Archive of Our Own

 I thought about a lot of things... Like where I was, what I'd got myself into. I started to feel light-headed... And then, sleepy. I think I had a dream. A dream of being alone. I wanted someone – anyone – beside me... So I didn't have to feel alone any more..

I woke to the unpleasant sensation of salt-water down my throat, clothes soaking and clinging to my body and doing their damndest to pull me back under. It was muscle memory that saved me there, and never before had I been so grateful that the majority of my life was spent messing about in water. I broke the surface with a spluttering gasp, spitting out the unwanted liquid from my mouth and taking in some much needed gulps of air before a quick shake of my head threw any lingering droplets from my face, specifically the ones on my fringe and near my eyes.

Blitzer I may be, but we play in fresh water. Don't nobody want any salt water in their eyes, let me tell you!

My feet quickly found purchase on the soft sand below, and I realised I must be standing in the shallows of some cove. A golden beach wrapped neatly around me in a horseshoe shape, hardly a pebble or shell in sight, and some sort of tropical trees had made their home on the grassy edges a little further back. The cove appeared surrounded by white cliff faces, more foliage scattered around in cracks and crevices and coating the top surface, and I could hear the cry of gulls over the gentle lull of the waves as they licked the shore, not hard enough to unsettle my stance but enough to be felt.

Pretty as it was, I had no idea where I was.

Last I was aware, I'd been back home – back in Pollux, surrounded by the big lights and bustling streets, with music and festivities and people cheering my name, our names, the team that was going to bring home the Blitz trophy for the fourth year in a row. I was their star player, their pride and joy, and the junior captain of the Pollux Prowlers, my incredible and ever victorious team.

Sure, I remembered feeling dizzy all of a sudden, and I remembered going and sitting down with my back to one of the walls while I waited for it to pass.. I remembered him talking to me, that old friend of dad's with the funny white fringe and the stupid undercut, but I didn't remember what he was saying at all, though I recall the giant.. Reptile.. Creature thing that came blasting into the city shortly after. I remembered fighting by his side, his cryptic words making no sense as I focused on just surviving. I remembered.. Being on a boat? Some weird ship with a guy with big round glasses who told me I'd gotten close to... To sin? Sin? Proper noun or deadly vice? His description made it sound like the reptile thingy from before, but, eh. Man, I didn't have a clue, but the next thing I knew the ship had capsized and I woke up here in this little beach and-

“OW!”

Something collided solidly with the back of my head and I whirled round to glare at the culprit, and while I saw a white and blue ball floating in the water just beside me (a blitzball?), I was more focused on the dude who'd thrown it. There was a small collection of guys near enough my age stood on the little peninsula of sand to my right, all in some sort of uniform or other, but judging by the sheepish way the one at the front was rubbing the back of his neck and shuffling his feet awkwardly, he was the one who'd kicked it. He was a well built guy, broad, soft but it looked like he had some pretty insane muscles going on underneath the layer of fat that gave him his rounded shape. He was wearing a short, open and sleeveless jacket in yellow, with brown and yellow trimmed knee-length shorts and dark sandals, and a matching yellow bandanna had his hair pulled out of his face. His skin, like mine, bore the darker complexion that didn't seem to match with the rest of his group, but when he smiled apologetically and raised a hand in my direction I didn't feel threatened or anything. In fact, he just seemed warm and open, and I scooped the ball up as I studied him a moment.

“Hey!” He called over, a friendly tone to his voice, and I raised an arm in a half wave to match his own. “You okay, buddy?”

“This yours?” I hefted the ball up for him to see because I was against lying, and really? I couldn't honestly tell him that I was okay. I was disoriented, confused, and missing a significant part of my memory. Drunken nights out were nothing new to me, but I'd never woken up in the middle of the bloody ocean before. He nodded in response, and I decided to return it to him with all the McClain flair I possessed – with a kick that half took me above the surface of the water and shot the ball back over to him. It was harder than I intended but hey, I was stressed out. To my surprise, however, he still caught it easily and turned to me with a wider grin and a slight look of awe on his face, eyeing me up and down a moment. I took this as my cue to approach the surface.

“Dude.” He was silent as I shook myself out, groaning under my breath as I tugged the webbed leather from my leg. Asymmetry was really in back in Pollux at the time, but I still wasn't sure how I felt about having one trouser leg longer than the other and made of mesh rather than actual cotton. The blue and white ensemble really brought out the colour of my eyes, though, and the gold trim just screamed Prowler. I always took our team colours for granted, huh. I glanced up to him when I was content that it wasn't going to irritate my skin, and noticed that his whole entourage – about seven guys of varying builds – were staring at me with a similar expression.

“What? Jellyfish on my face or something?” I didn't think they were staring at me because of how gorgeous I was. I mean, not that it would have been surprising if they were, but there was something.. Different, in their expressions.

