Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Are you listening?”

“Yeah, Kolivan, I’m listening.”

“Repeat what I just said.”

“You want me to go back to Jing next movement to see how they're doing with the new agricultural program, and before that you want me to check in with Acxa's team in the Trisona System.”

Kolivan grumbled disappointedly at being proven wrong, and Keith shrugged minutely in response. He was sitting on the floor in what functioned as the Denebola’s living room, Mervus mostly hidden from view behind him. She was doing something to Keith's hair, but he wasn't paying it a lot of attention. Hair was hair, and it was easy enough to undo any designs she had put it in with a little bit of untangling. Kosmo was on the floor in front of him, content to be used as a stand for the tablet as long as Keith kept scratching at his ears.

“You let her remove your braid," Kolivan said, not quite accusingly. There were all sorts of rules about Galra braids and hairstyles, Keith had learned, and some of them were being reinstated in a bid to find non-oppressive traditions now that the Empire had well and truly crumbled. But Keith only really needed to take care not to make any social faux pas when he was in a diplomatic gathering, and as imperious as Kolivan liked to be, diplomatic gathering this was not.

“She likes my hair. It’s a different texture than hers and she can’t do most of this stuff to her own hair without it hurting.”

“I had two different colored bows and I couldn’t decide which one I liked better so I’m doing pigtails to use both,” Mervus informed Kolivan from behind him.

“...I see,” Kolivan said.

Kolivan did not see. Keith wasn't actually sure Kolivan knew, or cared to know, what pigtails were. He was mostly surprised that Kolivan was entertaining Mervus's participation in this meeting at all. Krolia must have yelled at him again.

"Was that all you wanted?" Keith asked, a pointed eyebrow raised. This was cutting into Mervus-and-Keith time.

"You should reconsider -"

"Not interested," Keith cut him off. It was the same argument every single time. 'You should consider raising your adopted empath child planetside. Daibazaal, specifically.' Keith knew it was mostly an attempt to get him to stop going rogue every few movements. It was really hard to keep to a schedule when your kid looked at you with big, round eyes, asking to visit 'that pretty moon over there.' So yeah, Keith went off schedule or off track sometimes, but he still got his shit done.

Correction. He still got his stuff done. He was a parent now, and according to Krolia, that meant not swearing in front of his child. It was a work in progress.

But anyway, regardless of what Kolivan wanted, there was no way that Mervus could be around that many people for that long of a period. She could barely handle lengthy stops at supply posts right now. It would be a disaster.

"Very well." Kolivan managed to make the sigh sound both pitying and annoyed. "Then yes, that is all. I'll call you again in three quintants for a debrief with Acxa."

"Great. See you then." Keith disconnected the call before Kolivan could get another word in, feeling a little guilty about it. Kolivan was trying to help, in his own, clumsy way. And it was true that raising a traumatized child while simultaneously flying through space on intergalactic aid missions would be easier with an extra pair or two of hands. A few more adults (because despite the way society viewed the former Black Paladin, Keith did not feel nearly adult enough to have a child).

But he wouldn't do that at the expense of Mervus's health.

It had been difficult, finding any information on how to help Mervus control her empathy, and Keith had nearly succumbed and asked Coran for help on more than one occasion. But then eventually Chroptka had turned up some documentation. It was old, but seemed to be accurate so far, and it did claim that eventually, an Evalüir would be able to live amongst many other people, but not until their empathy had fully matured and they had learned how to filter out everyone else's emotions. And Mervus's control was already shaky, having taken a huge beating when she was under Treptor's 'care,' carted around to different gambling planets. Keith didn't want to make it worse by introducing too many people, too soon.

Besides, there was something kind of nice about it. Just Keith, Mervus, and Kosmo out in the stars. A little family, sure, but a family nonetheless.

Keith had a family, and he wasn't going to let anything or anyone cause them harm.

Chapter Text

Krolia, true to her word, had obviously sped over to Keith's position on Dest_^. If his math was right, she had pushed her fighter to its absolute limits and hadn't taken a single break on the way.

Keith was grateful, having spent the past two days panicking about sudden fatherhood. Mervus, once she figured out the cause, was unconcerned, but that didn't really relieve Keith's stress.

That was something to think about. Mervus was an expert at telling what exact emotions Keith was feeling (often better than he himself could suss them out) but she didn't know the 'why.' She had known Keith was panicking and thought maybe they were in danger until Keith had explained everything. And then she had called him foolish, because Mervus knew he was going to be an excellent father.

Keith himself was not so sure. Mervus's goalposts were 'bigoted mother' and 'slaver.' Keith was an improvement, obviously, but could he figure out how to actually be a good parent?

Mervus was asleep when Krolia poked her head into the Denebola, and after she had paid Kosmo the required attention and treats, she sat with Keith in the cockpit in what could only be described as a debrief.

