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It happens at the worst possible time.
There are Galra ships everywhere. The goal is to get onto the main ship so they can download some information concerning the possible location of some prisoners, but they haven’t quite gotten to that part yet. Allura and Coran are maneuvering the castle ship as well as they can, taking attention off the paladins as much as possible.
Shiro is yelling commands. If they could just find a gap in the enemy’s fire, they might have time to form Voltron.
“Our time frame is closing!” Allura shouts through the comms. “The number of Galra ships here is only going to multiply.”
“We have to get onto that ship, one way or another!” Pidge insists. They will not lose another opportunity to find their family.
“Yeah, yeah, just be patient!” Lance assures them. “I’ll get us on there, don’t you worry.”
“Lance, eyes on the space road!” Keith barks.
It happens at the worst possible time.
“Excuse you, I could pilot Blue with my eyes closed- Keith?”
“Keith!?” the rest of the team echoes, and Keith slams his hand over the cam on his dashboard, quickly turning it away from him.
“We cut out,” the Red Paladin supplies, voice low and somehow steady.
“Keith, no, you- You had ears,” Lance breathes, and his eyes widen dramatically. “Are- Are you a cat? Kitty Keith!?”
“I’m not a cat, it was just a mistake in the video feed,” Keith growls. He glances down at his purple-speckled hands and shivers slightly. Have to control it, he thinks. Can’t let them see. Not now.
“You…” Shiro’s voice trembles uncharacteristically, and the rest of the team can practically feel him falling into some terrible flashback.
“Keith,” Hunk whispers.
“He has the Red Lion,” Allura breathes out, sounding horrified. Something falls on her end of the comms. “Coran, emergency protocols?”
“There aren’t any, Princess! The Red Lion isn’t rejecting him!”
“That’s because I’m her paladin,” Keith hisses. He takes a deep breath, uses his hands to push his purple ears down beneath his hair as best he can, and grips his lion’s controls more tightly. “It was just a video error.”
“Kitty, eyes on the space road, specifically the right side of it!” Lance yells, and Keith grits his teeth as he dodges a Galra beam of who-knows-what.
“Lance, don’t,” Pidge says carefully.
“Don’t what? Holy crow, hold that thought, Pidge, we’ve got an opening!” Lance laughs, and Blue suddenly dives down to weave between a few little ships. The lion ends up latching on the bottom side of the giant Galra ship, and Lance whoops as his lion bends to allow him to jump into a hatch that had been spewing tiny Galra ships moments previous. “Come on in, the water’s great!”
“Lance, get the hell out of there!” Shiro commands, jumping up as though shocked awake. “We aren’t prepared! We can’t- We can’t do this now!”
“Hey, Keith! Let it be known that I’m the one salvaging this mission. Ten points to Gryffindor!”
“What the hell is a Gryffindor,” Keith mutters.
“I’ve always thought of Lance as more of a… muggle,” Pidge says, shrugging shamelessly.
“You wound me,” Lance whispers, sounding genuinely offended.
“Lance, I said, get out of there!” Shiro yells, but he’s already following after Blue’s lead.
“Could’ve at least waited for us, moron,” Keith huffs, starting toward the hatch.
“No! You can just- just- stay out of this!” Shiro demands, and Keith’s breath hitches when he realizes Shiro has suddenly cut off his communication connection with Keith.
“Guys?” Keith ask hesitantly, wondering if the others have done it, too.
“Don’t-” Pidge sucks in a breath. “Don’t.”
Keith did not want this to happen.
“Hunk? Come on, man.”
“Shay… For years, under their- yourcontrol-” Hunk sighs.
“No,” Keith chokes out.
“Wait, hold on, why are we bugging Keith, again?” Lance asks curiously. Keith is panicking internally but he can hear gunfire on Lance’s end of the comms so he steers Red straight for the hatch anyways and jumps into the Galra ship without a second’s hesitation.
“He’s a Galra, Lance,” Allura says gently.
“For the love of god, get him out of the comm channels!” Pidge huffs. “Coran!”
