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“It’s a surprise,” Mama says, slipping a knit cap down over his ears. The wool is too warm and feels scratchy against the back of his neck, but she chides him when he tries to take it off, tucking the little tuff of hair at his brow beneath the folded edge and tweaking his nose when he pouts.
“Ready?”
Takashi nods, all though he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be ready for. He doesn’t think it’s his bedtime yet, all though he’s already had his bath and Mama dressed in his pajamas instead of a new set of clothes. She told him to be patient the third time he tugged at her hand and asked where they were going, so he tries his best, sitting on the stairs in the front hallway as he watches her bustle about, folding a blanket over her arm and shoving an extra pair of mittens into her pocket before kneeling down to tie his shoes. Takashi taps his toes together when she’s done, and wonders if she’s still going to read him a story.
They drive down to the park, and even though its nighttime in early November there are people huddled in clusters along the sidewalk and scattered across the grass, sipping from thermoses as steam rises up into the air like little clouds. Mama pulls over to the side of the street, exiting the car with the blanket and laying it out over the hood before turning back to collect Takasahi.
Later, he won’t remember the cold, the uncomfortable press of metal underneath his short legs. What he remembers is the scratchy wool hat, the strange thrill of being allowed to sit on top of the car instead of inside it, his mother tickling his sides before hoisting him up into her arms. In the distance, someone on the grass lights a cigarette, and Takashi watches the red-yellow glow of it flare in the dark.
“Look, sweetie,” Mama says, leaning back against the windshield, clutching him to her chest. “Look, there they are.”
Takashi curls his fingers around her wrist, tips his head back against her collarbone, and watches as stars streak across the inky black sky, bright trails of light that appear from nothing and are gone after he blinks.
There’s a scent that lingers inside the Galra’s ships. Shiro doesn’t know how to describe it, doesn’t have a solid point of reference to compare it to. It’s faint but sharp, pungent yet sweet, a little like fruit gone to rot.
“Paladin with no lion,” Sendak muses. “Hardly a fair trade.”
Shiro says nothing. The inside of his cheek is bleeding, sliced open by his own teeth when a sentry stuck him across the face. The blow cracked his helmet, left him with a gash on his brow and blood in his eyes, paper-thin splinters of the Altean equivalent of fiberglass scattered along his temple.
Sendak steps closer, passing through a holographic star map rotating slowly in the centre of the room. Shiro studies it, noting the highlighted areas before turning his attention away. He thinks about statistics —the insurmountable odds against Sendak being discovered in the void of space, the passing ship being Galra and not some scavenger. Pidge or Hunk could probably devise some kind of equation to highlight the absurdity of it, lay out in a spectacular display of numbers just how bad Shiro’s luck really is.
Claws scrape over Shiro’s scalp and Sendak’s fingers dig into his hair, strands breaking at the root as grabs a fistful at Shiro’s crown, wrenching his head back.
“I wonder how long it will take.” Sendak leans closer, lips curling back to expose teeth, the shiny flesh of his gum. “That is, for you to regain your former title in the arena.”
Shiro sneers, his disgust and hatred of the Galra Empire flaring inside him, hot and ugly. He spits in Sendak’s face, blood and saliva spattering over his fur, flecking against his glowing eyepiece.
The thick scruff at Sendak’s throat spikes. He recoils, ears flattening against his skull as he lifts his prosthetic hand and jabs it into Shiro’s ribs, electricity crackling.
Shiro’s teeth snap together. His vision goes white, static buzzing between his ears as every muscle in his body locks with tension. The pain of it is oddly distant, crashing over all at once only when he comes back to himself, twitching and shuddering as he’s dragged up to his feet.
“Perhaps something else, this time,” Sendak says.
The guard at Shiro’s back clears his throat. “Sir, Haggar’s orders—”
“Do not speak to me of that witch! Take him!”
Three sentries step forward, guiding him from the room and down a long, narrow corridor. Shiro realizes too late that they’re not bringing him to a cell, lifting his head just as the doors at the end of the hallway glide open, revealing a pair of druids as they scuttle around a beeping monitor, affixing tubes and cables.
Shiro draws back, tries to dig his heels in against the floor as the sentries urge him forward. No, no, he can’t, not again—
His prosthetic burns with light as he wrenches at the cuffs around his wrists, gritting his teeth and snarling like a caged animal when they hold. One of the sentries grabs at his elbow, and Shiro knits his fingers together, cracks his joined hands against its face. He aims the blow so his metal knuckles take the brunt of the hit, and his fist punches through the side of the sentry’s head as though it were made of wet paper.
The machine whines and crumples, its rifle clattering to the floor. Shiro lunges for it only to be pulled away, his knees kicked out from under him. The remaining sentries drag him the rest of the distance on his back, their steps measured and steady even as Shiro kicks and shouts and struggles.
He’s strapped to a table, cold steel pressing up hard against his spine. Dark light bleeds out from the hinges of his prosthetic, and a druid tips into view. She draws her fingers up along his elbow until they stutter over a near-invisible catch between two plates. Something clicks, buzzes softly, and the Galra arm blinks out and falls limp, as heavy and cold as a block of lead.
The second druid approaches, yellow eyes gleaming wickedly behind the pale covering of her mask. She clutches at Shiro’s jaw, forcing him to turn his head until his cheek is mashed up against the table. Something wet is touched to the base of his skull before being followed by what feels like a small, metallic disc, humming with energy.
Shiro groans, straining against the straps that dig in across his left wrist and ankles, trembling with revulsion and fear.
“Proceed.”
A pinprick of pain against the back of his neck, and all at once there is light and sound, the taste of ozone and charred meat flooding Shiro’s mouth. Far away, someone is screaming, and everything inside of Shiro’s head strains at the seams, tears and splits apart and unravels.
It’s his sister who starts calling him Shiro.
He’s seven years old when they meet. Her father is a tall man named Renan with wide, dry palms and deep laugh lines that stretch down towards his cheeks. He introduces himself to Takashi as a friend of his mother’s, and crouches down so Takashi can look him in the eye when he shakes his hand.
