Chapter Text

From his first words to his dying breaths, Keith can only remember running.

The action flows through his veins like thundering waves; a whispered prayer in a deadly storm. Run. Run. Run. There's no glory in it, no rush of thrill entrenched in crimson adrenaline, no heady high of windless space swallowing his lungs whole. Keith doesn't run for the joy of gravity releasing its hold on him, as he bounds and leaps through endless fields — that luxury is alien to him.

Keith runs because he has no choice.

A blast just barely sizzles past his cheek, singing his fur a star-borne orange. That’ll leave a mark. He lifts his head, and with a sense of holy mizvenk that was close, watches as the smushed edges of the hole in the wall drips to the ground, rivulets iron-hot and molten red. He’s given little time to count his lucky stars, as the sentries fire shot after shot.

Hissing between his teeth, Keith runs, spidering through the interlocking exoskeleton of the ship, dodging every attack the sentries crack at him. His muscles burn and his chest throbs, but he’s not giving up now. Not when he’s closer to his goal than ever before.

It’s when he’s met with a stock-still, metallic wall, that he skids to an abrupt halt.

Mizvenk.

Not good.

There’s no room for an escape — the sentries are dogging his heels, he’s got about five doboshes before a commanding officer finds him, and there’s nary a ventilation shaft in sight.

Their artificial feet clang against the floors, loud in the near-silent hum of the engine.

You’ve run out of time, a hysterical, overwhelming fright screams, gripping at his heart. Claws stray to the blade strapped at his hip bone in preparation for the worst, ears flicking against his skull at the buzz of reloading—

Laser rifles.

Laser rifles, that streak blinding purple beams into anything that crosses their path, blazing a trail of dying stars with the vivacity of a war god.

Laser rifles, that blow holes in walls.

It is, at best, a fickle hope. But Keith’s been operating on nothing but fickle hope for eighteen deca-phoebs now, what’s another tick?

So when the sentries round the corner, Keith plants his feet, narrows his stance, and follows the harrying ticks before the blast.

One.

The sentries aim.

Two.

The plasma swirls.

Three.

Now!

He dives to the ground, tail instinctively coiling around his midriff in a lame attempt at cushioning his fall. The corridor judders in the aftermath following an entire section of the structure oozing into pools of newly-formed magma. Keith wastes not another tick, leaping through the cavity and rolling to a stop.

Whatever cosmic absoluteness inhabits the void must have taken a liking to him, because not only did Keith flee that exchange unscathed, but he also somehow managed to land in the ship's hangar, of all places.

He takes a moment to revel in the sheer dumb luck he stumbled into by complete accident, before remembering where he is and scrambling to his feet.

A ship, he thinks. Any ship. Even if it's the clunkiest, ugliest, slowest cargo mobile the universe has to offer, he'll take it.

Just when Keith pounds over a misplaced conduit, a bone-deep, trembling roar echoes in the bay, reverberations like metal striking metal ringing in his ears.

“What,” he says, conviction dulled by the shock of hearing a roar in a hangar. He glances around, wondering if the Empire added some sort of mayday function to any of their ships, and if that's something to be worried about, when another, more forceful growl creeps under his skin.

Keith swallows, footfalls soft and breathing hushed. As if he's pulled to the heart of a den by some invisible string, he navigated the winding corridors with a practiced ease he was sure he didn't possess until now.

Eyes landing on the source, his breath hitches.

Awash in the light of embered coal, the lion glowed like a wildfire. Daring, yellow eyes gazed back at him, red as bright as blood coating its masterful mechanics.

When Keith’s father was still alive, he would regale his son with tales of his home planet: the frigid ice of ruthless tundras, billowing sands of scorching deserts, the trill of the wild in dense jungles. It was through him that Keith was made aware of lighthouses, beacons of hope and safety to sailors so caught up in their wiles, that they forget the meretriciousness of oceans.

Now, looking at this utterly regal being, Keith is reminded of lighthouses. The beacon in the storm. The flame of promise in darkness. A shelter and a warning all the same.

“Who are you?” He murmured, pressing calloused fingertips to a rippling particle barrier. There’s no way this thing isn't at least semi-sentient. He'd be inclined to think himself insane, but the fire in that lion's eyes is a fire he's seen in the mirror countless times before.

Ears flatten against his head, fur at the nape of his neck stands on end, and it drags him back to reality quick enough for him to snap into action.

Keith hits the floor with a grunt, over a dozen sentries bombing miniature stars in his general direction. He supports himself on all fours, tail arrow-tipped and a snarl building in his throat. Every last modicum of rationality he has is screaming, pleading at him to run, run, run. There's some sort of misfortunate tautology plaguing him, because Keith has been in this exact circumstance far too often in the last varga alone. Ducking behind the control panel, his mind whirrs.

What can he do? Any ship nearby is a no-go, the industrial fans beneath him make diving off the fence fatal, and fighting through the horde of sentries will cause more harm than good.

In his haze of panic, an idea, wild and desperate as the hole-in-the-wall, begins to stir. Dangerous and reckless, but the sentries are exactly where he needs them to be and the solution is one press away. If Keith can pull this off, he walks out a free man. If not…

They're closing in on him.

He breathes, deep and mindful, maybe for the last time. He feels the oxygen turn his blood to steel, and when he opens his eyes — he doesn't recall closing them — his decision is made. If he's going down, he's going down fighting.

With a swift turn, Keith lunges onto the control panel, smashing the large, scarlet button in the center with much more force than necessary. True to suspicion, the floor upon which his enemies stand gives way, and the sentries vanish.

One problem solved, another arises.

Keith grits his teeth, digging his claws into the panel as far as they'll go, screwing his eyes shut as the vacuum sucks his skin off his bones. Keith would rather be dead than remain the Empire’s prisoner, but it's a trade he wishes he didn't have to make.

God, he didn't even say goodbye to his mother.

Fruitless is the effort he exerts, yet he perseveres. Death curls nasty fingers around his forearms, deca-phoebs of war and slaughter telling him this is it. Keith exhales, his breath steadier than his heart, as the abyss violently pulls him in.

He opens eyes, and the last thing he sees is the tell-tale shimmer of a falling particle barrier.

And the last thing he sees is a mechanical lion, doing the one thing he never expected it to do.

It flies.

Before he knows it, the screech of steel crunches around him, her teeth snapping closed, warmth enveloping him, chasing away the shivering cold of space. He gasps, greedily gulping mouthfuls of static oxygen around him, and some infinitesimal part of him pauses to comprehend the absurdity of it all.

Really, hyperventilating in what he's pretty sure is the maw of a mechanical lion after barely escaping an Empire ship with his life was not a task on his to-do list.

Deep in the throes of his mind, he hears a strange rumble of warmth, and amusement flushes his cognition. It's not his own, so who does it belong to?

As if in response, the sterile silver of the lion’s insides — esophagus? Viscera? Where exactly is he right now? — heats a blooming red, but it doesn't burn him.

“Are—” he pauses, parsing through his thoughts. “Is… is that you?” A hum of agreement. Huh. So it is alive, after all. And it has telepathy, which is— cool, he guesses.

“Uh,” darn it, Keith isn't built for socialization — sentient robo-lion or not. “Do you have a name?” The red grows. “Red? Is that it?” Content appreciation floods him, and that's just proof he hit the bullseye on this one.

Keith gave himself a mental, if rather befuddled, pat on the back for, somehow, surviving. The amusement only seems to increase.

Slowly, he hoists himself to his feet and works his way further into Red. It doesn't take him long to reach what he realizes is a pilot's seat, looking out through what must be the lion's own eyes.

A ship. Because if all this hullabaloo wasn't enough, the lion is also a ship.

He valiantly resists the urge to rip out his follicles. “Mizvenk.” Word of the quintant, it would seem.

He collapses onto the chair, distantly pondering what exactly it is he should do now. To be frank, Keith didn't actually think he'd make it off the ship, let alone this far. His escape attempt was, at its core, an all-or-nothing, ride-or-die gamble, designed to harken the will of primal instincts instead of well-coordinated, thought-out plans.

So excuse him if he's left reeling at the unadulterated surprise that his not-plan worked. Where does he even go from here? The last thing he wants is to lead Zarkon’s fleet straight to Marmora headquarters, and he definitely doesn’t want to alert them to his mother’s subterfuge — though, he supposes that’s redundant, because he hasn’t the faintest idea where she is.

Gentle prodding, like a tender suggestion, snags his attention. A blue hologram pops up, displaying a set of coordinates. Running a quick search, Keith finds that the planet is recluse, primitive and located in the backwaters.

That… could work, actually.

He smiles, a genuine, “Thanks Red,” slipping past his lips as she opens a wormhole and disappears into it.

He snorts. “You're just full of surprises, aren't you?” She preens, pride spurting lava-hot through their link. Hues of navy blue and foam white convene and fold into each other, and he realizes that for the first time in three deca-phoebs, he is well and truly free.

Yes, my paladin, Red purrs, voice infused with the crackle of campfire as they ran. Free.

It’s perfect.

Miles and miles of rocky cliffs and sour earth, salt-edged stalactite lancing the sky in jutted fractals. The dust is soft and dewy under his feet, resembling mounds of shredded jaggery in color and texture alike. Keith breathes, letting the sweetened tang of solitude invigorate his bones.

“Red,” he begins, overlooking the spires of bedrock from their perch on a wind-whistled precipice. “You’re incredible, you know that?” Whatever he feels from their bond is answer enough. Then, Keith laughs. A raw, honest-to-god, full-fledged laugh. Because he’s in a quadrant yet untouched by the Empire’s hands, in a world where he and Red are the only ones with the blaze of life flaring under their skin.

Keith fell back on the mud, hair tangled in clumps of dirt and mulch, fur matted, body blissfully cool and chest steady in its rise and fall.

Red shifts behind him, and from his peripheral she sets her chin on her paws, eyes shining to a soft tune of tenderness. They stay like that for a while, Galra and Lion, flesh and machine, the fierce-hearted laying to rest their battles, if only for a tick or two.

Eventually, he yawns, pulling himself up and stretching. Red purrs in question. “Shower,” he mutters. “I smell like shit.” She chortles, or at least, does whatever the lion version of chortling is.

He spots a pinprick of an oasis not too far away, and makes quick work of scaling down the scar of sod and stone. One brief dip of his tail in the lake deduces that it is, indeed, safe to bathe in. Shrugging off his prison rags — he really should get clothes — Keith steps in, the water glazing over him and soaking his fur a deep, rich purple. A content sigh wooshes past his lips. He can’t remember the last time he was able to soak in true, clean water.

The oasis is guarded by cropped swards and tall, non-poisonous (he hopes) flowers that secret a strange foamy substance. He debilitates for a hot minute, before deciding he’s been too filthy for too long, and he’d rather risk dying than staying this grimy.

Red rumbles with something that tastes vaguely like befuddled amusement, and Keith tells her to put a lid on it. Admittedly, the quasi-soap feels heavenly, as if it were pure nectar trickling down his fur.

In general, he doesn’t care for oblivion, but Keith’s beginning to think that there may actually be a God.

Of course the universe chooses that moment to rain hell down on him.

Distantly, like the glimmer of needle tips, Keith spots what seems to be a meteor hurtling towards the planet. Only as they get closer does it dawn on him: there’s more than one, and those aren’t meteors.

Those are lions. Lions whose course is locked on Red.

Panic surges through him, sputtering pathetically like the fluttering of dove wings trapped in a cage. Even his time in the Arena didn’t solicit him pulling on his clothes this fast, but the sheer alarm blaring in his head hurries him to lengths he never knew.

His feet have taken him closer to Red, almost instinctively. He coils around the jagged stalactite, tail arched over his crawling figure, morning-lidded eyes dark with dread and conviction and the urge to run. Obviously, the lions got there before he did — blue, yellow, and green all parked around Red impassively. He does manage to catch the last dregs of a one-sided conversation, though.

“—Hey Red Lion, are you an intergalactic super weapon? ‘Cuz you’re really activating my particle barrier!” Flirted an alien clad in white and blue armor Keith had never seen before, and if he squinted hard enough he swore he could see sparkles around him.

Red did nothing. “Oh come on! That was my best one!” Keith couldn’t tell if the downright done-ness was emanating from him or Red. Possibly both.

“If you can’t pull a regular human, how exactly do you expect to woo a sentient space robot lion?” Drawled a higher-pitched voice. Straining, he peeked around the side of his spire, spotting another of the first’s ilk, this one with similar armor in shocks of green.

“Oh yeah? Well why don’t you try convincing the space lion to leave this nowhere-planet while it’s looking at you like you’re some kind of— of deplorable scum! Or something!” Squawked Lance, at this Pidge-person.

“I think that’s the biggest word you’ve ever used—”

“Listen here you little—”

“Guys, cut it out,” interrupted an exasperated sigh. The newcomer carries himself with the air of a leader, someone who knows what he’s doing and why. He arrives with a large, muscled man beside him, and Keith’s running a mental tally on how likely his success would be if he tries to escape. Keith’s eyes naturally stray to that prosthetic arm of the supposed leader, and it takes a while for the sight to compute.

