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Chapter Text

Lean in, some instinct whispered in the back of his mind.  Lean in.  Drag the bike with his weight.  Throw himself to the side.  Away from that sharp curve.  But the man's fingers clenched tighter over the handlebars and threw his weight forward instead.  In the corner of his eye he could see another hover bike coming up on his left, gray and black with gaudy stylized flames on the side.  His fingers shifted, opening the throttle, pushing himself forward.  His hands tightened on the leather grips, finger tapping rapidly.  

Keith.

The name rang sharply in the back of his mind, driven forward by a memory.  But Keith only grit his teeth and pushed it back and away.  That was done.  It was over.  There was only the road before him now, the race, the sharp turn in that cliffside road.  

It was coming up fast, that twisted barrier already telling its own stories of vehicles striking the guardrail too quickly.  If one only leaned over the side, they'd see the scraps of metal littering the ground belw.  But just that one breakneck turn and then it was home free, a mad dash back down into the gorge against the dry air, crowds gathered, screaming, cheering on their favorite bikers who they had bet far too much money on.  

Just had to get past that one turn first.  Other bikes pushed harder, faster.  Keith's eyes darted to the side, sizing up Mr. Flames Decal.  He was pushing it, moving closer, forcing Keith in turn closer to the edge.  But he didn't back down.  Didn't slow down.  The other rider's face was hidden beneath a helmet, but Keith could see lips twisting into a sneer.  Keith growled right back.  

Dry wind bit at his skin, sending dust flying up around him, goggles pulled down over his eyes.  He opened up the throttle, the speed gauge climbing upward.  He wasn't slowing.  

Keith.

A whisper in his ear sent his stomach into knots and Keith grit his teeth, zipping ahead, hunched forward over the handlebars.  He threw his weight to the side, the bike dipping dangerously, one wing dragging along the ground, kicking up sparks as it scoured the concrete.

The adrenaline kicked in and for an instant, Keith felt like he was floating, that high driving its way into his brain.  

Road fell away to sandstone, and suddenly there was only open air beneath him.

It was in moments like this, that weightlessness rolling through him, stomach rising up as the nose of the bike started dipping downward that he felt most free.  Burdens lifting away, dark sky stretching on for eons over the endless desert.  The moonlight was weak tonight, barely making it through the heavy layers of toxins that had been dumped into the atmosphere.  But there was a glimmer of it there over the scruffy drylands.  All he had to do was to drag his eyes towards the flickering lights in the distance.  Atop those cliffs, the city stretched upward and upward, reaching high into the sky.  Towers lit by flickering lights, punching through the smog factories and refineries belched out.  

They swallowed up the stars, the moon.  Distant ships soaring by somewhere up above.  But there was no place there for Keith.  No way out, as the acrid taste of poisoned air of a poisoned people filled his lungs.  His bike plummeted and Keith closed his eyes.  

You've got this.

Frustration built up and exploded in his chest, eyes snapping open as he grit his teeth.  Torn away from that sweet relief of hopelessness and grief, Keith fiercely rejected the inevitable one more time.  Just a little closer to the point of no return.  He pushed his heel back, adjusting the pedal, hover gears spiraling, shifting, pushing rapidly downward to slow his descent.  A wing scraped against the craggy outcropping of rock, sending him jolting to the side.  Keith's fingers shifted, twisting, sending the right engine shifting just enough to level himself out.  

Another jarring crash against cliffside and the engine snapped off entirely, one red wing only sparking now.  Keith bit out a curse, ground coming up fast, and bailed.  

He threw himself off to the side, hitting the ground hard.  His leather jacket barely enough to guard against the branches snagging at him, stones scraping his cheek raw as he went tumbling down, towards the final cliff edge -- the one that would give way to a straight drop down onto the boulders and crags far below.  Keith threw out his hand, scrabbling, grasping at the dirt, stones, roots.  He let out a pained cry as he abruptly drew up short, shoulder wrenched painfully.  But he clutched at the firm edge of a boulder, gloves torn, fingers bleeding.  

The bike's engine was still whirring powerfully, spinning out of control as it tumbled straight off the side.  Keith quietly held his breath until he heard the powerful burst of water as it swallowed up his beloved bike.  

Clinging to the harsh slope, Keith let out a shuddering breath as he finally turned back to look upwards.  The guardrail up above was twisted and broken.  He could hear engines screaming somewhere in the distance, and as he looked further up along the cliffside, he could see the flash of headlights in the darkness. 

The race continued, Keith forgotten.  Abandoned.  

Just another day in Tolsea, Arizona.  

By the time Keith pulled himself back up and onto the road, one hand was scraped absolutely raw, blood dripping from dozens of cuts and scrapes the harsh stones had asked for in exchange for Keith's passage.  Yanking it off, he shoved the ruined glove into his pocket and fished out his phone next.  

"Keith.  How bad is it?"  The voice on the other end was gruff, tired.  Keith snorted quietly, shaking his head.  Kolivan didn't expect anything else from his calls anymore.  

"Went off the cliff this time," he said, quietly checking himself over.  For a brief moment, he'd been afraid he'd dislocated his arm during the fall.  But bike aside, he'd gotten off pretty good. "I can still walk.  My bike is at the bottom of the gorge though.  Probably totaled."  

There was only stony silence from Kolivan for a moment. "I'll send the men out.  See what they can do."

❖

Night after night, his life was filled with the roar of engines that ended with the whooping of crowds or the dissonance that arose in those moments that stretched on and on before the crash.  And always, no matter how it ended, Keith came home to the same empty apartment.  The same four walls, each with its history laid bare in the cracks and dents that marred the peeling wallpaper.  A rickety fan blew hot air over him, carrying with it the nauseating mingling of scents that came from the eclectic restaurant below.  

Keith sat on the edge of the couch, it's frame sagging low, puffs of cotton fraying outward from one of the cushions.  From somewhere to his side, muffled by cushions and upholstery, his cell phone buzzed with an incoming message.  Keith ignored it, just as he'd ignored it when it had started buzzing in his pocket on that long, weary walk home.  Hell, why did he even hold on to the damn thing.

The coffee table in front of him -- which had a couple of dusty old books under one leg to keep it level -- was scattered with ragged strips of bandage, medical tape, and a bottle of pain meds that Keith had already swallowed down.  A rag lay crumpled there, stained with blood.  Pants ripped, shirt torn, but the worst of it was that gash on his right bicep, thin but long, curving down his upper arm.  White bandages pressed around it, lifted that arm high, muscles protesting at the way it pulled on the ragged cut.  Keith grimacing, lips tight against the pain as he shoved the bandage back around, reaching awkwardly beneath his own arm, catching the edge to pull it tight again.  

It took far longer than it should have.  But eventually Keith slumped back on the sofa, finally allowing that exhaustion to wash over him.  Something that was bone-deep, leaving him weary in both body and soul.  Naturally, that was when somebody knocked on his door.  

No, not knocked.  That was far too conservative for the pounding that had his door rattling in its frame.  

Keith considered ignoring it; pretending he wasn't home.  But he knew who was on the other side, and knew the man wouldn't be so easily fooled.  With a heavy sigh, Keith pushed himself to his feet. "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," he said, padding barefoot over to the door.  

The figure on the other side loomed tall over him, broad-shouldered, filling the doorway.  Tall, purple skin, and with long white hair, braided tightly, Kolivan cut an imposing figure.  And that was before Keith got a look at the stern disapproval written over the Galra's face.  Keith met it with a scowl of his own.

"Answer your phone."  It was an order.  Too bad Keith didn't take orders.  Kolivan marched right past Keith and into the apartment.  Keith didn't invite him in.  He didn't stop the man either.  Kolivan wasn't one to leave until he decided he should. "Every other human can't seem to stay off their phone."

"Yeah, well, I'm not like every other human."  Keith crossed his arms over his chest, a slight tension in his shoulders.  But still, he didn't look away from Kolivan.  Only met that level stare in kind as it was turned on him.  

"No, but your mother wanted you to be raised here, among them." 

"And look how that turned out."

Kolivan was silent, face drawn as he studied the younger man.  Only twenty years, and Keith had already cut himself off from so much.  But he couldn't blame Keith for not trusting him.  Not opening up to him.  He was here because Krolia, in her final moments of life on a distant star, had asked him to look out for her son when she could not.  But to a half-Galra like Keith and so many of the Earthlings around him, Kolivan was just another Galra, part of the invasion.

Except this was a Galra who gave a crap about Keith for reasons he couldn't understand.  Keith strode forward, shoving right past Kolivan, ready to end the conversation right then and there.  Kolivan only turned after him, eyes falling down to that edge of white bandage peaking out from beneath Keith's sleeve.  

"Is that from the crash tonight?"  

Keith grimaced, rolling his shoulder a bit with the reminder. "What do you think?"

The other man reached out for the bandaged arm, but Keith jerked back, as if burned. "I didn't ask for your help."

Kolivan frowned, but dropped his hand.  He didn't make a move forward, but he didn't back off either.  Stood his ground, just as Keith stood his, the pair of them glaring at each other.  If Keith's anger was all fire, threatening to erupt at any moment, then Kolivan's was stone; cold and firm and carefully contained.  

"You keep shutting everyone out like this, running off and searching for trouble, you're going to wind up dead one of these days."  Blunt.  Brutal.  Each word chipping away at Keith's armor.  The younger man bristled, hands balling into tight fists at his sides, fingernails digging in.  

"Not tonight," he bit out.  It wasn't the first time he'd heard this lecture.  And it wouldn't be the last time. "Go home, Kolivan."  

Those dark eyes only stayed on Keith, steady, piercing.  Kolivan had always been able to see so much.  Too much.  The younger man averted his eyes.  The big man let out a heavy breath, finally letting the matter drop. "Come by the garage sometime this week.  We'll see if we can save your bike." 

Not waiting for an answer, Kolivan turned towards the door.  The man paused only a moment, reaching out to flip a frame back upright, no longer hiding the faces that Keith had tried to push out of sight, out of mind.  His door swung shut and Shiro's framed bright smile was turned upon a lonely room.  Keith's face was drawn, something thick and cloying caught in his throat as he looked at the photo.  Shiro's arm was slung around his younger self; a boy that had dared to find something to hold on to.  

Keith hated that kid.  

He took the photo and shoved it into a drawer, slamming it shut with the same note of finality as Shiro's death.  

❖

It was the last place Keith wanted to be after his run-in with Kolivan a few nights before.  But after days spent sprawled on his lumpy couch and staring apathetically at the ceiling, drinking himself to oblivion, or somehow ending up in a fist-fight behind a 7-11, Keith found himself staring dejectedly up at the sign of the mechanic's garage.  

Kolivan's garage.  It wasn't hopping, at least.  Keith braced himself for the inevitable as he stepped into the garage.  Cars sat inside, silent as ghosts.  A couple of motorcycles on one end, with a hover bike that was much newer than Keith's own with a set of tools lying discarded on a rolling tray beside it.  Thace gave Keith a nod, glancing up from where he’d been working beneath a car’s hood, his jumpsuit covered in grease.  The Galra gave a nod, gesturing Keith further in where somebody was unhappy.

He followed the sounds of bickering to the back of the garage.  Kolivan stood there, arms crossed over his chest, silent and impassive as he let Frank vent out his frustrations all over his boss.  Keith hung back, leaning against a support beam, one foot pressed back against it as he waited.  Kolivan's yellow eyes had already flickered up, silently acknowledging Keith.  

"--on my goddamned day off!  Not like we get any fucking business in here.  Guy probably bailed like every other when he realized you're a...I mean, what the hell kind of name is 'Hunk' anyway.  You sure he even exists!?"  

Frank wasn't done.  Not by a long shot from what Keith could see.  But Kolivan just grunted a 'get back to work', before stepping past the man. Keith watched Frank fume a moment longer before he stomped back to the car he'd been working on.  The garage was looking depressingly empty.  

That was nothing new.  

Most people didn't trust Galra as far as they could throw them.  Business was hard to come by.  

"Stopped by to check on my bike."  Keith didn't bother with the niceties, and Kolivan didn't push for them.  Just waved for Keith to follow him.  Right to the mangled remains of his bike.  Keith's blood ran cold, staring at the mess of twisted metal, the paint that had been scraped off entirely in places.  The engines were blown out and stacked to the side, with one wing missing entirely.  The nose crumpled inward. 

"There isn't much worth salvaging."  Kolivan was never one to beat around the bush.  He stepped back, watching the way the color drained from Keith's face.  Reality slammed right in place, cold and cruel and yet he felt numb to it.  He'd done this, after all.  Driven himself right to the edge, pushed just a little too far.  

Shiro's bike.  Something he'd promised to take care of.  

But then again, promises were worth shit.  And Keith had nobody to blame for this one than himself.  

"Forget it.  Trash it.  Use it for spare parts."  Every word was stiff, Keith's fingers curling into fists, something deep and raw curling tight in his chest.  Keith turned away from Kolivan, from that last bit of Shiro he'd been clinging to, and something in him cracked just a little bit more.  

"I don't care."  

Keith left without looking back.

❖

Yet another moonless night across the city, the shadows stretching, reaching out towards Keith, ready to wrap him up and vanish him into the abyss where none would ever think to look for him.  Not that there was anybody left who gave a damn.  The young man dragged himself along, one foot after another, exhausted and trying so very hard to ignore that twinge in his left knee with every step.  Yet another gift that lingered on after his ill-fated race, and still Keith refused to accept a ride from Kolivan.

And the guy’s shop was pretty far from Keith’s apartment.

But it was the bike his brain lingered on. 

A good 5 years that bike had lasted him, one last remnant left over from a time when he'd thought there would actually been some sliver of hope for a kid like him.  

Hell, maybe it was a sign that this was it.  No more.  Stop trying.  

But Keith never had known how to stop.  

A six-pack of beer thumped against his thigh with each step, Keith intent on drinking himself into oblivion.  Didn’t want to think about Shiro or his bike or all of the other crap in his meaningless life. 

Deep in the East Side, the sounds of a scuffle coming from down that bleak street to his left were far from out of place here.  The Galra ran this part of the city, and they'd effectively run it into the ground.  The young man hunched his shoulders, beaten and downtrodden and wanting nothing more than to give in and turn away.  Just had to keep walking.  It wasn't worth the trouble.  

A sharp, piercing yelp struck at his heart chords and Keith's head was drawn towards the sound before he could stop and think.  That sound had been downright animalistic.  Just dark shadows fumbling amidst the trash bins, somebody shouting, deep and guttural.  

"The hell're you doing!?  Just grab the mutt!"

"It bit me!  You grab it!"

Three large Galra, all trying to wrangle one -- well, Keith didn't know what.  All looming over the creature, two of them struggling with long metal poles, the cables at the end hooked around the beast's neck.  The third and the largest of Galra stalked forward, a steel baton in hand.  Electricity arced from its prongs in rapid, crackling bursts.  Keith pressed his lips tightly together, starting to turn away.  But there was a rustling, low growling and Keith bit out a growl of his own whipping towards the sound and the action.  Cause damn it, he still had a beating heart somewhere beneath all the grime.  

The wolf didn't have any grime.  None at all.  Just silky midnight fur, with pale blues that seemed a better fit for somewhere out in the cosmos.  The colors practically gleamed amidst the refuse, trash heaps that lined the street.  Oh, there was color in the city.  Color in the tacky neon signs that pointed the way to clubs and signs that were trying far too hard to pull people in.  But the wolf -- that Earth creature was all he could think to compare it to -- was of something natural and beautiful.  

And headed for the fighting pits at this rate.  The Galra were always bringing in exotic creatures from the far-off reaches of the galaxy in search of a good show, full of blood and guts and always to the death.  Keith had watched too many of those shows, always on the edge of his seat, though for entirely different reasons than the Galra who had surrounded him.  Eyes fixated on a man, struggling only to survive, rising to the top, looking only for that escape.  

Those memories brought nothing good, and Keith shoved them viciously away.  

Nearly as viciously as he pulled his knife out and shoved it into the back of the largest of the three.  The Galra let loose any angry, shocked shout, twisting around.  Clawed hands reached out for Keith, but he had already ducked down, droplets of blood dripping from his blade.  The smallest of the Galra, clinging desperately to that pole as the wolf fought and struggled against the cable at the other end.  Each movement only tightened it further around the beast's neck.  He turned just in time to spot the human driving the pointed blade straight into the big guy's knee, driving through cartilage.  A howl of pain ripped through the night, not from the beast this time.  

Keith kept moving as the Galra dropped to the ground, clutching at his knee.  The next Galra broke away from his prey, dropping the metal stick.  His buddy cursed, doubling down as the wolf growled and flailed, head ducking low and then surging up, trying to squirm free.  

But Keith couldn't worry about that right now.  Not as Galra number 2 yanked a blaster from the holster at his side and raised it directly at Keith.  He didn't hesitate.  Knee screaming in protest, he dove to the side, energy exploding against the concrete behind him.  Another blast and another, leaving angry pock marks in the building as Keith ducked and weaved, twisting to drive in close.  A meaty fist met him in the stomach.  The air was knocked right out of him, spots bursting before his eyes as he croaked out a groan, dropping down to his knees.  

Behind them, the wolf ripped the metal pole free from the Galra's hands and leapt forward, tackling his tormentor to the ground.  Teeth flashed and came away red.  

A heavy booted foot slammed down once, twice, three times on Keith's curled fingers, until he cried out, the knife falling free from his grip.  The Galra kicked it away, sending the blade skittering across the dirty ground, far away from Keith's reaching fingers.  That foot pulled back to kick again, but Keith rolled away, the foot smashing right through the space his ribs had been a moment before.  Needles of fire jabbed through his fingers, his palm as he cradled the smashed hand to his chest.  Keith's eyes swept upward and he found the barrel of that blaster pointed right at his face.  

The Galra's face twisted into a cruel, toothy smile as he let Keith take a moment to look down the barrel to the end of his life.  

A vicious snarl cut through the silence, a flash of movement.  That light of victory in the Galra's eyes turned to one of panic as he remembered the wolf.  Keith watched as the the alien twisted around only to meet a muzzle drawn back, teeth bared as the wolf bore down on him.  Small, compact, but powerful, the wolf carried the Galra to the ground, sharp teeth plunging into the meat of his neck, gripping and ripping until that body stopped flailing, stopped twitching, stopped living entirely.  

The Galra fell still, life-giving blood flowing from his mangled neck, face contorted in the horror of his final moment.  

Keith rose carefully to his feet, ignoring the pain in his side where the fist had connected.  Splashes of red over dirty concrete drew the eye, dragging his gaze inexorably to another twisted corpse lying on its back, arms and legs sprawled out like a rag doll.  Just like Keith's attacker, the Galra's neck was a mangled mess.    Another trail of red, led by a bloody footprint, crawled up the alleyway and out of sight around the corner.  Keith stepped over to fetch his knife, flipping it deftly in his off-hand.  The Galra couldn't have gotten far with that knee. 

All thoughts of hunting down that final Galra and finishing him were swept from Keith's mind as he heard a pained whine.  The wolf, it's muzzle stained with blood whimpered softly as it plodded with far more care forward, favoring its right back leg.  Keith's brow furrowed, keeping his distance as he circled slowly to the side.  He slipped his knife back into its sheath, making a slow movement of it, trying not to startle the creature.  Not after he'd just seen it rip two full grown Galra to shreds.

Midnight blue fur was matted with blood, tangled and twisted together.  The animal moved with a distinct limp, head turning to follow Keith's path.  Its eyes were wary, but it did not growl at him.  That was the only thing that made Keith step a little closer, hand held out, palm up-turned as if the animal were a common dog or cat he was trying to lure forward.  

"Hey," he said softly, the word slipping out as the wolf seemed to consider his hand.  It hesitated, before limping forward a step.  And then another.  And despite the fact he'd just seen the strange creature maul two Galra to death even with the wounds littering its body, he dropped slowly down to one knee.  Maybe he was just an alien wolf person, just like some claimed to be dog or cat people.  Or maybe there was a kinship there, of two lost souls battered and ground beneath the heel of others, but not beaten.  Never beaten.  But he felt an odd sense of relief as the wolf took that final step and nudged at Keith's palm with his nose.  It was cool to the touch.  A little wet.  Keith made no further movements, letting the wolf sniff at his hand as the young man's eyes swept over its body.  Thick fur made it hard to see the full extent of the injuries, but with the fur of one of its hind legs matted red with the blood that was still dripping down, it wasn't hard for Keith to guess what the worst of it was.  

Not that he could do much about it.  How the hell would he even get the wolf somewhere safe to try and treat its injuries?  Why the hell was he even thinking about treating some strange alien wolf's injuries.  He was being stupid.  Keith pressed his lips tightly together and slowly withdrew his hand, severing that link, however tentative it was, between them.  The wolf only stared at him, cautious, but not aggressive as Keith straightened up.  

"Sorry boy.  We're all on our own out here."  Strange, how turning away from that creature felt like he was ripping at something deep inside.  But it was a harsh lesson Keith had learned long ago, and one this wolf would have to learn, if he hadn't learned it already.  But as Keith pushed himself back out towards the street, his newfound companion only trailed after him.  Limping with every step he took, pausing whenever Keith glanced back over his shoulder to see if he was still there.  

The wolf was already there, trailing after Keith like a shadow.  He followed him down the three blocks to the Thai restaurant he lived above.  The pair of them moved in and out of the scattered street lights, the occasional lamp flickering overhead.  One time Keith looked back as the wolf stepped from the light and back into the darkness, his light blue fur and eyes glowing like phosphorous lamps in the night.  

