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Lupa is nagging him again.
“I don’t see why we can’t go up to the roof,” she huffs, padding alongside him as he walks down the hallway.
“One, because it’s windy up there, and half these papers would fly out of my hands, which would make me a lousy TA,” starts Shiro, “and two, because it’s cold, and unlike you, nature did not see fit to gift me with a warm coat of fur.”
“You have a jacket.”
“I’ll take you up after I finish grading these papers,” Shiro promises, and is rewarded by Lupa affectionately bumping her head against his hip.
Guilt pricks him at that. Lupa is a big daemon, meant for open fields and winter snow, not the washed out lighting of the Garrison hallways and the cramped confines of their barracks. During flying maneuvers she takes up a whole back row because she insists on sprawling on her stomach instead of sitting upright. No one says anything, of course, because he’s Takashi Shirogane, the Garrison’s Golden Boy, but he can’t help feeling obtrusive every time he sets foot in a cockpit. Most pilots have smaller daemons—hawks and falcons, canaries, squirrels, he’s seen a few skunks—but nothing as big as a wolf. Apparently someone in engineering has a bear, but that kid’s probably not on the flight track.
This is who you are, Lupa had told him during his first medal ceremony, nose nudging the fist clenched at his side. Own it. Let them stare.
And people do. It’s impossible not to stare at Lupa, with the proud tilt of her head, that fierce canine intelligence and the way her black fur catches the light. Shiro’s loved her all his life, and the day she settled was one of his happiest moments.
He just wishes that it didn’t always feel like when people look at him, they’re seeing only his daemon.
Lost in thought, Shiro rounds the corner and winds up bumping straight into someone.
“Sorry.” The apology comes swiftly, clipped, without any of the anxiety-mixed-with-awe that Shiro normally gets. He catches a glimpse of indigo eyes before the boy has sidestepped him and Lupa, boots clomping solidly on the floor as he continues on his way, head down.
A low growl draws his attention; Lupa’s ears have flattened against her skull.
“Lupa? What’s wrong?”
“That boy.” Lupa sniffs the air, tail flicking between her legs. “Something’s off. He’s…different.”
Shiro follows her gaze, regarding the now-empty corridor. A strange prickle has crept over his skin; whether it’s from Lupa’s sensitivity or a feeling all his own, Shiro can’t tell.
“Different, huh?”
*
The dining hall is one of Shiro’s favorite spots in the Garrison. The clinking silverware, the excited chatter of cadets and officers alike, the commotion from daemons climbing on top of their owners and each other, darting under the tables—the room just exudes life. Even Lupa, as aloof as she usually is, settles into the energy, made evident by the fact that she’s currently allowing Harry’s daemon, Lila, to sit on her back without complaint.
Lila is a talkative ring-tailed lemur, matched only by Harry himself. It’s Harry whom Shiro turns to while ladling mashed potatoes onto his plate, asking as casually as he can: “Hey, what do you know about that guy over there?”
Harry follows Shiro’s head tilt, finds shaggy black hair and intense eyes and a near-empty table.
“Keith Kogane? I’m surprised you don’t know more about him—word has it that he’s set to beat your sim score. Hasn’t got much in the way of friends, though, and nobody’s seen his daemon. Bets are that it’s small and deadly and probably hides in his collar or sleeve—black widow or scorpion or snake or something. He won’t answer if you ask point-blank, and nobody’s brave enough to try to get close and sneak a peek. Apparently he sleeps with a knife.”
Lupa’s ears have perked; Shiro can tell she’s absorbed all this information as well. Whether they draw the same conclusions from it, however, is another matter.
*
“I don’t like this,” says Lupa.
“Friends close, enemies closer,” counters Shiro, adjusting the wrapping tape around his hands. “And since all you have is a feeling, it’s up to me to decide which camp he falls into.”
“How very military of you,” sniffs Lupa, resting her head on her paws.
The two of them watch Keith Kogane wreak havoc on the black punching bag before him. Jab-jab-step, feint, punch.
Whom are you fighting? Shiro wonders.
“There are other stations open.”
“What?” Shiro blinks, caught off-guard.
Keith steadies the punching bag with one hand, eyes boring into Shiro’s.
“There are other stations open,” he repeats slowly. “You don’t have to wait for this one.”
Shiro overlooks the observation, rolling to his feet and reaching out.
“I’m Shiro.”
“I know who you are.” Keith doesn’t shake his hand.
Shiro drops it, shrugging. “Knowing me and knowing of me are two different things. But I guess the same goes for you. Congrats on beating my sim score, by the way.”
“Thanks,” says Keith, thinly sarcastic. His eyes dart toward his jacket and then the door; Shiro recognizes the signs of impending flight from his own experiences at Garrison post-accolade parties. He has to move fast if he doesn’t want to lose this chance.
