Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Keith used to watch the stars from her bedroom window like something out of a fairytale.

Once she waited, seven days through the unwavering heat of the desert and the inhuman cold of the skies, for her dad to come back. Looking at the stars.

“Please,” she heard herself. “Don’t say it.”

It was a whisper. A fragile wisp of a sound.

Mercy.

Shiro looked shocked. Her eyes widened a bit and her mouth opened, then closed as if she were confused, considering Keith’s request.

“But I need you to know…” Shiro said, at last. She sounded like she was about to cry, voice tight.

Keith laughed, an ugly, bitter sound.

“You’ve never been selfish before in your life,” she basically spat. Then, softly, like waving a white flag: “Please…”

Shiro reached for her hand, and, if Keith were a stronger woman, she would have pulled away.

“It’ll hurt too much,” Keith explained. She hated how weak she sounded. How desperate. How small. Her entire body shook with the effort of appearing strong, and still she failed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it.”

Keith wanted to take comfort in Shiro’s presence, to sink into the space between her hands in the way she longed for almost always and almost always could not. But her hand flickered like a candle where it met hers.

Her entire body told her: Pull away. And still she held on.

“You’ve never…” Shiro took a moment. “You’ve never backed down from anything before in your life,” she said.

Keith could see that the words tasted guilty in her mouth.

Both were right.

All around them, the desert roared its merciless heat.

“I know already,” Keith said, at last.

She looked away from Shiro.

“Good,” Shiro said. Her voice was firm. “Then let me say it.”

Keith scoffed.

“When are you leaving?”

This gave Shiro pause.

“Really?” She said, angry. “Is that what this is? You’re angry at me for going on a mission? You know –”

“I don’t know how I feel!” Keith shouted.

There were tears in her eyes and the last thing she wanted was for Shiro to see her cry. They burned.

Shiro’s eyes softened a bit, and she reached out to touch Keith’s shoulder, and this time she flinched away. Shiro was never the aggressive type. Sometimes that made Keith so angry.

“Keith,” she breathed. “It’s okay. I’ll be back sooner than you think…”

Keith stepped away from Shiro, unable to look at her for one second longer.

“Patience yields focus, huh?”

She stormed off without looking back.

Loneliness was a familiar foe.

For most of her life, Keith had been alone.

But this, she thought, was a new low – even for her.

Up on Shiro’s hoverbike, flying through the desert faster and faster, she yelled.

Yelled. Sobbed.

Her vocal chords throbbed, in pain. She stopped producing sound before she could stop crying.

Soundless tears fell from her eyes, interrupted by the cut-off sounds of her gasping for breath.

Her arms shook with exhaustion. The hoverbike wobbled dangerously.

Keith looked down at the blurry sight of the red bike and… let go.

.

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.

“Wake up…”

“Wake up…”

Was that… Shiro’s voice?

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When she came to, it was morning.

Keith’s eyes were encrusted with something. It was difficult to open them. Miles and miles of red desert sand stretched out in front of her. Her mouth felt dry.

She felt empty.

For a while, she laid there, feeling the heat of the sun burning its way through her. But, eventually, she tried to sit up.

She was sore. Her ribs were bruised, her arms… well, her entire body felt like a huge bruise, but… She was alive. There was no blood. She looked around, disoriented. Her hair was matted with sand.

The hoverbike was laying several feet away from her, around it messy tracks on the sand that hadn’t yet dissipated with the wind. Her bag was around there too, intact.

Keith grunted, and pulled herself up. Her throat hurt.

She took a step towards the bike and stumbled. Her hands stung as she caught herself.

“Ah!”

She let herself fall on her side, and looked at her hands, surprised.

There were deep scars on each of them. Scars, not cuts.

They throbbed.

Keith stood once again. She looked around, confused.

The sound of the desert was the same as always. It looked just as enormous, expansive and familiar as it always had.

But something in the desert was different. There was an energy. A booming, otherworldly strangeness. A call.

It surprised her that her dad’s little hut had stood the test of time.

The floors were clean, and there were no holes on the roof. Even the furniture – it was old, but not infested or even dusty…

She was sitting on the couch. Piles of old documents, paper and photos, were all around her. In front of her, the map of the desert. The crash site was marked by a post-it.

She paced around. Her hair was pulled back, into a long braid. And she was wearing leather, fingerless gloves; she’d found them in the shack after she patched up her hands.

The mystery was enough to keep her mind occupied during the day, but the nights were tough. She tossed and turned and failed not to think of Shiro.

She didn’t sleep, many times. She stepped out of the house in too-thin clothing and looked at the stars. Sometimes she drank. She never cried.

She needed to be strong.

Her voice fell into disuse.

She got used to surviving. Living with the bare minimum.

Sometimes she wanted to waste money with things like conditioner, lotion or hot water, but she was reminded of her dad; a cowboy to the core, who never spent a dime on something he didn’t absolutely need, and felt futile and girly.

She’d always had her hard edges…

Eating beans on the floor one night, she was startled by the red dress that hung by the window.

She dropped her food, standing up so fast that her head spun – she must be malnourished, dehydrated, going insane…

Her hand met the soft fabric.

Keith had embarrassed tears in her eyes.

The dress fit her perfectly.

Her muscular arms didn’t look out of place, and her hair fell in delicate waves onto her chest. The pile of clothes beside her made up the closet of someone else – a small, obedient girl that Keith despised. But Keith didn’t look like her. She looked like… herself.

Her heart sang.

“Keira?” She heard her foster mom calling out to her.

She cleared her throat, which had gone tight.

“I’m here,” she said, shyly.

Jane let herself into the changing room.

“Keira, take that off!” She gasped, scandalized. “What were you thinking? You look like a whore!”

Keith looked down at herself, trying to see what she missed – what could make that wonderful dress so offending.

“But –”

“But nothing, young woman. What about those white, modest pieces I picked out for you? We’re going to church, not a - a brothel. For Christ's sake, you’re only fourteen.”

Keith raised her arms, covering herself.

“I’m sorry,” she bites out.

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady, I just want what’s best for you,” Jane said, stern.

The words lit a fire inside her. A raging inferno.

She bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything. It bled.

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Jane bought her a modest white dress. It choked Keith with a high neckline and was tight around her too-toned arms and her waist. It hit her ankles.

Keith took the red dress.

Stuffed it in her bag after ripping out the store alarm.

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“Catch!” Her dad yelled.

No.

It was Michael.

She could’ve sworn, for a second…

The ball whizzed past Keith.

“Oh, um, sorry,” she said.

“You’re off your game today, sweetie,” he said, frowning behind his blond beard.

“Yeah, um, I think I twisted my wrist,” she said.

‘’Twist,” he corrected.

She frowned, and he laughed.

“Let me look at it,” he said, taking off his glove to come see it.

Keith took off her glove, rolling her wrist a few times until Michael stopped her, holding her arm tightly.

“Stop that,” he said.

He grabbed her hand, interlocking their fingers, and moved it around and around.

“Ow,” she hissed.

He kept on,

“Ow,” she said.

He stopped, but said nothing. He stood there, looking down at her arm. His fingers shifted, lingered.

His hand was almost as big as her forearm, she noticed. There was another moment of silence as his grip tightened. He breathed hard, and Keith suddenly wanted to shift away. There was a tingling, unsettled feeling spreading all over. She didn’t move.

“It’s fine,” he said suddenly, like nothing had happened.

Maybe nothing had.

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“What shirt is that?”

“None of your business.”

“Would it kill you to make small talk with me this one time?”

“Hm.”

“Come on. Tell me.”

“One of my foster dads gave it to me. It was his when he was younger.”

“He know you’re a dyke?”

“Fuck you.”

“Don’t get so defensive. I like it. The shirt.”

“Stop staring at me.”

“You don’t even have any tits for me to stare at. I’m just trying to read. Is it the Red Sox?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Just –”

“‘Cause you’re Korean?”

“I was born in Texas.”

“Nice. A cowgirl.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s okay. I like ‘em feisty.”

“Shut. Up.”

“Is that a fucking knife? You fucking psycho bitch get away from me!”

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.

She was wearing the shirt.

No.

She was wearing the red dress.

In front of the mirror.

Purple – holographic –

The mirror – was it?

“I can’t believe my girl’s gonna be off to the Garrison soon.”

Keith startled, turning around and growing red, embarrassed, as Michael seemed to take in the sight of her in that girly dress. His eyes were wide with shock.

“Why, Keira, don’t you look nice,” he said, not taking his eyes off of her body. “You’re growing up so fast.”

“A friend gave it to me,” she lied quickly.

He hummed, eyes briefly shifting to meet hers.

“That right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she snapped.

He smiled conspiratorially, and the anger that was growing in her chest ebbed away.

“Come on, let me look at you, you’re always hiding behind those baggy clothes… I shouldn’t have given you my old stuff.”

Keith awkwardly uncrossed her arms, her hands pointing forwards like she was making jazz hands.

Michael laughed, and she laughed along.

Casually, he put his hands on either side of Keith’s waist, pulling her towards him and taking a long look, his eyes raking her body.

Her heartbeat turned cold, and she stopped laughing, lips snapping closed.

“Yeah, you… you look really nice,” Michael said.

His hands kneaded her waist.

When his eyes finally met hers, Keith looked away, not wanting to see the expression on his face. She felt his hot breath on her skin.

For a few moments, why stood there, and she heard her own heartbeat hot and loud — her entire body shaking with it.

Michael hugged her. Tight.

“I’ll miss you, kid,” he said.

She tried to breathe. He held her tighter.

Her dress rode up a bit and her heart jumped in a wild panic.

She didn't push him away.

He let her go.

And she gave him a shaky smile.

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“Do you sometimes feel like you’re just a piece of meat?” Keith asked, one night.

They laid on the floor of Keith’s dorm, side by side, illuminated only by the light that filtered in through the window. The stars shone pretty.

Shiro turned to her in alarm, and Keith regretted the words immediately.

“No!” She responded immediately. Almost like a reflex.

When Keith said nothing, Shiro seemed to pause. There were long moments of stretched out silence. She pondered.

“Maybe… sometimes. I guess I’ve been lucky,” she said, morose.

Keith hummed in acknowledgement.

She looked at the Galaxy Garrison recruitment poster that hung on her wall.

Shiro stood tall and proud in it, her smile radiant. But stiff. Keith had learned the difference between Shiro’s polite smile and her real one.

“I’ve been lucky, too,” Keith was quick to correct. “Don’t get me wrong…”

They laid in a burgeoning silence.

Keith kept her mouth shut, suddenly feeling like an alien.

“You don’t have to say that,” Shiro said, finally, in a whispery tone that betrayed her so rare uncertainty.

She turned to look at Keith, hand brushing hers delicately.

Keith wished Shiro had the desire to hold her like she wanted to be held. Or that she had the courage to bridge the gap between them herself.

But she was a coward.

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Keith was wearing her hideous white dress when she met Shiro.

She immediately irritated her.

Shiro was in her gray uniform, hair pulled back into a bun. Smile radiant.

Stiff.

That picture.

PILOT ERROR

– purple –

“Keira, is it?” Shiro asked, extending her hand out for a handshake.

“Actually, it’s Keith,” Keith said. Shiro’s eyes widened, but Keith quickly explained. “They just don’t like that I’m a girl with a boy’s name.”

“Who’s they?” Shiro said, abandoning her earlier composure.

Keith shrugged.

“The sisters at the home. Foster parents. Teachers.”

Shiro smiled. It seemed different.

Keith looked away, suddenly nervous.

“So, Keith, do you hope to get into the Galaxy Garrison?” Shiro asked.

Keith scoffed.

“I couldn’t afford it even if I got in,” she said. “And I doubt I’d get in.”

Shiro looked at her for one long moment. Sizing her up.

“Why don’t you take a stab at the simulator?” She asked.

Keith set her jaw.

“I just told you. There’s no point,” she said, bitingly. “Besides, my foster mother would kill me if she knew I –”

“Yeah, you don’t look like you’re the kind of person who lets anyone tell you what to do,” Shiro interrupted.

Keith balked. She stared at Shiro with wide eyes, surprised that such a prim and proper looking girl would just – say that. And surprised that she looked like a person who didn’t let anyone tell her what to do. In her obediently modest white dress.

“And the Garrison has all kinds of programs. You shouldn’t worry about the money now,” Shiro said. “I saw how you were looking at the sim machine. Just try it.”

Keith stared at the simulator, the boys in her class all piled up around it. She swallowed dryly.

“I’m not cut out for these types of schools,” she said, finally.

“You know, my first name is Takashi,” Shiro said, tilting her head to the side. “A boy’s name, too.”

Keith looked at her for a long moment.

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She went home that day with a dress stained with red/orange sand and Shiro’s number clutched in her hand.

And the promise of greatness ahead of her.

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Her vision was fuzzy. She was running around the house.

Her purple hippo plushie was in her hand.

“I’m home, Keith!” Her dad announced.

Keith gasped, turning on her heel and stumbled, wobbly.

“Daddy!”

She ran to his arms, and he dropped his hefty work bag to pick her up.

“Did you have a good day, sport?”

She smiled, arms tight around his neck in a way only children who haven’t learned that the human body is breakable can do.

“Yes, daddy, but I missed you,” she pouted. “I wanted you to braid my hair before school.”

“Oh, come on, I wasn’t gone that long,” he laughed. “We’ll see about those braids another day. So, listen, do you want to come with me into work tomorrow for Take Your Daughter to Work Day? You can go up on the firetruck! And…”

Keith didn’t really remember the sound of her dad’s voice.

Her head started to hurt…

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“You made it here after all, huh?” Keith heard a voice from behind her. “Cadet.”

She quickly turned around.

Shiro. Smiling. Radiant — Stiff.

“Ma’am,” Keith said, after a brief moment processing. “Oh, um, yeah. I did.”

“I had a hunch,” Shiro said, a proud puff in her chest.

Keith rolled her eyes, but despite herself, she was smiling.

“Well, good luck getting settled in, cadet,” she said, patting Keith on the shoulder. “At ease.”

Keith turned around.

They were on the roof.

“I need to tell you something,” Shiro said, vibrating a little with nervous energy. Her hair was down. They were in their pajamas.

“Go ahead, dork,” she said.

Shiro bit her lip and shoved Keith in the shoulder lightly.

“I’m being serious, Keith!” She said, but she was smiling. That full, unrestrained smile that seemed to contain the entire world. It made Keith a little dizzy. She looked away.

“I’m sorry. I’m not over your UFO socks yet, but I’ll shut up for a bit,” she said.

“I got selected for the Kerberos mission!”

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“I don’t know, man, I don’t know if we should hit a girl,” the lanky boy said.

Another boy, shorter and stockier, nodded along.

“Yeah, she looks pretty small, Danny.”

“A helpless little kitty,” Danny said, a mean lilt to his voice. “Isn’t that right, sweetie pie?”

“Fuck you, Danny,” she said, through clenched teeth.

“Fuck me, you little bitch? You’re gonna regret telling the teacher what Britney and I –”

Keith shook with anger, uncontained inferno that burned inside her always, and threw a punch at his face.

“Grab her, dude!”

She flailed as the stocky boy grabbed her around the waist, hand brushing against her chest.

“She’s fucking feral, man!” He yelled, trying to grab at her arms and hold them behind her back.

Keith swung her head around, making contact with the boy’s shoulder, but he didn’t let her go. She squirmed.

Danny’s hand grabbed her chin, and tilted it towards himself.

“You know I got fucking suspended?” She tried to wrench her head away, but he only grabbed on tighter. It hurt. “You didn’t have to say anything, you don’t even fucking know Britney!”

Keith stopped moving for a second, hoping to catch the dude behind her off-guard, but it didn’t work.

“Stop moving!” Danny slapped her with his other hand. “I don’t even know why you care so much, anyway. Jealous, dyke?”

Then, Danny took a second to gather saliva and spat on her.

Keith couldn’t really remember what happened, then, only that she got away that day, a loud “She bit me!” echoing behind her and haunting her walk back to the home.

There was blood in her mouth…

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“I’m sorry,” Keith said, tight-lipped. “I got into a fight and. You should just send me back to the home. I’m not made for places like this.”

Shiro’s eyes were soft and determined.

“I will never give up on you, Keith.”

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“Keira? Will you please help lay down the table?” Jane – no, it was Margaret. Margaret asked, from inside the house.

Keith grunted, leaving the boys to go help her foster mom.

“Honey, you’re covered in mud! It’s unseemingly,” Margaret fretted.

Keith stared out into the yard longingly, a frown on her face.

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“I hate being a girl.”

“I hate the patriarchy.”

…

…

Lance?

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“Have you had your first kiss yet?” Janet asked her, one night.

She was new to the home. She was Keith’s age. Eleven and a half.

This was after Margaret and Kyle’s home, (Number Four). Before Jane and Michael’s, (Number Five).

They sat with Trisha, Daisy and Mary on the floor. It was a makeshift fort. A makeshift sleepover. A makeshift childhood.

“No,” Keith said.

Her hair was divided into two pretty braids.

“How come?” Daisy asked. She was twelve already, and had kissed two (two!) boys. “You’re so pretty, Keira.”

Keith tried not to blush, or stammer.

“I don’t know, I just haven’t really had the chance, I guess,” she said.

“Who’s your crush?” Mary asked. She was ten (about to turn eleven!).

Keith shrunk, not really wanting all eyes on her.

“I don’t know… I don’t think I have one,” she said.

“That’s BS,” said Daisy. “Tell us!”

“I don’t know. Nobody, I guess!” She said, angry.

Trisha raised a condescending eyebrow at her. Looked away.

Keith was never invited to a sleepover again.

“Go play with the boys,” Trisha said.

The other girls looked away.

“Fine,” Keith grumbled.

She held in her tears as she lay in bed, but the boys still made fun of her.

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Keith stared at Shiro as they studied, or were supposed to be studying. They lounged around Shiro’s bigger dorm room.

Shiro had insisted on it, the day she found out the other cadets picked on Keith. They were silent, until one day, they weren’t.

One day, they sparred and ate and studied together.

One day…

The lights inside the Galaxy Garrison's rooms were not neon aqua.

Keith looked at Shiro, her long pretty hair, and was hit by a wave of nostalgia.

She thought about her dad, and, hesitantly, decided not to lock the thought up inside her.

“I miss it when my dad would braid my hair.”

She was surprised that the words flowed out of her mouth so easily.

It was the first personal thing that Keith had told Shiro, maybe.

She turned to Keith and smiled.

“I can do it for you if you want.”

Keith opened a small smile.

“You have already.”

Shiro tilted her head in confusion.

