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Chapter Text

The Red Paladin of Voltron is much smaller than the average Galra. Newly outfitted in a Blade suit with his pale skin covered, he could be mistaken for a young one, caught in that liminal space between adolescence and adulthood. He fights with the kind of wild abandon that undersized creatures always do: reckless, impulsive, and brimming with a vicious fervor to prove himself. Kolivan has only watched him fight once, but that’s all he needs to know. The Red Paladin has always been dwarfed by his adversaries, and it is the first thing that he takes account of when he steps on the battlefield. 

The intensity of his gaze is distinct from his human companion, whose expression speaks of an internal stillness singular to predators who lurk in the tall grass. In contrast, the Red Paladin is true to his title, and a heat simmers in his eyes that seems one gust of wind away from creating a wildfire. 

It is there that his ancestry shines through. He takes advantage of his size; he moves quicker, lasts longer, and changes directions at the last possible moment. He’s nearly untouchable for it, and Kolivan realizes that it is out of necessity that the Red Paladin cannot be caught. He wouldn’t have survived this long otherwise, for he fights like a Galra, but he has the soft, breakable body of a human. 

Kolivan has witnessed a number of Trials, each as infinitely complex as the last, and this one is no different: every sentient being carries a weight. Ordinarily, new recruits train with Blade members for deca-phoebs before they submit to the Trial, and by the time that they come to pass, Kolivan has developed a well-honed deduction about what beast they will come to bear. It is rare that an outsider arrives and immediately undergoes a Trial. 

It is unheard of. 

And yet Kolivan offers this solution on an impulse that escapes him as soon as it flies out of his mouth. 

You seek knowledge? 

It is the question that was posed to him long ago. He remembers wanting the answer more than anything he’d ever wanted before and going to his knees before the council of old with his head held high. There was a certain freedom in having lost everything and arriving with nothing but himself. 

At his Trial, Kolivan confronted absolute loss, sought meaning, and found the mission of the Blade. He has never looked back. 

On the other side of this question, based on their introduction, Kolivan envisions that the Red Paladin will confront arrogance, or perhaps anger and impulsivity. A penchant for lying. 

He is wrong on every account. 

The boy appears to fight a sort of defiant, aching loneliness that holds him together as much as it tears him apart. He longs for acceptance, but he does not need it, and he refuses to compromise his values for it. 

It is unexpected. 

The Red Lion of Voltron tears through his base as though she is cutting through fire itself. When she lands, she roars so loudly that dust from the ceiling showers the room, and a gust of air brushes Kolivan’s cheek. He blinks and fights the urge to bare his fangs in response. Predator to predator. At the same time, a strange feeling rolls over in his chest, awakened after so long languishing in the dark cavern that has become his center: something like hope. Anticipation. 

The sensation wrests its head from the ground, sits up for the first time in years, and brushes dirt from its shoulders. Walks. 

Only a foolish man would ignore a sign like this. 

At the arrival of his Lion, the Red Paladin looks up. 

Underneath the dirt and grime and blood and bruising, the boy named Keith smiles. 

“Keith, I don’t know how you’re going to pilot Red like this,” the Black Paladin says worriedly. He’s crouched before the newest Blade in the cargo hold of the Lion, holding him upright by the arms. Kolivan is inclined to agree, given that the boy has just undergone the Trials and recently lost consciousness. The salt and metal smell of warm blood has already filled the small space and sticks in Kolivan’s nose. 

That, too, has always held true in universal terms. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. To what degree and in what variation, there are an infinite number of combinations.

The Red Paladin, Keith, blinks hard and shakes himself awake, forcing himself to sit upright without assistance. “She won’t leave if I don’t. I can do it.” 

Shiro lets go without a fight, which is surprising in its own way, given that he was willing to take on an entire army in Keith’s defense just moments ago. Kolivan wrestles down the twitching of his mouth. It appears that the Black Paladin knows how to pick his battles. 

“Are you sure? She got here just fine.” 

“She’s worried,” Keith explains. He sounds annoyed that he has to say something that should be apparent to everyone. 

“So am I,” Shiro insists. 

Keith huffs, fruitlessly trying to slap away Shiro’s hands as he wobbles to his feet. “I know, but you can’t do anything about that until we’re in the air.” Shiro must not be able to find a flaw in his reasoning, but his jaw is clenched as he forces his shoulder underneath Keith and helps him limp into the pilot seat. 

Even though his hands shake at the controls, the Red Lion soars through the sky as straight as an arrow, unwavering in her path. Kolivan stands in the cockpit and tries to temper his sense of wonder. Next to him, Shiro is unimpressed by the display and stares sullenly at Keith’s shoulders. 

“I see that his determination extends to all areas of his life,” Kolivan remarks. 

Shiro looks at him sideways. “Obviously,” he mutters, crossing his arms. They have a tentative alliance, but Kolivan suspects that Shiro will reserve some level of resentment that it was acquired at the cost of Keith’s health. He seems to care much more about that fact than Keith does, if he does at all. 

They slip through a wormhole without the slightest indication of turbulence.

Kolivan swallows his amusement and says, “Knowledge or death.” 

“Way too soon for that,” Shiro snaps back. 

The Champion is not to be trifled with where it concerns the Red Paladin, and the message is clear. 

Once they are on a straight path to the mythical Castle of the Alteans, Kolivan watches that formidable fire melt into concerned warmth as Shiro coaxes Keith from the pilot seat and drags him back into the cargo hold. He talks as he sheds Keith’s armor and mournfully assesses the damage, attending to the wounds as best he can with a rudimentary medical kit. By the time that he finishes, Keith lists forward as his eyes close, jerking himself awake periodically in a way that looks painful. 

Shiro sighs heavily at the sight of this, hanging his head. Kolivan thinks that he looks incredibly weary, but the Black Paladin must find some hidden reserve of strength, for he sits next to Keith and props the boy against him. He curls his arm around Keith’s shoulders, leans in close and whispers you can sleep, I’ll protect you . Undoubtedly, Kolivan is not meant to hear this, but it is a small ship, and his ears are sharp. 

The Black Paladin settles against the bulkhead for a long ride. He takes special care to ensure that Keith’s sleeping face is hidden from view, half-shrouded by his dark hair and the shadow of a large hand over his brow. Kolivan understands this perfectly well. Even across the vast gulf of their species, there is no state more vulnerable than that of repose. 

Together, they fly to the Castle of Lions, a thing that Kolivan has only heard about in stories. Although his eyes are heavy and his body is tired, Shiro never lets his eyes stray from Kolivan for long. 

It is a good thing, Kolivan thinks. He would do the same. 

Although Shiro is insistent that Keith heads directly to the infirmary once they land, Keith is resolute in his desire to tell the other paladins of Voltron that he is half-Galra. Kolivan is puzzled over why the need is so pressing, but the answer reveals itself before him, as the universe tends to do with ignorant questions. You are a fool, it seems to say. 

The Altean Princess is immediately interrogative, a hardening suspicion in her voice that makes the boy flinch when she spits out an accusation. But the Red Paladin rises to his defense only twice: first, to assert that he was unaware of his Galra heritage until now, second, to vow that his loyalties remain where they have always been, in defense of the universe against the empire. 

It is a careful turn of phrase that Kolivan considers long after he’s retired for the evening. It follows him into the night. Keith had firmly aligned himself with the paladins of Voltron and Blades of Marmora, but he had pledged no allegiance. Even in that room, he’d stood just on the outside of their circle, lingering near the doorway. He had placed himself beside, but not within. 

 Kolivan cannot decide if it is out of an unwavering faith in his own moral compass, or a fundamental distrust in forming coalitions. Both, perhaps, or neither. He doesn’t know Keith well enough to say. 

After retiring from their negotiations, Kolivan and Antok are shown to their temporary quarters by the Altean advisor, who has an exuberant way of inhabiting space that goes unanswered by either Galra, but he does not seem to notice. If he does, he does not care. 

After he bids them good evening, the door seals shut and leaves them in a mutual silence. Kolivan turns his head toward Antok and waits upon taking in the posture of his companion. They have long surpassed the need for lengthy discussions. 

“This is not an alliance that we return from, Kolivan.” 

Kolivan nods. Voltron promises a method of ending this war that is the antithesis of the tactics of the Blade of Marmora for the past five millennia. Once they are associated, the Blade ceases to exist as it once did. 

“No,” he replies. “It is not.” 

He dreams of them for the first time in so long that he doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late to wake himself up. 

Ry’ka. He’s a runner. Kolivan gives him chase through the grass, following the shadow of his little figure and the sound of his laugh. 

He is so easy to lose in the sun’s dying light, as small as he is. If Kolivan loses him now, he may never find him again. 

So he runs and runs and --

Staying at the Castle is illuminating, and he quickly decides that it was the right decision. Kolivan splits his time equally between negotiating terms and exchanging information with Shiro and Princess Allura and observing the paladins. At first, he follows Keith, curious to learn more about his abilities, but the boy quickly catches on and gives him the slip within moments of Kolivan’s arrival. In any case, this tells him something useful as well. Keith is hard to find when he does not want to be. It is exactly the kind of trait that a Blade must possess. 

His capability in battle is apparent, but Kolivan has a difficult time discerning where he picked up these skills, as they seem to have little cohesive style. It appears that the boy found himself a weapon, then thrust himself at every enemy and prayed that he survived. Kolivan should be appalled at the lack of formal structure, but contrary to what he should expect to see from an untrained warrior, Keith is efficient and controlled. He moves with his sword like it is an extension of his arm, and he relies on his speed to keep him out of close quarters. He’s decent at hand to hand, but he is small and easily overpowered once he’s been caught, so he simply endeavors to never let that happen. 

Watching the paladins train, it is clear that Shiro and Allura are the only ones who can provide Keith with a genuine challenge. Kolivan is impressed by the Black Paladin and the Altean Princess, and their skills are far more refined, but there is a sort of wild, untempered grace to the way that Keith fights that holds so much promise. He has potential, and he has the determination to take it somewhere. 

This point is driven home by how often Kolivan finds him at the training deck, long into the dim evening hours of the Castle. 

On the third evening of his stay, Kolivan finds the boy exactly where he’d been expecting, three gladiators bearing down on him as he weaves and dives, searching for a way to break the line. In the next instant, Kolivan realizes that the boy is doing a makeshift rendition of his Trial, seeking to improve the method that he uses to slip by his enemy. He ventures further into the room. 

When the match ends, the boy turns on his heels and stares down Kolivan with an ease that even his fifth year Blades would gawk at. He has a difficult time deciding if he thinks that it is affronting or amusing. Both.

“Are you just going to stand there and watch?” 

Kolivan does not move. “I am not going to fight you,” he responds. Not yet. 

The boy spares him one second for a dark glare and turns back toward the simulator. “Suit yourself.” He calls for the next level of the simulation but it is obvious his attention is divided now that he’s aware of Kolivan’s presence. His form goes hesitant with self-awareness and he locks up trying to fight it, his movements becoming jerky and half-committed. He lasts one more round before he leaves the training deck in a huff, gathering his things in his arms and walking by Kolivan without a word.

Kolivan is momentarily stunned at the passionate reaction, but later he thinks that it is quite humorous. 

It has been so long—he’s forgotten what it’s like to be young. He’s forgotten about the constant insecurity, the sensitivity to judgement, how every event is world-shattering in its novelty and crushing in its aftermath. His body is still healthy and his mind is still sharp, but he has seen so many things, lost so many people, that even catastrophes feel like sliding into the worn grooves of an old pair of shoes. There is simply very little that he has not experienced, and if he hasn’t experienced it, then it was never available to him in the first place and not worth thinking about. 

But he remembers being young, the rawness of it, the way your skin never seems to fit right. Constantly shifting into a new form, outgrowing the old one, getting stuck between the two and wondering which way to fall. He does not miss it.

The fourth day, he finds Keith training alone again. He is conspicuously small in the cavernous space, and his measured breaths and the dissonant clang of his Blade against the gladiator are the only sounds filling the room when Kolivan steps through the doors. 

It is ill-advised to practice combat with a live opponent unsupervised. Furthermore, it is difficult to receive constructive criticism when there is no one watching to give it. For example, Kolivan could tell him that there is a way to change his grip when his Blade transforms into a sword, and it is certainly not like that. There are appendages at stake. 

“You must anticipate the shift and move your hand as it occurs, not after.” 

His voice carries well in the Castle and brings the boy to a stop, half-hidden behind the bulk of the gladiator he had been facing down the moment before. He eyes Kolivan skeptically over the droid’s shoulder, flexing his grip on the Blade at his side. Kolivan watches him shift his weight from one foot to the other for a moment, as if he is perched before a chasm and calculating the risk of the jump. 

“It’s still… surprising. When it happens.” 

Kolivan steps onto the training deck. He gives the gladiator a brief, yet clinical inspection and finds his nose twitching at the idea of fighting a droid. For a beginner, perhaps. For one such as Keith, it is already a waste of his time. 

He needs better opponents. 

When Kolivan lifts his head from the gladiator, Keith is staring at the Blade in his hand. His expression is indecipherable, blank in concentration, until his brow twitches and the knife shifts into a sword with a familiar shimmer of violet light. Keith twirls the Blade right before his nose with wide eyes that speak of lingering awe and a faint smile playing on his lips. 

“You will get better in time,” Kolivan says, “but there are things that can be improved now.” 

It is a straight forward offer. He waits for a reply, but there is hardly a need for patience. Keith decides instantly. 

“Like what?”

Kolivan is pleased by that. Although Keith had technically wanted to join the Blades, the manner in which he did was largely antagonistic, and Kolivan is reassured that he appears to hold no ill will, if he ever had at all. 

His relief is short lived, however, withering away when he notices the tense line of Keith’s shoulders only thirty ticks into their first bout. 

“You hesitate,” Kolivan declares, but the word falls short. He eyes the boy’s posture and frowns. “I am not going to hurt you.” 

Keith scrutinizes him for a moment. “Knowledge or death,” he retorts. 

Kolivan turns this thought over in his mind. Keith has only ever fought Galra that sought to harm him. Even the Blades had drawn blood during his Trial. 

Keith thinks that Kolivan would be willing to kill during a training match, and he has no reason not to. The realization catches a foothold in his mind. 

“Not here,” Kolivans responds finally. “We are here to learn.” 

The boy seems to consider this and find it trustworthy in the span of the same breath, tightening his grip around the handle of his Blade and sliding back into the ready position. Any trace of hesitation has been wiped away by a keen drive in his eye. 

“Again,” Kolivan says. 

And so they go. 

Later that evening, Kolivan sets out for the lounge, where he finds almost all of the paladins in various states of leisure around the room. The Yellow Paladin fusses through the cupboards as he attempts to cook something that Kolivan cannot pronounce, while the Green Paladin has her tiny hands buried in a contraption at the counter beside him. Keith and the Blue Paladin, whom Kolivan finds very loud and exuberant at best, sit before the large screen and play some sort of simulated racing game. It soon devolves into a spitting wrestling match when Lance questions the legitimacy of Keith’s victory. 