“So listen, I’ve been looking for a good hand-to-hand partner. And you look like you know your stuff,” he explains, indicating the beaten punching bag.
That gives Keith some pause.
“You want to spar?”
“If you’re up to it.”
“Okay.” Keith’s eyes flit around the room before landing on him again. “Fine.”
Triumphantly, Shiro grins at Lupa over his shoulder as he follows Keith to the mat. The look she levels back reads clearly: I hope you know what you’re doing.
“Let’s start light and easy, nothing heavy hitting. Taps to head, neck, shoulder, chest for now, if it gets past the defense it’s good.”
“Ready when you are,” Keith replies, raising his fists and tipping forward on the balls of his feet, and then they’re orbiting each other, touch and go. Keith’s movement has a feral quality to it, a wild grace Shiro’s never associated with anyone but Lupa, before now. But it’s more restless, reckless, and Shiro gets five points to Keith’s two before he’s slipped behind him, clamping his wrists together in one hand.
“Yield,” Shiro starts to say, pulse thrumming with adrenaline, but his words are cut short by a blinding crack against his jaw.
He staggers backwards. Keith has already fled to the other side of the mat, chest heaving as he clutches his elbow.
Snarling, Lupa leaps to her feet.
“No, Lupa.” Shiro holds out a hand, wincing as he touches his slowly forming bruise with the other. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Sorry.” Keith stares at the ground.
Shiro tests his jaw, opening and closing his mouth a few times before speaking. “No, it’s my fault. We didn’t say anything about pinning or grappling, I shouldn’t have—”
“What do you want from me?” Keith bursts out, and whether his breathing is labored from their sparring session or emotion or some combination of the two, Shiro can’t tell. “Is this a joke? Some sort of dare? Because I don’t—”
“No. No, it’s nothing like that,” rushes Shiro, finally realizing just how much of an idiot he’s been, how all this could read. “I just thought…”
You’re smart. And talented. People talk about you, and I get it, how—isolating, it can be. And you’re…different, you don’t look at Lupa when you’re talking to me, and that probably shouldn’t matter to me as much as it does, but it does, and—
“…I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he finishes lamely. “I just thought—some of where you are now—I’ve been there, you know? So if you ever want to talk, or just spar, I’m—I’m around.”
The offer hovers between them, fragile as a moth.
Eventually, Keith breaks the silence.
“I have class,” he says, stepping off the mat. He doesn’t spare a backward glance as he scoops up his jacket, and Lupa moves, finally, to Shiro’s side, flicking her tail against his leg as comfort.
*
Shiro eats by himself on Tuesdays. He’s never lonely, not with Lupa, and it’s a chance to get some reading done. So when he hears a tray slide into place across from him, he looks up from Rubicon, startled, and finds—
—Keith.
They don’t talk. Keith pushes the carrots around on his plate determinedly, avoiding eye contact. Eventually, Shiro returns to his book.
It still feels, somehow, like a victory.
*
“Did you get into Roman history because of Lupa’s name?”
Shiro pushes back from his desk, looking over to where Keith runs fingers along the books on his shelf. Another thing they have in common, though where Shiro reads historical tomes, Keith devours aeronautic manuals and scifi epics. And devours is exactly the right word for it, Shiro thinks; hunger sets Keith’s face aglow in a way Shiro hasn’t seen on anyone else. There’s always this fierce drive for more in Keith’s expression, so at odds with the tenderness with which he wraps a bandage or flips a page or touches a control panel. It catches Shiro’s breath, sometimes.
“Shiro?” Keith raises an eyebrow, prodding. “‘Lupa’ is Latin, right?”
“Yeah. You know the legend about how Rome was founded?”
Keith’s lips quirk. “Remind me.”
“So Romulus and Remus were twins that got cast out by their grand-uncle Amulius because he was worried they’d be a threat to his throne. The reed basket they were in got caught in a tree, where a she-wolf found them and suckled them, hence that famous Capitoline Wolf sculpture in Rome and stuff. There’s another version where a shepherd finds them and takes them to his wife, who was a former prostitute, because lupa can mean both those things.”
“Great, Keith, now you’ve gotten him started,” Lupa complains from the floor.
“Did you know that that was what you were going to settle as?”
“No.” Lupa stretches lazily. “I just shifted, and it felt right, and I didn’t shift again.”
“Still.” Keith sits on Shiro’s bed, leaning back on his hands. “It all seems kind of prophetic, doesn’t it? That you were named ‘wolf’ and that’s what you ended up being.”
“Are you calling my soul predictable?” teases Shiro.
Keith meets his gaze, and there’s the briefest shudder of something before it’s gone, Keith’s eyes shifting to the side, fingers picking at a loose thread on Shiro’s blanket.
“No.” Keith swallows. “No, you aren’t what I expected at all.”
*
It’s something that Shiro promised himself he wouldn’t ask.