The image stuck with Keith -- a beast vanishing into the night, carrying starlight with him.  

❖

And life went on just as it always had.  Only difference was that he had a strange alien, glow-in-the-dark wolf/dog hanging out in his apartment now.  One who always seemed to watch him, as if waiting for something.  Well, maybe he should have followed somebody else home that night, because it wasn't like Keith had much to give.  Even now the listlessness was spreading.  With his bike fucked up, the nightly street racing had ended and Keith had nothing to distract himself.  

This night he just lay on his back, sprawled on the couch.  The wolf was....somewhere.  And Keith just found himself staring at some splotch of discoloration on the ceiling of his apartment as he tossed a small, raggedy tennis ball up and down.  Catching it in his hand again.  And again.  And again.  

Going nowhere.  

The fridge was empty, but Keith couldn't find it in him to get up and actually go out to do something about it.  Just stared, listless, at the ceiling as that ball went thump, thump, thump in his hand.  He let out a weary sigh and caught the ball one last time, and rolled over onto his side, legs drawn up.  

The wolf was right there, mouth agape, yellow eyes fixed on the ball in Keith's hand.  And he followed it, enraptured, as Keith lifted his hand slowly.  His tail swished against the floor as Keith, experimentally, gave it another little toss.  Kosmo straightened up, alert and interested.  

The ball dropped to the floor, where it went rolling beneath the coffee table.  There was no hesitation, the animal simply bounced excitedly and went diving after it, nearly upending the table.  

A moment later, he was back at Keith's side, tennis ball in his mouth, watching him expectantly.  

Keith held out his hand, and the ball dropped right into it, slick with saliva.  Keith wrinkled his nose and sent the ball rolling again, before taking a moment to wipe his hand somewhat clean on his pants.  

And the beast was back there again, ball in his mouth, filled to the brim with energy.  Keith couldn't stomp down the flicker of warmth in his chest, or the ghost of a smile on his lips.

Chapter Text

He didn't know what he was doing. Didn't know why the wolf was here, laying sprawled out over the ratty rug that had taken up residence in the center of his poor excuse for a living room.  Keith didn't know what was so appealing about that rug.  It was unraveling at the edges, smelled faintly musty and he wouldn't have been surprised if it had once been used to roll up and haul out a corpse.  It was just that unappealing. 

And yet the wolf had turned it into his makeshift bed.  He'd turned it into his makeshift bed nearly a week ago now.  It was either the rug or the couch.  Keith was already finding strands of blue fur stuck to couch cushions or in gathering tufts on the floor. All over the apartment, there were new signs that an animal was living here with Keith. Two large mixing bowls had been repurposed into a food and water dish respectively and set against the wall just outside the kitchenette. He hadn't bothered to clean up the water sloshed all over the floor, and he'd gone few a few different brands of dog food before Keith started looking at the animal as more of a wolf than a domesticated dog.

So, he'd gone to the butcher and found way more raw meat than he had ever seen in his life. The wolf had gobbled that down greedily — and Keith, despite the meal he’d already had, felt his own craving for something tasty.  The wolf had only just finished cleaning his paws when his eyes swept up to the tennis ball Keith was waving in his face. The young man sat perched on the edge of the couch, waving the ball slowly back and forth until the animal's eyes were following it.

And then he tossed it in an easy, underhanded throw across the living room. The ball hit the floor, bounced back up and off the wall before bouncing back, losing a bit more height with each bounce, until it was rolling to a stop back near his feet again. Kosmo only looked at him and then tucked his head down on his paws. Keith pouted, shoulders slumping.  

He was still bouncing that same ball later that night, a couple blocks away and in the overgrown greenery of a park that hadn't had any care paid to it in a long time.  Lines of graffiti covered the bench he was sitting on, the steady tap, tap, tap of the tennis ball filling the night air.  The wolf was running circles on the green, bounding around late at night, working off the excess energy that there was no room for in Keith's apartment.  

"What are you?" he murmured, frowning softly.  Strange and monstrous creatures were no longer an unusual sight on Earth -- if you were watching the matches at the arena, at least.  As far as the Galra were concerned, the more brutal the better.  But still, this beast would not have been out of place there.  He looked more like an overgrown puppy now as he rolled around on the grass, but Keith remembered those vicious teeth, the dangerous growl, the way the wolf had ripped into those Galra harrying him.  

Jaws snapping, the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth.  A Galra lay still at his feet, blood spilling free.

The wolf nudged at his hand, and Keith snapped back to the present.  Breathless.  Disoriented.  He shook his head, wrestling his wandering mind back to the here and now.  God, he wasn’t getting enough sleep lately. 

Keith stubbornly ignored the lingering taste of blood on his tongue.

On an impulse, he tossed the tennis ball into the darkness, letting it fall back into the simple joy of a game of catch.  The wolf bounded after it, Keith watching until the luminescent glow of his pale blue fur vanished into the night.  

And then silence.  Or as silent as it could be with the occasional care driving by at this late hour -- well past midnight now -- on the streets somewhere beyond the park.  Silent enough to set Keith on edge, lips growing thin as he scanned the shadows of trees, searching for any sign of movement.  

"Hey," he called out, the word short and clipped.  Keith rose to his feet, looking about for the animal.  A wild animal, as far as he could tell.  A wild space animal.  One that could have left at any moment.  A wolf he had intended to leave behind and abandon on the street that very first night.  Unease settled over his heart, a tension he hadn't felt just moments ago. Was he gone? Just like that?

"Hey, wolf!" A little louder as he stepped forward, one foot after another. It was a familiar road he followed, fingers squeezing his heart tight, chasing the shadow of someone who was gone.  Keith's hands balled at his sides, panic welling within him.  Somehow familiar and distant and just as suffocating as the first time.  The animal had let him touch him, pet him, fingers stroking through fur that was too soft to be real.  Kosmo had set there, head tilted, watching as Keith cleaned his knife on the couch or as the young man cooked a simple meal for himself in the kitchen.  Watched as Keith unloaded groceries, actually putting something in his fridge beyond booze for the first time in weeks.  Watched until he edged forward one time Keith was slumped back on the couch, just dozing, nosing at the young man's fingers before just sliding his head right under, looking for scratches that, after a moment's pause in quiet wonder, Keith sleepily gave.

He had done this already.  Said goodbye before he was ready.

Panic welled, the man turning this way and that, rising up inside of him, breaths short until he released it all in a single, panicked word.

"Kosmo!"

Something sparked inside of him.  A simple, boundless joy that felt foreign and strange, only giving way to confusion.  Kosmo.  It was a dumb name.  But familiar somehow.  Right.  A faint memory from long ago, drawn from a stuffed animal or a toy or maybe an old friend he'd once had before he'd given up on childish dreams entirely.  A strange noise from right behind him, the rush of moving air and Keith jumped and spun around, one hand already reaching for the knife he kept tucked away beneath his jacket.  

But it was only Kosmo sitting right there, tail wagging lazily back and forth as he dropped the saliva-soaked ball at Keith's feet.  All at once the tension swept out of him, as if a switch had been flipped.  Keith's shoulders dropped, and he could suddenly breathe again, a faint smile quirking his lips as he stooped down to fetch the ball. 

"Kosmo," he said again.  The wolf sat at attention, raising his head, ears flickering with familiarity. "You like that?"  Keith wasn't sure where it had come from, but if it felt right and if the wolf himself seemed to like it, who was Keith to question it.  

"Alright, Kosmo it is then."  Kosmo nudged at the ball in Keith's hand, tail wagging a little more eagerly now as he stood up.  Bigger somehow.  His head bending low to reach Keith's hand when he was pretty sure the animal had to stretch up to do the same just a little earlier.  But he pushed the question away for another time and grinned, taking a step back and then another, drawing the wolf after him with another shake of his hand.  

Keith twisted and lobbed the ball into the distance.  Kosmo was a blur of movement past him as he sped after the tennis ball, outracing it entirely and turning to catch it in his mouth.  Keith let out a whoop, punching the air in celebration.  And for just a little while, it felt like things were okay.  

Another twenty minutes was spent tossing that ball to Kosmo, grinning as the wolf bounded after it.  There were a few moments when Keith worried that Kosmo might go and just swallow it with the way he clamped his jaws around the yellow ball, shaking it wildly.  But it always came back to him in one piece, covered in saliva and a bit ragged by the end of it.  One last throw and they were packing it in, Keith petting Kosmo between the ears, over his back as the wolf offered Keith the toy once more.  

The pair turned to leave the park.  If Keith had only looked over his shoulder, he would have seen a swirl of darkness, a figure vanishing into nothing.  

❖

It kept going like that another two days; Keith picking up some extra work at Kolivan's garage, just so he could afford to keep up with Kosmo's appetite.  And then exercise and playtime long after night had fallen, in the relative solitude of the park.  But Keith was always attentive of his surroundings.  Galra had tried to capture Kosmo for a throwaway fight in the arena once.  He wouldn't be surprised if others got the same idea.  

Kolivan paid well, but Keith had other ways to make money too.  Word of another race being organized for two nights from now.  Keith rolled over onto his back, arm slung over his forehead as he stared blindly up at the ceiling, eyelids heavy with exhaustion.  A race had always drawn him in -- promise of a good payout as long as he didn't crash his bike.  But for the first time in recent memory, Keith was hesitating.  

The soft creak of rusty hinges met his ears, and Keith looked towards the door.  Kosmo pushed his way inside, the door opening wider for him.  Keith dropped his hand down over the side of the bed, fingers curling as he beckoned Kosmo in closer.  

"What do you think, buddy."  Voice thick with sleep, he let his eyes fall shut. "It would pay well.  If I win, I'd get you all the pork you could eat."  If his bike was still a lost cause, he’d at least be able to borrow one from Kolivan.  Maybe. 

The sinking of the mattress was the only answer he got.  Keith cracked his eyes open a bit, an annoyed huff slipping free as Kosmo was intent to squirm his way into place right there next to Keith.  A strange longing filled him, something that didn’t entirely feel like his own.  With a grunt, he slid over a bit. 

"Thought you were sleeping in the living room," he murmured, dragging the blankets up from where they'd gotten caught and rumpled underneath the wolf.  

Keith rolled onto his side, one arm slung over Kosmo's body, pressing his face into soft fur.  Despite finding him in distress in an alleyway, and despite the evenings they'd spent running around in the park, or the time Kosmo spent rolling around in the dirt, he smelled fresh and clean, something light and almost airy.  It was nice.  Keith breathed deep.

Just as he had on another night so many, many years ago.  Small arms wrapped around an endlessly fluffy body.  It was just the spark of a memory, something distant and half-remembered.  But Keith furrowed his brow, his sleepy brain taking him down a path that didn't quite make sense in the waking world.  

"Mm, Kosmo.  That's what I called you back then," he murmured.  It was a distant memory, slotting into place as Keith drifted off.  

Just a small boy and the few brief months he'd spent with his pet dog.  

He dreamed of Shiro that night.  Just as he'd dreamed of Shiro so many other nights.  Fragmented bits and pieces pulled together from memory, thrown into the whirlwind of dreams and coming out with something new.  Wholesome moments, confused wanderings, or Keith reaching out so desperately, arm stretching out as far as he could reach.  Farther even.  But Shiro was always just vanishing around a corner or into the fog or consumed by violet lightning.  

This was a new dream.  He dreamed of cold stone beneath his back, cutting right through the purple rags that hung from his form.  Ragged breaths burst from his chest, every muscle in his body tense, panic welling up in his chest.  Keith tried to push himself up, but he couldn't move.  Couldn't turn his head.  Only stared up at that that metallic ceiling up ahead, a three-pronged device hovering ominously over him.  Its wicked looking tips crackled with violet energy.  

"Still no reaction," a wizened voice announced.  And finally Keith's head turned, flopping to the side just as the woman stepped into view.  No, not a woman.  A crone.  Like the one from all those dark fairy tales children would eat up.  Ancient, with long white hair falling limp around her face.  Galra, probably, what with that purple skin.  Gnarled fingers settled on his arm -- Keith's gaze moved automatically downward -- and it wasn't his own arm he was looking at.  Human, but larger, muscular, the skin the wrong shade.  And a jagged scar running over the bicep.  

Keith recognized that arm.  The scar.  He'd been there, anger boiling high from the arena stands, watching as the wicked curved knife cut deep into Shiro that day.  

Shiro!

He screamed the word, but not a sound came out.  His mouth -- Shiro's mouth -- didn't move.  Instead that arm flinched, trying to recoil back.  But Keith could feel the tingling sensation of something holding his wrist -- Shiro's wrist -- unforgivingly to the stone slab.  Not just the one wrist.  He couldn't turn his (Shiro's) head to look, but he could sense the tension in both wrists, both ankles, another around his throat whenever Shiro pushed up.  

Panic.  He could feel his panic.  That building fear that the man tried valiantly to smother, to hide.  Couldn't show weakness in front of this enemy.  The crone regarded him with a cool expression for a long moment before waving her fingers.  In an instant, two more masked figures were at her sides, culminating from the very shadows.  Bone-white masks hid their faces from view, their robes swallowing their bodies.  

"No matter.  We'll keep trying until we find the right combination.  Run Protocol 32."  

Shiro's head turned frantically back and forth, pushing frantically against his bindings. "Whatever you're trying to do, it isn't working!" he called out, and Keith could feel his panic.  That desperation as the bindings began to move.  The masked figures drifted effortlessly around him, hands raised, energy crackling from their fingertips.  The crone stood at the point, directing the power, the bindings, forcing them to drag Shiro upwards.  

One thought shot through Keith's mind, but it wasn't his own.  

I can handle it.  Better me than them.  

An inhuman shriek ripped from Shiro's throat, entire body spasming as energy coursed through him.  

Keith burst up in his bed, blankets kicked around his feet, sweat-soaked and shivering.  His eyes swept over the dark room and landed on Kosmo's, glowing eerily in the night.  

❖

He could still feel the energy coursing up his arms, lighting up every nerve.  Keith stumbled into the open door frame, t-shirt soaked with sweat, perspiration still dripping down his forehead.  Muscles twitched as he wrapped his arms around himself, fingers digging into his forearms.  Too real.  He'd had so many dreams about Shiro.  Good dreams, bad dreams, dreams that featured a wish and an intimacy that he had buried so, so very deep once all hope had been ripped away from him.  

But never like this.  Never a dream that left him screaming when he awoke, buried beneath the weight of emotions that weren't his own.  Couldn't be his own. 

"Shiro," he choked out, voice broken and reaching for somebody who couldn't hear him.  Who was so far away and hadn't known that Keith was right there.  He stumbled through the living room, nearly tripping over the corner of that ratty rug.  Kosmo trailed after him, tail low, sensing his human's distress even if he couldn't understand it.  

Fingers shook as he clutched at the picture frame -- that only photo he had of the two of them together.  Shiro's smile wide and goofy and full of all that innocence that had been brutalized by the arena.  The man had still smiled then, when Keith slipped in to see how he was doing, to try and keep that hope of escape alive.  But he'd seen the shadow behind the man's eyes, the strain just on the edge of every smile.  

Keith grit his teeth, eyes squeezing shut tight.  And then he spun around on Kosmo, the wolf staring unblinkingly up at him. "Where is he?  You know, don't you?" he demanded, dropping to his knees before the beast.  He turned the photo around, fingers running over the image almost frantically, trying to drag Kosmo's attention to Shiro.  

Kosmo didn't move.  Only stared at Keith with those unblinking eyes.  Silent and still as a statue, poised and graceful and wrapped in such an air of mystery.  

"That's why you're here, isn't it?  You have to know something!"  Because everything had started to change with Kosmo.  The bags had begun to fade from beneath Keith's eyes.  His fridge was actually stocked, filling his stomach with actual meals, poorly cooked but still something more than drowning himself in booze.  And then those strange sensations.  Flashes of feelings, worries, intuitions that had never felt right.  

Not unnatural.  Just not his.  

The frame dropped to the floor and Keith was on his hands, eyes level with Kosmo. "Just...just show me!  Where is he!?"    

Those yellow eyes were fixed on Keith.  The wolf pushed himself up, the pale blue of his mane, stretching along his spine, thicker than the rest of his fur, began to drift in a breeze Keith could not feel.  A shimmering light spread back and Keith rocked back on his heels, eyes widening.  Is was like the way his fur glowed in the darkness, but more somehow.  Emitting its own wisps of pale blue life, right there within the walls of Keith's barely patched together apartment.  

Keith hardly dared to breathe, hand reaching out slowly for the beast.  And then Kosmo's light went out.  A shudder ran through the wolf, from snout to tail, fur returning to its normal shade, devoid of any strange lights.  Kosmo sank down to the floor, panting softly, tongue lolling out as if he'd just spent the early morning hours bounding back and forth through the park.  

Settling a hand in Kosmo's mane, Keith sank down beside him, that anger slipping away from him.  It was all too easy for hopelessness to slip back into place.. "Sorry buddy.  We'll...figure it out."  

He just had to figure out where to start.  

❖

The arena.  It all went back to that day at the arena.  Keith desperately scrabbling for those memories, turning them this way and that, trying to find some new angle, some new piece of information that he hadn't found the last hundred times he'd done the same.  How many evenings had he spent just lying there, lethargic and despondent, picking apart each moment of that final fight again and again?  

No, he needed something more than his own memory.  

Grabbing his red leather jacket from the chair, Keith was out the door of his apartment, letting it swing shut behind him.  Kosmo was left nosing at the closed door, Keith's footsteps retreating down the stairs, out the front door, the wolf finally losing them as he strode down the street.

Kolivan's garage might have been a fair distance away, but Keith needed an outlet for all that restless energy as it was.  And it was Kolivan he'd gone to two years ago, desperate and searching for answers.  The garage was open, a couple of Galra and humans alike working on some local vehicles inside.  Kolivan had arrived in the second wave of the Galra invasion, with other so-called settlers -- the ones who arrived to stake a claim on some part of Earth, make a place for themselves, and turn human labor to their own advantage.  But the Galra and his own small team had turned instead to integrating, trying to keep the neighborhood under control, the violence low.  

Not an easy thing to keep the peace, especially when the entirety of the planet's population was wary, fearful, or outright hostile with anybody not of Earth.

Keith made it a point not to share his own Galra heritage with his neighbors.  Only Kolivan and the other Galra in his employ knew.  And they had known before Keith.  

"Where's Kolivan," he grunted out, giving no other explanation for his sudden mission.  Thace gave Keith a weary look and just jabbed his thumb towards the back office.  Keith didn't acknowledge the gesture, only threw that door open and marched right on in.  

"The footage from the arena," he said. "I need to see it."  Kolivan looked up from his desk and the tablet he'd just been sliding through.  If the man was annoyed, he didn't show it.  Just looked at Keith with that carefully controlled, cool expression.  

"Why?"

Keith hesitated, fingers curling into fists at his sides.  The door swung shut behind him, cutting their conversation off from prying eyes.  

Why indeed?  He grimaced, not wanting to admit the hope that Kolivan would have only seen as naive.  Keith had been through this already.  Had refused to believe the man was dead.  

Until this very footage.  

"I just need to see it."  It wasn't an explanation, but Kolivan seemed to understand all the same.  The man rolled his seat back from the desk and pulled open one of the lower drawers.  Keith stood impatiently, fingers tapping against his arm as Kolivan pulled out a small data drive.  It was narrow, barely thicker than a fingernail.  Kolivan slid it into the port on his tablet and, with a flick of his fingers, projected the image out for Keith to see.

The projection flickered a moment as the video took shape, lines scattering through it until it was as clear and sharp as any high quality screen.  Keith's arms slowly dropped back down to his sides, fingers uncurling.  It was the raw footage, unedited and uncut, straight from the arena itself.  Kolivan had fetched it himself after Shiro's death.  He'd done it at Keith's demand, but he had hoped it would help Keith face reality and stop his foolish, self-destructive quest.  

It had only half worked.

And Keith watched again now, as Shiro, looking so small out there on the sands, backed up step by step, muscles coiled tight with pent up energy.  His metal arm -- the ones the Galra had forced upon him as a reward glowed an unnatural purple, hand burning with deadly plasma.  Shiro put distance between himself and the monstrous creature they had dragged from some far corner of the galaxy for the sole purpose of spilling blood on the sands.  

Victory or death.  Those were the terms of the arena.  And for Shiro, it was victory again and again and again.

"You don't have to watch them, you know."  Shiro sounded tired.  No, not just tired.  Broken.  Beaten down.  Shoulders slumped, his Galra arm unhooked and set on the table with various cables running to it from the nearby computer system.  Routine maintenance.  And a new program they wanted him to test for them.  Tests that he allowed time and again because of the edge they gave him in the arena.   He needed every edge he could get if he wanted to keep on breathing.

Keith sat on his other side, eyes dark, stitching up a nasty gash in the man's arm.  There might have been a medic waiting in reserve for the arena combatants and especially their Champion, as they liked to call Shiro.  But they left it to Keith to help patch Shiro up.  Give him that touch of humanity to keep him going.  Keep the man fighting day after day, week after week.  

"I'm not abandoning you in here."  No matter how nice the accommodations were -- an actual bed, small sitting area, a private bathroom -- it was still a prison for Shiro.  A far cry up from where he had started, the man was granted the illusion of freedom; but only if he kept fighting.  

The Galra valued only strength, and this was how they rewarded the strength of their enemies. 

"You sitting out a match or two isn't abandoning me."  