"You're doing well," she said, once Keith had gone over the important points again.

"How do you know?" Keith grumbled. She hadn't even seen Mervus yet, much less had seen Keith interact with her.

"That child spent a week with you and decided to reject everything she knew to stay with you. She made a choice. She trusts you."

"Only because her other options were shit."

"If I had shown up after your father died and said I could take care of you, but you'd need to leave everything you knew behind, would you have gone with me?"

Keith's breath caught in his throat. Since discovering that his mother was alive and well out there in the universe, that was something he had fantasized about. Being taken care of by someone who actually loved him instead of the travesty of the foster system.

His first instinct was to say 'yes, absolutely,' but then he stopped to really think about the question.

Would he, as a child not much older than Mervus, have given everything up? The desert he knew as home, the people around him, to go out into space with a woman who claimed to be his parent but looked nothing like him?

Keith left the question alone, in the end.

"It's not a fair comparison," he finally said.

Krolia hummed in concession. "The point still stands. True, her options may have been limited, but she still chose you. You need to trust her."

"She's a kid. Isn't it her job to trust me? I mean, yeah, she's an empath kid, but still a kid."

"An empath child that grew up very quickly. You can't treat her like an ignorant infant. She has seen parts of the universe that neither you nor I have much experience with."

That... was not reassuring. If anything, it meant that Keith was even less qualified for this task. It was like some cosmic power had just decided he didn't have enough responsibilities as a Blade vice-lieutenant and former paladin and said 'you know what else would be fun?'

"You are not required to do this," Krolia told him, practically reading his mind again. It was unsettling whenever she did that, but she also wasn't correct in this case.

"I told Mervus it was okay. I'm not going back on my word." He had experienced it far too many times. Too many foster parents had told him that they would work with Keith to make sure he was happy and comfortable in their home, only to give him up at the first behavioral problem. Too many social workers had told him that they would place him with the nicest families they could find, only to dump him somewhere neglectful or worse, at a group home.

The paladins had told him they would always be a family, only to leave Keith in the dust after the war was over.

Krolia might have been able to turn her back on her child, but Keith couldn't.

"If you're sure," she said.

"I'm sure." It was pretty much the only thing he was sure about.

Mervus chose that moment to make her way into the cockpit, obviously curious about the new person she would have been able to sense upon waking.

"Hey, Mervus," Keith automatically leaned down closer to her level, and she clamored up into his arms. "Did you sleep well?"

She likely hadn't, because she hadn't been sleeping well at all since they came back from Evae, but she still nodded shyly, hiding her face behind Keith's hair.

Yeah, Keith had felt a bit like that toward Krolia in the beginning, too.

"This is my mom," he told her. "She came to meet you."

He left the naming up to Krolia. Was she going to be "grandma?" "Grandmother?" Just "Krolia?" Keith was just Keith, after all.

"I am Krolia," she said, holding out an arm for a Galran handshake. Mervus leaned back, further into Keith's chest, and stared at the gesture.

It was then that Keith realized that his mother might never have interacted with a child of Mervus's age. Keith had been a baby when she left, and a teenager when they'd reconnected, and it wasn't as if Blade of Marmora bases or Galran war vessels were teeming with children.

"Can I go play with Kosmo?" Mervus whispered, and Keith choked off a laugh at Krolia's shocked expression.

"Yeah, go for it. Just don't go too far away from the ship, okay?"

"Okay," Mervus said, slipping off of Keith's lap and heading for the door, Kosmo giving an excited little boof on their way out.

"Don't take it personally, mom," Keith laughed. "Kosmo is perfection incarnate. Also, I'm pretty sure you were trying to repress your emotions, and that probably freaked her out."

"I didn't want her to realize that I was...afraid," she admitted.

"If you're trying to hide your emotions, she'll automatically think that the emotions you're hiding are dangerous to her." (Keith had made the same mistake himself yesterday, but he wasn't going to tell Krolia that). "You can't treat my empath daughter like a Blade mission."

Krolia's expression immediately soured, and she grumbled something under her breath that Keith didn't bother trying to make out.

"Do you want to make some breakfast? I have actual chicken eggs. Or, well, close enough to actual chicken eggs to not be able to taste the difference. We could do omelets."

"I might not be cut out for this," Krolia said in a small voice.

"Nah, I know you can make omelets."

"Keith."

"You're going to be fine," Keith assured her. "You just need to be less scary. I mean, what would you have done if you had stayed on Earth with dad? You would have figured it out, right? You wouldn't have just terrified kid me all the time."

Maybe if Keith needed to be the adult in this moment with his own parent, it was okay that Mervus was occasionally the adult between the two of them as well. Was this a normal thing with children?

Keith missed his dad.