Standing alongside Hunk and Pidge (both exceedingly strange names, he thinks), Kolivan watches as Keith quickly turns the tide of the fight and has his opponent locked in a tangle of limbs upside down until Lance pulls his hair, and the match starts anew with fresh accusations of dirty treachery. 

“How old are you all?” Kolivan ponders, directing the question toward Hunk. He seems to be the most level-headed out of this group. 

Hunk turns at the sound of his voice, eyes flaring when he realizes that Kolivan is addressing him specifically. He shrugs and follows Kolivan’s gaze across the room, where Keith is taunting Lance from his precarious perch atop the couch. Lance lashes back by calling Keith a “mullet-headed wild street cat” which is an insult that Kolivan has never heard before, nor does he understand. 

“Um, well, I guess. Earth years are counted differently, you see. I think Shiro is like, twenty five now? Me, Lance, and Keith are all about the same age. Pidge is the baby-”

“Sure, if Earth years are what we’re measuring by,” Pidge mutters darkly. 

Hunk rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean!” He clears his throat and starts counting on his fingers. “So I guess that puts us all between--” 

Kolivan blinks once at the response. 

His mind fills with static, his ears overcome by a harsh ring. His eyes are drawn back to the lounge when Lance shrieks for help as Keith gets him in a headlock. 

“You are children,” he says slowly. “You are all children.” 

On the heels of that thought, Kolivan reminds himself of the objective truth: the Lions of Voltron choose their paladins. The Altean stories speak of an ancient wisdom they hold that allows them to see into a soul and find a kindred spirit. 

Inexplicably, they have chosen infants belonging to a species that is essentially pre-contact, barring the misfortune of the few who had dared to explore and found themselves in the hands of the Empire, and a half-Galra boy with no awareness of his ancestry beyond a Blade left behind by a ghost. 

Kolivan has a theory for that, too. 

“Hey,” the Yellow Paladin blurts, drawing Kolivan back to the moment at hand. “Our lifespans are different than yours, but we’re still adults. Teenagers, at least. Definitely not children.” His expression darkens and his eyes dim. “Not anymore.” 

He means to imply that their experience in the war has forged them beyond their years. Kolivan does not disagree with this sentiment, but it fails to make him feel better. 

For his own information, Kolivan pretends that he wishes to see what Pidge is working with on the table and hovers over her shoulder. He leans close and inhales, but the result is predictably unilluminating. Her scent is nearly identical to that of Hunk and Shiro. Humans have dismal olfactory senses, so it follows that they would not present certain indicators that Galra would, but he still senses a slight difference, that miniscule, fresher twist. 

“Keith,” he calls out. The bundle of limbs on the floor untangles and falls apart. Keith scrambles to his feet and eyes Kolivan suspiciously. “Follow me.” 

Sullen and untrusting, the Red Paladin trails him into the hallway. Once they are alone, Kolivan wraps his hand in the collar of Keith’s jacket and drags him closer. 

His grip falls slack immediately. There had been no question of Keith’s heritage once he had awakened his blade, but this is another revelation entirely. 

The boy still smells like a Galra kit. 

While Kolivan struggles to process this new information, Keith wrenches out of his hold with ease and backs away until his shoulders hit the wall. His eyes are wide and confused. “What was that for?” 

“You have not reached adulthood,” Kolivan explains. 

Keith clenches his jaw and squares his shoulders, a familiar ire flashing over his face. Discreetly, his left arm shifts behind his back. “What does that matter? I awakened the blade already. It’s mine.” 

There had been no hesitation, Kolivan notes. Without remorse, even given their newfound alliance, Keith had identified Kolivan as a potential threat and prepared for battle. He has the instincts of a warrior, but there’s a defensive, raw edge to them, like he’s guarding an exposed nerve. It is not a trait that the other paladins share. 

“I would never steal your Blade. As you said, it is yours.”

This doesn’t appear to appease the boy, given the dark frown that remains after his assurance. “So why did you grab me like that?” 

There is no use in lying. “I wanted to confirm my theory that you are still a kit.” 

Keith blinks. “I don’t know what that is.” 

“Galra young are referred to as kits. We rely on our olfactory senses to discern many things, one of those being our children. You do not experience this?” 

The boy’s hand finally falls away from his knife. “Humans have a sense of smell. But I don’t think it’s as strong as yours,” he says. His brow furrows, and his voice trails into a mumble. “Then again, who am I to say? I’m not really human.” With that, Keith kicks off the wall and starts down the hallway, but he spins to a halt after a few short steps. “If that’s it, I’m going to--. Can I go?” 

Keith is not accustomed to asking permission from others before he took his leave, but he had decided to do so anyway. Kolivan wonders if it is out of respect or fear. 

Considering that Keith had assumed that Kolivan wanted to take his knife by force, he must accept that it is the latter. The thought lingers in his mind as he watches Keith walk away. 

There’s a nimble, loping grace to the way that he moves that is distinctly Galra, and a youthful fervor seems to boil in his blood, spilling over the edges when he’s pushed. Keith is quiet until he bursts into action, but his eyes are always scanning the room, bright and brimming with passion. Kolivan has been watching him, but he would be a fool to think that Keith isn’t watching him back. 

What the boy thinks about what he sees, that remains to be told. 

The answer to his question, Kolivan cannot determine either. 

Why does that matter? 

So Keith is young, Kolivan ponders; he had known that from the outset, from the moment that the two Paladins had stepped foot on his base, but why had Kolivan felt compelled to confirm that hypothesis? Did confirmation change the nature of his conclusion? 

It had not. The universe was not in the habit of handing out positive affirmations, and Kolivan had hardly expected it to start now, but there was something to be said about the difference between simply bearing witness to knowledge and the act of holding it in your hands until it had a shape and a weight and a warmth all its own. 

Kolivan has accidentally recruited a half-human, half-Galra child Paladin of Voltron to the Blade of Marmora. 

He has experienced a great number of things before. 

This is not one of them. 

The first time that Kolivan invites Keith to the Marmora base as a fully-fledged member, the boy is escorted by the Green Lion, whose camouflaging abilities are unique among her companions. After she lands in the hangar and the cloaking mechanism dissipates, a murmuring ripple travels across the wide space, every Blade’s eye turned toward the ship that had once been only a legend of old, a mythical beast come to life. 

It is no surprise that the Black Paladin descends the ramp alongside Keith and the little green one. When Kolivan strides forward to greet them, there is a heavy expectation in the Black Paladin’s gaze that makes itself known immediately. 

Kolivan nods once. “Welcome, Keith. Ilun is here to escort you to your quarters. We will reconvene shortly.” 

The boy doesn’t take his direction immediately. Instead, he flicks his eyes between Shiro and Kolivan, his brow furrowing. After sharing an indecipherable look with Shiro, he turns on his heel and heads toward the doorway, leaving behind his two companions. 

Serving as an almost identical mirror, albeit shorter and higher-pitched, the Green Paladin darts her eyes between Shiro and Kolivan before she huffs and rolls her eyes, shoving those strange spectacles further up her nose and striding back to her Lion. 

And then they are alone. 

“I don’t think I need to tell you how important he is,” Shiro says. The tone is benign, but there is a deadly promise flickering in his eyes. 

Kolivan inclines his head in deference to this statement. It is a rational concern, lending an irreplaceable soldier to another organization, and not one that Kolivan takes lightly. “He is one of five Paladins of Voltron.” 

This is a crucial juncture to lose a pilot, and if they do, Kolivan risks the collapse of their entire joint operation.

“No,” Shiro states. “He’s more.” 

With that statement, short and simple, the Black Paladin turns on his heels and leaves. 

It is not unexpected, this reaction from the Black Paladin. Their relationship is foundationally personal. Kolivan had known from the moment that they had arrived at his base for the first time, long before Keith’s greatest fears took the shape of his friend walking away, and long before Shiro positioned himself between Keith and a veritable army. 

It is a dangerous way to command a team, rife with pitfalls borne from emotional attachment, and certainly not one that Kolivan would espouse for his own role. 

However, Kolivan is in a position for which he volunteered, and the Paladins were unwillingly thrust into roles for which they were chosen. The implications of this difference are many, some more troubling than others, but Kolivan cuts through to the main point. 

If Keith dies on a mission with the Blade, they risk much more than a mere pilot of Voltron. They risk the unbridled rage of the one that Haggar deigned the Champion of Champions, and they risk the integrity of the entirety of Voltron itself. 

This, Kolivan has known from early on, and yet he finds himself questioning his impulse to allow Keith to participate in the Trials all over again. Their alliance could have moved forward without his induction to the Blade. It would be easier, as a matter of fact. 

I need answers, the boy had said, and in that moment of desperation, Kolivan had heard a distant echo from his past, a time when he had stood in that very same spot and begged for that very same thing. 

He wants to tell himself that he’d never expected the boy to pass the Trials, but Kolivan is not in the habit of lying to himself, nor does he indulge in mistakes made on a nostalgic whim. 

No, Kolivan breaks down that decision into a simple equation: the arrival of Voltron, a myth so ancient that it is writ into almost every culture oppressed by the Empire as a beacon of hope, and the unlikely discovery that the Red Lion of Altea had chosen a pilot who belonged to the very people that had destroyed her home. 

Kolivan is not in the habit of ignoring signs, nor does he waste time lamenting decisions that have come and gone. 

Certainly, the consequences of this one are yet to be seen, but Kolivan finds that his trepidation does not come from a place of regret, but rather from the growing realization that he has made one of those choices that begins as a single ripple in a pond and ends in a tidal wave, crashing over the beach of some distant shore. 

Only time will tell, as it always does. 

He spends an inordinate amount of time orchestrating Keith’s introduction to the Blade way of life. The more that he thinks about it, the more variables accrue, until he’s wasted a varga jostling around sleeping arrangements and prospective teams without success. 

Ultimately, he decides to make Keith room with Regris, another half-blooded Galra with an easy  charisma strong enough to get along with anyone, and enough youthful energy left to expend on the task.

He ensures that the first place the boy visits is the infirmary to meet with their head doctor. Not only is it a standard practice for new Blades, but it is also poor form to lose a Blade from something so simple as a missed vaccination. Having served as their head medic alongside Kolivan for two decades, he is certain that she will take to the task of learning about a new species with professional decorum and no small amount of undisguised relish. 

But it isn’t until Glivik is requesting and subsequently granting herself entrance into Kolivan’s office that he remembers having done so. Going from the expression on her face and the abrupt nature of her arrival, he suspects that he should have invested more thought into it. He barely has the opportunity to open his mouth in protest of her blatant disregard for protocol before she’s turning on him with a snarl curling her lips. 

“I wasn’t aware that we were in the business of recruiting children.” 

Ah. Yes. 

“Then it is a good thing that we are not a business,” Kolivan replies. 

Her eyes narrow. “He is hardly on the cusp of adulthood, even for his own species, much less for a Galra.” 

A lesser Galra would crumble under the intensity of her gaze, but Kolivan is well-practiced with high scrutiny. “He is a Paladin of Voltron, and he passed his Trial.” 

Glivik makes a snide, rumbling hiss from the back of her throat that he should consider highly disrespectful to the degree of outright insubordination.

“Neither of those things will matter when he dies on his first mission.” 

It is not a thought that Kolivan hasn’t considered at length. “Do you think that the Lions of Altea would make such a poor choice in Paladins, if he were that easy to kill?” 

Glivik folds her arms over her chest. 

“Perhaps it is not the judgment of the Lions that I question, Kolivan.” 

Kolivan exhales slowly, waiting out the flutter of indecision in his chest that her jab incites. His shoulders fall. “I did not realize his age when I allowed him to undertake the Trial.” 

Glivik raises one eyebrow. “And now that you do, you invite him to our base and propose him for a mission,” she states dryly. 

“You presume that I would needlessly put his life in harm’s way,” he counters. “I did not force him to come here. He chose the Blade of his own accord.” 

Glivik leans forward, her hands flattening on his desk. 

“The Blade are in the practice of traversing doorways that their predecessors have already opened for them,” Glivik replies. “This is a statement that I have heard you repeat for millennia, Kolivan. Granting a child paladin admission to the Blade is that doorway.” He doesn’t blink when a claw jabs in his face. “You opened it. You should know where it leads.” 

Kolivan doesn’t break. “What makes you think that I do not?” 

Glivik remains motionless, poised over his desk, and they are held in mutual silence. She searches his expression for something, and he cannot be sure that she’s found it when she turns on her heels, effectively dismissing herself from the room. 

She pauses at the doorway. “I hope you realize that this is your responsibility.” 

“I never denied that.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “He is here because of you. He is your responsibility.” 

“I do not deny that either.”

Glivik gives him a strange look over her shoulder, as though she is reading another layer of meaning to his words that he hasn’t accounted for. He hates it. It passes as quickly as it had arrived, and Glivik shifts her tone. “And who will he work with?” 

“Myself,” he says. “Regris, Ilun. Vrek.” 

She does not turn from the door, but her head quirks as she considers his statement. 

“You are sure of this,” she states. “Why?” 

He almost says I do not know, but that would be one shade off from the truth, which is already veiled behind shifting shadows and flickering impressions. 

Kolivan had felt something shift upon the arrival of Voltron, but he cannot identify what it would be called, or when exactly it had taken place. 

At some point between laying eyes on the Red Lion for the first time, and watching the boy’s borrowed Blade transform into one of his own, Kolivan had felt it rattle loose, as if he had been playing the same hand of cards for millennia, only to look down and discover that he had acquired a completely new set, and he was playing an entirely different game. 

It is not easily explained. He does not know where to start. Once he does, he cannot be sure where it will lead, so he settles for the shortest answer. Simplicity, after all, is the analogue of truth. One is meaningless without the other. 

“I think that they are the future.” 

Glivik’s hand pauses over the keypad of his door. “Voltron, or this boy?” 

It is almost an absurd follow up question. Does Kolivan think that the fate of the universe depends upon the arrival of a weapon mythologized in every galaxy under the thumb of the Empire, or the life of a single half-Galra child who happens to be subject to its operation?

“Both,” he says. 

Long before Kolivan found the Blades, it had been established that they begin training at daybreak, when the mind is clear and the body is rested. As a young recruit, Kolivan had attended every session for phoebs before being allowed to take the Trials, watching and learning from his superiors, both in function and form. Other recruits who had joined at the same time as Kolivan had immediately leapt into the ring, unwittingly renouncing any claim to pride that they might have walked away with before getting ruthlessly defeated in the first thirty ticks. For his own part, Kolivan had observed every match that he could find, cataloguing the differences in style among the senior Blades. They did not have a uniform technique. Each Blade arrived with their own way of fighting, and there was no requirement that it changed. 

The only expectation was success. Therefore, every Blade fought each other, with no adjustments for size or experience. They would not be awarded the liberty of choosing their opponent within the Empire, so it followed that the same would not be allowed within the Blade. 

Those first few movements that he had observed his new comrades, buoyant with a thirst for vengeance and outsized confidence, and watched them get thrown into the mat time and time again, Kolivan had realized that this practice had more to do with encouraging humility than sharpening technique. It became easy to predict which recruits would wash out in due time and those who would persevere to see the day of their Trial. 