He finally comes to the belated conclusion that the apparent leader of this group must have been the Empire’s prisoner at one point, because his right arm is Druid tech. Which means it can probably spit fire, or turn into a sword, or fly, or something because everything in this universe hates Keith.

Par for the course, really.

Because if these people were here to take Red away from him, Keith would be stranded on some “nowhere-planet,” as Lance put it, with zero supplies and a negative will to live. He hates to say it, but Red is quite honestly the first positive interaction he’s had in the past few deca-phoebs, and she can’t even talk.

He thinks of her incandescent eyes, aglow with the light of a thousand suns, her smug cheek, and tittering laughter. It’s been only a few vargas since he and Red met but… Keith likes Red. He doesn’t want her to go.

Us, Red agreed, the sentiment returned twice as boldly. An unplaceable emotion permeates the bond, a feeling fierce and loud and comforting.

Devotion, he marvels. Red is flooding him with loyalty and promise and devotion. With him and Red, there is no mine or yours; possession is the foe, not the friend. Red does not belong to him, and he does not belong to Red.

They belong with each other. And that’s an epiphany that purrs along his marrow like vespers.

It’s decided now.

He’s running from these creatures with Red.

Things head south then, as Keith steps a bit too loudly on a twig when he’s halfway to the cockpit. Where precisely did said twig come from, if there are no trees here? Keith doesn’t know. What he does know, is that when eyes lock on his spire with startling speed, he’s in deep shit. With the exception of the cyborg, they all unsheath elegant white… what is that? It might be a problem. He’s pretty sure it’s some kind of weapon, but not any that he’s ever seen—

He blanches as the big guy’s pseudo-weapon turns into a shoulder gun. Holy zekin. That’s definitely a problem.

They approach his hiding spot cautiously, snippets of whispered conversation floating past the rush of blood in Keith’s ears. Gulping, whips his blade out, readying himself for the inevitable. Time slows, Red’s incessant growls fading to the far corners of his mind. The space between them takes ages to close, agonizingly languid, like the leisure trickle of water from a pipe.

Honestly, Keith doesn’t understand why this is getting to him. He’s faced scarier enemies than creatures who can’t seem to hold their daggers right. (Is that a dagger? It’s short, sharp and green, but that’s about all he can tell.) And yet… he can’t shake off the feeling this is going to be important.

The leader sees him first.

“It’s a Galra!” He yells with a voice of steel.

“How?! What’s a Galra doing here?” Lance screams, as Keith pounces out of his hiding place, swinging his blade in wide, practiced arcs. Leader dodges them with grunted effort, though Keith manages to graze his cheek just barely.

Rapid fire bullets converge on him from all directions, gleaming the soft yellows and unabashed blues of stars. Keith’s eyes dart around, settling on the spire that climbs highest to the stratosphere. Reeling backwards, he evades a vein of the blasts and a swipe of Leader’s glowing arm, wrapping his tail around the base of the spire and clawing his way to the top.

Leader’s barking some command at Shoulder-gun, but Keith’s too preoccupied with putting one foot in front of the other to pay attention. He spends barely half a dobosh up there, before a squeezing rope snakes around his thigh. Looking down, he realizes the “dagger” he pegged was really some sort of grappling hook, taut with toxic green coloring.

“I got him!” Pidge exclaimed, eyes alight in a kind of manic exuberance one wouldn’t expect during battle.

“Oh my god, how do you work this thing again?” Shoulder-gun called frantically, aiming his gun at the base of the spire, and Keith has one tick to finally wheedle out their strategy.

Then, stupidly, Shoulder-gun actually blasts, and Keith watches the stalactite crumble faster than his chances of survival. Mizvenk.

Okay, new plan, he decides, staring down at the bind clasping his leg. Keith wraps the cable around his hand, covering himself behind the unstable jenga tower that was his best bet. Red, he pleads, back me up here.

Head bent low, back and tail embowed to gravity, he pushes his legs as high as they can go. Using what remains of the stalactite tips as a springboard, Keith pours every ounce of strength he can muster into the soles of his feet and vaults forward. He hears a yelp as Pidge was dragged along with the force of his momentum, shouts petering out into the faraway stale gray; Keith’s claws are outstretched to the hulking scars of the escarpment, cool air biting against the frigid tension of his body.

Red growls, loud and displeased, and Keith understands.

He huffs, quietly, spirits of mirth and danger in his tone. “I asked if you’d back me up.”

And then, Keith plunges off the precipice.

His shackles fall back not too kindly, and Keith can comprehend, in an aloof sort of fugue, that the rope-burn will hurt for quintants to come. As sandy floe devoured the uneven, mountainous countenance of the planet, Keith could only theorize if he, too, would join that choir of bedrock and mulch and solitary silt.

His eyes flutter shut, muscles unwinding in the freefall. It’s unexpectedly peaceful, the impetus of tumbling to your death with no escape in sight. Maybe it’s because Red’s annoyed, if reassuring rumbles, sound less and less like a potential outcome, and more like a decided future.

Twisting around as best as he can mid-air, he finds her black-hole maw agape, and smiles something wild.

“Good kitty.”

Red jostles him into the cockpit roughly, snapping what he assumed to be scathing insults in lion-speak. “It seemed like a smart move in the moment,” he defended, thrusting the throttle levers forward, the planet on which they found a brief respite nothing more than a speck of dust as they soared farther and farther away.

A sudden jolt shook the interior, causing Keith to topple out of his seat and fall on his tail. Hard. “Hey,” he said sharply. “Not funny.”

Very funny, she argued. Paladin should think things through better. Recklessness does us no good.

Keith settled back into his seat, cocking an eyebrow. “That’s the most I’ve heard you say in one go.”

Our bond is stronger now, Red said smugly, and Keith conjured up a mental image of her puffing out her chest in pride. So I can talk. The other lions cannot help their paladins, not like I.

Apropos of that comment, Keith thought back on their conflict. He hadn’t had the time to process it fully, but now that he went over the events of battle again, it dawned on him, that those creatures? There’s no way in the abyss they’re a team. At least, not an experienced one.

Keith has seen veterans at work before. While his first solo mission ended in utter disaster, the Blade of Marmora is no stranger to teamed stakeouts. He knows the intricacies at play; how every member is a gear slotted in a machine larger than themselves, how the product of their teamwork isn’t simply a sum of their parts, but a collective effort put in by every Blade to reach their end goal, their freedom — no matter the carnage left in wake of that hunger.

Knowledge or death. That is the Marmora’s creed. When Keith fell short, they could not prevent his fate. He was on his own, and he knew this.

War is no home for compassion.

Whoever they were, those aliens were rookies at best, wildcards at worst. It’s just the name of the game that those two tend to go hand-in-hand.

Flashes of the other three lions shine through his hurricane of thoughts. The druid experiment’s charcoal eyes and fleck of snow-soaked locks. Their austere, deadly weapons, which looked to be an extension of their very souls, as if it were made to be held in those hands. Wildcards, indeed.

“Red,” he began, when he deemed their distance to be far enough. “Who are they?”

For the first time since Keith has met Red, he smells the scent of uncertainty imbued in the mélange of emotion that is their mind-link.

A chill pools in the atomies of his gut, his mind straining at the howl of run, run, run, and Keith wonders which he dreads more: the echo, or the answer.

Chapter Text

At the very least, it explains why Red calls him Paladin.

Don't get him wrong, Keith would love nothing more than to relinquish his title as Defender of the Universe and be on his merry way, but since that honor and Red are kind of a package deal, he has no say in the matter.

In any case, Voltron is the stuff of legends. Literally. Within wisps of rumors and hushed lullaby, ten thousand deca-phoebs of inactivity have rendered it nothing more than a fairytale.

From the most powerful weapon in the universe to mere mythology; quite the demotion. Oh, how the mighty fall.

Fixed on that mindset, Keith resolves it safe to visit a market. He’s hoping that when he lands in a regal, archaic lion-ship, no-one connects the dots and the stall vendors just assume he’s a melodramatic, flamboyant fuckboy with a thing for lions. Or something like that.

Besides, it’s not like he actually has a choice. As much as he would like to, Keith cannot survive on thousand-year old non-perishables for much longer without the price of his sanity.

And he needs clothes. Definitely needs clothes.

“Almost there girl,” he says, more to himself than Red, ears flicking away stray hair from his eyes.

The planet they're heading to harbors a market far-removed from the hustle and bustle of major trading points. It's located in a quadrant Keith has never stepped foot in, a place so alien to Zarkon’s fear-mongering empire, — due to the lack of any indigenous sentient species, which puts it rather low on the list for conquering — that eventually displaced merchants settled down to start new lives, bartering in food, alcohol, and the like.

So while he isn't sure of the exact contents the market has to offer, it's a safe bet.

One of many deserted grasslands beckons him a few degrees North, and Keith obliges. He watches flecks of vibrant pink grass and dew sputter into the sky, eddied away by Red’s thrusters. They land smoothly on the planetside, a yellow morn yawning the world whole and dusting clouds a pleasant coral.

Keith hops out of the cockpit. “I'll be back in one varga,” he tells her. Red's affirmation is quick and curt, before the hearthstone glow of her eyes go dark. He tugs on a flowing, black robe, something he found stowed away in Red's lockers. He has the distinct impression that whoever wore these robes was at least thrice his size — closer to Galra stature than Keith himself. (Although, the robes almost immediately shrunk to fit him perfectly, so it’s hard to say now.)

Heck, it even carried resemblance to his own mother's attire. Sleek, stealthy, and ill-suited on anyone who isn't her. That didn't stop young Keith from robbing her wardrobe, though.

Childishly, Keith pretends it’s her hood pulled over his head even as he ventures into civilization.

Ruffled grass elides into paved cobblestone, the air abuzz with the chatter of shoppers and the smell of candied fruit. An Unilu mans a jewelry store, cajoling a reluctant creature into buying a bedazzled bracelet for their lover. Children swarm a Puigian-owned stand in droves, and Keith’s nose picks up on the mouth-watering call of sweets.

No, he tells himself. Necessities first. He looked around, spotting an opulent-looking lizard with tentacles sprouting from her back.

As he passes her, he discreetly extends a claw, ripping open a pocket on her frilly, rainbow skirt. He swipes the wallet swiftly, moving along like the innocent man he masquerades as.

“Damn,” he whistles lowly. Jackpot.

He sifts through a bulky wad of GAC lined neatly within the wallet’s navy confines. Tucking the cash into the folds of his sleeves, he tosses the wallet in a trashcan to rid the evidence. Blue’s not his color anyway.

His first stop is, as promised, a clothing store. Cottony sundresses, tailored suits and silken scarves decorate the plain, wooden walls. He passes the crooked threshold, squeezing into the tight space built haphazardly around a canted countertop.

“How can I help today,” drones a bored vendor, flipping through some decade old issue of a tabloid Keith couldn’t care to learn the name of.

“Just looking around,” he mutters. He presses the fiber of a yellow sweater between his fingertips, eyes a high-collared shirt distastefully, and contemplates leaving when nothing appeals to him.

It’s only on his way out Keith catches sight of a ghost.

White, billowing sleeves puffed like a peacock’s feathers, fanned into enveloping furbelows that caught sunrays as if woven into the threads itself. The mud-brown pants stir color like the throes of swirling whiskey, and he finds himself lost in its thraldom. What gave it away was the crimson sash hoisted lazily on the hip, fissuring Galran embroidery in gold and scarlet thread spanning across in a vernacular his tongue would not mouth anymore.

“A pulkel,” he breathes, certain his lungs are starved of air.

It was believed that most of Galra culture was lost to Zarkon’s ethnic cleansing within his own race of people, and whatever pieces of their past remained was preserved within the Marmora’s base. But, somehow, this infinitesimal cog of history fought its way to the present. He feels the familiarity taunting and cradling him all the same; how long has it been since he saw something resembling home?

He heard the vendor’s incredulity. “You know what a pulkel is?” They asked, narrowing their sea glass eyes. “How?”

“How much?” Keith demanded, completely ignoring the inquiry.

The vendor blinked. Then, they snorted derisively. “It’s not like anyone would wanna wear anything belongin’ to the Galra. It’s on the house — in fact, there’s an entire haul in the back. I can fetch it for ya.”

An entire stock of native clothing for free? Keith couldn’t have nodded faster.

Soon, he was walking away with two copies of something long thought to be ash, hands trammeled by the burden of memory. Well, if the dead don’t just love to haunt.

(Privately, he would ponder on the disgust that snarled across the baritone of the vendor’s voice. Galra, they had said, like blood in the mouth, like poison in the heart. He understands, really. The entire universe had lost something to Zarkon — livelihoods, family, friends, culture, homes.

But what so many seem to forget, is that the first people Zarkon ever hurt were his own.)