"But she isn't you."

"No, she isn't," Keith agreed. And maybe it was a good thing. There was a large, possibly unhealthy part of Keith that had determined that, no matter what happened, Mervus wasn't going to have the same childhood that he had. She was going to grow up with a loving parent at all times.

It probably meant he was going to need to take fewer risks, he realized. He couldn't go into unstable situations without a plan and no one for back up except for the wolf if he wanted to make sure he came home every night.

Shiro would be proud. Or he would have been, if they had actually spoken to each other in years.

Ugh, he was getting maudlin again.

"Anyway. We do need to do something about breakfast, because Mervus will run around with Kosmo out there until she drops from exhaustion, and she'll be hungry after that."

"Right. Breakfast," Krolia agreed. "And I will try to be less scary."

"That's all I can ask," Keith said, patting her shoulder as they made their way to the kitchen.

One of the first things Keith did once the novelty of 'I suddenly have an empath child' wore off was to get Mervus a therapist. As much as Keith knew he was going to try his best at this whole fatherhood thing, he also knew when he was fully in over his head. He had acquired the basics about coping skills and mental illness from his own life, but there was a limit, and Mervus needed much more than he could give on that front.

"A what?" Mervus had asked when he suggested it, her nose wrinkling.

Ah. Right. A race of emotionless beings probably didn't have use for a therapist.

“It’s a person who helps you work through bad stuff that happened to you," Keith tried to explain, and Mervus didn't look convinced.

"That is you," she told him.

Well, she wasn't entirely wrong.

"You're right. I'm here, whenever you need me, for any reason. If you want to talk, I'm always here to listen. But therapists are a lot better at some stuff than I am. They know all sorts of stuff like how to make things less scary, and how to help you calm down, and other stuff like that."

"You do that," she said again, getting slightly agitated in her confusion. "You make things less scary, and you help me calm down. I don't need someone new."

Oh...

"Mervus, I'm not going anywhere. The therapist isn't going to replace me. They'll be someone you can talk to in addition to me."

"Oh," Mervus said, the fear clearing from her face. "Okay, then."

See, this was easy. Keith could totally handle this.

Keith had to do some searching and call in a few favors, because therapists were in incredibly high demand after the war, and especially therapists who focused on traumatized children. But, if it helped Mervus, Keith was more than willing to throw around the 'former paladin of Voltron' card. A friend of a cousin of a Blade agent had turned up someone promising who could make room in her schedule for a traumatized empathic child, and Keith had contacted her as soon as possible.

They had spoken briefly before Mervus's first appointment, so Keith could get a feel for her and know what the basic plan was going to be going forward. Dr. Xenarien had a low, gentle voice that automatically put Keith at ease, so hopefully it would do the same for Mervus. She had explained that the first few appointments would just be getting to know each other, and that any delving into trauma would be several movements down the road. It all made sense to Keith. He couldn't imagine Mervus would want to reveal all of her past troubles to a stranger.

Granted, she had done it with Keith, but he was pretty sure that was an anomaly.

"Hello, Mervus," she smiled at the beginning of the first appointment. "My name is Dr. Xenarien. You can also call me Dr. Zer, if you want. We're just going to chat a little bit today. Do you want Keith to stay with you for the session, or would you rather talk alone?”

“Want Keith,” she mumbled, her face already buried in his shoulder.

"That's fine," the doctor said, and Keith found himself calming a little at her delivery, hoping that the calm would spread to Mervus as well.

Dr. Xenarien, it was clear, was excellent at her job. Even through the video screen, she could immediately tell when she had touched a subject that Mervus didn't want to engage with and deftly changed topics. Keith even found himself learning a few things about Mervus's past that he hadn't thought to ask.

At the end of the session, it didn't surprise Keith when the doctor said she wanted to speak to him alone. She probably had suggestions for some strategies he could try if anything came up before the next session, and maybe some exercises they could do together.

“Bye-bye, Dr. Zer," Mervus said shyly, before loudly whispering to Keith that she wanted to go play with Kosmo. Keith nodded, and off she went.

"She is adjusting well, all things considered," Dr. Xenarien told him. "I suspect her empathy gives her more confidence in that area than a typical child, but her past upbringing also means she will likely need more encouragement to embrace and accept her own emotions."

Keith nodded in agreement. That made complete sense, and it tracked with what he'd observed from her in the short time they'd been together so far.

"I am also not sure of how that empathy may affect her own emotions. She might consciously or unconsciously mimic the emotions of those around her, regardless of what she is feeling herself. I'll try to do some research, but I suspect it will be difficult, given her unique position within Evalüir culture."

"I've been looking into that myself," Keith said, "but any help would be appreciated. I feel really out of my depth here."