Renan cooks for them, serving out beef stew in wide bowls with chunks of fresh bread, ushering them outside so they can eat on the veranda as the sun goes down. He offers Takashi a taste of his beer after the meal is done, sliding the bottle across the table and leaving a thin trail of condensation behind to soak into the wood.
Takashi sits straight up in his seat, instantly intrigued, looking to his mother for permission before taking a sip.
It burns in his mouth and throat, the foul taste lingering on the back of his tongue even after he swallows. Renan’s laugh is booming and infectious, and he scrubs a hand through Takashi’s hair as his mother smiles and trades out the bottle for a glass of water.
“Maybe when you’re a little older, hm?” Renan says.
They gather up the plates and bring them to the kitchen together, and Takashi is left to watch the baby. He hops over to Renan’s seat so he can sit next to her highchair, and she blinks at him with liquid dark eyes, gumming at her own fingers. He’s been told her name is Ana.
“Hello,” Takashi says.
She gurgles in response.
On a whim, Takashi hides his face behind his hands before bringing his fingers down to his nose so he can peek up at her. Ana smiles, kicking her little feet, and starts laughing when he does it again.
His mother never marries Renan, though they eventually buy a house together and stop lying to Takashi about being friends. They tell him that Renan doesn’t have to be his father but Ana is his sister now, and Takashi considers the words carefully before deciding he agrees. She’s talking, by then, and Takashi makes a game of asking her to say certain words, of holding up cups or toys and waiting to see if she knows what they are.
He points at himself, one day, and she stutters over the syllables of his name. He tries to help her, repeating the whole thing slowly: Takashi Shirogane
“Shiro!” She squeaks.
Takashi shakes his head, but she’s already latched on. “Shiro, Shiro, Shiro.”
It sticks. Ana cannot be persuaded that Shiro isn’t Takashi’s name, and the kids at school adopt it almost immediately. His mother doesn’t like it, tries to persuade Ana to stop for nearly a year before giving up, and smacks Renan playfully on the arm whenever he slips up and uses it in front of her.
“What’s the big deal?” Renan asks. “He likes it.”
“We’re a family. It’s too impersonal.”
But Takashi thinks of Ana, with her round face and red-cheeks, chanting the name she’d given him with delight, and disagrees.
No one uses his name after Matt leaves. Shiro walks away from his first battle in the arena battered and alone, carrying the title of Champion like a brand that’s been seared onto his skin. He tries to deny it, but the guards ignore him when asks them to call him Shiro, and the other prisoners either don’t understand or fail to live long enough to ever fulfill his request.
Haggar cements it when they meet. She steps silently into his cell like a ghost, dwarfed beneath the heavy fall of her robe, eyes flashing ghoulishly in the dark.
“Hello, Champion.”
Shiro sits up on his cot. He wants to move away, repelled by the dry creak of her voice, but there’s nowhere for him to go. The wall of the cell is cold at his back and a sentry is standing guard in the doorway with a shock-staff clutched in its hand.
“Don’t call me that,” he says, quietly.
She laughs, lifting her chin, and Shiro’s sees the white flash of her teeth, the jagged red markings that bracket her thin face. Long, bony fingers stretch out from beneath the sleeve of her cloak, reaching for him, and Shiro’s fear sparks.
“My name’s Shiro,” he spits, smacking her arm away. She’s smaller than the other Galra he’s encountered. Maybe he can overpower her, get his fingers around her throat. “Takashi Shirogane, I’m—”
Shiro’s skull cracks against the wall. She smothers her palm over his mouth, fingers clutching at his jaw, and though he scrabbles at her forearm with both hands, nails dragging over fur and flesh, she shows no sign of pain. His teeth grind together painfully as she squeezes, pinpricks of blood welling up beneath the tips of her claws.
“Enough of that, Champion,” she says.
Her strength is astounding. Shiro kicks out, landing a blow against her sternum, and the impact feels as though he’s slamming his foot against a stone slab. He flinches and drops his arms, lays his hands flat against the wall in a show of submission, and swallows down a whimper when she lets him go.
Lance yawns, the couch creaking beneath his weight as he stretches and tries to wiggle out a comfortable dip in the cushion. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh oh,” Pidge says.
Shiro shifts and opens one eye, his head lolling against the padded armrest.
Lance is frowning, miming the words back at her. He nudes at Pidge’s hip with a socked foot, pulling away quickly when she smacks at him in response. She’s wedged in the middle of the sofa between them, curled over her laptop with her shoulder pressed up against Shiro’s bent knees, Lance’s long legs pushed out behind her.
Shiro isn’t sure who had the idea of dragging one of the couches from the longue halfway across the ship onto the observatory deck, and every time he asks about it he’s given a different explanation as to how it came to be there. Pidge and Hunk say Lance pushed it on his own. Lance blames Keith. Keith claims ignorance to there being any couches on the ship at all.
“As I was saying.” Lance clears his throat, pauses to let the suspense build. Shiro clenches his jaw to keep from smiling, and closes his eye before he can be accused of being awake. “Space is kind of scary.”
Keith snorts. He’s sitting on the floor with Hunk.
“You sure picked the right school to go to, then,” Keith says.
“Oh, I’m sorry, drop out says what?”
“Hey, hey,” Hunk interjects. “Keith didn’t drop out, he was kicked out.”
“Um,” Keith says. “Thanks?”
“Sure, man.”
“I see where Lance is coming from,” Pidge says, bringing the conversation back around. “Space is sort of intimidating. It’s just really—big.”
A hand falls on Shiro’s ankle, giving it a shake. He pulled his legs up earlier when the others joined him, half-asleep as he tucked his toes beneath Pidge’s knee, trying to pester her as she tapped away at her laptop. It’s the kind of stupid little thing that would have made Ana shriek.
“What do you think, Shiro?” Hunk asks.
“Nothing,” Shiro says. “I’m sleeping.”
Keith snorts. “I mean, you’re not?”
Shiro opens his eyes. Someone has flicked on the overhead view screen, casting the illusion that they’re sitting within the very heart of a spiral galaxy. Stars glitter brightly through a clouded, purple haze, and though it’s undeniably beautiful, it should more. Awe-inspiring. Humbling.