In defeat, there is knowledge, and the difference between those who thrived and those who failed lie in the way that they responded to that knowledge. The bad ones thrashed like a wounded animal at the harm to their ego. The good ones reapplied themselves to their training with a renewed vigor, determined to practice until they prevailed. The smart ones walked themselves backwards through every defeat with a painstaking attention to detail and never made the same mistake twice. 

 So there is much to be learned from these sessions. Even as the leader of the Blades, Kolivan ensures that he is present for every session that he can afford to attend when he is not away for a mission. Ordinarily he scarcely thinks about it, but the first day that Keith is on the base, he wakes up with a nagging curiosity to see the Red Paladin participate. 

Keith stands stiffly by his side when Kolivan introduces him to the room. It is an awkward affair, given that most recruits had been practicing with the Blades for phoebs before passing their Trial, and Keith has arrived on his first day, not only as a fully-formed Blade, but also a Paladin of Voltron. 

It inspires a competitive gleam in the eye from most, eager to test their skills against this strange, small half-breed who has been chosen by the Red Lion, while others appear dubiously curious, and the rest are seemingly uninterested. Antok swiftly moves past the introduction and starts dividing Blades into pairs at his own behest. 

Kolivan has never doubted Antok’s intuition in this regard, even though he suspects that Antok sometimes indulges his own frustration with new recruits by giving them a particularly ill-fitted match up. However, in lieu of placing Keith with Regris, who is the closest in both size and skill from what they have seen so far, Antok assigns him to fight with Ryker. He is a senior Blade, bigger than both Antok and Kolivan, with a lethally powerful punch and an implacable calm in battle. 

He questions this one. As soon as Antok finishes saying Ryker’s name, Kolivan tries to catch his eye and suppresses a growl when Antok thoroughly ignores him. In his periphery, he can see Keith look in his direction for one moment before turning toward his new opponent, who is easily twice his height and width. He exhales, readjusts his grip on his blade, and steps toward the ring. The corner of Ryker’s lip twitches as he follows the boy. 

They square up with each other. Kolivan’s eye naturally draws a line between the steep differences in their height. 

The fight begins. 

Predictably, every other fight in the room slows to the degree of comical incoherence. Kolivan should reprimand them, but that would require breaking his own attention, which he is not willing to do. He doesn’t think that Ryker would cause permanent damage to the boy in a training match, but it is not an idea that he can completely cast out of his mind. 

It is no surprise that Keith strikes first, at least not for Kolivan, but it doesn’t land. As soon as his Blade is deflected, Keith retreats on his toes, slipping under the other Galra’s massive arm and just barely escaping. 

“He is fast,” Antok says at his side. 

Kolivan nods, watching Keith dance around the perimeter of the ring as he dives in, misses, evades, and retreats. Over and over. But never from the same location. He is testing Ryker for blind spots. 

“Adaptable, as well,” Antok hums. There is a note of surprised approval in his tone that almost diverts Kolivan’s attention. Antok’s reaction to their initial introduction to Voltron had almost been stronger than Kolivan’s, and he had been the only one to draw blood during the boy’s Trial. He had just pitted Keith against the worst possible opponent in the room. 

His lieutenant has a strange sense of humor.

For all of his speed, Keith is caught relatively early in the battle, announcing its end. He gives it a fair effort to shimmy his way out of Ryker’s grip, but ultimately yields once he realizes that he isn’t getting anywhere. This is a relief for Kolivan. He had entertained a concern that Keith’s stubbornness would translate into an untenable refusal of defeat, but the boy appears to harbor neither ill will nor a bruised ego when he climbs to his feet and faces his opponent. 

Instead, he holds out his arm, palm up, and says, “Good match.” 

Ryker stares. 

Keith flinches and withdraws his hand immediately, his shoulders hunching. He mumbles something under his breath that Kolivan cannot hear.

“Ah,” Ryker rumbles, as though he has realized something. “Here, we end a fight like this.” He reaches out and catches the boy’s forearm, extending two fingers until they press into the pulse point at his elbow. Fumbling, Keith mimics the pose the best that he can. Ryker squeezes once and slides his arm free, then forms a fist and holds it against his opposite shoulder. He bows his head. “In victory, there is strength.” He points at Keith. “In defeat, there is knowledge.” 

It is clearly unpracticed and uncertain when Keith copies the motion, and his fist is turned the wrong way, but his voice is clear and strong. 

“In defeat, there is knowledge.” 

Ryker exits the ring first, coming to stand beside Antok and Kolivan. “The little one has potential,” he says, as though this is a surprise to him, but then his eyebrows furrow and he makes a strange cupping motion with his hands. “Very… small, though.” 

Antok doesn’t miss a beat. 

“He will fit in all the vents.” 

Kolivan sighs through his nose. 

Ryker hums thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. 

“You are right. I hadn’t even considered this.” 

Predictably, Keith loses the next four matches. Against Davoc, who relies on speed more than strength, he is caught almost immediately and the fight is over in twenty ticks. He lasts the longest against Regris, but ultimately as his stamina starts flagging, he is forced to yield again. This time, when they exchange parting words, Regris reaches out and turns his fist so that it lays flat against his breast. “Like this.” 

Keith blinks and performs the gesture again with a newfound certainty. 

He bows his head. “In defeat, there is knowledge.” 

Later that day, Kolivan spots Keith sitting next to Regris and Ilun in the meal hall. He lingers long enough to observe that Regris is gesturing at the food on his plate while Keith tries everything in turn. The main course makes his face contort in a way that causes Regris to chuckle entirely too much, but he recovers by pointing out the skiva, which is the very same reason that Kolivan had ventured down to the kitchens in the first place. 

Keith gives the pastry a skeptical sniff before he takes a bite, but as soon as he starts chewing, his eyes go wide, and he grins at Regris after he polishes off the rest. Regris laughs at his expense once more, but they promptly settle on a fair trade, swapping another slice of skiva and an abandoned kyal fruit. 

So human taste buds are not completely worthless. 

Kolivan is buoyed by the knowledge that Keith seems capable of interacting with the other Blades in relative ease, given the vast cultural divide between their institutions. Voltron is a small, cohesive unit that almost appeared to function as a family, perhaps necessitated by the nature of the Lions and the weapon that they formed. The Blades are decidedly not. They are a splinter group. They usually act alone, responsible for the mission and themselves in respective order. This is how they have survived as long as they have. 

He is not sure how Keith is going to fare in this environment, but they do not have an excess of time or soldiers, so Kolivan decides to send him on his first mission. It is a short and simple affair, involving the extraction of an exiled prince from a medium level prison. 

Shortly before their scheduled departure, he calls Regris and Ilun into his office, in order to impress upon them the importance of keeping Keith alive. 

It would be a very poor look to lose the boy on the first day. 

Regris is undaunted by his warning, while Ilun offers only a cryptic raise of her eyebrow, which Kolivan already knows that she will not follow with an explanation. He figures this is the best he can do and sends them on their way. 

This is a mistake. 

Kolivan monitors their progress from the bridge, but he loses the location of the ship once they near the prison, and they go completely silent shortly after. This is not unheard of, but it is unplanned, and Kolivan cannot help but consider the worst outcome. 

He hears nothing for the next four vargas. He spends it pacing back and forth and debating about whether he should be sending out a ship of his own, or if he should cut his losses and tell Voltron that he’s lost one of the paladins now. And Regris. And Ilun. 

It doesn’t matter. Well under the wire, they come barreling through the wormhole and into the hangar at a frightening speed, barely pulling up short before a perfect landing. Kolivan knows because he is already there, waiting for the doors to open. 

Regris and Ilun tumble out, singed but breathing prince in hand. Behind them, Keith, with all four of his limbs and no gaping wounds. 

“Report,” Kolivan demands. 

Regris lets out an aggrieved sigh. The prince shrieks and flails his arms at Keith, standing off to the left. “That imbecile nearly killed all of us with his happy trigger fingers! Not to mention the scum that he unleashed from that ship!” 

Kolivan clenches his teeth and tries looking to Ilun for an explanation. “What.” 

Ilun shrugs and gestures at Keith with her Blade. “This one orchestrated an all out prison break.” 

“What-” 

Keith stiffens. “I couldn’t just leave all those people there! They didn’t--” 

Kolivan advances without thinking about it, until Keith is stumbling back a step. “No one was supposed to know that you were there. By announcing our presence, you threaten the very foundation of the Blades--” 

“He removed his mask and told them that we were Paladins of Voltron,” Ilun interrupts.

This makes Kolivan pause where he looms over Keith. He spares the boy one glance, not surprised to find that he is resolute even in his blatant fear of Kolivan, his shoulders squared and hands loosely tensed for a fight. 

“Explain.” 

Ilun shrugs again, almost dismissive. “It worked. He looks human. None of them have ever seen one of those before. We positioned all of the sentries in the secondary holding cell and blew it off the main prison ship. The inmates took the remaining pods. No one ever laid eyes on us.” 

Kolivan exhales deeply, slowly moving his gaze from Keith, a line of tension vibrating in front of him, skipping passed the noisy prince who shrieks into the void, over to Ilun and Regris, who appear satisfied and suspiciously amused, and finally the ship, mostly unharmed save for the telltale scorch marks of a piece of machinery that barely fled an explosion that leveled an entire prison. 

The rage that simmers in his chest cools into a cold frustration. At least the boy’s piloting skills are not in question. 

The rest of it… he cannot say. He isn’t sure that he likes what he has heard, but clearly it was short-sighted to send him out on his own this early. The fault lies with Kolivan for not realizing this earlier. 

Next time, the boy will have to go with him. 

Over the next few movements, Kolivan transitions the Blade into working in tandem with Voltron and the Olkarions at a rapid fire pace, so that they reinforce the larger revolutionary movement, rather than taking it down in disparate parts. He spends a significant portion of his time at the Castle of Lions, coordinating with the Princess and Shiro, and it puts his endeavor to assess Keith’s potential as a Blade on the back burner. 

Observing Keith as a paladin, however, is crucially informative in its own way. Although Kolivan had approached them with his characteristic reserve, it quickly becomes apparent that both humans and Alteans are seemingly guileless creatures, with little penchant for subversion or deception. They are expressive and verbose at a rate that Kolivan finds exhausting, for all that he is reassured of their intentions the more that he spends with them. 

To a certain degree, Keith is an outlier in this regard, and in comparison with the others, he is markedly more reticent. Unless they are discussing battle strategy, he tends to be a silent, vigilant presence that lingers on the outskirts of the room, always listening, but rarely interrupting. Kolivan half-entertains thoughts of this being a latent trait from his Galran side, but he quickly dismisses the idea as preposterous, for there would be no way to explain Regris if this were the case. 

Keith is simply loud in ways that the other paladins are not. His instincts are razor sharp, and he has the sort of decisive aplomb required to capitalize on them. He does not hesitate, not for fear or self-doubt, which means that if he sees an opening worth pursuing, he can turn an entire mission on its head in an instant. This trait is a double edged sword, often to the great consternation of his teammates and particularly the Princess, but Kolivan cannot help but think that with the right guidance, that intuition could be honed into something great, because it is not something that can be taught. 

More importantly, his motives are genuine. Although his Trial had made this apparent in a rough outline, working side by side illuminates the details. He cares deeply for his teammates and defends them fiercely on the battlefield. He avoids a killing strike at all costs, and he is the first one to vocalize where there are civilians that must be avoided. 

In smaller ways, as well, Keith starts earning Kolivan’s approval. After their first session, he has no qualms asking Kolivan to train again, with an eagerness so palpable that it is almost contagious and seemingly impossible to reject point blank. They never speak much during these sessions, but Keith is laser focused on every instruction, and there is something fulfilling about watching his own advice put into practice in real time. 

Soon enough, he starts asking questions about the Galra, carefully never spoken in the presence of the Princess, and always with an air of tension, like he is treading into uncharted waters and unconvinced of his right to be there. 

Often Kolivan finds that the simplest questions are the ones that unsettle him, not because he is bothered that Keith asked, but rather because it is strange to juxtapose the same paladin who held his own against Zarkon with the one who furrowed his brow in deep concentration for five dobashes before tentatively asking do all Galra have tails ? 

It is hard not to pity him, if only for a moment, which is why Kolivan treats every question equanimously. It is not the boy’s fault that he does not know. 

There is nothing wrong with the fact that he wants to know either, which is why Kolivan starts answering questions that Keith hasn’t even asked yet, solely because they are in earshot of the Princess and he wants to make it clear that there is nothing to be ashamed of. 

You cannot help what you are; you can only do the best you can with what you have, and Kolivan has never been ashamed of being Galra. 

It serves no purpose for Keith to be either. 

Zayla places Ry’ka in his arms, and Kolivan holds him awkwardly, cradled against his chest in hands that feel too overgrown for the task of carrying an entire life in his hands. 

Even with sweat still drying her hair to her brow, Zayla is a vision that brings him down to size. She laughs and lifts her arms, waving him closer. She rearranges the baby in his arms with a patient smile on her face. 

“You have to support his neck, Kolivan,” she laughs. “Haven’t you ever held a baby before?” 

Kolivan can’t tear his eyes away from the little face nestled against his chest. He assesses the familiar line of his jaw. Zayla. That nose, his grandfather. His smile, potentially all his own. Only time would tell. 

“Now I have,” he replies. 

She hums and closes her eyes, laying back in her nest. “You better get used to it,” she says sleepily. 

Kolivan gently traces his finger over the line of his brow. All Kolivan. 

“Is that what will happen?” he ponders. 

His question goes unanswered. 

In a way, it is one of those that answers itself. 

It is inevitable that, at some point, their positive momentum would collide with the stark reality of their situation. They are in a war, after all, and every ounce of their progress is built on loss. 

This time, it is Antok. 

Then, Shiro. 

Kolivan does not discover this until he returns to the Castle of Lions, still reeling from the grief of his own fight. It is a loss that he holds in his chest like a wild beast threatening to burst from a cage. 

Vengeance assuages nothing. Postpones madness, perhaps, but nothing beyond that, and not for long. 

Not for long, at all, it seems. 

He knows that something has happened from the moment that he lands in the hangar. Standing before the exit door of his own ship, he sways on his feet and wonders if the weight of his exhaustion could press him into the floor, until he sinks through to the other side, until his body dissipates into empty space and scatters among the stars. 

It is an option. The easy one, which means it is one that he won’t take. 

On the other side of the door lies the wreckage of another team. Not his own, but wading into it cuts all the same. 

The Black Paladin is gone. 

Spread out within the hangar, Kolivan catalogues them all as though he is stepping into a violent storm, where a gusting wind is liable to pick up a piece of the wreckage and bowl him over with it. The remaining paladins and the Alteans are screaming at each other, their words sharpened by the edge of panicked grief. Frantic. 

In the center, an unknowing eye of the storm, Keith kneels alone before the Black Lion. He is an island among the chaos, silent and unmoving. 

The others are giving him a wide berth, a wariness in their expressions akin to those who dismantle explosives, as though getting too close means setting off a chain reaction that cannot be undone. 

Kolivan pushes himself forward, never one to linger in the face of a tragedy. 

Sometimes the only way out is through. This is what he tells himself. This is what he will tell them, he vows. 