"You're doing well," she told him. "However, if I may? It might do you good to talk to someone, as well. I mean no disrespect, but I’m going to forward you the names of some of my colleagues who work with veterans."

Keith stared at her—not in offense, but in shock. Luckily she seemed to tell the difference, and let the silence stretch as the idea tumbled around in his head.

"I'm fine," he finally said. He had made his peace with all his war trauma long ago. If anything, being part of Voltron had been the high point of Keith's life. It had been the one time he felt like he truly belonged, the one time he felt like he had a real purpose. When he imagined himself happy and content, his mind automatically took him back to the Castle of Lions.

The doctor assessed him with a shrewd eye. "I will forward you the names of some of my colleagues who work with people who experienced neglect and abandonment."

Okay, ouch.

Accurate, but still, ouch.

"Does that sound more appropriate?" she asked with a tiny, challenging smirk.

"Yeah," Keith said, defeated.

It was for Mervus's sake, he told himself. If he wanted to be the best parent he could, he would need to deal with his own mental health problems sooner or later.

"Excellent. Then I will see you both next movement. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the case of any emergencies."

Keith was just about to start figuring out what he could scavenge for dinner from the dregs of the refrigerator (he'd been putting off a supply stop for a while now, unsure of how Mervus would do with more people and emotions around, but he would need to deal with it sooner rather than later given the state of their stock) when someone knocked on the front door.

The Denebola was currently docked in the middle of nowhere on a planet he didn't even know the name of on the fringes of the Droa System, and Krolia had just left a few movements ago. She would have no reason to see him again so soon, and besides, she would have contacted him ahead of time if there was something she forgot or something she wanted to discuss in person.

"Go see who it is," he whispered to Kosmo. The wolf growled and poofed out of existence, before returning a few seconds later with a humph. Keith didn't know exactly how to take that, but it probably meant whoever was out there 1) didn't mean them any harm and 2) didn't have any snacks.

Still, Keith was a bit shocked when he opened the door to see Kolivan there, in all his overbearing glory.

"What are you doing here?" he asked before he could come up with something less rude to say to his commanding officer.

"Krolia told me you had a child now," Kolivan said.

"I told you I had a child now," Keith corrected.

"I did not expect it to be a permanent situation."

Keith's hackles raised on instinct. If Kolivan had come here to tell him that he had to choose between Mervus and the Blade, Keith knew full well what his decision would be, and he also knew that Kolivan wouldn't like it.

"Hush, kit."

"I'm not a kit," Keith grumbled, but he still stepped aside to let Kolivan onto the ship. You unknowingly join a group of intergalactic spies while being under the age of majority for their race one time, and your commanding officer never lets you live it down.

"I suppose that's true. Kits do not have their own children. Where is she?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because I would like to see her."

Kolivan was being deliberately obtuse about things, then. Well, two could play at that game. It was Kolivan himself that had taught Keith some of his best 'avoiding interrogation' techniques, after all.

"I've sent you multiple pictures of her. You know what she looks like. A personal visit wasn't necessary."

"I would like to meet her, then."

"I offered to set up a videocall. You said no," Keith reminded him.

"I thought it might be best not overwhelm her with videocalls."

That was bullshit. Kolivan liked to overwhelm everyone with videocalls. It was one of his very few hobbies since the Blade had become an aid organization. Why have one single message about a topic when you could have twenty different video meetings?

Keith was fully ready to kick Kolivan out of his ship, his home, Blade hierarchy be damned, when Mervus herself peeked around the corner from the living room.

"You're upsetting Keith," she informed him.

Kolivan's eyes flashed very, very briefly with something that might have been remorse, but was gone too quickly for Keith to really catalogue it.

He would need to remember to ask Mervus about it later.

"Apologies," Kolivan said. Whether it was directed at Keith or Mervus was anyone's guess.

"You are curious. And you are concerned."

Keith turned a questioning look in Kolivan's direction, pleased that, for once, Keith had the upper hand in a conversation with him. "Concerned, huh? What's got the Blade Commander concerned now?"

"Krolia informed me that Mervus was afraid of her at first. I want to make sure that I did not frighten her."

Mervus hummed a bit at him, her tail swishing behind her in a pattern Keith was beginning to associate with her particularly focusing in on one person's emotions to pick them apart, before she shrugged and wandered off down the hall. It wasn't exactly an answer, but it was a better greeting than Krolia had gotten.

"This was why you wanted to come in person," Keith realized. "You wanted her to be able to sense your emotions instead of just seeing you on a screen. You didn't want to freak her out." It didn't quite fit with Keith's view of and past experiences with Kolivan, who delighted in freaking people out by showing no emotions whatsoever. Maybe he was getting soft in his old age.

"In part. I also didn't quite believe you when you claimed she exhibited emotions. It is... atypical, to be sure."