Shiro thinks that the largest cosmic void is estimated to be 1.3 billion light years long. He thinks that nothing exists in that stretch of space all though hundreds upon thousands of galaxies could fit there, no dust or debris, molecules or atoms.
It’s a worthless scrap of knowledge, a piece of trivia that stunned and excited him as a child but elects nothing more than a hollow feeling, now.
And it’s that emptiness, that complete lack of a reaction he finds distressing.
“Space is a little scary,” he says.
The plane rumbles around them and Matt turns pale as he looks up in alarm, his eyes wide and bright behind his glasses.
Shiro squints, makes a show of peering down at him, snapping his fingers in front of Matt’s nose before touching the back of his hand to his clammy forehead.
“Are you dying?” Shiro asks. “You look like you’re dying.”
“I can’t do this,” Matt says. “Oh my God, I can’t do this. They’re never gonna let me go to space.”
“Try smiling, next time.” Shiro takes Matt’s face between his hands, uses his thumbs to turn up the edges of his mouth. “It reduces the gag reflex.”
Matt wrinkles his nose, blows out his cheeks beneath Shiro’s palms. “Not working.”
“Okay, everyone!” The instructor calls out. “Get ready for round two!”
Grinning, Shiro drops his hands to Matt’s shoulders, giving him an encouraging little shake just as the nose of the plane dips.
“You’ve got this,” Shiro says.
Matt groans.
As bad as he feels for Matt, Shiro can’t contain his delight as the tug of gravity slips away. He stretches out his arms so he can catch himself against the ceiling, tucking up his legs and summersaulting backwards for the fun of it. Down towards the other end of the cabin someone laughs, and Shiro twists around to watch another cadet squeeze a blob of liquid out from her water bottle, bobbing around comically as she tries to catch it in her mouth.
Matt makes a miserable sound, his hands clasped over his face, eyes squeezed shut.
“You’re fine,” Shiro says, equal amounts amused and exasperated. He catches Matt’s arm, and inadvertently sends them both spinning.
Matt’s eyes fly open. “Oh my God. Oh my God, I hate you.”
“It was an accident! Um, don’t puke in my face, okay?”
“I should. You deserve it.”
Matt’s glasses slide down his nose and begin lifting from his ears, so Shiro pushes them back into place before they can float away. There’s a little red mark left behind on Matt’s skin where the frames have dug in, faint freckles dusting the apples of his cheeks that Shiro’s never noticed before, and suddenly he feels both a little charmed and very concerned.
Matt’s been with him since the beginning, has acted as both Shiro’s communication officer and tech expert, pulled one too many all-nighters at his side and crashed in Shiro’s bed when he was too tired to drive home the next morning. It wouldn’t feel right to Shiro for that to change now, if he was selected for the mission while Matt was left behind.
“Bet I could smuggle you into the shuttle,” Shiro says. “You’d fit in a duffle bag.”
“What?”
“You’re tiny. It’d be easy.”
“You know, maybe it’s better if I don’t make the cut,” Matt says. “Being stuck in a metal tube with you for over a year might actually be worst than not going at all.”
Shiro laughs though he tries his best to swallow it down, warp his expression into a pout. “Oh, that’s mean. I’d miss you, you know.”
“Shut up,” Matt says. A bit of colour has returned to his face, and he squeezes at Shiro’s elbows when the plane starts to level out.
“You’ve wasted your time,” the captain snarls, down on his knees and struggling against the restraints Hunk rigged up back at the castle. He bares his teeth in a feral smile when Shiro turns to look at him. “Yet another blunder from the renowned Voltron paladins.”
“Ooh,” Lance says around a yawn, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand as he keeps his bayard aimed at their captive. “Hear that, guys? Renowned.”
Hunk shrugs. “Eh. I like legendary better, to be honest.”
Overtaking the supply ship took less than three hours. It’s a small vessel with minimal security, run almost exclusively by sentries with only two Galra soldiers on board. It’s a pattern Shiro’s beginning to notice more and more, the Galra’s overreliance on machines. He flexes his metal fingers and wonders about their numbers, how much of the Galra’s reach is made up of the robots they’ve constructed, whether or not there’s a way to shut them all down collectively.
“What do you got for us, Pidge?” Keith asks.
“Whatever they’re carrying is in the cargo hold,” Pidge says, her face cast in an eerie glow as she peers up at the monitor. “There’s uh, a lot of it.”
The captain and first mate share a smug look, but say nothing more, not even protesting when Shiro and Hunk drag them into a raided utility closet and seal the door shut.
They travel down to the lower levels of the ship as a group. Pidge hacks the opening to the hangar in a matter of minutes, and the sharp, rancid scent that greets them, the ear-splitting yowls ricocheting off the walls, is enough to make everyone draw back.
The Galra are not using the ship to transport weapons, or equipment, or food. Instead, the room is filled with live animals stowed away in cramped, wire-mesh cages. The creatures tremble as the lights flick on, lifting their muzzles to scent the air before pressing themselves back against the far end of their enclosures. Saliva drips down from their chops in thick strings, and there are scars carved across their snouts and skinny hides, chunks of fur and flesh missing around their legs where they’ve set their teeth to gnaw.
Lance recoils, reaching for Pidge and drawing her back and away from the miserable, wailing beasts. Hunk chokes on a gasp, horror-struck, and Keith turns to Shiro, wide-eyed and shaken.
“What the hell is this?”
“They’re for fighting,” Shiro says. He doesn’t remember ever encountering these kinds of animals before, but somehow, he knows the Galra like to pit them against each other, use them for entertainment when the gladiator fights grow too crowded or expensive to attend.
His prosthetic glows, and before he’s even aware of what he’s doing, Shiro’s steps into the room and works his fingers beneath the lock of the nearest cage, tearing it clean off with a metallic shriek.
Someone shouts, and suddenly Hunk is there, grabbing at Shiro’s arm and yanking him back. But the animal just slinks further away inside its box, snapping at nothing.
