

  ‘Your eyes.’

  He barely manages to choke out, ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t imagine that. Dude, your eyes, they went all—’ His mouth twists. ‘Weird. Kind of yellow.’

  If this is some kind of line, it’s worse than usual.

  ‘Yellow?’ He runs his tongue over his teeth. Whatever he expected—not that he expected anything—he finds the same mouth as always. Uneven (because who was going to buy a foster kid braces?), his bottom left canine sharper than the rest (because he doesn’t eat on that side).

  ‘And pointy. Like a cat.’

  He huffs. It’s not quite amused, not quite disbelieving. More resigned. ‘Like a Galra,’ he corrects.

  Lance only seems to realise the position he’s put them in when he shuts his mouth. Face red—above and beneath the skin—he takes the hand Keith offers. They see-saw but catch each other at the elbows and manage to stay upright.

  Lance doesn’t go far. ‘Do you think it might be important?’

  Important to Keith? Yes. But he knows that’s not what Lance is asking.

  ‘You think I should tell Shiro.’

  It comes out flat.

  Lance seems to consider it. Consider the ground, and his hand on Keith’s shoulder. Then he folds his arms and glares. ‘Keith, if you tell anyoneyou had to come to my rescue, I’ll punch you straight in your stupid mullet.’

  Again: Keith knows a life-line when he sees one.

  Six months ago, Lance would have been tripping over himself to dob Keith in. Why he isn’t now—well, Keith has to wonder if he’s seen it too. If he’s imagining the quiet understanding they share. If they’re both lost in their own anxieties and mourning who their leader once was.

  Support from Lance is still foreign. Keith can’t be making it up—how can he be? Lance talks him down at every opportunity.

  He argues with him and insults him but also insists on touching him and comfortinghim, even when Keith yells at him for it.

  Lance raises an arched brow. ‘So?’

  Like keeping the secret is for his sake. How does he do that? How does he manage to insult Keith and save him in the span of one ridiculous threat?

  Keith nods. ‘Fine. I won’t tell anyone.’

  Lance jabs a finger at his chest. ‘You better not.’ Then he spins and stalks towards where the team is reconvening.

  It’s an utterly bizarre time for the quiet crushto show its face.

  Keith bites down on it with immediate ferocity.

  No. Absolutely not.

  Deal with it later.

  He’s been saying that a lot, recently.

  He swipes up his helmet as they move to regroup with the others. He catches his reflection in Pidge’s visor as she turns to say something. His entire face is speckled with red, two long finger marks smeared down one cheek. The blood on his chin must have migrated to Lance’s gloves.

  Pidge’s mouth snaps closed with a click of her teeth.

  They walk back to the Capitol together in silence, all silently replaying the day’s events.

  Form Voltron. Liberate the planet. Come down to celebrate.

  Back-up arrives once they’ve let their guard down.

  A blood bath. In the most literal sense, for Keith.

  The natives are rightfully cowering when they arrive. Who’s to say a third wave isn’t on its way? Their eyes skirt from team Voltron. Some saviours they turned out to be.

  In the courtyard crouch the nobles, their numbers cut significantly since a few hours ago. One of them gasps when Keith looks up.

  ‘That’s the Galra one.’

  He clutches his helmet a little tighter.

  But honestly? He doesn’t have the will to be more than mildly upset about it. His fellow Paladins nudge him in the opposite direction all the same.

  Shiro takes one look at him and says, ‘Someone get him something to clean his face.’

There really is nothing like forming Voltron. Being connected to his team revitalises him. It gives him the energy to do the diplomatic stuff and, even if he spent most of the night sitting at the table watching his friends dance and socialise, he feels like they accomplished something.

  The party was cut short due to Lance laying the charm on a little too thick with the planet’s crown Princess, and Keith couldn’t even bring himself to be angry.

  They head to the bridge from their respective hangars, as always. Shiro rode back up with him in Black, and apparently doesn’t have anything negative to say. (Sorry, advice.) They argue about whether Shiro needs reading glasses instead. It feels like old times.

  They’re the last to arrive to the bridge. The others are quiet; Kolivan’s voice is flat in the silent room.

  ‘—killed in the explosion. Send Keith immediately.’

  Shiro’s smile falls. ‘What’s going on?’

  Face stricken, Coran opens the next message.