“Waitwaitwait,” Lance says slowly. “Whaaaat?”
“You’ve got it wrong,” Keith tries, one last time. He unsheathes his bayard as he sprints down a black and purple hallway.
“You were purple , Keith,” Pidge deadpans.
“I- I know, but I’m not, I promise-”
“You are but you aren’t?” Hunk asks, unamused.
“Galra?” Lance asks. “You’re sure he’s not just a cat? ‘Cause, like. I don’t know. I think Keith’d make a pretty good cat.” Keith dives in front of a distracted Lance, barely protecting him with his shield, and Lance continues, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I mean, think about it! He hates everyone. Like a cat! And he’d probably scratch you if you tried to bite him, like, let’s be honest here. Also, he doesn’t know about Harry Potter, apparently? And I’m pretty sure cats don’t know jack about Harry Potter.”
“Lance,” Keith says, slightly strained as he stretches to guard against another beam of energy.
“Oh,” Lance says, eyes wide as he suddenly focuses in on Keith. “Gotta admit, you are pretty purple.” He pauses and then winks. “Then again, you’re pretty in any color.”
“Lance, I don’t think you understand,” says Shiro, who has had his hand on the Galra computer for a while now. Pidge bursts into the room with Hunk not far behind and immediately starts tapping away on the Galran keys.
“Galra are dangerous,” Allura reminds Lance.
“Or have you forgotten?” Pidge asks bitterly, not even glancing over at him.
“Um? How exactly does this apply,” Lance says, putting his hand on his hip while Keith holds up his shield in front of him one last time. The shield breaks, and Keith winces.
“Uh, maybe start helping now?” the Red Paladin asks.
“Mcscuse me? I am owning these bad guys!”
“At most, you’re boring them,” Keith huffs, skillfully blocking another energy beam with his sword.
“Okay, rude.”
“Ninety percent!” Pidge shrieks. “Allura, all clear for a wormhole soon?”
“All clear!” Allura shouts back.
“Lance, to your left, hit that button thing!” Hunk yells.
“What does it do?” Lance asks, absentmindedly headshotting five Galra in a row. Keith squints at the skill.
“Open the floor, hopefully!” Hunk replies.
“We can’t exactly make it back the way we came,” Pidge worries, glancing towards the heavily guarded hallways.
Lance nods and sprints over to the ‘button thing,’ and Keith struggles to keep up. “Keith, buddy. Do me a favor and cover me while I dramatically push this button?” Keith grits his teeth but nods anyways.
The floor opens in a flurry of last-ditch energy beams and angry commands, and the paladins scramble to find purchase along the walls. “Lions!” Shiro yells. Half a second passes and there are lions hovering beneath the open floor, waiting obediently for their paladins.
“Wait. Red, where’s- where’s Red!?” Keith shouts, glancing around almost desperately.
“Castle,” Allura answers, without mercy.
“Pidge, Hunk, go!” Shiro commands, refusing to leave before his team has safely evacuated. The green and yellow paladin hop down into their lions and jet away, and Shiro breathes out approximately half a sigh of relief. “Lance!”
Lance salutes jokingly and then lets himself fall backwards into space, and Blue catches him perfectly.
“Shiro,” Keith says, and he’ll admit that his panic is growing. “Wait, please. Red is-”
Shiro shakes his head, and Keith’s soul shatters, he swears. “I wish I’d known,” he says simply.
“No!” Keith screams desperately, dodging the few Galra soldiers left standing as he struggles to get closer to his friend. “Please, Shiro, I’m not- not like them, I swear! I’m not a Galra, I’m Keith!”
Shiro smiles grimly. “Is there really any difference?”
Keith feels like the air has been knocked out of him. He can’t breathe, can barely see and can hardly think, and, with what little working thought process he has, he wonders vaguely if this is karma for ruining Lance’s Voltron chant.