Shiro turns and begins to walk, his breath coming out shallow gasps. He waves the others off when they make to follow, asking them to wait, just give him a minute, please.
He’s alone when he ducks into the next corridor, his footsteps stuttering as knees give way. He can still hear the animals shrieking, so he slaps his palms to ears, squeezes his skull between his hands until there’s nothing inside his head but the steady pound of blood.
It’s okay, he tells himself. It’s okay, you’re okay.
No one says anything about it when he returns, and it’s only later that Coran broaches the subject, coming up behind him and placing a hand on Shiro’s shoulder, leaving it there when he jumps.
“Everything all right?”
Shiro almost wants to laugh.
“Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t turn around. “Sure.”
“We finished retrieving the cargo. I thought you might like to know that the Princess and I recognized some of the animals. They’re known to be adaptable creatures. It shouldn’t be hard, finding suitable planet for them.”
Shiro shakes his head. He can’t bear to tell Coran that it doesn’t matter, that even with the temptation of freedom laid out in front of them some of those animals will still choose to curl up and die inside their cages. They don’t remember anymore, what it is to be unafraid.
A wool hat slips over his ears, warm and scratchy against the back of his neck.
“It’s a surprise.”
(No.
Shiro curls around the memory, clutching it close.
No, you can’t have this. It’s mine. It’s mine.
They pry it away from him, and its absence leaves a gash inside his head that bleeds and bleeds. It’s all right, they say, and their lies slither into every tattered crack they’ve carved through him, solidify and stick like plaster. Someone touches his hair —his mother, a druid— and everything tips sideways, the earth spinning wildly off its axis as the universe collapses inwards, and Shiro is lost.)
Matt cries when his father is taken. He screams his throat raw and beats his hands against the floor, rakes his nails back through his hair as he presses his face to his knees and shakes apart.
Shiro watches it happen from across the cell, unmoving and silent. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do for him.
A guard smashes their boot against the door, snarling at them to be quiet as they passes by. Matt makes a choked sound, curling in on himself as he stuffs his fist against his mouth, teeth dragging over his knuckles. Shiro doesn’t so much as flinch, closing his eyes as he leans his head back against the wall.
There’s something wrong with him. The fear he felt when they were first captured, mind numbing and inescapable, has faded, leaving behind nothing but a hollow pit inside his chest. Everything seems far away and detached, as if Shiro’s viewing the world from the end of a long tunnel.
He can’t remember the last time he slept.
“Shiro?”
Matt rubs the back of his sleeve across his face. His eyes are glassy and swollen, and there are streaks on his cheeks where his tears cut through layers of dirt and grime.
“Can you come sit with me?”
It takes Shiro a moment to respond. Matt’s face crumples at his hesitation, and he looks like he might cry again, so Shiro pushes off the wall and shuffles across the short length of their cell on his knees. Matt watches him warily, teeth digging into his bottom lip, and waits for Shiro to settle in the corner and stretch out his arm before scrambling over.
He fits himself against Shiro’s side, clutching desperately at the front of his shirt as if he’s afraid Shiro will change his mind and shove him away. And Shiro looks down at the base of Matt’s neck, the short, downy-soft hair curling at his nape, and something tight and raw coils inside of him, twisting in on itself until it snaps. His vision wavers as his eyes start to sting, and Shiro wraps his arms around Matt’s trembling shoulders, vows right then that he’ll keep him safe, that he’ll throw himself to the wolves long before they ever have a chance to sink their teeth into him.
“Congratulations.”
Keith looks up, his shoulders rolling forward defensively as he frowns at Shiro from beneath the dark fringe of his hair.
“What?”
Shiro sits down across from him, notebook tucked beneath his elbow as he balances two styrofoam coffee cups in his opposite hand, one on top of the other.
“Oh no no, don’t get up to help,” Shiro says, sliding one coffee across the table, nudging it against Keith’s hand. “I heard you beat my record.”
Keith looks down, dragging his spoon through the cold mush of his oatmeal, swirling through it once before shoving the entire dish aside.
“Iverson wasn’t impressed. Fucking dick.”
Shiro chokes a little, startled into laughter. He’s already heard the rumours, knows that Iverson chewed Keith out in front of the entire attending class after he completed his now famous Saturn run. Shiro can almost picture it in his head: Iverson folding his hands behind his back, squinting his good eye as he cited off one of his very favourite lines: high scores mean nothing without any discipline to back them up.
“Is that why you’ve been moping around?” Shiro asks.
Keith bristles. “I’m not moping.”
“Okay. But he’s like that with everyone, you know.”
“Even you?”
“Sure. He loves to talk about how I can’t just keep skirting by on my talent.”
“What does that even mean?”
Shiro holds up his hand, a helpless gesture. “Right?”
Keith’s mouth twitches, almost like a smile. He curls his fingers around the coffee, clutching it between his hands.
“I thought you might be pissed,” he says.
“Why?”
“I dunno.” Keith shrugs. “Other people were, for some reason, and I’ve always been better than them.”
Keith says the words without ounce of pride. He’s not boasting, but Shiro knows it’s still that kind of blunt honestly that alienates him from his classmates. But Shiro doesn’t mind the quality. He likes it that Keith will cross his arms and tilt his head and tell him without a moment’s hesitation that Shiro needs to do things like work on his landing maneuvers, or study for physics more, or guard his right side better when they spar.
“I’m not mad,” Shiro says. “It’s not a competition, right?”
Keith looks upwards towards the ceiling, completely exasperated, and shakes his head at Shiro when he frowns in response.
“What kills me is that you’re the only person in the garrison who thinks that.”
The crowd hollers when she steps into the arena.
Shiro knows this opponent, all though he’s unsure how long it’s been since he last saw her. They fought days or weeks or months before, back when he still recoiled from the splash of fresh blood or crack of broken bone. She laughed at him when they met, commenting on his lack of armour and his poor, exposed throat, moving with grace as she glided up to Shiro and lashed out with her knife, knicking his abdomen in her attempt to gut him.