  ‘This is Kolivan hailing the Castle of Lions. We are in dire need of assistance. Our base in the Edinian system has fallen to—’

  It pauses. ‘That’s the third one,’ Coran says softly. ‘The seventh came in a varga ago.’

  Shiro reacts quickly. ‘Call them back. Find out where they need us.’

  ‘This is my fault,’ Coran mumbles, fingers flying over the keys. ‘I should have been up here, instead of lured to the party like a zintad to stardust.’

  Allura explains solemnly, ‘Zintads really like stardust.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Coran,’ Keith says firmly. Lance catches his eye, brows furrowed. He severs the contact to watch the screen.

Allura looks worried. (They all do. Lotor is devious—far more so than his father was. He wreaks havoc from system to system and still they can’t catch his trail.) She drags a tiny holo-ship towards a tiny holo-planet, squinting thoughtfully.

  ‘Princess?’

  She starts. Maybe because he doesn’t call her Princess very often. ‘Keith.’ She smiles. It’s tired. ‘You’re up late. We have a meeting tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I know.’ He hesitates. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  She abandons her diagram and faces him fully, expression open. ‘What can I help you with?’

  ‘Actually, I—I was wondering what I can help you with. I feel like, since Shiro got back—I don’t know. I haven’t been doing my part.’

  Her hands clasp in front of her. ‘You’ve been working very hard, Keith. That hasn’t escaped my notice. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve taken your Paladin duties so seriously.’ He bows his head. ‘You’ve been incredibly busy these last few weeks, especially with your Marmora training. I think that we can both be glad Shiro is here to pick up our slack.’

  She turns back to her map. It glows brighter where her fingers wander.

  ‘So I can’t,’ Keith confirms quietly.

  He can see the side of her smile. ‘You’re doing plenty already. Get some sleep, Keith. I imagine the closer we come to Lotor, the worse our fatigue will become.’

The air wavers in front of his nose. His hair is plastered to his face, and his skin is sopping inside his insulated flight-suit. Beads of sweat drip into his mouth with every command and battle cry. Hunk complains of a foggy visor, and the team agrees between a series of grunts and the metal twang of meeting blades.

  Still, Keith keeps cutting down sentries until Lance goes, ‘We’ve got what we need and we’re about to fry. Call it, Keith!’

  ‘They’re gonna melt anyway,’ Hunk points out. The temperature has been steadily climbing since the engines caught fire.

  The team has been on the base for hours now, running the mission entirely on adrenaline. The alarm went off in the middle of their sleep cycle, so they’re all hungry, tired, and about to drop from heat exhaustion.

  But a ship carrying prisoners wanders into their vicinity? They couldn’t pass up the opportunity to look for the missing Holts.

  They find nothing, as usual.

  Keith calls for retreat without even processing it.

  ‘Pidge, fall back,’ Lance shouts.

  Keith can see how tight her eyebrows are knit behind the condensation on her visor. She keeps typing furiously, barely even jumping when Allura slams a sentry right into the console beside her. ‘I just need five minutes. Lotor—’

  ‘No. Pop smoke.’ Lance grabs her by the high collar of her suit—an astoundingly Shiro move—and shoves her forward, and the whole team is in motion. Keith takes the lead alongside Pidge; they need her codes and his genes to unlock the doors.

  Lance brings up the rear, sealing each one without being asked. If there are still Galra in the control room, it won’t stop their pursuers for long.

  It’s when the glow of the second or third scanner illuminates the red handprint he leaves behind that Keith realises something is wrong. He doesn’t pause—they can’t afford for him to stumble, not when his DNA is the only thing getting them out of here—but he glances down to look for the source.

  Okay. His jaw clenches. Pretty bad.

  Deal with it later.

  It’s strange how the human body can withstand such massive amounts of pain through the simple power of denial—or maybe it’s a Galra thing.

  He slams his hand on the next scanner and ignores the bloody slide of his fingers over the doorway.

  Lance says, ‘Shit, Keith,’ but he leaves it at that, so Keith thinks, later.

  They pass the bodies of sentries from earlier, each melted or sawn through with laser fire. Hunk and Lance only had to come in at all because Keith let them get overwhelmed. Earlier that morning, he, Pidge and Allura had simply slipped past them.

  He clips his shoulder on the wall as they skid around a corner and his vision whites out. His feet don’t stop moving, partly thanks to Hunk’s quick hand wrapped around his upper arm, partly due to whatever instinct has got him this far. Was he born or built for this?