Keith didn’t answer, though the knit of his brow said it all.  He only guided the needle through and pulled the thread tight.  Shiro winced, eyes turned away from the gash and the smaller man's careful needlework.  Keith grabbed the small set of medical scissors and cut the thread after knotting it off firmly.    The needlework was crude, black stitches holding puffy skin together.  It would likely scar, but at least Shiro wasn't bleeding out.  

This time.  

"I met someone who can help get you out of here."  Abrupt, to the point.  The words were nearly a whisper, just in case somebody was listening in.  Shiro's lips pressed tightly together, watching Keith carefully.  It wasn't the first time they'd talked of escape plans.  But it was the first Keith had ever mentioned of bringing anybody else in on it.  Keith, who seemed almost hesitant, preemptively defensive, gaze fixed steadily on the wound he was winding a bandage around  But Shiro knew the tension in the man's shoulders.  

"A Galra," Keith admitted.  Shiro's hackles raised.  

"Keith, you can't be--"

"He knew my mom."  Four words, and Shiro was immediately silenced.  Keith never spoke of his mother.  Had no memory of her, from what little Shiro had been able to pull from the boy about his life before the foster homes.  Keith took the opportunity to tape up the edge of the man's bandage.  

Footsteps echoed on the hallway just outside the door.  Both of them immediately stiffened.  Shiro might have been allowed visitors, but the Galra still kept a close eye on their prized gladiator.  

"Next time," Keith whispered, pulling back from the man. "We'll talk more next time."  He'd have a plan sorted by then.  

But the next time he saw Shiro, it was through the spreading darkness that threatened to overtake the arena as lightning violently sparked through the smoke.  Shiro was swallowed by it all.  

And then Shiro was no more.  

It was the same darkness that flickered on the projection now, spreading through the arena, veiling the action within.  He could see people in the stands standing up straight, protesting the lack of view.  The fact that the arena drew fans at all -- human and Galra alike -- had always made him feel sick.  He remembered vividly the dread curling heavy in the pit of his stomach.  The way he had burst up from his seat, racing towards the barrier that separated the crowds from the fighters.  Shiro was swallowed up by that smoke.

How many times had he watched that scene?  How many times had he played it out over and over in his head?  And when his own memory could give him nothing new, he'd turned to the video footage.  Each angle showed the same smoke, crackling lightning, covering the arena with that unnatural haze.  Everything was blurry, Shiro and his monstrous opponent's shapes turning hazy, indistinct, until they were consumed in darkness.  

Keith knew every moment, every switch to a new camera angle.  He could time them all perfectly in his head.  But he had no idea what had happened within that smoke.  No idea even as it cleared away, the arena empty.    

"Play it back again."  The image paused, and then reset back to that first shot, where Shiro was standing there, cautious and on the defensive, sizing up his opponent.  Smoke exploding outwards, swallowing the arena.  Keith narrowed his eyes, studying the layers of gray upon gray, purple lightning arcing through.  

"Again."  

The same scene.  The same grays.  Hazy smoke, that left them all lost.  

"Go back 10 seconds.  Slow it down."  Kolivan was silent as he did as requested.  Keith leaned in closer, following the lines of smoke, searching for something hidden deep within the moving shadows.

❖

Keith returned home frustrated.  No matter how many times he replayed that footage, there was nothing he could see there.  Whatever faint shapes there might have been, it hadn’t been enough to convince Keith that it was more than just his imagination running wild. 

Just a whole lot of nothing in the end.  Keith’s jaw was stiff, lips pressed tightly together as he unlocked the building’s front door and let himself inside.  Keith’s apartment was one story up.

But there was a large shape there, eager to greet him.  All at once, Keith forgot his irritation.  Kosmo bounded right down the stairs. 

“How did you get out?”

Kosmo didn’t answer.  Naturally.  Keith just rolled his eyes, though he couldn’t shake that amused quirk of his lips.  He pet Kosmo between the ears and suddenly found himself in a dark cell. 

Keith tried to move, but his body didn’t obey him.  A body that definitely wasn’t his.  Legs were sprawled out — long and alien with the knees reversed.  Long, webbed fingers threaded anxiously together, gaze fixed on them.  The sound of swishing fabric met his ears, and Keith felt every muscle in that body tense.  The stranger ducked his head, made himself small.  Didn’t dare to look. 

“Take the small one.” 

Hands trembled, and Keith felt that guilt rising up.  Guilt born of the need to survive and not draw attention to himself. 

But others weren’t silent.  Not as a younger voice cried out in fear.  Others were shouting.  The stranger’s gaze shifted up just enough for Keith to see another cell across the way.  The door open.  Dark robes brushed the ground. 

And he glimpsed Shiro there.  Shiro, strong and defiant, placing himself between the robed figure and a young boy with short brown hair and large, round glasses. 

Do something! 

Keith willed that body to move.  Needed to get up and help.  But the stranger’s body just hovered there, eyes dropping back down to his lap.  And all Keith could do was hear.  Hear the tell-tale thump of a body hitting the ground.  Shiro groaning in pain. 

And then he was torn free and thrown back into the real world.  Keith’s fingers clutched at the banister in a bruising grip, arms trembling as he walked up those steps, as if in a trance.  “What the hell—”

But the visions and the questions and the thought of Shiro out there, still fighting and still suffering wasn’t enough.

Something was wrong.  It struck him as soon as he hit the landing of his apartment.  And it stuck with him even as he stood frozen before his apartment door, one hand on the knob.  Keith hesitated.  Static prickled over his skin, raising goosebumps down his arm.  Something pulling at his instincts that had warned him away from danger so many times.  But more than that was the low, rumbling growl that came from the beast at his side.  Kosmo's head was low, teeth bared, dangerous hostility rolling out from his maw.  

That uneasiness grew inside of him, something akin to dread.  Every basic instinct inside of him screamed at him to turn the other way.  To take heed of Kosmo's warnings, that dark energy that spread over the hallway.  But when had Keith ever listened to reason?  Danger pulled on him, drew him close, the young man seeking something foolish and reckless as he pushed the door open.  

Keith stepped into his apartment, Kosmo trailing behind him.  

Somebody had gotten there first.  

At first, Keith didn't know what to make of it.  Just a shadow maybe.  One that stood apart from the wall and rose up like a mass from the floor.  Keith's hand slid behind him, fingers curling slowly around the familiar grip of his knife.  The creature wasn't looking at him, the pale edge of its face shrouded in darkness, staring at -- of all things -- the photo of Shiro and Keith that Kolivan had set upright.  

Keith took another step forward, Kosmo's low growls filled the air between them.  And then the shadow-man turned to face Keith.  A sharp, unnatural movement, the way its head jerked straight towards him.  A pale face that was far too smooth and manufactured to be anything else but a mask.  A set of four slits set over where the eyes would have been glowed with an ominous yellow.  Keith could feel that gaze fixated right on him.  Analyzing.  Calculating.  

When it spoke, the voice was low, smooth.  The words were in English.  

"We've come for the creature.  Step aside, and you won't be harmed."  

From the corner of his eye, Keith saw another shadow shift and convulse, taking the shape of a second robed figure.  The same eerie face, glowing eyes.  Two more followed, both rising up from the shadows, until they encircled the pair of them.  A glance over his shoulder only confirmed what he already knew; the fifth and final one blocked the door.  

Keith threw all caution to the wind.  Against these unknowns, with their strange powers, he drew his knife.  Didn't think of the life he'd be throwing away.  Not like there was anyone to give a damn about him once he was gone anyway.  Wasn't like he hadn't been living his life, day to day, just seeing how far he could go until it was too far.  

His knife ripped through fabric that became nothing but shadows.  Senses alert, he turned sharply, swiping almost wildly.  But the shape was at his elbow now, hands crackling with energy.  Keith felt the hairs on his skin stand upright and he threw himself to the side as hard as he could, dodging the stream of lightning that burnt up the air he'd just been standing in.  

Keith's eyes darted up, and it was just scorched wall that filled his vision.  But there was no time to process.  No time to consider how that black mark might have been him.  The whisper of fabric behind him and Keith whipped back, a wild, out of control strike.  The robed figure scattered into dark particles only to reform just a foot away.  Keith was already on his feet, lunging after the creature.  

It flickered back through the living room, past the kitchen, into the narrow hallway that led to the bedroom and bathroom.  Keith growled in raw denial of his inability to cut anything but air. Another lunge, a powerful downward swing.  It was only the sudden slap of his hand against the open doorway, Keith just barely catching himself, that saved him from tumbling over.  

And for a moment, all he could hear was the sound of his own breath, struggling to still his racing heart as he peered into the darkness of his bedroom.  Unnatural yellow eyes peered out at him from the darkness, lopsided, as if curious about this human boy and his ineptitude.  

It was toying with him.  Keith's fingers dug into the wooden frame, knife held out defensively before him in a white-knuckled grip.  

This wasn't about Keith.  

He could still hear that low growl from the living room.  But more strained, edged with a pitiful whine.  Swallowing down a curse, he darted back down the hallway.  Goosebumps prickled up his arm and Keith burst back out into the open space, throwing himself over the back of the couch in the same moment.  His elbow slammed the coffee table hard, pain shooting up his arm.  But he was scrambling for his feet, eyes struggling to make sense of the scene before him.  

There was no blood.  No mauled bodies sprawled out over the ground.  It was nothing like the gruesome sight he had left behind weeks ago in an alleyway.  No, Kosmo was frozen at the center of it all, teeth bared, fur standing on end as he struggled.  The beast shook and trembled, energy flicking around him, cascading into him or erupting from him -- all in one terrible cycle that Keith didn't understand.  But those four robed figures surrounded the wolf, arms raised outward, energy flooding from their fingertips, joining the circle they created.  It all interlinked, the air stirring up wildly, piles of abandoned mail and forgotten newspapers scattered over the floor.  

And at the center of it all was Kosmo.  Kosmo who was surging with energy, tossing his head this way and that, as if he could buck off whatever was happening to him.  Fur billowed up, standing on end.  His entire form seemed to swell, brimming with energy even as it began to darken.  Teeth were bared, and that face swung towards Keith.  The very same that had been begging with a ball in his mouth just the night before.  

There was nothing playful in the gaze that settled on him now, staring and growling.  The eyes of a predator flickered from yellow to violet and back again.  

Every instinct screamed at him to run.  But something deeper urged Keith forward.  With a foot on the coffee table, he lunged towards the nearest robed figure.  The figure cried out in surprise and anger, the cycle of energy immediately broken.

Kosmo's eyes were yellow and Keith scrambled to his side, one arm on his back.  Keith's eyes widened as he saw the one who had toyed with him back there behind the couch.  Out! Some part of him shouted, already trying to figure out how to get Kosmo out the door.  

"Come on, we have to go!" His fingers curled tightly in Kosmo's fur -- fur that was growing brightly between his fingers.  Kosmo understood.  He'd understood before Keith had said a single word.  

Before Keith even realized what was happening they blinked out of existence.  Amidst the circle of shadows closing in was only a scattering of luminescent stardust drifting silently to the ground.

Chapter Text

There was no searing pain of scorched skin. No crackling energy in the air. Just a cool breeze ruffling his hair, cooling his sweat-soaked skin as Keith slowly drew his face out of Kosmo's fur.  

This wasn't his apartment.  And yet Keith still knelt there beside Kosmo just as he had back in his living room, fingers clenched tightly in the beast's fur.  He felt jittery, like a live wire, ready to move at a moment's notice.  Except he apparently had moved just that fast.  Keith looked around in naked wonder, trying to process the buildings rising up around them, the quiet park just across the street (but not their park) and the Chinese place that a young couple was walking out of, arms linked.  

Instead of the acrid smell of singed wood, there was only the smell of something roasting nearby.  Pleasant scents drifting out from the restaurant.  But Keith was too keyed up to pay it more than a cursory amount of attention.  Cautiously, he rose to his feet, half expecting one of those shadow people to emerge from the night around him.  

Kosmo nudged his hand instead, his nose cold.  

"How did you do that?"  Because there was no doubt in Keith's mind that it had been Kosmo that had done that.  Carried them across the city, out of the disaster that was his apartment.  And that had been before his home had been invaded by shadowy attackers.  Keith turned his hand, absently scritching Kosmo behind the ear.  Kosmo dipped his head, looking for more pets.  

"Definitely can't head back," he murmured, tugging his cell out of his pocket.  The screen read 8:43.  Tapping it open, he hovered over the contacts a moment.  It was a brief list -- delivery place, Kolivan's, office manager, Shiro.  He considered Kolivan for all of a moment, lips pressed thinly together, before he pocketed the phone again.  

"Okay boy, first we gotta find a place to stay.  Then we'll figure out what to do next."

Funny how the thought of giving up Kosmo -- a not-quite-dog-thing he'd had for barely a few weeks -- was simply not on that list of options.

❖

The bed squeaked, something high-pitched and subtly shrieky, as Keith sank down on it.  Not that he had expected much from a cheap ass motel that, thankfully, hadn't raised a fuss at his large wolf-dog-creature.  Kosmo was gnawing at a precooked chicken dinner, tearing the plastic apart and everything.  Keith frowned, sitting cross-legged on the bed, his own gas station sandwich unwrapped in his lap.  But it was Kosmo that had his attention.

Kosmo who was....definitely bigger.  

He reached out with a hand, just as he had done from the couch time and time again to pet the animal's head.  Except he wasn't leaning down for it anymore.  Even with Kosmo settled down on all fours, his head lifted up past Keith's hand.  Those eyes fixed on Keith and Keith returned the stare in kind.  Considering.  Sizing up.  

"I have so many questions right now."  Frustration edged those words as Keith tore his eyes away and flopped back onto the bed instead, sandwich forgotten at his side. "But you can't answer any of them, can you."  

Who are you?  What are those freaky shadow guys?  Where is Shiro?  

Question after question flickered, rapid-fire through his head.  So many questions and no answers.  Keith couldn't even decide where to start looking.  The faint creak of floorboards signaled Kosmo's movements around the room, but Keith just shut his eyes, letting his mind wander a moment.  

He opened another set of eyes, pure primal fear ripping through him.  His body prickled as energy coursed through him undulating waves of chaos that drove into him, consumed him.  And yet he was frozen in place.  Frozen and growling, the color draining away from the world before him.  Centered right before him was another robed figure, those same flowing garments obscuring her form.  She wore no mask like the others, though her eyes glowed with that same unnatural yellow light, bleeding out into reality.  A length of white hair whipped about her form, carried by those same waves of energy.  His claws dug into the cold, unforgiving stone beneath him.  The woman said nothing, her gaze cold.  But strange sigils formed from smoke in the air before him, growing brighter and brighter until they consumed his world.  

Keith jerked up from the bed with a strangled cry, gasping for a breath he could suddenly take again.  Emotions that were white hot and raw and not being smothered by something terrible.  He turned wide, purple eyes to Kosmo.  The beast bowed his head, and Keith felt sorrow, regret, and fear welling inside of him.  But not his.  

"That was you."

Keith didn't have even a moment to figure out what to do with that revelation.  

Glass shattered inward, the motel's window a gaping hole, curtains fluttering in the breeze that hadn't been there a moment ago.  Keith was already up and off the bed, diving towards Kosmo as the flutter of a cloak filled the room.  He threw his arms around Kosmo, never tearing his gaze away from that invader.  

Kosmo carried them both off in a scattering of stardust, Keith's unspoken command ringing through both their minds; Take us somewhere safe.

The druid lingered a moment, peering down at the scattered bits of lettuce and lunch meat from the human boy's meal. "This is a complication," he voiced out loud.  Another being, that masked face obscured beneath the folds of the robes, stepped out from the wall. "The boy is an anomaly, and he seems to have some command over the Guardian."

Beyond the walls of the room, they could hear a door slamming shut.  Running feet over the gravel.  

It was time to go.  

"I will report to Haggar.  Make no further moves until I return," the figure commanded his comrade.  The air flickered, the two figures slipping away without a trace.  

❖ 

Fresh and clean, the nighttime breeze drifted over them, carrying the distant scent of ironwood.   The naked hill looked out over the valley below, ringed with scraggly trees and gnarled bushes on all sides.  A stark difference from the compact city with no room for wide open spaces he’d left behind.  Keith sat perched on a low slab of rock, legs kicked out, leaning back on his hands, with his head tipped towards the sky.  Kosmo lay curled up on the dirt, his glow soft and subdued beneath the night sky.  

Keith had wished for safety and Kosmo answered with this.  

Something queasy twisted in his belly, Keith looking down over the rugged landscape, past the dotted greenery and jutting boulders to the town that glittered peacefully in the distance.  And to that darker spot, just on the edge where the houses grew further apart, the streetlights more distant.

He knew that town.  Maybe not from this distance in particular -- he'd been so small back then.  There was no way he would have ever ended up so far out.  But he knew that town.  

"Why here?" he uttered in the silence.  

Kosmo did not answer.  

Fingers curled against the stone, dragging at the rough texture, as he discovered the splinter of a memory.  He knew that dark spot right there on the edge of town.  Angry words chasing him out of a ranch house.  The sickening smell of booze on an old man's breath.  A flash of anger, hot and blinding, burst inside of him, Keith's knuckles bruising against the unforgiving stone.  

Slurred shouts chased a small boy out of the house, the screen door crashing against the siding behind him as a large man stumbled out after him.  

"Kosmo," he bit out, eyes flashing down towards the animal. "Why--"  

Yellow eyes peered up at him, unblinking.  Kosmo had lifted his head, watching Keith in that peculiar way of his; as if Keith just wasn't understanding.  Keith trailed off, staring down at the wolf.  But not too far down.  Even sitting on the stone like this, and Kosmo still on the ground, the animal's head was nearly level with Keith's shoulder.  So much bigger and in so short of time.  

No longer the pup that had sat in much the same way, tail wagging curiously back and forth, eyes peering up at Keith.  Yipping playfully as he hopped and bounced, Keith laughing as he fed the dog another bit of egg he'd stolen from the breakfast plate that morning.  

The memory grew slowly in him.  Little bits and pieces slipping into place, joining the other fragments that had flickered at the edge of his attention.  All the familiarities.  The déjà vu.  That simple happiness that he hadn't had since...well...Shiro.  And before that?  A fleeting couple of months amidst a hell he had nearly forgotten.  Keith slipped down from the stone, kneeling in the dirt right before Kosmo.  He was level with the wolf’s eyes now.  

"I knew you back then, didn't I."  It was a slow realization as a memory slotted into place.  He understood now. 

"This was where we met."  Maybe not this particular place, but out here in these woods.  

Kosmo huffed softly, tipping his head.  Keith saw an echo of another memory in that head tilt, though Kosmo back then had been so much smaller.  Just a pup, really.  Just like Keith himself had been.  They'd both been lost and alone.  Keith could just tell.  He felt that same empty hole in Kosmo that he'd always had in his own heart.  

Just as he had back then, Keith looked into Kosmo's quiet eyes and found a piece of himself.

Kindred Spirits.  

❖ 

"You get your ass back here!  We're not done!"  Those angry words followed Keith out the door, the rickety thing bouncing shut behind him.  They followed him across the lawn, through the hole in the fence.  He ignored the scratches they left on his skin, the way they caught at his shirt, ripping a patch out from his sleeve.  Keith didn't look back as angry tears coursed down his cheeks, short legs carrying him as quickly and as far as he could.  

"I want my dad!"

"Your dad is dead!  You want him that bad, you know where the shovel is!"

Angry words bounced around his head, the six-year old torn away from love and hope and family far, far too early.  Beyond that fence, there was just open wilderness carrying him further and further from the town.  Scrub struggled to survive out here, growing in sparse clumps, the wind stirring the dirt beneath Keith's feet.  He grit his teeth, angry and hurting and lonely and wishing desperately, desperately for something new.  

New came in the form of a mountainous rock standing suddenly before him, the boy's eyes widening as it loomed, shifted, form silhouetted against the setting sun.  Suddenly his feet were digging in, struggling to stop himself.  But he only went tumbling back onto his rump, coarse dirt digging into his palms as he scrambled suddenly backwards, eyes struggling to take in the massive shadow as it bent down low over him.  Fear clenched his heart as the nightmarish purple swirled in the monster's eyes.  

It descended upon him in a moment, and Keith panicked.  He swung himself around, scrambling to get away.  But something caught his foot and he went toppling down.  A flash  of pain, searing light, and then darkness swallowed him whole.

Keith dreamt of empty rooms, empty bellies, and monsters under the bed.

He awoke to the sound of bubbling water swirling over smoothed stones.  Keith groaned softly, lying sprawled out on his back, blinking slowly up at the lit sky above him, just beyond the sparse canopy of trees.  Stars.  Hundreds of thousands of stars spread as far as the eye could see.  So much brighter than the stars he'd glimpsed from the backyard of his latest foster home.  

For a moment, Keith was on his father's lap again, a warm voice laughing softly in his ear as he pointed upwards, guiding his son’s eyes, still so full of wonder, across the night sky.  

Keith rolled over onto his side, squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden rolling nausea.  His belly tightening up uncomfortably.  He whimpered softly, arms wrapping around his middle.  Everything was hazy, the world's axis gone all wobbly, and Keith just wanted to curl up in bed.  

But he wasn't in bed.  This wasn't his father's ranch.  His dad was dead.  

And there was a monster. 

It was like a splash of cold water, startling the boy upright, too wound up to even shiver in the night air.  His head wheeled this way and that, searching frantically for the monster that had blotted out the sky.  But there was nothing there.  No footprints in the dirt, no hulking form with a tooth-filled maw descending towards him.  Keith shuddered, fingers digging grooves into the earth as he looked for any sign of the monster.  