"Yeah, I'm aware. I'm the one that saw how her home planet reacted to her, after all."

"I meant no offense to you or your child," Kolivan said.

"He is sincere!" Mervus yelled from a room down the hall, and Keith could almost convince himself that Kolivan was surprised.

"You seriously just took time out of your Blade schedule to hang out with me while I'm on leave so you could meet Mervus? In a setting where you would be less likely to scare her? Am I getting that right?"

Kolivan didn't answer.

"He is embarrassed!" Mervus shouted again, and Kolivan's expression fell into a pout.

Man, maybe he was getting soft.

"Do you want to stay for dinner?" Keith asked before he could think better of it.

"No, thank you. I need to be on my way." He was out the door before he even finished the sentence. Whether it was true, or he just didn't want to reveal any more emotions to Keith and Mervus, Keith wasn't sure. Regardless, it was the strangest conversation he had ever had with Kolivan, and that was saying something.

"He is a confusing person," Mervus said as they watched his ship take off.

"You don't even know the half of it."

Chapter Text

Since the Blade of Marmora version of "parental leave" was mostly "Kolivan will eventually tell you to go back on duty when he thinks you are ready to do so," it wasn't that much longer before Keith had mission orders waiting for him. Truthfully, that had probably been part of Kolivan's plan when he had visited them: to see how Mervus was settling in and how soon Keith would be ready for active duty again. Other Blade agents with children, few and far between though they were, got a longer time off. But Keith, whether he liked it or not, was the former Black Paladin, and that meant he was more "in demand" than a lot of the other agents. Whether they wanted to meet Keith for the novelty of saying they'd met a Paladin of Voltron, or whether it was the more practical response of a planet's population not quite trusting the Galra yet and wanting some extra assurances from the Voltron connection, the result was the same.

Keith could probably push it back, tell Kolivan that he wasn't ready, or Mervus wasn't ready, or claim he didn't get the message because of a weird nebula interfering with communications.

But truthfully, Keith wasn't sure he would ever really feel ready, so he might as well get it over with.

"Where are we going?" Mervus asked once Keith had explained the situation to her.

"A planet called Doran," Keith said once he looked over the report again. He hadn't heard of it before, but that wasn't saying all that much, considering the size of the universe. Still, he would have preferred to be sent to somewhere familiar. Maybe a check-up on a planet he had been to before, or at least somewhere closer to an existing base in case he needed backup. But there wasn't all that much Keith could do about it. What Kolivan wanted, he got, in the end.

He glanced over the briefing, calling most of it in as he skimmed over the important parts. Bipedal bird like people... feathers... diurnal... not capable of flight except for short bursts... no known warring between factions or other planets...

Good enough.

At least the task itself seemed fairly straight forward. Mostly a recon mission more than anything else. See how things were, see what they needed and what he could accomplish with the supplies he had, and then set up a larger supply transport if necessary.

All stuff he'd done before.

Granted, it was a lot more difficult to do those things while he was inwardly panicking about leaving Mervus alone for the first time. He trusted Kosmo to watch her and keep her safe, but what did it say about him as a parent that he was leaving his kid with a wolf for a babysitter?

This was a stupid idea. He should have gone with the "communications interference" excuse.

From the moment he docked and disembarked, his mind wasn't in the present moment. He vaguely noted that the planet was mostly green, though whether that actually translated to trees and potential farmland was up in the air. He hadn't looked over the briefing very thoroughly and wasn't sure if green meant photosynthesis on this planet or not.

He had to focus. He let himself slip into the blank diplomatic mask he used to wear for these kinds of things when he could just let Allura handle all the actual speaking, He was fully aware it wasn't ideal, and it wasn't the kind of energy he should be giving to this planet, which had done nothing but ask for aid, but his mind was just too distracted to give it his all.

It passed well enough during the initial introductions, at least. The Dornae didn't need much. They had heard about the informal network of planets and moons that the Blade was connecting through its aid work and had mostly been curious about joining. The one concrete assistance they wanted was some better water purification measures, since about once every fifty decaphoebs or so, a comet passed by close enough to their airspace to leech some toxic chemicals into most of their reservoirs. By their calculations, the next pass should be in a few phoebs. Plenty of time to set up a supply drop with one of the Blade teams that focused on that kind of thing and get them all set up.

Keith briefly allowed himself to think that maybe he would be able to get through this without any problems. He'd message Kolivan when he got back to the Denebola tonight and tell him they needed some water purification help, get them set up with some better communication tech, and then be on his way.

And then the minister and her aids brought him into the main city hall, a building that looked like it was made of solid obsidian, and informed him that they had prepared a room for him for the duration of his stay and that there was going to be an all-night banquet tomorrow to celebrate Doran connecting to the larger universe around them.

Oh, shit.