“Where'd you learn to kick like that? I've never seen you at the tournaments before.”

Tournaments? They were Blitzers? I had to say the feeling was mutual, I didn't recognise their uniform at all. Then again, I clearly wasn't in Pollux any more. Everything since that dizzy spell had felt like a dream – maybe this was all some fevered creation from my imagination. I decided to play along for now, anyway.

“I'm the captain of the Pollux Prowlers, that wasn't even my best kick! I mean if you want to see something really special, I can..” I trailed off when I noticed the looks had changed from awe to, well.. Pity. Confusion. Disbelief. Whatever they were, they weren't the sort I had been embracing just before. I held my upper arm a little defensively, looking between them with a frown. “What?”

“There ain't been no Pollux for millenia, bro,” one of the other guys spoke – taller than me but broad, pretty blond hair pulled back in a loose pony. “Who you really play for?”

No Pollux? Oh. Maybe this dream world played by the rules of the whole boat episode. “I uh, I got close to.. Sin? Toxins. Stuff. I get real confused.”

The effect on them was immediate. A general hushed curse set about the group, and I saw a good number of them make some strange hand gesture – like they were holding their own hands, one upturned to the other, braced over their heart. I wouldn't have thought much on it had I not seen it ripple through them almost identically. The big guy that had spoken to me first was one of the ones to do the gesture, eyes wide and solemn. “Praise be to Voltron. You could have been killed! You're lucky to be as upright and coherent as you are. Do you remember your name..?”

“Lance,” because yes, that was something I was certain of. Saying that, even I was starting to doubt myself. Even the most simple and obvious of things to me could be complete nonsense to these guys. They were all a figment of my over-active imagination, though, that's what I had to keep reminding myself. Play along and at some point, the dream would end.. I could hope. For some reason, I wasn't so sure that this was all in my head anymore. It was all too.. Real. You couldn't fake the warmth of the sun on your skin, or the salt on your fingers or the feel of sand crunching under your feet. “You?”

“Call me Hunk.” He stepped forward an extended an arm, and he met him in an extremely firm grasp and a brief shake of introduction. I didn't like the look of pity in his eyes. I hated being pitied. It made me feel insecure about myself, about my situation, and I'd had enough of that back at home. “Look, if you want, I'll take you back to the village, get you some food and somewhere to sleep for the night. We can run through some teams and questions, wait for your memories to come back, yeah?”

I didn't exactly have an option, so I agreed to his suggestion. His team welcomed me with open arms and I tried to ignore the sympathy in their gestures, but when we got on the topic of Blitz we were soon cajoling each other and rough-housing on the path up one of the cliff-sides to a town I was promised sat over the brow and on the opposite coast of this small island. It was warm and friendly, but as I cast one last glance over my shoulder and back behind me, I couldn't help but wonder..

What was the purpose of all this?

And would I ever see home again?

 All I could think about was... Everything that happened to me – all this – started with Sin. Maybe if I could find Sin, or that white-fringed guy, I could find a way to go home. For now, though, I'd just live life until that moment came. No more worrying about where, or when, I was. Sure, it was hard not to think of home. But I started to feel better already. A little better... Maybe.

It turned out that there was a lot that I didn't know about this place I had found myself in. They called their known world Arus, and apparently I was currently on one of its smallest settlements, a quaint little island called Besaid. Pollux was nothing more than a site of ruins now, destroyed some thousands of years ago by Sin as punishment for its reliance on machines and technology. But then, even what limited knowledge I had of the tech back home didn't match with what Hunk explained to me, something about a substance called Quintessence that was in every living thing.. And some races had discovered the secret to harnessing its power for their own uses? “Mortals playing at the Maker” was what the islander had called it, not without a hint of scorn in his voice. “Some geezers way back when got in over their head, and now we have to pay for it.”

He explained the concept of Sin to me which, although helpful, left me with a sense of dread. A large and practically unbeatable beast that destroyed and destroyed and killed hundreds, thousands of innocents. Men, women, children – it didn't discriminate. It was the embodiment of greed, retribution for mistakes of the past. That I had witnessed it meant that their current period of time, known as the Calm, was drawing to an end. I could easily see how unsettled everyone was at that revelation, but I'd seen it first hand. I'd witnessed Sin demolish my home, a giant, thriving fortress of a city. In comparison to that, Besaid was a mere ant waiting to be squished up against a wall by a bored toddler, a fly with wings begging to be torn off. If Sin attacked the island.. I couldn't possibly see it surviving.

Hunk kept to his word, though, about helping me settle in. According to one of the guards stationed at the entrance to the village, there was no space for me in the temple at the time (a temple of Voltron, a religion that I was apparently supposed to be aware of – an extremely integral part of everyone's lives. I'd never heard of it before but hey, 'Sin's toxin' is the best get-out clause I've ever had in my arsenal), so he'd kindly offered to put me up in the house he shared with a smaller girl named Pidge. She was apparently a scholar, travelling across Arus in order to study the temples and the different civilisations, but she confessed to having a strong interest in alchemy. Each to their own, really. She seemed familiar in her looks, but it might have been someone from back home, maybe a fan I spoke to a lot or something. She had really inquisitive eyes and hair that looked like a mini bomb had been set off on her head, but she had spunk and sass and I can appreciate that.