But there was only the wind blowing lightly through the scraggly underbrush, and water drifting lazily down the shallow stream, reflecting the same browns and grays of rocks that disrupted it. 

His limbs felt shaky, arms and legs not quite cooperating as he clumsily pushed himself to his feet.  Keith turned in a slow circle, fingers clutched into the hem of his t-shirt.  With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he couldn't figure out where his feet had carried him.  He was a child alone, lost in a rugged land, pocked with stones and prickly plants that never grew taller than his waist.  

The anger had long since evaporated, replaced with fear and uncertainty, cheeks stained and clammy with dried tears.  Keith, not knowing what else to do, began to walk.  

He didn't make it far before the bushes began to rustle.  Right there on the edge of the stream, followed by the sound of something splashing into the water.  Immediately he thought of those terrible eyes and the looming creature, and he swung towards the sound, stumbling back a step.  A breath.  A beat passed.  

It was a puppy that came pouncing through the brush.  Small and round, with eyes and ears that both seemed too big for its head.  The animal froze in its tracks as it spotted Keith, tail still behind it.  An almost tentative delight spread over Keith, reigniting that childish wonder that had become muted and distant since life had stolen his father from him.  But he dipped into it again now, the child sinking down to his knees, scooting forward a little closer.

The puppy tipped his head slightly, almost skeptical as he watched the boy get just a little closer.  But not frightened — not even as a hand reached out, slow and tentative.  A wet nose brushed over Keith's hand, the boy startled at how warm it was.  And he laughed.  Laughed and the puppy shared in that delight, suddenly bouncing and bounding up to Keith as if they were old friends.  

He didn't know where the puppy came from, why it felt like Keith had found his other half, and definitely didn't question the fact that the puppy was blue.  Laughter bubbled out of him, warm and happy as the puppy licked at the tear stains on his face.  Keith caught the animal in his arms, hugging that soft body close.  

Keith never noticed that glimmer of a symbol over the beast's forehead -- a shimmering light that was mirrored on Keith's own temple.  Though it faded away, that mark lingered there somewhere beneath the skin.

❖ 

"I brought you some food."  Not even 24 hours later and Keith was dropping down to sit in front of the puppy, backpack open between his legs as he started pulling out bags of chips, a can of soda and even a big bottle of water.  He'd also brought a couple bright green band-aids on his cheek, the skin around it swollen and purple.  

"Greg and Linda don't have any dog food, but I found this in the fridge."  Keith yanked out the crown jewel of his scavenged meal -- a tupperware of cold, leftover chicken from dinner a few nights before.  

Excitable, the puppy pounced forward, paws on Keith's knee, pushing his nose at the plastic.  Something almost like a whine slipped free and Keith reached out, petting the puppy on the head.  His fur was soft.  Soft and a deep blue.  He'd never seen a puppy with fur like that before.  

"You must be hungry."  Small fingers worked at the container lid a moment, lips twisted in frustration, brow furrowed as it stuck.  Until, finally, he managed to pop the lid off.  The pup showed no restraint as he shoved his entire face into the container, tail wagging eagerly back and forth.  

Keith yelped as the bundle of fur knocked the container clear out of his hands, slices of chicken scattering over the dusty ground.  But that surprise soon turned to joy, and the child laughed -- the sound bubbly and happy and brought tears to his eyes as his lips pulled at skin that was tight and swollen and still sore to the touch.  

Shifting onto his knees, Keith watched as the puppy nosed at chunks of chicken.  He didn’t seem to care about the layer of dirt counting each piece. 

"You need a name," Keith declared.  He pursed his lips, hard at work trying to come up with the perfect name.  The puppy scarfed up a piece of chicken, salivating as he devoured each and every piece until there weren't even scraps left.

It couldn't be a boring dog name, like all the ones he met.  Had to be special, cause this puppy was special.  The puppy who pounced back towards Keith, paws on the boy's knees, searching for more food.  

Lips split into a grin, and he wrapped his arms around the puppy.  

"Kosmo," he decided, all in an instant.  A name that came to him from the coolest cartoon about a magical flying dog.  Because the Kosmo here had to be magical and special, even if he was still just a baby now.

❖

Two months passed like that.  Two hot and blistery summer months, when his foster parents left him to his own devices during the day, not caring where the 6-year old ran out to.  He wandered into the hills, bringing along treats and leftovers that he managed to scavenge from the kitchen.  

Kosmo was always there, nosing at him, sniffing at a new band-aid over his knee or on his arm.  

They went wandering through the outskirts together, scampering over rocks, and chasing down lizards.  Kosmo was ever there at his heels or bounding ahead, the pair of them full of endless energy.  And always the day would end with Keith's tummy rumbling, the boy growing quiet and sullen as he stared back towards the house in the distance, barely visible over scrub and hillsides.  

He didn't want to go back.  He wanted to just stay out here forever.  

And why shouldn't he?  

"Kosmo, I'm gonna be right back, okay?" he told the pup, crouching down on his knees, already plotting.  Keith was already making that mental list of things he'd need if he was gonna move out here with Kosmo.  Not like Greg or Linda would care.  They didn't like him much anyway. "Just going to get my stuff, then we can live out here.  It'll be like camping!"  Except he didn't have a tent or a sleeping bag, but no reason he couldn't stay up all night telling ghost stories with Kosmo.  Greg and Linda probably didn't have any marshmallows either for making s'mores.  Daddy made the best s'mores.

Keith was already on his feet and scrambling over the stones that marked the edge of what would become their makeshift camp.  No, not just a camp.  A whole fort!  Keith’s imagination ran wild, smile growing on his lips as he picked his way down the path. 

Kosmo trotted after him, never failing to trail after the boy until Keith turned on his heel, a stern look on his face.  It was the very same that his dad would give Keith when he was testing boundaries, only to swoop the boy up in his big arms a few minutes later. 

"No, you gotta stay," he said, pointing at the little clearing. "Greg and Linda don't like pets.  They'd get rid of you if they found you."  

Kosmo tilted his head and took another step forward, only for Keith to side and hop back over the stone again.  

"Stay," he repeated, voice firm.  The boy pushed his hands down on Kosmo's rump, encouraging the puppy to sit. Kosmo nuzzled at Keith's face until the boy was giggling.  

Night had fallen before Keith finally managed to make it home alone.  

It would be another 3 days before he made it back again.

❖ 

It was an older Keith who wandered through those same foothills now.  This rough and rugged countryside had been his escape back when he'd been in that home on the edge of town, far from the prying eyes of neighbors who might have questioned the bruises the 6-year old had showed up with time after time.  He could hop up onto the low stones far more easily now, and the Kosmo who trailed after him was so much larger now, his head nearly level with Keith's as he followed behind him, the pair of them walking into a memory together.  

Their home base.  Yes, this right here, it was it.  Not much but a little dip in the earth, surrounded by stones, making what he'd imagined had been the mightiest of fortresses when he was small.  He could still hear that stream bubbling nearby, feeding the stubborn and sparse plant life that had taken root in this arid land.  

Keith had been much the same back then and Kosmo had been his lifeline to sanity.  

But he remembered now.  Keith looked around that very same clearing and remembered scrambling over the rocks, face drawn, barely holding back the storm of emotions that threatened to throw him free.  He remembered the distinct pain in his leg.  The limp he'd been forced to walk with after his foster father, in a drunken rage, had knocked him down and stomped down hard on his leg when he'd found the boy raiding the fridge with a backpack.  

It had taken them 24 hours to finally take him to the emergency room.  And barely another 24 hours before a tired woman with drawn eyes showed up at their door.  The very same woman who had dropped Keith off four months ago.  

Keith had slipped out the window of his bedroom, no backpack or blanket or anything but the clothes on his back, once he'd realized what was happening.  And he had limped so very far, leg screaming, tears staining his cheeks as he called for Kosmo.  The puppy came running.  

Keith was older now, but just as broken and lost.  Shiro had come along and, for a brief few years, had been something truly good in Keith's life.  Somebody who looked at him and saw beyond the raised walls, the standoffish demeanor, the way he'd kept everybody at a distance.  But there had been Kosmo too.  

"Can't believe I forgot you," he said, with a laugh.  But maybe that strange blue dog was one he'd convinced himself was just a figment of his imagination.  Some way to cope as he was passed from foster home to foster home, a never ending stream of neglectful or abusive adults who had decided to take in a kid they had never wanted for reasons he couldn't even begin to understand.

❖ 

Keith settled his hand on Kosmo's back.  The beast almost seemed contemplative as he looked around that same wilderness that had once been their playground.  There was a pang of longing there.  Of loss and confusion, welling up deep inside.  Keith frowned, the emotions distant and raw and echoed, but not truly his own.  He looked down at Kosmo and suddenly he was seeing himself.  

Boundless excitement punched through him, tongue lulling out, yipping happily as he watched himself -- a far smaller, scrawnier version of himself -- come clambering clumsily over the rocks.  Three days.  It had been three whole days since Keith had last come.  And he was seeing out of Kosmo's eyes.  Somehow, someway, he had the wolf's own view of that past day and Keith couldn't help but be swept along in those emotions, feeling them deep within his soul, filling every corner of his body until he felt fit to burst.  

But they dulled, replaced with confusion, and then that same sadness that was rolling off of the small boy in waves.  Small arms reached out for him, and he felt the warmth of that body pressing in close, face pressing into soft fur.  Keith remembered the moment, even as it played out before him.  

"I gotta say bye now."  

Kosmo didn't understand the words, but he felt that sorrow reflected in his own heart.  Sorrow and a longing to stay.  Keith felt a whine rise up from his throat, and the child shook his head fiercely.  

"I don't have a choice.  Gonna go to a new family.  They’d never let me keep you."  The boy was pulling away now, those tears wet on his face and Keith leaned in close just as Kosmo did, reliving this same experience through the wolf's eyes, and licked at those tears on the boy's face.  

Keith remembered this now -- the adult Keith, who had somehow lost his hold on this memory.  Something that had crumbled away into just fragments that he had written off as a child's imagination.  But it all came back to him now.  The warmth of the sun on his back.  The way he had clung to Kosmo, even as he gave up on a forever home with his favorite puppy.  

Only five, and he had already learned that good things weren't meant for him.  

Kosmo's confusion washed over him, but still he stepped forward, trying to trail after Keith.  This wasn't like the other times Keith had left him.  The animal didn't understand why, but it was different.  

"No."  Frustration and regret were sharp on the child's face.  Keith felt it like a shock through Kosmo's heart, reeling from the finality of that single word.  The small Keith looked upon the dog, sniffling as he held back those tears. "You can't come with me.  You gotta be good.  Stay."  Keith remembered the next words moments before they slipped from his past self's mouth.  

"Find a real family."

20 years old now and Keith was still desperately searching for that very same thing.    

"Bye, Kosmo."  It was barely a whisper, but Kosmo heard each word clear as day.  And Keith could tell he didn't understand the meaning, but he sensed it -- sensed that Keith was going.

He was leaving Kosmo behind. 

Keith wanted to call out, tell that boy to turn around and come back.  He was too young.  He didn't know what he was missing out on or what Kosmo could bring him.  How could he have known how Kosmo could help him stay afloat amidst the pain and loneliness that would come in the following years.  But he was just a silent passenger, reliving a moment in Kosmo's memories.  He could only watch as the child clambered over the stones and ran down the hill.  The vision lingered on, Keith watching through Kosmo's eyes as the puppy sat there for a long moment.  

And then he was on his feet, trotting forward, scampering up over rocks and stones, following the path that Keith had left in the dust and dirt.  The sun was getting low and the shadows stretched and grew.  Like a spike through the heart, sudden raw fear ripped through the puppy.  He stumbled back, vision whipping about wildly until Keith was dizzy with it.  Shadows circled around him, billowing upward and there were figures there.  Hands raised, purple lightning sparking from their fingers.  A white mask tilted to the side, words uttered in a guttural language he did not recognize.  

Keith snapped free from the vision, standing frozen in that old childhood hangout, the shape of a white mask still dancing across his mind's eye.  

❖ 

For hours he drifted in and out of sleep, sprawled out on the unforgiving ground.  Though Kosmo made for a warm body to lounge against and help chase away the rest of the night's chill that his jacket couldn't quite manage.  But as comfortable as Kosmo was, and as soundly the wolf seemed to be sleeping, Keith was having trouble chasing the static from his brain.  Too many thoughts drifting in and out.  Questions that he had no answers to.

Keith shut his eyes a moment, and another image drifted through.  

Eyes peering through the narrow space of a cell's bars.  Cold stone was set into the floor and walls beyond those bars, and across the way, another cell.  A form was slumped within it, dark hair marred by the streak of white, falling down over a familiar jawline.  Keith tried to reach out for the man, but the body he was seeing through only sat there, mind drowning in confusion, uncertainty, and the undercurrent of fear that carried it all.  And exhaustion.

It was the exhaustion that chased him into the waking world, Keith's fingers curling, dragging against the dirt beneath him.

"Why are you showing me these things?" he whispered.  Kosmo never answered, of course.  Only slept soundly below him.  

His eyes drifted upward, heavy with sleep, but drawn inevitably to the ocean of stars hanging over them.  How many nights had he spent staring up at that dark sky all on his own?  How many had he spent with Shiro at his side, until the man was stolen away from him by war and cruelty and monsters in the arena.  Keith let out a quiet breath, turning his face into Kosmo's coat.

"Maybe it's not even you."  A wild guess in the dark, and Kosmo's chest only rose and fell with each slow breath.  Keith frowned, trying to find some sense in it all.  The visions had started when Kosmo had entered his life.  Little snapshots of moments seen through the eyes of another -- through Shiro first, and then strangers.  And now even the wolf himself.  

Each time he shook with the same emotions, sharing them, feeling them deep within his own heart.  And when he reached out now, something quiet and tentative, feeling almost foolish with himself, he swore he could feel a soothing calm drifting from Kosmo himself.  Or the eagerness when he had spotted a rabbit bounding through the underbrush earlier in the evening.

It was a strange bond the two shared.  But it was that bond -- the soul of another touching his own, that wouldn't let him abandon Kosmo to the shadows that hunted him.  

Besides, Shiro was alive.  Kosmo had given him hope and a lifeline both; something to hold on to and fight for.  

Kosmo's ears flickered in his sleep, the wolf snorting quietly.  It was enough to draw Keith's attention up.  He found himself smiling faintly -- another rarity for him -- and lay back down, holding the warmth close to his heart.  

❖

"So, how does this work?" 

Keith stared hard at Kosmo.  Kosmo stared right back with that quiet look of his, tail swaying gently along the dusty path behind him.  They had spent the morning picking their way through rocky terrain, following vague childhood memories towards the hiking trail that cut through this area.  He had no intention of visiting his old foster home.  But the town of Rockwood stretched out beyond it, and Keith was getting pretty hungry.  

And Kosmo could apparently teleport them long distances.  Having a teleporting wolf was damn useful.  Kosmo had carried them away from danger twice -- a particularly shocking distance the second time.  If only he could figure out how to get Kosmo carry them where he wanted, when he wanted.  Keith set a hand upon the wolf's back, thinking hard about an old diner he vaguely remembered on some random corner.

Turned out that was all he had to do. 

The image was fuzzy around the edges, but he pulled up a memory of an old diner he had visited one time with a social worker.  He must have been only five or so, and he remembered a plump waitress with a warm smile giving him extra bacon.

Keith blinked and suddenly he and Kosmo were standing across from that very diner.  

Out in the open.  

After a brief moment of panic -- thankfully nobody seemed to notice -- he had told Kosmo to wait outside while he grabbed them some food.  

There had been one tense moment, Keith watching through the window while he waited for his takeout order to be ready, when a passing businessman paused on the sidewalk.  Maybe he was naive or perhaps just hopeful, but he held his hand out tentatively towards the huge wolf sitting quietly on the sidewalk.  

Kosmo bared his teeth and growled lowly, a warning.  The man paled, tightened his hold on his briefcase and hurried away.  

Keith couldn't help the flood of relief that nobody had been maimed.  

Nor could he shake the idea that he knew Kosmo wasn't going to attack or bite from a gesture like that alone.  

Once Keith had a few takeout containers stored safely in a plastic bag, he rejoined Kosmo out on the street.  Together, the pair wandered for only a brief time before they found a somewhat secluded courtyard tucked away at the park's edge.  A few benches lined the cobblestones, a bubbling fountain creating the centerpiece.  

Finding a seat on one of the benches, Keith dug into the simple bacon and eggs breakfast he had ordered -- a styrofoam cup of steaming coffee at his side.  There was another container open on the bench beside him.  Every so often he plucked a strip of bacon from it and tossed it to Kosmo.  The wolf ate it up eagerly.

Kosmo hadn't been particularly picky when it came to what he ate -- sharing mostly what Keith had gotten for a meal, or the raw cuts of meat that Keith brought home every other day or so.  Plus the occasional squirrel or rabbit he'd catch in the park.  Keith suspected the beast would have been happy out in the wild, hunting up his own food.

But bacon was apparently a winner too.  

So many questions.

"Can you show me Shiro again?"  Keith tapped his fork against the styrofoam edge of his takeout container, uncertain.  

Kosmo nosed at another piece of bacon and Keith, with a sigh, passed it over to him.  Kosmo brushed his nose against Keith's hand, lapping at the bacon-grease left on his fingers.  

Reality shifted, and it was no longer greasy fingers he was staring at, but metal digits, scuffed and scratched from fight after fight.  Metal plating had replaced flesh, but his fingers flexed, opening and closing one by one.   For one brief moment, Keith settled into Shiro’s form, feeling the strange disconnect of nerves sending signals down through his artificial arm.  But there was no horror this time — a mind on the edge of panic.  No, there was exhaustion instead.  Exhaustion and a numbing sense of resignation that threatened to overwhelm the fight that had kept Shiro going for so long.  A flesh and blood hand passed over each metal joint, tracing the jarringly inorganic sensation.

“Shiro,” a voice croaked out.  Somebody moving at his side, and the vision lifted to find another figure — human with the same ragged clothes he’d glimpsed on others — offering him a lump of something that Keith knew (because Shiro knew) passed as some poor excuse for food in here.  Others, human and alien alike, were scattered in the cell or another across the way, all just as listless and tired.

When Keith snapped back to awareness, he found his fingers licked clean and the box of bacon upside down on the ground, Kosmo eagerly snapping up each piece.

"Shiro," he breathed out, that fear knotting tight in his belly.  That was Shiro, without a doubt.  The man felt familiar to him, just as he had that first time he'd found himself in Shiro's head.  But the others he had seen?  Keith frowned, staring down at his own hand, still flesh and blood.  Human.  

The others had been strangers to him.  

Keith clenched his jaw, fingers curling into a tight fist. 

"Take me to Shiro." 

It wasn't a test anymore.  But a demand and a hope, all twined into one.  His hand settled once more on the beast's neck, the fur soft and warm between his fingers.  Kosmo was still licking his jaws, but he swept his head up towards Keith.  They sat in silence together, a boy and his dog, something thrumming gently between them, a thread that was like a cool touch upon Keith's mind.  He frowned, reaching tentatively towards it.  Starlight rose from Kosmo's fur, scattering down in gentle waves.  That canine heart beat a little faster, and Keith could feel his own growing to match.  A frown tugged at his lips, that thread straining tight, leaving him short of breath even though he wasn't doing anything.  It pulled from him and from Kosmo alike, searching, seeking, straining until the path crumbled away entirely.

And then the light faded from Kosmo and the wolf whined softly, something like disappointment and sadness running along that bond and touching Keith's own heart.  He lowered his own head, dark hair falling over his eyes, that impossible task looming over them both. "We'll get there," he said, letting his hand move now, voice and touch both working to sooth the beast.  

They spent the next while just sitting there, enjoying the slight breeze that ruffled at hair and fur alike.  The spilled bacon had been fetched from the ground -- what remained of it -- and had turned into a game of catch, with Kosmo running or outright warping eagerly to catch that strip of fried goodness right in his mouth.  Keith only draw the game to a stop, a sudden tenseness running through Keith as he spotted a Galra drone up above, casting it's ominous shadow along the ground.  A constant reminder of the Galra presence and control holding the planet in check with fear.  

But the drone passed by overhead, Kosmo alert and poised to take action, feeding off of Keith's own restlessness.  

When the engine vanished into the distance, Keith tossed the last bunch of bacon at once, letting Kosmo go for one last mad catch as he stood up.  

In an instant, shadows were upon them.  Keith felt the blow to his side like an explosion.  Skin hissing, blistering, ripping right through both his leather jacket and black t-shirt alike.  A pained cry escaped his lips as he tumbled to the ground.  A weight grew on him, all around him, the air itself growing heavier as he struggled to push himself up.  Teeth grit, arms shaking with the effort, before he was smashed back down again.  He raised his eyes, irises blown with anger and humiliation, at the figure standing tall before him.  That tattered cloak fluttered around him, an arm extended towards Keith.  The mask, tilted in that odd way, only added to the air of cold detachment.  

He was really tired of those fucking masks.  

A shrill cry ripped free from another shadowy figure as he curled forward, clutching at his mangled hand.  The blood that dribbled let violet splotches upon the ground.  Keith's gaze snapped over, knowing instinctively where Kosmo would land.  And without fail, Kosmo ripped back into existence, a furious, gnashing, swiping beast that threw himself bodily into the druid, ripping into those impossible folds of fabric.  