The Black Paladin jumps down into his lion and speeds away, and Keith cries out in alarm when the floor begins to close up again. No, he can’t, he can’t be stuck here! But he can’t jump out into open space, either, and- and, oh, god, he can’t hold off Galra soldiers forever. He doesn’t even have the promise of a rescue anymore-
The floor closes.
Keith is trapped.
There are Galra soldiers everywhere, everywhere, and Keith unsheathes his sword because damn it if he won’t at least take some of these bastards with him, but then.
Then.
Magical metal lion teeth break fiercely through the wall of the Galra ship, and the Blue Lion roars something awful and sends half the Galra soldiers flying. Then Lance is there, standing in his lion’s mouth, grinning and holding out a hand for Keith to take.
“Can’t believe your lion was actually stupid enough to go back to the castle without you,” Lance scoffs. “I thought they were kidding about that.” Keith just stares at him, and Lance’s grin turns very Lance-ish. “Crazy stupid. Reminds me of a certain rival of mine.”
“Lance,” Keith whispers.
“Okay, yeah, not the time, I get it. Sorry, man.” … “Dude, are you gonna take my hand, or not? We’re kind of in a hurry, you know.”
Keith opens and closes his mouth a few times, and then he grasps Lance’s hand tightly and lets the other pull him fully into his lion. “Haven’t got an extra seat yet,” Lance says, winking again, “so you can either sit on my lap or stand like last time.”
“I think I’ll stand,” Keith says, rolling his eyes.
The cockpit falls silence as Lance pulls his lion out of the Galra ship and darts off toward the wormhole so they don’t get left behind.
But Lance really doesn’t deserve to be left in the dark.
“My lion didn’t leave me just because,” Keith says, deciding this is as good a way as any to lead into it. “Allura must have called it back to the castle somehow.”
“Which was dumb, no offense to the princess,” Lance snorts.
“No, Lance, I-”
“Cat boy, got it.”
“Lance.”
“What, so now you’re purple! You’re like a, uh, what’s it called?”
“A Galra, Lance,” Keith growls.
“Aha! A teletubby.”
“… Lance.” Lance smiles sheepishly as he glances back at Keith, and Keith sighs and continues. “My eyes are yellow. I’m fricking purple. And I have ears.”
“So maybe teletubby wasn’t the word I was looking for,” Lance admits, shrugging slightly.
“I’m the enemy, Lance,” Keith says.
“You know, but it’s on the tip of my tongue. It’s a, ah, let’s see…”
“Lance,” Keith says, exasperated.
“Oh, yeah!” Lance beams. “I’ve got it now. You’re a Keith.”
Keith is ready to hopelessly drone Lance’s name again, but that response catches him off guard. “I… What?”
“Yeah. You’re Keith, the Red Paladin. Except you’re just kinda stealing Shiro’s other color for a bit, which is probably why he was all weird back there.”
“You-” Keith swallows hard, because he figures he must not be hearing Lance correctly. “You don’t, like- care? That I’m a Galra?”
“My abuela always told me to use adjectives,” Lance says matter-of-factly, eyes still on the space road, “instead of nouns. So, like, I’m not a Latino. I’m a Latino person. Latino is not who I am, it’s what I am, and that isn’t really what matters, in the end. So you’re not a Galra, you’re a Galran Keith. And that’s fine,” Lance finishes, shrugging again.
Keith has to choke back a sob of relief and something like love.
“Whoa, you okay?” Lance asks, spinning around in his chair to look at Keith properly.
“I’m fine,” Keith sniffs. “Thank you, Lance.”
Lance grins. “No problem. Hey, but don’t get used to this! I’m only being a decent person for a littlebit. Then I’m gonna make fun of your mullet again.”
Keith wipes his eyes and smiles. “Fine by me. Hey, uh- are we at the castle yet?”
“Oh, uh…” Lance blushes quite obviously. “I’ve actually been circling it for a while now. I figured you probably wouldn’t wanna go in right away.”
“Frick, you’re perfect,” Keith mumbles, and Lance blushes harder despite not having been meant to hear that. “Thanks, Lance. Could we maybe just- I just wanna go to my room first.”