He buys other things, too, in a sort of hazed wonder. Ration bars, water packs, medicine, and a spice-filled, flaked dough delicacy he thinks is street-food, but isn’t entirely sure.

Red is waiting for him, the sky having melded into a sage green. “Hey girl,” he says, pressing a hand against her hind leg. The drawbridge slides out welcomingly, and Keith doesn’t hesitate to walk in. It’s only when he’s that true elation hits him like a fortified Empire cruiser.

“You will not believe what I found,” he said excitedly, laying the sack on the floor and rifling through. He whipped out the pulkel, brandishing it around the ship triumphantly. Red hummed questioningly.

“It’s traditional Galran clothing,” he supplied, exchanging his drab prison garb for the warm comfort of his — his, holy zekin — pulkel, and it rests against his fur like a second skin. “Zarkon destroyed most of it during the war — something about devoting all your time to serving the Empire.”

Red’s presence buzzed in his brain, contemplative, like there was something she couldn’t quite wrap her head around.

Eventually, he found out what.

Black’s Paladin wore this, once, Red whispered, as if speaking of it alone was a sin.

Keith started at that as he adjusted the cuffs. The Black Paladin was Galra?

We remember times when they were friends, Red said, regular campfire crackle hedged by cool winds. There was a certain weight to her words, leaden by deca-phoebs of grief and loneliness and betrayal. That’s one thing the Empire hands out indiscriminately: strife. Ancient as she may be, that makes Red all the more acquainted with rage.

She is silent as he stares at the rich red of his sash. Right. The Galra are not who they once were. Everyone and their grandmothers (perhaps especially their grandmothers) hated Keith and all that he stood for, even if he hated Zarkon just as much. Keith wouldn’t know what to say in her place either. Would he reassure, or would he agree, if he were anyone else?

After a moment, though: They wore it at festivals. Galra like dancing. Zarkon did too, then.

For a brevity he wishes were longer, Keith has the ridiculous image of Zarkon, dressed in the clothes of common folk, dancing in a festive parade at one of their now un-practiced celebrations. The mere idea is so absurd Keith nearly chokes on his own spit cackling, and Red titters with him.

It’s all they are, in that tick: a boy and his lion, on the run from the universe, drenched in the past and the future and everything they fail to be.

And Keith slows down, if only for a bit.

“No.”

Shiro sighed. “Princess—”

“I said no, Shiro!” Allura snapped scathingly. “I will not have the title of Red Paladin belong to some— some Empire scum! The Galra are already jeopardizing Voltron’s cause, and if we do not find a substitute soon, there will be nothing standing between Zarkon and complete universe domination.”

“I’m just saying that he could be an ally.” Shiro placates. “We have no proof that he’s fighting on Zarkon’s side.”

“He almost murdered Pidge!” Lance cried. “That seems like proof enough to me.”

“We attacked him,” Shiro reasons, growing increasingly exasperated. “Of course he’s going to try and shake us off.”

“I dunno, Shiro. I mean, he did go after us first,” Hunk said, scratching the nape of his neck. When Shiro glared at him, he winced. “Sorry, but it’s true.”

Pidge, ever unbothered by discussions of his near death, turned to Allura. “Didn’t you say the lions choose their pilots, though? If the Red Lion really chose that “Empire scum,” or whatever, then we can’t boot him out.”

“What if he tricked the lion?” Lance posited, spinning around his chair languidly. “I mean, it’s been ten thousand years, Pidgey boy. The Galra totally could’ve found a way to hack into Voltron’s mainframe.”

Coran twirled his mustache, considering. “That is certainly a possibility, although I’m inclined to question the notion that anything could overpower King Alfor’s creations.”

Hunk raised his hand tentatively. “Um, aren’t we all forgetting that the Red Lion was with the Galra for the longest? And now a Galra is flying it. Am I the only one who finds that suspicious?”

And— well, as much as Shiro was defending the Galra, Hunk’s got a point. Zarkon’s entire raison d’etre is to conquer and enslave every civilization holed away in the darkest recesses of the universe or otherwise. For ten thousand years, the people dragged by their collars under his dictative hegemony have been fighting an impossible war. Voltron can change that.

Is it truly mere coincidence, then, that the one lion they are in so desperate need of, just so happens to be piloted by a Galra?

Don’t get him wrong, he hasn’t put even a modicum of faith in their fugitive Galra boy, much less consider him an ally, but he’s far from someone who would blame an entire race of people for the wrongdoings of a few.

Shiro wants to— no, he does believe there are good Galra out there. What makes a person cruel is never their blood, and when Shiro recalls the fearful countenance of that Galra, like a cornered animal desperately searching for an escape…

He didn’t see his captors. He saw a normal man, scared of the world and the people around him. He can’t let go of that so easily.

(Apropos of this entire situation-ship, there’s the strangest little bug nibbling away at the back of his mind; a prognostication, almost. The hum of something more sings to him, from underneath the layers and layers of skepticism and misgivings.

This is big, it siren-calls, from the depths of a fathom he can’t quite comprehend. This is big.

Only thing is, he can’t tell if it’s a warning or a welcome.)

So yes, Shiro’s willing to lend the benefit of the doubt to any innocent person, but he knows how this looks — especially to Allura, whose entire home planet was destroyed by the Galra.

Yeesh, what a mess.

“All valid arguments,” he concedes. “But we can’t jump to conclusions about something as significant as this. Besides, if he really did fool the Red Lion, then why would it dive down a cliff to save him?”

“Maybe he rewired it,” Pidge shrugged, and wow, Shiro was having a really hard time trying to understand whose side he was on.

The side of logic, he heard Pidge rebuke, and instantly pushed the thought away — they had other things to worry about.

“I just have a feeling that there’s more to this,” he settled on.

“What was he even doing there, though? We checked the entire planet! There wasn’t a single Galra cruiser in sight.” Lance threw his hands up.

“Maybe he was a scout?” Hunk said, cupping his chin in his palm.

Pidge leveled him with an incredulous glare. “Right, because they’d send the fricking pilot of the Red Lion to a deserted planet in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere—”

“Language—”

“Enough!” Allura raised her voice, reverberations high and quavering in the recycled air, awakening a beast he could not name. Shiro could almost see the walls she was building. “I don’t know why this Galra is so important to you, Shiro, but my people — my home, was scorched to ash by his kind.”

She laid a hand over her chest. “We trusted the Galra, and just look how that turned out. I am not going to risk the entire universe on a feeling of yours.” She stalked closer to him, eyes cold. “So you are going to put aside whatever baggage you’re carrying, and work with the team. Am I clear?”

Shiro grit his teeth. “Crystal.”

She inhaled deeply, tone chemically calm. “Coran, triangulate the Red Lion’s position. Paladins—” she turned her sharp eyes on them. “—ready yourselves. We are going to find the real Red Paladin, and take back Voltron once and for all.” Pivoting on her heel, Allura marched down the castle halls, footfalls echoing in the ensuing silence.

“…Well, I guess that’s that.” Pidge said.

“I guess so,” Shiro said stiffly.

As the others drifted to the hangar, and Coran began to type away on the control panel, Shiro couldn’t help but think back on the confrontation: the serpentine ease with which the Galra evaded every bullet, coiling around the beaming strips of color; his wide, feral smile as he nosedived off a precipice; and the Red Lion’s storm-gray eyes stoking into a burning yellow as she fell right after her pilot.

The Galra are ruthless, but brilliant — Shiro realizes this truth down to the bone, where foreign metal has replaced human flesh.

(His mother taught him to sew ages ago, and for that his hands were always delicate, meticulous, considerate. He wonders if this phase of his life is a rejection, of sorts, now that he's more machine than man.)

And yet Shiro doesn’t think they managed to alter the Red Lion. That kind of loyalty is earned, not coded.

Here’s what he knows:

Voltron is built on trust.

No one here trusts the Galra.

A Galra is flying the Red Lion.

Ergo, Voltron cannot be formed.

Shiro really, really hopes they’re doing the right thing.

Holy zekin, how do they keep finding him?

Keith’s covering up his tracks, he swears! They've been planet-hopping for the better of two movements now, and those creatures are always hot on Red’s tail. Not only is he being hunted by three insanely powerful lions with three insanely idiotic pilots, but now he has a gargantuan battle-castle-ship-thing tearing wormholes into existence willy-nilly every time he so much as pauses to catch his breath.

And yeah, Red can wormhole too, but her limit doesn't even touch what that ship is capable of. What the hell does it run on? Quintessence? Sheer willpower? God?

He wouldn't be all that shocked, honestly.

Heaving a world-weary sigh, Keith slumps into his chair tiredly. That was the closest they've ever gotten to him, the green and blue lions guarding his top and bottom, with the yellow one ramming into him from the side. The lions converged onto him in an instant, swarming him like a cloud of bloodthirsty gnats, and it's only because he hadn't used Red's wormhole ability at all that quintant, that he was able to teleport several galaxies away. He had no doubt they would find him again, but for now—

He needed sleep, goddamnit.

He groaned, head lolling back and eyes on the steaming machinery above. “How long do you think I have?” He muttered.

Perhaps one varga, Red mused. Princess Allura is quite tenacious.

“Ya don't say,” he drawled sardonically.

I will keep watch, my Paladin, she offered. When they arrive, I will fly away on my own.

Keith knew better than to hope Red didn't feel the spike of relief that snagged him. “You’re the best, Red.” He yawned, and collapsed to a heap on the bundle of unwashed clothes he dubbed a bed.

Beneath him, the metal floors grew warm, and he felt a valleyed thrum kiss his aching back, like water washing down a scorched throat.

Yup. Red is definitely the best.

Keith relishes the light sleep for however long it lasts, slipping in and out of his well-deserved slumber, before being very rudely awakened by an attack. This, in light of recent circumstances, and also Keith’s general circumstances, isn’t all that surprising. Frantically throwing himself onto the seat and dropping a steep height to evade a blast, Keith finds something that does surprise him.

Namely, the fact that it’s not the castle-ship or the lions shooting him.

It’s a Galra fleet.

Ah, mizvenk.

“What in celestia’s name—” he barely spits out a curse before swerving harshly to the right, looping over and under blast after blast after blast. Keith does a mental tally, and quickly comes to the conclusion that there are way too many ships hovering over this lonely planet with one star, all in a backwaters region, to make sense. Even taking stock of the sight of an Empire colony rooted on the planet doesn’t justify their numbers.

Which could only mean that they’re not here for the planet. They’re here for him.

Keith belatedly registers he also stole directly from Zarkon. Right. He’s a known fugitive. How does everyone ever just know where Keith is? Is there some kind of tracker on Red he isn’t aware of? What do they know that he doesn’t?

Keith lets his instincts take over, dashing from side to side, shots just barely grazing Red’s skin, as he tries fervently to come up with a plan.

Just as he avoids yet another blast, said plan hits him like a sack of bricks.

Red is a part of Voltron, a man-made, intergalactic powerhouse battle-ship. Emphasis on the word battle, because how is Keith realizing only now that Red absolutely has laser beams on her?

In response, Red only grumbles grouchily, and Keith’s hand automatically pounces on the extremely conspicuous trigger. Once he’s gained enough distance, he pulls the throttle levers, and Red snaps back mid-air, unhinges her jaw, and fires a blindingly technicolor plasma beam, cutting moltenly into the ships. Pinpricks of nuclear orange bubble across the hulls, and in a flash of lightning, fulminate into flame-borne stars bleeding iron and aluminum.

The explosions glitter like Christmas lights in his acacia eyes. Red roared with the adrenaline of war, victory drumming over her, in tandem with the blood rushing his veins.

Mizvenk. Mizvenk.

He barked out a laugh, as grating as shrapnel, fangs catching on the chapped skin of his lips. Oh, how he had missed the thrill of a fight.

Keith wastes no time, stamping the rudder and dragging the steering wheel far enough that it would’ve broken if it wasn’t Red, he rips another plasma beam at the fleet, slicing through the clean blackness of space and lighting up the darkness.

As he fells ships left and right, more arise in their stead, a never-ending deluge of besiegers.

“Where are you coming from?” He asks futilely, soaring high above a cluster of ships, taking aim, and tearing them into charred shards. From his periphery, Keith is reminded of that lonesome planet, undoubtedly subjugated by Empire forces.

Narrowing his eyes, he zooms over to the planet, whistling fighter jets in tow, as the roots of a strategy begin to form.

Paladin, no. Red pretends she’s warning him, but her excitement belies her true feelings.

He’s a hair’s breadth away from the station, Empire soldiers aiming their blasters at him, with the jets falling into formation behind him.

He grins, and it’s all fangs. Paladin, yes, he agrees.

At the last second, he pulls off an impossible maneuver, rocketing low across sandy grit just as the ships and the guns acquaint themselves with each other. Purely for his paranoia’s sake, Keith embows Red toward the station as they shriek into the atmosphere, letting loose a final, devastating plasma blast. What remained of the Galra post becomes rubble and, surveying the carnage, he doesn’t find any survivors.

Good, he snarls vindictively.