  He stumbles only slightly, blinking away stars, but a gasp escapes him with the contact. The comms catch it in an echo.

  ‘You okay?’ Hunk half drags him for a few steps, looking him up and down. ‘Oh crap. Nope. Keith’s hurt.’

  He must look awful if Hunk is swearing. He grits his teeth and pushes forward. ‘Go fast.’ It’s all he has the breath to say.

  Another set of doors slide closed behind them, stalling the sentries but not the heat. It pounds in Keith’s temple, insistent and uncomfortable. Lance catches up.

  ‘He’s been dripping blood the whole way,’ he informs them, mouth a grim line. Keith doesn’t like being talked about right in front of his face, but he ignores it in favour of slapping another mark on the wall. The morose sign of the Red Paladin. Is he still the Red Paladin? Did they ever figure that out?

  ‘Die later,’ says Pidge. ‘We’ve got company.’

  Hunk and Lance are shooting before the doors are even open all the way. They pause briefly to let Pidge and Allura dive through the gap. It takes Keith a tick longer than it should to react; he acknowledges this with a milky kind of panic.

  It’s over quick. They’re Voltron, after all. Too experienced to be taken down by a couple of robots.

  Keith swallows. It hurts. ‘Allura. Wormhole.’

  ‘On it.’

  He sees Lance half-turn across the hangar, already at Red’s feet. ‘No Voltron?’

  Yellow shoots out into space, the force of his exit bowling Keith into Black’s chin. ‘No Voltron,’ he groans.

  He hears Lance curse, distantly, but he’s focusing on dragging himself up the ramp.

  ‘Everyone out?’ Black jolts forward as soon as he touches the controls, not panicked but certainly urgent.

  ‘Keith, you—oh, god. What the hell happened?’ He blinks a few times before Pidge comes into focus. Why is she—

  ‘In my cockpit?’ he mutters.

  She just glares, and Keith realises she’s in the window. On the window? Oh. Video feed.

  ‘Where’s Voltron?’ demands Shiro.

  ‘Not happening,’ Lance says quickly. ‘The cruiser is done for anyway, and—’

  ‘Keith? Where are you?’

  ‘Guys,’ Pidge says loudly. ‘Quit arguing. Keith’s fucked.’

  Which is the first time he allows himself to really look down and see what she’s seeing.

  He retches, and something beneath his hand responds with an audible gurgle. The roller doors segmenting the logical part from the emotional part of his brain come up and it all hits him at once; the throbbing low after a burst of adrenaline, the drain of being pushed into battle unprepared, worry for his team, for himself, the pain.

  ‘Pod, please,’ he whimpers, and then he shuts his eyes.

‘Kit? Hello—Kit?’

  ‘I’ss Keith,’ he slurs, blinking himself awake. He scratches the crust from his eyes with his fingernail. His back aches.

  The voice rumbles in amusement. ‘No. Kit is what Galra call their young.’

  He squints until the fluorescent lights back the hell off and he can see. A Blade member smiles down at him. It’s not often they do that.

  ‘I’m not young.’ He glances around. There are plenty of Blade members smiling at him. Something soggy slides down his chin. He swipes it away with his fingertips. Food goo?

  ‘Only kits fall asleep in their dinner,’ the Galra explains, offering him a starchy piece of paper to wipe his face.

  The cafeteria, he realises with mounting horror. He fellasleepin the cafeteria.

  He ducks his head. The Galra on his other side thumps him on the back. ‘No worries, Kit. You’ll grow up soon enough.’

Lance intercepts him in the hall, loudly and physically. Keith raises a brow at the hand on his chest.

  Walking in place like he means to push him but can’t find traction, Lance declares, ‘You know the rules! We do alone time in the same room or we go crazy. Non-negotiable.’

  Keith knows the logic behind it. It’s fairly standard behaviour for space travellers, or the feeling of isolation becomes crushing. On the other hand, ‘I just need sleep.’

  ‘You can nap in the lounge. I do it all the time.’

  His smile quirks up because, yeah, Lance can sleep literally anywhere. He’s slept through the Castle alarms more than once. ‘I’ll come out when I wake up.’

  Lance sighs. ‘Promise?’

