Chapter Text
The castle has three hundred and fifty-seven doors. Two hundred of those doors open to bedrooms, suites, and bunkrooms, and the closets and bathrooms inside them. Another two dozen open up to familiar and well-used spaces — the bridge, the training deck, the kitchen, the lounge. The ship has twenty levels with an airlock on every one, an unstocked kitchen and mess hall for the ship’s crew, two shuttle bays, one ballroom, a dozen offices and conference rooms, and five Lion hangars.
Some of the places he’s explored once and not gone back; some of them he avoided from the start, not wanting to run into anyone. And some — like the room with three walls made of thick, invisible glass looking out onto the passing stars and moons and nebulae — he’s come back to again and again and again, staring out into space until he isn’t sure what day it is anymore.
There’s nothing else to do but wander the castle — aimless, purposeless — and even that gets boring eventually.
Shiro sighs, tipping his head back and staring up at the ceiling.
It’s late. Late enough that everyone should be asleep — himself included — but that means the kitchen should be empty, finally, so he gets up to find something to eat.
He’s been doing this for almost a week now, sneaking around during the quiet hours of the night so he doesn’t have to talk to anyone and wandering the castle the rest of the time so no one can hunt him down in his room.
Shiro’s room.
Fuck.
It’s been something like a week since Lance took a dream ride through the Black Lion’s consciousness and brought Shiro back into the land of the living and corporeal. A week since Shiro — since Ro — realized he’s not Shiro. He’s someone or some thing else.
Despite their quick reassurances that first day — that they would figure things out — the others have been unbearably awkward and uncertain around him since then. Maybe it’s because now they’ve had the time to process, to think about who or what Ro really is and why he’s here, and all the easy camaraderie they’d achieved has melted away. Ro’s starting to feel like nothing so much as a stranger in what was his home.
He doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t trust himself either.
Ro roots around in the “space fridge,” hoping there’s some leftovers of whatever it was he smelled Hunk cooking when he’d meandered near the kitchen several hours ago. He scarfs down a few mouthfuls and then shoves the rest back into the fridge before heading back toward his room to lock himself in for the rest of the night.
Maybe he’ll even be able to get some sleep.
No one decided to uproot him from the Black Paladin room, for some reason; Allura put Shiro in the closest guest suite, around the corner from the other Paladins’ rooms and bigger, but less personal, farther away from everything. It’s really where they should have put Ro and he can’t decide if the comfort of a familiar room outweighs the tension of having to tiptoe through the hall past the other Paladins’ rooms to avoid them.
He gets back to his room and takes a short shower, throwing on the shirt and pants he uses as pajamas.
There’s a knock at the door.
For a long moment Ro just stares at it, wondering if he should even answer — it could be important, maybe, but if it were truly urgent Allura would have called him over the comms.
He’s still debating when the knock comes again and Ro grits his teeth and moves to open the door.
It’s Shiro, expression neutral and arms folded over his chest, and his voice is even — emotionless — when he speaks. “Hi.”
Ro watches him for a second, waiting, but Shiro doesn’t offer up any explanation as to why he’s here, so after a long moment of dithering Ro decides he’d rather be behind a closed door when he hears whatever Shiro wants to say. He steps back and gestures for Shiro to come in, and then leans against the opposite wall, mirroring Shiro’s closed off posture.
Shiro stays just inside the closed door, eyes averted and shadowed. He looks tired — not much better than he had that first night — and pale and awkward in his body. Like he’s not used to it.
“I, uh, wanted to check in, see how you were doing,” Shiro says finally, gaze flicking over to Ro and away again, never quite looking him in the eye.
Ro frowns. “Why?”
“Because it’s my job,” Shiro says, firm and assured. “I need to take care of my team.”
“I’m not on the team,” Ro counters, heart thumping painfully in his chest. Checking in with the team still feels like his job and it’s been torture for the last few days ignoring the intrinsic need he has to do it.
Shiro’s expression pinches, and he goes silent for a moment. “You… you were ,” he says slowly, more like a question and no longer hard with conviction.
Ro pushes down the desire to scoff and shakes his head instead. “Past tense. As in, not anymore, which means there’s no real reason to check in with me. So why are you here?”
Shiro’s frown deepens, seemingly debating whether to answer. “I… wanted to know if something happened between you and Lance,” he says eventually, and it might have sounded apologetic if it weren’t for the suspicion lingering in his eyes.