The well of gravity vanished abruptly, leaving Keith shaken, but free to stumble back up onto unsteady legs.  He reeled back, one hand already going for the knife at his back.  Another shadow and he spun himself around, relying on those survival instincts as he swung wildly at the figure.  Once, twice, three times.  The knife sliced harmlessly through shadow, sending it scattering, the figure flickering back, reforming again and again.

From the corner of his eye, he could see more figures warping into the square, right there in broad daylight.  A man turned the corner with a cup of coffee in one hand.  All it took was one look and he went pale.  Coffee hit the ground as he fled back the way he’d come.

The shadow cut forward, glowing fingers slashing out.  Searing pain ripped into Keith's side, the young man gasping as he stumbled back, falling to his knees.  

"Don't kill the boy."  

Keith grit his teeth, eyes flashing up in rash anger.  The figures all looked alike -- sharing the same formless cloaks and ominous masks.  But he recognized that one's voice.  The same who had told him to give up Kosmo in exchange for his own life.  

"Haggar wants them both, boy and guardian alike."  

They were having enough trouble with a dog as it was.  As large as Kosmo was, with the way he had been chasing after bits of bacon earlier, or playing fetch with Keith in the late hours of the evening, it was easy to forget how vicious he was.  Keith gasped in pain as he shoved himself back upright, only to stumble back, one hand clutching at his side.  Across the way, near the fountain, Kosmo snapped his jaws at one of the attackers, finding only a mouthful of fabric as it ported away.  Quick, sharp bursts of darkness, colliding with shimmering fur.  

Keith saw the sparks of lightning striking the ground, leaving a glowing trace.  Another cloaked figure popped up behind Kosmo, and then yet another, each adding their own markings to the growing circle.  

"Kosmo!"  The warning burst from his lips, that sudden fear and alertness coursing between them, the wolf instinctively heading the silent command.  He vanished in a burst of light.  But before Keith could let out a breath, Kosmo was right there at the center of that circle, violent energy coursing upward.  It created a barrier between them, the air itself growing angry and Kosmo seemed so small at its center.  Small and growling, frozen, fur standing on end.  

Lightning sparked out in every direction, sending static into the air.  Keith was just as frozen as Kosmo, a fist squeezing his heart tight.  Losing him.  He was losing him again.  A loss he thought he'd grown used to, one that he had accepted time and again, bitterly.  Loss after loss, with the last one centered around a man lost to the violence of the arena nearly breaking him, sending Keith racing recklessly towards that abyss, not caring if he tipped right over the edge.  

Fuck it.  

Not again.  He saw Kosmo there, twisting in the energy, somehow misshapen and larger and looming up higher and higher.  And he saw that puppy from all those years ago, giving him his only bit of warmth in the midst of those loveless years.  

Frantically, he scanned the ground for his dropped knife.  He fingers closed around a chunk of the fountain instead, still damp from spout and leaving wet splotches over the cobblestones.

A loud crack echoed from the barrier and the cloaked figures all drew up short, staring with an air of uncertainty -- the one nearest the energy cage backed up a step -- as something within that field slammed itself against the wall.  

Too large.  The warmth that kept them connected was muted, distant, and Keith felt cold.  

He turned that dread into desperation, and slammed the rock down on the booted foot of the shadow hovering just behind him.  The man cried out in pain -- it sounded shockingly human -- the glow of magic abruptly vanishing as he jerked back from Keith.  He took that opening, Keith stumbling desperately to his feet, swiping up his dagger once he spotted it.  And he didn’t think.  Didn’t think as he dashed straight towards that wall of energy.  

"Kosmo!"  He swiped at another cloaked figure, driving the knife deep into the shadow's side.  Another scream, sharper this time and another sliver of energy powering that field fell away.  It trembled as the beast within slammed into it again.  Tall, looming, wreathed in shadow beyond that violent purple cast of light.  That head lowered, the wolf barreling forward in a frenzy.  This time the barrier burst, shock wave ripping back through the courtyard.  It sent Keith flying back, gasping as his elbow collided with the pavement first before he went tumbling.  Another form, cape fluttering, was thrown right past him, slamming into a street lamp.  

Figures were left scattered all over the courtyard, struggling to regain their feet.  And that their center was Kosmo.  Kosmo looming tall -- far, far taller than Keith or any of them.  A wall rising up, fur stained dark as tendrils of smoke seemed to shift and swell around him, trailing off into the daylight.  And he was shaking his head, jerking from side to side, as if trying to shake something free.  Keith rose up, cautious, heart beating out of his chest.  

That bond, that bit of himself that he always felt Kosmo within, it was cold.  Cold and slimy and vibrating with static that seemed eager to spread.  

Around him, the cloaked figures rose like the shadows they were.  The leader spoke in a guttural whisper, and yet his words carried clear as day.  

"She calls us."  

They all vanished as one, flickering away back to wherever it was they came from.  It was only Keith and Kosmo now.  Alone.  

Keith's heart beat wildly in his chest, mouth dry as he stepped forward slowly.  Cautiously.  Kosmo felt more wild now, more dangerous than when Keith had found him facing off the Galra.  Had it only been a month ago?  

And now he had to crane his head upward.  Kosmo was massive.  Looming easily over Keith, the human standing barely as high as a leg.  And those eyes.  Dark eyes flickered, alternating between their familiar, canine shape and a glowing, opalescent blue that matched Kosmo's starlight, filling the entirety of his eye until there was no darkness left.  But it was the violet sheen, as pure as the energy the cloaked figures attacked with that made his breath catch in his throat.  

"Kosmo," he said, pushing past that niggling thought.  Keith took one step forward and then another, stretching out his hand.  Kosmo growled and pushed forward, sharp teeth snapping at Keith.  Clothing ripped, face smudged with dust and dirt, Keith didn't back down.  He growled right back and shoved forward, narrowly avoiding those teeth as he pushed himself up against Kosmo's leg, pushing his face up into the fur of his chest, dark and tainted and it smelled sick rather than fresh.  

It was wild and reckless and maybe this, this would finally be the moment.  All Kosmo had to do was catch him with those jaws and Keith would be a goner.  But Keith reached along that line between them, still strong and there, but twisted somehow.  Kosmo's eyes still flickered, struggling against the corruption that spread even now through his soul.  

Keith clutched at something pure and unsullied and tasting of starlight.  And he held on, yanking it closer and pulling Kosmo free from that corruption.  Free and untainted and a sudden, longing sensation.  Something touched and unfinished, a broken strand somewhere beyond that stars that needed to be reforged.  

Keith could sense it and squeezed his eyes shut as, together, they fell into the stars.  

Chapter Text

Keith should have been dead.  Logically, he knew, the sights around him, as awe-inspiring as it was, should have stolen the life from him in an instant before he had the chance to appreciate them.  And yet here he was, clinging to Kosmo's back, the universe passing them by.

Entire galaxies swept past them, brilliant colors reflecting light back at them.  He'd somehow managed to pull himself up along that thick fur, dragging himself onto Kosmo's back as the wolf swept through the stars.  It wasn't instantaneous, like traveling across cities had been.  But he was glad it wasn't.  How else would he have seen that vast ocean of stars, stretching on forever.  

All he could do was hang on and struggle to take it all in, committing the warm emotions bursting up inside of him to memory, because there was too much for his eyes alone to take in.  

Riding that strange euphoria, Keith was brought suddenly back to a night spent on Earth.  A lone tent setup out on the rocky outcropping.  A pair of red hoverbikes were parked nearby.  Shiro had sat across from him, the flickering flames of a small fire wafting up smoke between them.  But both of their eyes were turned upwards, basking in the glorious canvas of starlight above.  

It was a memory he had packed carefully away once it had grown tinged with sorrow.  Something too raw and peaceful, and something Keith hadn't want to taint any further as he drowned in anger, sorrow, and finally apathy, all driving him towards an inevitable destruction.  

If only Shiro could see the magnificence of it now, that inky darkness that stretched on for an eternity, filled with its own kind of life.  

Shiro.  

Keith's fingers curled tighter in the soft tufts of Kosmo's fur, feeling that pull again.  A current of understanding between the man and the wolf.  And yet there was a chill to that thought.  Something thick and cloying and wrong.  But before he could pull his mind free from it, he was tumbling down into a sea of corruption.  

And he was drowning in it.  The sea of anger, hatred, bestial brutality as he stared down at the figure.  Keith growled low in his throat, saliva dripping from his jaws.  Darkness swirled around him, snout twisting up in a terrifying display as he growled threateningly.  Energy crackled in the midst of that violent storm.  But as the smoke grew thinner, Keith could see him.  

Hair gone partially white from the stress, body dressed in those slave rags he had fought in time and time again.  The metal arm that had been forced upon Shiro as a '"reward", for the cruel price of his flesh and blood arm.  And those gray eyes, wide and terrified, frozen in shock at the beast that had burst out of nowhere.  

Keith's maw opened wide and snapped Shiro up.

He no longer saw the stars.  Not that they had vanished, but he was blind to them now, knuckles white as he clung to Kosmo's back.  Bile rose up in his throat, the vastness of space suddenly something cold and ominous.  He did not process the vortex of swirling light that swallowed them whole.  Couldn't bring himself to care enough to see the unfamiliar land they had found themselves upon.  

All Keith knew was the tidal force of emotions that threatened to send him toppling over.  The moment Kosmo settled on solid ground again, Keith slid off his back and stepped away.  Stepped away to truly look at the wolf that had carried him across the universe.  Towering over him, eyes those of a wild beast, but there was a spark of intelligence in them.  

Eyes that had once shown with a violet light.

And more than that, he had been Kosmo, reliving that memory through the beast.  As if he had lived the moment himself.  He'd experienced the simple joy of a bouncing puppy looking up at a younger Keith with effortless joy.  But that monster he had lived through just now?  A wild, boundless aggression.  And it had been turned entirely on Shiro.  

Keith stalked away, hands tight fists at his side.  Kosmo lowered his head slightly and started to follow after Keith.  It was that same wild anger that rose up in Keith’s throat, nearly choking him as he spun back towards Kosmo.  

"It was you!  You did this!"

Kosmo paused, uncertainty in the way he cocked his head.  Keith's nails dug grooves into his palm.

"You attacked Shiro in the arena!  We were going to finally get out of there!  And you...you...!"  Some tiny, tiny small part of his brain told him he was being irrational.  This Kosmo and the wild beast he became when the masked men had worked their magic were two entirely separate beings as far as Keith was concerned.  

But Shiro.  

Shiro staring up, horrified.  Keith's hand went to his throat.  He had felt it.  Tasted it, all through Kosmo's memories.  

"What did you do to him!?  Is he even alive!?"

Keith turned on his heel, the gray and barren landscape that surrounded them little more than an afterthought.  Kosmo moved to follow, but Keith turned sharply, thrusting his hand out towards the wolf. "No!  Don't follow me.  I can't look at you right now."  And Keith didn't look back as he walked towards the plateaued land ahead.  If he had, he would have seen Kosmo sitting there, tail still and ears drooping.  Those eyes followed Keith’s every move as the man left him behind.  

It took all he had not to look back as he felt that loneliness settle in, deep in his gut -- one that was equally his own and Kosmo's.

❖

It wasn't until his legs began to ache that Keith realized just how far they had carried him.  His feet carried him on and on, Keith stubbornly ignoring the burning pain in his side with every movement.  Those shadowy beings had left their mark this time.  He’d ended up on a steep slope, a sharp drop to his side.  Keith paused, a hand pressed to his side.  One wrong step, and he would have gone tumbling back down.  Probably breaking a few bones along the way if he was lucky.  It was a barren landscape he found himself in the middle of.  But this wasn't the dusty tans and browns of the desert that he knew.  It was shades of gray, with sharp dips and rises, shallow craters spread as far as he could see.  And up above him, there was only stars, shining bright and full without the haze of the Earth's atmosphere to mute their light.  

He could see Kosmo back down the way he had come, sitting down on the ground, head resting on his paws.  It was a strangely forlorn sight, the wolf's ears flickering every so often.  Keith could feel that piercing gaze upon him.  But more than that, there was that ghost of a touch, a constant presence settled in the back of his mind.  

And yet when he looked down upon Kosmo, that image of Shiro, staring up in horror at a monster's open maw, rushed to the forefront of his mind.  And there was no room to rationalize it.  No space to try and take it step by step.  All he saw was the beast who had stolen Shiro away.  The creature who had eaten him and swallowed him down, that sensation still thick in his throat.  

All of a sudden Keith stumbled to the side, arm flying out to catch himself on a rock as he pitched forward to heave.  

Keith was still shaking, grimacing at the sick he could still taste in his mouth as he straightened back up.  He wiped his sleeve over his mouth, stomach twisting and empty now.

He couldn't shake those images.  Couldn't shake the memory that wasn't even his own.  And Keith felt that pit opening up beneath him, threatening to drag him back down into that same despair that had just about swallowed him whole before he'd found a reason to come each night.  

Kosmo bounding around him excitedly, chasing after the ball Keith kept throwing.  

Kosmo stealing Shiro away in the midst of the madness of the arena.  

Keith turned sharply on his heel and slammed his foot into a nearby boulder, cursing into the silence.  It didn't move, and he slammed his foot into it again.  And again.  And again.  Beat up that unfeeling rock until he was drained and aching.  Keith sank to the ground, eyes tired as he gazed off across the star-lit landscape ahead.  

A shadow slipped across the flatland, and Keith furrowed his brow, studying that shape in the distant.  One that came steadily closer, until Keith could make out limbs and a head and a cloak hanging still about narrow shoulders.  It was perhaps another twenty minutes before the figure was climbing up the opposite slope towards Keith, panting raggedly with the exertion.  Keith stood there waiting, knife in his hand, waiting for the worst.  

But the worst never came.

"Please just...just a moment to catch my breath, if you would."  The woman sank down on the rock away from Keith's pile of sick, one hand pressed to her chest as she panted quietly.  A woman who had the hood of her cloak resting against her back, long white hair done up in a bun.  He might have mistaken the dark-skinned woman for human if it weren't for the elongated ears or the utterly unnatural, jewel-bright eyes that peered back at him.  

"You can put that away now," she said, just a touch of dryness lacing her accented words.  Her eyes fell down to his hand, and Keith followed them down to the knife he still held.  

"And why should I trust you?"  True, she didn't look dangerous.  None of the glowy hands or eerie masks or tattered robes of the shadowy figures that had been stalking him since they had appeared in his apartment.  But Keith was on edge.  There was no way he was letting his guard down so easily.

"Let me answer your questions, and then you can decide."

❖

Her answers, it seemed, required a slight change of scenery, though Keith didn’t see the point.  Was was stopping her from just telling him whatever it was she wanted to share?  But Allura -- for that was what she called herself -- seemed intent on it.  Keith's dagger was back in its sheath and, with one glance back towards the cosmic wolf settled down to wait in the distance, Keith fell into step behind the alien woman.  

At first, he had thought there was not much to see here.  Just a chunk of rock -- perhaps an asteroid -- somewhere out in the vastness of space.  He'd decided since the moment Kosmo had launched the pair of them across the universe that he wouldn't think too hard about the whole breathing thing.  Allura did not seem all that concerned either.  And Keith couldn't deny the air, still and dry, that filled his lungs.  But as they crossed the dusty plane, what Keith had mistaken for shapeless stone jutting up from the stone took on a more carefully crafted appearance.  

One that had long since been ruined.  Stone walls lay half-crumbled, leaving behind the outline of structures where the roofs had collapsed inward.  Pillars shattered and toppled over.  The stone rose upward here, steps carved into the mountainside.  Though they, too, seemed to have long ago begun to erode.  Edges that must have once been carefully carved with perfect angles were now rounded and worn away by time.  

"This is The Grand Temple," Allura explained, leading Keith between the fallen buildings, along what had once been a road. "Though it's been a very, very long time since this place had fit that title."  Something somber settled over her, the woman stilling for a moment in the middle of what must have been a courtyard, her eyes gazing at something that Keith could not see.  

A memory, perhaps.  

He knew that look.  Had seen it each time he had found himself in front of a mirror.  It was the face of a person who had lost the very thing that had anchored them to the world.  

But Allura shook the shroud free after a moment and cleared her throat, beckoning for Keith to follow.  She did not turn up towards the main temple.  Instead, she led him along a path that ran alongside the mountain, hugging the slope.  

There they found paradise.  It was a pocket of greenery in the middle of this strange, dead world.  The stone had turned to dirt, rich with nutrients that fed the grass that burst up from the earth.  A few trees, their boughs heavy with fruit, hugged the side of a spacecraft -- one that had clearly not moved in a very, very long time.  It's white hull was obscured by vines that grew tall, decorated with pink and purple and white flowers in bloom.  And there in the back, he could just make out what seemed to be a garden.  So vibrant and full of life, but so small and contained.  

Allura's lips spread into a beaming smile. 

"Welcome, my friend, to Altea."

❖

Altea, as it turned out, covered the entirety of this rock in space.  Something far too small to call a proper planet.  One that drifted slowly through this region of space.  But though Altea had once been a grand Empire that stretched out across the universe, this little pocket was all that remained of it.  It was hard to imagine that the entire rock had been green and vibrant and pulsing with life.  And it was only this one little corner that Allura was able to maintain.  

And it was all because of the Galra.  

"Those figures you described, with the white masks.  They're...something different."  She had already set Keith down, the man watching her warily as she healed his the burned skin of his side with a strange blue light — one that reminded him of Kosmo’s own glow.  And now Allura worked in her little kitchen, boiling water for a pot of what Keith could only guess was tea.  "They serve the witch, Haggar.  And she has served the Galra Empire for generations."

"Alright, but why are they after Kosmo?" His fingers probed absently at his side, but found not a hint of a burn.  Only a lingering tingling sensation that was growing fainter by the moment.  Wild. 

Allura stared at him a moment, and then chuckled. "Kosmo.  Yes, I like that."

"Can we get to the point already?"

The look Allura gave him was withering, before slowly morphing into something almost resigned. "Before I can tell you just what Kosmo is, you must know about Oriande." She set the little bowl of herbs down and turned, gesturing Keith towards the table.  "Here, let me show you."  

The key to learning about Oriande, it seemed, was in the small basin set into the center of the table.  Soft lights twisted and glowed at its center, an ever-morphing centerpiece that Keith had thought only a mildly interesting decoration.  But there was more to it, it seemed.  Keith slipped into a seat, and Allura took one opposite him.  With a light touch, she pressed her fingertips to the tabletop.

An interface lit up, right there beneath her fingers.  Keith blinked and, after a moment’s hesitation, subtly brushed his own hand over the tabletop.  Nothing happened.  

"It's powered by Altean alchemy," Allura said, eyes flickering up towards Keith before settling on the centerpiece.  The play of liquid light collapsed into nothing.  

"Run program: 'A Beginner's Guide to Oriande.'"

Immediately the basin filled with a blue light, that same holographic liquid bubbling up.  But this time it was no mere decorative pattern.  Right before his very eyes, it built a miniature castle suspended in the air.  Whoever had created the program had opted for a simple aesthetic -- one with thick outlines and flat colors -- more symbolic than realistic.  It was the sort of thing Keith might expect to find in a story book, or painted on cave walls.  

The castle was both wreathed in light and shrouded by clouds -- both mysterious and mystical.  It's gates were wide open, and figures stood there, frozen in time, balancing an orb between them.  

Soft music began to play, a man's ecstatic voice bubbling up.  

"Ah, Oriande.  So beautiful and noble, the likes of which old Pop pop Wimbelton wrote lengthy--"

"Silent Run, please."  Allura coughed, smile almost sheepish as she brushed back her hair. "Ah, the narrator did tend to embellish.  I'll try to not get sidetracked."

Keith was grateful.  Patience was something he was running short on at the moment.  

"So, Oriande," he said, leaning back in his seat, arms crossed.  Something nudged at the back of his mind.  Something warm and familiar as that word fell from his lips.  Almost a longing.  Which was strange.  Keith had never heard of the place.  But if it was connected to Kosmo...  And there it was.  That brush of the wolf there on the edge of his consciousness.

Shiro's terrified face.  

Keith's lips pressed into a thin line, reflexively pulling away from that subconscious link.  

If Allura noticed his struggle, she said nothing.  Only flicked her hand over the table, as if she were swiping along a tablet.  Immediately, the image of Oriande enlarged, zooming in on that gateway and the figures garbed in robes at its center.  

"Oriande is the final resting place of my people.  It's where Alteans go when their bodies have died, adding their knowledge to the memory of our entire people."  There was something somber in her voice, and Keith felt his own unease fade a little.  Keith had lost everyone who had ever given a damn about him.  But he couldn't understand what that must have been like -- to have lost an entire people and their history.  

"It's also the birthplace of our guardians, the five lions of Voltron."

Another flick of her hand and the image changed.  The castle was gone, and in its place were five lions swerving around each other and up towards the ceiling where they broke apart.  Each hovered there, and Keith could see the dark lines, as if parts had been welded together to give them shape -- more mechanical than organic.  Five lions, each a different colors -- black, red, blue, green, and yellow.  Their eyes glowed with a golden light.

Strange.  It was such a simple image, boiled down to only its basic shapes.  And yet Keith got the sense of intelligence from that glow and the slight lift of the Black Lion's head.  

"And that is where the Cosmic Wolf, your Kosmo, ties in."  Allura lifted her hand and once again the holographic storybook moved forward.  The five lions faded away, and in their place was Kosmo himself.  Silvery and blue and shimmering, looking regal and sleek.  