“This is the moment when I started to fall in love with you.”

Shiro’s eyes widened. Her cheeks turned pink.

“You’re about to tell me about your Grandma, and how she raised you, and how she braided your hair, and how she wants you to meet a nice Japanese boy.”

Shiro’s face became blurry.

“You’ll talk about how you used to shoplift candy and hide it under your bed and I’ll tell you about my purple hippo plushie and you’ll tell me I’m a dork.”

The room disintegrated between them.

“Shiro! I think I’ve lived through this before!” Keith tried to say it quickly, but she –

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There were colorful pots and vases all over the shack. Pottery.

Keith had a vague memory of her father collecting pieces of clay from all over the desert. He’d put them in a barrel with water and take out the rocks. She’d spend many afternoons playing.

But most of the pots her dad had made. They were pretty.

They’d cracked with time.

Keith’s vision is swirly.

She doesn’t remember there being a field of beautiful marigold carnations just outside her house. Inside.

Sprouting from the cracks in between the wooden slabs of the floor, tearing through the couch cushions, showing through the tea kettle’s spout and in between her fingers.

Everywhere.

There was an unearthly energy surging through the shack.

Keith tried to keep her eyes open.

– there was a dark hallway in front of her – purple lights flickered on –

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Shiro sat across from her in the cafeteria.

She looked pleased.

“At ease, cadet,” she said.

Keith rolled her shoulders. She had tensed up.

“Why are you sitting here? Ma’am?” She asked.

“You don’t have to call me that,” Shiro said, all easy going.

Her eyes were always so soft. Keith had none of that softness in her anymore. She was exclusively sharp edges.

Keith glanced around. People were looking at them with untrusting eyes, and mouths whispered maliciously. She felt like she was having dinner at the sisters’ home.

“Why are you sitting here?” Keith asked again.

Shiro had followed her gaze, and nonchalantly took another bite of her (surprisingly edible on Thursdays) food.

“They’ll talk, yeah, but it’ll blow over,” Shiro said.

Keith frowned at her.

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

Shiro gave her a small smile, amusement alight in her eyes.

“I guess it isn’t,” she said.

Keith stared at her for a bit. She ate, unbothered.

“Want to spar later? I can get into the gym at any time,” Shiro said.

Keith huffed.

“I don’t need your charity, Mother Theresa,” she bit out, shifting away from Shiro, about to get up and change seats.

“What? Are you scared that you won’t measure up?” Shiro goaded.

Her tone was anything but mean, though. She looked hopeful.

“You’ve never backed away from anything in your life,” Shiro said.

But it was dark and starry. The moon shone on her face.

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“I just wanted a friend,” Shiro said.

A month later, as they sat side by side sipping on water after a workout.

Keith eyed her suspiciously.

“I don’t know. You looked interesting,” she said, some other day.

“What? Was it my ‘fuck off’ aura that charmed you?” Keith laughed, satirical.

And “No,” Shiro replied, too earnestly.

Then, maybe a week before the Kerberos mission was formalized:

“Why do you keep asking me about this?” Shiro smiled, seeming amused and exasperated.

Keith laughed.

“It’s just… I haven’t made this easy for you. It was just… you made a continued effort to be my friend and…” Keith squirmed. “Nobody else has done that before.”

Their eyes met.

For one second, there was this foreign anticipation in the air. They were less than one feet apart. It all left Keith a little breathless.

Shiro blushed, suddenly. She let out a laugh, but didn’t move.

“They should've. You’re... And, um… to answer your question… I did all that because I wanted to.”

Keith looked at Shiro.

Sure, her eyes were soft, and she was all smiles.

Tall. Radiant.

But she was dangerous. Shiro wasn’t meek, or obedient, or a pushover.

Yes, she was a rule-follower. Yes, she was empathetic.

But she was strong-willed. Patient.

A rock.

Keith smiled.

(This is when she should’ve known that it was love that would destroy her.)

Shiro leaned forward, cautious.

Her eyes flickered from Keith’s mouth to her eyes.

Keith’s breath hitched.

Shiro leaned in and hugged her close.

And Keith tried not to let it hurt her.

(She failed.)

“Don’t change me,” she whispered, as Shiro let go of her.

Shiro’s eyes met hers.

“I won’t”, she said.

They were so close.

Light drifted in from… somewhere… and lit up a field of blooming carnations.

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“I heard she stabbed a boy at her school!”

“I don’t know, Lance, that sounds pretty far-fetched.”

“Oh! And! And! I heard that she bit a dude so hard that he bled. Bled, Hunk. Bled. Bled!”

“Yeah, I heard you. I also think that’s a lie.”

“Why would people lie about that?”

“‘Cause people want to gossip.”

“Ok. But this I know is true: she’s always trying to seem, I don’t know, tough and, and aggressively masculine. I bet she hates Taylor Swift. Like, what are you trying to prove?”

“At this point, dude, you’re just making stuff up.”

“Ugh. Why are you always so determined to make the world less interesting than it is?”

One of the stall doors slammed open.

A heavy, uncomfortable silence hung in the air.

“It’s okay,” Keith said, as she washed her hands, “I learned not to trust other girls a long time ago.”

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How long can a drought last?

Keith felt blood, dry or drying, all over her. It stuck her clothes to her skin. Her fingers together. Her eyelids closed.

Was there sand in her mouth?

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She was wearing the white dress.

Her foster mother stood tall in front of her. Which one? It escaped her the name in that moment, and wasn’t that frightening?

Her identity slipping through her fingers in such a small detail.

“Is it true you bit a boy at school?” She asked. Her voice shook with anger.

It would be stupid to argue. Keith could taste the blood on her lips. But nothing good could come of telling her the truth.

“No, I –”

Her mother slapped her across the face.

“Are you a liar?”

Keith’s heart rattled inside her ribs.

“I – no, I –”

Her mother gripped her face tightly. Her eyes were alight with some barely contained emotion that seeped through her fingers and into Keith’s face.

“I’ve tried so hard with you, Keira. I really have.”

It hurt that she couldn’t finish that thought. Like saying the words would be gauche. Like telling Keith how much she was failing as a woman was too unseeming for her.

She could’ve said she was a failure, inadequate, brute, feral, rough. But she said none of those things, and as such, she said all of them.

“It’s Keith,” she spat out.

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“... Shiro?”

There was no answer. But that was to be expected. Keith hadn’t said anything.

It was her last night at the [Redacted]’s house. Her belongings were all stuffed into her bag, already waiting for her by the door.

Her white dress would stay, abandoned hanging inside her closet like a ghost.

The window was open. There was a whisper of wind that kept on throughout the night. It betrayed the tall trees, the humid landscape, the lawn, the street, the neighbor’s dog. And yet it was quiet. Empty, almost.

It felt like Shiro’s voice could just jump from the other line at any moment, a slightly metallic tone to her voice:

“Hey, hotshot,” she said.

Keith smiled. She gripped the sheets close to her chest. Closed her eyes.

“You know, we’ll see each other tomorrow. Across the room. I’ll smile and you’ll pretend you don’t like me,” Shiro said.

“I know,” Keith said. “I’m sorry I’ll take so long to come around.”

There was a sudden noise from just outside her bedroom. The wooden floor groaned under the weight of a person. There was a shadow visible in the thin strip of light that shone from underneath the door. Either that, or the house was just settling into itself.

They were silent for a while. It was dark.

Keith was frozen.

She waited.

The staggering feeling of being alone threatened to overtake her whole.

“Hey,” Shiro said, again, but her voice seemed more distant. “Where’d you go?”

Keith tried not to breathe too loudly. It weighed on her chest.

“Nowhere,” she whined, so quiet that no phone line could possibly pick it up.

Shiro shushed her.

“It’s okay. There’s no one out there,” Shiro said.

The wood made another sound. Keith refused to open her eyes. There was nobody outside. There was nobody inside. Michael and Jane were asleep. She’d leave on the next day and never see them again.

Her breathing picked up and she loathed to feel the tears gathering on the corners of her eyes.

“Promise?”

There was no response.

“Shiro?”

Keith opened her eyes, looked around.

The door was ajar.

She threw her covers to the side. Her mother’s blade was hidden beneath her pillow.

She closed the door, so quickly she forgot about the silence draped over the night.

She stood with her back to the door for what felt like a million years, waiting for her heart to stop racing.

There was nobody in the room.

There was nobody in the room.

There was nobody in the room.

She pressed her ear against the door.

And waited.

And waited.

To stop feeling the eyes on her.

.

.

.

When she turned, Shiro was lying on a steel slab.

Chapter Text

“Stay.”

“I want to.”

“That’s not enough. You need to follow the rules, go by…”

“I want to.”

Shiro sighed, frustrated.

She looked in Keith's eyes.

“I won't always be here to defend you,” she said.

Keitth looked back into hers.

“I know”, she lied.

.

.

.

Two weeks had passed since they’d come out into space.

It angered Keith that she couldn’t really remember what it was like to see Shiro again for the first time in a year (a year, going by what the others had said).

But then, she didn’t really remember anything about the last twelve months of her life. That was something she had in common with Shiro.

Shiro, who now had a scar across her nose and cheeks. Whose hair was now streaked with white. Shiro, who was now taller, buffer, and somehow bigger and smaller at the same time. Shiro, who was now missing an arm. Shiro, whose eyes were now haunted and who flinched when noises were too loud or too close and – who didn’t remember anything…

“Number Four?”

She turned.

It was the alien man. Yes, aliens were real, too.

“Keith,” she said, firm. Her voice was gravelly and hoarse.

(from disuse?)

He looked at her in confusion.

“That’s my name,” she said.

“Okie dokie!” He said, way too excited. Keith was still unused to life on the spaceship. The high spirits, the bouncy energy going around. “I was going through the medical check-ups we did on you and we found a very strange anomaly.”

Keith crossed her arms.

From the other side of the common area Keith could hear Lance cackling.

“Say more, Coran,” she said, eyes gleaming with amusement.

Shiro was staring off somewhere at a middle distance.

“Well, your quintessence level is way higher than the other’s, apart from Number One’s, because of the arm, I’m assuming.” Coran looked down at the orange-ish tablet hologram in his hands. “Do you know why that might be?”

Keith looked at him blankly.

“Coran,” she said, slowly, “I don’t even know what quintessence is.”

He let out a laugh.

“Of course!” He exclaimed, bubbly, “I should’ve known. But, well, as long as everything’s okay up there,” he pointed to Keith’s head. “... we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Keith nodded. For a second, she thought of telling him about the bizarre year she had, but soon Lance was talking. Again. Loudly.

“She’s always been weird up there, it’s nothing new,” she said.

Keith turned to her. Hunk and Pidge were covering their mouths, giggly. Shiro was still offline. The worst thing about it was the lack of venom in Lance’s voice. Keith had been called a dyke, a whore, a bitch her entire life. She knew how to fight. She didn’t know how to deal with… whatever this was.

“Do you have something to say to me, cargo pilot?” She asked, pointed. Her hands were clenched, shaking. Ready for action.

The giggly atmosphere died. Good.

“What? Can’t take it, dropout?” Lance retorted.

Finally, that familiar venom laced her words.

Keith smiled. It was ugly and angry, she knew.

“You dropped out?”

Finally, Shiro joined the conversation.

Keith turned to her, and all her anger turned into shame.

Shiro had always been larger than life, but Keith had never felt so small under her gaze. She felt more real, more physical, more grounded. Her presence felt different.

Keith swallowed dryly.

“So there is a way to tame the beast. We just needed to call Mommy,” Lance said, in a ridiculous tone, but quietly enough that Keith could tell that she wasn’t supposed to hear.

But it didn’t matter. All Keith could focus on was Shiro’s gray, desperate eyes.

“I…” Keith started.

.

.

.

“Stay,” Shiro muttered, so close that Keith feels the warmth of the words on her lips. “I know I’m leaving, but… stay.”

If she were anyone else, Keith would lash out: I’m not a dog, she’d say. And leave.

But it was Shiro.

Quietly, she said, so scared:

“It’s not in my nature.”

Shiro’s eyes seemed to flash with desperation.

“But–” she started.

And, because Keith was, at heart, a scared, hurt animal, she interrupted:

“You said you wouldn’t try to change me.”

The words lingered around.

Keith was suddenly very cold. Shiro was no longer lying next to her.

She was freezing.

The air she struggled to pull into her lungs stung. She couldn’t open her eyes. The floor, beneath her body, was hard and grainy. She coughed, and warm blood dribbled out her mouth.

It was blood, she realized. Coating her body, congealed, frozen. Her eyelids dragged, heavy, but she couldn’t see anything when she opened her eyes.

Anything but the moon.

I’m sorry I broke my promise.

I didn’t stay.

I told you… It wasn’t in my nature.

Keith felt warm tears drizzle down her face. She shivered.

.

.

.

Shiro… on a metal slab.

Her pulse. Alive.

Her hair, her face, her arm. No time!

Keith tried to be gentle, but she couldn’t hold her up.

No. No.

Where am I?

Soldiers.

Fight.

That Keith could do.

Her body was a livewire.

Three young cadets.

‘Help’, she read on their lips.

Her bike.

Wind.

Speed.

The moon shone above.

Shiro, on the couch. Keith on the floor.

Hands clasped together.

Sun. Shining in.

Shiro was gone.

Shiro was gone.

Shiro was gone.

No.

Outside. Looking at the sunrise.

“Shiro,” she said.

Shiro turned to look at her.

They hugged.

But…

something was wrong.

They weren’t holding each other.

.

.

.

“Keith! Keith!”

She was on the floor.

Of the castleship.

The common area.

Her mouth felt weird.

The lights were too bright. Shiro stood above her. Coran was holding her head up. Lance, Hunk, Pidge observed from a middle distance. Annoyed, curious, concerned. Shiro was above her. And…

“It’s not in my nature,” Keith whispered.

She rolled over, coughed once again, and stood up on shaky feet.

Nobody stopped her as she exited the room.

It wasn’t long after that Coran came to find her.

He stood behind her, silent, for many moments before saying anything.

“What?’ She snapped, eventually.

“The princess wants to see you,” he squeaked.

“Okay,” she said and tried to walk past him. Leave.

“Number Four – Keith. What happened earlier–” She bristled. “Has it happened before? Your fellow humans seemed to think it was a sei-zure?”

She closed her face.

He seemed to understand that she wasn’t going to say anything.

They walked in uncomfortable silence, and when they reached the “conference room” – the wide, open room with a 270 degree view out into space and a holographic whiteboard (?) – Keith saw all her supposed teammates whispering together.

She realized she’d never felt so alone. Never.

And Shiro was right there. Why couldn’t she just – ?

“Keith,” the alien princess called attention to her.

Everyone stopped talking, turning to her with wide eyes.

“I was made aware of –”

And, as usually happened when they were beginning to address the crumbling foundations of their team, the alarm rang and they were made to get into their lions.

The fight was easy. It was done in less than thirty minutes, probably. They’d just bumped into a small fleet of Galra spaceships.

But, at one point, Keith had broken formation to protect the Black Lion from a deadly-looking laser and, not only left Pidge’s back unguarded, but gotten hit herself by one of Hunk’s cannons (originally aimed at the ship firing at Shiro in the first place).

Going by the clipped tones she heard coming through the intercom, she knew that she was getting chewed out when they landed back on the castleship.

She’d barely gotten her helmet out, careful with the bruise growing on her brow, when she was pushed against her lion’s closed mouth.

“You need to get your fucking shit together,” Pidge said.

Lance came up behind them, and sneered, her arms crossed.

“Yeah. I know you're desperate for Mommy’s approval, I get it, but you’re gonna get us all killed,” she spat.

Keith tried to push Pidge away, but they were stronger than they looked, and Keith didn’t want to hurt them.

“Shut up, Lance,” Pidge said, surprising Keith. Their eyes burned, turning towards Lance. “You’re part of the problem.”

Suddenly, Shiro was there, prying Pidge away from Keith gently.

“Let’s all calm down,” she started, cold and clinical and distant. It was her Officer Shirogane voice. It stung on Keith’s chest like a cold blade.

“I’m part of the problem?” Lance laughed, incredulously.

“The problem is,” Pidge turned to Keith. “That you don’t trust us.”

Keith crossed her arms over her chest.

She wasn’t inclined to start, caged in by two aliens, three strangers and the cold, distant image of the love of her life.

“Wait,” Shiro said, “look, all we need to do is some more team bonding. Trust isn’t something easy, and every person has a different pace, we can’t rush –”

“We don’t have time, Shiro,” Princess Allura interrupted.

“And,” Lance tacked on, “No matter how much ‘team bonding’ we do, it’s not going to fix this. Keith doesn’t want to make an effort to be a part of this team. All she does is sit there with her smug shitty face, like she’s so much better than us.”

“What?” Keith asked, a fire starting within her.

“Don’t try that,” Lance rolled her eyes. “And you have seizures? Don’t you think that would have been, you know, important information for us to know? What were you thinking?”

“I don’t have seizures!” Keith yelled.

“Really? You’re going with that?” Lance yelled back, and Keith could see the same look of disbelief on Pidge and Hunk and – Shiro. “You just decided to try some sick new dance moves for us? Explain what happened back there then, or so help me God!”

“I don’t know!”

Keith’s voice broke.

Terrifyingly, she felt her eyes stinging with tears.

“I can’t remember anything that happened this last year.”

Silence.

She was met with many stunned looks.

She found that breathing was becoming difficult with all of them looming over her. She felt her face heating up. Using her shoulders to make way, she broke the little semi-circle they’d made around her.

“I need to breathe,” she spat. “Fuck you.”

And left.

Obviously, it didn’t take long for there to be follow-up questions.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” was the first one.

Keith’s eyes met Shiro’s from across the table.

“It’s all a blur, I don’t know,” she echoed the words Shiro had said when asked the same. “Maybe leaving the Garrison. Everything’s out of order.”

Coran hummed. Everyone turned their attention to him.

“Well, both you and Number One have suffered from memory loss. You were also the only ones with high levels of quintessence in their system. Maybe these things are related?”

“But we’re around quintessence all the time now,” Pidge refuted. “And we’re fine. I mean, no one else is having these ‘seizures’...”

Keith crossed her arms at the use of the word.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled.

There was a collective frustration building.

“Ugh,” Lance groaned, exasperated, running a hand through her hair.

“What are they like?” Shiro asked. She looked so lost. Longing, maybe. “The ‘seizures’?”

Keith squirmed as the attention turned to her once more. Shiro’s eyes used to break through her so easily. She used to feel naked.