Ro blinks, unease sinking his stomach. “I haven’t seen Lance since the day you came back.”
“No,” Shiro shakes his head, “I meant while I was gone.”
Ro flinches, remembering losing his temper and treating Lance like a child, and then apologizing later and watching something slowly start to bloom between them. Goofing off and flirting -- because they were definitely flirting, weren’t they? -- during missions, playing Killbot Phantasm II until the wee hours of the morning, and realizing how valuable a second-in-command Lance was, how adaptable and optimistic and tenacious he is. He remembers wishing and hoping and dreaming for something more, but knowing that something was wrong with him and it wasn’t right to ask anything of Lance while he was still figuring it out. So he never had.
“No,” Ro finally says, shaking his head and resisting the urge to press a palm against the ache in his chest. “No, nothing happened. Why are you asking?”
“The way you two were together the day I got back...” Shiro says, brows knitting together. “Lance and I weren’t like that before. We weren’t… close.”
Ro closes his eyes and swallows, throat tightening. “I know.”
“You know ?” Shiro asks, tone sharp.
Ro opens his eyes again and frowns. “Like I said that day — I thought I was you, I’ve got all the same memories. So if you’re worried I made a move on Lance, there’s no need. Nothing happened.”
“You were acting pretty intimate for ‘nothing’ happening,” Shiro says, gaze hardening.
Ro’s heart gives a silent pang, remembering how attentive and gentle and kind Lance was that day — sitting close, squeezing his hand in reassurance, swearing to Ro that everything would be okay. It was barely a taste of what he’d hoped they’d have some day.
“We’re just friends,” Ro says, voice rasping. “We’re not any closer than you and Keith are.”
Shiro’s jaw clenches and he searches Ro’s face for a long moment before gritting out, “But you want to be.”
Ro laughs, wry and pained. “Of course I do. I have from the beginning.”
“You’re not me!” Shiro shouts, eyes flashing, and he points a trembling finger at Ro’s face. “Those are my feelings, my memories! You don’t have a right to them!”
Ro shakes his head, leaning all of his weight into the wall at his back, not in denial, but in confusion. All the memories in his head, everything he believes and knows and remembers is familiar, is important . He thought it was all his . But it’s not, none of it is his, it can’t be his, not when the proof of that fact is standing right in front of him.
It all still feels like his, though.
“It’s all in my head,” Ro whispers, almost more to himself than to Shiro. “It’s all in my head, too. It all feels like me.”
“It’s not ,” Shiro snarls, suddenly too close and shoving him back against the wall. “It’s not yours! You’re not even real, just some thing Haggar grew in her lab!” And then his hands fly off Ro’s shoulders like he’s been burned and he backs away.
Ro stills, pressing his shaking palms against the wall and just staring. Shiro’s eyes flash rapidly through a series of emotions Ro can’t identify, looking down at his hands and clenching and relaxing them over and over. He looks lost, confused maybe, but Ro doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t want to keep seeing this face that he both knows and doesn’t know in all the ways that make his gut clench with unease.
“Well,” he rasps, fighting to keep his head up, to not look away, “when you decide whether or not you’re going to kick me off the ship or kill me, let me know. Until then, please, just… go away.”
Shiro stares at him for a long moment, silent and unreadable, and then he turns on his heel and walks out without another word.
~~~
He doesn’t sleep much that night, drifting in and out of consciousness a few times but not getting any decent rest from it. The last time he wakes up it’s with a strangled choke, lungs sucking in air and stomach lurching as he throws himself off the bed onto his hands and knees. Ro shakily lowers himself all the way down to the floor — the plasteel surface cool against his flushed skin — and tries to get his breath back without vomiting.
This is why he’s barely slept since… since . It’s just not a good idea. Too many nights of seeing his mirror image staring back at him, grinning viciously as it finds and steals and destroys everything that’s his, everything that’s him , and what right does he even have to that nightmare? Ro’s the monster who steals lives away.
But whatever or whoever he is, he’s still human enough to need sleep. Ro’s memories may not be his own, but he’s learned that his limits are about the same as Shiro’s, which means he’d needed to at least try to get a full eight hours last night. He hadn’t managed even close to that, but the results of his effort should get him through another twenty-four hours, probably, if he doesn’t push himself too much.