Shiro had liked her, in a strange sort of way. She was fierce and stubbornly unbroken, had yielded to Shiro without shame when he snapped her wrist and ripped the knife from her limp fingers. He asked for her name, afterwards, curious to see if she would tell him the truth or recite the title she’d been given, but the sentries rushed in and dragged her away before she could answer.
She’s different than Shiro remembers. Her slender limbs, once lined with layers of pastel-coloured feathers, have been hacked away, replaced by cold metal and whirring tech. Her legs are too tall to match her frame, bent back at the knees, clicking at the joints as she rushes towards him.
Shiro stumbles, barely managing lift his sword in time to deflect her blow. She’s ruthless in her assault, grabbing Shiro’s weapon by the blade and tearing it from his hands, clawed fingers striking out and curling over his shoulder, digging into the meat of him.
“Look what they did!” She screams.
They’ve taken her eyes. One gold and one green –gone and replaced with silver spheres, a pinpoint of white light flickering at the centre of each like a dying star. Agony is etched out across her face, settled in at the deep-set lines by her mouth. She shakes Shiro violently when he flinches away, her hooked fingers tearing through layers of muscle and skin. “Look at what they did to me!”
“I’m sorry,” Shiro croaks. “I’m sorry, I—”
She laughs at him, a wretched sound that spirals from her mouth, shattering into a sob before it ends.
She lets Shiro go, flinging him halfway across the ring. He hits the ground with a crack, pain shooting up his spine as he rolls head over heels, stumbling back to his feet. He throws up his arm, braced for an attack, but she hasn’t moved to follow him. Instead she turns to reclaim his fallen sword, slicing it smoothly through the air before lifting it high above her head, violet light glinting harshly off the blade as she displays her prize to the crowd.
Their Galra onlookers scream, stomp their feet and pound their chest plates, voices rising into a steady chant of vrepit sa! Vrepit sa! Vrepit sa!
She look at Shiro, then, a smile splitting across her face like an open wound, and he knows what’s going to happen a moment before it does.
The blade is lowered, twisted around, and the betrayed scream that rises from the Glara is unlike anything Shiro has ever heard. He crumples beneath the weight of it, trembling hands covering his face, and his knees strike the sand long before her body hits the ground.
He doesn’t want it to be an argument.
“If it happens again—”
“I’m not interested in discussing hypotheticals with you, Shiro.”
“If it does, you need to leave me.”
Allura steps down from the command podium, silhouetted by the light of the wormhole flashing across the view screen behind her. The shifting colours glance off the hard lines of her armour, cast her hair in muted tones of reds and yellows and blues.
“No,” she says.
Shiro sighs, settling heavily onto the hard bench that curves around the control panel.
“I’m being practical,” he says.
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes. Unless you think we can defeat the Galra while being stranded in space?”
Allura’s shoulders tilt downwards, falling into an elegant slump. She surprises Shiro by pacing towards him and sitting at his side, close enough for their knees to knock. Shiro straightens his spine, his shoulders rolling back like he’s been called to stand at attention. His neck feels warm beneath his collar.
“You wouldn’t be stranded,” she says.
Allura reaches up, starts to unwind the knot of her hair. She pulls out delicate, clear pins, one after another, and locks tumble down to unwind against the slope of her neck. To Shiro’s eyes, it looks as though the clips are made of spun glass, and on a whim, he offers his hand.
“Here.”
Allura’s eyebrows lift, and she makes an amused sound before depositing her collection into Shiro’s open palm.
“So how fast can the ship travel, without a wormhole?” Shiro wonders, widening his eyes in a mocking show of sincerity.
“You’re being glib,” Allura says. “The others need you. I don’t think you realize how much.”
“They need you, too.”
Allura rolls her eyes. Shiro suspects it’s a gesture she’s picked up from Lance. “Of course. But not in the same way.”
“They’d be all right. You could—”
“No.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“I don’t care. I couldn’t replace you, no more than you could me.”
Allura begins grabbing fistfuls of her hair, searching by touch for any pins that she’s missed. Shiro spies one first, hiding just above her ear, and boldly reaches over to untangle it.
He holds it out between them, afterwards, and waits for Allura to meet his eyes before he says it. “I’m not losing any of you.”
He speaks the words like a warning. He knows Allura’s strength, now, understands the lengths she’s willing to go. He’ll be ready, next time.
Allura considers him, the rose-coloured flecks in her eyes gleaming as her face tips into the light. She looks serious but ultimately unconcerned as she takes the pin from him, turning it round between her long fingers.
“Well,” she sighs. “At least we’re in agreement on that.”
Lance lifts Voltron’s leg, stretching it out and then bending it back at the knee, as if readying to preform a pirouette. “Hey, you guys wanna dance?”
Without a beat of hesitation, Keith says, “no.”
“So you’re the one with a song stuck in their head?” Shiro asks. The tune has been buzzing along the edges of his thoughts for almost twenty minutes now, though he has no memory of ever hearing it before.
“I kind of like it,” Hunk says, and Voltron’s opposite foot begins tapping, clouds of dust rising up from the red soil beneath them.
Keith sputters, alarmed. “Hunk, no, stop that!”
“I’m with Keith on this one,” Pidge chimes in, and something not unlike shame flutters through the thread of their connection. Shiro frowns, his concern piquing in response, a bright flash to follow.
“Aww,” Hunk coos. “Shiro, that’s cute.”
“What, you can’t dance Pidge?” Lance says, piecing it together first. “That’s okay, I’ll teach you.”
“Pass.”
“It’ll be fun.”
“It absolutely will not,” Keith says.
“Hey, what’s with the Arms versus Legs mentality here?” Hunk asks. “Shiro, wanna be the tie-breaker?”
Shiro ducks his head, trying to hide his amusement from the view screens all though surely the others can feel it. He means to say no, to suggest they return to training, but without meaning to he thinks about Matt, how he couldn’t dance, either. Maybe it’s a Holt thing?
The memory swirls away from Shiro before he has the chance to contain it: going into town after exams, the soft buzz of alcohol fusing with the hum of the subwoofers set up on stage. Lila bullied him into dancing with her and Shiro snagged Matt by the back of his collar and dragged him along too, only to discover that Matt didn’t so much dance as did shuffle back and forth on the spot without moving his upper body at all.