“Um… I’ll just be in another moment, all of a sudden. It’s like I’m in a dream. Time doesn’t move in a straight line, it’s just a collection of moments, and it feels like I’m living through them again, sometimes on a loop. Things would sometimes be out of place, or I would see flashes of other moments, or, um… the future I guess. Or maybe that was reality? At one point, I figured out I was in… a ‘seizure’ and then the world just sort of seemed to… melt away…”

Keith cleared her throat.

Shiro looked disturbed.

“And when did…” she cleared her throat. “When…”

She didn’t seem to be able to finish the question, but Keith understood.

“When I found you,” Keith said, looking away. “That’s when things started to make sense.”

.

.

.

Keith hugged herself tightly to sleep that night.

She didn't know that Shiro was standing outside her door. Teetering.

.

.

.

It wasn’t long after that the castleship shut down, infected by the crystal – well, the crystal that provided energy to the castle.

Keith had gotten locked in a sudden fight to the death with the castle’s training bots. Lance had almost gotten ejected through the castle’s airlock. Pidge and Hunk had gotten stuck in the control room with Coran. Allura had been hunted by the ghost of her father. Shiro had been thrown into a fight with Sendek.

At the end, Lance had gotten shot. In the chest. With a laser gun.

Keith watched her fall to the floor, her heart stopping dead in her chest. It looked… serious.

She contorted on the floor, at Sendek’s feet, and Keith had punched him in the face, carrying the other girl to safety.

Keith watched over her body, in the healing pod. It was lit up by the neon aqua that colored almost all the lights in the castle. The gelatinous, otherworldly substance glowed with it. But the room itself, a semicircle of those tall, imposing tubes, was actually quite dark and off-putting.

The team theorized around her. Allura had left. Shiro was quiet.

“So what do Keith, Lance and Shiro all have in common?” Coran asked.

“They…” Hunk drew the word out. “Huh, I actually don’t know much about you guys. That’s disappointing.”

Keith met her eyes, shrugging.

“Maybe it’s genetic?” Pidge posed. “Can you curl your tongue?”

Keith shrugged again.

“I can’t,” Shiro said.

The faraway look in her eyes didn’t go away. Keith wondered if it ever would.

They were all silent for a few more moments.

Keith was tired.

“Let’s think,” Pidge said. “Shiro and Keith don’t remember what happened to them, but we all saw what happened to Lance. She had her seizure after she got hit with the laser gun. Did anything like that happen to you two?”

Keith pondered.

“Yeah… I mean, I crashed my bike – Shiro’s bike – when I was leaving the Garrison… It’s actually –”

“You what?” Shiro interrupted.

Her eyes were wide and startled.

She was suddenly in front of Keith, and she took both her shoulders in her hands. Keith gasped at the contact.

“It’s fine. I repaired the bike, I think… I was riding it when –”

“That’s not what I care about, Keith,” Shiro said. Her eyes flashed. Intense and a little angry.

“Um… I’m sorry I stole it, I thought you were dead?” Keith tried.

Shiro scoffed.

“How serious was it?” She asked, looking away – at the same time focused and lost in thought.

Keith shoved her off, immediately missing the warmth of her hands on her shoulders.

“I don’t really know,” she lied, a touch too bitter. “But in the grand scheme of things, it seems a little irrelevant, Shiro.”

There was a tense silence.

Pidge cleared their throat.

.

.

.

Lance didn’t take long in the healing pod. In less than a day, she was out and being her annoying self again.

“I was such a hero. What were you even doing, Keith?” She teased. Her eyes lingered on her a touch too long, though.

“What? I punched Sendek in the face! We had a bonding moment!” Keith said, flustered, but also a little defensive. “I cradled you in my arms.”

“Well, I don’t remember that happening,” she said, flushed, turning to Hunk, who simply shrugged. Then, Lance froze. “Wait… did I have a seizure?”

She turned to Keith.

“That’s, um… yeah, that’s what we think happened,” Keith said, a little put on the spot.

Pidge chimed in:

“We think that the seizures happen when a human gets injured around a large amount of quintessence. There needs to be contamination of some sort,” they said. “You were hit with a laser gun around the corrupted crystal, Shiro was… hurt and also, presumably, hit by the witch’s magic and Keith was in a bike crash near the Blue Lion’s beacon.”

Lance nodded along.

Keith tried to meet Shiro’s eyes across the table, but the other girl looked away.

.

.

.

Because of their collective ‘trust issues’, as Allura had put it, even though her tone seemed pretty pointed to Keith, the team decided to increase their time ‘team bonding’.

“So,” Allura said, bubbly and assertive all at once. “Should we get the mind-melding headsets?”

Keith felt a chill of anxiety run up her spine. She hated the thing.

“I think that might be a little invasive,” Pidge said. They were facing Allura, but their eyes were on Keith.

“We could just… you know, talk,” Hunk said, a little timidly.

“I’m down for that,” Lance said. “Let’s break out the fuzzy cushions!”

Cheerily, the team scrambled to bring out several large couch cushions and blankets. When they were done, the common area looked less like a clinical hospital waiting room and more like a pillow fort. They sat on the floor, in a circle.

Keith felt nervous. She remembered the last time she’d been invited to a slumber party very clearly.

“Man, I wish we had some scented candles,” Lance said.

Pidge snuggled into the covers around them.

“Or like, some music,” they said.

“Marshmallows!” Hunk added. “Standard sleepover things.”

“Did you guys have a lot of sleepovers growing up?” Shiro asked.

“All the time!” Lance said, smiling. “I have a really big family, so sleepovers were basically, like, weekly. And we went camping a lot, too. My Mama always says ‘the more, the merrier’. It feels like there’s always an event happening at home.”

Hunk nodded along, smiling.

“Yes! My Moms love cooking, so we’d always host dinner parties for my family and my friends,” she said.

“That’s so cool. I didn’t really have many sleepovers, but I liked it more when it was just me and my brother anyway. Or like, me and one other friend. Just, you know, chilling,” Pidge said.

“I’m the same,” Shiro said, turning to Keith with melancholic eyes.

There was a moment of semi-awkward silence as the team turned to look at Keith. She swallowed dryly.

“I don’t know… I was never really invited to any,” Keith said, and not ‘The girls never wanted to hang out with me because I was too boyish’ or ‘The boys used to tease me for wanting to be invited to those’.

“That’s a shame,” Lance said, but Keith could sense the sarcasm in her tone, even if it wasn’t overt.

“Well, I used to hang out in Shiro’s room all the time,” Keith tried to backtrack. “That was pretty fun.”

“When did you two meet?” Hunk asked, curious.

Shiro looked at Keith, a small smile forming on her lips.

“I was out recruiting new cadets at local public schools and foster homes,” Shiro said.

“I wouldn’t even have gone on the simulator if it wasn’t for you,” Keith said, a little fond.

“You said your foster mom would kill you if you did,” Shiro said, with something like reverence rising within her.

“Well, she did beat the shit out of me when she found out,” Keith said. “But you were right, no one could tell me what to do.”

Despite Keith's warm feelings, the mood darkened around her.

Keith looked around, sensing her faux pas and reddening at the attention.

She cleared her throat.

“And you three? How did you meet?” Keith asked.

“We were in the same class,” Pidge mumbled.

The awkward silence stretched on.

Anxiety bred annoyance underneath Keith’s skin.

“I didn’t know you were a foster kid, Keith,” Hunk said, infuriatingly sympathetic.

Keith grunted, nodding along and not meeting her eyes.

Maybe sensing Keith’s discomfort, Shiro tried to step in.

“Did you guys play any sports –”

“What was that shack in the middle of nowhere, then? I thought you lived there,” Lance asked.

“It was my dad’s old house,” Keith said, defensive. “He died when I was young, but the house was still there after I left the Garrison.”

“So you were alone?” Lance asked.

Keith stared into her eyes, tasting bitterness on her tongue.

“Yes,” Keith said, clipped.

“Must’ve been lonely,” Hunk said.

“Don’t remember much of it,” Keith said.

“Still,” Hunk said.

Keith cleared her throat.

“So did you guys play any sports?” She repeated Shiro’s question, stilted, through her teeth.

…

“Does chess count?” Pidge said.

The mood shifted once again. Bubbly. Cheerful.

Keith remained silent.

It must’ve been twenty minutes before anyone asked her another question.

“And you, Keith? Have you ever dated anyone?” Lance asked.

Keith squirmed, uncomfortable.

“Once, kind of,” she said. She looked anywhere but at Shiro.

The others turned to look at her, excited. Hunk had mentioned a kiss by a creek near her house with a local boy, but that was it.

“I’m so jealous! Tell me more!” Lance said. “Did he go to the Garrison?”

Keith picked at her nails.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Keith said.

“Come on,” Lance drawled. “Tell us his name at least!”

“I said that I don’t want to talk about it,” Keith said.

Lance drew back, stunned.

The mood darkened around them once more.

Everyone looked uncomfortable.

“You know what? This is why I never say anything in your stupid little share circles. I always bring the mood down and you guys look at me like that and I hate it,” Keith stood up. “I'm sorry for depressing you with my shitty life!”

She stormed off. No one followed her.

.

.

.

It came up again not even a week later. Or whatever goofy name for ‘week’ they had out in Altea.

Team Voltron had had to land on a planet and interface with the local government, which was in the midst of a Galra takeover. Mostly, it was alright. Mostly.

No one was really talking to her, not since she stormed out of their little “trust exercise”. Even Shiro… Shiro seemed so far away. A part of Keith wondered if they’d both changed so irrevocably as to not recognize each other anymore. Not… love each other anymore.

Keith felt lonely. Maybe lonelier than before. What a horrible thought that was.

Maybe that was why she’d ignored Shiro’s command and took off on her own to protect the alien princess (not Allura, for once) of the planet they were on.

“Keith! Keith! Where are you?” Shiro’s voice came through the comms.

She couldn’t find it in herself to respond, breathing heavily as she fought off a group of Galra that had snuck in to assassinate the princess, unbeknownst to Team Voltron. So she turned off the comms.

Admittedly, she maybe shouldn’t have done that.

But nothing bad came of it. The princess was fine. And Keith got hurt, sure, but only a little bit. And –

“What were you thinking?”

Back in the lion hanger, Keith was suddenly accosted by a red-faced Shiro, who’d just thrown her helmet across the room. It made a loud noise as it connected with the control panel. Keith stopped dead in her tracks.

“That was completely out of line, cadet!” Shiro yelled.

Keith had never seen Shiro that angry. She took a step back.

“I’m sorry, I just turned off –” Keith started.

“You disobeyed a direct order. You put yourself and the mission in danger!” Shiro continued, and Keith stumbled back as she took another step forward.

Keith opened her mouth to respond, but suddenly her throat was very dry and she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“That was stupid and reckless and if you keep doing things like that, you’re going to get yourself killed, Keith,” Shiro said, her voice trembling even as she screamed, even as her Galra hand started to glow purple.

“Shiro…” She rasped.

“Why, Keith? Why don’t you trust us to have your back? Why are you so determined to be alone?”

Keith turned to face the other way, to look anywhere other than at Shiro’s face, but Shiro wouldn’t let her. She grabbed the chestplate on her armor, pulling her closer roughly, her eyes boring into Keith’s.

Maybe, for the first time since they’d found each other again, they saw each other.

Then, Shiro was being pulled away from her and Pidge was in front of her, looking horrified.

And then, the pain hit her. White hot, on her shoulder. Smoldering.

Finally – the smell of burning flesh.

She looked down at it, a sizzling mess – her armor had melted into her skin, which was red and irritated, boils forming. Her hand was shaking, but she couldn’t feel her arm. In fact, she couldn’t feel much of anything other than –

Keith realized her ears were ringing.

“ – eith? Hey, hey, let’s get you to the Med Bay,” Pidge was saying.

“Um…” she said. “But… Shiro?”

Keith tried to look for her with her eyes, but her vision was turning black around the edges – blurry.

“Let’s – let’s go, Keith.”

.

.

.

When Keith woke up, she was alone in the dark.

It was cold. Her feet burned with it, against the freezing metal floor.

The lights above flickered on – purple.

Before her was a corridor, at the end of which there was a purple, holographic door.

She took a step forward. Then another.

There was a muted sound coming from afar.

She picked up the pace.

It was – it was Shiro!

Keith started to run.

“Shiro!!”

It ripped through her throat.

She was lying on a steel slab, a tall, hooded figure above her.

“Shiro!!”

Bolts of purple lightning exploded from the figure’s hand and struck Shiro on the chest.

She arched off the table with a terrible cry.

“No!”

Keith kept running, but it felt like she wasn’t getting any closer.

Shiro contorted on the table.

“No!” Keith sobbed. “Please…”

Just as her knees were about to hit the ground, some foreign energy lurched through Keith and she –

.

.

.

Suddenly, she was face to face with Shiro.

Above her – floating.

She looked…

She looked despondent.

Like she was about to give up. It brought tears to Keith’s eyes.

“Please…” she found herself whispering. “Come back to me…”

She leaned down, trying to reach Shiro’s cheek with her hand.

Her lips grazed against hers…

.

.

.

She woke up in incredible pain.

She wasn’t in a pod. She was lying on a table in the Med Bay.

Her shoulder burned.

“Where’s Shiro?” She heard herself asking, though she didn’t know if there was anyone around. “Where’s …?”

She looked around, in a haze.

Keith was alone.

She whimpered.

When she tried to get up, a nauseating wave of pain hit her, and she doubled over.

She was breathing heavily, sweating.

‘You’ve never backed down from anything before in your life.’

Her toes touched the floor. Cold, metallic. She shivered.

“Keith!” She heard, distantly.

With both her feet on the ground, she stood and –

She buckled into –

“Lance?” She groaned. “Is that you? Where’s Shiro? I –”

She tried to squirm her way out of Lance’s arms, but found herself unable to support her own weight.

“Hey, you gotta lay down, Keith, you have a fever and – Dios mio, Keith, you don’t look so good,” Lance said, trying to get a better hold on her.

With Lance’s arms tight around her, Keith couldn’t help but melt a little. It had been so long since she had been held. So long…

“Keith…” Lance said, softly. “Hey, c’mon, let’s get you back in bed… you need rest.”

Keith whined, struggling to escape the embrace while everything in her longed to be in it.

“But… Shiro,” she slurred.

Lance lay her back on the table gently.

“She’ll be here when you wake up,” she said.

.

.

“Promise?”

.

.

.

The fight broke out on the training deck.

“I can’t. Lance, I can’t,” Shiro said, shaking her head at the ground.

“Well, you better,” Lance snapped.

“Lance, –” Hunk started, soft-eyed.

“You weren’t there when she woke up, Hunk,” she said. “You didn’t see what she was like.”

Shiro was silent for a second. She wouldn’t meet Lance’s eyes.

“I can’t do it,” she said.

Her voice was firm.

“I promised,” Lance said.

Shiro didn’t reply.

“Wow,” Lance said. “I can’t believe this. Really.”

She turned around and took a step towards the large, holographic doors…

She looked back.

“I used to look up to you, you know?”

Then, she left.

–

It was an awkward couple of days for the paladins.

Keith couldn’t go in a pod because some of her armor had melted into her skin. So she was confined to the Med Bay, in a state of semi-consciousness due to high fever, sick and miserable.

Everyone visited. Everyone but Shiro, who hadn’t gone back since she’d witnessed Keith’s conversation with Lance. Every day that passed, it seemed like people got less sympathetic to her cause, and soon they were all telling her to just go see her already.

Lance wasn’t talking to her.

Luckily, they hadn’t needed to form Voltron. That’s what she resolved to call it. Luck.

Meals were a tense affair. Maybe even more so than training.

But it wasn’t until Pidge came barging into Shiro’s room that the dam burst.

“You have to go see her,” they said, as soon as the holographic acqua door slid open.

Shiro sighed heavily.

“Pidge, I can’t,” she said, gritting her teeth and looking away.

Pidge marched up to her, squaring up to Shiro despite how much shorter they were.

“Bullshit. You know that she won’t blame you,” Pidge said. “I was just there –”

“Well, she should,” Shiro snapped. “I hurt her, Pidge. A lot. I – I burned her. Did you see her wound? I have to protect her. And if I have to stay away from her to do that, then…”

Her eyes were wide and desperate. Pidge stepped back. There was… fear in them. They sighed.

“You're hurting her more by not seeing her,” Pidge said, in a gentler tone.

Shiro looked like she’d been struck.

“She keeps calling for you,” they said. “She needs you there with her. You’re the only one she trusts.”

Shiro buried her face in her hands.

“I know,” she breathed. “I know.”

Pidge widened their stance. Stuck the final blow.

“She’s confused and she thinks you’re dead.”

A cold anxiety grew and spread rapidly in Shiro’s chest.

“What?”

Pidge shifted their weight.

“Sometimes, it’s like she thinks you’re still… lost, that you’ve been presumed dead,” they said, softly. “She’s been crying.”

Shiro’s eyes quickly filled with tears, and she tried not to let them fall.

She hummed.

“Go see her,” Pidge said, before turning around on their feet abruptly and leaving.

When they left, Shiro felt a biting emptiness.

The thought of seeing Keith made her nervous and afraid. But the thought of staying in her room, when she knew that Keith was somewhere in that spaceship, lost to her, was unbearable.

She’d felt it so much, lightyears away from Earth. But this time, Keith was so close…

The castleship’s halls all looked the same. The light gray walls, the acqua lighting. So similar to the Galra ships’ in so many ways. Also the Garrison’s walls.

For so long, Shiro had been surrounded by this lifeless, clinical world.

She remembered when she lived in that beautiful house by the woods, with tatami floors and wooden walls. Long, big windows that let the light in, filtered by the trees outside. She dreamed of the stars.

At one point, she’d wanted to take Keith there.

“When I come back,” she’d said.

Staring at the doors to the med bay, Shiro felt the distant longing of a dream – to live with Keith in a house like that someday, surrounded by greenery and life, closer to the stars than she was among them.

The holographic door slid open.

Shiro was shocked to see Lance sitting at Keith’s bedside, holding her hand and carefully laying a wet rag on her forehead.

She turned to look at the sound of the door opening.

Her face immediately closed up.

“You’re late,” Lance said, not too loudly, but with a definitive sharpness.

Shiro shifted her weight.

Lance sighed. She gave Keith one last look and then started to walk towards the door. When she came to stand next to Shiro, she paused.

“You made a liar out of me,” she said.

Shiro breathed.

“I know. I’m sorry. I have a lot of making up to do,” she said.

Lance looked away.

“Start with her,” she said, and walked out of the room.

Once she was gone, an unsettling silence befell the room.