Eventually, Ro drags himself off the floor and into the shower — throwing his shirt over the mirror on his way — and then slips out into the hall as quietly as he can once he’s dressed. It’ll still be another thirty minutes before any of the other Paladins start waking up, so this is his best chance to sit and eat undisturbed.
Except as soon as he’s sat down with his bowl of goo, Allura marches in early and watches him silently for a long moment.
And Ro waits, because unlike last night there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say to make this any easier. Either she’s going to follow along with the others, keeping a close eye on him but allowing him to stay, or she’ll decide Ro is too much of a threat and throw him off the ship now while there’s no one here to argue. And that would hurt, no matter whether she shoved him into a shuttle with a bag of his belongings or simply pushed him out an airlock, but Ro won’t stop her. He can’t trust his own judgment right now, but he trusts Allura; if she thinks it’s too dangerous to keep him near the team then he has to agree.
“Shiro is still weak,” Allura says eventually, arms crossed and expression carefully neutral. “His time in the Black Lion has left him malnourished and exhausted and he needs time to recover. And while the other Paladins are improving rapidly, I am still worried about their ability to defend themselves and others. They still have a long way to go.”
Ro nods, knuckles turning white where he’s got his spoon in a death grip. “They’re stubborn and strong, but they’re still kids,” he agrees. And Allura can’t keep an unknown threat near them, not where they’re supposed to be able to rest and train and be safe . He doesn’t want to leave, but he will. He can at least do this for them, for his team, no matter how hard it is.
“They — we — need to keep training on schedule,” Allura continues. “We can’t afford to take breaks and I cannot lead them when I am no longer in a leadership position while on missions. We need you to keep training with us until Shiro is ready.”
Ro blinks, before ducking his head, staring blankly down at his food. That… is not what he expected.
Allura standing silently in the background and letting Shiro and the others decide to allow Ro to stay is one thing. But asking him to still show up on the training deck every day, surrounded by and using weapons with and against the Paladins, is completely different. Either she’s deciding to put a level of trust in him that Ro, frankly, thinks is completely idiotic, or she’s confident enough in her own abilities to be able to stop him if he attacks someone.
Before he can think of anything to say, Allura continues. “The others will be up and ready in a varga or so. Meet us on the training deck at your 0700.” And then she turns and walks away.
Ro watches her disappear around the corner before letting out a sigh. He probably shouldn’t go; it’s dangerous, he has no idea what he was made for or why he’s here, and every additional interaction with the others increases the odds of something bad happening, but…
But he misses them. It’s only a few days into his self-induced isolation and he’s already aching for their company — for Pidge’s sass and Hunk’s cheerful support and Lance’s banter and Coran’s goldmine of stories. This could go horribly, disastrously wrong, but if Ro spends another day completely alone he might go crazy.
So he finishes choking down the neon green goo and heads back to his room to change into his armor — Shiro’s armor, which is now on loan. He goes up to the training deck and does his warm ups, stretching and jogging around the perimeter while he waits.
The others trickle in about an hour later, one after another, and start moving through their own stretches and warm ups until they’re all ready to go. They turn toward Ro, obviously waiting for instructions, but none of them are really looking him in the eye.
“Let’s… start out against the gladiator,” Ro says, biting back a sigh of resignation. “Training sequence number four, level one.”
The team forms up as a gladiator drops from the ceiling, bayards flashing into shape. And… it goes okay. The armor on Altean tech is tough and even Lance and Hunk’s bayards need to get in a couple successive hits to punch through it, so the two of them draw the gladiator’s attention with some glancing blows while Pidge sneaks around behind it. Allura’s whip lashes around its legs, locking it in place, and Pidge leaps up and cuts through the more vulnerable, flexible material at its neck. It drops like a stone and then disappears through the floor as soon as Pidge has climbed off and gotten out of the way.
Ro nods to all of them in approval and gestures for them to get back in formation. “Good. Let’s ramp it up, level three.”
Three gladiators drop this time, two with staffs and the other a whip, the combination of close and mid-range weaponry meaning they’re going to have to work as a tighter unit to take them down.