Shiro had doubled over with laughter, watching him, and had to loop an arm around Matt’s shoulders and apologize between hiccupping gasps to keep him from leaving.
“Sorry,” Shiro says afterwards, all though he doesn’t feel any distress from Pidge.
“It’s okay,” she says. A deep-rooted sense of affection lingers behind her words, tinted with a weighing sadness. “I already knew my brother was a loser.”
“So that’s three votes for dancing, then,” Lance says.
“Shiro didn’t actually vote,” Keith points out.
Hunk hums. “But he can dance.”
“Sure,” Shiro says. “When I’m hammered.”
Amusement bubbles up, soft and bright. Shiro’s not sure who starts laughing first, doesn’t even think it’s even that funny, but the humor spreads and soon even Keith is quietly chuckling over the comms.
It’s not always like this, when they form Voltron. Even after they learn to control it, more often than not someone will be anxious or distant, flinching away from the bond. The sense of disconnect remains thereafter, and it’s a little like walking around with a stone in your shoe, a prickle of discomfort, just jarring enough to notice but not so debilitating that it can’t be ignored.
But sometimes, when they fall into sync and click together, it’s a little like meeting an old friend after years of separation, bringing with it a pleasant flash of surprise, a surge of deep, genuine affection.
Oh, there you are.
Hello, hello.
I see you.
I know you.
I understand.
Shiro’s held captive for seventy-three hours, all though he won’t know this until later. Caught between dreams and memory and the physical word, time fluctuates unevenly, expands and contracts, unspools in a flickering line before springing back into place.
He experiences what’s happening to him in pieces: the rumble of the ship (a wool hat scratching against the back of his neck), harsh whispers and skittering voices (Matt draws his sleeve over his eyes), the shrill howl of an alarm (“space is terrifying”).
“Shiro!”
Distantly, Shiro feels pressure against his cheek, the pinprick pull of wires and tubes tugging at his skin as he’s tipped upwards. He wakes with the desperate, lung-searing gasp of a half-drowned man as the probe at the back of his neck is crudely torn away.
It’s like someone has cut a live wire, touched a cattle prod to an exposed nerve. There’s a whine in Shiro’s ears, a buzzing sensation that crackles straight down his spine. His back arches like an electrical current has been shot through him, and everything around him is too bright and loud and completely overwhelming.
“What the hell did you do?”
“I had to get it off him! Shiro, can you hear me? Shiro!”
Shiro opens his eyes, sees violet light and cold metal, a mouth shaping words he doesn’t understand. His thoughts drift across the surface of his mind like a cracked sheet of ice on dark water, bouncing off each other, unable to click into place before floating away again.
“Hey, we need to move! Keith!”
The figure hovering over him is pushed aside, and Shiro blinks, catches a glimpse of white and blue, brown hair and worried eyes, but can’t slot the image together well enough to form a face. There are still wires attached to his left arm, dug up under his skin, and he feels nothing when they’re torn away, gloved hands throwing each one violently to the floor.
“It’s okay,” someone says, over and over again. “We’ve got you, all right? Keith, can you—?”
“Yeah, here.”
Shiro’s guided into a sitting position. There are hands on his shoulders, fingers clutching hard at his elbows. They drag him away from the table, pull him forward a single step and grasp at him tightly when his knees give way.
Someone curses in his ear, and Shiro turns towards the voice.
“Shiro, please, we can’t carry you—”
“Keith?”
His vision clears, bit by bit. Keith is nodding at him frantically, squeezing Shiro’s wrist hard enough to make the bones creak. “Yeah, yeah it’s me.”
A grumbling on his opposite side. “Geeze, what am I over here, chop liver?”
Shiro hangs his head, struggling to set his feet flat against the floor.
“Lance,” Shiro says. His throat hurts.
“Hey, nice to be acknowledged.”
Even with his legs holding beneath him, Shiro finds it difficult to walk. Lance and Keith urge him on, leading his shuffling footsteps and taking his weight whenever his ankle turns or his knees begin to wobble. Shiro can hear Lance huffing for breath at his side, Keith grunting low in his throat as he adjusts his grip on Shiro’s arm.
“This way,” Lance says.
Keith tries to tug Shiro in different direction. “No, it’s left.”
They start bickering over his head, voices growing loud, tones harsh with anxiety. Shiro wants to help, tries to recall the pathway the sentries led him along when he was first taken captive, but his memories are fickle, unreliable things, shifting between now and then, slipping from his grasp whenever he tries to pin one down.
The argument is disrupted by a crackling sound, and Shiro can hear the faint echo of Allura’s voice filtering through the mic in Lance’s helmet.
“Okay,” Lance breathes. “Got it, thanks.”
“We’re almost there, Shiro,” Keith says. “Just a little more, okay?”
Pidge and Hunk are waiting for them, twitching the nervous energy, weapons drawn and surrounded by fallen sentries.
“About time!” Pidge shouts, activating the holopad on her wrist. The hangar door behind her cracks open and she lifts her face, mouth curved in a smug smile that abruptly falls away the moment she locks eyes with Shiro.
She starts towards them, but Hunk hauls her back, bringing his bayard around single-handedly, gritting his teeth against the strain.
“Get down!”
Keith and Lance drop, pulling Shiro with them, his teeth clipping the tip of his tongue when his chin smashes against the floor. There are shouts behind them, the clatter of metal. Shiro struggles up to his elbows, his head spinning, and looks over his shoulder to see sentries and guards scattering away from the blast of Hunk’s canon.
“Okay, you’re clear, c’mon!”
Shiro doesn’t know if he can stand, but Keith digs his fingers into his collar, heaves and pulls and bullies him to his feet, pushes him on as Lance ducks away, turning to provide cover fire.
More noise erupts down the corridor, and Shiro hears the bark of Sendak’s voice, marred with anger and desperation.