They fed me one of the greatest fish stews of my life, and shortly after I took the time to explore the settlement at my own pace so as not to impose on them further. It was a close-knit community, it seemed, with the elderly and the youth working hand in hand to keep everything ticking along nicely. A nice old man gave me a pair of gloves that he'd found while sorting out his old belongings, insisting that I would need them more than him, and a young girl split her loaf of bread with me, and at that point I was struck immediately by the generosity of this place. Small buildings and simplistic commodities made me realise that while they didn't have much, everyone shared their humble ownings with everyone else, even with a stranger who had literally emerged from the sea.

It was.. Nice. It was warming to the heart. I loved Pollux, I did, but it was a bit.. Cold. It was an individualist society, dog-eat-dog and all that. Every man for himself. You'd never get people just giving stuff away without an extortionate favour in return.

Still, there wasn't really much to see around the place. The shops had only small trinkets and domestic necessities, the tailor was closed for the day (for his granddaughter's birthday, so the sign on the door said), and I was getting tired of saying something that was apparently a great faux-pas and having to repeat the whole toxin story over and over.

It was for that reason that I eventually found myself taking the few steps up into the temple. It was the largest building on the island but still modest, and it offered great shade from the sun. A few people milled around under its cover, and I passed an elderly lady in the doorway as she left. I was greeted by the scent of incense, one I couldn't place but it was light and not at all suffocating, and I soon realised that the inside was lit by a collection of candles placed at strategic points around the walls, as well as a ring around the inside on the floor. The main chamber was circular with a fair sized staircase at the far end that lead up to some sort of closed, elaborate doorway, possibly to another chamber of some sort? What did catch my eye was the statues all around the inner wall, large, stoic, people in some peculiar garb and looking far too noble. Religious icons? Idols? I wasn't sure, but there were villagers kneeling at their base, hands in that strange gesture that Hunk had explained with a prayer, and murmuring things for the ears of the chosen statue alone.

Each statue depicted someone completely different, and I ambled around the outside as quietly as I could as I studied them, enjoying the cool air of the temple chamber and the dignified yet charged atmosphere inside. I'd never been in a place of worship before, but the whole area – it holds something truly magical, it really does. There were faded inscriptions at the base of each statue with dates on them, presumably the years of their births and deaths, but it wasn't until I paused at the foot of the larger, newer statue that I froze.

“Takashi Shirogane. 652-671”

Shirogane. Shiro. Dad's friend with the white hair was called Shiro. Coincidence? Unconscious brain doing weird brain things? I hesitantly raised my eyes to the statue and saw that same, solid jaw, the strong features, the straight nose and the kind smile. It was like seeing a ghost, except this time it was a ghost made of stone and scaled up from his real size. Shiro was from Pollux, like me – but the statue in front of me was also, undeniably him. I didn't understand. My Shiro was in his mid- to late-twenties at least, but this one had died – died – when he was.. What, nineteen? It couldn't be the same person.

“It has been seven years since Lord Takashi became High Summoner. A truly great man – it is an honour to finally be able to display our gratitude with this statue.”

I all but jumped out of my skin when I heard a voice at my shoulder, whirling round to see a man dressed in what I could only assume were priestly robes. He was a wizened old dude, wrinkles on his face making him look like some creased blanket, but I was trying to make sense of his words more than his excessive folds.

“What's a High Summoner..?”

Apparently my question hadn't been quiet, if the startled gasps of those nearby and the sensation of eyes boring into me were anything to go by. Indeed even the priest looked like I'd just indecently exposed myself at his most holy festival, mouth ajar in horror and looking like he might faint at the notion at any second. I waved a hand in a hurry, turning to look at the small crowd in my haste to make things right. “I-I got too close to Sin's toxin!”

It was funny hearing myself make the same excuse over and over. Funny, and a little sad.

The rippling wave of quiet prayers and clasping hands echoed the look of understanding in the priest's eye as he placed a presumably comforting hand on my arm, squeezing slightly, before turning his gaze back up to the statue.

“The summoners,” he began reverently, no doubt explaining for my benefit in the delusion that my memories were only temporarily missing, and that his description might miraculously unlock them, “Are practitioners of a sacred art, sworn to protect the people of Arus. Only a chosen few become summoners, who call forth entities of great power: the Lions. The Lions hear our prayers and come down to us. They are the blessing of Voltron.”