Two of them go straight for Pidge, the smallest target, and the others rally around her. Allura locks whip with a gladiator’s staff while Pidge tries to find an opening, and Lance and Hunk fend off the gladiator wielding the whip. Ro’s left facing the third on his own. Normally he’d have it taken down in seconds and rushed over to help the team, but this one keeps dancing out of his reach and lunging for the others. It’s all Ro can do to block its attacks before it runs off again, struggling to keep up.
It all goes downhill fast when the gladiator charges at Hunk from behind. Ro leaps forward to take care of it, but Hunk sees him out of the corner of his eye and jerks in surprise, almost smacking Ro in the head with his cannon. Ro’s so busy dodging him that he loses track of the gladiator.
Pidge calls out “Shiro, get down!” and he ducks on instinct. He sees her flinch the moment the words are out of her mouth and another gladiator smashes its staff into her chest plate while she’s distracted, sending her flying.
“End training sequence!” Ro shouts, rushing over to her. “You okay?” he asks, crouching down and holding a hand out.
Pidge stares at it for a moment, and then glances up at him, expression equal parts embarrassed and wary. “I’m fine, Ro,” she says, a subtle, but unmistakable pause just before his name. She pushes herself up to her feet with a low groan. “I can keep going.”
Ro wrestles with himself for a moment before pushing aside the mess of emotions over Pidge’s mix-up and subsequent reaction to it in lieu of concern for her physical well-being. She hit the wall pretty hard, she’s gotta have some nasty bruises at the very least, and maybe a concussion. “You sure?” he asks.
She nods, and Ro decides not to push it. Pidge is the most stubborn person he’s ever met and she’s already tense, prickly.
“Alright,” he concedes, and then turns back to the others. “How about we try that level again?”
He calls out for the computer to restart the same round from the beginning. The three gladiators are more mobile this time, weaving through the team and darting in and out, attacking at random. Ro’s gaze is flitting everywhere at once, working frantically to figure out the pattern.
And then everything snags when he watches Allura tag a gladiator running right past her toward himself and Lance — easily within reach of her whip — and then purposefully ignore it, turning away to lash at one of the others.
Ro lunges, just barely intercepting in time to block the staff hurtling down toward Lance’s head. He’s just not quick enough to protect his own head. The staff smashes into him and he drops, knees buckling under the force.
Lance cries out in dismay, whipping his rifle around and taking out the gladiator even as he shouts “End training sequence!”
Ro groans, blinking rapidly to clear the stars from his eyes as Lance crouches down and starts probing at his head.
“Fuck, Ro, you okay?”
“Yeah, think so. Just hurt like a bitch.”
Lance’s answering chuckle is strained, but his smile of relief is genuine. If Ro didn’t feel so woozy from the hit, he’d probably be feeling woozy just from Lance being so close and smiling like that, especially since he’s been distant for days.
Lance pushes up from the floor, offering a hand to pull Ro up beside him and holding on until he’s sure Ro is steady. And then he rounds on Allura, expression furious. “What the quiznak was that, Princess?”
Allura frowns. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Bull shit , you don’t know,” Lance spits. “That gladiator had to have gone right past you to get to us and when I turned around you were taking out the one Pidge was already handling . So what the hell happened?”
“I made a snap judgment,” Allura says, eyes narrowing. “I saw Ro tracking its movements and I trusted he had the situation under control.”
Lance scoffs. “Right, and you would have ‘trusted’ all the rest of us with that responsibility, too, rather than eliminating the threat while you had the chance to do it yourself, would you?”
“Lance,” Ro cuts in, quiet and calm, but firm. “Don’t.”
Lance turns to him with a glare. “You know she let it go by on purpose, there’s no other explanation.” He rounds back on Allura, gaze burning. “Well, Princess? Did he pass your little test? Is that bruise on his head enough to convince you that he’s on our side? Since apparently the dozens of other times he’s done something just like this in the last six months weren’t enough!”
Allura doesn’t answer any of his questions, just shrinks her whip back to its bayard form. “Perhaps we should train individually for the remainder of the day,” she suggests, avoiding Lance’s gaze. “We’re not working well as a team this morning.”
Ro closes his eyes and breathes out that quiet sigh he’d held back earlier. “Yeah. Yeah let’s just… work separately for the morning,” he says, waving the others off.
They all break off individually to run or go through sims or stretch or whatever — Lance still fuming — and Ro stands off to the side, watching and cataloging what to work on with each of them later. Honestly, this wasn’t as bad as he was expecting it to go, no matter what he might have hoped for. It hurts, but he’s not really surprised that they’re all uncomfortable around him now. They’ll only have to deal with it for a short while, anyway, just until Shiro gets his strength back.