But his chest has been loosened by the clear rooftop air and the looming departure of the Kerberos mission, and so, on a Saturday night beneath the stars, he breaks that promise.
“Keith, why don’t I ever see your daemon?”
Keith stiffens.
Immediately, Shiro hurries to retract his words: “Actually, never mind, you don’t have to—”
“Her name’s Nozomi.” The words drift toward Shiro on the wind, paper-thin. “She’s—um. She’s a really small hermit crab. She doesn’t like to be seen because—at the children’s home, things were…different. People didn’t always follow the same rules, and sometimes it’s easier to get to someone’s daemon than it is to get to them, so…” Keith shrugs. A practiced thing, too deliberate. His eyes remain fixed on the desert in the distance.
Lupa bristles. It’s ingrained in them from birth: daemons can touch daemons, but for a person to touch someone else’s daemon without permission is one of the ultimate violations. Imagining Keith separated from his daemon, forced to watch it trapped, poked at and prodded, fills Shiro with a cold fury, something akin, he thinks, to that silent blackness between the stars.
“Keith,” he starts, choked, “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine. It happened a long time ago,” says Keith, but there’s still a haunted quality to his voice, and Shiro thinks: Pandora’s box, look what you’ve done, what do you do?
Lupa acts for him. Padding over to Keith, she nudges his temple with her muzzle before lying down in one swift motion, placing her head on his lap.
The world, for a moment, stills. Keith freezes; Shiro’s heart slows. He wonders which would be worse: Keith touching Lupa, Keith not. They both know what this means; there is no coming back from it.
And then, gingerly, Keith uncurls his fingers, reaching up to run them through the fur around Lupa’s neck and shoulders.
And Shiro, with his heart in his throat and his soul in someone else’s hands, closes his eyes.
*
“You’re mad at me,” Lupa says later, when it’s just the two of them in the quiet darkness of Shiro’s room.
Shiro rolls over on his side to face her.
“No, I’m not. I’m just…surprised.”
Lupa blows air out of her nostrils, stirring his bangs.
“Are you really?” she asks, delicate.
Shiro’s silence speaks for him. His heart is like a radio filled with too much static, crackling in his chest. But now someone has dialed him all the way up, and he can feel everything in blinding detail, some kind of fever-dream: Nails dragging along the nape of his neck. Keith’s fingers in his hair, touching him but not-him. The wet gleam of his mouth in the moonlight.
Shiro squeezes his eyes shut. He’s going to need at least twenty-four hours to come to terms with this.
“Your timing sucks, Lupa,” he says instead, voice coming out hoarser than he means it to. “I’m leaving for Kerberos in a week.”
“Your timing sucks,” Lupa corrects. And then, gentler: “Keith won’t hold it against you. You know that.”
“Still.” Shiro swallows. “What if—what if I’d wanted to confess? You stole all my thunder.”
Unceremoniously, Lupa jumps onto the bed. The mattress dips with her weight as she settles her head against his shoulder, her nails scratching his legs slightly.
“You wouldn’t have,” she says. “You were too afraid.”
“There are rules, you know.”
Lupa snorts. “He’s someone you want to protect, Shiro. There’s no shame in that.”
It’s hard to argue with your soul. So Shiro stares at the ceiling instead, tracing imaginary constellations in his mind.
“Don’t worry too much about him while we’re gone,” Lupa murmurs. “Keith is strong. He’ll be all right.”
“If you think so,” says Shiro, relaxing into the warmth of his daemon, the soothing rise and fall of her chest.
“Mhmm,” she says, yawning. “Everything will be all right.”
*
There’s a phenomenon, called the Pulling, that happens when a daemon and its human get too far apart. Depending on distance, it can result in discomfort, excruciating pain, or even death. Shiro has never experienced it, wouldn’t want to—but the day of the Kerberos launch, as his ship draws away from Keith and the Garrison and Earth and his family—he thinks that might be the closest he’ll ever get.
*
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Captain Holt asks from beside him.
A little farther off, their daemons are enjoying the weaker gravitational force, drifting from one sand dune to the next, circling around the sample site they’ve set up. Samuel Holt’s daemon Marie is a turtle, and she’s currently allowing herself to be used as a makeshift ball, batted gently through the air between Lupa and Rosalind, Matt’s tayra.
Meanwhile, Matt makes pleased noises at the monitor, motioning his father over. “Dad, look at these readings—they’re off the charts.”
“Well, I’ll be—” starts Captain Holt, but the rest of his sentence is lost to Shiro because he picks up a different noise, one his ears have been trained to listen for: Lupa’s growl.
“Lupa?” His breathing echoes loudly in the confines of his suit; gravel crunches underfoot as he turns. “Lupa, what’s wrong—”
Above them, the sky splits open.