"Each Lion has a single paladin, somewhere in the universe, that they bond with.  The Cosmic Wolf is the messenger that seeks them out."  Allura spoke, and the universe spread out around Kosmo.  Vast distances crossed in an instant.  The stars shifted from one pattern to another, galaxies giving way to solar systems to planets.  Kosmo bursting from one place to the next.  

But that sight, so small and artfully crafted projected over the table, had nothing on the real thing.

"He crosses entire galaxies, scours solar systems, until he finds the right soul.  And then he delivers them to Oriande and to their Lion, to serve as the protectors of the universe until they are needed no more." 

The image shimmered for a moment longer, and Keith's eyes were drawn to the shape of the cosmic wolf — Kosmo — as he looked down upon one of those fabled paladins of a faraway people.  And then it was gone.  The lights collapsed all as one, bringing in the sudden darkness.  Allura looked tired, one hand resting back on the table.  Only the soft band of light around the table illuminated them now.  

"And then the day came where the Lions were needed no longer.  Oriande was sealed and the Cosmic Wolf took to the stars, destined to journey alone until Oriande would awaken again.  The cycle is an eternal one.  Oriande and all who come from there are far older than we are.  And they will last far beyond our own time."  

It was so much to take in.  Something that sounded far more like a fairy tale than an actual telling of history.  Except he had ridden upon Kosmo's back as the wolf carried him across the universe and straight here, to Allura.  Allura, who was so alone, her people gone.  But why in the world was she here of all places?  

Humans might never have traveled far from Earth, but with the Galra invasion they knew there was more out there.  And Allura's people clearly had the technology to travel.  But she waited here, at the ruins of some sacred temple, telling him stories of some sort of Altean afterlife and mystical source of power and knowledge.  

"Are you the reason Kosmo came here?  To find you?"  

"I can only assume that's the case, though I can't be sure.  But this isn't our first meeting."

Again that push on the back of his mind.  Longing, sadness.  Fear.  Keith felt that trembling echoed in his own heart.  Loneliness.  His fingers tightened in his jacket, wrinkling the leather.  

"Tell me everything."

Allura did.  

❖

It was perhaps another twenty minutes when Allura had finished her story. This time there were no visual aids. Only the Altean woman speaking of a moment she had hardly expected would ever come in her lifetime.  Allura sipped her tea.  Keith's own cup was already empty -- he'd practically swallowed it all down in one go, with how parched he realized he was.  

But it was a snuffling at the hatch that drew their attention across the ship.  One of the windows had been pulled out of the hull, pastel pink curtains hung over it, left to flutter gently in the breeze.  And it was through that porthole that a long snout tried to push through now.  Just that shining wet nose really, Kosmo pushing his head back and forth, whining sadly.  Keith was inside.

Kosmo wanted to be inside too.  

For a moment Keith could only stare, while Allura's hand went over her mouth, eyes sparkling with mirth.  And against all odds, even with that sickened sensation that had settled like a rock in his gut, Keith found a slow smile growing upon his face as well.  Keith pushed his chair back from the table, and Kosmo's nose vanished from the window.  In the moment, it was replaced by an eye.  

"Sorry big guy.  Not enough room in here for you."  

It was hard to stay mad at him.  Especially when he felt that eagerness humming inside of him, reflected in his own heart.  The hatch of Allura's ship opened with a hiss and Keith stepped out.  The Cosmic Wolf sat there, just outside the door, peering down at Keith.  He was large enough that he could peer right over the top of the one-level ship.  

"I'm sorry I got mad at you."  The words dropped free of his lips before Keith could really think of them.  But they were true.  Keith reached up as Kosmo lowered his head.  The human's hand, small and calloused from an unforgiving life, stroked soothingly through Kosmo's fur.  The bond had never been broken.  Only small cracks.  But they were mending now, and made all the more stronger because of it.  

But even that wasn't enough.  There was still a gulf there.  A lack of understanding, and Keith reached up with both hands, catching Kosmo's head between his hands, resting his forehead against Kosmo's snout.  Kosmo's ears twitched, tail swaying back and forth, confused, but happy.  

"You've had a rough time of it too."

For the first time, Keith reached out to touch Kosmo's mind with intent, following the pathway forged by that strange connection between them.  One that had formed before Keith ever had the chance to truly question it.  The story Allura had told, the pieces she had put into place, echoed in his mind, guiding him towards what it was he searched for.  

Kosmo's memories were laid bare for Keith.  Human eyes fell shut, and when Keith gazed upon the world again, it was back in that arena.  The color had all been sucked out of the world, and again he saw that vibrant aura emanating from Shiro.  It was purple and alive, the touch of another upon his soul.  

"Haggar captured Kosmo, corrupted him with her power and has used him to find potential paladins."

It was why Kosmo had found Shiro in the arena that day.  Keith watched through canine eyes, bracing himself as the horrific memory replayed itself.  His vision plunged downward, Shiro's shocked gaze, helpless to do anything but watch the inevitable in that moment.  Keith pushed past it.  Forced himself to ignore that sick feeling in his gut -- his real gut -- and turn inward instead.  

Past the primal anger, a vicious wrath.  Something pointed and directed.  Those emotions fed into Keith's head and heart, poisoning him with that same wild abandon.  Dangling there on the cusp of something dark and deadly.

No.  

He dug deeper, clinging desperately to that sliver of light buried deep, deep down.  The same that had connected them in those earliest of days, when a lonely boy and a messenger with no purpose had found each other.  Kosmo had curled up in his arms, small and fragile.  Keith had held him close, and Kosmo had kept him warm on those cold nights he'd slept out in the wilderness, not wanting to return to that house.  

And it was that same pup, the same core that had resonated with Keith that he found buried there, in the depths of that painful memory.  Something huddled up, and curled desperately around that last little fragment of an untouched soul.  Keith clung to that memory even as it sped him forward through time.  

A looming fortress.  Keith and Kosmo suddenly heaving, muscles protesting as they regurgitated up a limp form.  Keith caught a glimpse of white hair and the glint of a metal arm, dripping with saliva, before he was whisked away by the druids.  Only one figure lingered behind, tattered robes hanging limp from her body.  But she did not hide behind a mask like the others.  No, Keith could see her long, angular face and sunken cheeks.  A deep hood cast her eyes in shadow, but still they glowed with an eerie yellow light.  

The Witch, Haggar, lifted her head.  Keith couldn't shake the feeling that she was searching for something in Kosmo's eyes.  When she spoke, the words were gravelly.  

"Go.  Continue the search.  Find more paladins."

Kosmo moved silent as a shadow, backing slowly away from the Witch before turning.  Keith caught a glimpse of spires in the distance, curving sharply upwards, points angled towards each other.  But Kosmo's vision kept swinging around, and soon all he could see was a rocky, barren wasteland.  

And the stars.  Always the stars, stretching on and on.  

"Show him what happened next."

Allura's voice was warm.  And, somehow, echoing inside Kosmo/Keith's head.  A new path opened up.  Another memory that Keith let himself be carried along into.  

This memory began in the stars.  

It began with that blanket of wrongness, darkness eating away at him.  Chains, thick and unbreakable, tangled in the beast's soul, forcing him to follow Haggar's bidding.  And he hunted. He hunted across the universe for the paladins.  Old trails reawakened for him, guiding him to people who had been dormant.  Who may never have been called upon in their lifetime.  A heavyset man on a street that Keith actually recognized, just a block away from Kolivan’s garage, frozen mid-stretch, staring upward right at Keith.  A blue-skinned man with fins and gills and an easy, confident grin that transformed into one of shock.

Keith kept a tight hold on that warmth, unshadowed at the core of Kosmo's memory.  Struggled not to lose himself to the corruption coursing through the wolf's veins.  They plunged down from the sky in a torrent of darkness, exploding out of nothing in an instant.  And there was Allura, staring at the cosmic wolf in shock.  An Allura with her hair undone and blowing wildly in the shock wave, arms thrown up before her.  

And through Kosmo's eyes, he saw the blue aura that emanated from her body.  The only vibrant color in Kosmo's entire world.  Allura backed up a step, moving slowly, as if trying not to startle the wolf.  

"It can't be..."

Was it the shock from seeing the messenger of Oriande here, for the first time in her lifetime?  Or maybe it was the corruption that had befallen the cosmic wolf, warping him into something terrible.  But there was no way for Keith to know.  And no way to warn Allura as Kosmo's muscles coiled.  

Keith cried out into the abyss of Kosmo's mind and the wolf dove towards Allura.  And then light.  Blinding light all around them.  It swallowed up Keith's vision, Allura's standing like a shadow at its center, hand extended, fingers splayed out as if to hold Kosmo at bay.  Light broke through the corruption, Kosmo lurching, reeling back.  He shook his head wildly, the darkness congealing around him.  

"No!  I won't lose you too!"  Allura pressed forward, that light pulsing brighter and Kosmo screamed as the world erupted around him.  The corruption was blown away like sand.  

And then all at once the energy fled from Kosmo.  The light faded, the darkness was gone.  And before him, there was Allura, her face drawn, lines of exhaustion pulling at her eyes.  But she smiled through it, warm hands reaching up. "Welcome back," she whispered.  

Back.  Go back.  Friend was gone.  Friend went away.  Need to find friend.  

Kosmo was tired.  So very, very tired.  But there was an urgency there.  A wrongness that had to be fixed.  The Cosmic Wolf turned away from Allura, trailing starlight in his exhaustion.  And, digging into that dwindling store of energy, he threw himself back across the universe.  

And back to Keith.

Keith came back too.  Back to his own body and back to the present, easing himself away from the cosmic wolf.  He felt off-kilter, his soul stretched too thin.  He could still feel Kosmo's fear, the way he had cowered somewhere deep in his own head.  Fingers curled in the beast's fur, Keith's lips pressed together in a thin line.  Shiro swallowed down, stolen away -- it was an image he could never banish from his mind.  

But Keith knew who to blame now.  He had seen her looking upon both Shiro and Kosmo without compassion.  

The opposite of Allura.  Keith found her at their side, one hand resting in Kosmo's fur.  The very same hand that had driven the corruption away.

"You're a potential paladin, right?  And Shiro too."  Though the question was unnecessary.  Kosmo had already shown him the answer.  

Allura gently pet Kosmo's side, stepping back as the wolf settled down, both content and soothed.  

"I never knew I was.  But it's the only reason Kosmo would have come to me like that."

And yet the Kosmo who had found Keith all those years ago, he had been only a baby himself.  

"Is that why I can see Kosmo's memories?"  But not just Kosmo's.  Keith frowned, his hand shifting to Kosmo's head, lightly scratching an ear. "I think I saw Shiro's one time too."  

The Altean woman turned his gaze back on Keith, brow furrowed, but thoughtful. "You're...not a Paladin.  I can tell that much at least.  But you're....something else.  The last Paladins had been found in my father's time.  But of all the stories I heard, I've never heard of any that can do what you can."  

With one hand still on Kosmo's back, she held out her other to Keith. "May I?"

Keith looked at that offered hand and hesitated.  Offered hands had always felt like a trap.  One too many times he'd taken a foster parent's hand, only to have it later strike him in anger.  Or some kid at the playground helping him up after he took a tumble, only to turn around and send him tumbling in the weeks that followed.    

Allura crooked her fingers, raising an eyebrow at him.  

Nobody offered their hand without wanting something in return.  Except Shiro.  All he wanted was for Keith to have faith in himself.  

And look how that turned out.  

Keith did look, and he wasn't sure what to think anymore.  Here he was, across the universe with his giant space dog, discovering far-off mythologies, and fighting evil witches.  He placed his hand in Allura's, watching her quietly.  There was something mystical about the woman -- living in this far off place, alone and cut off from the rest of the world.  But it was never more apparent than in the display of her powers.  Altean alchemy, she had called it.  And yet Keith could only see it as magic.  The sort you'd read about in children's books, where good always triumphs over evil.  

Allura's eyes were closed, and Keith stood there a little awkwardly.  His gaze shifted to Kosmo, who seemed intent to ignore the pair of them, dozing quietly on the ground.  Allura didn't move, didn't speak and Keith fought against the impulse to fidget and pull his hand away.  

But slowly, ever so slowly, Kosmo's fur began to shimmer even brighter than its natural luminescence.  And something brighter still, a sigil blazing to life on the creature's temple.  Kosmo lifted his head and nudged forward, butting his nose up against Keith's own forehead.  He could feel something tingling there.  With the hand not in Allura's own, he lifted his head, fingers grazing lightly over his temple.

He couldn't feel anything there, but from the way Allura was looking at him -- or at his forehead rather -- he could make a guess.  

"It's like nothing I've ever seen before.  But we know so little of the Guardian."  Wonder danced in Allura's voice.  Her hands lingered where they were -- one on Kosmo's back, the other on Keith's hand -- bridging the connection between them, finding something there that went beyond the bond a Paladin might have with their lion.  

"From the moment I saw you, I knew there was a link between you and Kosmo.  But it runs deeper than I had thought it would.  Anchored together, somehow, by something you both share."  

"Anchored by what?"  Keith slowly drew his hand away, and the sigil that shone on both the boy and the wolf's forehead faded away.  

"I'm...not sure."  She seemed hesitant to admit it.  But Allura shook off that moment of doubt and forged ahead with what she did know. "But it explains why you can see Kosmo's memories.  I wouldn't be surprised if he can see yours as well.  But it's more than that.  So much more."  Allura beamed, her hands catching up Keith's own.  

"Keith, you act as a compass for Kosmo.  You can guide him to where you want to go.  It's what you've done each time he's teleported you, even if you didn't realize it.  He can find Haggar, your friend.  And maybe together, we can put an end to this.  She's been searching for the potential paladins for so long.  Who knows how many she's captured.  What she's doing to them, all so she can find a way into Oriande."  

There was an earnestness and a desperation both, her eyes quietly begging.  

"And she's not going to stop searching, until she has all of Oriande's powers and secrets.  We cannot let Oriande fall into Haggar's hands.  Keith, with your help, you and Kosmo both, maybe we can finally stop her."

For so long, Keith had kept his head down.  He'd stayed out of other people's business, struggling alone, shrugging off the attentions of those few who actually gave a damn about him.  And here was Allura, asking for his help.  But all he had to do was look at Kosmo, and that heated angry swelled up in his chest.  Kosmo, eaten away by corruption -- his sanity and freedom stolen from him to become Haggar's pet.  And Shiro, who had lit up his world.  And now he was suffering.  

And he was alive.  Shiro was alive.  And Kosmo had a chance to stay free.  

In the end, Keith didn't need to think about it.  

"I'm in."

Chapter Text

"Just tell him where you want to go."  Allura had traded her dress for a jumpsuit -- a simple black and white design with pink accents along the arms and legs.  She sat just behind Keith, the both of them on Kosmo's back.  Keith leaned forward, legs pressing against Kosmo's sides.  It was the first time he'd sat on Kosmo with the intent of actually riding him.  No clinging desperately for life this time around.  

Each time Kosmo had warped, he had responded to Keith's own wishes.  They hadn't been incredibly specific at the time, and Kosmo had interpreted them from his own and Keith's memories as best he could.  This time though, Keith knew exactly who he wanted to go to.  And for the first time since Kosmo had regained his true form, Keith spoke aloud the one thing he'd wanted since the day Shiro had been lost.

The very same thing he'd wanted even when he'd thought Shiro dead.  

"Take me to Shiro."  

Shiro, the only other being in the universe who shared a connection with both Keith and Kosmo -- one born of terror and corruption, and the other from friendship, love, and devotion.  Within their shared mind a pathway flared to life, one that had been forged in that singular moment of terror when Shiro had been swallowed by the corrupted cosmic wolf.  It unlocked now, strong and poignant with Keith's desperation to find the man.  

Kosmo crouched down, muscles coiling.  Keith clutched suddenly at his shimmering fur.  Behind him, he could hear Allura's gasp of shock.  In the next moment Kosmo plunged forward into the ether and Allura's arms wrapped tightly around Keith in a bout of blind panic.  Her ruined temple, stranded ship all vanished in an instant.  The wolf carried his riders across the universe, that endless beauty -- vibrant and full of life and a hundred, thousand pathways twisting and branching in every direction scattered around them.  

One of those pathways was stronger than the rest.  It shimmered with violet energy and Keith knew instinctively who was at the other end of it.  

"Keith!  Look!"  Allura's voice called out to him, sudden and awed.  Keith was already seeing it.  A swirling vortex off in the distance, space collapsing in on itself.  They glimpsed spires there, at its center.  They were ghostly and faded, as if shifted away from their own world.  Allura's voice was but a whisper behind him, lost to the universe around them.  But Keith understood all the same.  

Oriande.  

But they were not bound for Oriande.  Kosmo gave the vortex no mind and swept right on past it, following that pathway down, down, down.  The entire journey passed in only minutes, before they were spat back out into the world.  It was a world unlike any Keith had ever seen.  

Keith slowly slid down from Kosmo's back, eyes wide as he took in the alien surroundings.  The sky was a dark, deep violet, sprinkled throughout with stars.  Plant life, short and sparse rustled in the breeze, covering the gentle swell of hills that ended at the mountains, their jagged peaks piercing the sky, there in the distance.  Allura's small asteroid had seemed strangely devoid of life -- a rock that she had somehow managed to make her own.  Something with no atmosphere, and yet they had been able to breathe there.  

This was truly alien.  

Allura slid carefully down to the ground, patting Kosmo lightly on his flank. "Good boy," she whispered.  Kosmo panted happily, and Keith reached up, absently stroking his neck as he looked at the shadow of the mountain and the facility tucked away there.  It was crafted from dark stone with several floors if the rows of windows were any indication.  

"He's in there," Keith said, pointing towards the building.  It was built with the same sharp lines the Galra seemed to favor in much of their architecture.  

"And the other prisoners too?"  

Keith pressed his lips tightly together, hand still on Kosmo's neck.  He focused a moment, the process feeling easier each time he reached out to Kosmo.  Keith silently asked to see.  But this time, not with the wolf's own eyes.  Instead, it was Shiro's eyes.  His vision was low, legs sprawled out, as if sitting on the unforgiving stone ground.  Somebody coughed, and Shiro's vision shifted, looking towards the person who had coughed.  A young boy with hair cropped short and big round glasses.  Huddled and miserable, with knees drawn up.  And there were more too — a handful of humans and alien races he did not recognize.  Several prisoners that all shared one cell, an energy field of some sort keeping them inside.  

Kosmo huffed and nudged Keith, shaking the man out of the vision.

"Yeah, there's maybe 6 or 7 that I can see."  Maybe more too.  How many had Haggar taken?  How many sets of eyes could Keith see through if he tried?  

"Haggar may be there too," Allura warned, her hand gentle upon his shoulder. "We need to be ready for anything.  She's powerful, clever, and cruel."  Allura's eyes hardened, grief warring within her. "Your friend may not be as you remember him, if he was at the mercy of her druids."

Keith shook her hand off his shoulder, instinctively pulling away from the very idea of it.  

"I'm getting Shiro back.  And if we can take Haggar out too, we'll do it."  It was the only way to keep Kosmo and Shiro truly safe.  The only way to stop the Galra Empire from gaining more power than they already had.  And if taking out Haggar would deal them a blow at the same time, all the more reason to.  Liberation from the Empire seemed like a far off dream, but this?  It was a starting place.  

But they weren't here for grand dreams of an ideal future.  It was purely a rescue mission.

One they had little intel for.  The facility ahead was a mystery to them.  Perhaps another man would have retreated to regroup, to collect intel.  But they were so close.  Even closer once Kosmo ported Allura and Keith across that grassy plain and around the back side of the facility.  He carried them past the gates that would have kept ground invaders out, and beyond the scanners that would have detected their crossing.  

No guards though.  No sign of the Galra who would patrol the streets back on Earth when the sight of drones alone weren't enough.  And no druids either, though Keith could not shake the habit of glancing behind him.  But there was only Kosmo, loping along in silence.  It wasn't long before Allura caught Keith's arm and silently pointed him towards a small side door.  

Keith nodded at Allura and then, together, they rested their hands on Kosmo as Keith guided him to the other side of the door.  A flicker of energy and...nothing.  Keith blinked, looking around.  But they were still outside, the moon crawling higher in the sky, looming over them.  Another try and still nothing.  

"He can't get us in," Keith whispered.  Then again....Keith glanced at Kosmo and then at the door.  Kosmo was...big.  Bigger than he had once been.  Too large to fit in Keith's apartment, and maybe too large to even fit in whatever sized room there was beyond that door.  A wry grin spread over his face as he shrugged, patting Kosmo lightly on the side. "Guess we're on our own for now.  Kosmo, wait out here and keep out of sight."

The words were unnecessary.  Kosmo couldn't understand the language from Keith's mouth, but Keith's command passed silently through their link.  Kosmo's eyes were understanding and with one last nudge against Keith, he vanished right there before their eyes.  It was the first time Keith had witnessed it from the other side.  All that remained was a dusting of light scattering out from the spot Kosmo had just filled.  But even that faded out.  

And yet he wasn't alone.  Keith looked to his side, and Allura was there, staring with that fierce determination at the locked door.  And even though Kosmo was out of sight he was still there, brushing up against the back of Keith's mind.  It was strange, going from feeling forever alone to sharing his mission with a near stranger, and his soul with a giant space dog.

But connections were fragile and could be torn away in an instant.  Keith clenched his fist, looking up at the facility that held Shiro.  That's what he was here for.  To save Kosmo, Shiro, and everybody else who had been torn from their homes.  