And Ro’s going to try not to dwell on what he’s going to do with himself once that day comes.
~~~
They pass the morning like that, finishing up with a quick run-through of what Ro wants them to work on during the additional individual training each of them does every day, and then they head off to the kitchen for lunch. Shiro is at the table when they all stumble in, munching slowly away at the last of the leftovers from the dinner Hunk made last night.
Ro freezes in his tracks, wavering in the doorway and debating whether he should leave and come back later, or if blatantly avoiding the Black Paladin will make things worse.
Shiro brightens at the sight of the others, lifting a hand up to wave before his expression goes completely blank when he spots Ro.
“Aww, Shiro! I was saving that for a late night snack,” Pidge says, shoulders slumping and oblivious to the tension.
“Snooze you lose,” Shiro quips, gaze moving to her and mouth quirking up in a grin around the fork in his mouth.
Ro eases just inside and leans against the wall — close to the exit while he takes a moment to evaluate, to wait and see.
“Says the one who’s been sleeping for days,” Pidge points out, purposely bumping into his shoulder on her way to the food goo dispensers.
“Shiro needs the rest,” Allura says, sliding regally into her chair while Coran goes to retrieve bowls for the both of them. “According to the scans we took, his body seems to have been in some kind of suspended animation, like cryosleep. He could have stayed that way for years, but the lack of use has still left his body weakened.”
“Guess it’s a good thing we found you then, huh?” Lance asks, grinning broadly from where he’s leaning against the wall by the dispensers, waiting his turn.
“‘We?’” Shiro asks, and his lips are curled up in a playful smirk, but there’s a dark glimmer in his eyes that makes Ro’s gut clench. “Come on Lance, since when are you so humble? Take some credit, that was all you.”
Ro fights the urge to close his eyes as the air in the room seems to drop a few degrees.
Well. It looks like any desire Shiro might have had in maintaining civility is completely gone now, thanks to the fight last night. Until yesterday, Ro had thought it would be okay. Tense, awkward — highly uncomfortable, even — but now...
Lance’s smile looks frozen, stiff, but his voice is bright as he waves away Shiro’s comment with a forced chuckle. “No way, I wouldn’t have even known if it weren’t for Ro.”
“Yeah, but he only found out because Black told him,” Shiro says, shrugging.
The others are starting to look uneasy — even Allura seems tense — and Lance’s smile is completely gone. “That’s not—“
“Lance,” Ro cuts in, digging his fingers into his biceps to hide the way they’re shaking. “Shiro’s right, you did all the actual work getting him back. There’s no shame in taking the credit for that.”
“Ro…” Lance says, face falling, but Ro just shrugs.
“If I hadn’t been here, it would have been Keith she told. I was just in the right place at the right time; I didn’t do anything special.”
Lance is still frowning, eyes swimming with sadness, but he lets it drop with a quiet “If you’re sure,” and everyone slowly goes back to grabbing food and crowding around the table.
Part of Ro wishes someone else would have protested too, but avoidance is probably better than causing a scene and really forcing everyone to pick a side, especially since he really doesn’t want to know what everyone would choose. They’ll have to eventually, but he’s not so eager for that day to come that he’s going to push the issue.
“So,” Shiro says, turning to Pidge and Hunk, “what have you been up to?”
The two of them launch straight into in-depth and complicated explanations about their projects on the Lions, Pidge’s work with her dad and the Olkari, Hunk’s work with Lotor’s engineers to make Galra and Altean tech compatible, and on and on, all the little inventions and tweaks and investigations they’re doing for Voltron, the rebels, and the Galra Empire that they’re now tentatively working with, thanks to Lotor.
There’s no room for awkward silences or blistering accusations once those two get going, so Ro fills up a bowl and eats quickly, avoiding eye contact and choking the goo down one spoonful at a time, even if right now it’s making his stomach roll. He leaves quietly as soon as he’s done.
Shiro doesn’t look at him even once.
~~~
The evening of the day after Shiro was brought back, Ro had let Coran drag him to the kitchen for one last meal with the others. Lance hadn’t been there, or Shiro — the former off hunting the castle for some part Pidge needed — but Keith had still been on the ship and he’d torn himself away from a slumbering Shiro to join the rest of them.