A distant whirring noise – the lights? The engine? – was all that Shiro could hear.

It was true that space was silent.

Then, she heard a moan coming from the table. Keith shifted, and turned to Shiro. Her eyes were closed. Cheeks flushed. She looked uncomfortable. Sick.

Shiro made her way to Keith’s side, pulled by an otherworldly force to stand next to her. She brushed her flesh hand against one of her cheeks. Soft – hot and sweaty.

Keith’s eyes burst open. The intensity of her violet gaze nearly knocked Shiro back.

“Shiro…” she said. Tears flooded her cheeks. “You came back!”

Keith rose, throwing herself completely into Shiro’s arms. Her arms hugged her neck and shoulders tightly, and Shiro’s came to encircle her waist.

Shiro felt a sudden wave of pure affection. The same feelings she had been trying to push away for so long. She took Keith in, burying her face in her neck. The warmth of her, in Shiro’s arms…

“I said I would, didn’t I?” She said weakly.

She was crying, she realized.

“I thought you were gone forever,” Keith whispered against her.

‘Me too’, Shiro thought.

She couldn’t help but hold Keith tighter as she thought of the last few weeks.

When she pulled back and looked into Keith’s eyes, it felt like reunion.

“Don't ever leave me again,” Keith begged.

Shiro’s eyes slid down to the bandages around Keith’s shoulder and chest.

She drew her in again, holding her as close as possible.

She didn’t answer.

Keith’s hands tightened around her.

Chapter Text

It didn’t take long after that for Keith’s fever to break.

The first shower she took after days in the med bay was pure agony. Coran had given her an ointment for the burn, and Keith’s hands shook as she applied it.

She didn’t make it a habit. To look at herself naked.

She didn’t look good. She was pale from the parting fever, and there were deep, purple bags under her eyes and her hair was greasy and knotted. She looked a little thin.

The burn looked smaller than she thought it would. It wasn’t exactly hand-shaped, but she could tell where Shiro’s hand had rested. Her skin was raised and mangled, a dead white in the center and pink all around it.

Keith had never found herself beautiful. Her body bore the marks of someone who’s been pushed around all their life. She looked at the new mark with a distant sort of indifference. When she put her usual shirt on, it became invisible.

For some reason, she hesitated before putting on her gloves, staring at the gnarly scars on her hands from when she crashed Shiro’s hoverbike.

“Please… come back to me…”

Keith frowned at the mirror.

Vaguely, she remembered, as she lay in the desert, alone and bleeding out, a distant voice.

“Wake up… wake up…”

Had that been Shiro? The real one, not just the one in her head?

Shiro. With her arms around Keith.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” Keith had said.

She turned her eyes away from her own, in the mirror.

Keith was surprised, when she walked into the common area, to be met with such animated energy.

“Keith!” Pidge yelled, upon spotting her, face lighting up.

Hunk and Lance turned to look at her too, smiles absolutely bright on their faces.

“Keith!” They yelled too, and scrambled over each other, Lance jumping over the couch to get to her.

Keith stepped back on instinct when Lance came to stand in front of her, but she felt a small, fond smile pulling at her lips despite herself. Lance simpered at it, reaching to rest her hands on Keith’s arms.

Keith shivered. The places where Lance’s palms touched her skin prickled. She made a conscious effort not to gasp.

“We’re so happy you’re okay,” she said. Then, anxiety took over her features. “Are you okay?”

She leaned away, running her eyes semi-frantically through Keith’s body.

Keith cleared her throat.

“Yeah. More or less,” she said, regretfully moving away from the almost-embrace.

She turned to look at Hunk and Pidge. Their eyes were fixed on her. They smiled like the expression fit their faces comfortably.

“Number Four! Keith, I mean,” she heard Coran’s pseudo-Australian voice. “You’re ‘up and at ‘em’ already?”

To Keith’s surprised stare, he responded with a wide smile: “The paladins have been teaching me human expressions.”

“We are very pleased to see you awake, paladin,” Allura said, that tight smile gracing her face.

Keith felt, suddenly, a quiet but powerful sense of belonging. It was overwhelming.

She cleared her throat again.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Whoa!” Lance said, “Keith’s all smiley and soft! Someone get a camera!”

Keith rolled her eyes, but she wasn’t annoyed by the comment. She felt fond. And she couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

“It’s the fever… It’s coming back,” Keith grumbled half heartedly.

“Wait, really?” Hunk scrunched her eyebrows together, leaning closer to Keith.

“No. Keith, was that a joke?” Pidge said. They looked feral.

Keith’s cheeks heated up.

“Keith!” Lance yelled out, smiling fondly.

“Shut up,” Keith said.

She batted Lance’s hands away from her arms, rolling her eyes again.

“Um..” Keith started, subtly looking around. “Where’s Shiro?”

Lance’s smile faltered. Pidge let out an amused huff through their nose.

“Consistency,” they muttered.

“What?” Keith asked.

“Nothing,” they said, smug. “I think she’s in the observatory.”

The observatory?

“Thanks”, Keith said.

She only made it about two steps before Lance called out to her.

“Wait!”

Everyone turned to look at her. Lance’s eyes were set. Decided.

She opened her mouth again. But no sound came out.

Keith raised an eyebrow at her.

Lance’s cheeks went red.

“It’s, um, it’s nothing.”

Keith chuckled.

“Okay, weirdo.”

Keith walked out and missed the incredulous looks aimed at Lance.

.

.

.

“Hey,” Keith said.

Shiro started, turning around. She wasn’t wearing her usual tight ponytail. The white streaks intermingled with the dark, flowing in an otherworldly way.

Around them, the long, rounded windows showed many planets from a distance. The closest swirled in tones of shimmering blue. A million stars shone from far, far away.

“You know, I always wanted to see the aurora borealis,” Keith rambled.

“I know. You told me,” Shiro replied. Her eyes didn’t leave Keith’s.

Keith watched the pretty lights reflect on Shiro’s eyes.

“I, um… I didn't think you remembered,” Keith said.

A smile grew on her cheeks, one that took Keith’s breath away.

“It would be a shame to spend so much time with someone just to find that she’s become a stranger to me,” Shiro said, the fondness in her tone threatening to break her.

Keith felt a smile pulling on her cheeks.

She stepped closer to Shiro.

“I’m not the same, you know,” Shiro said, looking away dejectedly.

“I’m not the same either,” Keith said, desperate to feel Shiro’s gaze on her again, after having missed it for so long.

Shiro flexed her metal fingers. She sniffed.

“It’s not the same. I… I hurt you.”

Keith doesn’t hesitate.

“I’ve been hurt before,” she said.

Shiro knew this. She knew maybe not all the bits of the things Keith least wanted to share. No one ever would, she was sure, but she knew enough to be able to guess or surmise the rest.

Shiro looked scared for a moment. She flinched away from Keith.

“Not by me”, she said. Her voice broke. “Not like this.”

Keith had this devastating feeling that Shiro was slipping away.

“I'm not scared of you, Shiro,” she said.

Shiro huffed. She ran a hand through her hair. She looked disheveled.

“I trust you with my life,” Keith said, trying to catch her eyes. “I swear.”

Keith reached out to take Shrio’s hand – her metal hand –

Shiro pulled away.

“Keith…” she whispered. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

There was a long moment of silence. Shiro shifted on her feet. Keith felt her throat closing up.

“What, so one minute you’re telling me I’ll die if I don’t trust you to have my back and in the next, you’re asking me not to?” Keith asked.

She wished she sounded tougher.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said.

Keith didn’t know what to say.

When she spoke, she could hardly tell the words were coming from her own mouth.

“I heard you. I woke up. Didn't you hear me?”

Around them, as the castleship shifted, the observatory windows came to show a closeby nebula, exploding in a multitude of different colors. Ethereal.

“I asked you to come back.”

Keith took another step forward.

She looked up at Shiro. She swallowed around her own tongue, ashamed.

“Please…”

Keith raised her hand again, resting it delicately on Shiro’s cheek.

She went up on her toes.

“I’m scared,” Shiro breathed, against Keith’s lips. “That you would do anything for me.”

Shiro slid her flesh hand onto Keith’s shoulder, gently pushing her back.

Keith felt the balls of her feet touch the ground again, feeling like there were suddenly lightyears of space between them. Her eyes burned with tears.

“Is that so bad?” Keith asked.

Shiro sighed, deeply.

She rested her forehead on Keith’s.

“I’m tough, Shiro. I can handle it,” she said.

“You shouldn't have to.”

.

.

.

Admittedly, Keith wasn’t a big fan of swimming.

Growing up in the arid desert had made her used to both the burning heat and the midnight cold, but it had always been dry.

It would have been nice to grow up with a pool in the backyard, she supposed, for when temperatures reached an all-time high and her skin sizzled in the sun.

She liked the castleship’s pool.

It was quiet and dark there. The water felt comforting around her.

She shivered slightly.

“Keith,” Lance’s voice echoed around the room.

Keith jumped.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she laughed softly.

Keith cleared her throat.

“It’s okay.”

She wiped her face, even though logically, she knew the tears must’ve blended with the pool water.

Lance took off her robe and set it aside haphazardly along with her towel.

“Ooh, it’s chilly,” Lance said, as she stepped into the water.

Keith wondered if she should leave. She felt her skin prickling with discomfort at Lance’s gaze. But ultimately, she just couldn’t muster the strength to leave the all-encompassing water. She turned her eyes to the bottom of the pool, hoping Lance was not in a talking mood.

“Hmmmmmm I love this pool,” Lance said. “Thank God aliens also like to swim.”

Then again, it was Lance. When was she not in a talking mood?

Keith dunked her own head under the water, feeling the pleasant tug on her hair as it floated up, and then back. She wiped her face. Yes, it was time to leave.

She started to tread away from the corner where she’d been curled up to get her towel from the other side of the pool. But –

“Hey, are you leaving?” Lance asked. She was frowning.

“I guess,” Keith said.

Lance opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Keith turned around, reaching for the edge of the pool.

“It’s just,” Lance said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Keith sighed. Turned.

“Talk, then,” she grunted.

Lance shifted her eyes away from her.

“Well, if you don’t want to…”

Keith scoffed, annoyed.

“Oh my God, just say it,” she said.

Lance set her jaw. Looked up. Sighed.

“Look. I know we don’t get along great,” she said, “but we did have a… bonding moment. I mean, I cradled you in my arms.”

Keith felt her face going red.

“I don’t remember that,” she blurted out.

“Well, we did,” Lance said, and for some reason she didn’t sound so much annoyed as she did sad.

“Fine. What’s your point?” Keith asked, looking away.

“I don’t know. I just… I guess I realized that I was maybe unfair to you… in the past,” Lance said. “And I want to be your friend.”

Keith felt a stab of anger – Oh, so the great Lance McLain deigns to grace me with her friendship?, but she bit her tongue to stop herself from saying anything. Lance was flushed and nervous. She was being genuine.

Keith took a deep breath.

“Are you talking about that time in the bathroom, dude?” Keith asked. “Forget about it. Everyone was saying those things.”

Lance shivered. The water was quite cold.

There was a long stretch of silence, and Keith pondered whether or not she should leave.

“It’s not cool, you know,” Lance said, quietly. “That people were saying that stuff. And I’m sorry that I was a part of it.”

Keith felt unexpectedly touched at that.

“I don’t even remember what you said, but I’m sure it was much tamer than the stuff I usually got called,” she said.

Lance frowned.

“Still,” she started.

“Why do you care so much?” Keith interrupted. “We can still form Voltron, so…”

Lance looked away guiltily.

“It’s just… You probably don’t remember, but you said some things when you were injured and I just think that we should give this a shot.”

Keith stared at her for a few seconds.

She decided not to ask what she’d said.

She hummed instead.

.

.

.

She missed the look in Lance’s eyes as she climbed out of the pool.

.

.

.

It didn’t take long for them to find themselves in that same situation again.

Things with Shiro were still tense and Keith didn’t really feel like sharing the training deck with her. So to the pool it was.

To Lance.

The ship was passing through a beautiful cluster of stars.

They were leaning on the edge of the pool side by side, staring out the same window.

“I really miss my family,” Lance said, seemingly out of the blue.

“And here I thought we could enjoy some silence in space,” Keith said, turning to her.

Lance stuck her tongue out at her. Keith frowned.

“Anyway. I miss them. I used to take care of my little siblings a lot, since we’re a big family, you know, and sometimes I get this irrational, like, fear that without me there everything’s going to fall apart.” Lance chuckled.

Keith nodded along. She tried to conjure up a time when she’d felt the same in the sisters’ home, but came up short.

“But, actually…” Lance rasped, “I think I’d feel a lot worse if they got along fine without me.”

She wouldn’t meet Keith’s eyes.

“Hmm,” Keith hummed.

“What?” Lance asked. Anxiety colored her tone.

“I don’t know. I guess it's nice that you took care of them… were your parents not around?” Keith asked.

“Yeah,” Lance said defensively. “My parents were great.”

Keith tried not to let it get under her skin.

“Why did you have to take care of them?” Keith asked, genuinely.

Lance stared at her for a few moments in disbelief, before her expression changed into a thoughtful one.

“Well, I mean, I guess it’s just what you do in a big family,” she said, finally. “Take care of one another.”

Maybe it was the honesty in her words, or her truthful, open tone, but Keith suddenly felt a terrible sense of longuing taking hold of her. Longuing, sadness.

She hummed.

“I guess I wouldn’t know,” she said.

She thought about all those times when she curled up in her bed at the sisters’ home, worried that she’d be thrown out – a teenager, no longer wanted. She thought of being chosen by Jane and Michael, finally. She thought about living at their house… she thought about Shiro.

“But, you know, if you want my two cents on it, I guess being wanted is way better than being needed,” Keith said.

Lance stared at Keith for a few moments, a serious expression that looked a little out of place on her face. Then, she smiled.

She had a pretty smile. When she wasn’t being insufferable.

“I guess it is,” she said.

Silence lulled between them once more.

“Do you miss them?” Keith found herself asking.

Lance turned to her.

“My family? Yes,” she said. “Everyday.”

Keith could see the truth of her words in her eyes. They were the heavy, weary eyes of a child who’d grown up too soon. Keith had been staring at those same eyes everyday in the mirror since before she could remember.

Lance cleared her throat. Her fingers tapped on the pool’s edge.

“Do… you miss your family?” She asked.

Keith didn't know how to answer.

She studied Lance with her eyes.

“Family’s a little complicated for me,” she said finally.

Lance nodded.

Keith took a deep breath.

“I do, um, miss my dad sometimes,” Keith said.

She felt a little awkward saying it, and her cheeks heated in embarrassment, but Lance didn’t say anything. Her face was serious and she looked at Keith with an encouraging expression.

“He died when I was very young. He was a firefighter,” Keith said, to which Lance gave a small smile.

“So it runs in the family, huh? The hero gene,” Lance said.

Keith scoffed.

“What?” Lance asked.

“Nothing. It’s just… It’s hard because… I just kind of… hate him, sometimes. He died a hero’s death and all, saved a lot of people, but…”

he left me alone, she wanted to say, but she became aware just then of how petty and stupid it would sound.

“He left,” Lance said.

Keith was struck by that statement. Her eyes burned, and she was left feeling at the same time understood and abandoned.

“I mean, I barely remember him.”

Lance scooted a little closer.

“I think that when Shiro says that –”

“I don’t want to talk about Shiro.”

They watched the stars quietly for some time still, and if Lance noticed the occasional sniffle, she didn’t mention it to Keith.

.

.

.

“So, will I be pushing your tough-girl boundaries if I ask where you got that scar?” Lance asked.

Keith snorted, turning around mid-lap to face her.

“Which one?” She asked, playfully.

Lance’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Um… the big one on your back,” she said.

Keith reached behind herself, feeling out the thick, gnarled lines of it.

She turned around to finish her lap, and pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the pool.

She drew her hair from her face, and looked at the other side of the pool, where Lance was sitting expectantly.

“I don’t really remember,” she said.

And it was true. She couldn’t really run her fingers through the whole thing, but it seemed as though it spanned her entire back, running from her left shoulder to her right hip.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Lance said, annoyed.

“I really don’t,” Keith said, frowning. “I’m not lying.”

“Ok, but like, how can you not remember that, then?” Lance asked.

“I didn’t know this was going to be an official fucking interrogation,” Keith said, annoyed.

She got up, pulled her towel around herself and left without looking back at Lance.

.

.

.

“It’s kind of cool that we’re all girls up here,” Lance said.

“We’re still doing that?” Keith asked, rolling her eyes.

She refused to admit that some part of her would be devastated to lose their short-lived… friendship.

“I was the only girl in my family growing up,” Lance continued, (thankfully) ignoring what Keith said. “And, like, of course I love my parents and my siblings, but… it did feel lonely sometimes. Like no one really understood me, even if they went out of their way to try. And like, I guess I didn’t ever really feel like a priority…”

Keith watched the water dance between Lance’s fingers as she played with it.

A girl. A priority. What a joke.

“It’s like…” Keith said, in a small voice. “The world was made for boys and we’re just expected to deal with that.”

“Yeah,” Lance drawled, sounding tired. “So it’s nice that we’re all girls up here. Well, not Pidge. Or Coran. But you get it.”

Keith cleared her throat, uncomfortable.

“The girls at the home never really liked me. Eventually they made me go sleep with the boys,” she said.

Lance frowned.

“Why?” she asked, judgement coloring her tone.

Keith shrugged.

“I hate being a girl,” Keith said.

“I hate the patriarchy,” Lance replied, sighing.

Keith smiled.

Her heart beat loudly in her chest.

“I think they didn’t like me because, well… I’ve never kissed a boy,” Keith said. Lance’s eyebrows lifted in shock. Keith hurried to say, also: “And I don’t want to.”

A wide range of emotions passed through Lance’s face, and eventually her face just looked sort of blank.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

Keith wanted to squirm out of her skin.

Lance’s face twisted in confusion.

“You said you dated someone, though…” She mumbled.

“Shiro,” Keith said.

Lance turned around suddenly, like she was searching for her.

“Wait, what?” She said, turning around with that lukewarm confused look still on her face.

Keith looked away.

“The girl I dated. It was Shiro,” she said.

A look of complete shock overtook Lance’s face.

Then,

“Oh my God, that makes so much sense,” she said, eyes looking off to a middle distance. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

Keith felt her heartbeat thrumming wildly – on her neck, her fingers, her eyes.

“Yeah, well… I don’t think we’re really… together anymore,” she said, crossing her arms.

Her throat felt tight. Horrifyingly, she became aware that she was going to start crying in the very near future.