Good, Red echoes, and Keith has to wonder if that’s personal.

He lands swiftly, the action almost robotic to him. It’s standard protocol — check the ship for damages. Theoretically, the chances of Red sustaining injury that surpasses the faint annoyance of chipped paint is slim, but better safe than sorry.

As he looks down through Red’s eyes, though, he thinks he may be sorry both ways regardless.

The crowd is massive. Stalks of creatures, dark as the dirt they stand on, holler wordless yells at him, fists punching the air and faces split in what he assumes is a smile, but with the glasgow-like curvature of their mouths, it’s hard to tell. It does take a solid dobosh for the reality to set in.

Are they… cheering for him?

You liberated their home, Red snorted. Of course they would cheer for you.

“Us,” he corrects softly, “They’re cheering for us.”

Red grows all dewy, voice warm with a mechanical timber. Go to them.

He jerked forward, protestations already piling up on his tongue, but she interrupts him.

They will not hurt you, she assures.

“They will,” he argues, exhausted. “They… they were enslaved, Red. By the Empire. If they find out I’m Galra I’ll—” Run. I will run, like I always do. “—have to fight my way back, probably.”

I will protect you, she says simply.

“You can’t harm innocent people, Red,” he deadpans.

If they harm you for your blood, they are no innocents, she avers. Besides, I will fly away with you, not hurt them.

He chews his lips, fiddling with the sash of his pulkel absent-mindedly. No-one likes the Galra anymore; that much is clear. The Blade used their secrecy as a protective measure as much as they did leverage — no one is ever willing to ally with any Galra. Not after ten thousand deca-phoebs. Not after Zarkon. Not ever.

(How will you know, if all you’ve ever done is run like a coward? Demands a voice of adamant fire and unrelenting spunk, pushing him further and further into that which he has never known.

He pushes back.)

She nudges him forward. You are not alone anymore, cub.

Keith swallows. For Red, he tells himself. She lowers her head to the ground, the bridge sliding out. He takes a moment to appreciate the calm before the storm, and steps out.

Daibazaal, he’s been told, was as dark, gloomy and adaptive as the Galra themselves. They evolved to have thick, protective membranes over their eyelids and incandescent sclera specifically to navigate the hot, crimson nights on their homeworld. As such, he’s never really been much a fan of bright, sunny days.

Which is exactly what this planet has.

He squints angrily at the luminescent red star hanging overhead, pulsing with a bloody light. The air feels humid, and sweat begins to soak his fur a murky purple. Keith’s gaze settles on the people before him in time to see their apprehensive faces. A parent clutches his child close to his chest, tucking their face into the crook of his neck. Someone gasps in horror, their rocky, three-digit hands covering their mouth. Several look debilitating, vacillating between fight or flight, sink or swim. All look hostile, admiration stamped out, silence ringing in the aftermath.

Yeah, he expected this.

Doesn’t make it sting any less, though.

Keith’s gonna cut his losses and hurry back into Red, when a kid — can’t be older than six, really — trundles over to him. She has pupils as red as her star, skin a deep brown, choppy maroon hair and a determined set to her mouth.

“Ehela!” someone shouts, and she startles bad enough that she trips, letting out a babbled cry. Keith doesn’t think, just rushes forward, and wraps his tail around her midriff. After a quick check, he deems she has no injuries, and rights her.

She stares at him intensely. “Uh,” he says. “I… gotta— go,” he mumbles, scratching his neck.

But he can never catch a break, because why would he? Someone hunched and hefty, with palms bigger than Keith’s head, follows Ehela. Her steps are slow and wracked with judders, which is the only clue Keith has to guess her age. Her wrists and throat are adorned with charms, constructed with leaves, rocks, and dried fruit clearly native to the area. Her earthen robes flutter windlessly, as if blown away by her presence itself.

“Good day,” she says, her voice honeyed with time. “You are the one who saved us, correct?”

“I— no? I mean, yes, I did. But I didn’t come here for that?” It comes out like a question instead of an assertion, but she only seems amused by this.

“I am Aryehel,” she says, bowing, though it wasn’t needed with how crooked her back already is. “The chieftain of planet Yurhal. Our people are forever indebted to you, brave warrior.”

“Keith,” he returns awkwardly. “Traitor to the Empire. And, uh, no problem.”

“Chieftain,” comes forward a tall woman with hair like Ehela, indignancy undisguised. “What are you doing? We cannot trust this man! His people have pillaged ours so cruelly, how can you approach him as if he were a gentlefolk?”

Keith winced internally, slowly edging away from the small party accumulating. He knew this was a bad idea, he knew he’d have to run, because he always, always has to in the end, so why even bother trying—

“Was it not him who halted the Empire from destroying us?” Aryehel spoke. “He is not subservient to their whims, and cares for our safety,” as she said this, her hand strayed to Ehela’s head, stroking her hair.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “So he lies.”

“Perhaps,” said Aryehel, “But were it not for him, we would be suffering still.” She tore her gaze away, addressing the entire village now. “Zarkon’s conquests have plagued us for ten thousand deca-phoebs, but to blame his people, and not himself, is an evil beyond even what he would commit.”

Keith is stunned into silence, as is everyone else, for the second time in the past five doboshes. Red purred approvingly, a sense of I like her replaying in his head. Looking back to him, Aryehel extended a friendly hand, expression calm and relaxed. Hesitantly, Keith takes her hand in his, and she raises it to the sky, loud and proud.

“My people!” She crowed, “Let us celebrate, for our freedom has finally arrived!” For an embarrassing moment, Keith thinks that the quiet will stay. Then, Ehela screeches so loudly he has to flatten his ears against his skull, and that acts as a catalyst to even more noise. People whoop and cheer, flocking towards him unabashedly.

The position of chieftain must be incredibly well-respected, if they were willing to throw away their apprehensions in the blink of an eye.

Soon, he’s roped into the flood, pats on the back and kisses on the cheek flurrying his way, and good God, Keith wasn’t prepared for this. He realizes halfway through the assault that Ehela has clung to his leg like some kind of octopus, peering up at him curiously. He tries to shake her off, but there isn’t room for it when he’s center stage in a horde of rock people.

Then, Keith hears the loveliest thing: a melody.

And it’s like a flip is switched; from an uncoordinated mass of limbs, the cavalcade arranges themselves into a multitude of copacetic circles, expanding as far as he can see. They hulk forward, feet thumping against the soil rhythmically, arms extended inwards, before reeling back and twirling. They clap once, then begin the process once more, matching their movements with the music.

“This is an uhluk,” Aryehel informs him, hobbling beside him. Keith briefly worries for her stability, but she stands upright with relative ease. “In our culture, dancing is a way to overcome. It connects the heart with all parts of the body. When we dance, we are in tune with our planet and ourselves,” she turns to him, eyes going solemn. “The Galra Empire would chain us to the walls.”

Of course they did, he thought bitterly, heart sinking. Because that’s what they do — they take and take and take until there’s nothing left.

“Ehela!” chided a voice, and Keith recognizes it as the woman earlier. “You mustn’t glue yourself to the Galra! We do not know what he is capable of.”

“Lahye Elre,” Aryehel said sternly. “Do not insult our savior so. Keep manners in mind; this is a festival, not a fight.”

The woman — Lahye Elre, simply huffs, and bends down to beckon Ehela into her arms. Instead, the girl just hides her face into Keith’s pant leg, stubbornly staying put.

“Insolent girl,” she sighed, though it was more exasperatedly fond than anything. She looked up at Aryehel. “If it is manners you seek, teach her. Watch how she favors a stranger over her own mother!”

Aryehel just titters, a queer, cavernous sound that bounds against the boulders and neon trees sticking out of the earth. Keith is lightly amused by it all, if quite puzzled over the amiable atmosphere he’s indulging in.

One particular circle had migrated dangerously close to their small clique, and it isn’t long before Keith finds himself wrested into it, the others marching roundabout with familiar ease.

He panics. “I’m not a dancer!” He says, frenzied. He’s maybe tapped his foot a couple times on the rare occasion he could blast a tune, but that’s about it.

Plus, Keith is tired after quintants of no sleep. Galra don’t need rest as much as most species, but even he has a limit.

“Never you mind, boy!” Aryehel calls wryly. Lahye Elre looks as if she’s about to follow, but the old crone stops her with a hand on her shoulder. “If you balter to the beat of your own heart, you are already one of us!”

Just like that, Keith is sucked into the whirlpool, Ehela still grasping his calf like the resilient little bear trap she is. They all smile at him so warmly, brighter than their sun, and he knows it’s fake, it has to be, because who would ever look at a filthy Galra like that—

Cub, Red susurrates, like fireflies swirling around his eardrums. I am here. Do not worry, just dance.

He breathes as he moves with the mob, chin quivering. Red would never lie to him. He’s a fighter, not a dancer, but if dancing connects the body like adrenaline does, then that might be something he can learn.

Dance.

Keith can try. (It’s all he can ever do.)

~Ballroom of Romance — Celtic Woman~

On summer nights when the barn is high

The stars are twinkling in the sky

Right foot forward, left hand in, twirl, clap, repeat.

Their motions are natural and free-flowing, but Keith sticks out like a sore thumb in the uhluk. Where they are elegant, he moves like a prehistoric cretin, a homunculus held by rotting flesh and decaying bone. A fossil that knows erosion first, survival second, and pain last. Where they are graceful, he is anything but.

He swallows.

We plant the seeds and till the soil

We pray for rain and pray for sun

Left foot now, both arms proffered, fingers just slightly touching. His look a matted, ugly purple amongst their calming browns. God, he doesn’t belong here.

Although, when does he ever? Even when Sendak took him hostage, even when he was forced into cages and gladiator fights solely for the Empire’s enjoyment, the prisoners othered him.

Too alike to the Galra to be a victim, too unlike the Galra to be a perpetrator.

He’d never say it, but the Blade was no better. Halfling. Runt. Hayek — poison child.

Keith is one of those rare, misfortunate souls; never enough but forever too much.

Whack for the danna, swing your partner

Around the floor, now one two three

We will dance until the break of dawn

So take my hand and dance with me!

“You have to plant your foot properly!” A tiny voice chirrups, and Keith looks down to see Ehela, who had joined the dance too, maroon locks flying about. “Don’t throw your arms out, you should do it like you’re stretching. Like this, see,” she demonstrates, extending an arm above her head, and then it plummets with everyone else’s.

Maladroitly, he does the same, and she positively beams at him. The man beside him lets out a hearty laugh, clapping Keith between his shoulder blades. “Ehela never smiles so brilliantly, you know. She must adore you.”

And that… changes something in him. His eyes look to Ehela once more, whose smile is so broad he fears her face might crack apart. This kid, who he’s only just met, finally has the chance to sing and dance after who knows how long, and she uses it to teach him. She’s been captured and enslaved by the Galra, and yet.

And yet.

And will I get to steal a dance

With the one who sends me in a trance?

If not, at least, you’ll get to dance

Down at the ballroom of romance

She does not fear him. If anything, he’d say the pure, childish buoyancy coloring her face is because of him.

Steadfastly, so agonizingly unrushed he wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t paying attention, the disquiet within him ebbs away.

He trips over his own feet on the twirl, and his tail keeps getting caught between others’ claps, but he’s getting the hang of it, he thinks.

And it’s when Ehela faceplants over a woman’s legs, bounces back, only to fall backward this time, that a surprised giggle springs from his throat. He thinks they would have faltered at that, but these people dance like Keith runs: with no pause, with no mistakes, like they were taught this from birth. Maybe they were. His laughter is raspy from his vocal cord’s disuse, and no-one faults him for it.

Rather, they welcome his timid glee with their own.

So Keith frolics and claps and nearly falls a hundred times, and he’s—

He’s—

Shined his boots and combed his hair

He’s having fun. Zekin, he’s having fun, and it’s so shockingly wonderful, so startlingly resplendent, that he can’t help the exuberance woven into his moves now.

Is there magic in the air?

Hayek, a vicious creature reminds him. It taints him for a tick, but he forcibly buries it. Here, he is no halfling, he is simply Keith: a Galra who does not stand with the Empire.

He shoots Ehela a toothy grin, and she mirrors it tenfold. He sees Aryehel watching with a placid smile, and even Lahye Elre has melted at the sight.

We will dance until the morning light

Come take my hand and we’ll take the floor

Keith lets himself go.

Leave your troubles at the door

We will dance until the morning light

Come take my hand and we’ll take the floor!

He should know better than that, because then it comes crashing down.

Let it be known that it was never Shiro’s intention to spy on the kid.

But in his defense, if you were to see an enemy assumed to be more monstrous than the Devil himself delightedly dancing with boulder aliens a week or so after you were shot into space by a sentient lion, you’d have questions too.

And hoo boy. Does Shiro have questions.

Most impending of all: is he supposed to hate this guy?

He looks so unbelievably young to be a part of an intergalactic battle. Everything about him is brighter, even the clothes he exchanged for those ugly rags from earlier. Shiro could pretend before, but seeing him laugh and galavant like there’s no tomorrow… reality electrocutes him.