*
When he comes to, his arms are pinned behind his back. Around him, the room radiates a magenta glow; he squints against its harshness, sucks in a stuttering gasp upon realizing that his helmet is gone.
“—know little of value,” someone says from over his shoulder, and Shiro looks up.
Before him sits some sort of creature—alien. A pale pink scar tracks down the left side of its face, from one glowing purple eye to the craggy line of its mouth. From beneath the visor of its helmet, it regards him imperiously. The cool gaze isn’t enough to cow Shiro; he’s faced bullies before, appearances be damned. It’s a different observation that chills him—the realization that aside from him and his fellow crew members, no one in this room has a daemon.
“The work camps, then,” the alien on the dais intones.
“And these creatures, Emperor Zarkon?” asks one of the other aliens, stepping aside to reveal—
Lupa lunges at the bars of the cage, snapping.
“Dispose of them,” orders Zarkon. “I have no use for those.”
“No.” Shiro surges to his feet. It doesn’t matter that his hands are bound—he uses his shoulders, his feet, sheer willpower and desperation and rage—“No, don’t you dare touch her—”
It takes five guards to subdue him. By the end, he’s managed to smash a blaster, and he’s bruised and bloodied but at least he’s closer to Lupa’s cage, and she keeps snarling in his stead, howls out all the hurt that he can’t articulate any longer.
“Interesting,” chuckles Zarkon as they drag Shiro to his feet, black invading the corners of his vision. “Send this one to Haggar.”
*
Once, when he was ten, Shiro saw news coverage of the aftermath of an earthquake. In the footage, a boy was trapped under a slab of rock, with just his head sticking out. The medical team successfully extracted him from the rubble, but for the next week, Shiro had nightmares in which his limbs deadened one by one, and then his chest would cave in and he’d wake up heaving, reminding himself how to breathe.
That’s how he shudders awake now, on the witch’s table. Thin leather straps hold him down, but even those prove too strong for his exhausted body. On the table next to him, Lupa suffers a similar fate; Shiro’s heart clenches like a fist when he sees that they’ve put a muzzle on her.
“Ah, he wakes.”
Shiro twists his head toward the voice. This must be—Haggar, is what Zarkon had said. A shock of white hair flows from beneath the dark hood, but the yellow eyes scare Shiro most, because they’re hungry—hungry in the terrifying, all-consuming way of a black hole. And they’re directed right at him.
Not at him, he realizes. At what’s flowing out of him: a sinuous golden stream, undulating in the light, connecting him and Lupa.
“What,” he gasps, “what is that—”
“Always the question with you mortals, isn’t it,” says Haggar, stepping closer. Her voice scrapes against his ears, a snake slithering over flagstones. “All these gifts, and none of the knowledge or appreciation to use them.”
“I don’t understand—aghhh!” Haggar holds a hand toward him and it’s like his arm has been broken and then wrenched out of its socket.
The golden link between him and Lupa flares brighter, thickens. Like a blood clot, Shiro thinks, fading in and out of consciousness. Like a scar.
“Better,” Haggar says, and then she reaches up and touches the cord and that’s worse, somehow, like someone’s gathered all the blood vessels in his body into a bundle of Christmas lights and ripped apart each one, and Lupa is thrashing and Shiro is screaming himself hoarse and these giant containers have been wheeled into the room and Haggar is holding a knife, wickedly curved and purple in the light.
“Such a pretty thing, isn’t it?” she asks, raising it above his connection with Lupa. “The sharpest blade in the galaxy.”
And every atom is Shiro rebels, because they know that this, here, is the end:
Your daemon is you and is not-you. It is the physical manifestation of your soul, but you two will not necessarily always be in accordance. The bond between human and daemon is the mark of what allows us to endure—to separate one from the other is to suffer death, at best. At worst, it is to render oneself incomprehensible, incomplete…
The Daemon’s Lexicon, 500th Anniversary Edition
“Lupa.” His throat closes up, tears streaming down his face. “Lupa, I love you—”
The witch brings her hand down.
*
—Hey, Lupa?
—Yes?
—I know you probably don’t have any control over this, but when the time comes for you to settle, can you—can you try not to be a marine animal? It’s not—I mean, it’s okay, if that’s what’s best. Just…it’d be easier to take you to space with me if I didn’t have to worry about water.
—I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.
Everything seems tinted blue when he wakes up. Shiro opens his eyes and sees the stars. He should be happier, knowing he’s back on Earth, but his mind yields only a sick sense of dread: the Galra are coming they’re looking for Voltron Voltron VOLTRON—
“Shiro,” someone says, voice overflowing with relief.
Shiro’s eyes widen. “Keith?”
“Here.” He moves close to help Shiro sit up higher. The motion causes something to scrape against Shiro’s back; he winces.
“Sorry,” mutters Keith. “Shitty hiding place, I know.”
“It’s fine,” grits Shiro, noticing two other figures crouched near him. “Who…?”