Lance’s features softened in sympathy.

“Really?”

Keith opened her mouth to reply, but a stifled little sob escaped her instead.

She looked away, embarrassed as the dam broke and tears streamed uninterrupted down her face.

“Oh, um…” Lance said, uncomfortably. “It’s okay, Keith…”

Keith moved away a little, trying to stifle the gasps of breath that broke through her throat painfully.

“Sorry, I don’t really know what to say… I’ve never seen you cry,” Lance said.

Keith felt so cold, suddenly, the air above the water hitting her damp skin and clinging to her like tar.

Lance’s hand, then, tentative, brought warmth to Keith’s shoulder. She twitched, shying away from it. Lance retracted her hand a bit, but ultimately rest it firmly on her.

“I’m sure it won’t be forever,” she said, softly.

Keith turned to her, the words having renewed the feeling of loss within her.

“She… she was going to tell me that she loved me, but I didn’t let her,” Keith sobbed. “I thought it would hurt me too much and that I’d break when she left… but at least I would’ve heard it once. I mean, it hurt like a bitch anyway.”

Lance pulled Keith close to her, wrapping her arms around her. Keith stiffened.

“I was so stupid,” she breathed, finally, letting her head rest on Lance’s shoulder.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Lance said.

Keith breathed against her neck.

When they were out of the pool, drying off silently side by side, Lance cleared her throat.

“Y’know, Keith,” she said, biting her lip, “it’s hard to tell what’s in your heart, sometimes.”

The words hit her chest with a dull thud.

“But now that I got to know you…” Lance continued, eyes fixing on Keith with startling intensity. “You’re really cool. And it sucks that the other girls in your home couldn’t see that.”

Keith swallowed drily, feeling a foreign warmth burrowing inside.

“Lucky for you, now you got a whole bunch of girls to hang out with,” Lance smiled.

Keith smiled back.

.

.

.

“How’d you get so good at all this?” Lance asked.

Keith turned, puzzled, and winced. Her neck was sore from a hit she took with a blaster. Her skin was sure to bruise, later. It would be nice if the water ever went warm…

“At what?” Keith asked.

Lance huffed, which must’ve been difficult, since she was floating belly-up on the water.

“I don’t know. Swordfighting. Hand-to-hand. Paladin-ing, in general,” she muttered.

Keith frowned.

“The same way you did, I’m guessing,” Keith said.

Lance was quiet for a bit, and Keith began to feel nervous.

“Um… Garrison training, then being here…”

Keith tried to think of something else to say.

Lance stopped floating, her back to Keith. Her voice was small, when she spoke.

“How come you’re all so much better than me?”

Keith’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes widened.

“Pidge could’ve died today. Because I wasn’t strong enough to have their back,” Lance said. “Shiro had to bail me out.”

Lance turned to Keith, but her eyes were trained on the surface of the water, full of tears.

“I’m weak. I’m going to get one of you killed and I don’t know what to do about it –” Lance sobbed.

Keith took a step froward, her hair falling into the pool.

Lance covered her face with her own hand.

Keith took a deep breath, setting her resolve, then made her way to Lance and tugged her tightly to her chest. Awkwardly, she rest her hands on Lance’s back.

“That’s not true,” she said.

Lance’s breath stuttered, and her hands came around to clutch at Keith’s waist.

“But if you want, we could start sparring,” Keith said, impulsively. “I was getting tired of this pool anyway.”

Lance looks at her like stars shine out of her eyes.

.

.

.

Keith wrapped Lance’s hands for her.

“See? I don’t know how to do this,” Lance said, but her tone was significantly more upbeat.

Keith glanced at her from under her eyelashes. Her smile was almost infectious.

“Shiro taught me when I got into the Garrison,” she said.

Lance nodded.

She pulled her hands back when Keith was done, testing the bandages by rolling her wrists around.

“Gettin’ a feel for it,” she said.

Keith rolled her eyes.

“Let’s do this,” she said.

Predictably, Keith laid her out on the mat. Five times in a row.

Lance whined and groaned, but when they left the training room, she was beaming.

.

.

.

“Ugh,” Keith groaned, trying to wipe the sweaty hair from her face for the hundredth time. “God, I can’t fucking see anything!”

Lance groaned, spread out on the mat, exhausted.

“Jeez, and even in that perilous state you still managed to kick my ass about ten times,” she said.

Keith huffed, frustrated.

“You almost got me on that last one,” she said.

Lance turned to her and a cheshire cat grin spread over her face.

“Well, those are just my amazing new skills, Keith. No one can blame you if –”

The door to the training deck slid open.

It was Shiro.

“Surprise, surprise,” muttered Lance.

Shiro’s eyes fluttered to Keith, then away.

Her eyes rested on Lance for a few long seconds.

Keith cleared her throat.

“I’m teaching Lance some hand-to-hand,” she said, for some reason.

Shiro hummed.

“Good job, Keith,” she said, through gritted teeth.

She didn’t look her in the eyes.

“We were just leaving, if you want the training deck,” Keith said, like a pinch in the arm.

“Okay,” said Shiro.

Keith turned to Lance, who was looking at her with some unreadable emotion in her eyes. It felt like she was trying to communicate something in that silent gaze, but Keith couldn’t make anything of it. She turned away, frustrated.

“So,” Lance said, once they were in the hallway, “you should cut your hair.”

Keith turned to her. She’d always worn her hair long. Cutting it hadn’t even occurred to her as a possibility.

“I usually just tie it back,” she said. “My dad used to braid it for me. Shiro did too.”

“Yeah. Maybe you should cut it,” Lance said, her voice tightening.

Keith thought about the sister’s hands in her hair, tugging as they brushed it, refusing to cut more than half an inch each time the length of it grew to be a hassle.

“Maybe…” Keith said.

“Yeah. I think you’d look really pretty,” Lance said, nonchalant.

Keith felt herself become red, embarrassingly.

“Shut up,” she said, rolling her eyes.

She scanned her hand on they keypad next to her door, but was surprised by the fact that Lance followed her inside.

“I’m serious. I think you’d look really pretty.”

Keith was struck dumb by that statement. Lance was looking at her with a soft, genuine look in her eyes and a small, content smile.

She turned around so she wouldn’t have to look at it.

She took off her shirt and walked towards the bathroom, as an excuse, but also half-hoping that Lance would take the hint and go to her own room to shower.

As soon as she did it, though, she felt self-conscious. Which didn’t make sense because, well, Lance had seen it all before and –

Keith felt Lance’s hand on her hair suddenly.

“You have nice hair,” she said, quietly.

Keith looked at her through the bathroom mirror.

Her eyes shifted to – herself.

Her hair was sweaty, and a little knotted up. Shift. Her skin was flushed from the sparring, and her cheeks a little puffy. Shift. The scar on her chest – Shift.

She turned around again, this time coming face to face with Lance.

They were standing really close. Keith’s throat closed up.

She could feel Lance’s breathing on her cheek.

Lance’s eyes drifted leisurely from her hair to her eyes, to her mouth, and still to her –

Lance frowned as she looked at the scar. She raised her hand –

Keith stepped back.

“Are you not, like, angry at her?” Lance asked.

Keith crossed her arms.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Keith said.

Lance looked at Keith for a long moment, and she felt herself starting to become annoyed.

“She put it there,” Lance said, infuriatingly sympathetic.

“God,” Keith scoffed, rolling her eyes. She turned around, fishing for her T-shirt.

“Keith, hey, it’s okay…” Lance said, shifting closer.

“Don’t,” Keith started, with more venom than she thought she felt. “Just stop it with that big-eyed self-aggrandizing bullshit.”

“That’s not –” Lance started, stepping back.

“You don’t know anything about what she’s been through,” Keith said.

Lance’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Are you kidding me? First, like that’s an excuse. And also, not even she knows what happened to her,” said Lance.

“She has a Galra arm, Lance, she barely knows how it works!”

Lance was looking at her with a presumptuous sort of exasperation that poked the fire burning inside of Keith.

“Well, it’s not like she permanently scarred the dinner table, Keith. She’s been doing a pretty good job of controlling it until suddenly it was time to ‘put you in your place’.”

Keith felt like she’d been slapped.

“I know what this is about now. It’s just your pathetic need to be needed, or whatever,” Keith said – she felt blood rushing through her ears. “Guess what, Lance? I’m not one of your stupid siblings. I’m not your friend. I don’t need you. I’m fine.”

Lance’s face flushed. Her eyes drifted to the door.

“I’m so sorry I assumed you could use some family. Fuck you.”

She stormed out of the room. If the doors weren’t automatic, Keith was sure she’d have slammed it.

.

.

.

Keith stared at herself in the mirror. At her scar. Then, away.

She met her own eyes in the mirror. They were brimming with tears.

It was big. Ugly.

She was ugly.

She shook her head – she shouldn’t care about those things.

Keith didn’t always feel like her body was hers. But then, looking at herself, the association was undeniable. She was damaged.

She’d been damaged.

.

But…

A knock.

Lance opened the door.

She almost closed it again, but Keith made herself open her mouth.

“It was the bike crash,” she blurted out.

Lance stared at her in confusion.

“Dude, what?” She said.

Keith took a deep, shaky breath.

“The scar on my back. It’s from a hoverbike crash. After I… left the Garrisson, I took Shiro’s hoverbike and I just drove. I had no idea where I was going. I don’t even know how long I drove, but eventually I just… let go of the handlebars. I thought I was going to die there, in the desert, all by myself. During the night, it gets freezing cold, but… somehow I woke up the next day, to the scorching sun, all healed up. With that scar on my back and these on my hands.”

Keith took off her gloves and showed her hands.

Lance stared at her, expressionless. It was a little unnerving.

“So that’s the answer to your question. I figured I owed you that much,” Keith said.

Lance was silent. Keith put her gloves back on.

“And… I’m sorry I said that we weren’t friends. I… didn’t mean that,” Keith said.

Lance nodded silently.

After another moment, Keith said:

“But I understand if you don’t want to be. I know I’m… difficult.”

Keith waited for Lance to reply. Each second that passed, fear grew within her – that Lance would open her mouth and, instead of the warm tone of friendship, she’d reply with a sardonic comment and an eyeroll.

She’d already resigned herself to it, setting her jaw, when Lance spoke.

“Friends… friends take care of each other, Keith,” she said.

Keith nodded hesitantly.

“And I know you don’t need me. You’re a badass warrior princess samurai, or whatever. But you’re the one who told me it’s better to be wanted than needed. I… want to be your friend, too,” Lance said.

Keith felt a smile split her face in two.

Lance looked shocked by it. She smiled back.

“Want to cut my hair?” She asked.

“Hell yes.”

Chapter Text

“You look so good,” Lance said when she was finished.

“Did you just compliment your own work?” Keith asked, flustered.

“Someone had to,” Lance said, that brilliant smile lighting up her face. “Come on, look in the mirror.”

Keith stared at Lance, unsure of why she wasn’t turning to look at the mirror, but unable to do it.

Lance raised her eyebrows.

“Look!” She laughed. “You’re making me anxious.”

Keith’s heartbeat startled her, suddenly quickening.

“I…” she started, but couldn’t finish.

Mortifying tears grew in her eyes and Keith chuckled at her own weakness.

And for a moment — maybe she caught the sight of her jacket in the corner of her eyes — she was wearing the red dress.

“I used to be stronger than this,” Keith said, looking Lance in the eyes.

Her bright smile slowly dimmed. Then, sympathy melted her expression.

“Keith,” she breathed. “Just take a look.”

Keith turned in the circle of Lance’s arms, hesitantly moving her eyes to her reflection.

The breath was knocked out of her.

It was short – stopped just under her ears, but the haircut looked edgy and cool and she looked so much like herself that…

“Damn it,” she said, looking down to hide her tears from Lance.

“What, do you hate it?” Suddenly anxiety was coloring her tone, and as much as Keith wanted to keep her mouth shut, or say that yes, she did hate it, she couldn’t deal with Lance thinking she’d messed up in any way.

“It’s perfect,” she said, looking down at her gloved hands.

She could feel Lance’s confusion, and she opened her mouth to explain, but she couldn’t find the words and why was she so useless?

“Hey, calm down,” Lance said. “Calm down. You don’t have to say anything right now, ok?”

Keith turned to look at Lance and there were arms around her, surrounding her, holding her. Another wave of emotion overtook her and Keith returned the hug, gripping Lance close to herself.

“Sorry. I’m just not – usually I don’t really care about this girly stuff and I just feel… like I shouldn’t, you know, be so happy about a stupid haircut, it isn’t going to solve anything, or, or –”

Lance’s arms tightened around her.

“Keith,” Lance said, so fond it actually sort of scared Keith. “Feeling good about yourself is important.”

Her voice was a little choked up.

Keith drew back and saw that Lance was crying, too.

“I’m sorry. I guess it’s tough for me, too. For a long time, I thought I shouldn’t care about this stuff, either. So I tried to pretend like I didn’t care,” Lance said. Her voice was shaky. “But I do. And I realized that choosing to be yourself, without censoring the girly parts… and owning up to it in this world where everyone hates girliness… that’s what being strong means.”

Keith stared at her, willing herself to comprehend the words coming out of her mouth.

“The world already hates us enough. We don't have to hate ourselves too,” Lance smiled, letting out a wet, breathy little laugh. “Just let yourself feel nice.”

Keith was too overwhelmed to answer for a minute, but then –

“I guess I’ve been defying it for so long I didn’t think I could… the parts I… like. I mean, being like that just feels like defeat,” she whispered to the ground. Then, meeting Lance’s eyes: “But I’ll try,” she promised.

She looked at herself in the mirror and felt a great wave of correct-ness fill her chest.

She shook her head, smiling.

“Yeah, I think you’ve met your emotional quota for the day,” Lance said. She turned her head away from Keith, wiping at her cheeks. “Let’s go have dinner and show everyone the kickass job I did.”

.

.

.

Pidge and Hunk were the only ones in the dining hall.

“Wow, Keith!” Pidge exclaimed as they walked in. “You look awesome!”

Hunk, who was sitting with her back to them, turned to look as well.

“Yeah! Total samurai princess!” Hunk smiled, looking very impressed. “Did you cut it yourself?”

Lance leaned against the doorframe, looking at her nails theatrically.

“Actually, I did,” she smiled, batting her lashes.

“You did a great job! Come here so I can take a look!” Pidge said, waving them over.

Keith stiffly walked over to them. Lance stood by her side, beaming with pride.

“Wow, so Lance did this?” They asked, raising one skeptical eyebrow.

“Hey! Don’t sound so surprised!” Lance huffed, crossing her arms.

Just then, Allura walked into the room, Coran and Shiro at her toes.

“We have news, paladins,” she said. There was a determined sort of smile in her eyes.

“With the help of Pidge’s tracker, we’ve been able to locate a nearby Galra fleet and we have reason to believe they’re headed for planet Pollux.”

“What? But we’ve just been there!” Lance protested.

“Which is exactly why they won’t be expecting us,” Shiro said, voice confident and steady.

It was weird how Leader of Voltron Shiro and Person Shiro were so well separated. But maybe not. Keith remembered the Poster Girl, Best Pilot of her Generation Shiro all too well.

“So,” Allura continued, “the plan is to infiltrate the ship when their guard is down and gather intel.”

“Wait, when their guard is down?” Hunk asked, a frown growing on her face. “Won’t that be when they’re all down on planet Pollux?”

“Yes, it will. That’s why we’re going to need to divide the team,” Allura said.

Keith’s eyes shifted to Shiro in surprise. Divide the team? How were they going to be able to go up against one of those monster ships without forming Voltron?

“Pidge and I will infiltrate the ship while Keith, Lance and Hunk go planetside and evacuate the city before the Galra get to it. If things get nasty, Pidge and I can get there quick and help form Voltron,” Shiro said.

Keith nodded along with the other paladins, and she was about to open her mouth and ask what their ETA was when Pidge spoke.

“Wouldn’t it be better for Keith and I to be paired up?” They said. “If the Galra go planetside and don’t see the Black Lion, we’ll get made immediately. Not to mention, the Red Lion is the quickest, if we need to get out of there fast.”

Everyone turned to Shiro, who hesitated for a second too long.

“Um, yes. I guess that’s better,” she said, at last.

She spared a fraction of a second glance at Keith before telling them to get ready. They were leaving ASAP.

Lance clapped her on the back on her way to change.

“Good luck out there, Samurai,” she said, shooting her a mischievous smile.

Keith smiled back, the same way.

“And good luck to you, … um… I’ll think of something,” Keith said awkwardly.

Lance just laughed, eyes sparkling, shaking her head as she left.

“Sheesh,” she heard from behind her.

It was Pidge, smiling knowingly with both their eyebrows raised.

“What?” Keith asked.

“Go change!” They laughed, running ahead.

Despite not really understanding what had just happened, Keith couldn’t help but feel like she was in on the joke for once.

.

.

.

“So, why do you think Shiro didn’t want you infiltrating the ship?” Pidge asked over the comms as they flew towards a still too-far-to-see ship.

Keith was taken aback.

“I don’t know…” She conceded, eventually.

Pidge simply hummed and Keith briefly wished to strangle them.

“I think you do,” they said, in a teasing voice.

“Well, I –”

“You know this is an open line, right?” Came Hunk’s voice, out of nowhere.

Keith felt herself going red.

“Oh…”

“I’ll separate the communication lines for now so as to not create confusion,” said Allura.

“Thanks, Princess!” they said, chorus-like.

There was a moment of silence as they flew, still without the ship in eye-sight.

“Sorry,” said Pidge sheepishly.

“Don’t sweat it,” Keith said.

.

.

.

Alarm bells rang in Keith’s mind as soon as she stepped foot on the ship. There were no guards around the loading dock, and even though their lions literally didn’t let anyone inside who weren’t them, Keith felt bad leaving them behind.

“Let’s go,” Pidge whispered, when she loitered too long.

The ship was lit up in purple, and Keith could feel the cold seeping into her bones, even though she was wearing armor. They passed through many locked doors, and one or two occasional guards.

“Pidge… this feels like a trap,” she said, as they waited around a corner for a set of two guards to pass.

“If it is, we’re already in it,” they said, fearlessly turning and raising their bayard.

“We should probably go in the opposite direction of the guards if we want to get to the heart of the ship,’’ Keith said. “I think they’re either leaving to go planetside or they’re the skeleton crew that’ll be left behind. So…”

“So we need to find who’s sending them this way. Good thinking, Keith!”

They walked for what Keith felt was a little too long, anxious to get back to Red. Until they turned and –

A long corridor.

A purple holographic door at the end.