Leaving Mervus alone for a few hours was one thing. Leaving her alone for a few days?

That wasn't part of the plan.

"Is something the matter, Blade?" the minister said, suspicion very clear on her face.

"No, I'm sorry, everything is fine," Keith said, trying to clear his head. "I was just thinking about something I would need to get from my ship. Please, continue."

"Very well," she said after an uncomfortably long pause.

"You won't need anything from your vessel," one of the aids told him. "We have everything necessary for your stay here, and we were told that you would be able to set up our communications with your Commander without accessing the technology in your ship."

Well damn, it appeared his hosts had read the briefing on him, even if he had only skimmed the briefing on them.

"Yes, that's... true," he started, casting out for some easy explanation that wouldn't sound out of place.

How badly would he fuck up relations if he just bolted and left?

Too late.

One of the minister's guards put a knife to his neck before Keith could come up with an adequate excuse, and Keith was torn between apprehension and embarrassment, because how did this even happen to him?

"Perhaps this isn't even the real Vice-Lieutenant," she growled. "This might be a trick. I had heard stories of how valiant the Black Paladin was during the war, how calmly he handled diplomatic matters."

Keith dearly wanted to explain that whatever stories she had heard about diplomatic paladins had probably been Shiro or Allura, but that wasn't exactly going to help his case right now.

"Do you have an explanation for what seems to us deceit, Vice-Lieutenant?" the minister said. The knife shifted ever-so-closer to Keith's skin.

The truth was probably the best option Keith has, though it went against every single one of his new parental instincts to admit that his child was currently alone on a space ship being guarded only by a cosmic wolf whose communication style was slightly lacking.

"I didn't come here alone," Keith finally said, realizing a second too late how threatening that sounded without the context.

"Spies!" the guard with the knife hissed, and Keith wished, certainly not for the first time, that Allura was still with them. He really should have paid closer attention to all those lessons she tried to give him about how not to piss off alien races. In Keith's defense, he hadn't really thought he'd make it through the war to have to worry about diplomacy later.

Ironic, that it had been Allura they had lost, in the end, and not someone less important like Keith.

Damnit. Not the time for survivor's guilt. Not when there was actively sharp metal against his jugular.

"No, no, I'm not spying! It's my daughter!"

The shift in the minister and her guards and aids was immediate.

"You are with child?" the minister asked.

Keith automatically blanched because no, that is not what he meant at all, until it occurred to him that it was just a translation issue.

"Yes. She's on my ship. I just adopted her about a phoeb ago." Well, for a certain definition of the word "adoption."

"Only a phoeb and your commander insists you return to work? What kind of organization would ask this of you?"

One that had started out as a bunch self-sacrificial soldiers with the emotional range of a teaspoon, but he wasn't going to tell them that.

"It's fine," (it wasn't) "I just hadn't realized I would be away from her for that long."

"Of course," the minister said. "Such a request would be barbaric of us. Please. We will accompany you back to your ship while my aids prepare a more suitable room for you both."

Well, it solved the issue of Keith accidentally making himself look incredibly suspicious, but he wasn't sure Mervus would be able to handle a planet full of strange emotions for that long.

"Is there somewhere farther away from the main city we could stay?" Keith asked the minister quietly as they made their way back to the Denebola. He was fairly sure the guards trailing them heard him anyways, but he didn't want to broadcast much about Mervus's identity if he could help it.

"Such protective nature is only expected of a new parent, but I give you my oath that your daughter will be safe within the hall. It is after all where many of our own children stay until they are ready to leave the nest. Children are precious, and no one would dare to harm her."

Good to know, but also not the point.

"It isn't that I don't trust your safety measures," Keith assured her. "It's just... Mervus gets overwhelmed around a lot of people."

The minister turned a shrewd eye to him. "Telepathic?" she asked eventually, and Keith was too shocked to lie.

"Empathic, actually."

The minister nodded. "One of our neighboring races are largely telepathic beings. We have several rooms designed to dampen the thoughts of those outside the walls for when they send delegations our way. We will see if those rooms are accommodations enough for your daughter's abilities, and go from there."

"Thank you," Keith said gratefully, marveling at the serendipity of it.

And then he realized it wasn't serendipity at all. It was Kolivan. Meddling, as always. He could have said something about it.

Mervus was waiting for them the moment Keith opened the Denebola's main door, Kosmo right at her side, still as a statue and waiting for Keith's word to either attack or teleport them away from danger.

It wasn't necessary, because the minister immediately bent down to coo at how precious Mervus was, how brave she was for staying by herself, how lovely the feather-like hair on her head was. Keith shot Mervus a confused look from behind the minister, only to receive a few innocent blinks from Mervus.

Well, alright then.