It is a foolish promise, one that he breaks before he finishes his own thought. The Alteans and the Green and Yellow Paladins explain their predicament in rapidfire succession, so quickly that Kolivan almost doesn’t follow the thread until the end. The Blue Paladin hovers nearby, bouncing on his feet with the energy of a thing on the verge of shattering, but Kolivan fails to notice until he feels a tug on his sleeve and looks down into pleading blue eyes, wide and shining in the harsh light of the hangar. The boy, Lance, he reminds himself, the loud and obnoxious one, the one that appears to nurture a strange contempt for Keith, conspicuously flicks his gaze to the right. “He hasn’t said anything,” he whispers urgently. “He hasn’t even moved.” 

Ah. Not contempt, then. 

Kolivan is too slow to realize what he is asking. He blinks at the fingers clutching his suit, but they remain insistent. This is the first time that Lance has addressed him directly, without fear of rebuke and unhindered by intimidation. He wants Kolivan to be the one to approach Keith. In the wake of Shiro’s death, he thinks that Kolivan is the one most suitable to step into such a daunting gap, skipping over himself and the rest of their team. 

He does not understand, but when he meets Lance’s gaze, the thought of asking instead of acquiescing completely falls apart. 

Young. Too young. Too, too young.  

Kolivan sighs, nodding once, and slips out of the boy’s grasp. He circles around until he stands in front of Keith with the Black Lion at his back. From this angle, Keith is even smaller, a crumpled form at the altar of his own loss. Kolivan is motionless for a moment, cycling through thousands of different things he could say and failing to find the right words. There are none, essentially. He knows this. 

Sometimes, the only way out is through. 

“Keith,” he says. 

The boy shudders at the sound of his name, curling over his knees. His shoulders heave with the force of his panicked gasps for air. 

Kolivan does not look away, no matter how much he wants to. He does not want to see this. He does not think that Keith wants him to, either. 

“Keith,” he tries again, lowering his voice. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise when Keith finally lifts his head, but the wet streaks carving paths through the grime on his cheeks catch the light in a way that transforms him into a complete stranger before Kolivan’s eyes. A child. Wrecked with grief. Bereft. He hides none of it, staring up at Kolivan with the same stripped-bare fervency that he always has. 

“He’s not gone.” 

That Keith is reaching for denial first does not come as a surprise. 

The sudden surge of empathy, a deep and swelling sensation in his chest that demands to be reckoned with, absolutely blindsides Kolivan. 

I understand, he almost says. I understand more than you know. I do not want it to be true, either. 

Saying this will not help Keith. There are no words that can. Even though he knows this to the marrow of his bones, Kolivan cannot help but undertake the futile quest for them anyway. 

Kolivan wants to, but he cannot.

It fills him with a regret so strong that he has to close his eyes against the bitter sting of it. He has failed in so many ways on this awful day, and for some inexplicable reason, failing to comfort Keith stands in equal measure with failing to save his one true companion, who has stood by him from the very beginning. 

So he says nothing, even when Keith finds a way to crawl to his feet, even when he vows to Kolivan that Shiro can’t be gone again and takes off for the Red Lion. 

Kolivan is silent through all of it. He has nothing to say. 

Sometimes, the only way out is through. 

Not even that. 

But he lives to fight another day, as he always has. 

This is a war built on loss. 

Kolivan stays at the Castle of Lions for two movements after Shiro disappears. It is almost certainly too long with respect to his role as the leader of the Blade, but in that time, a larger part of him fears that his departure could spell the unraveling of this team that has found itself flailing in the aftermath of a devastating loss. 

None of them more than Keith. The boy searches the vast emptiness of space with a fervent desperation that slowly morphs into despair as time continues the grim march forward. The shadows under his eyes become permanent bruises. The manic tension that follows him like a dark cloud wards off any and all attempts at consolation from his teammates. They almost seem fearful of Keith, intimidated by the sheer size of his grief and his unpredictable mood swings, but they are too lost in their own anxiety to notice the distance that slowly grows between them. 

It worries Kolivan. It is the exact opposite of what they should be doing, but he fails to find the right way to express this concern, and the issue takes on a life of its own when they finally bring themselves to resolve the question of who will pilot the Black Lion. 

Kolivan genuinely thinks that it will choose Princess Allura, as she has been somewhat of a de-facto leader for all of his time with Voltron, but the Black Lion refuses to accept anyone but Keith. 

He does not think that this is necessarily shocking, but the miniscule flicker of pride that sparks in his chest is surprising in its own right. He had often entertained the thought that Keith’s leadership skills showed potential, and the Lion’s validation of this belief is satisfying, but it is something more personal when he hears the news. He does not know how to give it a name, so he doesn’t bother trying. 

The new Voltron certainly gets off to a rough start, for which the blame lies mostly at Keith’s feet, but his teammates respond with varying degrees of reluctance and impatience that unsettles Kolivan. They need to stick together and support each other now more than ever, but they struggle to do so with Keith, who still yearns for someone beyond reach. 

Kolivan has to watch from a distance, occupied with the Blade, but Keith makes incredible progress in the short time since the switch, even despite the rift that opened at the beginning. He is impressed that Keith hurdled the gap in the first place, but less than reassured by the fact that he had to do so in the first place.

In any case, they find their stride quickly enough.

So Kolivan sets the thought aside. 

The evening before he is scheduled to rejoin the Blades, Kolivan finds himself pacing the empty halls of the Castle of Lions. The cause of his restlessness is clear, but it has no real solution in the light of day, or the haunting of night, so it makes no sense to ruminate on it. 

Instead, for the first time since he has arrived, Kolivan gives in to the nagging curiosity that has dogged his step since the moment that he learned of their existence. 

He goes to see the Lions. 

They are kept in their own bays, mostly separated from one another by the large walls that span the width of the hangar, and Kolivan heads toward the Black Lion without thinking. 

She appears to be shutdown, her eyes dark, but the moment that he steps into her vicinity, he feels a sense of presence that sends a shiver down his spine. 

Inanimate robots, they are not. He has always known that. Kolivan looks up at her and wonders what she has seen, what she knows now, and what she sees in the future to come. It is impossible to know because her secrets are her own. 

He stands silently at her feet until he resigns himself to the fact that her knowledge is not going to be given away. Even if it were, he knows that she would not give it to him. He is about to leave when his ears catch the faintest shuffling sound from the other side of the hangar. 

Naturally, he goes to investigate. 

Something in the back of his mind whispers don't, but Kolivan has already come this far, and he does not listen. He follows the sound to the Red Lion's bay and easily finds a spot where he can observe without being seen. Once he peers around the corner, he finds what he had been looking for and knows that he should not have sought it out in the first place. 

Keith kneels before the Red Lion, bent over so far that his head brushes her feet as he rocks back and forth. He has one arm wrapped around his torso like he is trying to hold himself together, and the other clamped over his mouth. It is a strangely quiet affair until Kolivan feels his ears twitch and realizes that the boy is trying to muffle his anguished screams with his hands. 

Keith curls forward, like he is crushed under the weight of the universe, and presses his head into the Red Lion so hard that it looks like it hurts. It must. Kolivan knows that it does. 

The boy shudders. "Please," he begs. "Please." 

Kolivan does not know what Keith asks for, but that kind of wish was never his to witness. He closes his eyes, turns away from the sight, and exits without a sound. 

As he walks away, he feels something one shade off from guilt building in his chest.

If he were honest with himself, he would call it grief, the kind that is borrowed rather than owned and inexplicably heavier for it, but giving something like this a name has never made it easier to handle, at least not in his experience. 

There isn't a word that encompasses this anyway, he thinks. In any language. In any form. 

Upon the miraculous discovery that the former Black Paladin still lives, Kolivan entertains several potential outcomes. At first, he assumes that the paladins will return to their original formation and the Princess will retake her role as a diplomat, but Kolivan is soon informed that the Black Lion is rejecting Shiro for reasons unknown. The meeting is over a holocall, and Kolivan catches the strained tension emanating from Keith as though he can feel it through the screen. 

The realization brings him to a pause. Now that Keith is the de-facto leader of Voltron, where he had once been purposefully selected, Kolivan must wonder how this will affect their group dynamics. The Black Paladin had been stilted and quiet during their meeting, and Kolivan finds it impossible to decipher what he must be thinking. He assumes that the rejection had stung. For Keith’s part, he anticipates an equal amount of guilt and trepidation. The boy had rebelled against replacing Shiro more than anyone, and now he finds himself standing in the way of someone whose shadow he had once happily inhabited. 

It is not an enviable position for anyone, but Kolivan presumes that it will work itself out. Voltron is a tight-knit and cohesive group, and it is difficult to imagine any rift large enough to sunder them. Keith and Shiro have a bond that has overcome a year lost to captivity and the fledgling steps into a centuries-long war unseen by their kind. Kolivan doubts that another near-death experience and some short-lived growing pains from Shiro’s return will be the breaking point when all else has failed. 

And yet, when Keith starts splitting his time between the Blades and Voltron in order to aid in their mission to track down the Empire’s quintessence, Kolivan knows that something is amiss. 

The boy is different. He remains diligent and fierce as ever, but an aura of tension follows him for vargas whenever he returns from the Castle, as though he is suddenly reluctant to settle into a groove that had once been familiar. The dark shadows under his eyes speak of the toll that it takes to balance the demands of both teams, perhaps more so because Keith dares not utter a word about what is happening behind the scenes when he leaves. 

Kolivan does not ask. 

It is not his place, he thinks. It is not his concern. Keith is grown enough to handle his own interpersonal disputes, and Kolivan inquiring about their nature would probably cause him to lock up more than if Kolivan had stayed silent. 

But it does not improve. Keith spends more and more time with them, and Kolivan loses track of the number of times he has watched the boy disembark his ship with an expression of… relief on his face, as though he’s been holding his breath the entire time that he has been away. 

The Blades are a strict military outfit who prioritize the mission above all else and shed all personal comforts in the pursuit of their goal. They discourage attachments and distractions of all forms. It is the antithesis of the environment of the Castle of Lions. 

And yet, Keith feels relieved when he returns. 

Kolivan cannot fathom why. 

But he cannot bring himself to ask. 

It is easy to forget, if only momentarily, how death nips at their heels with every step. 

Regris dies in front of Keith. 

Kolivan offers what little solace he can, but he can feel himself holding back even as the words spill out of his mouth. Part of him wants to let this burn sting for Keith, part of him wants to say do not do as he did. It is an ugly, bitter side of himself that he hasn’t seen in so long, but indulging it feels worse than resisting it had, and long after the fact, he wonders what he had been thinking in the first place. 

He certainly hadn’t been thinking clearly, but he doesn’t realize this until Keith has turned around and retreated to Voltron already. It isn’t until he has washed and eaten after returning from the mission that he learns secondhand that Keith had left, and another part of him gets angry. Another part of him says we weren’t done talking yet, even though Kolivan had never really started a conversation in the first place. 

Part of him thinks that he owed Keith one anyway. Part of him knows that he had envisioned that conversation in his head and decided before it began that he wasn’t capable of having it. 

Part of him is sick of lying to himself. 

And part of him mourns. For Regris. For what is, for what has been, and for what will never be, for lack of courage or lack of conviction. 

For the way that, lately, Kolivan finds himself between both, constantly wondering which way to fall, and fearing the gap in either direction. 

Merely one quintant later, Keith returns to the Blade with no explanation. Kolivan is waiting in the hangar when he lands in the small Altean pod that had brought him from the Castle. 

Curiously, he climbs out alone, donned in his Blade suit from head to foot, and his head tilts sharply when he sees that Kolivan is waiting for him, as if he did not expect Kolivan to be here. He drags his feet as he approaches and Kolivan frowns at the clear hesitancy in his step. 

When Keith finally stops before him, he does not square his chin and lift his head to meet Kolivan’s eyes, as he has always done, undaunted by their height difference. Instead, he keeps his gaze directed somewhere past Kolivan’s elbow. 

“You have returned early,” Kolivan offers. The boy shifts on his feet and does not respond. Kolivan eyes the slump of his shoulders and his suspicion grows. “Your mask?” Ordinarily the boy withdraws his mask at the earliest opportunity. That he hides his face now is out of character. Much is out of character. 

Finally, Keith releases a frustrated breath and taps behind his head. The suit recedes, unveiling that wild tangle of his hair, but it still conceals… Without thinking about it, Kolivan reaches out and grips his chin, tilting his head up. 

He almost regrets it. He gets a brief glimpse of bloodshot eyes, flushed cheeks, and a trembling jaw before Keith shakes him off and heads for the door. 

“Keith,” he calls. The boy pauses his gait, half-turning to listen, as if that is the best that he can do. 

Kolivan remains silent, offering an opening in turn, but it is quiet as the boy remains resolute, staring at the wall before them as if it holds an answer to his problem. 

“Can I stay?” he says finally. 

Kolivan blinks in surprise. “You do not need to ask.” 

What happened? 

Keith nods once, turning back toward the door. “I thought you would remain with them longer,” Kolivan hedges. “After Regris.” 

“I didn’t.” 

Kolivan feels his frown deepen. “Did you tell them?” 

He watches the back of the boy’s head shake. “It doesn’t matter now,” Keith says. 

And that is another thing without explanation: Keith has never lied to Kolivan. He does not do it well, and they both know so, and for no reason at all, the mutual understanding of that compels Kolivan to let the lie slide entirely.

“How long are you staying?” 

Keith stiffens, flexing his hand around his blade. “As long as I’m useful.” 

Kolivan frowns, weighing his options. “That wasn’t the question.” 

Keith whips his head at Kolivan and his expression would fall just short of a full on scowl were he not on the verge of tears. “I don’t know, Kolivan! Until we find Lotor, until we figure out this quintessence stuff… until the war is over! Until Sh--,” he stops yelling with a strangled gasp of air and turns on his heels, embarrassed by the outburst. “I don’t know,” he finishes quietly. 

“Okay,” Kolivan concedes. “You will stay here.” 

It does not matter how long he stays, but Kolivan was trying more so to glean why Keith seems convinced that he will not be visiting Voltron in the future, not whether he had the right to stay with the Blades. Keith has a place as long as their base is still standing and long after. Every Blade does. 

But it is obvious that now is not the time to have that conversation. Keith is practically vibrating where he stands from the effort of remaining in the same room as Kolivan, and Kolivan is not about to test his limits in order to pry into the inner workings of the fractured Voltron team. 

In any case, it is not pressing. 

If Keith is going to be staying here long term, then Kolivan has time, more of it than he ever anticipated having. He has time to wait until Keith is ready to come to him on his own terms. He has time to teach, time to discipline, and time to grow. 

The door closes while he’s lost in thought, leaving Kolivan alone in the hangar. He fights the wry twitch of his lip when he registers how stunningly rude he should find the gesture, but he doesn’t.

Instead, Kolivan thinks about the future. He thinks about horizons and the unknown places beyond them. He thinks about growing and guiding and learning in turn. 

He thinks about teaching Keith not to slam the door in his face. 

Even that, Kolivan would consider a triumph. Anything more, a miraculous gift from an uncertain universe. 