He screams something, a short string of numbers, and each one sticks in Shiro’s mind like a spike, deteriorates and dissolves, seeps deep into the very root of who Shiro is, curdling. It feels like the inside of his head has been scrubbed with steel wool, like he’s falling asleep and being jolted awake within the same breath. Shiro experiences the odd sensation of peering out trough his own eyes like a voyeur, disconnected from the shape and feel of his own body, and everything is suddenly unbalanced and overflowing and wrong.
The door closes at their back with a heavy thud, and Shiro stops moving. Keith turns to him, brows knitted in concern, and barely manages to swing up his shield in time to block Shiro’s blow when his prosthetic snaps up to strike him.
“What are you doing?”
“Shiro, stop!”
The door rattles. Something slams against it from the other side, punching in a rounded dent without breaking through.
Shiro sees it happen out of the corner of his eye as he swings at Keith, knocking him back. Everyone is shouting, but Shiro hears it like a warbling echo, the words muffled and hollow sounding. His prosthetic flickers, glowing dimly as it struggles to reboot.
Keith side-steps, dodging Shiro’s next attack. He activates his bayard and brings it up to meet Shiro’s following strike, a shower of sparks flashing between them.
Lance still has his rifle drawn. Shiro spares him a brief glance, takes in the tremor of his hand, the pallor washing over his face. He knows, deep down, that Lance would never be able to bring himself to pull the trigger, and turns away, unconcerned.
His mistake is underestimating Pidge. She shouts a warning to Keith and flicks her bayard, sending it out like a whip. It coils around Shiro’s prosthetic and yanks it back, throwing him off balance. Keith seizes the opening, charging forward as Hunk barrels in from the side. Together they knock Shiro to the ground, and Keith slams his shield down over Shiro’s prosthetic, energy crackling at the contact as he throws his weight on top of it.
Shiro pushes back, heels scraping against the floor. He swipes at Hunk with his free hand, catching him across the jaw. The punch is clumsy, poorly aimed, and Shiro feels his finger break without registering the pain of it.
Hunk grabs at his wrist, twisting his arm as the tries to pin it, choking on apologies that mean nothing to Shiro.
Lance is yelling. “We need to go! Just—knock him out!”
“No, don’t!” Pidge snaps. “Do you have any idea how bad that is for you?”
“Shiro?” Keith says softly. “Hey, can you hear me?”
“Lance is right, we’re out of time. I’m sorry, Shiro, I’m sorry—” There’s a bright pop of blood at the corner of Hunk’s mouth, a red smear on his teeth. He shifts his weight, planting his knee on Shiro’s forearm so he can use both hands to raise his bayard high above his head like a club.
But Keith is still in the way. “Wait—”
The door clunks and whines, sliding open in a series of jittering clicks. Lance whirls around, firing at the hands and arms pushing through the crack as Pidge brings up her holopad, jabbing viscously at the screen.
The door halts, shudders, and snaps shut.
“So they’re overriding my lock,” she calls out. “Just in case that was unclear!”
Hunk elbows at Keith, trying to push him aside. “Move!”
“No! You don’t have to—he knows us!”
Hunk’s chin wobbles, doubt softening the uncharacteristically hard lines of his face. He looks down at Shiro as Lance appears from over his shoulder, Pidge leaning in next to Keith.
One of them says Shiro’s name, heartbreakingly hopeful, and something small and fragile trembles inside of him.
“Look, sweetie,” Mama says. Takashi lifts his face, but the sky is a vast, empty void, and there are no stars left for him to see.
Look what they did.
Look at what they did to me.
Takashi crawls off the hood of the car. The park is empty, picnic blankets and vehicles abandoned, telescopes swinging back and forth in slow arcs with their lenses directed towards the ground.
His mother’s gone. Takashi looks up and down the street for her, bringing his cold hands to his mouth and huffing against his fingers. He wishes she’d given him his mittens before she left.
He takes the blanket, wrapping it snugly around his shoulders before setting off to walk along the road. He doesn’t know where he’s going, understands that he’s too far away from home to navigate his way back on foot, but hopes that if he keeps moving he might find his mother again.
The world begins losing detail as he wanders, the dead leaves on the trees blending together in a blur of dull colour, the dim sliver of light marking the horizon fading to black. Under his feet the pavement softens until its sucking at Takashi’s shoes like mud, and when he looks down he sees a thick, greyish sludge mucking up the clean cloth of his pajama pants.
Stop.
Takashi jumps, turning around in a full circle. There’s no one in sight, but the back of his neck prickles in warning, and though he doesn’t recognize the voice Takashi thinks it would be a mistake to listen to it. He tries to drag his leg forward only to find that he’s stuck, the sludge hardening like cement over his feet.
That’s enough, the voice says.
Come back, Takashi.
He can’t. He’s alone, and he’s frightened, but there’s sick feeling rolling in his stomach, the sense that if he stops, if he gives in, something terrible will happen.
But aren’t you tired?
Takashi blinks, his eyelids suddenly heavy, as if saying it makes it so. He doesn’t understand what happening to him, but everything seems wrong and distorted, like he’s peering through a mirror image, and maybe it would be easier if he just—
“Dude,” Hunk says. “Seriously?”
The street has completely faded, leaving behind a black pit that stretches on endlessly. But the others are all standing in front of him, solid and perfectly clear.
Lance shakes his head, wags his finger disapprovingly in Takashi’s face. “Easy way out, man. Don’t fall for it.”
“You don’t have to be scared, you know,” Pidge says. She crosses her arms, tips her chin so she can look down at Takashi from above the rim of her glasses. It’s strange, being smaller than her. “We won’t blame you, for what happened.”
“This isn’t real,” Takashi says, slowly.
Lance pulls a face, scrunching up his nose. “I mean…”
“Technically,” Pidge says.
Hunk shrugs. “Doesn’t matter as much as you think it might.”
Takashi turns to Keith. “You haven’t said anything.”
“Because you’re being stupid,” Keith says, though he smiles a little. “Just wake up. Come back.”
And Takashi’s trying, but they did something different to him, this time, shattering what they couldn’t take, and he’s afraid that the pieces left behind won’t fit together right, anymore.
“Who cares?” Keith says.
“I do,” Takashi says. “I think—they ruined me.”