I made a noise that I hoped sounded interested, but really, what even was this? Summoned beasts? Lions, at that? That some deity had supposedly deigned to gift his people? Still, if this was what Hunk had been talking about, the gift needed to defeat Sin.. Maybe I shouldn't be prodding fun at it. Pollux didn't have any summoners like this, and look what had happened there? Mass death and destruction and now it was nothing but a glorified dump, if I believed what they were telling me.

I looped my hands behind my back and decided to stay here, staring at the statue as if the Shiro, my Shiro, could step out and answer all my questions. Was this a dream, or was it my new reality? Would I ever return home? Could Sin be stopped? Why was I brought here? What.. What did I have to offer anyone?

I hadn't noticed the priest leaving or the surrounding villagers turning their attention elsewhere, but I did notice the sound of sudden, hurried footsteps, and I especially noticed the high, feminine voice that called out for the priest's attention as she ran in. I turned to look at her as most people did, and while I anticipated an annoyance at the fact that she had disrupted the solitude, I was surprised to find a shared sense of.. Pity? It felt very similar to what people kept giving me, at any rate.

That said, she was gorgeous. Long white hair, dark skin, a floor length light, cotton dress in pale shades of blue and pink over a solid, pearly white. She looked a little dishevelled, as if her mind were otherwise occupied, and she bent down in a quick gesture of prayer at the surprised priest before darting forward and grabbing his shoulder desperately, a hint of worry in her melodic voice. “Please, tell me, is he still not out?”

“I'm afraid not, my child, but we must be patient. These things take time.”

“It's been two days!”

I felt rude for staring, but hey, I probably already had the reputation as that weird amnesiac who looks like the most inconspicuous tourist ever. May as well use that to my advantage and eavesdrop since people wouldn't expect any better. The woman huffed and stepped back, throwing her arms up in agitation and pacing a small circle, the priest looking at her with a strange mixture of patience and exasperation all at once.

“And my uncle? Has he no word?”

“The chamber has been silent, save for the Hymn.”

At this point I could hear the other villagers start muttering among themselves, but I couldn't make out much except for the odd word, like 'apprentice' or 'worried'. They all kept glancing up to that big fancy door with a nervous energy, and I had a feeling that there was something big going on that I, an outsider, wasn't privy to.

It was when Hunk and Pidge came stepping in with brisk steps that I raised a hand and caught the former's attention, stepping over to him while Pidge went to the other woman's side.

“What's going on?” I asked quietly, brow furrowed as I tried to make sense of it all. We shared a quick look over to the white-haired girl before Hunk sighed and drew me back in.

“The apprentice summoner is still in the Cloister of Trials. It's known to be a difficult process, but the fact that he's been in there for two days.. It's a bit concerning, yeah?” It was easy to see the tension on Hunk's face, and I wondered if he was personally involved with this apprentice person. In a community like this, I imagine a lot of people probably were.

“Is he alone?”

“Ha,” he snorted weakly, and that wasn't the response I was expecting. “When isn't he?”

Cryptic.. I decided to turn his focus on the woman then, tilting my head curiously. “And her? She seemed pretty upset about the whole thing.” And she was cute, but I wasn't going to give myself a reputation as a Casanova on top of everything else. Let's get over one hurdle at a time, yeah?

“Oh, that's Allura. Her uncle, his godfather, is waiting in there, just outside the inner chamber. Halfway through the first day he made us all return so we didn't go stir crazy waiting, but he hasn't left his side.”

“Us?”

“Huh?” He blinked a moment, rubbing under his nose then before making a sound of understanding. The poor guy looked like his mind was a bit fried as well. “Oh, yeah, Allura, Pidge and I. We're all his appointed Paladins, yeah? Kinda tasked with guarding him, keeping him safe, all that sorta stuff. We all just feel pretty useless stood here though cause, well.. What can we do? That trial is for him and him alone.”

“So when you say he's not come out for two days, that's bad...?”

He nodded quickly, chewing at the side of his lip. “We thought Shiro took a long time with being a day, but Keith? Two days? We weren't expecting it, man.”

Keith? That was the least impressive name I'd ever heard for someone who supposedly possessed a great talent. I mean, really, like.. Watch out, Keith's gonna get you with his weird Lion pet thing. Shiro at least sounded strong, a nice, bold name. Keith just sounds like a wet flannel.

That aside, I did wonder why they were so worried. I didn't have any idea what went on in this whole apprentice summoner shebang, though, so maybe their fears were warranted. “Do summoners ever die in there?”

He hushed me quickly and stepped in my personal space, looking around himself quickly with wide eyes. “Don't say such things. You'll tempt fate.” When he was sure nobody had heard he sighed and stepped back, eyes looking pained once more. “They haven't in a while, but.. It's real hard on them, yeah? In order to get the spirit to bond with them, they have to open their entire being to it, make it realise their determination is pure, yeah? No doubts, no regrets. He insisted he was ready, but..”