This is no hardened war criminal. This is a boy who isn’t a day over eighteen.

He’d thought it before, but it was just confirmed now. He looks at his arm, at what was once his, and again at the Galra, who’s smiling at that child like she’s the reason his heart beats.

God, he’s just a kid.

God, they’re all just kids.

It’s so unfair. This— this dancing and singing and halcyon happiness is how it should be. Maybe they haven’t saved the universe yet, maybe they don’t have the damndest chance, but Shiro has no doubt that all the children he’s fighting with deserve to be back home right now, with their families and all that they love.

He’s been caught in the crossfire of this war for a year, and already he is sick to his ears of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

“Shiro?”Lance’s voice crackles to life in his ear, a hint of concern tinging it. “You doing okay there, buddy?”

He places two fingers over his earpiece. “Yeah,” he lies, struck by how boyish Lance sounds. He shifts back on his heels, covering himself behind the mounting blue tree (he thinks that’s what it is) with veins of purple and pink spidering into the spongy bark.

“Well, didja find the Red Lion? Or the Galra guy?”

“Uh,” he tries. “Maybe?”

“Why does that sound like a question.”

Shiro’s considering just straight up lying, purely to see where this goes, but Hunk spares him the decision.

“Oh, guys! The Red Lion’s here!”

“Great job, Hunk,” Allura enthused. “Is the Galra there?”

“Uh,” Hunk drew out the vowel, and Shiro could imagine him circling the Red Lion cautiously. “I don’t think he so? Her eyes are all black.”

“Excellent,” Allura said curtly. Shiro heard the darkness in her as she spoke: “Hunk, I want you to take the Red Lion and fly away with it. You head there as well, Pidge. We will strand the Galra on this planet and inquire his whereabouts to its inhabitants; they will be more than happy to comply.”

“...I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Shiro said, watching said target clap and bounce onto his heels, cavorting joyously.

“Why?”

“Because he’s right in front of me, and he’s dancing with the inhabitants.”

Silence.

“What.” Pidge vocalized, and he felt the others shared the sentiment.

Hunk laughed nervously. “Dude, that’s— not really funny, Shiro.”

Shiro pursed his lips into a flat line. “I’m not kidding, Hunk.”

“Oh dear,” okay, why does Allura sound downright horrified at this prospect? “Has he— have the Galra conquered these people as well?”

“From the looks of it, no,” Shiro corrects. Besides that Galra, no Empire troops, sentries or soldiers cross his line of vision, and that’s pretty telling, since the entire population has congregated into this area. “They’re all having fun.”

“Do you honestly think that a Galra would ever—”

“Guys!” Pidge cuts in hotly, and Shiro hears a tussle in the background. “Can we please do this some other time? The Red Lion’s fighting back!”

“A little help would be nice,” Hunk chimes in. Shiro’s about to edify Lance to provide back-up, when an explosion rattles the ground. The people yelp, startled, and Shiro watches as the Galra holds the child steady with his tail, pulling the fallen back to their feet.

His head swivels wildly, eerie yellow eyes locking on his half-hidden face instantly.

Ice water sluices over Shiro, leaking into the diaphanous pores of his skin, washing into his veins and flooding his heart. He’s seen those eyes before. He’s seen that face before, on the vivisection tables in the Empire ships, and it’s all he can do to choke down the bile crawling up his throat.

Shit. He’s going to be sick.

When a woman falls to her knees by the girl, the Galra turns tail and runs.

Shiro can’t even do anything, because there are straps rooting him to the table and he can’t get out no matter how much he squirms. The druids loom over him, like a portent of agony, and he’s going to die here, isn’t he? Those yellow eyes are boring into him and he’s going to—

“Shiro!” They yelled, desperate. “Where are you?”

That’s not right.They know where he is, they always do, so why—?

“Shiro,” said someone, and oh. That’s Allura. Right, he’s not a prisoner anymore.

His breathing ragged, he inhales, deep and slow, just to prove to himself he’s still here, that this is still real.

Get a grip, Takashi, he scolds himself. Shiro is, at least for now, the leader of Voltron. He can’t — won’t — slip up like that again.

“Do you still have visuals on the Galra?”

The Galra. Who he stumbled upon when scouting the area for any signs of the Empire.

The Galra, who ran away, while he just watched.

Swearing, Shiro hoists himself up and sprints after him. Frantic shouts accompany him as he weaves through the glued-together throng of people, and Shiro almost loses his balance thrice as his feet pound upon thundering rock.

Lance is yelling something into the comms when he updates them. “He spotted me. I’m chasing him down; get ready, I think he’s coming your way.”

All three give the affirmative, he thinks Hunk mutters a prayer, and he directs his speech to Allura once he catches sight of the Galra again. “Princess, if he manages to escape, could you open a wormhole to bring him back?”

“I’m afraid not,” she says grimly. “The teludav only opens wormholes within a certain radius of the castle, and he would not be close enough for us to succeed.”

“I see,” Shiro pants, leaping over a fallen log, the distance between him and the Galra growing by the second. The earth tremors under him, and it’s a struggle for Shiro to maintain the same level of efficiency with which he usually moves.

For the Galra, however, there seems to be no such hindrance. He runs effortlessly, with the same self-destructing, temerarious motion as a braided river. Flooding over and over and over — but instead of supporting the life around him, this Galra uses it as a crutch to run, and Shiro can hazard a guess this isn’t the first time he’s been in this situation.

But as Shiro watches him, he’s struggling to connect this Galra with the one from before. His steps are lethargic, the tear of his muscles in the wind quavering ever so slightly, breaths more labored than they should be. He’s questioning if his previous escapade had just been a fluke, but then, it clicks.

They’ve been ceaselessly chasing the Galra for two weeks now. Obviously he’s as bone-deep tired as them, if not more so — because at least they have actual cooked food and warm beds (not that he himself uses the latter much). Shiro hasn’t been in the Red Lion, but he’s fairly certain it doesn’t have a working stovetop, and he doubts the Galra has had any spare time to stop by a space motel, or something.

He tamps down the guilt that threatens to engulf him.

Shiro has a feeling that if the other was at one-hundred percent, they wouldn’t stand a chance. At the moment, though, Shiro sees an opening, and he’s nothing if not an opportunist.

So when he finds himself just a few meters closer than before, he goes for it.

With a prompt and sudden movement, he drops to the ground, swinging his leg in a wide arc. The Galra doesn’t fall for it, bounding high into the sky, but he wasn’t counting on that.

They’re here.

Time slows. Lance reacts fastest, the Blue Lion’s mouth is black as night behind the Galra’s purple figure, a sough of wind tousling Shiro’s hair. The Galra’s eyes widen, but he can’t move when he’s mid-air, and a second is all they need.

But it doesn’t go like that, because they failed to account for the most dangerous player in the game — the Red Lion itself.

It is the most volatile, temperamental lion, who needs a pilot that relies more on instincts than skill, Allura’s voice rang in his head like church bells.

Most importantly, though, it’s the fastest out of all lions.

He sees the Red Lion dive towards the Galra, sees the hope glistening in his eyes as he prays, wishes with all his heart that it makes it to him in time. And Shiro could crush that hope, then and there; his tail is wide open, one simple tug, and both lions would crash into each other harmlessly. He could roll out of the way with the Galra in tow, and they’d have both the lion and the pilot.

But Shiro is wondering what exactly it is that he’s doing, fighting against someone with so much life ahead of them.

He can pinpoint the moment the Galra realizes this, can nearly taste the despondent resignation inked into the fur on his face, the streak of orange that’s singed into his cheek — probably from some fight, he decides — and he understands this is it.

Lucky for him, Shiro thinks twice.

He remembers the Galra boy plunging off the cliff, eluding them with ease, dancing with the villagers, shielding them during the fallout Voltron caused. Shiro can end it, right here, right now.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he takes a gamble, looks the Galra dead in his nightmare-eyes, and smiles.

The Galra blinks.

The Red Lion swallows him whole.

He ducks his head under his arms, lying flat against the floor as the Blue Lion skims over him. An inch closer, and he would’ve been dead meat. Thank God for that, then.

(Those eyes are going to visit him in his sleep, he’s sure.)

“Aw, quiznak!” Lance whines. “We almost had him.”

“Just what is going on,” Allura whispers, small and vulnerable. “Why is the Red Lion so adamantly protecting him? It’d really choose the Galra over—” whatever she was about to say is lost amidst the overwrought shouts that ensue in the comms, and Shiro’s ears ache with the noise.

“You almost killed Shiro!” Pidge squawked, his voice rising three octaves.

“What?!” Lance shrieked back, equally agitated. “Shit, Shiro, I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you—”

“Uh, guys! He’s getting away!” Hunk said.

“Coran!” Allura barked. “Follow his coordinates, now! We have to—”

“No,” Shiro cuts in, stone cold.

“No?” Allura reiterates.

“We’re tired, Princess,” he amends. “We’ve been chasing down the Galra for two movements non-stop. We can track his location whenever, and with your wormhole ability, it’ll only be a matter of time. Let’s rest first.”

Allura is silent, and Shiro grows more apprehensive with each second, but he stands his ground. Eventually, she gives in. “Fine,” she says icily, and they both pretend they don’t hear the other three let out relieved sighs. “But when I say we go after him, we go.”

Shiro nodded, though they couldn’t see. “Done.”

Lance picks him up, and repeatedly apologizes profusely for nearly running him over. Allura says something about conversing with the rock people, but he’s only half-listening. Say he’s juggling his loyalties all you want, but Shiro’s shifted gears; his goal is different now.

They aren’t going to capture the Red Paladin.

They’re going to recruit him.

Chapter Text

Keith couldn’t tell you the last time he saw his dad.

This was, in part, due to the fact that he hardly remembered him. Bits and pieces were committed to memory, here and there, though even the validity of that remained questionable. They came to him on restless nights as soul-stirring specters — ghosts, not of vengeful men done wrong, but of a tragedy that refuses to let him go.

Keith couldn’t tell you the last time he saw his dad, but God, did he dream about it.

Ribbons of flesh clotted between pearl-embedded fangs, flies skittering lowly across the leathery, wanton texture of a decomposing cadaver. His father’s skin, once plateaued with the callousness of silt and sediment, shone a pallor pale enough to rival the desert sun. His shoulders, which had held the bedrock of mountain ranges in its depressions, were now slack with the weight of death.

The fangs glinted in his teary eyes, but Keith couldn’t even pay mind to the coyotes then. He stood, shellshocked, back to the decrepit shack he’d come to call home.

“Dad?” He quivered, impossibly small and vulnerable in that voice specific to children. Vultures circled overhead, the miasma of rot luring them in.

He imagines his eyes would have been pinpricks of fright, so infinitesimal they might as well have been dotted on with a needle. His limbs shook and shivered, as if the very tectonic plates beneath his feet were fissuring.

“Dad,” he said again, insistent. He collapsed to his side, ignoring the growls. He lifted his trembling hands, lightly tapping the side of his father’s lifeless face. His eyes stung, his throat welled up painfully, and he almost couldn’t speak. “Wake— wake up. Wake up!”

He wrought his fists against a pulseless chest, beating and beating the body senseless. “Wake up!”

Futile. Futile, like everything he did was. Quavering fingertips brushed against the blade strapped around the man’s hip — a gift from mom, he was told. He held it gingerly, eyes raking over the blood rolling down in rivulets, as if the knife itself was bleeding.

Abruptly, a mangy jaw ripped away the meat on his father’s cheek, the gross, liquid squelch making Keith choke on his own vomit. He puked, palms inches deep in a puddle of sick and heaved woodenly, in large, gaping mouthfuls. The stench clogged his nostrils mercilessly, and he regretted ever breathing at all in that moment.

He heard a rustle behind him, and met with the curious eyes of coyotes.

There’s something about the badlands that instills a particular wariness in the civilized. The call of hunger is rabid in the lonesome wild, apparent in the actions of every creature belonging to it: in the scrape of their paws against dirt; in their beginningless, abyssal gaze; in the tongue that drags over their wet noses and salivating chops.

It was with this dread that Keith finally confronted the petrifying truth of this situation.

The coyotes were still hungry.

He clenched the knife, and ran as the first lunged.

He stumbled over his ankles, barely scrambling back to his feet in time to dodge the following attack. They were blocking his path to the shack, so Keith chose the only direction that remained: the desert.

He bolted, knobby knees straining under his fright. Keith tripped more often than not, and to this day he considers it a miracle he was not devoured.

For all that he was raised amidst the land of empty spaces, his home was inevitably in the fire-cliffed constellations his father preached. Where Keith belongs to the sky, the coyotes belong to the desert. Eddying dunes and grains of sand cutting into skin did nothing to them — they zipped across the ground, yapping and howling something awful.

Their low, thunderous growls were mechanical, almost. Like the grinding of an archaic engine revving to life, low and grating. Chalks against a blackboard didn’t even begin to describe it.