And a hooded figure –

Keith walked backwards, reaching and pulling Pidge back as well.

They turned to her in exasperation, but she raised a single finger to her lips as a ‘be silent’ motion.

“It’s there. I’ll lure them away, you go in and get whatever you can on the pen drive,” she whispered.

“It’s not a pen drive,” Pidge laughed.

“I know! It has like, a sci-fi name or whatever, but that’s not important right now!” She said.

The sound of crackling reached her ears, and Keith pushed Pidge away quickly.

She stepped into the hallway and turned her head –

Sudden, searing pain. Lightning hit her and her body was thrown into the air, flying back several feet, making impact with the floor violently. Groaning, she scrambled to get up.

“The Red Paladin,” a raspy, ancient voice sounded around her. “We meet again.”

Her body shook. A wave of pain created and she took a breath, trying to raise her sword with heavy arms – another crackle of purple lightning struck her.

The breath was knocked out of her, and she fell back once again, helmet hitting the floor with a crack so loud she was sure it had been broken.

The world spun as she managed to sit up, body almost numb with the pain, barely able to raise the weightless shield activated by her armor.

Her vision was going blurry, and she caught Pidge still waiting on the corner of that now far-away intersection. Keith swallowed. She nodded at them.

She stumbled upwards, turned around and started to run as best she could down the long corridor.

A dark, chilling laugh rang as if inside her own head.

“You think you can get away from me, child?”

The figure materialized itself in front of her in a moment. Keith staggered.

“I was hoping to see the return of the Champion, but you’ll do very well indeed,” the figure said.

Keith was suddenly certain that this was the same creature she’d seen once before, through a door in a hallway just like this one. Torturing Shiro. Killing her.

“That’s not… her name,” she panted.

Then, she brandished her sword in a contained arc and aimed for the figure’s midsection.

Again rang that decrepit laughter that reached into the deep recesses of her mind. The blade ran right through it.

Keith looked up, and in that brief moment of shock she felt two hands coming up behind her.

“You’re weak, halfbreed.”

Keith had no time to process the words, as the druid’s hand came to group at her neck.

“It’s arrogant of you to wear your biggest weakness on your sleeve,” she heard, as she was kicked down to her knees.

Keith panted. Spots entered her vision. She fell forward.

“The Champion, at least, had the sense to hide you in the depths of her mind,” the figure said, climbing over Keith and reaching to dislodge her helmet. “But, well…”

She laughed once again. Suddenly, her mouth was right there, next to Keith’s ear.

“I got there anyway…”

…

Dark.

Scanner.

Flashing lights.

Red. Red. Red.

“Useless…

DNA…

most interesting…”

Crash.

A steady hand on her shoulder.

No.

“No, no!”

Arms, crowding around her.

Blurs of black and white. Purple lights. Red. Red. Red.

“Keith!”

“Your bond with the red paladin…

Electricity.

… runs deeper than the others.”

A scream.

A hand, pulling her up.

With her whole weight, she fought against it.

“Do you want to live?” A yell.

A second.

The alarms.

Blood on her lips.

A laugh. Hers.

“What a question.”

She went slack. The arms around her…

Shiro’s fierce expression was looking down at her.

Behind her, a looming figure rose from the floor and –

“NO!”

Keith shoved Shiro out of the way.

.

.

.

.

The sound of the healing pod’s door sliding open was crisp and fresh.

The smell was almost minty.

The arms holding her up were thin and wiry with muscle.

“...Lance?”

“Hey, Keith”, she said, a smile in her tone.

“Hey…”

Keith blinked away the stupor.

Lance held her for a beat too long, grip tight around her.

“You scared me, asshole,” came Pidge’s voice from behind her.

Keith disentangled from Lance, taking in the room, empty but for the three of them.

Pidge was standing awkwardly, no longer in their armor and squeaky clean. Some time had passed, then. Keith winced internally. As Pidge got closer, Keith noticed their eyes were watery.

“Don’t do it again,” they said, burying their face in her shoulder.

Keith looked up to meet Lance’s strained gaze.

She smiled, but it didn’t meet her eyes.

“I didn’t even know you were injured until Shiro carried you in here all heroic-like, yelling that we needed to put you in a pod STAT,” Lance chuckled weakly. Her hands twitched forward.

Keith tucked her hair behind her ear, unsure of what to say. She was beyond embarrassed to hear that Shiro had been the one to rescue her.

“In some ways, it was worse than when you had that fever. We didn’t know, like, how you were doing, if that makes sense,” Lance continued.

Pidge nodded from their spot against her.

They sniffled, pulling away.

“Well, it’s nice to see that you’re okay. Seeing you get beat up by the witch was really scary. Shiro went like, feral and –”

Lance cleared her throat, elbowing Pidge on the side.

“Where is she?” Keith asked.

Lance cleared her throat, looking away.

“She went to the training deck to blow some steam. She was… pretty riled up,” she said.

A deep pit of dread started to form in Keith’s gut.

“How long has it been?” She asked.

Keith looked at both of them with a growing sense of unease.

“...I’m not sure,” said Pidge, after a beat.

Lance looked to the side, crossing her arms.

“Way too long,” she said, almost with a scoff.

Keith sighed.

“I need to go talk to her…” she said.

Lance’s hand touched her arm. So lightly it was almost startling.

“You need to put yourself first,” she said.

“Friends take care of friends, don’t they?” Keith said, smirking.

Lance opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. She furrowed her eyebrows.

“I’ll rest after, ok?” Keith found herself saying, patting Lance’s hand on her arm before making her way out of the Healing Bay.

She missed the pointed look Pidge gave Lance, as well as the color on her cheeks.

She felt herself a little wobbly as she made her way to the training deck. A little light headed. She didn’t really remember her fight with the witch, much less Shiro’s intervention. But she was sore. She felt like she could sleep through an entire week.

Approaching the training deck, Keith started to hear grunting and clanging. The doors slid open. Shiro was surrounded by at least eight… no, nine, training bots, swirling and hitting in a mad sort of frenzy Keith had never seen her in.

“End training sequence!” She yelled, scrambling forward.

Shiro’s eyes snapped to hers. She was panting. Drenched in sweat. Swaying a little on her feet. Her hand glowed – buzzed, almost.

Her face remained impassive.

“You’re okay,” Shiro said. She looked away, swallowed. Nodded a few times. “Good.”

Keith stared at her for a minute. The sound of Shiro’s panting filled the room. Her hand powered down, losing its purple glow.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” Keith asked.

“Yes,” Shiro answered, immediately.

It hurt. Shiro was almost unrecognizable to her.

“Great,” she spat, turning to leave.

The doors slid open, but before she could make her way out of the room, Keith heard a bitter little laugh.

“I can't do anything right, huh?”

Keith turned. Shiro had straightened her back. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

“What?” Keith asked.

“I said!” Shiro yelled, suddenly, “I can’t! Do! Anything! Right! Huh!”

Keith flinched back. Shiro had tears in her eyes.

“Can’t keep you safe, can’t keep… anyone safe. I can’t save the fucking universe. I don’t know what to do. I can’t sleep, I’m always tired, and everyone just keeps looking at me like I’ll make everything alright. And I can’t – I don’t… I can’t even touch you without hurting you… and the way you looked at me. It was like you didn’t even care. And it was so bad…”

Shiro was hyperventilating. Keith took a step forward, but Shiro raised her hand up – don’t come closer.

Keith felt lost. She didn’t know what she could say to make Shiro feel better. For a moment, there was only silence. Then, like a puzzle piece finally sliding into place, the truth:

“I am upset that you hurt me,” she said.

Shiro’s breathing slowed down. Their eyes met. Desperate.

“And, honestly, I’m even more upset that you’re pushing me away…” Keith said.

“I’m trying to keep you safe,” Shiro said, through a lump – wet, raspy.

Keith was confused.

“From – you?” She asked.

Shiro looked to the ground in shame.

“You don’t know what I’ve become,” she whispered.

Keith tried stepping forward again, but Shiro took a step back.

“Shiro… what?”

“You don’t know what I did. In the arena,” she said. “I’m a monster.”

Keith tried not to let the words rip her apart.

“You’re not,” she said.

“You don’t know –” Shiro started.

“I know you,” Keith said, for once absolutely certain.

Shiro wiped the tears from her face.

“I know you like I don’t even know myself, Shiro.”

“Not anymore. I’m not –”

“You’re a dork,” Keith said, amused at the shocked look thrown her way. “You have pajamas with little UFOs on it. You’re uptight, and a rule-follower, and a control freak. You ask too much of yourself. And it hurts you. But when you let go, I can see how full of excitement and joy and recklessness you are. You saved me. And you hurt me. I know you’re not perfect. You’re Shiro.”

The air seemed to drain out of her. Keith smiled.

“And you’re not keeping me safe by pushing me away. You’re punishing yourself. But… I want to be with you. And you deserve... love. And – well, me, if that’s what you want.”

Shiro turned away.

“You almost died for me. You pushed me out of the way when the witch shot quintessence at me,” she said.

Keith sighed, long and a little irritated.

“What do you want me to do, Shiro?” She asked, finally.

“I want you to love yourself enough not to die for me,” she breathed.

Keith stared at Shiro’s back. She was massaging her forehead.

If there was one constant – one unchangeable variable in the mess of probability that the universe presented, it was that Keith would do anything to save Shiro. She knew that for sure, down to the marrow of her bones. Never doubted it for a minute.

Even before she knew her, perhaps.

“I was alone in the desert for a year, Shiro. I lost you. I grieved for you. Excuse me for being a little protective when I find out the love of my life is alive,” Keith said.

Shiro turned to look at Keith, cheeks aflame. Either from the exercise or the praise. She scoffed wetly.

“You’ll kill yourself for me,” Shiro pushed the words out, like they hurt.

Keith crossed her arms.

“No. Look around, you’re the one trying to hold all this weight by yourself, when there are six other people to hold it with you.”

Shiro looked confused.

“I’m the leader,” she argued.

“Exactly,” Keith said. “So lead.”

Shiro crossed her arms, furrowed her brow.

“Excuse you, what have I been doing so far?”

“You’re not alone. No matter how hard you push me away, I won’t stop caring about you.” Keith looked at her. She’d felt scared, before, of saying something and driving Shiro away, but… she needed to say this. Her voice shook. “Our lives are intertwined. Nothing you do will ever change how much a part of me you are. So… stop trying to control me.”

Shiro set her jaw. Looked up. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“I don’t…” She stopped herself. Cleared her throat. “I’m… scared, Keith. I told you.”

There was a sudden lump in Keith’s throat.

“I know. I know you’re scared. I am too. Scared of losing you. Scared I’ll die. Scared of what failure could mean for the universe. We’re all scared. But why can’t we be scared together?”

Shiro wiped at her own eyes. Keith felt hope, unbidden, startle to life in her chest.

“Is it really helping, being apart from me? Or are you just punishing yourself?” Keith asked. Whispered, almost.

Shiro covered her face with her flesh hand.

Keith wanted to tear it away. She remembered a time when Shiro never hid herself from her. She looked at her metal hand. A lot had changed. Maybe more than Keith had really understood before.

Of course Shiro had changed. A logical sentence. She spent a year imprisoned and – probably tortured. Of course she had changed. As an abstract thought, it made sense.

But when Shiro had said it, that was all Keith had understood. A logical, abstract thought. She didn’t feel – didn’t understand with the heart.

Shiro had changed.

It was a heart-shattering thought.

“You won’t – you can’t –” Shiro tried. Her voice was tight with emotion. Her hand still covered her eyes.

She was shaking and all Keith wanted was to be near her again.

“The person I am now… I know you would love me anyway… but you shouldn’t…” Shiro managed to say.

Keith watched her for a long moment.

Then, she took a step forward once again. Tentative.

Shiro swayed towards her.

“You need to let me decide that for myself,” she whispered.

Afraid to break the moment.

Shiro let her hand fall away, defeated. She looked at Keith with her puffy eyes and, with a miniscule movement, nodded.

Keith tried to stretch her body wide enough to hold Shiro in her arms the way she’d been held by her before. Gentle, she told herself. But she wasn’t sure she really knew how to be.

Maybe she was learning.

Shiro started to melt against her, arms coming to grip at her sides. But as she let the tension of her body strain away, little sobs escaped, each one stabbing through Keith’s heart.

Keith did her best to comfort, to contain.

It reminded her of her first few months at the Garrison, and discovering how insanely vital it was for the soul, to be able to let go and have someone there to hold you together.

Shiro.

Who had always held her. Grounded her. Touched her.

“I love you,” Keith whispered.

Shiro’s arms tightened around her.

“It'll hurt too much,” Shiro hiccoughed. "I don't think I'll be able to handle it."

Keith closed her eyes tightly.

“I'm not leaving you.”

.

.

.

Pidge’s eyes ran from Keith to Shiro to Lance.

“What do you think is going on there?” They asked to an absent-minded Hunk.

“Huh?” She said, turning to Pidge and following their eye-line. “Oh, them. I’ve stopped trying to guess, honestly.”

Pidge snorted.

“You know what? Fair.”

Keith was looking settled, eyes droopy as she leaned her head back on the hard, gray couch cushion.

Shiro was openly staring at her with stars in her eyes.

Lance was glaring at an unsuspecting Shiro, pouting with her arms crossed.

Coran made his way into the room, crushing a holo-pad in his grip and shifting his eyes nervously.

“Pidge? Um… Hunk?” He squealed, high-pitched. “Could you please help me with something human-related, please?”

Pidge stretched, getting up and reaching out a hand to Hunk. She groaned.

“It’s important,” Coran said, again.

Pidge and Hunk turned to him, eyebrows raised.

“Should we tell…”

“No! Let’s just… come with me.”

Pidge and Hunk traded an inquisitive look.

“Okay,” they said, and followed Coran through the door.

Through the hallways.

To the holo-bay.

.

.

.

Chapter Text

“We have to tell her,” Pidge said.

“Pidge, it’s clearly a, a mistake of some kind, we shouldn’t talk to her before we really know…”

“Hunk! There’s no mistake. We’re looking at her DNA. I,” they gesticulated, “for one, would love an explanation.”

“Number Five, I’m afraid the situation is a little more complicated than that,” said Coran. “If she’s an undercover agent, we simply cannot —”

“What, you think she’s a spy? Are you listening to yourself?” Hunk asked. “Pidge, we went to the Garrison with her! How could she be a spy?”

Pidge breathed out through their nose.

“Yeah. No. No, there’s no way she could be a spy, Coran. That would be insane.”

He didn’t say anything.

.

.

.

“So we think that Keith’s DNA might be partly… Galra,” Coran said.

Allura turned to him, eyes wide with shock and outrage and perhaps a million other emotions.

“Might be, Coran?” She asked, curt.

He looked away.

“Is,” he said.

She gasped softly, turning away and hiding her face in her hands.

“How did this happen? We’ve been tricked… again.”

“Princess… I don’t think she knows…” Coran tried.

She turned to him, mouth pressed into a straight line.

“We can’t trust her, Coran… Not after…”

Her breath stuttered.

“We must tell Shiro,” she said.

Coran’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth, but sighed in defeat at Allura’s set expression.

.

.

.

“Coran told Allura, and she’s definitely going to go running to Shiro, so…”

Hunk held onto herself. She was getting a stomach ache. Anxiety.

Pidge was staring off into the distance.

“I know that she went to school with us, so she can’t really be a spy, but… Hunk, if she is… if she knows anything about Matt…”

Pidge’s hands trembled.

Hunk’s eyes softened. She stood up, walked towards the spot where Pidge had crumpled themselves up, in the observatory.

“Pidge, we’re going to find him. But this isn’t the way. How many times has Keith saved our lives? Your life?” She asked.

Pidge stood abruptly, turning to face Hunk with a crazed look in their eyes.

“She could have been trying to gain our trust. Make it hard to suspect her as a spy.”

Hunk scoffed.

“Pidge… She’s been shutting us out for months… Why would she do that if she was trying to gain –”

“Hunk. She’s part alien. I don’t think it’s too far off to think that!”

“Who’s part alien?”

Pidge and Hunk turned to stare at a wide-eyed Lance, standing at the open doors of the observatory.

“Guys…?” Lance frowned.

Pidge narrowed their eyes, turned away.

Feeling desperation growing in her chest, Hunk turned to Lance.

“There was something off about… Keith. When Coran put her in a pod, he saw an anomaly in her DNA. But when he was looking into it, he realized that she’s… part Galra,” Hunk said, hushed and yet so loud in the large room.

“She’s part Galra? What?” Lance gasped. Then, she startled, looking back at the door. “Does she… know?”

“Jury’s still out,” Pidge said coldly.

“I don’t think she does,” Hunk whispered.

Lance blinked a couple of times, still processing, and…

“Does Shiro know?” She asked.

“She will soon,” Pidge said, making their way past her and leaving the observatory.

.

.

.

“Wait… what? How can you know that?” Shiro asked, bewildered.

Her eyes shifted to Coran, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. His head was tilted down in defeat.

“It’s in her DNA,” Allura said. “She’s one of them.”

Shiro felt nothing and everything all at once.

“But I don’t understand… how?”

Allura’s eyes were hard and unforgiving.

“The Galra always find a way.”

“There’s no way… she…”

Shiro’s eyes went glassy.

“What are we… How?”

“We have to take her off the team,” Allura said.

Shiro hesitated. She heard footsteps in the distance.

“No! What? Allura, that’s insane!”

Just then, Pidge stormed into the room.

“Where is she?”

Shiro turned to her, feeling like the world was going at lightspeed, while she stood still. Everything was blurry and confusing and –

Lance burst into the room just a second later, panting.

“Goddamn it, you’re fast…” she panted. She looked around urgently. “Keith…”

Shiro furrowed her eyebrows.

She opened her mouth, but then Hunk arrived, also panting.

“Jesus… guys… can we just calm down a bit,” she said, looking at Pidge with alarm.

“No, Hunk, one of our teammates is a fucking spy, so actually –”

“Did everyone know before me?” Shiro asked.

The room settled into silence. Electric. Unstable.

“I discovered an anomaly in her DNA when I was setting up the healing pod… Then, I saw it wasn’t like Lance’s and asked for Hunk and Pidge’s help,” Coran said. He was frowning.

“She’s a spy, Shiro,” Pidge said, their voice cracking. Their eyes were wide and frantic. They saw red.

Lance let out a scoff, turning to them with incredulous eyes.

“Do you hear yourself? This is Keith we’re talking about!” She shouted.

Pidge rolled their eyes.

“Come on, you’re just defending her because you’re in love with her!” They yelled back.