Our gazes both trailed to watch Allura and Pidge take a seat at the foot of the stairs to wait, and after giving me a soft pat on the shoulder Hunk moved to join them. I didn't have anywhere else to go, so after a few moments of awkwardly standing around, I moved to join them and was welcomed with weak smiles while introductions were made. As the night drew in and people moved to return to their homes for the night, the four of us sat there one those steps, and we waited, and we waited.

As the sun broke over the surface of the horizon, the door behind us slammed open, and a weirdly accented yet urgent voice called us in.

I'm still not sure why they let me come in with them, since it was supposedly a Paladins only place beyond that door, but I wasn't going to complain. I was introduced to Coran and my story summarised briefly, but he was the first one to not make a fuss of it and just expressed his pleasure in meeting me. Maybe it was because he was exhausted, maybe it was because he'd been sat in silence in this small chamber for hell knows how long, but I appreciated the straightforward response more than I cared to admit. Pidge had made herself at home with her back to the wall at the far end, staring up at the door at the other end up, surprise surprise, another flight of steps, while Allura angrily paced the whole length of the room with muttered curses ranging from 'does that boy have any fucking idea how worried I am' to 'oh Voltron please, please just let him be alright'.

Coran had called us through because he'd heard stirring from the other side of the door and had assumed that it would open imminently, but if my numb butt cheeks were anything to go by, we'd been waiting in this room for at least an hour again. Hunk was silently fretting while I took to fidgeting, anything to keep myself occupied. I didn't know this guy inside, didn't have any emotional connection to him but hey, what can I say, I'm an empathetic guy. If I'm in a tiny room full of anxious people, sure as cheese am I gonna feel it. That and the eerie singing coming from up there didn't settle my nerves in the slightest. It was choral, it was minor, and it was freaky.

I lost count of how many times I'd rotated my ankles round both clockwise and counter, focusing on the sensation of the joint clicking in the cycle, when I heard the unmistakeable sound of a heavy door opening. The reaction in the group was immediate, those of us on the floor jumping to our feet, those of us pacing stilling in our steps. I found myself moving closer as the figure stepped out of the shadows and into the dim candlelight, staggering a little as he did so, and although I couldn't see his face behind an insane mop of dark hair my gut told me he wasn't coherent enough to make it down the stairs. I moved without thinking, and even then I barely managed to make it to his side before his strength left him and he dropped, and with his weight in my arms and the gravity of my lunge I bashed my knee pretty solidly against the step, but we'd both avoided getting a cracked head so I considered it my lucky day.

He stirred slightly where I held him, just enough that his thick fringe fell to the side, and I felt more than heard my sharp intake of breath at the sight. I was well aware of and comfortable with my sexuality, I can appreciate an attractive guy just as much as I can a pretty lady, but I don't think any had ever struck me quite as solidly as this one did.

His skin was smooth, baby smooth, not a hint of stubble anywhere on his jaw, with sloping and soft cheeks and a little upturned nose. The skin on his cheeks was flushed red, no doubt from whatever exertion he'd gone through back in there, and I could feel mine rapidly changing to join him. Dark brows furrowed as long lashes blinked slowly, and I waved goodbye to my previous indifference as it fled me at breakneck speed. His eyes were the most gorgeous thing I have ever had the fortune to witness, like edged amethyst that caught the poor lighting and refracted it in a thousand varying shades. I'd noticed a similar thing with Allura's, with her sparkling blue ones, but I'd put it down to a trick of the light, or perhaps unshed tears. This man's eyes were dry, but they still glinted magnificently and drew me in and I knew right then that I was lost.

The others were paused halfway up the steps, frozen as they watched him gather himself, and I felt him shift in my arms as he pushed himself upright, reaching up with a shaky arm to brush his hair from under his collar and out of his face. I caught the shimmer of some kind of braid in the side closest to me, beads woven in to the strands, and the light caught the metal of an earring on his right lobe, a few gold and black beads accompanied by a long, red feather. His chest was covered in black cotton binding, enough to provide cover though it left his surprisingly toned stomach open to the air, and I could tell that the fabric was drenched in sweat. His forearms were covered in a red chiffon that faded into orange and yellow near the elbows, bound to him with black ribbon, and his loose, black trousers were painted up the sides in a peculiar red and gold motif, like a burning tree or something. I wasn't paying particular attention to them at that point, more hovering nearby in case he stumbled while he stood once more.

This time, however, he seemed steadier than before, and he managed to focus properly on the rest of the group, sparing me the briefest of glances before addressing them. “It is done.” He sounded exhausted and resigned, but there was an underlying strength to him that suggested he was doing his best to not sound like he'd just all but passed out on a complete stranger. I glanced down to see how the others were reacting, but judging by the taut expression on all their faces, none of them were buying into it.

“Come,” Allura spoke first after what was undeniably an awkward and prolonged silence, “There is time for you to rest up before the festivities begin.”