They don’t tell him he’s wrong, but they don’t leave, either, and maybe that’s still enough.
Takashi lifts his foot out of the muck and pushes forward, step after step after step.
He’s left on his own for what feels like a very long time, after that.
Every so often there’s a spark of sensation, a flash that illuminates the darkness around him. Sometimes there are stars, stained voices and soft touches against this face and shoulders, the scent of clean, filtered air and washed bedding.
He sobs when the black lion finds him.
She pounces, and almost snaps the thin thread of their connection with that act alone. Shiro fumbles, reaching for her with an uncoordinated desperation, his panic flaring. His grip on the bond feels weak, and the harder he clutches at it the more it seems to unravel.
The black lion snarls in the face of his fear, pushing harder, digging in her claws as she fights to remain.
The sheer force of her presence hurts. Shiro feels it like a pressure building at the base of his skull, but he’s withstood worst, and understands that the pain is a result of consequence rather than intent. So Shiro braces against it, clings back even when a headache starts to swell behind his eyes.
Child, she calls him, affection buzzing through the bond. Paladin.
Her fondness for him is devastating, her rage unbearable. She can’t gather the tatters of Shiro’s mind, can’t fold the edges back together. An image of Zarkon slips between them, followed by the red gash of the Galra insignia. How dare they? How dare they?
Shiro recoils, overwhelmed, almost sinking beneath the dark wave of her wrath. The black lion buoys him back up, rumbling her apology.
Go now, she says with a nudge, gently pushing him past the blurred edge of his unconsciousness, settling deep in the depths of his mind like a promise.
“Shiro? You awake?”
Shiro opens his eyes and immediately flinches back, gasping. The light sears at his corneas, leaves behind bright spots that flicker sporadically across the inside of his lids when he squeezes them shut.
“Sorry!” Lance squeaks. “I’m sorry! Here.”
The room dims until everything is cast in a soft, warm glow. Shiro swallows hard, his cheek pressed flat against the pillow, nails digging into the calloused flesh of his palm.
“It’s fine,” he says, clearing his throat when his voices comes out strained and gravelly.
He’s in his bedroom instead of the infirmary. Shiro recognizes the dresser against the back wall, can see his spare set of gloves sitting on top of it, right where he left them. The others are hovering around his bed in a tight semi-circle, chairs pushed back, all but radiating a warped mixture of excitement and anxiety.
“How do you feel?” Pidge asks.
Shiro hums thoughtfully, unsure about his answer. His face is warm and the sheets are damp beneath his shoulders. He wonders if he had a fever, and lifts his arm from the mattress so he can draw the back of his hand across his brow.
There are welts on his arm, starting at his wrist and moving up towards the crook of his elbow. It strikes Shiro, then, that his hands are free, that he’s not restrained, and once the realization dawns on him he finds it impossible to move past it.
“Hey,” Hunk says. “What’s wrong?”
“I attacked you,” Shiro says, slowly, shifting his legs to confirm they’re unbound as well. It’s absurd, irresponsible and dangerous. They had no way of knowing what he’d be like when he woke up.
He laughs.
It’s a wretched, terrible thing that tears at his throat, leaves him feeling hollowed out and raw. Shiro presses his hands to his face, fingers shaking as his lungs grow tight, breath catching in his chest.
He’s frightening them, now. Their voices rise, laced with concern. Hands flutter over Shiro’s arms and shoulders, unsure if they should touch.
“You’re unbelievable,” Shiro says, choking out the words between thin gasps. “You—how could you not—”
“Shiro, it’s okay.”
No it’s not, it’s not. Shiro wants to rake his fingers over his scalp, wants to tear out his hair and claw at his skin and scream.
If they hadn’t come for him—
“Thank you.” The words catch in Shiro’s throat, brittle and creaking. “Thank you, thank you.”
Lance makes a soft, quiet sound. “You don’t have to thank us.”
“We wouldn’t have left you there,” Keith says.
Shiro shakes his head, can’t stand the ease of their forgiveness. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Hunk says, kindly. “You don’t have to do that, either.”
“Can I sit with you, Shiro?” Pidge asks.
Shiro lowers his hands, nodding, and to his surprise Pidge crawls directly over him, fitting herself between his side and the wall. Lance settles on the edge of the mattress by his knee as Keith drags up one of the abandoned chairs. Hunks remains standing, his posture loose, arms relaxed at his sides. There’s a shadow of a bruise on his jaw that Shiro knows he’s responsible for.
“What happened?” Shiro asks.
Keith lifts his foot, hooking his heel on the bedframe as he leans closer. “You mean after the fight?”
His candor almost makes Shiro smile. “Yeah. After that.”
“You passed out,” Lance shrugs. “So we dragged you onto the yellow lion and booked it.”
“And just trusted I’d be myself when I woke up?”
“Coran did a brain scan, or something. He seemed pretty optimistic.”
Shiro frowns, but Pidge pipes up before he can speak.
“I hacked the ship’s main database when Keith and Lance went to find you,” she says, stealing Shiro’s extra pillow and flopping down beside him, sitting up on her elbow with her cheek cradled in her hand. “Whatever they were doing, they didn’t finish.”
“That doesn’t mean—“
“We’ll figure it out,” Hunk says.
Shiro pauses, teeth dragging over his tongue. He can’t let it go. “It could happen again.”
Lance sighs. “Dude, stop being such a downer.”
“Agreed,” Keith says, tilting his head with a slight frown, as if surprised by his own reaction.
It should bother Shiro more, their calm acceptance, the unwavering faith they’ve placed in him. It’d be better for him to crush it now, to yell and shout and scare them, show them what he really is, all the terrible things he can be.
But Shiro’s tired, and selfish, and wants to keep it so Pidge doesn’t feel afraid to curl up beside him, so Lance can laugh in his face and Hunk can snipe at him when he’s afraid and so Keith never feels the need to pull his punches when they spar.
Shiro swallows down his doubt, nods, and tries not to bask in the relief that falls over their faces, the way they all seem to press closer, drained and reassured and so, so happy that he’s there.
It’s a strange comfort, Shiro thinks, knowing he has something left to lose.