“Lance,” supplies the taller, lankier one. “And this is Marina.” His daemon, a gorgeously sleek otter, dips her head solemnly, though Shiro gets the impression that isn’t her usual mood.
“Pidge,” speaks the other, adjusting their glasses. Shiro’s too scattered to make much of anything in this light, but something’s uncannily familiar about the voice and silhouette.
“And Hunk’s over there with his klipspringer Lani,” says Lance, pointing toward the neighboring rock outcropping.
“We couldn’t risk hiding too far away from the compound,” explains Keith. “I couldn’t find Lupa, and I didn’t want to accidentally kill you by stretching your bond too far. Do you have any idea where they could be keeping her? You can stay here and I’ll go back—”
“Hell no,” splutters Lance. “I thought we settled this! It’s not just the Keith-saves-the-day show anymore; if you’re going back in then so am I—”
“Don’t bother.”
Their argument grinds to a halt.
“What?” Keith’s brow furrows.
“Um, yeah, all due respect since she’s your daemon and all but—how does that make any sense?” asks Lance.
Shiro digs deep, reaches for the gaping hole behind his rib cage. He’s had a year to acquaint himself with this pain, to practice the words:
“It’s no use because the Garrison doesn’t have Lupa. Up in space, the Galra took her from me. Lupa…Lupa’s dead.”
*
The Alteans don’t have daemons either.
Shiro knows, deep down, that it should be obvious. In a universe filled with so many different lifeforms, it’s not realistic for things to be just like Earth. But he can’t help the warnings that creep through his mind: to know one’s daemon is to know oneself… to be without a daemon is to be incomplete…incomprehensible…unnatural—soulless—hollow—
Allura is none of those things. She is fierce and determined, hurting and haunted and gentle in all the ways that matter. The way she speaks to her mice reminds Shiro, achingly, of Lupa, and as the paladins practice forming Voltron again and again, Shiro realizes a new bond forming.
Paladin, the Black Lion says, the first time they join minds. I see you have lost much.
Shiro doesn’t mean to, but he draws away, protects the corner of himself that still reads more wolf than lion.
Black notices. She brushes against his thoughts again—this time softer, radiating a certain sadness.
We will have justice, she promises. But it will require you to give yet more of yourself. Are you willing?
Unbidden, Shiro thinks of Lupa, her coat tinted silver in the moonlight.
—Look at the stars, Lupa.
—Yes, I see. You’ll get your chance among them soon.
—Does it ever scare you? Imagining how big the universe is?
—Hmph. You’re the part of me that worries about things like that. I’m the part that worries about you. But yes, Shiro, the universe is quite a lot bigger than the two of us.
It is, isn’t it, Shiro thinks. And then he exhales—goodbye for good, Lupa—feels himself meld more fully with Black, lets her fill in the cracks.
Later, he’ll pass Pidge and recognize her as Katie Holt, remember that Winnie her chameleon daemon is really Darwin, but he won’t tell.
In times like these, everyone chooses a mask.
*
“It’s just frustrating,” Lance says, hands in his pockets. “I mean, Blue and I, we get along great, and I unlocked that cool ice canon or whatever, but I still feel like we’re not as close as we could be, you know?”
Marina drapes herself around his shoulders, bumping his cheek with her head. Lance reaches up, petting her absentmindedly.
“It might have to do with your daemons,” hypothesizes Allura. “The lions rely on an emotional connection with their pilots, but alongside the bond that already exists between you and your daemons…it’s like the stronger signal wins out.”
Lance chuckles. “Hear that, Marina? You’re the alpha.” His face sobers slightly, however, as the four of them tilt their heads skyward, where the Red Lion streaks through the air, limitless. “Keith doesn’t seem to be having the same problem, though.”
“He does seem like quite the natural, doesn’t he?” Allura observes.
Shiro follows the whiplash motion of Red’s tail, remembers a rooftop and gentle hands.
“He is,” he says. It comes from one of the few places still raw and honest inside him.
*
The scream has barely crackled through his headset before he’s running, Keith on his heels.
“Allura?”
“Already locked onto your energy signatures. Sending Hunk and Lance in for extraction.”
“Pidge?” pants Keith.
“According to the readings, she’s still in the room—but I’m picking up another body with her.”
The corridors of the Galra ship pulse purple, and Shiro pushes their glow from his mind, steels himself. Stupid, to have spread themselves thin, but there’s no time to dwell on it now. He won’t lose another Holt.
“Shiro.” Keith grabs his arm, preventing him from overshooting the sealed doors on their left. “It’s this one.”
Over their comms link flows a steady stream of chatter—Hunk and Lance maneuvering towards a safe pickup point, Allura with a worried be careful—but Pidge’s line has gone quiet. Shiro takes a shuddering breath, trying not to think about how just this morning they’d all been seated at the Castle of Lions’ banquet table, debating the optimum angle for piercing an Altean juice pouch.