Only time will tell, as it always does. 

Chapter Text

For the first four days at the Blade of Marmora base, Kolivan does not say a word to anyone else, and they do not say a word to him. He has been told that he may reside at the base and participate in the daily training activities, but he will not be able to join any missions until he has passed his Trial. This is surely a fair arrangement, but his blood runs hot when he thinks about all the work that’s being done behind his back while he is forced to sit on his heels and wait for his time to come. 

His frustration only grows. He had worked so hard to confirm the mere existence of the Blades, and now that he stands at the gates, he is forced to pound his fist on the door and beg to be allowed inside. 

He doesn’t realize that this is having an effect on his performance until the end of his second movement, on the heels of getting slammed face first into the mat by a Blade twice his age in a third of the time that it had taken everyone else. A pin is an automatic win, but the Blade fails to release him after a generous two ticks. Kolivan growls and wrenches away, rolling into a crouch and snarling at his opponent. 

The elder Galra is already on his feet, his stance loose and his shoulders back, and he has the audacity to laugh, fangs long and white under the bright lights. 

“You will get nowhere with that attitude, Kolivan.” 

Kolivan grits his teeth but doesn’t look away. Lhanak, he remembers, that is his name. He is a senior Blade by a margin of 50 decaphoebs, with a distinctive scar etched diagonally across the length of his face and an unmistakable limp that ended a perfect gait and his participation in active missions. Even so, Kolivan does not enjoy being mocked, nor does he see the value in staying any longer, so he swallows his tongue and turns on his heel to leave. 

“Why did you end up here in the first place?” Lhanak muses, calling out after him. He almost sounds like he genuinely wants to know. 

So Kolivan stops, turns, and looks at him dead center. “I had nowhere else to go.” 

It is the truth. Kolivan had lost everything he’d ever known in one fell swoop. This is all that remains. 

Strangely, Kolivan encounters Lhanak again the next evening, just after he has concluded fighting Fyvna, an equally silent and insomniatic woman with a lethal left hook and no qualms about beating Kolivan into the floor and leaving without saying a word. They both prefer it that way. 

Kolivan turns to leave and finds that Lhanak must have watched his entire match, based on the leisurely way he leans against the wall and rolls a long straw of kisha between his teeth. 

“Your impatience betrays you, young Blade,” he says, “and even more so your skills.”

Kolivan exhales through his nose. Carefully. “I am not so young, and I am not a Blade.” 

Lhanak laughs again, but at least this time Kolivan is expecting it and forcibly lowers his own hackles. It appears that this is just how this Blade conducts himself interpersonally: cryptically and with the blind confidence that no one will ever challenge him on it.

A moment passes, and Kolivan assumes that the other Blade has gotten his fill of mockery for the day and goes to gather his things from the sideline. 

“I mean what I say, Kolivan,” Lhanak continues. “You have the necessary skills and dedication to pass your Trial, but your impatience drives you to an early defeat without reason.” 

“I am not impatient.” 

Lhanak hums and steps closer. “I know of your glorious arrival to the Blades, Kolivan, when you arrived at our base unescorted and screamed at the front doors until someone let you in. Many of my comrades were horrified by the fact that you’d found us on your own. Some wanted to eliminate you based on the principle of the matter. It is due to your incredible fortune that a select few saw your behavior as an act of passion and not outright treachery or apparent insanity. I believe that I find myself among them, which is why I am telling you this now: you will not pass your Trial if you continue like this.” 

It is a brutal sort of honesty, and for the first time in three decaphoebs, Kolivan gets the strangest urge to laugh and barely smothers it by exhaling harshly through his nose. No one has had the nerve to speak to him so plainly since Zayla, and he must assume that if anyone reminds him of her, then their judgement is likely to be trusted. 

Kolivan puts his fist against his breast and sinks into a slight bow. “What do you suggest, my elder?” 

Lhanak growls in pure, snide frustration and clicks his tongue as he lifts his walking cane and jabs it directly into the hollow of Kolivan’s collarbone until he straightens with a confused hiss, rubbing his shoulder. “To never attempt flattery again. I liked you more when you were raving at the gargoyles outside like a lunatic as if they were going to respond.” 

Kolivan huffs and narrows his eyes. This is a dubious figure to accuse him of lunacy. “It was an honest question.” 

Lhanak scowls. “Then you should sound more honest. And quit dropping your left elbow. It is a product of pure laziness and unbecoming of a Blade.” 

With that, the other Galra turns and gets halfway to the door before Kolivan can gather his thoughts and call out after him.

“Are you offering to help me?” 

Lhanak stops and looks back at him. “That is how these things go.” 

Kolivan is unmoved by that answer and nor does he find that it makes sense. 

“Why?”

Lhanak laughs at him again, but it carries no actual malice. He has deep lines around his mouth when he smiles that speak of a movement performed countlessly over the span of a lifetime. 

“Someone has to. This time, that someone is me,” Lhanak explains sagely. “You may understand one day.” 

Then, as if the thought just occurred to him, his head tilts back with another booming laugh. 

“Besides, Kolivan, who do you think opened the door for you when you arrived?” 

Kolivan trains with Lhanak every quintant after that. The man’s sense of humor is dubious, and his sadistic streak is sometimes concerning, but Kolivan cannot deny that his observational skills are impeccable. He quickly discerns that Kolivan had had zero formal training before arriving at the base and adjusts his instruction accordingly and without judgment. He has never once asked what Kolivan’s life was like before he joined the Blades.

Lhanak is an excellent mentor, whether or not Kolivan is easily frustrated by his mercurial attitude, or understands why he is dedicating so much time to a single recruit. The question looms even greater in his mind on the days that Lhanak’s limp is markedly more severe, and Kolivan cannot help but fixate on it. By the third occasion, he is so distracted that Kolivan subtly proposes that he call Fyna so that Lhanak may observe the two of them sparring instead. He must not be as subtle as he likes to think, given the knowing look on Lhanak’s face after Kolivan’s suggestion, but the elder Blade never calls him out on it. 

So he is not the worst mentor. 

Certainly, Lhanak always knows when Kolivan’s frustration is starting to build and stops the fight at once so that he can make cryptic declarations about patience and Kolivan’s lack thereof. 

“You fight ahead of yourself, young Blade,” Lhanak says. He gestures between himself and Kolivan. “We are both here, in this moment, and you,” he whistles and swings his arm in a wide arc to point at the opposite end of the room, “are way over there.” 

Kolivan pulls the towel away from his sweat-drenched forehead and fights the urge to scream into it. “What does that mean?” 

“That you are impatient,” Lhanak repeats. “You are so focused on the end in sight that you lose track of the moment at hand. Fortune-telling is a fool’s errand, Kolivan. Even the most educated guess will bow before the hands of fate.” A slow, manic smile crawls up Lhanak’s face, and Kolivan resists the urge to sigh. He knows what that look means--he’s about to be insulted. “Besides, you never predicted getting beaten day after day by a retired ol’ cripple like me, did ya?” 

 Kolivan sighs heavily through his nose. “No.” 

Lhanak hoots with laughter. Before Kolivan can react, the elder Blade tugs on his braid where it rests against his shoulder, still growing after his arrival to the base. Kolivan growls and attempts to slap his hand away, but he is too late. 

“I didn’t think so,” Lhanak says jovially. He sidles back to the other side of the ring and faces Kolivan. “Now, be a good student and do as I say. Remember: there is nowhere else but here. You do not have a past, and the future is yet to come.” Lhanak’s blade flashes and elongates into his sword, and like always, Kolivan cannot tear his gaze away from it. Lhanak smiles wolfishly at Kolivan. “If you want to see that future, you will master your present.” 

And so they go. 

Although it is a bitter pill to swallow, Kolivan improves remarkably under Lhanak’s instruction. Within a few movements, his matches with Fyvna start coming to a draw more than half of the time. That he might be getting closer to winning only increases Kolivan’s frustration, and Fyvna appears to notice every time his hackles come up and refuse to come down. Inexplicably, she never grows angry at the turn of events. Instead, she ends the match early, turns those exhausted eyes on Kolivan, and says things like, “The kanokva with the sharpest claws may get the hiyut, but loses the sa’nakorv,” which certainly must hold great meaning for her, but hardly ever rings a bell for him. 

While he has never heard of her sayings, their meaning becomes clearer over time. 

He has never asked how she came to be here, or where she is from. He has enough guesses, and it is probably not his place to ask. He chooses to play dumb. “What?” 

Fyvna stares back at him for a moment before she sighs. When she walks by, she tugs Kolivan’s braid, and he barely reacts. “Rest, Kolivan.” 

The door has already closed behind her by the time that Kolivan realizes he should respond. 

He says goodnight to an empty room. 

One day, Kolivan wakes up and realizes that he has been at the Blade of Marmora base for half a deca-phoeb. He is still not a Blade. Zayla’s face swims in his mind's eye before he awakens fully, soft with discontent, for she could never express disappointment with him fully, no matter how much he deserved it. What is taking so long? she seems to ask. 

He has no answer. He has a guess. He has an assumption. 

A varga later, Lhanak drives him to his knees halfway through their second bout. Kolivan gasps for air, bent over on the floor. In a blind fit of aggravation, he pushes away the Blade held to his throat with his bare hand, heedless of the hot line of pain that blooms over his palm. He seethes and breathes in equal measure, watching blood drip on the floor. 

“You don’t intend on letting me take the Trial,” he growls. Once he voices the words, his resolve only gets stronger. His anger balloons in size until it feels like it outgrows his entire body. “You never intended to.” 

Kolivan looks up, and Lhanak’s expression is unreadable. His Blade hangs at rest at his side. Kolivan cannot help but stare at it. 

“Not as you are now,” Lhanak says evenly. “You are not ready for the Trial.”

Kolivan growls. He clenches his hands into fists and focuses on the burn. “Is that not for me to decide?” 

Lhanak’s eyes flash. “Your arrogance proceeds you, young Blade, as does your impatience. I should not need to tell you that you are not ready. You are smarter than this.” 

“Arrogance,” Kolivan spits back incredulously. “That is not--” 

Lhanak smirks, but it lacks the bite that it usually has. “Oh, but it is,” he says lightly, interrupting Kolivan as if it is no question that he has the right to do so. His expression drops into complete neutrality. “Why are you here, Kolivan?” 

Kolivan frowns. “To become a Blade.” 

Lhanak shakes his head. “That is apparent. Why are you here?” 

“I just said why--” 

A deep growl rises from Lhanak’s throat, one that Kolivan is decaphoebs from being capable of producing, and one that still brings him to an absolute standstill. “You may evade every other aspect of your life, but you may not evade this. Why are you here?” 

“To become a Blad-” 

Lhanak limps closer in a flash and grabs his collar, dragging him close. “You. LIE. Why are you here!?” 

Kolivan breaks. “Vengeance!” 

Lhanak shoves him hard, and Kolivan falls back, barely catching himself with his hands. Then, the elder Blade stands, looking down at him. His expression holds nothing but disgust. “Is that still the case? Have you learned nothing at all?” His eyes scan Kolivan up and down. “Is that all there is to you?” 

It strikes Kolivan very suddenly and all at once: he feels like he has committed a grave error, but not that of an accidental mistake. It is much more personal than that. A strange feeling, like a close relative to panic, wells up in his chest and has him scrambling. He shakes his head. “You do not know what happ-” 

Lhanak cuts him off with a snarl, pushing the tip of his cane into Kolivan’s shoulder. Kolivan won’t admit how much it hurts. “You think I do not ‘know’?” he mimics snidely. “I know. Everyone here knows. They came for the same reasons, and yet you remain the only one who does not evolve.” 

“I don’t understand,” Kolivan says. He hopes that he does not sound as helpless as feels, but given the expression on Lhanak’s face, he is not sure that he succeeds. 

Lhanak backs off until he stands several feet away from Kolivan, well out of arm’s reach. It feels like a purposeful distance from someone who hasn’t cared about personal boundaries since day one, and it makes something in Kolivan’s chest seize up. 

Lhanak doesn’t look at Kolivan any longer. Instead, he grips his cane in a tight fist and speaks to the wall, suddenly subdued. His voice is impossibly quiet, echoing in the silent room. “Until you do, you will not pass your Trial. There is no room in the Blade of Marmora for a selfish soldier who cares only for his own gain. You may think that your thirst for vengeance is righteous. It is not. It is weakness masquerading as strength. It is a blindness that will get someone killed one day, and I will not stand idly by and watch another Blade die for no good reason.” 

Finally, Lhanak looks back at Kolivan. “Everyone comes here with nothing, Kolivan. They come because they have nowhere else left to go,” he explains. Lhanak frowns and shakes his head slowly. “That does not make this an empty place. It is a clean slate. It is for you to decide what you will make of it. You are young, and you have already lost things that are irreplaceable. They cannot be replaced by vengeance. They cannot be replaced at all. Trying so anyway, in spite of this fact, is perhaps the gravest insult of them all.” Lhanak pauses for a long moment, his eyes fixed on Kolivan. “Whomever you lost, Kolivan--do you truly believe that you honor their memory with vengeance?” 

Zayla surges to the front of his mind: her hands, delicately drifting over the wheat fields of his father’s farm; her laugh, peeling through the air clear as a bell as she played with his mother’s schoolchildren; her smile, gentle yet fierce and always just for him, tugging at her lips when she catches him staring; her eyes, dancing with joy, as her voice says something else. You and me, she says. We’re going to--. 

It is crushing to think of her in detail for the first time in so long. It is crushing to realize that he’s been trying to forget. As if she deserved that. As if it was possible. 

Kolivan crumples under the sheer weight of it until his forehead touches the floor. It steals all of the air from his lungs, and yet he thinks that he screams. He does not know for how long, or how loud, or how many times. He only knows that it cannot be stopped until it is over. 

Distantly, he’s aware of other sounds: a sigh, shuffling items, footsteps by his ear. He feels the distinct warmth of another living body sit next to him. It’s followed by a hand, settling over the nape of his neck and squeezing only once before lifting away. 

The torrential wave of grief pouring out of him slowly eases into something more manageable, but leaves him utterly exhausted and limp on the floor. He rides out the aftermath by focusing on the sensation of his hand being lifted, twisted, and turned, over and over. Lhanak is bandaging the wound on his palm. The silent act of kindness is so overwhelming that Kolivan cannot bear to open his eyes, for he doesn’t deserve to witness it in the first place, much less receive it, yet Lhanak does so anyway. 

When Lhanak finishes, Kolivan draws his hand back to his chest. Every part of him feels like an open wound, laid out on the training room floor. It is the instinct of a child to curl up and protect his middle. 

“Young blade,” he hears. The tone is light, but in no way unkind. “Sometimes, the only way out is through. From what I have seen, you are already halfway there, but you will not get to the other side alone. Do you understand? None of us can. The man who tries sacrifices the most important pieces of himself in the process. I have seen it before, and I do not want to see it happen to you. I’d like to think that you are meant for greater things, and I have thought so since I vouched for your recruitment the day that you arrived.” 

That gentle hand squeezes his nape again. Kolivan does not move, but a breath he’s been holding for phoebs tumbles out of him long and slow. 