News spread like wildfire in such a small community, and no sooner had they dragged Keith off to sleep in what I assumed was his home (everyone was offering him their bed and food though, to be honest) was I dragged into helping set up for the festivities. The birth of a new summoner was a huge deal, apparently, and he was the first the island had seen in some eight, nine years. Since Shiro, I was told. I didn't really understand this whole summoner thing, still. I'd asked Coran about it while we set up tables of food though, since he seemed like a patient sort of guy, and he did his best to describe the situation to me.

Not everyone was born with the affinity to be a summoner. It was a physical manifestation, the ability to manipulate Quintessence, and it was pretty rare. It didn't seem to be hereditary, but it did have a habit of manifesting early. Not everyone with the gift chose to pursue the career, either. They made great medics or warlocks or whatever, and that was fine. They had their places in society to fill after all. Not all those that made the choice passed the training, either. Coran had explained that Keith had devoted himself to training from his thirteenth birthday, the youngest they would accept apprentices, and he had spent all his time either in the temple or up in the cliffs by himself. A solitary sort of soul, one who didn't speak much, kept himself to himself.

That was probably why he looked like he was sucking lemons for pretty much the entire of the afternoon and evening celebrations.

He'd lost the flush to his cheeks but otherwise he didn't look much different. His hair was still a wild mess, his clothing still in the striking black and red style, and still just as cute whenever I caught a candid glance at him. He may constantly look bored or annoyed or just downright closed off as more and more people came to give him their praise and their thanks and engage him in as much conversation as they could, despite it looking about as painful as pulling teeth, but there were moments, short, little moments where his eyes would widen and his mouth would twist and he would appear so bright and innocent that it made my insides twist with excitement. I got a rush from being near him, and I was feeling less and less apprehensive about it.

Apparently my staring hadn't gone unnoticed.

It was Pidge who came to sit by me that evening near the campfire, unnanounced, just plopping right down and crossing her legs and staring at me intently. I brought my drink to my lips and raised an eyebrow at her as I sipped, but she just folded her arms and raised an eyebrow to mirror me, waiting petulantly until I finished. I drank slower as I realised, seeing who would win out. In the end my empty cup was the decider.

“What's that look for?” I asked her, having gotten to know her enough in our short acquaintanceship to know that she had a secret agenda. She was like an onion, I'd decided, layers upon layers of smooth, crispy little plots and plans that would make you cry if you tried to get involved. She was also a good accompaniment at times, and I'd had some enlightening chats with her. She was incredibly intelligent, but also young, and that suited my slightly less mature side pretty well.

“He's cute, huh?”

Whoa, whoa, that had not been the words I expected out of her mouth. She didn't need to specify who, either – my gaze immediately sought him out in the crowd, Allura stood next to him as he awkwardly spoke to a collection of young children who were enthralled by his every uncertain word. I couldn't even hear what he was saying from over here, but it seemed that he had all the social competency of mouldy apple. He was like a child's drawing, where the adults couldn't work out what it was for the life of them, except he was just as unsure of what he was producing himself.

It was very, very cute.

My expression must have said it all, because she was soon grinning wickedly and looking to me with a fairly unsettling look in her eyes. “Don't get any ideas, Romeo.”

“No promises there.” In other words, too late. I already missed the warmth of his body resting against mine, except I wanted it with him, well, conscious. Coherent. Willing. I frowned, glancing to the short stuff next to me. “Hey, though, what if he, like, comes onto me?”

She burst out laughing in genuine hysterics then, and I tried not to let my pride take a beating. What was that even supposed to mean? It wasn't like people hadn't come on to me before. I wasn't all that undesirable. “Trust me when I say that it's really not going to happen.”

I huffed at that but the matter was soon dropped as a plate of food was passed round and some elderly gentlemen came and sat by me, asking me questions that I couldn't answer about my home, my past, myself. Well, I could, but this was Keith's time. I didn't want to steal the spotlight with my peculiarities.

For once in my life. Eesh, I really had it bad for this guy, huh.

At some point later on though, Coran had us all clear the centre of the square for some reason. Allura came to stand beside me and I felt her grip onto my shoulder tightly, though the small sound she made was one of excitement and not of fear, so I assumed something good must be about to happen. Keith was stood off behind Coran and nervously fidgeting with what appeared to be a black and silver staff, so I assumed he was going to be doing some weird performance thing. A speech maybe? A prayer?

It turned out it was better than that.