(He sleeps for thirteen hours and misses a call from Kolivan that he doesn’t get to listen to for a further seven hours because what finally wakes him is, naturally, the Castle alarms.) 

‘Keith, what do you think?’ Allura smiles at him kindly. Like he’s a kid.

  (He isn’t.)

  (But still, he doesn’t have any great ideas.)

  ‘Um.’ He points at the map. ‘The sentries can’t get down here, with the heat. If Lance could start here, lay down some covering fire—’

  Shiro stops him. ‘There’s civilians down there. We can’t risk the casualties.’

  ‘Right,’ he sighs. ‘You’re right.’

The others are eating lunch when he finally gets back. He doesn’t even bother changing, just tugs off his hood and sinks into a chair.

  ‘Nice of you to join us,’ says Pidge, tapping away at her computer with one hand and shovelling goo in her mouth with the other.

  ‘How’d it go?’ Shiro asks, gesturing to the bowl already set out for him.

  He takes a grateful whiff. It’s scentless—Marmoran food goo has some extra vitamin in it that tastes and smells like laundry detergent. It’s awful. Healthy, apparently. Still terrible. Their dehydrated meat supplement isn’t any better.

  ‘Alright.’ He smiles at his brother. ‘We found out today that Lotor’s been dodging calls from the witch. We essentially,’ he interrupts himself with a yawn, ‘intercepted a voice mail from her that just said “call me back”.’ Lance snorts.

  ‘Trouble in paradise,’ says Hunk, shaking his head.

  Keith hums his amusement. He stuffs the spoon in his mouth and groans in pleasure. Sweet, sweet, not-laundry-detergent.

  ‘In front of my salad?’ Pidge grumbles, pulling her laptop closer to her.

  ‘The Blade has the worst fuckin’ food,’ he sighs. His scoops up as much as he can fit in his mouth with the second bite. Pidge gags. Shiro politely stares at his own plate. Allura winces. Coran covers her eyes with a gloved hand.

  His third bite stalls in the bowl, interrupted by a soft ping. He blinks slowly, then reactivates his mask. The team watches him with varying degrees of confusion.

  A minute later, he reports, ‘The Blade found another storage facility. It’s the biggest collection of quintessence we’ve ever seen in one place. Kolivan says it’s being distributed in three directions and brought in from one more. One of them has to lead to Lotor.’

  He places his spoon on the table.

  ‘Wait,’ say Allura.

  ‘Keith,’ Lance says meaningfully. He misses it. ‘Keith,’ he repeats, ‘no.’

  He stands. ‘I’ll be back. This shouldn’t take any longer than two or three quintants.’

  Pidge glares at him over her screen. ‘What if we need Voltron?’

  ‘You just got back. You can’t leave again. There’s stuff to do here too, you know.’ Lance stands too, his chair screeching against the floor. Keith doesn’t budge, and he doesn’t deactivate his mask. ‘Shiro, tell him how insane this is.’

  He agrees gently, ‘Lance is right. You need to take care of yourself, or you’ll burn out.’

  Hunk hedges, ‘Isn’t there someone else they could send? Just for one mission?’

  ‘They’re spread thin as it is—’

  ‘Well, there’s only five of us,’ Pidge points out.

  Six, he thinks privately. Shiro’s downturned mouth suggests he knows exactly what Keith is thinking.

  ‘Leo needs his dad—’

  He sends Lance a dark look. ‘Don’t.’ His team looks lost, but he doesn’t know how to explain to them that this is the right thing to do, he knows it. Allura takes a shaky breath, but Keith saves her the trouble. ‘Look. I’m fine. I just ate, and I’ll have time to rest when I get back to the base.’ Maybe. ‘I’m going.’

  Lance slaps his hand down on the back of his chair. ‘Keith, no.’

  ‘You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do,’ he snaps. The table quiets, hands and cutlery stilling. Lance’s frown deepens. ‘Look,’ Keith sighs, and in his mind it’s as good as an apology, ‘we’re so close. This is why we’re here. I’ll report back as soon as I can, and hopefully it’ll be with Lotor in captivity.’

  He goes.

(They don’t find Lotor. They sure as hell don’t capture him.)

The Avanakian Senators watch with heads tilted in curiosity as Shiro pulls Keith aside. Allura launches into a speech of some kind to distract them, but Keith can see their almond eyes flick in his direction every so often.

  Shiro looks for all the world like a kicked puppy. ‘We have to do better than this.’