“I do not think you want to do it alone, either,” Lhanak says. 

With that being his final word, Kolivan listens to Lhanak climb to his feet, grunting as he negotiates the movement with his bad leg. It is almost certainly aggravated after sparring with Kolivan for two vargas. 

Kolivan tracks the click-step-drag of Lhanak’s slow walk out of the room until the door seals behind him. 

The sound echoes in his ears long after it’s faded. 

Three nights later, well into the hours that they should be spending asleep, Kolivan pins Fyvna for the first time. For a moment, they are both so shocked that they simply blink at each other. 

It doesn’t feel like a victory until Fyvna, still pinned underneath him, lets out a sharp laugh. Her fangs catch over her bottom lip, and Kolivan realizes that it’s the first time he’s ever seen her smile. 

“About time,” she says. 

Kolivan releases her. He feels lighter than he can remember in a long time. “Knowledge or death,” he replies easily. 

Fyna makes a dismissive sound and rolls her eyes. “Maybe later, kanovka.” 

He does not know why she calls him that and he’s never asked. In any case, it does not sound cruel. In fact, it seems to be anything but. There is really no other explanation for why she has put up with him for so many nights. The realization comes up slowly and bowls him over in an instant, so obvious that Kolivan feels stupid in hindsight. He looks at her and says, “Thank you,” with as much gratitude as he can possibly convey. 

Fyvna hisses and smacks his arm. “Do not thank me for your own victory. How incredibly rude.” 

“That’s not what--” 

“I know, Kolivan.”

“Three on your right, two on the left.” 

Kolivan ducks into the alcove just ahead of him. He waits. Three. Two. Now . 

Simple enough. Kolivan stands from a crouch, kicks the remains of a sentry out of his path, and starts moving forward again. “How long?” 

“Six doboshes. I’m still in quadrant three.” 

Kolivan clicks his tongue. “Cutting it close,” he warns. 

“I got a little dis- oof - ow! motherfu- tracted. I’ll be there in three.” 

Kolivan pulls up short when he steps around a corner and faces four more sentries. He drops before they even lift their weapons, sweeping his leg to take down two. He uses the closest one as leverage, kicks off the wall, and sends the head of the last careening down the hallway. He pulls his blade free from the wreckage, wincing at the high-pitched screech of metal on metal. Sentries. So distasteful. 

He sets off again. Sixty ticks. He encounters two more sentries and takes them down in thirty. He sprints into the control room and swallows a sound when he realizes that it is empty. 

“You are late,” he says. 

There’s a harsh clang over his comm, followed by a startled yelp and a muffled curse that gets lost in translation. “I know. Minor change of pla--.” 

Kolivan rears his head back as an ear-splitting siren fills the room, pulsating lights throwing everything into blood red, dark shadows, blood red. His pulse spikes. “What did you do?” 

A small figure careens through the doorway, rolling in head over heels to avoid the wave of blaster fire that follows and takes out three computers and a desk chair before Kolivan slams the mechanism to close the door. 

Kolivan turns, searching, and a head pops up on the other side of the main control board. Keith lifts his hand in a dismissive wave that is probably supposed to be more reassuring than it is infuriating. “Wrong button,” he says. 

He doesn’t even try to sound sheepish. 

Kolivan closes his eyes, counts to three, and opens them again. “The entire ship is now aware of our presence. We must abort the mission.” 

Across the room, Keith tilts his head. Even covered head to toe in the Blades suit, he is incredibly easy to read. “ A presence,” the boy corrects. “Not ours.” 

Kolivan swallows a growl. “The surveillance system--” 

“Oh, I took care of that. Well, Pidge did. She gave me a--” 

Something large and heavy pounds at the locked door to the control room. Keith and Kolivan look at each other, the door, and each other again. During that time, Kolivan calculates the size of the ship, the number of sentries he has seen so far, and multiplies that by three. He puts his hand to his ear. “Davoc, be ready on the starboard side. Do not miss .” 

“Wait, what--” 

Kolivan strides forward, jerking Keith to the left with a strong tug on his wrist. When Keith stumbles, Kolivan uses the momentum to spin him around, back to chest, and locks his arm around the boy’s waist. “Close your eyes,” he says. He pulls the small block from his belt, plucks out the ring winking at the top, and launches it over his shoulder. 

He has just enough time to get his other arm around Keith before the observation window at their backs explodes. Between the force of the blast and the ensuing snap caused by the overwhelming power of empty space rushing into an open vacuum, it is a little shocking that Kolivan is able to maintain his grip on Keith as they spiral away from the explosion. 

Thankfully, Davoc is a nimble soldier with nerves of steel and the keen eye of a sharpshooter. In five ticks, he catches them in the tractor beam and starts reeling them back in. The loading bay door opens, the beam shuts off, and Kolivan lands on his back with an oof followed by an ack! as one hundred something pounds of hormonal half-Galra teenager slams into his chest, pointy elbows and all. 

Kolivan goes to sit up, and Keith rolls off him with a strangled moan. The boy’s hand flails for his neck, and Kolivan realizes what is happening just in time to look away as Keith proceeds to empty his stomach on the ship floor. He grimaces when the smell hits his nose. 

Once the hacking sounds subside, Kolivan turns back to him. On his hands and knees, Keith looks at him with an incredulous expression. He’s even paler than usual, and his eyes are big and wild. 

“I told you to close your eyes,” Kolivan points out. 

Keith does not find this amusing. “Ugh,” he groans. He flops over on his back, taking care to land away from the mess he’d just made on the floor. “That was insane .” 

“It would not have been necessary if you hadn’t made a mistake,” Kolivan snaps. Adrenaline rush gone, frustration has time to take its place. “We didn’t get the data we were looking for, and now we must start from square one again--” 

A small device clinks as it hits the floor in front of him. Kolivan quiets and picks it up with two fingers, holding it to the light. He narrows his eyes. “You--” 

He looks at Keith, but the boy stubbornly insists on avoiding eye contact. “I told you,” he says to the ceiling. “Minor change of plans. We had the wrong room. I found the right one.” His brow furrows, and he rubs at his temple. “By accident, I guess. But I did find the right room.” 

Kolivan exhales, long and slow, through his nose. Now is not the time for… whatever he feels inclined to do. He isn’t sure yet. 

“How did you know that for sure?” 

Keith shrugs one shoulder, pushing sweaty hair out of his face to direct a confused look at the ceiling. 

“It felt right.” 

“It felt right,” Kolivan parrots numbly. It felt right . Perhaps, when he had agreed to take Keith on as a Blade all those phoebs ago, he might not have thought it all the way through. Maybe if he had, he would’ve been more prepared for situations such as this.

The worst part is that when they get back to the base and upload the device into their server, the shipping logs for the single largest transportation hub in the Galra Empire spring to life before his very eyes. 

Keith was right. 

Having Keith at the Blade of Marmora base full time is a change of pace, one that tilts Kolivan off his axis even more so than the discovery of Voltron’s existence had in the first place. The first few quintants, the difference is little more than a jolt of shock when he attends morning training and his eyes have to drop several feet to find the top of the boy’s head during roll call. Of course, one is hardly ever aware that their routine is entering a state of flux, so Kolivan loses the thread between the way things were when Keith arrived, and the shape they settle into once he stays. 

Keith still hasn’t explained his sudden and semi-permanent sabbatical from Voltron, but the weight of it looms over his shoulders like a vast, unexplained shadow. Kolivan gleans through a few benign comments made in passing and several strained holocalls that Keith’s departure is something of an open wound, both for the boy and for the teammates he left behind. Kolivan cannot claim to understand the reasons why entirely, but he is able to gather enough: Shiro’s return had upended the power structure of Voltron, and in the jostling that ensued, rather than stay and fight, Keith had bowed out of the race entirely. 

It had taken one look for Kolivan to understand that it had never been a choice for Keith in the first place. When Keith had returned to the base on the heels of Regris’ death, the look on his face had been nothing short of resigned devastation. It is the sense of expectation that throws Kolivan for a loop, for it makes him wonder how long this had been brewing. How long had Voltron been in such a state of disrepair that Keith had finally been driven to leave? 

Kolivan doesn’t know, and he doesn’t ask. Instead, he focuses on the task at hand. He shows Keith to his permanent residence at the base and reminds him that they train every morning at ship’s rise sharp. Impatient as ever, Keith demands to know when they will leave on their next mission, but Kolivan isn’t about to take an emotionally distraught Blade into battle any more than he is going to sit Keith down and force him to explain what had happened in the first place, loosely-formed concern and curiosity be damned. 

In any case, they will not be ready for their next mission for at least two movements. Kolivan informs Keith of this and leaves him to his devices. 

He makes it three steps down the hallway before he pauses to consider what Keith’s devices may be. 

Kolivan shudders and shakes his head. 

Some questions are better left unanswered. 

On the second day, during their morning training, the boy gets pinned three times in a row by Ilun, his sparring partner. Naturally, she has a generous, teasing smile on her face all the while, which only succeeds in aggravating the boy even more, creating a toxic feedback loop that Kolivan grows tired of watching. 

During an intermission, Kolivan waves Keith over. The boy glares up at him through messy hair, the perfect picture of disgruntlement. Out of the corner of his eye, well over Keith’s head, Ilun winks.

“I would advise attacking Ilun from the right,” Kolivan offers. “She has a tendency to drop her elbow.” 

Keith quirks an eyebrow. “Why are you helping me? Is that fair?” 

It is hard not to sigh. Had he been this intractably cynical as a youth? He doesn’t think so.  

“Because you need it,” Kolivan replies evenly, “and her attitude annoys me.” 

For the first time in days, the shadows lift from Keith’s face. An almost-smile tugs at the boy’s lips. Suddenly Kolivan is positive that Keith will not be losing the next round. Such belligerence is a chaotic force, but propelled in the right direction, it can spell utter havoc on its enemies. 

This time, Keith takes Ilun down in forty-five ticks. Still kneeling on her back, he looks up at Kolivan and says, “Tell me how to do that again.” 

From the floor, her cheek pressed against the mat, Ilun tries her best to appear intimidating and bares her fangs, her eyes dancing with promises of revenge. 

Kolivan merely shrugs innocently. She will have to try harder than that. 

On the fourth day of his stay, Kolivan finds Keith training well into the night cycle, much like he had when he had first visited the Castle of Lions. Only the Blade of Marmora do not have gladiator droids, so instead the boy must settle for practicing forms in total and complete silence. 

Kolivan hovers out of sight near the doorway and observes the first night, but he does not stay long. There is something haunting about watching Keith move through the steps over and over. When he messes up, he lets out a sound of frustration, shakes his head at the floor, and returns to do it all over again. Sometimes, he looks down and doesn’t move for so long that Kolivan barely fights the urge to walk out and jar him into motion again. 

The scene sticks with Kolivan for vargas, playing out behind his eyelids on repeat, and it isn’t until the next day that Kolivan recognizes the feeling in his chest for what it is. 

That night, Kolivan leaves his room at the same time and goes for a calculated stroll. Sure enough, he finds Keith exactly where he’d left him the day before. This time, Kolivan scuffs his boot on the floor to announce his presence and pretends to be surprised when Keith whips his head up. 

“Care for a real partner?” 

Keith scrambles to his feet. He turns big, hopeful eyes on Kolivan, clenches his fingers into anxious fists at his side, and says, “Really?” with such poorly concealed eagerness that it pains Kolivan to hear. 

In any case, Kolivan knows that he’s a lost cause. He had been from the moment he’d laid eyes on Keith in that room, all alone and playing with pretend enemies for lack of anyone at all. 

If the price he must pay is a couple hours of missed sleep and a few bruises, Kolivan will take it. The investment is returned tenfold anyway: he gets more time training Keith, spends less time worrying about the boy impaling himself in the middle of the night, and he never has to witness such a scene as he had that first day. 

That, he thinks, is more than enough. 

They do not spend every night training in silence. Initially, every session is a practice in providing instruction specific to small fighters with lightning fast reflexes and little sense of self-preservation, which Kolivan grows very proficient at. However, one cannot be inclined to fight every second of every day, and quickly enough, Keith starts letting his guard down little by little. 

For once, Kolivan arrives, and Keith is not waiting for a lesson or a battle. He sits with this back against the wall, his legs sprawled out in front of him. When Kolivan approaches him, the boy doesn’t bother getting up. Instead, he cranes his head back and looks up at Kolivan with tired eyes. 

“I don’t want to fight today,” he says. 

Kolivan scans him up and down. He finds little of interest beyond the usual bumps and scrapes. The purplish bruises underneath his eyes, however, seem a shade darker than they normally are. Subtly, Kolivan shifts his weight between his feet while he thinks. 

“Do you have something else in mind?” he asks. 

Keith doesn’t look away while he considers the question, and Kolivan wonders if the boy is aware of how much his every emotion plays across his face. He must not be, Kolivan decides, or such a look of bone tired exhaustion and frazzled vulnerability would never be displayed for Kolivan to observe. 

“Not really,” Keith says finally. He looks away. “I just didn’t want to be…” 

He neglects to finish his sentence, and Kolivan takes pity and picks it up on his behalf. “There are better places than this for sitting,” he offers. Without waiting for a response, he exits the room. Right on cue, he hears the patter of small feet chasing after him. 

Kolivan leads Keith to one of the observation decks set aside on the base. It is out of the way and rarely occupied, which is why it is Kolivan’s favorite spot for stargazing when he cannot find rest. Keith appears to like it as well, given the awed little hiccup he makes when they round the bend and are faced with the full breadth of the Kaisa Nebula, sprawling across the entirety of the glass ceiling. He’s so captured by the sight that Kolivan has to tug his sleeve so that he doesn’t trip over a couch while he’s too busy looking up. 

Keith turns his gaze from the night sky to Kolivan. Breathless excitement is written all over his face, and for no reason at all, Kolivan finds it inexplicably painful to look at. 

“It’s beautiful,” Keith says. 

Kolivan nods. “It is.” 

Having said everything they need to say, Keith flops over one of the couches with his characteristic combination of lanky clumsiness and baffling grace. They sit in silence and observe the night sky until Keith’s eyelids spend more time closed than open. Kolivan helps him shuffle all the way back to his room for fear that he may get lost in his sleepy haze or cut a corner too sharply and decide to camp out in the hallway for the rest of the night. 

Kolivan pushes Keith into his room with a gentle shove. The door closes in front of the boy’s shoulders, and Kolivan stands there momentarily, staring at his still-raised left hand. What are you doing? he asks. 

What are you doing?

He surfaces into something halfway between a dream and a memory, half-awake in the long grass of his father's wheat field and pleasantly warm under the heat of his planet's two suns. He inhales slowly and watches Zayla's head rise with the motion, heavy on his chest. He can feel her hand drawing aimless shapes over the fabric of his shirt. 

"Lhunan," she says. 

"Too common." 

"Thessaray!" 

"Much too ancient. He will be mocked relentlessly by his classmates."

Zayla laughs, and he can feel her shoulders shake with the force of it, tucked under his arm. "Konovka!" 

