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Keith trembled. He stood in one of the castel's lookout rooms with a giant window, looking at the space.
It was calm, bright and full of hope. The exact opposite of the red paladin's soul.
Keith thought back to how it all came down to this.
He was bickering with Lance as usual, eating at the table with everyone, sometimes stealing glaces at Shiro in hope of cathing sight of one of his rare smiles.
That was when the emergency call came in. A small, lotharrian ship was attacked by a large galra mothership, they were after the quintessence the lotharrians were taking to a research base in a nearby planet. Next to an asteroid field.
Team Voltron got into their lions and went to rescue them. Pidge guarded the ship while Lance covered the holes on the vehicle with ice to stop oxigen from exiting the ship.
Shiro and Hunk attacked the mothership while Keith took care of the small attack ships.
The black and yellow lions managed to destroy the huge ship with the help of Allura firing a blast with the The Castle of Lions, for a minute everyone breathed sighs of relief.
They didn't see as a huge piece (as big as blue) of the blown up ship flown towards the small lotharrian ship.
Keith, being the only who saw it fired at the metal piece but it only made that said piece change course and hit Red head on.
Red was sent uncontrollably flying in the space and crashed into an asteroid. The inside of Red was lit up by blinking red lights. Keith tried to concentrate and get Red moving but the moment he lifted his arm and leaned forward a searing pain went through his body.
Vaguely he heard someone calling him.
Words like "Keith", "buddy", "okay", "please" and "answer" seemed so far away.
He grabbed at his chest with a trembling hand and and coughed, making his head spin, his vision getting blurry by second. He took a shaky breath and licked his lower lip. It tasted metallic, with a start he realized he was tasting his own blood.
Suddenly Red was being moved. Keith could still hear her scared and worried purring, the sound like static noise with a slow, low beat.
He tried to lean forward again but the pain intensified and he fell off the chair and landed a wheezing mess on the floor. He coughed again and blood started pooling in his mouth, he started choking on his own blood and saliva.
Oh. He was bleeding out internally. He needed help. Fast.
In a few minutes, or was it hours? Seconds? Who knows. Red's mouth opened and Keith was being turned onto his back.
"Shit, Keith! Keith! Get the pod ready we need to get him in there now."
The red paladin slowly blinked up at the blurry figure he recognized as his first and best friend. In the background he could hear different voices fading into one white noise.
"S-Shiro?"
He called out to him softly as the bigger and stronger man lifted him up and carried him to the sick-bay.
"Hush Keith, don't try to talk, everything's gonna be just fine."
He heard Shiro say, but could only answer with a soft, pained whimper. His armor's collar soaked up his blood, but a shiny trail of crimson red was left from his lips to his chin and down his neck. His clenched fists slowly let go of Shiro's armor, -when did he grab hold of it?- and fell to his side and abdomen as he started slipping into unconsciouness.
The last thing he remembered was Shiro pleading at him to stay awake.
When he woke up two days later only Allura and Shiro were there.
Keith still felt weak but also incredibely happy to still be alive.
Unfortunately, his happines was short-lived.
"Keith.. We have to talk."
The brunette heard Allura say that, he looked at Shiro, wondering what was going on and just gotten more confused when he saw the black paladin's clenched fists.
"Allura? Shiro? What's going on? Is.. Is there any complication?"
"No Keith, not exactly. You had some very serious injuries and we were afraid for you, but now you're completly healed. You had 1 fractured rib on the right side and 2 broken ribs on the left, those punctured your lug and caused internal bleeding. You had concussion too thanks to a mild head trauma.
But as I said these are all healed. That's not what I, we wanted to tell you."
"Then what is it? I, what is it?"
Allura took a deep breath and looked the lightly sha king Keith in the eyes.
"You're not fully.. Human. You, well, you have another set of dna. It's, it's galra dna.
Keith. You're part galra."
Keith stopped moving all together. He just looked ahead with unblinking, unseeing eyes.
Then uttered "What? You, you're wrong, I'm not, I can't be!"
"Keith.."
Shiro spoke softly, his posture defeated.
"I'm sorry Keith but every known dna is programmed in the pod and it identified your dna as a mix of galra and human."
The altean princess said with pain in her eyes. She held out her hand towards him, but Keith just shook his head and backed out of the room then started runing.
The last thing he heard was Shiro screaming his name.
And that's how we get back into the present.
Keith stood in front of the window when he heard appoarching steps.
He didn't need to turn back to know who they belonged to.
"What do you want Shiro?"
Keith asked, staring right ahead into the deep, deep space.
"I want to talk to you about what happened back in the sick-bay."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"There is. Keith. Listen, you-"
"No! You listen Shiro! I'm part monster! I always thought that maybe I was just strange, weird, and that's why noone wanted to adopt me or why kids seemed to avoid me. Not even my own mother wanted me! Noone could ever love such a things as me! She must have found out what I am and decided to get rid of the little monster as soon as possible! Maybe she should have just ki-"
"Keith STOP!"
Shiro stopped Keith from continuing by grabbing his shoulders and pushing his back against the window.
He was about to start talking when he felt the smaller boy tremble and soft sobs reached his ears.
"Keith?"
He asked, eyes widening as Keith lifted his head and looked at him with big, wet purple eyes brimming with tears and chocked out the next words so defeatedly and with utter belief that Shiro felt like his heart was just crushed, the same thing he felt when Keith almost died 2 days ago.
"I-.. I, I'm a.. I'm a monster.."
Shiro felt tears come into his eyes too and lifted his left, human hand, tilted Keith's chin up, looked him in the eyes and said:
"No, you're not it's not what dna you have that makes your person. It's how you live, what you do and believe in that determines your person. And Keith. You are a good person.
You told me a while ago when I was struggling with myself that just because now ai have something in me that's galra it doesn't make me bad, evil."
Shiro lifted his right, galra hand, grabbed hold of Keith's left hand and interwined their fingers.
"It applies to you too. The fact that you are part galra won't make you a bad person, you're still Keith. Headstrong, brave, selfless, beautiful Keith.
And you have to know.
I love you."
Keith looked at Shiro with eyes full of wonder and shyly said:
"I love you too."
They smiled at each other and leaned in, slowly, tentatively closed the distance between their bodies until they breathed as one begin and shared a soft kiss, full of emotions and promises, unsaid words and whispers of "I'm here" "I'm not leaving", "I will always be by your side."
And suddenly, the red paladin's soul was calm, bright and full of hope.