Shiro felt her body seize as she struggled to take in the information.

Lance sputtered, turning red and stammering unintelligible noises.

“Pidge, we have literally seen memories of her childhood on Earth!” Hunk said, red in the face.

Silence stretched on for a few seconds. It was like a new puzzle piece was suddenly introduced to a jigsaw puzzle, and every other piece was then struggling to shift and accommodate it – the picture in the box had disappeared.

“The Galra must have reached Earth,” Allura said, eyes wide.

Everyone turned to her, suddenly on alert. Like the temperature had just dropped by twenty degrees.

“What…” Lance’s voice was a breathy wisp of nothing. “No…”

Shiro felt like her world was ending.

She was in a desert of red sand. A group of students hung around. A girl, in a long white dress stared at the simulator with a longing expression.

“Keira, is it?”

Shiro shook her hand. She stared up at her with suspicion in her eyes.

“Actually, it’s Keith. They just don’t like that I’m a girl with a boy’s name.”

Shiro shook her head.

No, no. Is that how it went?

She was in a desert of red sand. A group of students hung around. A girl in a white dress stared at the simulator.

“Keira, is it?”

“Actually, it’s Keith. They just don’t like that I’m a girl with a boy’s name.”

Is this my memory? Or did they plant it in me somehow?

She was in a desert of red sand. A group of students hung around.

“Where is she?” Asked Pidge.

They all looked at each other, noting Keith’s prolonged absence.

Oh… fuck.

.

.

.

Keith needed a place to hide. She didn’t know what was going on, but alarm bells were going off in her head.

Allura said she was going to take me off the team… Shiro just stood there… why? why?

The question swirled in Keith’s mind as she ran through the halls, desperately trying to remember if there was a place where she could stay undetected for a bit.

Why would she want me gone? What did I do wrong? Is Shiro on her side? What’s happening?

The aqua doors all looked the same to her after a while, and she cursed the fact that she never explored the castle. Never catalogued any escape routes. Never thought she’d need to.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Keith had been so confused, so lethargic once she’d come back to her senses from the seizures or whatever it was that was happening to her body that she hadn’t – she…

There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to run, nowhere to run…

She dug her nails into the palms of her hands, just to feel in control of her body again. She could tell her breathing was coming hard and fast, her airways on fire, but she could do nothing to stop it, there was no time, Are they going to kill me?

She found herself, suddenly, among purple doors. Purple lights. Dark floors. Her hands tied behind her back. Two Galra soldiers dragging her somewhere. A roaring sound growing closer and closer. She turned to the side, and one of them smacked her.

“Keep walking, Champion,” he grunted.

Keith huffed.

“What?” She asked.

“Walk!” The guard yelled at her, pushing at her shoulder.

She looked at the door, massive and open at the end of the hallway.

The roaring sound became louder.

Thousands and thousands of voices.

Screaming.

Champion! Champion! Champion! Champion!

Keith screamed.

“Keith! Keith!” She heard.

She fell to her knees, shifting away.

“Please! What’s happening?” She cried, desperate.

“Keith, it’s okay. It’s okay, I promise…”

Long, brown hair.

Tanned, smooth skin.

Her round face.

Shining blue eyes.

Aqua lights all around the room.

Those careful fingers wiped at her cheeks. Wet with tears.

“Lance…” Keith breathed.

“I won’t let them do anything to you, okay?” Lance said.

Keith’s breath stuttered. She nodded.

“Thank… thank you,” she said.

Then, she was on the floor of a huge arena. Dark, purple, tall like a colosseum. Thousands of Galra were yelling and waving their arms and throwing things. A tall figure stood above her, brandishing a longsword. It came down and…

She let out a horrible yell.

Sinewy arms were wound around her, holding her close.

“What’s happening to me?” She whispered.

“Keith, look at me,” Lance said.

Aqua.

Lance smiled softly at her.

“I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything bad happen,” she said.

Keith was hyperventilating. Her eyes locked onto Lance’s.

Then, Lance’s eyes dipped a bit lower and she leaned in and…

The kiss was chaste and sweet. Lance’s hand was in her hair. Her thumb caressed Keith’s cheek. It was calloused and warm and safe.

The murky, thick waters of a healing pod swirled around. Keith saw it as though from outside her body. The reflection of aqua on the pool. Keith was crying. And Lance was kissing her.

Lance drew back, eyes boring into Keith’s.

Keith’s breath calmed.

What…

She looked at Lance.

“I didn’t know if it was really going to happen until now…” She chuckled, shaky. “I guess it was meant to be.”

“Lance, I…”

“I saw this. Us. When I was shot by Sendak. And at first, I thought it was just a hallucination, but then, when you guys said it was a seizure, I started hanging out here, and Keith… Getting to know you…” Lance’s hands were shaking. “You’re so amazing. So strong, brave and beautiful… Keith, I…”

Keith stared back at her, a million thoughts running through her head.

“And it doesn’t change anything for me, knowing that you’re Galra, I don’t know how the…”

Lance kept talking, but all Keith heard was ringing in her ears.

“I’m… what?” Keith frowned.

Lance looked at her, taken aback. Her expression closed.

“You’re part Galra, Keith. Coran figured it out, looking at your DNA…” Lance mumbled. “I thought you knew… what were you freaking out about?”

Keith felt her world collapse in on itself.

It’s over…

“I need to… go…” Keith heard herself say.

Lance grabbed her hand.

“Wait, Keith, please,” she said.

But it was weak. Keith took her hand back, taking one last glance at a distressed Lance before turning and running. This time, she had a destination in mind. The Hangar.

I’m Galra.

I’m Galra.

My mother…. My mother must’ve been a Galra.

How did I not know that? Who am I?

Keith reached the Hangar. The doors slid open with a woosh sound. Five massive metal lions towered over her as she ran. She ran past them to the escape pods. She wasn’t in her armour, and she didn’t have her bayard with her. But she did have her knife. Her Galra knife. She grimaced in anger.

All logic escaped her and an irrational, overwhelming wave of anger filled her chest. She threw it at the wall, and with the dry sound of metal on metal, it slid to the floor at the corner of the room.

She stopped for a second in front of Red. Her heart beat erratically in her chest.

The team… Voltron…

They need me… but they were going to throw me out anyway. I’m the enemy now.

“What do I do, Red?” She asked.

“Keith!”

She turned around, and saw Shiro barreling towards her. Keith turned to the escape pods and ran.

“Keith, what are you doing?” She asked.

Keith reached the nearest pod, struggling to open the door. Her hands were shaking.

“Keith, just… just wait, please!” Shiro yelled.

She didn’t know if it was desperation or anger, but Keith didn’t feel like Shiro was on her side. The feeling was unfamiliar and awful.

She closed the door to the pod, throwing herself onto the pilot’s seat and turning it on. As soon as she did, the castle alarms started ringing. Are we being attacked? Wait, no. I am the threat. I am the enemy.

Keith started to panic. The pod lifted off shakily, and Keith saw Shiro out of the corner of her eye for a second before she plunged the spacecraft into dark, starry nothingness.

For a very brief moment, Keith felt wrongness settle into her chest.

Then, the escape pod shuddered as it was hit. The castle was shooting at her.

How fast can I go?

.

.

.

Lance stormed into the control room.

“What the fuck, Allura? Did you shoot at her?” She yelled.

Allura turned to her, eyes icy and mouth turned down into a deep frown.

“It was a tracker,” Pidge said. They were turned away from her, sitting at their control desk. Looking at their stupid computer screen.

Hunk was cowering, arms crossed, on the corner of the room. She looked at Lance, anxious and concerned.

“Did the world turn upside down? I feel like I’m the only sane person here!” Lance laughed, incredulous and angry and sad.

I kissed her. She ran.

Shiro entered the room, looking haunted and shaken. She held a blade in her hand.

“She’s… gone,” She rasped.

“We have a tracker on her,” Allura said. “We should pursue her as soon as possible.”

“You… what?” Shiro blinked slowly.

“You’re our leader, Shiro, it’s your call,” Coran said, eyes shifting to the sides.

Allura shot him a stern look. He backed down.

“What are you talking about? We need to go right now! She could have important information. Time-sensitive information!” Pidge shouted, turning to look at them. Their face was red.

Lance felt hysterical.

“What are you talking about?! Keith isn’t a spy!” Lance responded.

“Then why would she run, Lance?” Pidge shot back.

Lance felt her skin become hot. She looked away.

“I don’t know!”

“She got made. She ran,” Pidge said, turning back to their computer.

“How did she find out?” Shiro asked. She still looked shell-shocked.

“She must’ve overheard us,” Allura muttered.

Lance felt the back of her neck begin to sweat.

The electric-adjacent hum of the castleship filled the room.

“That doesn’t matter! She didn’t run because she’s a spy! She ran because she was afraid of what we would do to her!” Lance said.

She turned to Shiro for support.

She was inspecting the weird-looking blade in her hand.

“How could you possibly know that, Lance?” Pidge responded.

Shiro closed her eyes tightly, shook her head.

“She left this knife behind,” she said quietly.

Allura shuffled closer.

Lance looked at it. A weirdly shaped, purple blade.

Allura took it from Shiro’s hand, eyes narrowed and lips pressed tightly together.

“It looks to be of Galra confection,” she said, finally, dry.

Coran looked stricken. His eyes were glued to it.

“It does resemble Zarkon’s blade from when he was –”

Allura cut him off with a pointed look.

“Why would she leave it behind if she was a spy, then?” Lance asked, a little thrown.

How did Keith have that Galra blade?

“She must’ve dropped it,” Pidge muttered. But they looked affected as well.

The blade glowed.

“Have you seen it before, Shiro?” Pidge asked, the manic tone of their voice quietening.

“No. Never,” she said. Resigned.

Lance looked away from it, the air robbed from her chest.

Hunk suddenly stomped to the middle of the room. Startled eyes turned to look at her.

“I don’t know how Keith got that knife. To be honest, I’m not very close with her. But I think we’re all emotional and we should try not to jump to conclusions. We need Keith here. She’s the only one who can explain herself,” she said, looking nervous.

Pidge frowned at her.

“She ran, Hunk,” they said.

“Yeah, but, also, it would make no sense for her to be a spy. She went to the Garrison with us. Shiro met her when she was, what, twelve? Thirteen? We’ve seen memories of her childhood in the mindmeld,” she said, matter-of-factly.

While the revelation of Keith’s blade had been chilling, it had also slowed their hearts and dampened the fire of the conversation. In the wake of that, Hunk’s arguments were a welcome return to clarity.

Pidge bristled, but said nothing.

Allura gripped Keith’s blade so hard her knuckles turned white.

“We’ll need her to explain herself anyway. We should pursue her,” she said coldly.

Shiro looked a bit dazed, still. But she nodded anyway.

“Pidge, could you get that tracker going?” Shiro asked, sober.

They simply nodded, glasses shimmering in the light.

Lance bit her lip. She felt her nerves crawling under her skin.

She watched as Allura and Coran adjusted the coordinates and locked in on Keith’s escape pod.

.

.

.

Shiro used to watch the stars like something out of an adventure movie. She longed to be up there, discovering wonderful and new corners of the universe.

Keith was an alien. Well, half-alien.

She didn’t know how to process that fact. At all. She stared at the blade in her hands.

Keith was her – best friend, girlfriend, soulmate. An extension of herself. Her own, furious wildfire of a person. An alien. Half-alien.

She was gone.

Shiro closed her eyes. Breathed. Patience yields focus.

Her eyes flew open.

“They tried to clone her?” She asked, sudden and loud and messy.

Not leader-like.

What are they planning?

What are they planning?

What are they planning?

The question echoed in her mind.

Were they going to kill her? Torture her? Hide her? Use a semblance of her body to destroy Voltron?

“What?” Lance turned to her in alarm.

“Coran, you said they were replicating her DNA?” Shiro asked.

Pidge tuned in as well, alarmed.

“Yes,” he said, clearing his throat nervously.

“Why would they be doing that?” Shiro was firm in her tone. Her eyes became clear and the world around her came into focus.

They stewed in silence.

“A clone?” Allura tested the word out, brow furrowed in confusion.

Pidge frowned, turning back to face their computer, shocked into stillness.

Hunk gulped, looking at Coran in confused awe.

“They can do that?” She asked.

“I guess it wouldn’t be that far-fetched,” Pidge muttered. “Even on Earth, we’ve been able to clone complex organisms, like sheep…”

“Cloning technology is nothing new for the Galra,” Coran said. “But in my time, it was deemed highly inefficient. The clones were simply… a copy. It was no easier to control a clone than it was to control the original organism.”

Shiro felt a headache coming on.

“Did they make a clone of her, then?” Shiro asked.

The room went quiet. Coran frowned down at his holo-tablet.

“It doesn't seem like they succeeded,” he said, finally. “The duplicated RNA was human. They failed because… they didn't know she was half-Galra…”

He said the words slowly, as if in realization.

Allura hummed, hard and without harmony. Her lips were set in a thin line.

“Maybe they planned to clone another Paladin,” she said.

“Yeah, or maybe they didn't know because Keith isn't a spy,” Lance said. “I mean, they tried to clone her and also they tried to kill her. And I've been in her head, I would have seen –”

“You mean 'we',” Pidge said. They turned to look at Lance, slow and deliberate.

Lance stumbled over her own tongue, turning to Pidge with wide eyes, like a deer caught in headlights.

“Yes, in the mind-meld. Hunk mentioned it,” Shiro said, confused. “But we don't know what sort of technology the Galra have now, they could have manipulated her memories, our memories…”

Shiro drove herself into an anxiety spiral. She'd really rather not think about the Galra snooping around her brain. She ran a hand over her chest in an effort to calm herself.

Lance gulped, mouth dry. A deep blush colored her cheeks.

“In the mind-meld, but – No, yeah, I meant 'we',” she said, rushed.

Pidge narrowed their eyes at her.

“We're losing precious time,” Allura interrupted, suddenly antsy. “We must follow the Red Paladin. Every second we spend in this fruitless discussion sends her further away.”

For once, everyone agreed. They needed to find Keith.

.

.

.

A tense silence loomed over the castle.

Keith had jumped into lightspeed, and she had maybe an hour head-start. It was definitely not enough that she was unreachable, lost to the vastness of space, but it was enough that it would take some time to reach her.

Nobody had left the control room. The jittery anxiety that seemed to go down to their bones would not permit it.

Pidge's incessant typing was the loudest sound in there, accompanied only by the soft swooshing of Allura's manipulation of the navigational system and Hunk's teeth grinding.

Lance started to tap her feet. She was only human, after all, her body literally could not comport that much nervous energy at once.

“So, like, the consensus is that she is good, on our side, not a spy, right?” She asked, breaking the silence completely.

Allura turned to her with a severe look on her face. For a moment, she said nothing. Then:

“The Red Lion chose her.”

And that seemed to put an end to the subject.

Pidge kept sending Lance weird side-glances, and she began to sweat like, well, like a whore in church.

She had kissed Keith. She had kissed Keith. She had kissed Keith.

Her hair had been in her hand, thick and lustrous. Her warm cheeks. Lance had felt her lips on hers. When she thought of it, she could feel a phantom wetness that lingered there, and the cold loneliness that they left behind.

She wanted more. Wanted to kiss her again, forever. Wanted to never forget the movement of her lips against hers. The memory was leaving her already. Wanted to be able to replay it forever, or never have to replay it at all – their lips locked for eternity.

Lance suddenly realized that she was brushing her lips with the back of her hand absent-mindedly and quickly put her hands in her pockets, face growing warm in embarrassment.

Keith had looked so lost, confused, sad. Had she found calm in their kiss? At least before Lance accidentally revealed her alien-ness?

Lance bit her lips. She'd never thought of herself as capable of falling in love with a girl before, and in some ways it still seemed far too foreign a concept. But there was no denying that what she felt for Keith was…

Pidge let out a loud scoff, pulling Lance from her thoughts.

“Hey Lance, is there anything you want to share with the class?” They asked, a pointedly sarcastic tone in their voice.

Everyone turned to stare at her. She felt Shiro’s eyes, her gaze heaviest of all.

Lance chuckled awkwardly.

“What are you talking about, Pidge?” Shiro asked, jumping to alertness at a moment's notice.

Lance’s palms began to sweat.

“I, um… I…”

Pidge huffed, tapping at their computer furiously.

“Oh, why don’t I give you a hand?”

They smacked a computer key and an image was projected onto the air. It was security footage. The glowing aqua color, the soothing reflections of water on the walls… The video was of the pool.

Lance felt like running away from her own skin. It prickled at the attention, and the anticipation almost choked her.

“Turn it off, Pidge,” she asked weakly.

“Oh, but I don't think I will,” they said, smiling cruelly.

Shiro frowned.

All of them watched as Keith entered the room with a brittle stance, legs shaking as she looked around, frantic, feeling at the walls. She seemed to be hyperventilating. A few seconds later, Lance entered the room.

Shiro turned to look at her, as did Hunk. They looked confused, inquisitive.

Allura kept her eyes fixed on the footage.

“Why didn't you –” Shiro began asking.

“Oh, there's more, Shiro. Just you wait. You're going to love this,” Pidge mocked.

She turned her attention back to the video. Lance felt sweat dripping down the back of her neck. She stared at Shiro, feeling like an exposed nerve.

They watched Keith falling to the floor, screaming and grasping her head in her hands. Shaking her head. Crying. Lance sat down beside her and held her closely. Ran her hands up and down her back. Shushed her lovingly as her fingers caressed her hair.

Keith looked up, finally, and Lance watched in horror as they kissed.

Time seemed to stop. Her heartbeat was so strong she could've sworn it would break through her ribcage, and she could feel it throbbing everywhere. The sound thundered in her ears, and she looked only to the ground, eyes misty.

The kiss was brief, in reality. She remembered. But she watched as their lips locked and it took so long for them to part that Lance thought that she would die by the time they did.

Silence followed.

“Look here,” Pidge said, pointing at Keith's obviously shocked reaction. “What did you say to her? She ran…”

“I thought she knew,” Lance muttered hoarsely to the floor. “She looked upset and I – I don't know, I thought… I told her I would never judge her for being half-Galra…”

She let her voice trail off into nothingness.

“You kissed her?” Came the dreaded response from Shiro.

Incredulous. Slow. Angry.

Lance couldn't bring herself to look at her.

Suddenly Shiro was right in front of her, looking incandescent and awake.

)“What the fuck, Lance? Why would you do that? Why would you think that's okay?” She asked, voice breathy and incredulous and –

“I like her,” Lance said, feeling strength return to her, even as Shiro's righteous stance loomed over her. “I didn't do anything wrong!”