Kolivan lets out an exaggerated groan and spins her around in one movement while she squeals and hits his arm in a half-hearted protest. Their positions switched, he rests his cheek against her stomach and looks up at her. "Hardly. Father's ego would never recover from the honor. Besides, any child of ours should have a new name." 

"A new name!" she mocks playfully. When Kolivan only hums agreeably in complete seriousness, Zayla's expression softens. She reaches out and traces the line of his brow. "An entire universe of beings, and you want to find a new name."

"Only one of those beings will be my son. Therefore, he deserves his own name." 

"I guess we will have to keep searching," she says. Her hand completes its journey from the crown of his head to the point of his chin and cups his cheek. He opens his eyes and finds hers, staring at him with more warmth than both of the suns combined.

He knows that face so well that he need not guess at what she is thinking about, but the question rises in his chest anyway. "Do you think that we will do well?" he asks quietly. 

Zayla hums sweetly and the sound sinks into his bones, anchors him to the earth. There is a reason why there is no one else in the world that he would be willing to undertake such a perilous journey with.

"I think we will try our best," she says, "and that is all that matters." 

Although Keith adapts to life with the Blades with remarkable poise and minimal cultural faux-pas, his former status as a paladin of Voltron is a beast of an issue that lurks beneath the surface, ready to lunge out and remind Kolivan that transitions like the one that Keith had made are rarely ever so smooth. 

They are still at war, one that they have been losing for the entire time that it has been waged. Tracking quintessence is a mission that strides forward and stumbles back in fits and starts. They lose soldiers. They win small planets on the outer rim. They reach a stalemate and scramble to start over elsewhere. 

When Kolivan opens the holo to speak with Voltron, Keith lurks in the background and rarely voices his presence. When he does, it is stilted and short-lived. He never asks to stay longer so that he can talk about more than just battle plans with his former teammates. 

To Kolivan’s growing confusion, Voltron doesn’t either. On their own, the Blue, Yellow, and Green paladins inquire about Keith’s health with clear concern in their voices, but they seem too timid to demand that Kolivan grant Keith alone time with the holo (not that he would deny this request; he would welcome it). Even the Princess checks in with a furrowed brow to ask if Keith is adjusting well. 

Shiro never says a word. 

It is like Keith had never existed, as though it had never even occurred to the twice-minted Black Paladin to ask about the well-being of a boy who he’d once tried to fight an entire army for. 

Kolivan doesn’t understand why. Given the way that Keith completely disappears after these meetings, he must assume that either Keith doesn't know as well, or that he does, and the reason why is too unbearable to think about. Kolivan finds himself studying the boy’s shoulders harder and harder every time he leaves, wondering what he truly thinks about all of it, what he would say if Kolivan just asked. 

This kind of stalemate cannot go on forever, he knows. Something is bound to break. Whether it will be due to Keith growing tired of keeping his silence, or a close-call that reminds them all of the fragile state of their continued existence, it is difficult to say. He can only hope that it isn’t the latter. 

As time goes on, as Keith settles into his life as a Blade and settles deeper into adamant denial that anything is amiss in the first place, Kolivan cannot shake the thought that if anyone should say something, it is himself. 

But he doesn't, and Kolivan tells himself that he is waiting for something. What that is, he doesn't know, yet the presence of it looming in the back of his mind is more than enough to put him at an absolute standstill, killing the words rising in his throat before he can ever give them a voice. 

It is nothing to be proud of--that much, he knows for certain. 

Unless they are on a mission, Kolivan sees Keith during their morning training and often not again until well into the night cycle for their second round of sparring. The time in between is a great unknown that Kolivan does not consider until one day he walks into the lounge that some of the Blades use in their leisure time and finds Ilun and Davoc introducing Keith to the great monstrosity that is holovid entertainment produced under the great thumb of the mighty Empire. 

“So Gheela just mated with Broder but this Broder isn’t Broder; he is Khiyama’s long lost evil twin who was killed during the fourth Great Unrest?” Keith looks up from where he had been tracking the plot on his fingers. “Is that right?” 

Davoc nods sagely. “It was the fifth Great Unrest, but you are correct.” 

Keith’s eyes flare. “There were five Great Unrests?” 

On the floor next to them, Ilun rolls her eyes and waves a hand dismissively. “The Empire has mislabeled every revolution in the past ten thousand decaphoebs as an ‘Unrest’. There were many more than that.” 

“There were more ?” Keith asks, but Davoc makes a loud sound. “This is my favorite part! There he comes!” 

“There who comes?” 

Ilun snorts and rolls her eyes. “The damn fool that they chose to play Zarkon.” 

All three of them pivot their heads at the time to watch, and Kolivan finds himself pausing in his journey to find leftover skiva to join them. On screen, the actor playing Zarkon strolls on screen: handsome, righteous, and kingly enough to run the most benevolent dictatorships of them all. He makes an empowering speech to his men about such things as bravery, honor, and loyalty to one’s Empire in the face of the great evil that are those who wish to rebel against his rule. 

It is riveting, in its own perverse manner, but Keith manages to skewer their concentration with a single, absent-minded comment. 

“Zarkon is way shorter than that.” 

The holo is muted. The temperature in the room drops several degrees. Several other Blades who had been lurking nearby and pretending not to watch with them all stop what they are doing. 

Kolivan hangs his head. Rubs his temple. 

“Keith,” Ilun says lightly, although her accent always makes it sound like Keef’a , “how do you know the height of the evil emperor?” 

Completely unaware of what he has done, Keith wrinkles his nose. “We fought once. I’m pretty sure he’s not that tall.” 

“You fought Zarkon?” Davoc sputters. The emphasis on the past-tense is clear, even though there is hardly a need. No one in the lounge, on the base, or even three galaxies away, has ever had the fortune of fighting Zarkon and living to tell the tale. 

Suddenly conscious of the way that he has drawn the attention of the entire room, Keith shrinks into the couch. “I was in Red at the time, so it doesn’t really count.” 

Davoc and Ilun look at each other and have an unspoken conversation that leads them both to turn their gaze on Kolivan at the exact same time. Their faces do not ask is he telling the truth? but rather why did you let him do that ? as if Kolivan had any choice in the matter. 

Kolivan shrugs. “I was not there. Do not look at me.” He snags a piece of skiva from the counter and makes his retreat. 

Of course, he cannot leave without saying his piece. 

“But the boy is right. Lest he wore platform shoes in battle, that man would not reach my chin.” 

The door seals behind him, but not before a flurry of noise explodes in his wake. The other Blades are undoubtedly accosting Keith for the tale of this great battle with the emperor. 

But Keith had been doing just fine before he had arrived, and he’ll do just as well after Kolivan leaves. 

With that thought in mind, Kolivan departs to eat his skiva in peace. 

“Koli- gah! You don’t need to press that hard-” 

“Then stop leaking .” 

“I can’t just will myself to stop bleeding! Can any species do that?” 

Kolivan frowns when he pulls away the gauze. Still going. “A superior one, yes.” He plants the wad of bandages back over Keith’s forehead, heedless of his squirming. “Humans obviously are not. Why won’t this stop?” 

“Head wounds bleed a lot!” 

“Clearly,” Kolivan growls. “And here I thought yours was too dense to break.” 

Keith attempts to glare, but the effect is rendered null when one of his eyes is caked shut with blood. “Rude.” 

“Perhaps next time you will refrain from attempting to ride a wild zyldra beast as a means of escape,” Kolivan replies. How was he supposed to prepare for that? Who does that? 

Keith has the audacity to grin at him, though the intent is once again marred when his teeth are stained pink with blood. The effect is more feral than anything, which he is sometimes. A feral little boy. Kolivan is a fool to forget this. “I think ‘attempt’ is the wrong word. I did it.” 

“That was not a success. You are pouring blood from your head.” 

Just as Keith opens his mouth, Kolivan is saved from another smart remark by the sound of the ship doors decompressing and sliding open as they land in the hangar. “Perfect,” he says, more to himself, but also as an announcement to Keith as he hauls the boy to his feet, one hand still clamped over his wound, and starts marching him to the infirmary. When Keith makes a halfhearted attempt to wriggle free, Kolivan growls and catches his other shoulder. He has half the mind to throw the boy over his shoulder and be done with it, but by now he is fully aware that Keith feels some sort of compulsive need to resist care even when he needs it, and even more so when he wants it. 

It is a relief to step into the infirmary. “Glivik!” 

The doctor turns to them, her eyebrows shooting up when she gives them a once over. Kolivan pushes Keith forward like an offering, which results in an awkward stumble as Kolivan’s hand is still pressed against his head. “Fix him.” 

Kolivan gladly releases his hold when Glivik slaps his hand away to examine the wound. “What did you two get up to now?” 

“An innovative form of horseback riding.”

Glivik quirks her ear. “What is - ” 

“Ignore him,” Kolivan interrupts, crossing his arms. “He is being coy.” 

Glivik rolls her eyes, but it doesn't sway her focus as she begins cleaning bright red blood from a pale forehead. She makes a half-hearted grumble in warning when Keith squirms under her hand, and the boy falls still with a resigned huff, slumping his shoulders and closing his eyes to let her work without a single protest. She lets out a pleased sound and pats his head in response. 

Kolivan feels an absurd stab of resentment at the display. Keith is never that obedient with him. With Kolivan, he always wants to put up a fight, even when they both know that Keith is going to heed his advice, whether it takes three ticks or three vargas, as though he puts up a fight just to prove that he can, just to see how far he can push. Kolivan has no explanation for it. He can only add it to the growing list of things that he's still learning about Keith, questions that will find their own answers given the time to see them through. 

"Is there anything else I should know about?" Glivik asks. 

"I'm fine-" 

Kolivan barely breaks his step on his way out of the room. "Check his ribs if you would, Glivik. He is prone to getting thrown into every available surface." 

"Hey! Ow - okay, that hurt." 

Just as he'd thought. 

“Yield.” 

Keith gives a half-hearted squirm, one arm bent behind his back in an unbreakable hold, before he presses his forehead into the mat. He growls something under his breath that Kolivan can barely hear but recognizes.

“What does that word mean?” he asks suddenly. “You say it often, but the translators do not offer an equivalent in Common. It sounds like fu- ” 

“Nothing!” Keith yelps. His pale skin rapidly flushes red. “It’s nothing. It’s a word. An English word.” 

Kolivan releases him finally, letting Keith roll out of his grip. “That did not answer my question.” 

The boy stalls by fetching two water packs and a towel from the bench on the sidelines. Kolivan silently takes the offered pouch when Keith returns and slides down the wall to six next to him with an explosive sigh. 

They rest in companionable silence for a long moment, catching their breath and absorbing the ambient sounds of the base. 

“It’s a swear word. Like, a curse. Do Galra have those?” 

Kolivan blinks. 

He barely swallows the laugh that threatens to burst from his lungs and turns into some sort of strangled snorting sound. He cannot help it. 

“Yes. We do,” he confirms. He eyes Keith’s sheepish posture and his nose twitches with the effort of containing his amusement. “I see you have a great appetite for such language, then.” 

Keith sits up straight at that, all embarrassed indignation, sputtering about how no he doesn’t… okay maybe when he gets thrown into a mat face first eight times in a night, thank you Kolivan. 

Two days later, thanks to the short memory of youthful confidence, Kolivan catches Keith in a last-second pin and the boy lets out a stream of furious curse words, muttered against the wall. 

“Such vulgar language,” Kolivan remarks.

Right on cue, Keith flushes and launches to his own self-defense, but when he notices Kolivan’s expression, his face twists into a sort of rueful, glaring pout and he hisses something fierce under his breath. 

Kolivan lets his ears twitch up, exaggerates his gasp. “I can derive the meaning of that one, I think.”

Keith squawks all over again, throwing his hands up, and Kolivan should not get as much amusement out of it as he does, but space is a cold, humorless place, and sometimes you have to take warmth wherever you can find it. 

Unfortunately, he is not alone in thinking this way. A movement goes by, and in the face of his own defeat, Keith spits out a Galran swear so obscene that even Kolivan would hesitate before saying it in mixed company. Kolivan sits on the boy’s back until he promises to never utter the word again and only releases him once he surrenders the name of the Blade who had taught him such profanity in the first place. 

Ryker . 

Conveniently, they have a meeting the next day. Before it begins, Kolivan catches Ryker standing alone and takes the opportunity to corner him. “Do you find it amusing to teach the boy about the absolute worst of your heritage, kye’cha ?” 

Ryker’s ears twitch back at his word use before realization washes over his face. He stares somewhere over Kolivan’s shoulder while he feigns pondering the question. 

“Yes. I do.” 

Kolivan exhales and tries to relax his shoulders. He should not be this aggravated. “Then don’t. The boy will land himself in a… bar fight,” he finishes lamely.  

A wicked smile crawls over Ryka’s face. He looks much too delighted. “Oh, I think the little Blade would be alright, don’t you?” 

Kolivan now realizes that this had been a wasted endeavor. Kolivan is only one man, and his comrades are determined to corrupt the boy. He doesn't stand a chance. 

“You need to take a break.”

Keith frowns from where he leans against the doorframe. He has a tendency to hover at the threshold of every room that he enters. It’s a quality that Kolivan used to find rather irritating, a habit worth breaking, but now it speaks of greater implications. He doesn’t enjoy thinking of where they might lead. 

“Am I not performing well?” 

Kolivan doesn’t look up from the datapad. “It is not a matter of your performance. You need a break.” 

At the horizon of his gaze, he watches Keith shift on his feet. “No, I don’t. I feel fine. I’m ready to go out again.” 

Kolivan swallows the urge to sigh and looks up. “I don’t care how you feel. You’re taking a break. Do other things, Keith.” 

“Other things?” Keith presses. He gestures vaguely into the air. “What other things? This is a military base! I’m a Blade!” 

That tone leaves much to be desired when it comes to addressing his superior officer, but Kolivan is merely struck with the urge to strap Keith to a horizontal surface until he falls asleep. The word cranky floats to the forefront of his mind. 

“Sleep, perhaps. Visit your friends at the Castle of Lions. Train. Fly. Things like that. It is not my responsibility to dictate your free time, only to ensure that you have it.” 

The clack of Keith’s teeth grinding together when Kolivan mentions Voltron is grating and unpleasant, and Keith sidesteps his suggestion. “What do you mean by fly?” 

“You appear to enjoy flying very much,” Kolivan offers. “Take a ship and fly. They are nondescript ships. We are in a liberated part of the galaxy.”

Keith mulls over this idea and the shadows start lifting from his face. “I forgot what it’s like to fly when no one’s shooting at me.” 

“A novel concept,” Kolivan replies. 

Through his eyelashes, he watches as Keith forms a fist with his left hand, runs his thumb over his fingers, and takes a deep breath. 

“Would you go?” 

Kolivan is rather thrown by the question, and his response comes without thought as he puzzles over the map he’s been looking at for three vargas. “I do not have time for that.” 

The boy’s ever-present bouncing comes to an abrupt halt. His hand falls from the door frame, and he rocks one step back into the hallway. 

“Right,” he hears. There’s a long pause. “Am I dismissed?’