Fingers skim down his wrist, tangling briefly with his own. The slightest kiss of palm to palm before the pressure drops away. Shiro raises his head to look at Keith, who nods grimly, sword at the ready.
Powering up his Galra arm, Shiro reaches toward the door.
*
“Welcome back, Champion,” greets Haggar.
Behind her, Pidge lies strapped to a table, sobbing. Wizened fingers clutch Darwin’s neck, squeezing. Golden light floods the room, arcing above them from girl to daemon, and Shiro’s stomach lurches, his body seizing with the memory of being dismantled, a purple blade winking wickedly—Lupa, Lupa, I—
“I see you’ve found yourself another wolf,” observes Haggar, mouth curving upwards as she lazily regards Keith.
Keith’s grip on his bayard tightens as he steps forward. “Put that daemon down.”
“Imperious, aren’t we. Is that what your precious paladinship has taught you? Don’t tell me you really believe yourselves the enforcers of the universe’s will.”
“We’re not here to debate morality with the Galra Empire,” says Shiro through gritted teeth.
Hagger tilts her head and advances, robe sliding against the floors. Shiro takes comfort in the fact that at least her refocused attention buys Pidge some relief. “Has your princess told you, paladins, the reasons for this war?”
“You destroyed her planet,” answers Keith. “You’ve kept destroying whole planets. That’s slaughter on a massive scale—”
“The Galra were dying,” hisses Haggar. “And your precious universe did nothing to help. Quintessence was fading from our lands, and no one knew why. The Alteans could generate quintessence of their own, so our blight was of little concern to them. They left us to rot and called it peace. We had no choice but to look beyond our borders.”
“That doesn’t explain why you experimented on me,” says Shiro. “Or what you’re doing to Pidge—”
“I grow tired of your ignorance, paladin,” sneers Haggar. “What do you think the bond between you and your creatures is made of? Breaking the one between you and your wolf alone unleashed enough energy to power a whole Galra fleet.”
The ground beneath him tilts. “You’re a monster.”
“I suppose. But then we all do monstrous things to survive.” Haggar’s gaze falls pointedly on his bionic arm. “Don’t we.”
“That’s not—that’s different,” Shiro starts, but there’s a plea buried somewhere in his voice, and already the arena is rushing back: the stench of dirt and blood, first his own and then others. Hissing laughter and that approving roar—finish him—the ground soaked red, his eyes burning with some combination of sweat and tears. The bargains made between the dying. The acrid scent of burning flesh, that purple glow at the corner of his vision, growing and growing until it overtook his entire vision—
“Shiro!” A body collides with his, slamming him sideways. Shiro snaps back to reality, catching sight of the wisps trailing from Haggar’s fingers, Keith on the floor.
Keith.
“No. No no no—”
Part of Shiro knows he makes the perfect target like this, on his knees beside Keith’s prone figure. And yet Haggar makes no move to eliminate him; she looks almost smug as Shiro reaches out to turn Keith onto his back.
“I’m fine,” Keith gasps, stirring in Shiro’s grip, hair falling away from his face as he moves to sit up. “Need…to get Pidge…”
Shiro pulls back as if scalded, scrambling to his feet.
Haggar’s blast has seared across the upper half of Keith’s face, turning the skin surrounding Keith’s left eye a motley purple. His pupil has disappeared, sclera overtaken by a glowing yellow, and Shiro recoils from the Frankensteined features, the juxtaposition of Keith’s smoother skin against this other shade, too familiar to name.
“Shiro—”
“Don’t touch me.”
Keith’s hand freezes in the air, outstretched, as they both absorb its new hue.
Purple.
Galra purple.
“What,” Shiro sucks in a breath, “did you do to him?”
“Do you know why the Galra Empire has survived these 10,000 years?” Haggar counters, tightening her grip around Pidge’s daemon. “Because there is no room for weakness in its ranks. And yet your kind…you wear your weaknesses so openly.”
“Stop,” warns Keith.
“I figured it out during our earlier battle,” Haggar tells Keith, still hovering. “I’m surprised that you didn’t. You caught a glimpse of your true form then; you must have at least suspected.”
“But I didn’t know.” Keith’s voice breaks, eyes locked with Shiro’s. “Not for sure.”
“This is a trick. One of your illusions.”
“Is it?” challenges Haggar.
“This isn’t real!”
Keith barely has time to react as Shiro surges forward. Activating his shield just in time to keep Shiro’s arm at bay, Keith stumbles back, digging in his heels.
“Shiro, stop—”
“What are you—”
“Keith. It’s me, your—”
“You’re not,” Shiro gasps, strained from the pressure of bearing his arm down on the energy shield’s surface. Dimly, he remains aware that his left side presents an easy target, but Keith makes no move to use his sword. The rest of Shiro’s body wants to engage, is already roaring for a fight, but a niggling doubt burns like an ember in the back of his mind.