Sitting around the table, all of them eating silently, tears had started dripping down Keith’s face for the second time that day. He’d choked out that he’d realized Black had been trying to tell him for months — from the very beginning — where Shiro was, but Keith hadn’t listened. Keith hadn’t listened to anything Black tried to say because he didn’t want to be her Paladin, didn’t want to take Shiro’s place, didn’t want to bond with her in any way.
So he’d blocked her out, shut her down over and over again, refusing to talk, and so he’d kept them all from finding out that Shiro had been so, so close to them all this time.
He’d looked over at Ro, then, expression conflicted and complicated. “How could you have gone so long without finding out, either?” he’d asked, tone frigid with accusation, but tinged with genuine confusion and hurt.
And Ro had told him the truth. That Black had never communicated with him and, after a while, he’d started to think that she never would. That he’d spoken to her again and again and again, every time they flew, every time they went into battle, on so many nights when the lonely, empty space in his head where his Lion used to whisper nearly made him weep in frustration. Until it all finally drove him down to her hangar in the middle of the night and he’d screamed in fury and despair before falling to his knees and begging her to talk to him, just once.
Why, why, why?
And all he heard back was Your quintessence is not the same.
Well. In reality, Ro had only given the very basics: that he’d tried, but Black never said anything back, save the once; he kept the rest of it to himself.
Thankfully, that had been enough of an explanation, apparently. Allura had chimed in, explaining that the Lions choose their pilots based on compatible quintessence. The less compatible it was, the harder it was to connect with them. Black’s explanation of Ro’s different quintessence said everything they needed to know — it must have been difficult for her to speak to him, requiring more energy than usual, and that brief moment where she got through and told him had been all she could do, probably, and that was likely only accomplished by Ro’s desperate desire to connect in that moment, a surge of energy feeding the link.
Lance’s connection to Shiro, she said, and his general knack for temporary adaptation, was likely how he was able to dive in and pull Shiro out. If he’d been there, Keith could probably have done the same since his connection to Shiro was even stronger and his was quintessence more compatible with Black than Lance’s.
It seemed to ease Keith’s anger with Ro specifically, knowing that there was no way Ro could have known, but it had also driven Keith deeper into the well of his own guilt. If he were really Shiro, Ro could probably have helped with that, reassured him, comforted him.
But he isn’t, and he hadn’t known what to say.
But regardless of who he isn’t , Ro knows he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. But if his suspicions about his origins are true - just some thing Haggar grew in her lab , Shiro had said - what he wants may not even matter.
Lance seems to trust him, but then, Lance has had faith in him from the beginning and has been worried about him ever since their talk outside Oriand a couple of weeks ago. Ro’s not Shiro, but Lance still apparently thinks of him as a friend anyway.
And that is what’s tearing him up the most. His feelings for Lance are a byproduct of the stolen memories in his head. They don’t belong to him and he has no right to Lance’s friendship because he’s not Shiro . Lance thought he was hanging out with Shiro all this time, which means Ro stole all that time from both of them, time they should have spent with each other.
It guts him to even think about it, for all of their sake.
So Ro wanders the halls again until he settles in his new favorite place, staring out at the stars and trying to push away the hurt over the strain in his relationship with everyone, the bitter accusations Shiro threw his way, the realization that whatever was budding up between him and Lance has to be over now. He doesn’t have the right to be hurt over it; none of it is his , not really. And everyone’s safety is the most important thing to him anyway.
The irony here is that he can’t bring himself to do anything on his own, either killing himself or leaving. Iit was probably Shiro’s first — this relentless, all-consuming desire to live — but even though it’s stolen, he still feels it , can’t ignore it, can’t push through the choking, raging, blinding desire to live . So Ro can’t kill himself, even though there’s a fairly logical argument for why he should.
And he can’t leave. He can’t .
It should be much easier than killing himself, just leaving , getting as far away from the Saviors of the Universe as he can. But he can’t, not even to protect his team, at least not while he doesn’t really know anything.
This ship, these people — they’re his family , the only one he has left, and even if they hate him — hate him because he’s not real, not the man they chose to lead them — he loves them and they might still need him if they can eliminate whatever danger he poses.
If they force him to, he’ll go, he’ll respect their wishes, but he can’t just walk away.