Keith ran, breaths coming sharp and short, hands outstretched to a setting sun he couldn’t possibly reach.

Already he was touching his limit. His puny, five-year-old body couldn’t take much more of this exertion. Then, as if the world itself decided to carve his epitaph into the ever-shifting dunes that would’ve forgotten him come morning light, he reached a cliffside.

The coyotes howled.

Keith stared off the escarpment, unnaturally still. He wasn’t even sure his heart was still beating, all he could hear were those damned coyotes, crowing in laughter.

He looked down at his mother’s knife clutched in his hand. He looked back at the coyotes, famished maws gnashing, stalking ever closer.

Fight or flight.

Sink or swim.

Do or die.

It was on that day, in a moment of wretched survival, his pale skin morphed into mauve fur, his pupils receded into a yellow void, and Keith the Human became Keith the Galra.

He’ll dream about it, alright. Wake up with terror in his throat, fire scorching him, evaporating his blood and boiling the iron to unbearable levels. If he squints through the film of sweat flecking his lashes, he’ll see his hands covered in the dirty blood of those coyotes. He’ll see the emergency transmitter his father left him, tuning in to a frequency unknown to Earth. He’ll see the cargo ship land, a mother he’s never known and never loved arising, enveloping him in warm arms, and promising to never leave again.

Most of all, though, Keith will see his own bare feet, traipsing the Arizona sands.

Sometimes, when night rang high in the Marmora base, Keith would climb to the roof, muscles throbbing in the inflicting gravity of dead things and a dying thing. He’ll dangle his legs off the edge, and smell the whistling desert winds carry the decay.

He screams until the coyotes scream back.

If he had to sum up everything that went down in the past few quintants in one, succinct word, it would probably be surreal.

By nature of his (now stagnant) occupation, Keith has lived through many a fool’s expedition and somehow survived to tell the tale. There was that time Keith was sent on a simple reconnaissance mission, and then had to face off in a one-on-one fight against a druid, or that time he had to pilot through zero-gravity space with nothing but a faulty jetpack, whilst caught up in the crossfire of a rebel hideout and Empire cruisers.

Then, of course, comes the notorious Solo Mission Gone Wrong, where one thing led to another, and next thing he knows, his cover is blown wide open and Sendak has carted him off to the Arena.

This — this takes the cake though. Because not only has Keith had to deal with the emotional roller coaster that was accidentally liberating a planet from imperial forces and then high-tailing it from Voltron, but now, he has to evade literally every bounty hunter in the universe.

Really, what other word can properly describe the feeling of staring at your own face, smack-dab on a wanted poster besides surreal?

His countenance is as displeased as ever. Lips peeled back in a snarl, teeth displayed like some feral beast; eyes narrow slits, like rays of first light peeking through the gaps between drawn curtains. They gleamed chemically, casting a sickly glow on his fur.

Wanted dead or alive for government theft, destruction of property and treason. Is in possession of an Empire-owned lion-ship. Reward of 100,000 GAC for capture.

Well, darn. There go his Sunday plans.

Keith very deliberately does not lose his mind. Instead, he carefully drags his gaze away from the poster, and tugs his hood lower. His steps are semi-robotic, uneven from disquietude. There aren’t many Empire soldiers roaming the market, but the drones are a different story. If even a glimpse of him is caught by those circling the lookouts... he prefers to not think about it.

Unlike Yurhal, this planet is rampant to the brim with Empire minions, and it's a major stronghold in the far-west quadrant of the Halkek region. Back on Yurhal, he guesses the Empire had only just built their first weaponry base — hence why Keith was able to take it out so effortlessly with only Red.

This place is in a completely different league, which on its own was enough to ward Keith off on any other day. But he was getting desperate. Supplies were thinning after ages of no pause, and he had gotten his first undisturbed sleep in two movements. He’s a little suspicious as to why Allura and the Paladins haven’t attacked him so far, but he isn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He weaves through the crowd, the amiable atmosphere rolling off his skin and sinking into the earth. Forget the first-aid and rations, he needs to get to Red. He was aware of the potential for a nasty fallout in an Empire-dominated planet, but he was taking a calculated risk here.

He just didn’t account for the variable that was Zarkon putting a price on his head.

Keith rounds a corner, buttoning the cloak to hide his pulkel underneath. Though it’s unlikely anyone will recognize it as Galran clothing, he’s still glad he had the forethought to hold onto the robe in the first place.

He takes a moment to survey the town square. Rows of fruit stalls and clothing stores line the entryway. A giant dias, about the span of a decent-sized hangar, glimmers like ocean water in the distance, catching the light in the way only tides do. He’s pretty sure it’s made of scaultrite, though why anyone would use such a valuable material as decor is beyond him.

As Keith hedges closer to the small forest they had burrowed away in, his ears strain at the sound of a mass of shuffling footfalls, far too heavy and tired to be your average grocery-shoppers. He cants his head to the side lightly, and notices the march nigh instantaneously.

It’d be hard not to, with their gaunt, harrowed faces staggering by in a lugubrious flow, like slow-seeping molasses. They sport tattered rags, so dirty they may as well have been woven from filth. An occasional few stray dizzily away, before being harshly pushed back into line once more. No quivers wrack the soldiers, Keith can’t find a spot of remorse in them. They have Zarkon in their eyes.

(He can’t help but wonder if he does too.)

And the hunger. Oh, the hunger. Their bodies are shadowed with it, unbearably so; weightless they may be, but their bones still cannot uphold the burden of their bodies.

“What...” he mutters, a deep cold settling under his skin. His ears erect, fur sploofing out. Keith joins the small crowd accumulating on the outskirts of the cavalcade, whispers scuttling through and leaving goosebumps in their stead.

He must have been heard, because a woman responded.

“It’s a Death March,” she says next to him. “The Empire discovered a rebel base here a few movements ago. They’re taking them to labor camps, I hear.”

He’s heard of these labor camps, though they were little more than free-floating rumors amongst the Marmora; the possible development was too new to actually draw a conclusion. None had doubted the cruelty of their enemy, rather, it was a simple lack of proof that soaked the notion in skepticism.

Maybe they should’ve taken it more seriously.

Out of the blue, he saw volcanic hair tumble over an emaciated frame, and when the girl lifts her head, she wears a face he knows.

Ehela.

Saucer-eyed and trembling, tears cascade down her cheeks, mouth hanging open in a wordless cry.

Keith loses his grip on reality, and all he sees is red. His heart palpitates, and his steps feel like distant thunder. The world narrows to that one point, where Ehela’s legs scissor this way and that. Her arms are stringy with rubbery skin, and the sturdy boulders of her back have crumbled to dust.

He’s going to rip those soldiers to shreds.

But when he blinks, she’s gone, replaced with the pink-freckled face of a boy about as old as she. The cuffs dig bruising scars into his wrists, and his vibrant, technicolor skin is stippled with grime.

“His parents must’ve been rebels,” the woman whispers. “Do you see them?”

Keith swallows, retreating into the shadow of the rabble. He presses the pads of his fingertips to his eyelids, reminding himself that Ehela and the others are light years away. Stupid.

The boy trips over his own feet, losing himself to the death-ring of malnourishment. Keith forces himself to watch as he, struggling with the sky on his shoulders, shuffles onto his feet once more.

They all get back up. And in their eyes it’s clear they don’t want to.

“No,” he gruffs out.

A soldier who, for all the world, looks as though she’s completing a task that’s about as interesting as watching paint dry, locks her gaze with Keith’s. His half-hidden face must have held something incriminating, because her eyes narrow, suspicion gleaning in them like oil.

He should go. There isn’t anything he can do about this anyway. Sure, Keith could charge in with reckless abandon, guns blazing and pulse pumping, demanding justice for the innocents dragged under the Empire’s regime. But he risks everything — him, the bystanders, the rebels themselves, Red.

Freedom isn’t free. Change comes at the cost of sacrifice, whether that be in blood or death. Those who stand against the forces that be know this like a hymn inscribed upon the heart. These mutineers knew of the things that could befall those like them, and this is their consequence.

Victory or death, the Empire says. But more often than not, the price of victory is death.

The soldier is wading through the throng now, folkmen parting for her like frightened birds. Keith meanders further into the crowd when she gets too close for comfort.

From his peripheral, he watches as the boy continues to spill over his feet, wiry limbs shaking violently as he tries to push himself upright again, to no avail.

“Hey,” said a soldier, looming over him. “Get up!”

The boy judders, heaving sordidly, and he isn’t given even a tick before the soldier kicks him in the ribs.

To suffer is to live. Everyone’s born a criminal, with some invisible transgression inked on their foreheads, just waiting to happen. Keith is a Hayek. That is his sin to carry, and his alone. This kid’s sin was being brought into this world at the wrong place, wrong time.

The mission before the individual. It’s what they chose.

(That boy didn’t.)

This is not Yurhal. This is a fortified Empire battle station that can and will tear into Keith given the chance. He can’t save anyone here.

Blow after blow lands, and Keith has to dig his claws into his palms to ward off the rage staining his gums like tar.

Knowledge or death.

(What does knowledge matter if they’re not alive to use it?)

The soldier raised his rifle, plasma swirling like a void.

He couldn't do anything.

(Liar.)

Against his better judgment, and defying the assumption that Keith actually possesses a will to live, he whips his blade from its holt, and in one fell swoop, hurtles it to the soldier, cleanly slicing his head off his shoulders. He observes, from the distance, as his lifeless body goes lax and the rifle clatters to the ground. His head rolls off its perch on his neck, falling with a wet thud.

For a brief moment, he spots the wide, horror-painted figure of that kid. Keith can’t make out much, but the boy backs away from the metal helmet grazing his naked feet.

There is silence, for approximately a tick, before sheer pandemonium seizes everyone.

“Mizvenk,” he hisses below the shrieking, watching as a clique of guards rush to their comrade’s corpse. One pockets his blade, and a frigid panic flushes him as he grapples with the implications of that.

Not only does his knife have the Marmora symbol on it, but it’s also forged from fucking luxite. The druids are going to have several questions about its origins, and that does not bode well for their operations. Last he checked, both Thace and Ulaz were amongst the higher ranks. With the revelation of his blade, Zarkon might ascertain the existence of an entire Galran rebel network with luxite weapons. It won’t be hard to track them down when the mineral is already so rare.

So basically, Keith may or may not have just exploded centuries of hardwork in building the Blade of Marmora to bits.

Suddenly, he understands why they never held knife-throwing classes at base.

He’s shaken out of his stupor when a heavy hand clasps his shoulder, none too kindly.

“Who—” the soldier doesn’t even get another word out before Keith roundhouse kicks her in the temple, acting on instinct before common sense. She unceremoniously collapses into a tangle of limbs, unconscious. Someone screams beside him, and he hears several gasps hush through the innocents. Keith’s wondering if fights are that uncommon here for them to act so scandalized, but it’s then that he realizes — his hood fell down.

“That’s the fugitive!” Hollers an indignant voice.

“After him!”

Keith hurries away from the dias in town square. For all that he sprints across relatively non-treacherous terrain, Keith practically feels himself wading through the shit storm he caused. He leaps over an officer, landing harshly on his broad back and using it as a springboard. Another soldier crashes into the first just as he vaults away, but Keith can’t take that as a win just yet.

The whirring of the blasters is all the warning he gets, before an eruption of plasma hits the floor, sending dust clouds spurting frivolously into the air. He narrowly dodges them, the searing heat making the scar on his cheek pulsate in phantom pain.

He ducks behind a fruit stall to catch his breath, ears flattened and tail snapping behind him. The soldiers, in a show of approximately zero tact, began firing at every potential hiding spot they could see: houses, stalls, vehicles. The people themselves are unsafe, scampering as far from the impact-range as they could.

Keith’s eyes rove across the scene as time ticks on, unrelenting. His eyes take a dobosh to adjust to the manmade sandstorm, but they settle on the wine-dark sheen of his blade in a trice. It’s slung around the hip of a soldier not too far, perhaps a couple yards past. It’d take one well-timed lunge, and—

He isn’t fast enough.

The fruit stall fulminates in a rollicking blare, and Keith just about manages to dive away before sustaining injury to his torso. He’s ashamed to say it’s not the blast that got him, though.

There’s the sense of an ill-done touchdown, followed viciously by lances of electricity up his spine, needle thin and razor sharp. He barely has time to utter a pained cry before he has to roll away from the next onslaught.

His ankle is definitely broken, maybe his tailbone got bruised, too. But he can worry about that later.

His tail curls around his ankle tightly, coiling the white hot agony like a wound-up spring, curtailing whatever it could so he could hop onto his feet again. He placed some weight on his bad foot, gingerly, and felt the prickle burn. The makeshift tail-splint could only help so much, but it’d have to do.

It’s a game, from then. Duck, jump, roll, ignore the pain, and pray it’s enough. Maybe it’s all simultaneous, maybe there’s an order he’s mugging up, but it doesn’t matter when his death is just one step behind.