“On it,” the Blue Paladin nods as his lion finally dives into the hangar.
The two sneak out of the hangar and towards their rooms, and Keith is feeling pretty good about the whole journey until he puts his hand on the sensor in front of his room and it tells him he’s not allowed.
“Rude,” Lance mutters, grabbing Keith’s hand and guiding him to the room of the Blue Paladin. “You can change into some of my clothes instead,” Lance offers as he unlocks his door. The Latino boy begins rummaging around in his closet and eventually comes up with a baggy blue t-shirt and some jeans. Keith would blush if he had any emotional energy left at all.
“Thanks,” he says instead, ditching his paladin armor in favor of the soft, Lance-scented clothing.
“No problem. Think you’re ready to face the others..?”
Keith isn’t, but he nods anyways.
The poor boy hears voices the moment they start down the hallway. “Do you think he’s okay?” asks Hunk’s voice.
“I mean, he’s flying, at least- or, he was,”Pidge offers.
“He must be mad at us,” Allura sighs. “With Keith’s… situation.”
“God- God!” Shiro huffs, likely pulling at his hair. “Why did I do that!?”
“You made the right choice,” Allura consoles him.
“Wow, what’s that noise?” Lance asks loudly. “Do you hear it? I think it’s- yeah, wow, it’s my bullshit detector!” The whole team freezes up when Lance strides into the room, but they relax almost immediately upon seeing how not wrecked he looks.
“Lance, he was a Galra,” Allura says, as though this justifies everything.
“Guess what else he is?” Lance huffs angrily, pulling a shy Keith into view. “The goddamn Red Paladin! Or have you forgotten?”
“Lance, no,” Shiro says, noticeably paling as he stares warily at Keith’s purple ears.
“Lance, yes,” Lance mocks him. “Ha, and you guys say I’m the dumb one!”
Keith is still trying to find the strength to speak.
“Coran, ready a prisoner pod,” Allura commands. “We’ll keep him there.”
“We will?” Keith asks quietly, eyes wide, and Lance scoffs and puts his arm protectively around Keith’s waist.
“We most certainly will not!” he says, tugging Keith towards the couch and plopping down carelessly onto it. Shiro actually falls off the couch in his hurry to escape Keith, and Hunk and Pidge glare but refuse to move. “Look, guys, he’s still Keith.”
“Not really,” Pidge huffs.
“Okay, okay. Keith. Let them pet your ears.”
“Wha- Why?” Keith asks incredulously.
“I dunno, maybe it’ll prove something. I just really want an excuse to touch your cat ears and if Pidge is doing it then it’s totally fine for me to do it, too.”
Slowly, Keith stands up, meaning to position himself so Pidge can easily reach his ears.
Before anyone can react at all, Shiro has Keith pinned up against the wall.
“Bruh,” says Lance.
“I’ll just- I’ll just kill him and end this whole deal,” Shiro breathes heavily.
“Mm,” Lance replies, drawing his bayard and tugging Hunk off the couch and into a choke hold. “No bueno.”
“You wouldn’t,” says a horrified Pidge.
“Wouldn’t I?” asks Lance. He puts his gun up against his best friend’s head and then leans in to whisper menacingly in his ear. “Hunk, be a buddy, man. Please?”
Hunk manages to refrain from judgmentally raising an eyebrow, and, because he does not think that they should kill their former friend, not even in the most dire of circumstances (not that this at all counts as one such circumstance), he sighs and keeps his mouth shut.
“Lance, let’s all just- let’s talk this out,” Hunk says, giving his friend the chance he needs to pull this situation out of the terrible hole it’s in.
“Thank you!” Lance huffs. “That’s literally all I want. Shiro, let Keith go.”
“No,” says Shiro, but he’s glancing at Hunk in concern.
“Perhaps talking is a better solution than this,” Coran, who has been oddly quiet, suggests.
“Yeah! You rock, Coran.”