So until the team makes a decision Ro will stay in this place of vacillation — on the ship, but not on the team; wearing Shiro’s face, but not Shiro; existing, but not truly real .
Waiting for his fate to be decided.
He stares up at the stars while he waits, letting the silence and sparkling lights settle his heart back down after the stress of the morning, and maybe an hour after Ro sits down, quiet, unobtrusive footsteps approach from behind.
Lance appears in his peripheral vision and takes the empty space to Ro’s left, leaning back on his palms and staring up at the stars as well.
A few minutes pass before he says, softly, “Sorry I haven’t come to check up on you. I needed some time to— to sort through all of this.”
Ro shrugs and pulls a knee up to his chest, wrapping both of his arms around it tightly. “It’s fine, I get it.”
“It’s not fine,” Lance insists, brow furrowing. “I was there today, I saw how the others are acting, how they’re treating you. Shiro especially. You’ve probably needed a friend and I’ve been too wrapped up in— quiznak, I don’t even know what. Everything I could say sounds stupid.”
Ro sighs, resting his chin on his knee. In the last few months, he’s started to rely on Lance as his right hand out in the field, started slowly opening up to him as a friend, too, beyond what he and Shiro had before. Had even started to wonder if “friend” might transition into “boyfriend,”but iIt seems like a trivial thing to care about now.
As if reading his thoughts, Lance blurts out, “Shiro confessed to me.”
Ro blinks, whirling around. “...What?”
Lance chuckles, but it’s a strained, broken sound. “It was almost funny, y’know, because I was trying to work up the nerve to confess to you in those last couple of days before you came to me about what Black told you,” he says, wry and darkly amused. “Heck, I thought that’s what you were doing.”
Ro’s chest tightens and he exhales noisily.
God , that… that hurts. Knowing that there really had been a chance with Lance. But it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s not his right.
He still cares about Lance, though, and he wants to know what’s going on with him, even if it’s hearing about him being with someone else. That would have been the case no matter who Lance was interested in. “So... you and Shiro, huh?” he asks, quirking a brow.
Lance makes a pained sound and tips his head up toward the ceiling, eyes closed. “ No ,” he says, and it’s wobbly and wet and Ro can’t stop his eyes widening in surprise. “No,” Lance continues, “because— Because it’s both of you and it’s not fair and I— How could I choose? ” He looks over at Ro then, pleadingly, and Ro’s heart warms and breaks all at the same time.
Fuck, this kid . Somehow he believes his own feelings actually belong to Shiro and Ro, and isn’t that simultaneously shocking and yet the most surprising thing ever. Heart of Voltron, indeed.
Ro shakes his head, chuckling softly. “I— I’m not sure that made sense, Lance,” he says, because really, it doesn’t, but Lance doesn’t get what he really means, and that’s okay. Ro didn’t intend for him to.
“Ah, yeah. Probably not,” Lance says, hanging his head. “Sorry. Should I just— never mention it again?”
“I have no idea,” Ro says, squeezing his arms around his knee and turning to stare back up at the stars. “Probably.”
Definitely, he tells himself. It’s unlikely he’ll be around much longer; Lance should save his heart for someone who’s real .
“Are we…” Lance starts, and then pauses.
Ro turns back, heart softening as Lance’s gaze roves searchingly over his face.
“Are we still friends?” Lance whispers.
Ro should say no. He has no right to any of this. Everything in his life belongs to Shiro and he’s not Shiro. That includes Lance’s friendship, but Ro doesn’t think he can let go of that too, not when it’s still being offered openly, genuinely.
“I hope so,” Ro says, palming the back of his neck. “I can’t— fuck , Lance, I don’t know how to deal with this alone.”
“I’d offer to find you a handbook, but I doubt one exists for this situation,” Lance says, leaning into his shoulder, warm and solid. “I do know the others will come around eventually, some sooner than others. They’re all good people, they just need some time to sort this all out like I did.”
Ro nods, not sure he agrees, but too tired to argue.
“Hey,” Lance says, waiting for Ro to look over at him. “Just remember I’m not going anywhere, alright?” he asks, echoing his words from the dining room on that first, gut-wrenching day, and all Ro can do is nod again.
He’s grateful — unbelievably grateful to have someone on his side — but Ro’s really not sure how much of a difference their friendship will make in the long run.