The soldier with his blade keeps cleverly out of reach, dancing away when he’s close enough to tantalizingly graze the hilt, and firing from behind his comrades when Keith is forced to fall back.

Another gun shoots wildly at him, and Keith feels the sizzle rush up his back with a vendetta. He hisses, ducking low behind a bluff of stone, mind running a mile a minute. What can he do? He’s surrounded, stripped of his weapons, and there’s no counting on backup when he’s alone.

Wait. He isn’t alone.

Red.

As the guards near, Keith shuts his eyes, reaching across the physical chasm that separates them, searching for a string of presence to latch onto.

Red, he pleads, and it's all he can do to hope she hears.

The crowd has disappeared completely now, vanished into the fringes of their dismal town. The rebels, too, are nowhere to be seen. Keith wonders on the boy. Did he make it out? Was there someone to hold his hand, to tug his weary body far from the violence?

An officer blew away the last bits of his hideout, and the ground shuddered with him. They raise their guns in terrifying synchronicity.

The thief, with Keith's knife hoisted round his hip bone, joins the guards at the forefront. He sneers at him with an air of vindicated satisfaction, and Keith snarls back, all teeth and fang. He bites back the pain nipping at his ankle, and crouches low on his hands and legs, belly bared to the land beneath.

It's good, he thinks, as the heat crescendos, that the rebels may have gotten a chance to run.

Suddenly, concentrated blue beams carve canyons into the planet, eviscerating the soldiers to fractals. A flip is switched, and Keith forgets his broken ankle and bounds for the one with his blade, snatching it from his grasp and jumping away, in time to see the soldier dive behind a still-standing fruit stall.

He does a tuck and roll, and doesn't even mind the jolt of pain twinging his back and Achilles’ heel.

He sighs, a small smile playing on his lips. “Hey, girl.”

Red purrs mechanically, a deep rumbling resonating in the atmosphere like a homecoming. He wobbles to his feet, and she swallows him before he could fall back down.

He's never been happier to see the cockpit than at this moment.

Steadying his racing heart to the rhythm of Red’s purring, Keith allows himself a brevity of composure.

Predictably, it goes to shit again.

A force like thunder rams into Red, sending them hurtling through the stratosphere. In the shock of it all he’s flung forward, bashing his forehead on the control wheel with a vigor that makes his eyeballs rattle in their sockets. He grunts, tugs the wheel towards him and Red zooms backward, evading a purple laser beam and curling mid-flight.

“Aw, zekin,” says he, for before Keith’s very eyes hovers a fleet of Empire cruisers, larger and meaner than any he has faced. He counts several dozens swarming around him, poised to destroy.

His fight with the soldiers, however long it felt, couldn’t have lasted more than ten doboshes, at most. That would have been a wide enough window of time to coordinate a flotilla of this magnitude, provided that someone had informed them of Keith’s appearance from the beginning. Which they very well could have done, because this planet is, once again, chock-full of Empire brutes who had communicators.

If there was an award for dumbest person alive, Keith probably wouldn’t win it, but he sure as hell would be nominated.

A flock of fighter jets swerve towards him, gunning rapid-fire blasts. Keith spins around them, lacing through the air deftly and fluently.

He pulls to the right and aims Red’s tail-laser, knocking four or so cruisers out of the ring in one hit. He dives down, arching the laser this way and that, taking out as many ships as he can while evading the overhead strikes.

All the while, he keeps an agitated eye on the battle-cruiser. Shocks of purple lightning spark across the infrastructure, and he isn’t amiss to the steadfastly growing energy ball.

That cannon is going to fire soon. Soon enough that Keith knows he won’t be able to escape the assault or the aftermath. Worse, there’s nowhere he can reasonably go. The skies are blotted with warships, the ground is infested with sentries, and Red’s wormhole ability is already so limited, nevermind the fact that he won’t find the time to actually initiate the sequence.

Sweat beads down his forehead, and he gulps.

What can I do, what can I do?

The jets get too near, so he yanks on the trigger, snaps Red’s jaw open and lets loose a blast for the history books. He decimates a good chunk of the jets, but more fly out of the battle cruiser in droves. The momentum of his ill-timed shot pushes Red back, directly into the path of a pack of jets.

Stifling a gasp, he slams his fractured ankle on the rudder, halting sloppily before an impact, and taking off again as the jets start to shoot.

He digs his canines into his lips, frustrated. “Damnit!” He yells, thrusting the throttle levers forward.

Maybe, just maybe, if he can pick up enough speed, he’ll be able to zoom out of the atmosphere before any serious damage. As soon as he sees an opening, all hell breaks loose.

He feels the intensity of it: the blinding heat, the release so earsplitting he can hear a deafening ring in his head. He screams, hands in a white-knuckled grip around the wheel. The cannon blast is too close, too hot, too much for him to take, and he can’t avoid it because there are ships clouding his escape.

Is he going to die here?

And when all hope seems lost, Red does what she’s most accustomed to doing: the impossible.

Her mouth gapes open, and out flows an incinerating pillar of fire, melting the ships below him to liquefied, viscous goop. Keith, like a fool, is too stunned to use that out, so Red flies for him, and they just barely avoid death.

He means to thank her, but all that comes is: “That’s new.”

You’re welcome, she deadpans.

He shakes his head. Red’s flamethrower — flamethrower? — bought them some time.

“What now?” He asks, hoping she’ll have an answer.

And she does. But it’s not one he likes.

Call them, she says. The other Paladins. They may help.

“Are you insane,” he derides incredulously. “They’d probably join the Empire!”

You know they won’t, she says, as Keith climbs the atmosphere. They aren’t . . . bad. They just think you are.

He scoffs. “Yeah, well, their loss.”

It will be ours too, if nothing is done, she avers, and he hates how she’s right. As if to prove her point, a crushing surge of ships flow out from the cruiser’s never-ending supply, like a portent of inescapable doom. Keith looks to the comms, inconspicuous yet foreboding.

A memory he’s tried to avoid, bitter-soaked and fuzzy, fights its way to the surface of his consciousness. The leader of Voltron, with pale locks plastered to his forehead and eyes of charcoal, smiling at him.

Besides, Red says, because she knows exactly what he's thinking. Not all of them hate you.

He wants to call it a machination of some sort, but Keith has grown so attuned to the slightest subterfuge that even he can’t deny the sincerity in that smile. Regrettably, he cannot think of a single, plausible reason as to why Voltron’s leader would let him go, and yet he did.

Trust, Red purrs, like riptides weathering sturdy mafic.

Keith shuts his eyes, and exhales.

“I better not regret this, Voltron.”

A vivid thunk echoed from Lance’s line, which Shiro suspected to be his head slamming against the steering wheel with all the force of a Galra cruiser.

“I so wanna fling myself off a cliff right now,” he said, voice muffled by what must be the aforementioned wheel.

Pidge’s voice crackled to life. “Well I wanna fling someone else off a cliff.”

“I volunteer as tribute,” Hunk said immediately, with far too much ardor for Shiro’s liking.

“Hey, I called dibs!” Lance squawked.

“There will be no throwing our teammates off of cliffs,” he chastised, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And Lance, start flying responsibly!”

“I’m plenty responsible,” Lance argued, as a well-aimed shot from Allura sent the Blue Lion catapulting into Hunk, who then used his newly-found momentum to ram right back into Lance, and then Pidge crashed into both of them because of course he did. “But we’ve been training for hours!”

“It’s been fifteen minutes.”

In a show of harmony they ought to display when in actual battle, all three Paladins said, at once, “Whatever!”

Shiro has long since come to terms with the fact that his team low-key couldn’t care less about forming Voltron or saving the universe. Which, contrary to their convoluted edifice, does not run parallel to their current goals. There will not be an Earth to return to if they don’t stop Zarkon, but it seems like the only member who cares about that is Shiro.

“Pidge, pay attention to your surroundings. There’s more determinants in a fight than direct attacks; you need to use the environment to your advantage. Hunk, know your strengths. The Yellow Lion is specialized for defense, not evasion! Cover your teammates,” Shiro instructed sternly, appraising the camera feed.

“The most important part of being in a team is covering each other's weaknesses and enhancing your strong points. You need to learn to work together.”

Shiro flicks his gaze across the feed, and catches Allura’s unreadable eyes, dappled with lavender and sage.

“Is something wrong, princess?”

“Not at all,” she says. “It’s just promising to see you settle into your role as Voltron’s leader.”

“Right,” he agrees. He wants to break eye-contact, but some part of him feels like he might be making a mistake.

She pervades the silence first. “You resemble the Paladins of old, in a way.”

He leans against the panel, and braces his elbows on the side. “There’s no need to spare my feelings. My team doesn’t even respect me.”

“They are quite the rapscallions, but you rein them in well enough, Shiro. You just need to…” she gestures vaguely with her hands. “Grow into the part a bit.”

He chuckles dryly. “We don’t exactly have time for that, princess.”

“Of course not,” she says, cutting him a look. “I’m just saying that they’ve had their entire world upended in just a few movements. They’ll learn to listen to you soon.” She looks at him tenderly. “When we retrieve the Red Lion, all of this will work out.”

Shiro turns back to the screen. “Are you still planning on capturing the Red Paladin?”

He can hear the slight exasperation in her tone. “Yes, Shiro.”

“Why?” He asks, absently shooting Hunk into the hard, rocky ground. The castle’s defenses are really something else. “You heard what Aryehel said.”

She scoffed. “She wouldn’t even tell us his name.”

“Because she wanted to protect the Red Paladin,” he said. “If he was as evil as you think—”

“I have heard quite enough, Shiro,” Allura cuts in, quiet but stormy.

He pursed his lips. “The others earned the Lions’ trust the same way he did. How is it any different?”

“Well maybe the Red Lion chose wrong!” She raised her voice, hushing the sterile air. Allura’s fists were balled at her sides, jaw clenched tightly. Her eyes were downcast, and Shiro was sure he imagined the mistiness.

“…No,” he said softly, incredulous. “You know it didn’t.”

She inhaled deeply, relaxing her shoulders. She looked up, but didn't turn to him. “The former Red Paladin was a virtuous, just man who gave up everything in the war against Zarkon. He had every making of a brilliant Paladin, and this… fiend cannot even begin to compare.”

What Shiro wished to do, more than anything, was to throttle Allura. Let him be remembered as the man who decked the princess of a dead civilization; may they carve it on his tombstone if they so wish.

But as he watches Allura hastily rub a palm against her cheek, Shiro wonders if he’s been going about this the right way at all. Allura has been the sole survivor to walk out of Altea’s genocide, alongside Coran and the mice. She is a piece of untarnished history; a halcyon, honey-hued remnant of a long-gone past.

It must be lonely, Shiro realizes, to have nothing but memories left.

Maybe, just maybe, Allura doesn't need a soldier.

Maybe she needs a friend.

“If the Red Lion lost her first Paladin to the Galra, why would she choose another Galra as her Paladin?” Shiro prompted gently. “She wouldn’t — unless not all Galra are the same.”

He swallowed. “Of course the old Red Paladin was incredible. I'm just saying that we should give this one a chance to be too.”

Allura’s head snapped up, a strangely stricken expression marring her face. Her mosaic eyes watered.

A million years ago, he and Adam had taken the phone off the hook and disappeared for a good week or two. It was rather unlike Adam, impromptu and unprepared. But he’d wanted to give Shiro one last hurrah before Kerberos, so he whisked him away to the fair-water banks of Alaska.

The cold had soaked through their woefully thin jackets in a wondrous joy; the kind you miss before the moment’s even over. The kind that resembles frostbitten pinkies interlinked, and frigid blue lips locked together, with no-one but the northern lights as witness.

Allura’s eyes look like the sky did, back then.

“Princess—”

A loud, invasive alarm washes the room in a red haze. It startles all of them enough that Shiro nearly punches the thing on reflex.

“What’s that sound?” Pidge asks, voice staticky through the radio and overshadowed by the alarm.

“It’s a mayday call,” Allura answers, schooling herself. “Someone sent us a cry for help.”

“Who is it? Yurhal?” Hunk says, sounding relieved — and oh, right, the team could hear everything. Damn.

“No,” Shiro disagrees, as he ceased fire and the Lions began to pull back to the castle. Coran rushed into the room, a dirty rag and rusted bucket clutched in hand, as he hurries to the front. “Yurhal isn’t valuable enough for the Galra to retake it so soon after liberation.”

“But who else could be sending us a distress signal?” Allura murmurs, as Coran types away on the panel.

Shiro knows of two people, and only two people who can send a direct call to them. The first, is planet Yurhal, to whom they imparted their emergency channel in case they fall into dire straits once more. And the second— well.

“I believe,” Coran says, hand hovering over the keypad and a note of wonder in his voice. “That this is a mayday call from the Red Lion.”

Shiro blew out a tired breath, and faced the princess.

“We can’t keep handing out second chances, Shiro,” she says, voice raw but firm. “We mistrusted once. We cannot afford the same again.” Shiro shelves whatever that admission means for another time.