"Let's go."

But all the determination in the world wasn't going to get him through that door.  Feeling a little foolish, he pressed his hand to the scanner on the side.  It flashed red, and the door remained stubbornly sealed.

"As soon as we figure out how to get through here."  

But before Keith could even think about looking for other options, Allura was suddenly there.  Rushing past him.  Barreling shoulder-first into the door.  Keith preemptively cringed, one hand up to stop her.  Except she kept going, throwing her all into that door and sending it ripping right out of its frame.  

"Woah."

Keith, just a little stunned, followed her into the facility.  The door lay against the floor, a clear crack in the wall where it had struck.  The door itself had crumpled in at the very point Allura's shoulder had collided, metal now warped.  Allura stood there as if it was nothing at all, except for the way she rubbed and rotated her shoulder.  

She arched a brow at Keith, an amused smile upon her lips. "Oh, don't look at me like that.  Alteans are made of strong stuff."  

"No kidding."  Color him impressed.  Keith took one last look at the dented door panel, and then at the hallway they found themselves in.  It was just a side entrance to the facility, and it only confirmed Keith's guess.  Kosmo would not have fit in here.  Not with that low ceiling and narrow corridor.  It stretched far, ribbed by steady fuchsia lights, casting an eerie glow.  

"Let's get moving," Allura said, not hesitating as she stepped down that hallway. "Before somebody comes to investigate that noise."  

If somebody had, there was no sign of them.  Keith soon took the lead, following that faint sense of Shiro.  Trusting Kosmo's link between the two of them to guide him through the maze of the facility.  They passed by doorway after doorway, some with shadows moving on the other side of the fogged glass.  The soft murmur of voices, or the whirl of a machine.  

Two levels up and one door had been left ajar.  Keith paused there at the opening, peering into a scene that was all too familiar.  An operating table took up the centerpiece, restraints left undone, its surface empty of its subject.  Keith's blood went cold, fists shaking at his sides as his gaze slid up to find the wicked looking machinery, all saws and knives and needles, waiting motionless.  

It was the same horrific room he'd seen through Shiro's eyes.  

Strange, how he could go cold and hot all at once.  His hand was on his knife before he realized it, that sudden need to see that thing destroyed consuming him.  Keith pushed into the room, only to stop with a start, a hand firm on his shoulder.

"Keith, there's nobody in here."  Allura was right there, gently drawing him back.  Keith growled and shook her hand off of him, turning around to head back into the hallway.  The spell was broken, but that need for vengeance still burned hot.  

"No guards in the hallway either," he said, trying to draw her attention away from that moment he'd almost lost himself. "No security of any kind.  Doesn't that seem weird to you?"  Keith shoved his knife back into his belt, frowning as he looked up and down the hallway.  Just silence.  

"Yes, I...thought that was strange," Allura admitted. "Haggar might have guessed you would come."  

A trap then.  A thought that had occurred to the both of them when they had hit the third turn without any guards to block their way.  But it changed nothing for Keith.  He knew why he was here, what he needed to do.  They were ill equipped, under prepared.  But when has that ever stopped Keith from driving recklessly headlong into the abyss?  

"You can go back to Kosmo.  He'd get you out of here.  No point in both of us walking right into this."  Why drag anybody else along with him?  

But when he caught Allura's gaze, the face that stared back at him was one of a woman who would not back out. "What, and leave you to go take on Haggar and the Druids all alone?  Leave the fate of my people's legacy on the shoulders of one man?  Don't be foolish."  And just like that, the discussion was over.  Allura turned the corner, her head held high, clearly on a mission all her own. Keith felt just a little foolish, and perhaps a little selfish, as he jogged to catch up with her.  

She didn't have that internal compass anyway.  

And it led them straight into the arena.   

❖

Together, Allura and Keith planted their hands against the massive iron doors and pushed.  They opened inward, inch by inch, as if trying to keep the suspense alive just that one moment longer.  It was the open air that hit him first, fresh and cool after the sterile environment of corridor after corridor.  Keith led the way forward, the eerie purple light of the distant sun drawing them forward to through the final tunnel and out into a large open field.  Dirt was compacted beneath his feet, white lines arcing across the space, never a sharp edge to them.  

Keith turned in a slow circle, taking in the dark seats rising tall around them.  The heavy lattice-work that arced over the empty space overhead, leaving slats open to taken in the open air.  He could see the sun through them, distant and small and cast in a halo of purple light.  It was disturbingly reminiscent of the energy one too many druids had tossed out at him.  

But despite the alien lighting, the Altean woman at his side, Keith couldn't shake the feeling he'd stepped right back into a mirage of the past.  The arena in his mind held the faceless crowd of cheering Galra, and the humans who were relieved that they were not the poor soul tossed into the arena to be slaughtered for the pleasure of the masses.  

These stands were empty, holding only the ghosts of violence and sickening delight.  

And it was one ghost who called out to him now, voice trembling and quiet.  One that had echoed in his mind time and time again, drawing him back from the edge.  

"Keith?"

Something inside of him shook.  He had come so far, crossed the stars to find him.  But how many times had he searched, only to find disappointment?  How many times had he dreamed of pulling the man from the abyss, only to wake up with his heart in his throat -- sorrow turning to frustration, anger, and then despair.  

But Allura swept past Keith, heading straight for that voice and in that instant, Keith realized it wasn't in his head.  

Keith spun around and raced across the arena until he nearly crashed into the gate at the opposite end, sealed closed.  The one that they would have held the more dangerous creatures in, before unleashing them on the gladiator.  But there was no beast in there now.  Only Shiro, with circles under his eyes, black hair grown out long, unkempt and uncared for, streaked with white right from the roots.  He grasped at Keith's hands, with both the flesh and Galra-made prosthetic.  

"Keith, how did-- What're you doing here?" the man practically sputtered.  Keith squeezed his hands, reaching through the bars to grasp Shiro's arms, a steadying touch for the both of them.  

"Looking for you.  Now, how do we--"  Keith backed up, releasing Shiro's arms and grasping at the bars instead.  Not like he could actually brute force the cage open.  

"They brought us in through the warehouse in the back.  I never saw any control for the gate."  Shiro may have looked run down, but there was a light in his eyes.  One that Keith had feared had been lost with the horror he'd witnessed in that laboratory vision.  But Keith looked past Shiro now, finally taking note of the others who stood there in the back.  They looked run down and tired themselves.  Three other humans, surprisingly enough, as well as a mix of other races Keith had never seen before.  

All looking run down and worse for wear.  The big guy, human, was pushing himself up from his seat on the floor, eyes wide with hope as he came up next to Shiro.  

"Seriously?  You're really getting us out of here?" His voice cracked, tears springing into his eyes.  

It was strange, having so many eyes suddenly looking to him for help.  

"Yeah, you're all getting out of here."  He dug into that spark of confidence, meeting Shiro's gaze for a moment and catching the quiet pride there.

Still had to find a way to open the gate.  

"I'll look over here," Allura said, already working her way down the opposite side of the gate.  There had to be an override or something.  

Between the two of them scouring the walls, it didn't take long for Allura to come upon a hidden panel.  It hissed open and after that, only a pull of a lever.  It raised up into place, settling with a satisfying click.  And then the alarm.  A warning bell that the gate was raising, preparing all for what monstrosity might have waited inside on any other day.  

But today, it sent panic reeling through Keith.  Lights flashed along the edges of the gate, the iron bars slowly lifting up.  Keith looked frantically back towards the door they'd come through, expecting to see soldiers storming in to investigate the noise.  But nothing.  No signs of activity.  

Keith didn't take any chances.  

"Come on, let's go!" he called, beckoning at the prisoners. They were already scrambling out beneath the gate, not daring to wait until it was high enough to let them simply stroll out. Shiro ducked beneath, coming up on the other side, swinging his arm, guiding the others.

"Keith, don't let your guard down," he warned. "Haggar and are druids, they're not stupid. They wouldn't just--"

"I know," Keith snapped right back, terse, on edge.  Only to immediately feel guilty about it.  He took a steadying breath, struggling to focus. "But we've got a chance here. We have to take it. Don't worry, I'm getting us out of here." And then he closed his eyes, hands curling into fists at his sides, reaching out across that link, over those miles that lay between them.

Allura had pulled away from the group, brow furrowed as she followed the swooping lines painted upon the ground.  Just a decorative pattern, except the Galra did not normally go for decoration -- and certainly not intricate designs like these.  

Meanwhile, Shiro was looking upon Keith, confused, a little concerned.  A hand hovered over the shorter man's shoulder, as if afraid to distract him from whatever unseen task he was working on. "Keith, what're you doing?"

"Calling our ride."

Shiro just looked confused, his eyes lifting up to the latticed dome above.  The same dome that Allura currently had her eyes on.  Strangely intricate decor for the Galra.  

It clicked into place.  

"Keith!" she shouted across the arena, whirling around to find Keith with his head down, dark hair falling over his eyes, focusing, reaching out. "No, don't bring Kosmo here!"

Keith's head snapped up, mouth falling open.  But it was too late.  Starlight exploded in the center of the arena, dusting out from the gigantic wolf suddenly standing in the middle.  He stood poised, back curved down, head turning back towards Keith.  

And then everything went to hell.  

Shiro shouted, eyes wide as he launched himself in front of Keith, shoving Keith behind him with one arm.  His metal arm pulsed with energy, held out defensively in front of him.  He didn't see that soft glow, the quiet but docile intensity in Kosmo's eyes.  All he could see was the monstrosity wreathed in shadow, purple energy licking at the air like flames as a dark maw descended over him.  

The man lunged, and Keith dove after him, yelling at him to stop, to wait.  He wrapped his arms around Shiro's metal arm, trying to drag him back.  

Except the flames were no longer in Shiro's mind.  A line of flames exploded before them, running along the line painted over the ground at their feet.  All around them, purple fire licked at the air, energy crackling.  They both froze, jerking back from the energy barrier, spinning wildly.  But it was all around them, following the pattern on the ground Keith had thought nothing of. And there, panicking at its center, was Kosmo.  

Right there before their eyes, Kosmo twisted and scampered back as his escape was cut off by another wall of flame.  Keith could see the starlight flickering, scattering around him.  His body flickered in and out again and again.  Up above the latticed roof of the arena pulsed with its own energy each time Kosmo attempted to warp.  

The other prisoners all scattered as the patterns swirling beneath their feet exploded.  The big guy panicked, stamping down on one patch with his foot.  Energy exploded and he went tumbling back with a cry.  

Allura was obscured on the other side.  But she was waving her arms, her shouted words drowned out by the roar that rushed through the arena.  She pointed wildly, and Keith's head snapped up, looking at the viewing box over the arena.  

Like a ghoul in the darkness, she stood there, her arms raised, her lank white hair and tattered robe whipping about her.  Haggar the Witch.  

And he could see them now, flickering out of the shadows one by one.  Druids all around the room, directing the energy with their hands.  The arena was wreathed with that corruptive energy and Keith felt it like a blow to the chest as it all funneled towards Kosmo.  

He'd lived that moment with Kosmo once before.  Had felt that terrible pain, loneliness, the smothering of everything that was natural, turned into little more than a puppet to serve the needs of another.  

He wasn't losing anybody else.  Not Shiro, not Kosmo, nobody.  Keith pushed past Shiro, only for a steel grip to close around his arm, sending him reeling.  

"Keith, what're you--!"

"I've got to help him, Shiro!  He's the only reason I found you.  That thing that took you, it's not him."

Whatever Shiro was going to say, Keith never heard it.  Not as he wrenched his arm free from Shiro's loosening grip and dove head first into the circle of corruption.  And Kosmo was there at its center, form shuddering with the energy that coursed through him.  It twisted him, right there before Keith's eyes.  Claws emerged from the pads of his feet, cutting into the concrete beneath them as he shook.  His coat lost its glorious luster, going dull, a gray that was nearly black, except for the white that marked his face almost like a mask.  Fur seemed to stand on end, spiked and feral looking.  Keith reached out, fingers inches away as that mane of shimmering blue that ran all the way down his back seemed to absorb that indigo that was the druid's own unique signature.  It still shimmered, but as his fingers brushed fur, there was none of the warmth of the stars.  

Only a cold emptiness.

Kosmo slowly swung his head around, eyes glowing an ominous yellow.  It was the same color beneath the druid's masks.  

Keith's blood ran cold.  But he didn't back away, nor did he back down even as he reached out for that snout.  Still, he could not stop his gaze from dropping to the wicked teeth he glimpsed in Kosmo's mouth. "Hey buddy," he whispered, voice hoarse.  

On the outside of the circle, Shiro and Allura both stood motionless, watching with bated breath.  

"It's okay.  You're gonna be fine."  Keith's fingers were inches away, eyes intent on Kosmo.  He moved slowly, carefully, not wanting to spook the creature into action.  

He hadn't accounted for the swirl of darkness at Kosmo's side, or the way Haggar erupted out from it.  Her own eyes glowed the same yellow, energy thrumming steadily in around one hand.  

"Take the navigator," she said.  

Keith didn't understand.  He didn't understand what she meant by that, and he didn't understand why Kosmo's cool gaze had suddenly turned hostile.  He growled, rising up tall, fur standing up and somehow making him seem even bigger.  Keith backed away, step by step, heart in his throat.  He could hear Shiro shouting for him.  Allura screaming something.  

But everything faded away beyond the sudden surge of panic.  The way he froze as Kosmo stood tall over him, energy crackling off of him with every moment.  He towered over Keith, huge and intimidating.  Keith was a child again, staring up at the shadowy monster that consumed his vision.  

Kosmo's maw dropped down around him, wet and acrid and tossing him deep.  Keith was lost in the darkness.

Chapter Text

It wasn't what he'd imagined being swallowed would be like.  Not that he'd spent a whole lot of time thinking about such things, but still, there were some assumptions a guy made. 

But this?  It was just emptiness.  Empty darkness all around, with Keith adrift in the middle of an abyss that had no beginning and no end.  And yet he wasn't alone.  No, he could feel Kosmo wrapped all around him, and yet somehow distant.  It left his skin chilled to the bone.  That terrible wrongness itched over him.  

It was wrong.  

This was wrong.  

Keith grit his teeth and tried to get his body to go somewhere.  He drifted through that emptiness, arms reaching out for something, anything.  

It's always been wrong.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard laughter.  It echoed out from the void, small and far away at first, but growing ever louder.  The laughter grew and grew, off-key and sharp, until it was echoing all around him, pounding in his head.  Keith clamping his hands over his ears, knees drawing up, trying to make himself small.

Small as a child, with unkempt dark hair falling over his eyes.  Keith huddled in the corner of a dark room, wishing desperately to blend in with the shadowy furniture, trying to keep himself small and out of sight.  A rectangular patch of light snapped suddenly over him, the boy's bony features thrown into sharp relief.  His stomach growled, his hands clutching a box of cereal with a white-knuckled grip.  

Two adults, laughing hysterically came stumbling in, leaning on each other, catching each other.  The man swore as he bashed his elbow against the door frame, and the woman cracked up, swaying on her feet.  Swaying forward until her reddened eyes finally found Keith backing up slowly, trying to slip away without notice.  

Bony fingers wrapped around his arm in a bruising grip and yanked him right off his feet.  

Keith tumbled and fell.  Falling and falling into that darkness, dizzy and sick to his stomach until he landed in bed, curled up under the blankets.  His hands wrapped around his tummy, aching from bother hunger and the foot that had planted itself there.  He sniffled, ugly tear stains on his cheeks as he shivered beneath that ratty blanket.  

His reality.

A reality that was a busted up bike -- that last gift from Shiro lying in a crumpled heap.  Keith felt that pit forming deep in his stomach, sickened as he staggered forward, eyes fixed on that pool of blood dripping down from the engine.  He took one step forward.  And then another.  

Step.  By.  Step.  Ever closer.

He'd ridden right there on the edge, teetering ever closer to the emptiness beyond.  Threw himself right into the exhilaration, the speed, the flight.  Until there was no turning back.  Until it was too late, his reaction too slow -- or just slow enough -- as he spun out over the edge.  

But now he looked down at that bike, the shiny red chrome twisted and smoking.  A leg pinned beneath the body, blood pooling.  Keith leaned over and saw a shock of white hair and gray, ghastly eyes.  

Shiro.  

Guilt twisted up tight in his throat as he stumbled back, recoiling from the sight.  Hands clutching at his sides, his hair, twisting and pulling until it hurt as he staggered away.  

No no no.  

You did this.

It wasn't supposed to be him.

It was inevitable.

All around him, Keith saw only broken people.  Distant faces lost to memory.  Gravestones that he had once stood in front of.  People who had meant well, but he was too much.  

Keith's heart beat wildly in his chest, turning wildly away, stumbling through the darkness.  But he couldn’t escape.  Couldn’t escape as hands grabbed at his arms, fingers digging viciously in.  Bony fingers pressed slowly over his eyes, pulling him back as images flowed together, faster and faster.  His father being lowered into the ground.  Children circling him and mocking him until he lashed out with his fists.  Teachers at a new school whispering as he walked past.  

Shiro, with his face so drawn and haggard at the end of it all.

Something mined his memories.  It plucked thoughts and ideas and visions lined with his grief, his fears, his regrets.  And that endless well of loneliness.  

And little by little, that voice sounded less like him.  A voice whispering in his ear, wretched and ancient, spinning only poisonous truths.  Keith grit his teeth and swung out at the phantom.  But she vanished like the ghost she was, and Keith was alone in that void as the darkness pressed back in.

There were figures there, distant outlines.  Silvery threads tattered.  Breaking.  They coiled out from his chest, Keith frantically gathering them up.  But they slipped through his fingers like water, and the man dropped to his knees, grasping, straggling, crumbling little by little.  He lifted his hand, searching desperately.  But the figures faded, taking the last bits of light with them.  

Darkness pressed close and Keith curled around himself.  

He was alone.  

Alone.  Drifting.  Drifting through the darkness, as meaningless and empty as any speck of dust lost in the vast universe.  His tail streamed out behind him, scattering stardust in his wake.  And he was at a door again, something tall and shimmering and insubstantial.  But still a barrier.  

Home was there.  Home was just on the other side.  

A lovely field stretching out as far as the eye could see, covered in a bed of soft flowers, swaying in a gentle breeze.  In the distant, a castle stood tall, its spires lost into the haze of clouds.  Everything was soft, awash with light, pure and good and comfort.  Keith could lay here for days, sprawled out in the flowers, frolicking with the lions that roamed even now in the distance.  

Until he was summoned to fulfill his duty, following an instinct older than time itself.  One that drew him across the universe to find that one soul.  

And then the gates closed, and he was thrust out into the darkness.  The lions slept.  Keith was alone.  

Alone.  Frightened.  Angry.  Driven by harsh words in his ear, fingers coiling tightly in the fur of his back.  A witch in tattered robes urging him forward.  He drove himself at that barrier again and again, Keith remembering warm fields and peace and tranquility.  No hungry bellies.  No pain that drove him to the edge, egged him on into staring down into that abyss.  

He wanted back in.  

He needed back in.  

His fur stood up on end, energy coiling around him, eyes seared yellow as purple lightning crackled around him.  Flickering rapidly, wildly.  Nothing would stop him.  He deserved it.  He was tired of fighting.  Tired of hurting.  Tired of losing everyone around him.  

The barrier shuddered, that paradise shimmering into view just beyond.  So close.  He was so close.  

Keith wanted to go home.

To Oriande.  

And it was like something simply clicked.  The barrier still shimmered, but it no longer denied them.  Now it welcomed them.  Keith closed his eyes and warped, scattering sickly violet stardust in his wake.  

But something gave Keith pause.  A soft sound that echoed inside his own head, sad and mournful.  Empty.  Whimpering.  Fading.  Keith turned away from the eyes of the cosmic beast, the feral, desperate need washing off of him as he found that one last strand, shimmering and strong.  It ran from his own chest and over across the void, past distant specks of starlight that still struggled on with those last bits of light.  The thread flickered in his hand at the lightest of touches, and it carried him.  

He was right where he needed to be.

"Hey," he whispered, sinking down at the puppy's side.   Kosmo lay curled up there, smaller than Keith had ever seen him. His fur seemed dull, ears drooping as he tucked his face into his side.  Chains wrapped around each of his legs, another on his neck.  And the final up around his snout -- a cruel muzzle that chained his mouth shut.  

Keith knew those chains.  Had felt them rattling around his own limbs as he was dragged along in the wake of that corruption.  But it was older than that.  Older still as he reached out, hands shaking, working at them swiftly.  Nobody deserved to be chained down like that -- trapped forever in misery and regret, unable to find the strength to stand tall.  

Each chain dropping away was like a weight lifted off of his own heart.  Sorrow tucked carefully away, as he grasped for something else instead. "This isn't it for you.” Another clink as a chain hit the spiritual floor, crumbling to dust. "This isn't all there is."

And in that moment he understood what had drawn Kosmo to him, and led the cosmic wolf to bind himself to Keith in such a way.  That shared grief, the loneliness as the world you knew was snatched away, replaced with nothing but endless cold.  Kosmo had been drawn to him from across the universe.

Him and so many others.  He saw it now, as the mindscape shifted and Keith was back in that childhood bed.  The shadows no longer seemed so looming, Kosmo's warm glow chasing them away. 

He propped himself up on one elbow, sleepy and content, fingers stroking lightly through the wolf's soft fur.  And he saw it like a movie reel in his mind -- flashes of memory one after another.  A puppy's rough tongue licking up the tears from a bruised and freckled face.  Playing fetch with a girl with dark skin and brilliant red hair that flowed like fire.  Setting himself, growling and menacing between a young green-skinned child and a raised hand.  