Shiro smiled, cruel. Her eyes were wide and manic.

“She’s mine!” She yelled.

“What do you mean? She's not –” Lance started

“She's mine!” She yelled again, crowding Lance, who took a step back.

“She's a person, you Neanderthal!” Lance responded, the outrage in her veins burning through her fear.

Shiro let out a deranged laugh.

“She loves me, not you!” She laughed meanly.

Lance felt her eyes brim with tears. The words hit her like a truck. Her biggest insecurity, her biggest certainty, thrown back at her face. Keith might even feel something for her, but she would never choose her over Shiro given the option.

She tried to keep her voice even as she answered Shiro.

“But you don't do it right!” She said, somewhat nonsensically, having completely lost control over the words coming out of her mouth. “At least I can stand to look at her in the face!”

Shiro set her jaw tightly, and Lance was genuinely afraid that she would slap her for a second. Their eyes were locked. Every instinct Lance had told her to look away, but her pride wouldn't let her.

An awkward, horrifyingly skin shedding silence followed. After a few seconds, Pidge cleared their throat.

“Could we press pause on this, actually?” Pidge said. “I know you three have this tragic lesbian love triangle thing going on, but we have more important things to think about.”

Lance crossed her arms, turning moodily. She was grateful, in any way, for the excuse to look away from Shiro.

“So, when you told her she was half-Galra, how exactly did she react, because she could've been acting, and –”

Lance interrupted her in a rage.

“For the last time, she's not a spy! I was in her head, I know!”

“The mind-meld –” Pidge started.

“Not during the mind-meld! When I was… when I… died.”

Everyone turned to stare at her with eyes wide with shock. Even Allura shifted her attention from the navigation console.

Lance shrunk into her shoulders self-consciously.

A melodic, short chime sounded around the room. A red little spot appeared on the holographic map of the galaxy. It hovered, somehow harmless and apocalyptic at the same time.

Chapter Text

Keith felt empty, barrelling towards nothingness.

She found herself alone with her racing breaths, her frantic heart… until the expansive galaxy calmed her.

Dark, with little bursts of light. Stars, nebulas.

She was alone. Completely alone.

And who even was she?

It felt, suddenly, like she knew nothing at all. Like everything that had existed until that moment was somehow fake. A lie.

Her past was a flimsy, fading memory…. And her future was…

She was half-Galra.

Her mother was an alien.

Her mother had abandoned her.

Such an old wound to be bleeding and raw once again, Keith felt herself flush with shame.

“Fuck…” she whispered. “Fuck!”

Tears began to run down her face, and she yelled in anger. No point in hiding it. There was nobody there to see it.

Fuck you, Mom…

If only her mother had taken her with her, she wouldn’t have been so… wrong… her whole life. Her whole life!

Why did she leave me behind? Why? Why?

Keith punched the control panel.

It throbbed. Her knuckles were bleeding. Keith stared at it, hurt.

She pulled her hand towards her chest. Cradled it.

Something was wrong with her. From birth. She was rotten from the start.

Her stepmother was –

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“Keira! Keira!”

She heard Jane’s thundering footsteps coming up the stairs.

She was sitting on her bed. Her mouth tasted of iron.

The door slammed open and Jane stared at Keith with wide eyes. Her face began to turn red.

“What have you done?” She asked, voice breathy and quiet in contained rage.

Keith felt her hands begin to sweat. Anxiety crawled up her back.

“I–”

“You bit a boy?” Jane yelled.

Her spittle landed on Keith’s face. She flinched back.

Keith stood up.

“He–”

“Don’t talk back to me, you insolent girl!” Jane slapped Keith.

It was so strong that Keith fell to the floor, but Jane soon grabbed her by the hair, lifting her up again so that their eyelines aligned.

“I thought you could learn,” Jane muttered, pulling Keith’s face closer to hers. Her blue eyes bore into Keith’s. “But you can’t change, can you? You’re a feral animal. So I’m going to treat you like one.”

Jane dragged Keith by the hair all the way down the hallway, down the stairs…

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Keith opened her eyes to stare ahead one more time. Was that – was she –

No.

There were asteroids ahead. Covered in moss and trees and – a whale. A beautiful, gigantic space whale. Keith’s eyes filled with tears.

She gasped.

Where was she?

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“It looks like she’s entered the Quantum Abyss,” Coran informed Allura.

Her expression changed from surprise into a frown in a span of milliseconds.

“How are we going to get her out?” She asked.

“What’s the problem?” Lance butted into the conversation.

Allura side-eyed her.

“The Quantum Abyss is a dangerous and unpredictable place. We have no way of knowing when or… or if Keith will make it out of there,” Coran said, worrying his lip.

He looked anxiously at Lance.

“Well, someone’s gotta go get her,” said Lance, face flushing. “I don’t care how dangerous it is, we need Keith!”

“We get it,” Pidge murmured, from the corner of the room.

Lance ignored her.

“Why is the Quantum Abyss so dangerous, Coran?” Shiro asked.

He turned to her.

“It’s an asteroid field that breaks the rules of time, basically, so when you’re in there you’re… everywhen and nowhen…”

Shiro stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

“Nowhen?” Came Hunk’s confused voice.

Coran simply nodded.

“It’s a place outside of time and… space,” he said.

A quiet discomfort permeated the control room.

“Maybe one of us goes in and the others stand by? Like, in case we need to pull someone out?” Hunk pitched, face twisted in discomfort.

“Good idea, Hunk,” said Shiro.

She straightened her back. Decided.

“I’ll go,” said both Shiro and Lance, at the same time.

Shiro turned to Lance, raised an eyebrow. Lance gulped.

“You’ll go,” Lance said.

Shiro clenched her jaw.

“I will.”

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Keith was at the gym with Shiro.

“Look, this is the proper way to do it. Y’know, otherwise you’re gonna mess up your back muscles,” she was saying.

Shiro’s biceps jumped out at Keith.

The lines of her tank top. Sweaty. Clinging to her skin.

The flush on her cheeks.

“You need me to show you?” Shiro asked, kind eyes looking over at Keith.

Stop being a creep. God. Stop staring at her.

“No, I got it,” Keith said.

Shiro looked at her in an unfamiliar way.

Like she wasn’t just waiting for her to stumble, fall. Like she just… cared about Keith. For no reason.

It was unsettling. It was addicting.

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Shiro took the Black Lion out. She figured that, if worse came to be, the Lion had a link into her mind, and could maybe pull her out.

She watched Lance watch her go, brow furrowed and arms crossed. Anger still surged in her veins.

Keith was…

Keith was the other half of Shiro’s soul.

She wasn’t going to let anyone just swoop in and take her away.

Not while she had a fighting chance.

Thinking of letting herself go, or more accurately, letting go of control, made Shiro’s hands shake in fear.

But what was her life worth if she wasn’t living it?

She wasn’t just a Paladin of Voltron. Not just a leader, not just a soldier. Not just a fighter in an arena. She was a person. She was a woman.

And she was in love.

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“Remember that day that you snuck into the simulator at night?” Shiro asked.

Keith was leaning against her. They were looking up at the stars.

In less than a week, Shiro would be leaving for the Kerberos mission.

Keith chuckled.

“Oh… please, don’t remind me…” She hid her face in her hands.

Shiro found it adorable.

“Come on…. I think it was actually one of the first times I saw you as a friend and not a cadet,” Shiro said. Mostly just to watch the tips of Keith’s ears turn red.

“Why? I was so dumb,” Keith turned to her. Her smile was sheepish, but free. Completely unguarded. Shiro would never grow tired of the sight.

“When I got there, you just looked so surprised! It was like catching a kid with their hand in a cookie jar. I realized you liked flying as much as me,” Shiro said.

Keith smiled at her.

“I mean, maybe even more than you. Broke your record,” Keith teased.

Shiro laughed. Kissed her.

“Careful, now…”

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Keith was wandering around a wide expanse of land.

She was made of fire. Out of control. Searing hot.

Made of embers.

The fireman never returned.

Made of coal.

The fireman never returned.

She turned to ash.

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Remember, Takashi. You need to set a good example. You’re an Officer now. I’m so proud.

I never need to worry about you, do I? I’m so proud.

I’m so proud of my little baby. You’re perfect.

“Why didn’t you ask your grandma to come?”

“I don’t ever want to worry her.”

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Keith blinks. She’s stepped out of the escape pod. She’s sitting in a mossy expanse of rock. Cold. Pretty. Little firefly-like insects flew between hollowed-out logs and the leaves of trees so old, they might have been born before the earth.

In the distance, she sees a lion.

Where is she?

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It’s a dream. It’s only a dream.

Shiro is fighting in the arena. The pits.

It’s dirty and blood-crusted and unbelievably loud with undistinguished shouts in languages Shiro can’t even begin to comprehend.

Shiro is drenched in blood.

The bodies of the dead pile around her.

There’s a small, humanoid figure underneath her. Shiro holds her arm, glowing and lethal, to its throat.

“I need to get back to Keith,” she whispers to them.

Not an apology.

They die. Shiro lives.

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Keith is walking through a cold, metallic hallway. Purple lights guide her forward.

Shiro is strapped to a table. Druids are above her. The witch. They’ll take her arm, she knows. This is not then.

Keith runs – Shiro is down this hall. Through that doorway. She knows. She runs and she runs, but the faraway door gets no closer.

Shiro feels a phantom of pain running through her body. Shocks. Magic. Whatever it is that happened to her back then. It traverses her body like a faraway ripple.

Keith runs and runs until her legs are so tired she’s sure they’ll carry her no further.

Shiro closes her eyes. Wouldn’t it be nice to just let go? Let herself fall into the comfort of sleep? Let… She’s gone. For a moment, darkness consumes her.

Keith finds herself above Shiro. Floating like an apparition. Mouths words that she doesn’t hear. Touches Shiro’s lips with her lips.

Feels her heartbeat.

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Suddenly, Keith’s eyes are wide open and she is rushing, racing, barreling through the desert. Red and yellow and dusty and furious. Her heart is beating wildly in her chest. Her blood is only adrenalin.

Shiro watches a line of dust reaching up into the sky as a tiny figure becomes larger and larger and larger. In her hoverbike. Keith.

Keith is crying and yelling and she feels a pain as if she were being torn in two. It resonates within her until she’s not sure where she ends and the desert begins.

Shiro watches on. It’s Keith. She sees her sobbing. The path of the hoverbike is wobbly and inconsistent. Keith takes her hand off of the handlebars to wipe her face and the bike veers dangerously off-course. Shiro is planted to the ground. Watching. Horrified.

Keith grips the handlebars, regaining control of the bike and feels… calmer. She watches as the entire world becomes a blur. Blue. The sky. White. The clouds. Brown. The mountains. Red. The ground. She closes her eyes and lets go.

Shiro watches as the bike fails. Keith’s body is thrown into the air. It describes an arc and falls to the floor with a gut-wrenching sound. The impact is fatal. Shiro falls to the floor. Gathers Keith up into her lap. She’s bleeding… everywhere. Her beautiful face is streaked with thick lines of blood. Shiro wipes it all away. She says something. Her soul reaches out to Keith’s.

Her heart beats again.

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Shiro sees Keith.

Keith sees Shiro.

She’s a maiden, a warrior.

A lady, a handmaiden.

They’re factory workers.

A seamstress, a dancer.

A writer, an actress.

They’re cats.

Trees.

Earth.

Stars.

They’re right in front of each other.

They can’t touch –

They’re in each other’s arms.

Looking into her eyes, always purple, but in different shapes, different places, different times, in different faces, Shiro understands. There are no words for what Keith means to her.

She catches a glimpse of a bride.

Keith sees Shiro’s understanding. Of who she is. Completely, entirely. And her care. If there's one thing of which she’s certain in this world, is that Shiro cares about her. Loves her.

She catches the glimpse of a bride.

Words tumble out into the galaxy. The space between them, which might as well be no space at all.

“The universe is vast and confusing. I want you by my side. Does it have to be more complicated than that?”

All that was weighing them down before seemed to simply dissolve into the unending vastness around them.

“I’ll follow you anywhere,” said Shiro.

Keith smiled.

“I feel unstable. Insane. Out of control.”

“We have no way to control this world. Control is an illusion.”

Flowers bloomed at their feet.

“We’ve been here before, haven’t we?” Shiro asked, looking around them.

“In another life,” Keith answered. “In every other life.”

Things were falling into place.

“I’m scared of everything,” said Shiro. “But I’ll be damned if I let myself be scared of loving you.”

Shiro kissed Keith.

They melded into one another. Clay. They shed their skin and remodeled their bodies until they were one.

“Please,” Keith breathed. “Please.”

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“Maybe we should go get them. How long has it been?” Lance said. She was jittery.

She was pacing around the control room.

Everyone was exhausted.

“When did my life become a lesbian soap opera?” Pidge asked, sarcastic.

Hunk sighed.

“What?” Pidge asked. Their shoulders were hunched.

“Nothing,” Hunk said, turning away.

“No, come on, say it,” Pidge needled her.

“Dude, I’m just a little done with your attitude today,” Hunk grumbled.

Pidge looked away, scolded. Their eyes met Allura’s.

Coran cleared his throat.

“I think we should wait just a little… Oh! There they are!” He pointed at the large window that curved around the room.

The black lion was making its way back.

Lance wrung her hands.

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The lion’s mechanical jaw opened, and revealed Pidge, Hunk, Lance, Allura and Coran. They were standing in a sort of semicircle.

It seemed like things had cooled down a little.

“Hey,” Keith said, simply. She was a little confused. Only a second ago, her essence had been spacedust. One with the Galaxy.

She was Keith.

Her mother was a Galra.

She was in love with Shiro.

Lance kissed her.

Suddenly, all of that seemed both manageable and too chaotic for her to wrap her head around.

She could deal with it. She could deal with anything. Shiro was standing right next to her.

“We don’t think you’re a spy,” said Hunk, bravely. She smiled at Keith reassuringly.

Coran laughed nervously.

“I guess the situation just got a little out of hand,” he said.

“Why did you run away?” Pidge asked. Their voice was cold and distant, but not really that confrontational.

Keith looked at them. She let herself be open.

“I was scared. I never knew my mom… and I’ve never really had a family.” Keith breathed. “This is the closest I’ve ever gotten. Then, suddenly, I felt like it would all go away. And that it would be my fault. That there was something wrong with me. A reason why nobody ever stuck around. I panicked.”

Shiro reached out and took her hand. The metal was cold, but the touch warmed Keith from the inside.

The other paladins stood in a sort of stunned silence. They never expected Keith to be so…

“Your mother… she was the Galra?” Allura asked. Even she seemed shaken.

“Must’ve been. My dad looked pretty human. I had some pictures of him, but… not here,” Keith said. “I have… a knife. It’s one of the few things I’ve carried with me my entire life. I think it was hers. You can have a look.”

Allura nodded. She gave a tight smile.

“Seriously, what happened to you two out there? You seem like two different people,” Pidge said. Their eyes widened. “Are you the clones?”

Shiro chuckled at the idea.

“Clones? What? No. We just… well, things got put into perspective a little,” Shiro said.

Keith turned to look at her. Smiled.

“Yeah.”

Pidge looked around, frantic.

Lance was looking fixedly at the place where Shiro and Keith’s hands connected.

Hunk was smiling, looking relieved.

Even Allura seemed to shake the day from her shoulders.

They realized that there was no breakthrough. Of course Keith wasn’t a spy. She was their friend. Their teammate. She cared about all of them. She was human. She’d had a life before all this chaos. Just like Pidge.

Their eyes began to fill up with tears.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Pidge said. Everyone turned to them in surprise. “I guess I just… I want to find Matt so badly… that I actually wanted you to be a spy. God, it’s so stupid to say it out loud.”

Pidge wiped at their face, and slowly, but surely, everyone came around to give them a hug.

“We’re going to find Matt, Pidge,” Shiro said. Pidge looked into her eyes. “I promise you, okay?”

Pidge felt tears overflowing from their eyes.

“Okay,” they said, all choked up.

Their eyes met Keith’s. Instead of anger, they only found understanding in them.

“We’re gonna be alright,” said Hunk, somewhere to their left.

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There was a knock at her door.

Lance knew who it was going to be.

She opened it with shame on her face.

“I’m sorry. It’s okay if you, like, don’t want to talk to me again, or, like…”

“Lance. Come on. It’s… okay,” Keith said.

Lance made way for her to enter the room.

Keith did, in slow but measured steps.

“You’re… my friend,” Keith said, turning to her. Looking at her sheepishly in the eyes. “My really good friend, Lance. And I–”

“Keith, it’s okay. I know it’s her. I know it’s always been… her,” Lance said. She was trying her best not to cry, but, well… she’d always been a crier.

Keith looked at her for a few moments without saying anything.

“When I died…” Keith’s eyes widened. “It was when Sendak shot me. I was… brought back. By a vision of us. Kissing, in the pool. And I thought it was destiny. I didn’t even know I liked girls, but, well, now I do… I think maybe we were meant to find each other.”

Lance looked away.

“I don’t even know what I’m saying. What I mean is: your friendship is precious to me. And I want to be friends with you. And… yeah. It’s okay that you’re with her. It’s okay,” Lance said.

Next thing she knew, Keith’s arms were round her and they stood in a hug.

“Your friendship is precious to me, too,” she said.

It was enough. And it wasn’t.

But time would keep moving forward.

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Shiro was in her room, preparing to go to sleep.

The day had been exhausting. It felt like several lifetimes had passed since she’d woken up.

Still, something stopped her from just flopping into her bed and falling asleep.

She opened her door, walked through the empty halls and into the observation deck.

“How did I know you were going to be here?” She asked, a smile on her face.

“You know me,” Keith said. Turned to look at her.

She sat down next to Keith. Lay her arm around her.

Keith gave her a little kiss to the cheek.

“I feel like I wasted so much time,” Shiro muttered.

“No,” said Keith. “It couldn’t have been different than it was.”

Shiro turned her head to the side, frowning.

“Hey, look at me,” Keith touched Shiro’s face. “We have all the time in the world.”

She rolled her eyes at herself. Smiled.

“I mean, in the universe.”

Shiro laughed.

I’ll come looking for you. I won’t abandon you.

Those were just words. Keith didn’t need her to say them in order to see them in her eyes.

I’ll come looking for you. I won’t abandon you. Keith said the words to herself.

What she said to Shiro was:

“And besides… I’ll always bring you back. As many times as it takes.”

Shiro smiled at her.

They settled against each other in companionable silence.

Keith and Shiro watched the stars. They used to be so far away.

Well, not anymore.