As they made their way back to the main square and the hall, Mervus riding on Keith's shoulders and Kosmo bounding around behind them, chasing butterflies, it was astounding to see the Dornae's reactions. They barely gave Kosmo a second look before they converged on Mervus, trying to get close without surrounding her.

"They are curious, and... happy?" Mervus explained with a tilt of her head. It tugged at Keith's entire being that 'happiness' was an emotion Mervus had trouble placing.

"Children are precious," the minister said to them again. "Our own young generally do not go outdoors much until their full feathers come in, for fear of sunburning the skin. To see a child out in the open is rare, regardless of the child's race."

Still, despite the clear welcome, Keith could feel Mervus's tension the farther they walked. She hadn't been around this many people since Keith had picked her up from that casino planet, and their emotions were starting to get to her.

"This way," the minister said, sensing the problem and leading Keith down a side path toward the hall. The inside of the hall was a maze, the shiny reflective stones it was made of not helping matters, and eventually Keith was sure they would need an escort to make it out without getting hopelessly lost. But it was all worth it when an aid met up with them and showed them to a room that seemed to have some extra paneling added to it, and Mervus slumped against the top of his head in relief.

"Better?" Keith asked.

"Everyone else's feelings have gone away," she said.

"What is this shielding made of?" Keith asked. Something that could dampen the emotions around them would be good to have on hand if this kind of thing continued.

"You are free to take some with you when you depart, Vice-Lieutenant," the minister said, and one of the aids scurried away, presumably to prepare the samples. "However, you should be aware that it seems to lose its properties when it leaves Doran's atmosphere. We're still unsure of what exactly causes the interaction."

Well, it was worth a try, anyway.

The rest of the trip went smoothly. Mervus made brief journeys out of their room, always accompanied by a couple of the minister's aids, who made sure that she didn't get too crowded. Kosmo stayed with them, as well, so Keith felt secure enough to see to a few other things on his own while Mervus explored. She even managed a couple vargas at the party before Keith forced her back inside when she started whimpering in pain.

It was a nice visit, all in all. Keith had a few choice words for Kolivan when he set up the request for the water purification team, mostly "if you want to meddle in stuff, you could at least tell me about it so I'm not caught unaware later." Kolivan didn't respond to those, but, then again, Keith hadn't expected him to.

"That was fun," Mervus told Keith as they disembarked from the planet, already en route to their next stop.

Maybe Keith wasn't going to be a horrible parent, after all.

Keith sat in the cockpit with his personal datapad, stupidly nervous.

It was going to be fine. People did therapy all the time. In fact, his daughter was one of them, and he was the one who had made her get a therapist in the first place.

But he'd put this off for.... awhile, and it was only when Dr. Xenarien asked about it again at the end of Mervus's last session and Keith had fumbled too much to convincingly lie that he had finally done something about it.

But it was going to be fine. He'd gone with Xenarien's first choice, and he assumed Pli would be similar to xir colleague, soothing and calm and picking very gently at Keith's experiences. Keith had fought wars, he had fought a little immortal emperor, twice. He could handle therapy.

So it was a shock for him during their first session, one he set up for later at night so he wasn't concerned about Mervus freaking out about any emotional upheaval he felt, that the first words out of his therapist's mouth, before even any kind of introductions, were:

"Are you happy?"

Keith could only sit there, dumbfounded, without an answer.

"Are you?" xe asked again, after letting the silence stretch on for a few dobashes.

"I don't really know."

"Yes you do," xe prodded.

Wow. Pli didn't pull any punches.

"...No," Keith eventually admitted.

"Excellent."

Keith's face did something he was hoping universally translated to 'what the fuck?' and Pli rolled xir eyes.

"You know what I mean. In order for me to start helping you, you need to realize you need help. Zer told me you thought you were 'fine.'"

"Isn't that against doctor-patient confidentiality?" As he said it, Keith realized he wasn't sure if that was a universal concept.

"You aren't Zer's patient," xe shrugged.

Maybe this was a mistake. He didn't need someone to tell him how unhappy he was. He already knew that. He'd been hoping for someone to calmly tell him that all his feelings were valid and that things were going to be ok.

"Do you trust Dr. Xenarien?" Pli asked.

"Yeah, of course I do. She's really helping Mervus."

"So you think she's a good therapist? You've had a couple phoebs worth of sessions you've sat in on with your daughter, correct?"

"Yeah...?"

"So she has sort of teased out your emotions, in a proxy sense. And yet she didn't tell you to get a nice, gentle therapist like her. She put me on the top of your list. See where I'm going?"

Keith did see, even if he didn't particularly like it. Dr. Xenarien thought he needed a more tough love approach to therapy.

She was probably right.

That didn't mean Keith had to be happy about it.

"So. I'm going to tell you what my first impressions are of you. All you need to do is sit back and listen, and then tell me how correct I am. Does that sound good?"