A feeling, hot like lightning but soothing like lullabies, floods his mind. Comforting. Reaffirming. Go for the throat, it says.

“Which is why we have to do this,” Shiro said, looking at her intently. “There is nothing between Zarkon and universal domination but us, princess. You said so yourself. If we don’t at least try to make peace with the Galra once it’s over, how are we any different?”

“Don't you compare us to Zarkon now,” she says hoarsely.

“Your father trusted the Galra. Maybe it didn't turn out for the best, but it's been ten-thousand years!” He pointed at the beeping alarm, gaze never once straying from their perch on Allura’s hesitant frame. “There are good Galra out there, and he's proof of that.”

“Shiro,” Allura says, but he can hear her walls crumbling in the slight quiver of her tone.

“You don’t have to like it, but he’s our best shot,” he stepped forward, and braced a hand on her shoulder. “I know it'll be difficult, but that's not all it'll be. Trust him, princess.”

He stares into her aurora-eyes, and says, unwaveringly, “If it doesn't work out, we'll fix it. Together.”

Allura bites her lip, the alarm casting a scarlet glow on her dark skin. Like ox blood, like field-borne poppies.

Maybe she needs a friend. “Allura,” he pleads.

After an infinitely long, excruciating moment: “Don’t make me regret this,” and for all the gratitude that floods Shiro, somehow, it sounds like an echo.

Keith has just about finished the preparations for his imminent death, which include, but are not limited to:

1. Scratching a poorly thought-out will onto the lockers that he’s certain no-one is going to honor.

2. Shoving as many sea-salt ration bars as he can down his throat in between avoiding annihilation.

3. Muttering half-assed prayers to gods he vaguely remembers Kolivan telling them about back at base.

4. And finally, trying not to flinch hard enough to dent the pilot seat every time he so much as glances at a bright light.

(That last one could be because of his concussion, but from where he’s standing, it’s just superb multitasking.)

Then, the sky is ripped apart at the seams, fractals of ocean blues and blinding whites diverging and pooling into one another.

“No fucking way,” he breathes, just as Red says smugly, I told you so.

Three very familiar lions descend from the wormhole, firing blazing pillars of plasma through the flotillas. He clicks his jaw shut, and pulls back before a blast hits him too. He catapults over a ship, shooting a laser that makes it bloom the prettiest oranges and yellows.

It would seem, Red begins. That I was correct once again.

He doesn’t roll his eyes, because that would make his head hurt even more. Instead, he says, “Fine, you got me.”

A small window snaps to life on Keith’s right, a glitching hologram showcasing a face he dreads to see.

“…Princess Allura?” His voice cracks halfway through and if he weren't in so much pain, he'd cringe from the embarrassment.

“Galra,” she says simply. He blinks. He opens his mouth, but she cuts him off. “What’s the status?”

He swallowed dryly. His throat feels so itchy — he’d kill for a drink right now. “At least a few dozen squads swarming from the battle-cruiser everytime one goes down. There’s another directly above on an intercept path, and the battle-cruiser’s cannon should be ready in about eleven doboshes. I barely escaped the first time.”

She huffs haughtily. “And? No Red Lion to save you this time?”

He narrowed his eyes dangerously. “Are you going to help or not?”

“So we need to figure out a way to stop it from firing,” Said a familiar voice, as the screen switched to yet another nightmare-inducing countenance. Disarming smiles, snow-tossed hair and all, it’s Voltron’s leader.

“Short of blowing it up, there's none,” Keith answered, as he spun and dove to shake the jets on his tail. He swooped below the belly of the cruiser and twisted around, searing a clean, red line into the underside. The jets were caught up in the ensuing explosion, leaving a cloud of cinders behind. If only that did half as much damage as it looked like it did.

As Keith hovers above the battlefield, he takes a second to assess the situation. The eye of the storm is just above town square, the unmarred dias glowing like morning dew in the haze of battle. The Green and Yellow lions are back-to-back, the former utilizing its agility to blow through jets, and the latter smashing them to bits by ramming into their sides. The Blue Lion flows like water, dancing out of reach and shooting startlingly accurate blasts at the jets.

A strange light glints in the leader’s eyes. “Then we blow it up,” he says, sounding as if he's just had an epiphany.

Keith snorts. “If only.”

“I'm serious, Pa— uh, sorry, what's your name?”

“Your mom,” he deadpans, dive-bombing onto the crown of a lone jet.

“Aren't you a charmer,” a velvety voice smoothed over the comms. Lance.

“Okay, but how do we do that, Shiro?” Pidge. And he's guessing Shiro's the leader, then. He's getting good at this voice recognition thing.

“Charge them all at once and hope for the best?” Probably the Yellow Paladin, right? There are only four of them, and Keith's stable enough to perform basic arithmetic. He hopes.

“I've got a better idea,” Shiro says. “That dias in town square is made of scaultrite, right? We can use it to reflect the canonfire back at the cruiser—”

“Of course!” Pidge cut in. “Scaultrite naturally reflects concentrated beams of light, and the cruiser’s cannon—!”

“—Is just a mega-giant laser,” Mystery-man added, voice harkening the dawn of a beautiful realization. “So if we get the blast to hit the dias at the right angle…”

“We could obliterate the cruiser in one fell swoop!” Lance finished excitedly.

Sheer, unadulterated relief rolls through Keith. He smacks a hand against his forehead, concussion be damned. By Jove, they had some semblance of a plan. An honest to God, solid plan that isn’t held together by prayers, dreams and flex tape. If he had the energy, he would cry.

Keith could hear the frown in Lance’s tone. “Wait, but, how are we gonna do this? We can't exactly move the dias.”

The skeleton of an idea began to assemble in his head. “I’ll take care of that,” He chirped into the radio. “Cover me!”

“Are we supposed to—”

“Just trust him!” Shiro ordered.

Keith dove into the fray, whirling under and over the fleets, bringing as many as he could to their knees. Gunfire rages atop. He nears the icy sheen of the dias soon enough, a horde circling the outskirts of town. He's about to make a break for it, but a flood of attacks barricades his path, and Keith falls back harshly.

Lasers penetrate the fighters, bounding into the ground below and spraying dust into the wind. The Blue Lion zips away just as Keith catches sight of it, watching over him.

He wastes no time, dropping low to the floor. Red’s maw cranks open, and one push of a lever later, Keith watches her breathe fire.

“He gets fire?! That's so cool! And unfair!” Pidge yelled, simultaneously awed and enraged.

“How is that even possible,” Lance muttered bitterly. “There should be a limit to the number of Newton’s laws this guy’s allowed to break.”

Keith, despite only recently discovering this power himself (and not having the faintest idea what Newton is), feels selfishly vilified at their astonishment.

Focus, Red chastises.

To absolutely no-one’s surprise, scaultrite is not easy to melt. Red's fire licks the waxy dias, leaving a sheen of sweat and vapor, yet the material itself remains unscathed. Not even a scratch.

He runs a tongue over his fangs. “Time?”

“Eight doboshes,” Allura responds.

Change of plans, he hastily decides. Keith flies to the edge of the circle, catching glimpses of metal brackets slotted below the scaultrite and rooted to the soil. It's a slim opening, but it's as close as he'll get.

Keith carefully, oh so slowly, begins to liquify the metal holding up the dias. The fire misses the mark more often than not, rolling off the scaultrite or snuffing into the loamy earth. What little flames break through the gap and to the metal, though, are what Keith's counting on.

He's a quarter of the way done when Allura calls, sharply, “Six doboshes remaining. Whatever you're doing, Galra, do it fast.”

“I'm trying,” he grits out, brow beaded with sweat and vision swimming. His movements are sluggish, his claws slip off the thrusters after a dobosh or two, and his foot goes limp every now and then.

“Five,” Allura says, and she too sounds like she's wrangling with panic.

“Hunk,” Shiro barks into the radio, and Keith vaguely registers what a weird name that is for a warrior. “We need you to lift up the bulk of the dias once it's loosened. Pidge, Lance, you two take the sides. It'll be just like training.”

“Except we'll die,” Hunk says.

“Except we will probably die,” Lance corrects.

“Shut up,” Keith growls, dodging a spike of blasts at the last second. “Just focus on covering me!”

“Four doboshes,” Allura says tightly.

Can you make the fire any hotter, Red? He asks desperately.

I'm sorry, my Paladin, she responds somberly.

Keith digs his claws into his palms, and tries to clear his sight. He chances a glance up at the cruiser, sees the lightning lash through the air in thin, spidering lines. The cruiser itself seems to glow brighter, its presence multiplying with the gravity of this cannon alone.

“Three.”

Keith exhales. “We're not gonna make it,” he breathes, despondently. “I'm only halfway done—”

“We'll win,” Shiro cuts in, sounding every bit as confident as Keith doesn't feel.

"No,” Keith says. Red rumbles comfortingly. “We can't.”

“Two,” Allura says, almost lost to the fear’s thralldom.

“Well, this'll have to do, then,” Shiro says. “Places, everyone! Whichever way this ends, it ends now.”

Keith gulps sordidly. The Yellow Lion whooshes down, taking place at the head of the dias. The Blue Lion joins at the right, and the Green Lion at the left. Keith glances up at the cannon, only ticks away from firing.

Whichever way it ends, it ends now.

Red's paws pierce through the half-solid metal, tallow-soft and mushy.

“C'mon girl,” he grunts, pushing the thrusters to their fullest. “You've got this!”

They're making little increments of progress, the Yellow Lion being the only thing pushing them further into the atmosphere.

“Pidge, what's the angle?” Shiro asks.

“Uh, one-twenty degrees? Hunk?”

“One-forty should be good,” Hunk answers through a heavy grunt.

“Nearly there, team,” Shiro encourages, though Keith can tell the trouble underlying his words.

“One dobosh remaining!”

“Steady,” Shiro instructs, and Keith does his best to follow, but the control panel turns hazier and hazier by the tick. “Steady…. hold!”

An all too familiar, blood-curdling shot splits the stratosphere in half, crushing his eardrums with the rage of hellfire. His head burns, and Keith screams, and—

He lets go of the thrusters.

No.

The dias falls backward.

No. No.

The Lions shudder under the added weight, and the plate tips down and down, every inch by which gravity pulls it to the earth spells their doom.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers. He doesn't think anyone hears.

Right as Keith is about to shut his eyes, he sees the dias stutter pathetically. His eyes flutter open, albeit painfully, and he squints. Because the Yellow Lion rears backward.

What—

The blast slams into the scaultrite at the same time the Yellow Lion barges into it from behind, flipping the dias forward madly. Keith watches the cannon carve a brazen path through the sky, scorching the dirt colored clouds into a flame-edged purple. It burns the gunning fighters, before finally landing on the cruiser itself.

A brilliant fulmination of light envelops the entire atmosphere, smoldering the bloody reds and envy greens of supernovas. Keith is sure it explodes in him, too, a nebula pulsating beneath his ribs, setting his eyes and nostrils on fire. He coughs roughly, shielding his eyes from the onslaught.

And once the ashes settle, only they remain.

“…Did we just—”

“—I think—”

“Holy fuck, Hunk! That was amazing!” Pidge screamed, a laugh caught in his throat.

“Who knew you had it in you, man,” Lance crowed, relief echoing in his lungs.

"Well I had to do something..."

“We actually did it,” Shiro marveled, no small amount of shock in his voice. “We destroyed a Galra battle-cruiser.”

The comms erupted with noise, excitement and thrill and a million other wonderful things ringing in the static.

Mizvenk. Mizvenk.

“Red,” he says. She purrs, timber warm and reassuring.

A pinprick of blue dots the air before them, and it grows into a cavernous tear in space and time, hued in lightning whites and shocking blues.

“Hey— wait! Where are you—” Keith doesn't hear the rest of Lance's words, because Red's already taken him through the wormhole.

The fatigue and the agony claw at his consciousness, tearing what remains of it into shreds. His nervous system ignites.

It could've been worse, he thinks, as his eyes roll back into his head, and everything goes black.

The symbol is distasteful.

Sharp, jagged lines, rough like bluffs of sandstone in desert canyons. Oddly formed, like a misshapen scar, mauling the face of a war-torn veteran. Or maybe that's just the way it's drawn.

The only thing it shares with the Empire is a rich, murky purple that blooms like heron wings in the dead of night.

“And you're certain this is what it looked like?” She asks, her voice scratchy in the charged air.

“Yes, High Witch,” the soldier answers, arms folded behind his back.

She swished her robes elegantly, turning her back to him. “And what was this knife made of?”

“I… I was unable to learn of its origins. But it was durable, nearly indestructible — not like anything I've seen.”

His fear tastes delightfully sour on her tongue. She lets him stew in his dread for a moment longer, if only to revel in it.

“Dismissed,” she commands.

“Vrepit sa,” he responds, and all but flees.

The pool laps at her toes chemically, soaking the ends of her robes. She runs one, gnarled finger over the pencil marks, committing the sketch to memory.

The Emperor should know of this.