  ‘I made the right call,’ he defends weakly. ‘I know I did, Shiro. The Galra are gone. They’re free.’

  ‘And they won’t have clean energy for—who knows, phoebs? You have to think about these things, Keith.’

  ‘Next time I’ll ask where they’re at with fossil fuel consumption,’ he says, snarky. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he sighs. He doesn’t want to fight with Shiro.

  His disappointed face is so much more effective than his encouraging face. ‘This isn’t a joke, Keith.’

  He presses a nail into the pad of his thumb to force himself to focus.

The goo dispenser is jammed for the millionth time. He bangs the nozzle against the wall, teeth bared. ‘Mother fucking bastard,’ he calls it.

  ‘What’d it ever do to you?’ Lance yawns behind him.

  ‘Doesn’t work,’ he growls.

Lance holds out his hand. Keith ignores it, fingers tracing the length of the hose to find the blockage. Lance sighs and snatches it from him.

  ‘I’ll do it. Jeez.’

  Keith leans his forehead against the machine. His eyes sting a lot less when he closes them.

  The snap of fingers by his ear sends him jumping backwards, knocking into the counter and sending a bowl flying to the floor. Lance steps backward, food goo nozzle flopping about as he raises his hands in surrender.

  ‘Dude, when was the last time you slept? You look like shit.’

  Keith snaps rigid. He leaves Lance spluttering as he pushes past him.

Keith paces the length of Shiro’s room. Three steps that way, three steps this way. Repeat. ‘I can’t do it anymore. I messing everything up!’

  ‘You’re learning. I wasn’t perfect when I started.’

  Keith doesn’t pause to plead with him. He has to be moving in some capacity, or he’ll go out of his mind. ‘But you are now. You could do this!’

  ‘Keith,’ he says firmly. No trace of disappointment or longing. ‘Youcan do this.’

  ‘Shiro, I—every mission, I screw up. Allura’s in a pod because of me! When has she ever been in a pod after battle?’

  ‘Mistakes are how we learn. We’ll keep working on it.’

  He does stop then, arms tight around his waist. ‘Mistakes get people hurt.’

  Shiro gets off the bed to take him by the shoulders. ‘If I didn’t think you could do this, I would take Black back. But I know you can.’

  Keith searches his face. Soft with understanding, but firm with determination. ‘Please,’ he begs. One last ditch effort.

  Shiro pulls him into a hug. ‘I’m not giving up on you, Keith,’ he tells the wall over his shoulder. ‘Don’t give up on yourself.’

  Keith sinks into the embrace, eyes screwed shut.

His shoulder blade connects sharply with the ground.

  ‘Like that?’ the Galra asks nervously.

  He scrubs a hand down his face to dispel the dizziness. The Blade in training doesn’t help him up—his hands are folded by his chest, shoulders hunched despite his tall frame. He can’t be any older than Pidge.

  ‘That was almost perfect,’ he says, climbing to his feet.

  It took him down, but there’s always room for improvement.

The gladiator halts mid-step, the light in its eye dying. The simulation fizzles away. Keith whips his head towards the control room, his fringe flicking beads of sweat with the movement. Coran frowns down at him and jerks his chin towards the door.

  Keith throws his bayard down with a huff. His throat is too dry to swallow properly.

Kolivan’s massive hand latches onto his breastplate, yanking him back. ‘Pull yourself together,’ he growls, ‘Or you’ll get us all killed.’

‘Guys, I—’ The words catch in his throat. He allows himself a second to breathe. Just one. His voice is small. ‘I heard what happened. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.’

  Face pinched with hurt, Allura snaps, ‘You keep saying you’re sorry.’

Keith doesn’t give up easy. Perseverance is Survival 101, and he’s nothing if not a survivor.

  He got close, though. Once.

  Two months alone in the desert can do crazy things to a human brain. It was hot. Quiet, for the most part. He could hear the faint sound of engines rumbling every now and again from planes or trucks; the Garrison’s reach ended outside his territory, though, so the only face he saw was his own. The bunker under his house was stocked floor to ceiling with everything he needed.

  There was the pull, as well. Now he knows it was Blue, but then, it just felt like unfinished business. Like any moment he’d turn over a stone and there Shiro would be.