Coran urged him into the centre and for a long while he just stood there, looking awkwardly at the floor and shuffling his feet. He seemed to find his resolve after a quick glance behind him, back to the temple, and whatever he saw or felt from it brought a strength to the posture of his shoulders, his back straightening just a little as he took in a deep breath and held it. I watched in awe as he twirled the staff in an odd pattern, felt the pull of energy in the air, the sudden warmth that filled the immediate vicinity as the space between us and him seemed to glow like the hearth around a fireplace. The air seemed to tear open in front of my eyes, and I watched in disbelief as a large, catlike being burst forth from it, far bigger than I had anticipated. I now understood why Coran had wanted the whole centre area cleared – the creature stood over Keith easily, one paw slightly in front of him as its body curled defensively round him. Its body was burning – and I mean literally burning. It looked like someone had trapped a burning forest fire inside a glass vial, flames licking at an invisible edge without breaking through, the oranges and red and whites pulsing through it like blood through veins, while striking yellow eyes took in the crowd before it unblinkingly. Allura squeezed my shoulder once more, and I barely heard her breath out the creature's name with my attention on the scene before as much as it was. “The Red Lion.” The Lion of Fire. One of the five Lions a summoner had to travel to collect in order to form the Final entity, Voltron's true gift to its people.

 I had never seen anything like it in my life. Sure, it was a little scary, but still... I could feel a strange kind of gentleness coming from it. 

The partying had returned full flow after that, the villagers emboldened by the sight, the memory, the knowledge that their deity had not deserted them. Everywhere around me though, I heard it, repeated on every pair of lips, held heavy in every person's heart. The focus was on Keith, yes, but nobody was really addressing the metaphorical elephant in the metaphorical room.

Shiro.

The last time they saw a Lion must have been when Shiro first became a summoner, when Keith had been stood in the crowd here, just like I was. Was that when he had decided to become one himself? Had he witnessed that power and felt the urge to control it too? If I'd managed to piece the tidbits of knowledge I'd gained together correctly, then Keith enlisted shortly after Shiro left on his pilgrimage, or whatever they called it. It was possible then. Plausible, even. Keith didn't seem to be sociable at all, but still everyone knew him and looked out for him as a friend, if not as a family member. If their Shiro was anything like the Shiro I knew from home, then his presence on the island would have been a huge deal. Friendly, kind, charismatic. The real boy next door, everyone's big brother, everyone's favoured son, nephew, friend.

Was it hard on Keith, being compared to the deceased High Summoner? Did he dislike it? Did he want the attention himself? I didn't know him well enough to say.

What I did know was that he had made himself very, very scarce.

I didn't want to bother the others about it, because it could have been that he'd headed off to rest some more, and I couldn't really blame him. Supposedly his pilgrimage would be starting in the morning, and Hunk had told me that they'd all agreed I could travel with them, see if we couldn't find where I'd come from with them. It was a lost cause, but I appreciated it either way. I hadn't really managed to make friends in this strange new world, and I wasn't in a hurry to lose the ones I had.

That thought itself brought on a new wave of homesickness, however. I'd never really considered myself to be a homebird, but what I wouldn't give for the smell of the street vendors with their cuisine, or the sound of the music that blared out onto the roads at all hours. The smell of the water as it filled up the arena in the stadium, the electricity in the audience as the home team scored, my teammates, my comrades, my cohorts. The glow of the building lights at night, the small patch of silence found only at the top of one of the tall tower blocks, a place I would go when I wanted to escape it all.

I found myself craving something familiar, something to ground myself with. All of a sudden the laughter and the hubbub and the bustling and the talking felt too much, far too much, and I could feel it closing in around me. They were all so happy, so hopeful and bright and I didn't belong with them. I turned and slipped away and my feet carried me to the place I knew they would – to the temple, to solitude, to reverence, to Shiro. He was the only thing that convinced me Pollux wasn't all in my head, that there really was a tie between my world and this. He was the only thing I had, and he was dead.

My steps echoed in the empty room, but drew up short when a figure at the far end shifted slightly, a flash of purple catching the light as wet eyes found mind. I hadn't expected him to have run off here, but Hunk had said that this was one of his favourite haunts. Seeing him knelt on the floor, half hunched over in front of Shiro's statue was definitely not something I had anticipated.

He stood quickly, defensively, and I ignored the fact that he roughly wiped a sleeve across his eyes. It wasn't my place to say anything. The watery state of my own eyes attested to that.

“I'm done with the celebrations,” he snapped, and I could see him shuffling to back himself away a little. There was that harshness to his glare, the underlying burning in his voice, that strength I'd heard in those first words back in the chamber. For all his social inelegance, I knew then that I was in the presence of fire incarnate. He was burning, simmering for now, and I was the helpless moth whose fate was already sealed.

“I wasn't here to force you back.” I ignored the way he tensed as I stepped over to the statue, but this time instead of backing up he stood his ground, and although I wasn't posturing for a fight I couldn't help but be impressed by his determination. He was spirited, and I got the feeling that failure wasn't in his vocabulary. He struck me as the sort of man who saw conflict everywhere he looked, and he wouldn't back down from a single one. I drew to a halt at the foot of Shiro's statue and looked up, silent as I took it in. For all my questions, the dead man still had no answers. I could feel Keith watching me, his gaze burning into the side of my skull, but for a long time neither of us said anything. It was a tense silence, but a silence nonetheless, and I appreciated it for what it was.