“You’re not Galra,” he reasons, sweat beading along his forehead. “You can’t be—you have a daemon.”
Silence. Behind Keith’s expression, something breaking.
“Please, Keith, just show me your daemon.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. I’m not like the rest, I won’t hurt her—”
“Shiro, I don’t have one.”
The energy shield disappears; Shiro falls forward as Keith twists away, recovering. Suddenly, Shiro is back in a Garrison hallway, the walls closing in on him as he watches a beautiful black-haired boy turn the corner. Lupa had sensed it from the beginning, had warned him, ages ago: Something’s off.
And they had taken her from him. The Galra. Keith. It all blurs together in Shiro’s head and he charges, blind, those old instincts resurfacing—only one of us can make it out of this arena alive, Champion. Do not fool yourself otherwise.
“Shiro, please.” Frustrated tears leak from the corners of Keith’s eyes as he ducks a blow, gritting his teeth. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
You already have hovers between them.
“They took everything from me.” You’re just a broken soldier—without a daemon— “Even you.”
“That’s not true.” A spray of sparks leaps from where Keith’s shield clashes with Shiro’s arm again. “I’m still here. I’m on your side, Shiro. You can hate me later, but we have to save Pidge.” Keith searches out Shiro’s gaze with his remaining human eye, holds steady despite the desperate waver in his voice. “Please.”
Pidge.
Holt.
Matt.
He’s been here before, knows what it means to hurt someone in the name of saving them.
Shiro drops his guard, rolling out of the way as Keith charges past him towards Haggar. Startled, the witch drops the daemon, thrusting both hands out to fend off Keith’s attack. The room lights up, purple and gold. Scrambling to Pidge’s side, Shiro slices through the bonds, hoisting her into his arms.
“Shiro,” she sobs into his neck, cradling Darwin as tightly as she can in her weakened state. “Did they—Matt and Dad—”
“Shhh, Pidge, shhh,” comforts Shiro, tightening his grip. “We’re getting you out of here.”
“Coming in hot.” Lance’s voice crackles through their headsets. “East corridor. Be ready in five.”
“Keith!”
“On it.” The response comes out as a snarl, and Shiro turns to find Keith with his sword pointed at Haggar’s throat, fury etched across his features.
The witch’s hands are raised in surrender, but her expression remains serene. “If you kill me,” she says, “your friend will never find out what happened to his daemon.”
“Lupa’s dead.”
Haggar’s laugh turns Shiro’s blood to ice. “Still such a fool. I chose you because you were strong, Champion. If you survived the severance, what makes you think that your wolf did not?”
Was that why it had been so hard to let Lupa go? Because some part of him had still sensed her out there? It makes sense, in a twisted way.
No, Shiro corrects himself sharply. This is just another one of Haggar’s mind games.
“Shiro.” Allura, this time. “Keith. Do you have Pidge?”
“Yes.” Spurred to action, Shiro pushes Haggar and her false promises from his mind. “Keith, we have to go, we don’t have time—”
“No.”
“What?”
“If there’s even a chance…you’ve given up too much, Shiro. I’m not letting you lose this.” Keith presses his sword closer to Haggar, threatening to break skin. “Now tell him where she is.”
“Guys, you’ve got to get out of there now,” urges Hunk. “Lance is covering my flank, but we’re still sitting ducks here.”
“Keith, we’re leaving. That’s an order.”
“Tell him where she is—”
“Shiro?”
The sound hooks him by the spine. It’s like hearing his name for the first time; like he didn’t exist before this moment and then suddenly he simply is. Shiro turns. Some ten feet above him, caged but alive, stands—
Lupa.
Her fur has turned completely white. Shiro wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, hands itching to touch his own faded bangs. Transformed, the two of them, but still the same; still two halves of a whole. No magic in the world could conjure this, the sensation of reuniting with a missing part of yourself, of being made complete. He would leap mountains and cross the universe for it. Lupa, Lupa. It’s us against the world.
But back then, the world had been smaller and not quite as fragile. Not something he needed to protect.
Pidge is still vulnerable in his arms. And Lupa, who has always understood him, even when he doesn’t understand himself, bows her head.
You have to go, Shiro.
Everything will be all right.
The first step away from her is agony. As if someone holds his heart in an iron grip, squeezing. Shiro keeps looking at Lupa, committing her to memory, drawing strength from the bond that still flows, invisible, between them, despite what Haggar did to him on the operating table.
Haggar.
Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro spots Keith climbing toward Lupa. Haggar’s body lies in a crumpled heap on the ground, cut down. The edges of her robe almost…translucent.
The realization cleaves him in two just as, above him, Keith breaks the bars of Lupa’s cage. Stubborn until the very end. And burning up with the need to prove—what, his loyalty? That he would fight the moon, if Shiro asked?