  Two months in the desert and he was ready to call it quits. Isolating himself, wandering through dust and rock; none of it helped Shiro, lost on a moon four and a half billion miles away. Maybe it felt right, being stuck on a moon of his own, waiting for rescue that wouldn’t come—but only for so long. He knew he was only punishing himself, and for what?

  Shiro chose to leave.

  If Keith was supposed to be alone? Fuck it. He could be alone somewhere with more electricity and less sweat. 

  He wasn’t sure where, exactly, but he’d probably know when he got there.

  Sand rattled in the engine of his hover bike as he rode towards the setting sun. It drove steady for hours, but his resolve waned with each mile. When it became apparent that the sun was outrunning him, he stopped. He drank and cursed his meagre supply of water. He drove again.

  He was on the fringes of a town when it finally broke down. The bike spluttered to a halt under him, whether from want of gas or because it was giving up altogether, he’d never know. He dragged it to its final resting place among tufts of ceramic grass and globs of tarmac. The keys were still in the ignition.

  He marched stubbornly past the siren call of blinking motel signs, his pockets weightless and his heart heavy.

  The stars were lost to light pollution.

  He wondered what he was thinking. How he thought he could do anything but wait on his own. He’d never been able to help himself before.

  He stuck his thumb out as one car drove by and glared after its taillights. He didn’t try hitchhiking after that.

  It was ages before his feet planted where they were and refused to move again. The heaviness settled in his lungs solidified and he could barely breathe until he looked back the way he came. The sweat cooled on his temples as he stood there, waiting. Waiting for his feet to resume walking or his legs to give in or Shiro to fall from the sky and tell him it was all going to be fine.

  The desert didn’t call for him or beg him to stay, but it did forbid him to leave.

  He was walking back before he realised. He couldn’t even bring himself to be disappointed, because what had he expected?

  He was going to die in that desert. He’d been born there. He’d trained and played and lived there. It was the only place for him, with Shiro or without.

  The thought was just a whisper—

  It was his dad. He wanted him to come home.

  Gone were the quiet images of a small house in the woods, or on the beach. Some shitty apartment at some shitty school where he’d finally be who Shiro always said he saw inside the angry kid.

  There were only so many people who knew the things the desert did, and he had to be around to breathe life into the reel of memories. Otherwise his parents were gone. Shiro—the one without the sparkling smile and crisp uniform—was gone. Keith would be gone, too. If he went, he left only the barest suggestion of himself in classrooms, on teachers who didn’t have the time, in a student’s bent nose.

  The real versions of his family only existed in the desert. Only he could keep them alive.

  Whether he deserved to stay or not—he owed them all that.

  So he’d drain the bunker dry of apocalypse supplies. He’d go out in the morning or during the twilight and feel the presence of the desert, whatever strange energy locked him into the granules of ground among rocky spires and the scorch marks of Garrison machines. 

  All of this is to say that Keith doesn’t give up often.

  When he does, he’s pulled back in; Shiro puts a kid in the simulator and shows him a life worth living, Blue tells a lost boy not to go just yet, Lance tells a cobbled-together Black Paladin not to split up the team. Something’s fought his genetics (the ones that scream abandon what is no use to you) his entire life to keep him going, keep him staying.

  That’s how he knows that if he’s wrong (and leaving is the same as giving up) someone will stop him. His feet will freeze in the hangar or on the controls of a piece-of-junk pod or between two blackholes. Something will tell him to take it no further, to go home. Something, someone, will forbid him to walk away.

  This is what he thinks as his team holds him tight. They cry, but he knows he won’t be allowed to make the wrong choice.

  ‘If this is what you want,’ Shiro says quietly. There’s a crease between his brows, and his eyes keep wandering away to the window and the great big universe behind it. Keith nods.

  Allura takes a deep breath. Lance, uncharacteristically, shuts his mouth.

  They walk him down the hallways and through the hangar and watch him load his meagre possessions into a piece-of-junk pod, and he knows he’s making the right choice because no-one asks him to stay. Pidge storms away, scrubbing her face, but the rest of them wave. Shiro presses his lips into a wobbly smile. Lance yells hoarsely, ‘Remember to visit, Mullet, or else!’

  Keith waits for more, but the engines hum under him and he blinks and he’s in the quiet of space.

  Just ask, he thinks, propelling the ship forward and away. Ask me, and I’ll stay for you.

  The Castle watches him go, solemn and beautiful.