Shiro squints and slowly releases Keith, who stumbles a few feet away and then sinks down to the floor.
“Oh my god,” Lance breathes, letting go of Hunk and practically flying across the room to embrace Keith. “Shiro, dude. Cats hold a hell of a grudge, just hope you know that.”
“It’s fine,” Keith whispers, his timid voice shaking fearfully as his hands fist around the fabric of Lance’s jacket.
“Please, Lance,” Shiro practically begs. “Please let us get rid of him.”
“He isn’t safe,” Pidge insists. Hunk stays quite, silently hoping Lance can prove them all wrong.
Lance seems to consider this for a moment, and Keith is almost afraid but then Lance’s eyes sparkle with determination and Keith has a feeling the whole team is in for a big lecture. Carefully, Lance stands up, pulling Keith with him.
“Hey, Pidge,” Lance says, hardly waiting for a reply as he approaches them with Keith. “Did you choose to be nonbinary?”
“What does this have to do with anything,” they deadpan.
“Humor me,” Lance huffs, crossing his arms. Keith clings to him still.
“No, obviously not,” Pidge huffs back, clearly annoyed.
“And people judge you for being nonbinary, don’t they? And it hurts like hell?”
“I- Well, yeah, some do. And, of course it does.”
“And would you stop it if you could?”
Pidge winces, suddenly realizing the point of all this. “If I could truly be a girl, I- I would. If I could lose the dysphoria, and the - the wrongness of it - I would fit into whatever society wants in a heartbeat.” Pidge blows out a short breath and closes their eyes. “Quiznack.”
“But that’s different,” Shiro protests, and Keith watches as Lance internally prepares for war.
“Your arm is Galra tech,” Lance says in monotone, spinning to face the Black Paladin. “Your arm is Galra tech and you can’t get rid of it and you know it. It will always be a part of you, and you will always feel guilty about it, because it connects you to something you’d give the world not to be connected with.” Lance is closer now, face nothing but a terrifying inch away from Shiro’s, and Shiro is fighting to keep a straight face. “You didn’t choose it. You wouldn’t in a million years choose it.
“But you’re stuck with it.”
Shiro sucks in a quick breath and doesn’t let it out for several seconds. But when he does, his guilt in the air is almost palpable.
“Any other objections?” Lance asks cheerily, turning around to look at everyone in turn.
“Keith..,” Allura says hesitantly.
Coran pushes her behind him and finishes for her. “ May we touch your ears?”
Lance grins proudly, and Keith gapes at him. “I- You guys are actually- You aren’t gonna kill me?” he asks, and his ears perk up. Lance tries not to coo.
“I’m really sorry, Keith,” Pidge sighs, too guilty to make eye contact.
“Me, too,” Hunk winces.
“The princess and I are very sorry for everything,” Coran says, but Allura shakes her head and pulls him back.
“I can apologize for myself, Coran. And, Keith, I truly am… I’ve never met a Galra with any regard for life, but I know that you would give yourself for any of us in a heartbeat.” Allura lets loose a smile, tiny but genuine, and smooths her dress a little. “I am truly sorry, and I hope you can forgive me.”
“Yeah,” Keith breathes, an impossible smile growing slowly on his face. “Yeah, of course.”
Shiro is quiet for a while, and Keith hates how his heart suddenly sinks.
But then the Black Paladin speaks up, nothing but a quiet “Come here, Keith,” and Lance is wary but Keith is desperate so he darts forward and slams into Shiro’s chest and Shiro breathes out slowly and wraps his arms, both of them, human and Galra, around the boy that has become like a brother to him.
“Thank you,” Keith sniffles, cursing himself immediately afterward.
He feels a sudden pressure on his head and nearly jumps out of Shiro’s arms only to find Lance giving him an appraising look. “I was right. They are soft!”
Suddenly, everyone wants to decide this for themselves, and so Keith is promptly assaulted but not in the way he expected he would be when he first walked back into the castle.
It happened at the worst possible time, but it turned out better than Keith ever could have hoped.