And he dozed now against Keith, soft glow driving away the cold emptiness of every childhood room he could remember.  Amazing how one creature could chase away the darkness in a man's life as well.  

His smile was warm as he wrapped his arms around the puppy. Kosmo lifted his head, nudging at Keith's cheek as the man hugged him close. The glow of Kosmo's fur grew brighter and brighter, burning out the darkness of a childhood memory. It wiped away the walls, the bed, leaving two souls no longer quite as lonely adrift in the starscape of the wolf's mind.

All went white. 

❖

Blinding light gave way to sudden darkness.  Darkness and a stench that made Keith want to gag, slippery, slimy walls all around him.  They pressed in close, flexing, regurgitating.  Next thing he knew he was spilling out of that disgusting tunnel, stained in saliva and the slime of Kosmo's throat.  He lay sprawled there on the cool ground, coughing and gagging.  He felt stretched thin, frayed all along the edges.  Everything was hazy as Keith lifted his head.

Just in time to see Haggar reaching for him, hand blazing with violet flame.  Keith recoiled just as a huge form blurred in front of him with an angry growl ripping free as teeth snapped viciously.  Kosmo's fur had regained it's natural hue, mane curving over his back, aflame with energy, tail lashing out behind him.  He circled protectively around Keith, and as the wolf turned his head, Keith caught sight of the torn edge of fabric fluttering free from his mouth.  

"Good boy," he uttered, cracking a satisfied smile.  

With a hand on Kosmo's side, Keith dragged himself to his feet.  His other arm tried, valiantly, to wipe the gunk from his face.  But he paused there, one arm still raised, taking in the wonders before him.

He stood in the middle of a roadway, sheer and impossible and running straight through a whirling tunnel of twisting clouds.  But there was no wind.  The air utterly still despite the power he could see twisting right there at the edge of it all.  At his feet the path shimmered with faint, elegantly curved symbols -- reminiscent of symbols that had appeared in Allura's story.  

But it was the massive gateway in the distance, at the very end of that winding road, that drew Keith's eye.  A doorway cut through with heavy runes, each glowing with that same blue light that flowed from Kosmo's body.  It stood at the very front of a large temple striking up into the sky, its spires towering over them.  And guarding over that gate, carved from marble, was a white lion.  

"You should be honored.  You're among the first to have seen even the gates of Oriande in hundreds of years."  

The witch's voice rose up from behind him, soft and steady.  Keith spun around to face her, knife already held defensively before him.  Kosmo growled at his side, fur bristling.  His muzzle pulled back, sharp teeth ready to rip into her.  

Haggar hardly seemed phased.  

"I underestimated the bond between the two of you.  I did not think you capable of breaking my spell once I had the both of you."   

She spoke so casually about it all.  About that torture the both of them had endured.  Keith’s knuckles were white around the grip of his knife.  He darted forward before he realized what he was doing.  Kosmo was right there at his side, lunging right past Keith.  The beast ripped through only darkness, and Haggar's raspy voice, laced with irritation, came from behind them now.  

"Call off your pet, boy.  We only ever wanted the same thing."  

"The same thing?" he echoed, incredulity lacing every word. "All you've done is enslave Kosmo, kidnap people, experiment on them."  Keith stalked forward one step and then another.  He'd seen that laboratory through Shiro's eyes.  Experienced the man's fear as if it was own.  Keith had felt the world go flat and bleak, losing himself to the poisonous magic she’d pushed into Kosmo's soul.  

It ended here.  

But Haggar did not seem put off.  She merely turned calmly towards him, hands rising to push the hood down and off her face. 

"I do not deny it.  But all of that was merely a means to an end."  No guilt.  No remorse.  Just a cold certainty as the shadows fell away from her face.  The face that stared back at him was just as ancient and withered as Keith had imagined.  

And yet he had never imagined it to be an Altean face.  The same pointed ears as Allura, long lines like a tattoo curling up each cheek.  But so drained from her brown skin that seemed to have long since lost its elasticity -- stretched thin as paper over bony cheeks  And that white hair, limp and unkempt hanging like a dead things about her shoulders.  But strangest of all were her eyes that had lost their ominous yellow glow.  If it weren't for the golden color of his eyes, he might have thought them to be human eyes.  

"I have a right to the secrets and the power of Oriande.  Just as the Cosmic Wolf has the right to return there and slumber forever with the ones sealed within.  No more loneliness.  No more grief.  A rare and glorious opportunity for you, and yet you have spurned it."  If she had meant it as a siren's call -- a way to tempt Keith into giving in and stopping the fight -- the words only rolled off of him.  He'd already done this inside Kosmo's head.

"Yeah, well, I decided it wasn't for me."  No, he had barely lived a life, and Keith didn't long for that abyss any longer.  It was time to start living that life.  And that started here and now with one simple goal.  

"And you won't be getting any closer to Oriande."  

Kosmo growled in agreement, eyes fixated on Haggar with that unblinking stare.  Keith lifted his hand to touch Kosmo's flank, and the wolf understood.  They had unsealed the gateway to Oriande, so they'd just have to close that portal once more.

Haggar disagreed.  Her eyes flashed yellow as she threw up her hands, face twisting with a sneer as she shot crackling energy towards the pair of them, the man's hand inches from Kosmo's fur.  Adrenaline shot through him, hair standing up as the air crackled.  Keith dove to one side, rolling perilously close to the edge of the road that dropped off into nothing.  But he no longer felt drawn to that abyss.  For the first time in so very long, Keith fought to survive.  

Kosmo was already moving, swift and brutal.  All of that primal, mystical elegance channeled into the vicious beast.  He warped in rapidly, closing in on Haggar in an instant, claws batting at her.  But she was just as fast, vanishing in a whirl of fabric, porting just behind Kosmo, hands aglow with energy.  Keith scrambled to his feet and dove for her.  He hit the ground hard, falling through her like smoke.

Laughter echoed around them, cutting deep.  Keith grit his teeth, growling almost like Kosmo in that moment as he found his feet again.  And there, a ways down the path, both Kosmo and Haggar were locked in battle.  Rapidly warping in and out, swiping, biting, energy blasting, only for the opponent to flicker away again at just the right moment.  It was like a dance that Keith could only see a quarter of the steps to.  

No, he realized.  

More like half the steps to.  Instinctively, he knew where Kosmo would land.  Where he would strike next.  Maybe it could work the other way too.  

Kosmo warped once more behind the crone, blocking her view of Keith as she spun around to meet the strike.  And then Kosmo was gone just as quickly, leaving Keith right there, diving at Haggar, blade at ready.  For one satisfying moment, he saw the panic in those widening eyes.  And then she threw her hands up, a shield cracking up before her.  It repelled his blade, tossing that energy right back at Keith, sending him tumbling back, skidding along the roadway.

He ignored the ache in his knee, in his shoulder, the way his arm shook where that energy had coursed right up and through him.  Keith reached out for his fallen blade, head snapping up.  She was laughing again.  Laughing and multiplying, as that voice echoed all around him.  One witch after another sprung up from nothing, scattered along the roadway, surrounding both the man and his cosmic wolf.  

Illusions danced all around them, insubstantial and ghostly.  And they vanished just as quickly as a new one rose up to replace it, even as Keith surged back to his feet, swiping at once after another.  Kosmo reared back, twisting and warping, starlight scattering from his coat.  And amidst the struggle, that frantic movement of bodies, bursts of energy shot out.  It caught Kosmo in the leg, singed his tail, or sent him scampering back as the ground exploded beneath his feet.  Hot pain seared Keith's shoulder, the man gasping as he dropped his blade, clutching suddenly at the scorched skin.

Haggar was gone just as quickly as she appeared, vanishing back into her ocean of copies.  Laughing.  Mocking.  Enjoying every moment as she draw the two of them into a frantic chase to find the real Haggar.  

Keith glanced over his shoulder, back towards that grand building rising tall in the distance -- marking the point where the path ended and the realm of Oriande began.  And there was a figure there, hurrying along the path, white hair streaming out behind her.  

"Kosmo!" he shouted.  Kosmo understood.  The beast turned away from the swarm of copies -- they were no more dangerous than mist -- and found the witch heading towards her final destination.  Kosmo vanished into starlight and popped back into existence right there on the road between Haggar and Oriande.  

The witch faltered, sneering up at the wolf who had fallen out of her control.  The beast that had once belonged to her.  But now he was bound to another.  She turned sharply, a great sphere of energy building up in her hands.  One by one, her illusions vanished, feeding more and more power into that orb.  Kosmo lunged at her, jaw opening wide and Haggar cried out her fury, launching the ball of energy straight towards Keith.  

A distraction.  The realization slammed into him like a truck.  All a useless distraction.  They already knew what they needed to do and it was so simple.  

And too late.  

That ball of energy shot over the road, the pathway cracking and crumbling away as energy splintered out over it.  And still it did not slow.  Keith threw his arms up before him, and braced himself for the inevitable.  

A sickening, terrible cry ripped through crash of energy and Keith snapped his eyes open to find Kosmo right there, standing protectively in front of Keith, curled around him, the ball of energy driving straight into his side.  The explosion rattled the ephemeral road beneath them, Keith staggering on his feet before Kosmo was tumbling back, catching Keith under him.  Keith’s head bashed against the floor and he fell still.

Haggar was right there with them, clutched in the beast's mouth, blood dripping from her sides as she wheezed out her agony, form trembling.  

Her hands shook, fingers tensed and splayed, violet energy coating her hands until they looked like claws.  Kosmo shuddered, whimpering as he struggled to lift himself off of the man who lay limp and still beneath him.

Haggar's hands sunk viciously into the beast's snout, ripping such a terrible, feral scream from Kosmo.  The beast whipped his head back and forth, dislodging her violently.  Haggar went flying along the roadway, bouncing and skidding, tattered robe twisting around her, until she lay at the very end of the shattered roadway.  Oriande was right there, beyond the massive gap.  

"Mine," she whispered, arms shaking as she worked to get them under herself.  Pain wracked her body, blood flowing freely from the punctures left by Kosmo's teeth. "It's mine."  

Kosmo panted brokenly, every movement causing a fresh wave of dizziness, nearly strong enough to overwhelm him.  But the wolf managed to drag himself off of Keith’s body, his head twisting around.  A whine slipped free, trying to get the boy’s attention. 

Keith didn’t move.  He merely lay there, sprawled out, breathing shallowly.  There was blood on the ground by his head.

Haggar was nearly on her feet now, hands trembling as she began gathering energy to herself.  Her form flickered, as if her body wasn't quite up to another warp.  But still she tried to carry herself over that empty space.  Oriande was right there.  

Haggar and Kosmo both fought, struggling to find the strength.  The cosmic wolf struggled, working his feet under him, only to slump back down as they gave out.  He lifted his head with effort, yellow eyes glassy as he turned his gaze towards Keith.  Nuzzling up against the man.  Nosing at him.  Pushing, until Keith rolled over onto his back.  There was blood in his hair, at the back of his head. 

Kosmo made such a pitiful, keening note as he nudged at Keith again and again.  Trying to wake him.  Trying to get him to stir. 

Home.  Kosmo only wanted to get Keith home.  

Kosmo gently picked Keith up by the back of his shirt, dragging the boy up with him.  But still Keith did not stir.

Home.  Had to get him home.

With each limping step, he struggled to find the strength to take him home — to where people were waiting.  Keith hung limp as a rag doll from Kosmo’s mouth.  The beast staggered, nearly dropping the man.  But he gathered himself, chest swelling with every harsh breath.  It sent a fresh wave of pain through him, but still he pushed himself. 

Pushed himself as his fur began to glow, weak and flickering at first, but growing stronger by the moment.  His fur grew brighter and brighter, as if awash with light from the inside.  That piece of living starlight that had bound itself to a child of Earth.  Kosmo gathered all he had left and, with his human dangling from his mouth, carried the two of them away.  Only cosmic dust was left in their wake, scattering down upon the road.

The gateway to Oriande snapped shut with their departure, Haggar poised there, hand stretched out as the obelisk faded away before her very eyes. "No," she uttered, leaning out over the void. "I was so close.  It was so close."  All around her, the churning white clouds began to disperse as the shimmering pathway flickered and lost its luster little by little. 

Haggar dropped into the void between worlds as the road to Oriande shattered around her.  

❖

Keith opened his eyes to find himself back in the arena.  The cold, unforgiving stone hard beneath his back.  But there were arms there, helping him to sit up, Shiro's worried gaze hovering right there before him.  His hands rubbed up and down Keith’s arms, and then gentler on his shoulders. "You're okay," he said, as if trying to convince himself. "You're back."  

Keith let his eyes slip shut again, a little dizzy, but feeling strangely warm.  Warm and whole, the back of his head tingling in that same strange way his side had after Allura had healed him then.

He was back. 

Back.  Back from Oriande.  Back from the battle with Haggar.  Keith's heart rose into his throat and his eyes snapped open.  Keith struggled in Shiro’s arms, trying to lift himself.  He felt short of breath, eyes searching frantically even as Shiro tried to steady him.  Where was--

There.  Just a dozen feet away, Kosmo lay sprawled out on his side.  His blue fur was matted with blood, fresh waves of red dribbling down from the mangled hole in his side.  Every breath seemed to pain him, the wolf twitching, shuddering.  Allura sat there next to the wolf's belly, hands hovering over the worst of the wound on his side.  Her eyes glowed with that same soft blue energy, brow furrowed with concentration.  

All around them stood Haggar's prisoners, rejuvenated and looking far more alive than they had when Keith had first found them.  The big guy was watching the scene play out, hands over his mouth.  Another one, nearly as tall, but scrawny and gangly was rubbing his friend's shoulder.  Beyond them there was no sign of the druids.  Only the scorched remains of the magic circle.  Some of the others were bleeding or bruised, and looking around the arena nervously.  

Another fight had taken place here.  But Keith couldn't pay it much mind.  Not when Kosmo was there, every breath a struggle, his eyes closed.  

Keith couldn't breathe.  Couldn't think as he pulled himself away from Shiro's supportive grip.  Dread clutched tight at his heart, afraid of the simple truth he felt in the frailty of the bond between them.  The pain.  The bone-deep exhaustion.  Keith ignored the shooting pain with every limping step as he crossed the arena.  

One step after another, hands clenched tight against the twisted mess of emotions.  

"Hey boy," he whispered, sinking down by Kosmo's head.  The wolf slowly opened his eyes, pupils blown wide and glassy.  It was a struggle to focus on Keith.  A soft, simpering whine carried all of Kosmo's pain, his confusion, with it.  But still he tried to lift his head, nudging forward, nose brushing and bumping against Keith's chest, his face.  

But not strong enough to push him over.  Just a gentle nudge.  Keith's fingers stroked lightly through the matted fur, running up along his ears, over the back of his head, just as Keith knew Kosmo liked.  He caught Allura's gaze over the top of Kosmo's head.  The Altean woman merely shook her head, eyes mournful. 

Keith took a quiet moment, steadying himself as he sucked in a shuddering breath.  Reality settled into place, and all that came with it.  

And for a moment, he felt on the verge of breaking again.  

Kosmo huffed quietly and nuzzled against Keith.  Soothing calm running from wolf to boy, and Keith chuckled softly.  His eyes were wet, but Keith didn't bother to try and wipe the tears away.  He only buried his face against Kosmo's cheek, arms wrapped around him as best he could, the gigantic beast rumbling and warm against him.  

Pressed so close, Kosmo's soft blue glow washed over them both. But even that was fading away little by little, drained from Kosmo's body as a visible sign of that life slipping away.  

"You did good." It didn't matter that people were watching, that Shiro was hovering just out of reach, that Allura was surreptitiously wiping a tear from her cheek as she stepped away. Keith grit his teeth, eyes squeezing shut as a sniffle slipped free. "So good, Kosmo. I honestly think you saved my life." From Haggar and from so much more. A small, brittle smile spread over his face, Keith's face streaked with tears.

Kosmo shuddered even as he brushed his head around, wet nose brushing against Keith's cheek. A rough tongue slid out, licking up the man's tears. And Keith laughed. Laughed and embraced the wolf, rubbing furiously at his own cheeks to wipe away the tears and wolf spit alike. Laughed until that final breath slipped from Kosmo's lungs, and they turned to quiet tears pressed into the wolf's fur. His back trembled, and he felt a hand, firm and comforting on his shoulder.  

Nobody bothered them.  Nobody tried to pull Keith away from Kosmo's limp body.  First Allura backed away to give Keith space, and then Shiro followed with a whispered promise that he was right there.  And somewhere behind him, he was dimly aware of them making plans and discussing options.  

But Keith couldn't sit in sorrow forever -- not as everyone else focused on the problem of getting them off this planet.  Slowly, he pulled himself away from Kosmo, careful as he gently lowered the animal's head back down onto the floor of the arena.  Keith rose to his feet, eyes drifting over Kosmo one last time -- the cosmic wolf quiet and still, fur dark -- and then he turned away.  

Faint specks of starlight drifted up from Kosmo's body, scattering away in the breeze.

❖

Keith didn't need to say a word.  Just approached the others where Shiro and Allura had their heads pressed together.  But as soon as Shiro spotted Keith he was over at the man's side, arms wrapping around him, pulling him into a hug.  Allura had filled him in on bits and pieces, and he'd ask Keith about the rest later.  But whatever his questions, his confusion, there was one thing he knew with certainty; Keith needed him right now.  

Keith didn't fight it.  Just let somebody wrap him in warmth, helping him carry that pain.  

"I'm fine," he whispered.  And then a little louder. "I'm fine.  I'll be fine."  Keith lifted his head, rubbing the heel of a hand over his eyes, trying to wipe away the tears.  

Shiro's smile was soft, comforting, accepting the truth of Keith's words.  Because it wasn't that false bravado.  Wasn't burying himself within the walls he'd surrounded himself with for so long.  

He'd be fine.  

"I'll tell you about him later," he promised, parting from Shiro. "Once we get off this rock."

They had the beginnings of a plan.  Few workers remained in the facility after the druids had fled in the wake of Haggar's defeat.  But several ships were in the hangar bay, just waiting for somebody who could pilot them.  They had a few candidates among the prisoners, between humans and non-humans alike.  And more than a few were thinking of the Galra threat, their potential as Paladins and what they could offer even if Oriande's lions never reawakened in their lifetime.  

Keith tried to pay attention.  But his mind was a million miles away, one hand pressing gently to his chest as a strange sensation swelled.  Something warm and comforting, like the fluttering of a heart, weak and rapid as a baby bird's.  

Shiro had fallen silent, and Allura's hands were pressed over her mouth, eyes wide.  The both of them stared at something over Keith's shoulder.  

He saw the stardust drifting down around them, that warm blue glow washing away the violence born in this arena.  Pure and beautiful and growing brighter and brighter by the moment.  Keith turned slowly, and that thread of connection within him trembled and shimmered with the promise of change.  

Keith knew it wouldn't be as before.  But still he found that joy blossoming inside of him, overshadowing the grief of loss.  

Kosmo's corpse glowed with a soft light, glittering and shimmering as it swallowed his every feature.  Until he was abstract and brilliant, like the shining creature that he had seen in Allura's holographic story.  His body was consumed with it, falling away, crumbling into stardust.  And there, emerging from the center was a tiny pup, opening up those big yellow eyes.  His fur was the same deep blue, with brilliant markings that seemed to shimmer in the darkness.  They circled his eyes, with the paler hues seemed a mask upon his face, stretching up into that line of fur down his back.  

A spitting image of that same Kosmo he had met so very, very long ago.  As if Kosmo had shed his old life and began another one.  Stardust sparkled down around him, gathering on his nose.  And the pup sneezed suddenly, sending the dust puffing up around him.  

Allura giggled at his side.  

Shiro watched, mouth agape, gobstruck at the range of transformations he'd witnessed in that creature first met in the arena.

"The Cosmic Wolf is eternal."  Allura had recovered from her giggle fit, stating that simple truth as they all witnessed the myth come to life. "As long as Oriande exists, he will as well."  

Keith smiled, wiping a hand over his cheek.  A new life.  A new beginning.  Not his Kosmo.  No, the thread that had connected them, while still there, was more of a memory or a ghost than anything he could truly hold.  The baby cosmic wolf yipped quietly, his gaze falling over the people watching him with that silent awe.  And for a moment, Keith's eyes met the wolf's yellow ones, a flicker of familiarity in them.  

A goodbye.

A goodbye as Kosmo lifted his head towards the stars that lay scattered across the sky, there past the lattice arch that covered the arena, casting shadows down over them.  The wolf shimmered, yipped quietly and shot off into the endless ocean above.  Keith followed that streak of silvery white as long as he could, until it was only a shooting star in the distant, barreling towards somewhere unknown.  

"Keith..."  

Shiro at his side.  But Keith shook his head, flashing Shiro a small smile. "He was never mine to keep.  I'll miss him, but I'll be okay.  He helped make sure of that."  

And he remembered so vividly the aching loneliness of a broken child that had drawn Kosmo to him from across the stars.  But he wasn't broken anymore.  It was enough to know that somewhere in the vast universe, a wolf from outer space would crash into another lonely soul's life to bring light and life back to it.  

Keith took a breath and turned back to his friends.  Even with his red eyes, his grin was confident and sure.  

"Don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to get the Galra off of Earth and every other planet they've conquered."  

It was time to start doing something with the life Kosmo had given him.