Keith flees the room at his nod, but his footsteps come to an abrupt halt and turn toward Kolivan’s office again. When he returns, his head is down, and he doesn’t look up as he sets a small bundle on Kolivan’s desk. “I forgot-. Kya snuck me extra for some reason.”

Before Kolivan can respond, Keith has already left the room.

The interaction follows him as he completes the rest of his work for the evening. He is not attuned to the nuances of human behavior, and Keith appears to be an outlier, even among his own species, more so because he straddles two at the same time. It doesn’t become clear until his attention drifts to the skiva that Keith had left on his desk, crumbling at the edges due to its smuggled journey from the cantina. 

A misstep, perhaps. 

Kolivan pockets the pastries and sets out for the residential halls. As he had presumed, Keith is awake and answers the door. 

“There is a nebula in the next sector called the Sword of Ithred. It is considered sacred to the Galra. You should see it.” 

Keith squints up at him. “Right now?” 

Kolivan starts walking away, and Keith jogs to catch up to him. He’s really quite short, and Kolivan forgets. 

When Kolivan instructs him to pilot, the boy takes to the task with relish, maxing out the thrusters and swooping around asteroids just because he can. There is a reckless abandonment to the way that he flies, but it’s rooted in singing confidence and unbridled joy. In the aftermath of a wild turn, he smothers his exhilarated laughter by biting down hard on his lip, as if he’s embarrassed to show how much he’s enjoying himself. 

“It is clear why the Red Lion chose you as her pilot,” Kolivan says. 

From the corner of his eye, he watches Keith’s posture stiffen, but he offers no response. 

Eventually, the Sword of Ithred dawns before them, a massive and sprawling nebula that fills the view screen the closer that they approach. Its namesake is clear. The long arc of the sword, strong and burning blue, shimmers in the distance.

 Keith falls still with a breathless sound. His eyes are wide with wonder. 

Watching Keith see something so majestic for the first time plucks a strange chord in Kolivan’s chest, so perhaps, when Kolivan tells the story, he adds a little flourish. Almost every interaction that Keith has had with his heritage lives and operates in the context of a war, and this bothers Kolivan for some reason, but he cannot place it. In lieu of an answer, he offers the skiva . 

After they dock the ship and enter the hangar, they slow to a complete stop at the juncture where they will part ways for the evening. It is quite for a moment as Keith shifts on his feet before Kolivan, subtly rocking side to side. He’s come to recognize it as a behavior that Keith exhibits when he’s working up the courage to say something. The boy never flinches before he acts, but the same cannot be said for what he shares aloud. 

But Keith must locate that bravery he was gathering because the boy looks up and smiles at him, undeniably pleased. “Thank you. That was incredible. I never thought I’d see something like that in person. Thank you for showing me. If you--if you ever want to go again, I’m there.” 

He watches as Keith sways on his feet again, rocking his weight from side to side one more time. A faint pink color spills over his cheeks and turns the tips of his small, rounded ears bright red. He takes a deep breath, ducks his head, and says, “Anyways. Goodnight.” 

As Kolivan watches him walk away, he’s struck with the realization that Keith had sought his company, not because he had a strategic advantage to gain from it, but because he wanted it.

Kolivan forgets - Keith is lost. He’s alone and stranded on the other side of the universe from his home planet. He’s unbearably young sometimes, even having accomplished feats of men three times his age. Recently, something had driven a wedge between him and the only family that he’d ever known. 

What feels like millennia ago, Kolivan had found himself in the same position. He had chosen to withdraw, baring his teeth against the world and refusing to allow anything close enough that it would hurt to lose again in the first place. 

But Keith is not like Kolivan, even despite their shared life experiences. 

In the face of his own loss, Keith chooses to reach out. 

Kolivan grapples with the thought that this might make Keith better in some indefinable, intrinsic way, than he could ever hope to attain, but the notion does not come from a place of envy. It is a comparison that gives him a lightness of spirit. 

Better falls short of encompassing the scope of Kolivan’s realization. It is a start, but there is something closer to the truth, something he is strangely unresistant to admitting. 

Braver. 

Keith is braver.

It is inevitable that a mission would come and provide a stress test like no other to Keith and Kolivan's partnership, but that does not mean that Kolivan is any more prepared for it once the moment arrives. Along with Davoc and Ifer, they had infiltrated a Galra military base in a remote quadrant of the next galaxy over in search for more clues about what the Empire is doing with the massive amounts of quintessence they've slowly been accumulating. Their presence is revealed just as they are moving to escape, and an exercise in stealth becomes the kind of harrowing fight for their lives that turns every tick into a varga as they burn through sentries and dodge enough blaster fire to take down a building. 

Kolivan would not have survived this long as a Blade without the understanding that at any point, his life could be become forfeit, and he will have to make his choices accordingly for the sake of the mission. 

That does not mean that it doesn't catch him by surprise. 

They are so close. Davoc and Ifer are already climbing into their ship, and Kolivan and Keith need only traverse through one more room before they can follow, but everything comes to an absolute, gut-wrenching halt when Kolivan stumbles only once and feels a wound tear through his middle with enough force to flatten him to the ground. 

He falls. 

Keith skids to a stop so quickly that he trips over his feet and ends up on his hands and knees in front of Kolivan. The boy is no wilting flower. He understands the reality of their situation instantly, and Kolivan doesn't need to see his face to know that it is true. Despite that, Keith shouts Kolivan's name in a voice stripped bear with horrified shock and hovers shaking hands over the hole that gushes blood through Kolivan's suit. 

Kolivan looks at him. Looks at the door. 

"Go! You need to go! Now, Keith!" 

His heart pounds. His vision shakes. Keith doesn't move. 

"Kolivan, I can't leave you!" 

Kolivan growls and grips the boy's arm like a vice. "You can and you will. Go!" 

Keith doesn't move. He shifts into a crouch. His head tilts towards the door, where the commotion promises a storm of sentries a dozen strong ready to ambush them. 

A wage of pure, unadulterated rage sweeps through Kolivan's body. His hand tightens around Keith's wrist until his claws break through fabric and draw blood. 

“ LEAVE!” 

A red haze fills his vision in ever-increasing waves. Kolivan shudders through the pain. He is running out of time. He has to try again.

“You are a failure of a Blade if you do not-”

“Sorry, Kolivan,” Keith interrupts. He doesn’t even bother looking back before he leaps over Kolivan and disappears from sight, charging for the door behind them. 

Kolivan screams, slamming his hand against the floor in an absolute fury. In the next tick, a heady wave of dizziness washes over him, and he sinks to the floor. 

The last thing he see is the ceiling, spinning in slow circles over his head. The last thing he hears is the sound of a Blade hitting metal and Keith's voice, twisted in rage and pain. The last thing he thinks is please no- 

The last thing he feels is regret. What an inane way to die, he thinks. Feeling regret. He does not go out in resigned glory, as he thought he would. He only feels a deep, all-consuming regret at the strength of his own profound failure.

How frustrating. How cruel. How unfair. 

When Kolivan wakes up in the infirmary, he is only mildly surprised. Glivik gives him one last check up and sends him on his way with a firm recommendation to avoid throwing himself in front of blaster fire the next time. He asks if anyone else was brought to the infirmary, and the doctor says no. His head still aches, and his recollection of the mission is erratic at best. Most vividly, he remembers the heart-stopping fear that had twisted into outrage when he had realized that Keith had stayed back for him. 

Keith had never even considered leaving Kolivan behind, and it infuriates him. It fills his body with a surging heat unlike anything he’s experienced in a long time. It is the bitter sting of failure. Regret. He’s failed entirely in everything he vowed to teach Keith. He stews in this realisation as he sits behind his desk in the darkness, and the feeling swells in his chest like a massive bubble. He hates it. It’s too many things at once, all jumbled together. He’s not accustomed to being so off-center. 

There’s a knock at his door, and he hopes desperately that it’s not Keith. He’s not sure that he’s ready to handle that interaction yet. 

Fortunately, it is the two other Blades that had accompanied him on the mission, Davoc and Ifer. He calls them in and offers his gratitude for their role in his rescue. He concludes their portion of the debrief. The rest of it will have to come from Keith, but he’s inclined to wait until the following day. To his surprise, Davoc hovers in the doorway with a pinched expression on his face, shifting his weight from side to side.  “Permission to speak freely, sir?” 

Kolivan lifts one eyebrow. Davoc has certainly never requested such a thing before, but Kolivan has always accepted constructive criticism and outside input, so long as it is justified. “Granted.” 

Davoc frowns and speaks slowly. “The kit was very distraught, sir, after your… conversation .” Davoc’s voice twists sharply on the last word, as though it’s something he has to spit out. “You lost consciousness soon after. It frightened him to distraction. I have never seen him in such a state.” Davoc’s expression darkens, and his eyes finally meet Kolivan’s. “This is not to say that he didn’t perform his duty admirably. He did. He saved your life, sir.” 

“Do not hesitate, Davoc. If you wish to say something, say it plainly, without fear.” 

Davoc clenches his jaw. “Keith went to great lengths to save your life and you screamed in his face for it."

“Keith disobeyed a direct order from me and violated the founding principle of our organisation.” 

Davoc continues as though he hasn’t spoken at all. 

“He knew that, sir, and yet he did it anyway,”

Kolivan feels as though he’s missed the point, but Davoc exhales like he’s already made it, so he dismisses them both. He thinks he understands the general message, but it is something that he will have to sort out with Keith. 

Kolivan is inclined to wait until his anger has died down to a manageable simmer, but the evening passes him by and it still hasn’t dissipated. He’s never been one for stalling, so he decides to track down Keith and address the issue immediately. 

It is quite late in the night cycle, but the boy isn’t in his room, although strangely, all of his belongings are spilling out of a bag sitting near his bed. Kolivan haunts the residential hallways, peeks into a silent training room, and finally locates him on the observation deck. Keith is sprawled on one of the lounge chairs, gazing up at the endless expanse of stars. His expression is calm, but his knuckles drum the floor in a nervous, repetitive tic. 

When Kolivan approaches, Keith scrambles from the couch like he’s been caught committing a crime. He crosses his arms over his chest and hides his face with his hair, staring at his feet as he scuffs the floor with his boot. Kolivan has never seen him so blatantly apprehensive, so thoroughly rebuked. Keith has always been unflinching in the face of criticism, quick to rise to his defense if he feels that he was justified, reluctantly acquiescent if he feels that he wasn’t. Kolivan does not see that person anywhere in the room.

It occurs to him with a sickening jolt that Keith almost seems frightened of him now. 

He does not want that. He does not want that at all. 

They stand at an impasse until Keith takes a deep breath, lifts his head, and blurts out, “I don’t regret it. I know that you’re mad, but I don’t regret going back for you.” He clenches his jaw and glares somewhere over Kolivan’s shoulder like a man awaiting his execution. “So if you want to kick me out for disobeying a direct order, I get it. I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out.” 

Kolivan feels like all of the air has been sucked out of the room. Keith had thought that the cost of saving Kolivan’s life would be getting kicked out of the Blades, and he’d done so anyway. 

“Keith,” he starts. He’s vastly misread this situation. He suspects that his mouth drops open until he closes it with an audible click. He takes in Keith’s disheveled appearance, the wicked bruise curling around his left eye, the way he seems to vibrate where he stands. 

“I’m not--I’m not cut out for this. I’m sorry. I can’t leave anyone behind. I couldn’t leave you behind. I could never leave you behind,” he babbles. A high-pitched sound of distress slips from his throat, and Keith swallows it with a choked growl. He stammers, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” covers his eyes with his hands and spins on his heels, turning away from Kolivan. “I’ll leave, I promise. I’ll go. I’ll figure it out. Thank you for trying.” 

Keith clenches his fists at his sides, lowers his head, and starts walking away. 

“Where are you going?” Kolivan calls out. Keith freezes, but he doesn’t respond. He’s allowed Keith to spiral while he’s been appraising the situation, but he has a handle on what is happening now. “Come back here.” 

Even though he’s committed himself to leaving, Kolivan’s voice still demands enough authority to make him turn around. He hides his face beneath all that dark hair and shuffles back to Kolivan. “Look at me,” he says, tilting Keith’s head up by the chin. He’s the picture of rejection; bloodshot eyes, quivering lips, and tear-stained cheeks. Kolivan puts a heavy hand on Keith’s shoulder and steers him towards the couch. For some reason, he doesn’t want to have this conversation while looming over Keith’s head. He’s frightened enough. 

“Do you understand why I was angry?” 

Keith blinks. “I disobeyed your order.” 

“I do not want anyone to die because they are trying to save me,” he says, but it feels like it falls short. “I do not want you to die because you were trying to save me.” That still seems inadequate, but it will have to do. 

Keith chews on his bottom lip and frowns at him. “I had to try.” 

“Do not sell yourself short. You succeeded. This time. I worry that next time, you might not.” He reaches out and taps underneath Keith’s chin when he starts hanging his head again. It’s a wonder that so much passionate conviction and abject loneliness can jostle for space inside such a small boy. “I am grateful, Keith, that you saved my life. I do not mean to eclipse that with my anger.” 

The truthful word would be fear but Kolivan simply cannot say that. Instead, he says, “I never wanted you to leave. You will always belong here. You are a Blade for life.” 

That seems to stun Keith into a sort of daze, as if Kolivan could not have said anything further from what he expected. A soft pink color fills his pale cheeks, and a slow, uncertain smile tugs at his lips. After a long second, Keith blinks hard and looks down quickly, but Kolivan can tell that the expression is still there. 

“You wouldn’t be a Blade if you didn’t deserve it, Keith.” 

Keith nods slowly while looking intently at his shoes, as if he’s finally come to that conclusion himself. “I know.” 

Kolivan fumbles for the next course of action. His damnable instincts are crystal clear about what he should do, but he turns his attention away from the pull in his stomach and settles for squeezing Keith’s shoulder. He should tell Keith that he’s not alone in his self-doubt. Sometimes, Kolivan wonders where he belongs as well. 

He settles for, “I suspect that you have not slept since we returned.” 

Keith shrugs and looks at the observation window so that Kolivan can see his face in profile. “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says easily, as if he isn’t the only person left in the universe willing to do so out of desire rather than obligation. Merely because he wants to. “I’m not very tired, but I’ll go back to my room.” 

“Do you know the stories behind the constellations here?” 

Keith hesitates. “No?” 

Kolivan pats the seat next to him. “Sit. I will tell you.” 

And he does. He points out and explains the mythology behind almost half of the horizon, fully aware that Keith is slowly wilting beside him. The boy fights to stay awake with the same kind of unfettered determination that applies to everything else in his life. He stubbornly wrenches his eyelids open and pinches the sensitive skin of his wrist, as if even things that are freely offered cannot be accepted without a sacrifice in return. 

Kolivan should tell him that this is not the case, that sometimes there is goodness without suffering, whether or not you’ve offered blood to it, and whether or not you deem yourself fit to deserve it. But he cannot do this in good conscience, he thinks, as a warm weight settles against his side, because there’s a kind of suffering in this, too. 

He lays his head back and fixes his eyes on the stars. Before long, Keith sleeps easily against his shoulder. His soft breathing is the loudest thing in the room. 

There is a kind of suffering in this, too, Kolivan thinks.