Things that Shiro already knows.
Things that are going to cost Keith his life.
Shiro’s scream has already torn itself out of his throat when the real Haggar appears, unleashing a jagged bolt of energy directly at Voltron’s red paladin. Keith turns, in time to watch it barrel straight towards his chest.
They took everything from me.
Even you.
The lightning bolt of pain arcs through him at the same time a blur of white hurtles from Lupa’s cage. The reaction throws Haggar back against the opposite wall while Shiro falls to his knees, gasping, every cell turned supernova. His body is a sky carved open, scarred by the searing imprint of a comet shaped like a wolf exploding into dust. Somewhere along the line Pidge has tumbled out of his arms, and then she is the one propping him up, and Allura’s voice is frantic but strangely distant as she commands get them out of there, now, and Keith is—safe, alive—crying hold on, Shiro, please, hold on, as he gets an arm around Shiro’s back, dragging them all toward the exit.
Gold dust clings to Keith’s eyelashes, wet with tears. Some of it falls from his hair onto his shoulders—the gentlest of showers amidst Shiro’s windstorm of pain. Shiro catches a bit of it in his palm, watching the final remnants of Lupa sink into his skin.
And then everything goes black.
*
The team is there to comfort him when he wakes up. He has Hunk to feed him soup and Pidge to read him stories, Allura to adjust his blankets and order him to rest. But as he watches them orbit around him—as Marina drapes herself around Lance’s shoulders and Lani butts against Hunk’s arm and Darwin peeps through Pidge’s hair—he suddenly feels too exposed, a raw nerve in the cold air.
His mind is a room he has forgotten the layout of. Everywhere there are shards of glass, dark silhouettes for him to catch on. Loss is a wolf that dogs him in his sleep, holds jagged teeth to his throat.
Shiro aches.
*
“So this is where you’ve been hiding in the week that I’ve been out of cryo.”
“End simulation.” Keith steps back as the floor opens to store the training robot. He holds himself rigidly—or, as rigidly as possible, after his earlier bout of exertion—and there’s a defeated bent to his neck when he says, after a long stretch of silence, “I didn’t think you’d want to see me. After…after what happened.”
Shiro pushes off from the doorframe. It’s like they’re back to a lifetime ago: a different training room, but the same uncertainty, the same tension. Keith’s shirt, dotted with sweat, sticks to his back, which remains turned toward Shiro.
“I’ve been wondering.” Shiro tries to keep his voice light, but it comes out more tired than anything. “The stuff you told me back at the Garrison, about your daemon—was it all a lie, then?”
“I had one,” Keith says hoarsely, finally turning. “She was named Nozomi. That part was true. But when everyone else’s was settling, mine just…disappeared. And it was horrible. Worse than when my parents died, in a way, because you’re not supposed to wake up one morning and just not have a soul, that doesn’t—happen to people. But of course I couldn’t tell anyone, because who’s going to adopt a kid without a daemon, he’s probably some spawn of the devil, and now it turns out I’m part Galra—” Keith chokes off the rest of the words, looking away. “I had Allura run tests. While you were recovering. The rest of the team knows.”
“Keith—”
“It doesn’t change anything. Not for me. You guys are still all I have, I wouldn’t—I’d never betray that. But I understand if—if you need—”
“Keith,” Shiro interrupts again, soft. “I’m not here for an apology. I don’t blame you for what happened on the ship; I came here to make sure you know that.”
Keith deflates. “You should,” he says miserably, taking a step back. “It should have been me, not Lupa. Lupa’s the one you need—” He swallows, pained.
“Lupa knew exactly what I needed." The realization settles in him, soft as snow. The split-second calculation that must have occurred, the instinctual sacrifice. He’d bid goodbye to his daemon once already, but he’d never considered what losing Keith would mean, all the things that would go unsaid. He’d never had to say them, before; he’d always had Lupa to speak for him.
Here, she has given him a second chance. Shiro can feel the ghost of her nudging against his knee now, urging him forward. Imagines her voice, regal and fond. This one has earned my trust. He’ll look after you in my place.
Now don’t mess it up.
“Keith,” Shiro starts, the name catching in his throat—he surges forward, suddenly desperate. “I couldn’t—if you—” His heart is a clenched fist, threatening to fight its way out of his chest.
All pretense of distance breaks as Keith rises to meet him, brings their foreheads together, thumb against the fluttering pulse at Shiro’s neck. “I won’t. I won’t,” he murmurs into the space between them, both mantra and prayer. His fingers thread through Shiro’s hair, and the pressure at Shiro’s throat eases, somewhat, as he gives himself over to someone else’s protection, soothed by the memory of a rooftop and gentle hands.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Keith promises, and for just that moment, Shiro lets the grip around his heart relax.