“So, Pollux Prowlers.” It wasn't a question, but it came out of nowhere and I turned to him in alarm. I thought only Hunk and his team had heard that.. But then again, Hunk had probably told him. No doubt Keith would have wanted – and deserved – to know about the guy who caught him from the chamber. His expression gave nothing away, but I had a feeling he was probably judging me as an idiot. Who could blame him?

“I-I must have had my head pretty damn confused when I first woke up, I mean, Pollux is dead now right, h-haah, it's all gone, must have made up some fairy story when I got close to Sin and--”

“You know Shiro.”

Again, with the not questions. And he didn't even have the decency to respond to my rambled explanation. This stick-up-his-arse attitude of his was either going to get real tiring real quick or, knowing my luck, it would end up being one of his most endearing qualities. I always did have weird tastes.

It took a moment for the tense to sink in, though. Know. Not knew, know.

It was my turn to look at him like he was insane.

He flushed slightly in annoyance and turned back to the statue, refusing to elaborate for some time. He stared in fixation at one point, and no matter how much I studied him I couldn't work out what he was thinking. He was a lot more open when he was tired, but here all I saw was frustration and a lot of brick walls. He was an odd cookie, that was for certain.

When the minutes dragged on too long to be comfortable I eventually caved, because hey, maybe he just wanted a laugh at my expense by getting me to confess some toxin addled story, but maybe, just maybe, he actually did believe me. If even just a little.

I sighed and looped my arms behind my head, shifting my weight to rest on my other leg for a moment and looked up into the stony face of the friend I had lost. “I knew him,” I corrected, because it was true. I knew my Shiro, but he wasn't with me any more. “He was friends with my dad, though I don't know how they met. He taught me how to fight, was real patient like, but still a stern teacher, you know? He'd give me all these hard exercises to do, and get me frustrated, or when a game had gone badly and I was angry hed take me aside and sit me down and tell me to calm, breathe, and remember, patience-”

“-yields focus.”

I turned to look at him in surprise once more, but though his gaze remained on the statue there was a softness to his features, like a load of tension had left him feeling a little more at peace with the world. It was a lovely look on him, and I wanted to see more of that gentleness, I wanted to see the twitch of his lips break into a full smile, I wanted to see the brightness in his eyes when he laughed. I wanted to make him laugh, to make him smile. Maybe that would be my personal task during the pilgrimage with him.

“What happened?” He turned to face me finally, the edges of his eyes tensing once more. “When did you lose him?”

I frowned and shifted my weight once more, hesitating this time because my memory genuinely was foggy. I still didn't remember all of what had happened myself. “We were.. We were in the streets, back in Pollux. Well, I know I was at the start. I felt dizzy and a bit sick, so I sat down off the side, just to rest, you know? Happens sometimes. And then he was there, and I just.. I can't remember what he was telling me, but he seemed uneasy, yeah? Not his usual self. And then.. I got frustrated cause my head was all over and he wasn't making sense, and then the next thing I knew.. Sin attacked. Sin was there, and I saw him knock down a giant fucking building, and then Shiro was grabbing me and dragging me off and telling me we had to fight, we had to do something. Sin had us cornered, I think.. I remember there was a lot of death, a lot of screaming.. And then--”

This is it. This is your story. It all begins here.

I'd trailed off and I could feel his impatience as he hung on my every word, but those three simple sentences had come back to me with such a force that I was stunned for a moment. Shiro had known something like this would happen. He'd expected it. Guided me to it. But what was it? What was my story? What did it all mean?

“Well?” He couldn't take the waiting any more, his urgent tone cutting in to my thoughts. It was the most open I'd seen his expression, something desperate yet hopeful in his eyes, and I could offer him nothing but a sad smile in response.

“He sent me here. He told me that this.. This is the beginning of my story, whatever that means.” I let out a sharp bark of laughter, and to my surprise, I could see Keith start to relax a little once more, arms hugging himself a little as he looked back up to the statue of the man in question. Shiro's expression never changed, but it was like I could feel him smiling on me, like he was praising me for some revelation I hadn't realised. It was always his way though, always had been as long as I'd known him. “That was just typical of him though, wasn't it?”

I felt Keith shuffle towards me, hesitantly, slowly, like he was approaching a caged animal rather than harmless old me, but when I felt him very, very lightly bump my shoulder with his, I couldn't help but look down to him curiously. There was a wistfulness in his expression, something I couldn't read once more, but there was levity in his voice and a hopefulness I had yet to hear from him. “Yeah,” he smiled weakly, eyes damp with moisture as they looked up into the unmoving ones cut into the stone. “That's my brother for you.”

  I remember... That night, we talked for the first time. Really talked. I didn't know it then, but after that night, everything changed. For everyone...

For me...