"It sounds terrifying," Keith said.

"Then we're on the right track. You fought long and hard the moment you entered the war, and I heard from a pretty reliable source that you once tried to take Zarkon on by yourself. That source also informed me that during the course of the war, you took several life-threatening risks. You likely have done dangerous things before and after the war, as well. You've been lucky each time, but you know eventually that luck will run out. And yet, you keep doing it.

"I don't believe you're seeking the thrill or the rush of these actions. If that were the case, I think you would be much more visible and up front with your actions. So, the contrary, then. You do not value your own life. Or, at least, you consider your own life of lesser importance than others. You take on the risks so that they don't have to.

"Why do you value your own life so little? Because you have been taught how to do so. Maybe not in so many words, but by actions. I am aware that the Paladins had an incredible bond, in order to fight the Galra Empire and make the most of Voltron's power. I am also aware that you have not been seen so much as near one of the other Paladins in decaphoebs. A falling out, perhaps?

"But a falling out is unlikely. You inherently dislike interpersonal conflict when it involves yourself, so you let people walk all over you and never voice a complaint, never voice your own wants or desires. That speaks to severe abandonment issues and lack of attachment. This kind of abandonment only stems from decaphoebs of no support. Decaphoebs of actual abandonment, likely starting at a very early age, that has hardwired your mind to accept loneliness and isolation and the inevitable conclusion of all of your relationships.

"How am I doing so far?"

"I'm not lonely," Keith croaked out eventually, the one tiny piece he could argue with. "I have a kid."

"And do you intend to burden that child with all of your emotional baggage?"

"No, of course not." Keith wasn't an idiot. He had enough emotional awareness to know that he was already dumping all his feelings on Mervus, whether he wanted to or not. He wasn't going to make it worse by actually telling her all this stuff.

"Good. However, it still means that, despite personal connection, you are likely still lonely and isolated. You have no real peers of your own, and haven't for quite some time. Colleagues in the Blade of Marmora, but nothing stronger."

"My mom..." Keith tried.

"...who you still resent, deep down, for contributing to your abandonment."

"I... it wasn't her fault."

"Well, then, whose was it? Was it yours?"

"I was a baby."

"That's not an answer," Pli said.

Keith just blinked, struggling to come up with an answer. In general, it had been Zarkon's fault, but he was pretty sure xe wasn't going to buy that response.

"We can come back to that. My goals, and hopefully your goals, as well, are to help you make lasting connections. To help you see past years of mental trauma and believe that not everyone will disappear, as so many others have done in your life. I've found what helps some patients is to think of me as a sort of inner voice, the voice of themselves as children, at the very start of their abandonment. At the very start of when you began to see people leaving, when you still believed that people would stay."

"You're not going to force me to make amends with people, are you?" Keith asked.

"Not unless you want to," xe shrugged. "If they have hurt you, you owe them nothing."

That didn't feel quite right, but Keith was content enough with the answer. For now.

"I think maybe I hate you a little bit," Keith said at the end of the session, feeling more miserable and wrung out than he had in a very long time.

Pli grinned, all sharp, sharklike teeth. "And didn't I tell you to think of me as your conscience? The voice of the little child that just wanted to be loved?"

"So I guess I hate him too, then," Keith grumbled.

"Hmm. Do you?"

"Ugh."

Xe just laughed, the bastard.

"I'll see you next movement. In the meantime, I want you to keep track of moments of connection with people who are not your daughter. And please let me know if your aid work requires a reschedule."
The moment the videocall cut out, Keith slumped against the steering column, and then let himself flop onto the floor of the cockpit. He wanted to do nothing but cuddle Kosmo for the next three days straight while someone else took care of him.

Maybe that was the point. Break him down and then put him back together again in a healthier way.

Regardless, it sucked, and he was glad that Mervus seemed to have slept through the whole experience.

It wasn't that late, but once he dragged himself off the floor, he decided to go to bed early, other responsibilities be damned.

But not before he put in a request for Kolivan to temporarily remove him from what was informally termed the "dangerous mission" roster.

Pli had jabbed salt into every single one of Keith's emotional wounds, but xe had been right. Most Blade members did perhaps a movement or so per decaphoeb on the dangerous mission roster, since there were still occasionally risky situations with unstable planets or uncharted regions of space that needed aid. Keith had put his name on the list immediately at the end of the war. He had never taken it off.

He toppled into bed fully clothed just as his datapad pinged with a message from Kolivan:

Finally.

I have permanently removed you from the roster. Any attempts to reinstate yourself will be denied.

Chapter Text

Everything about integrating Mervus into his Blade work had been going mostly smoothly, so far. After that disastrous near miss on Doran, Keith had started announcing that he had a kid with him on approach. Sometimes Keith's instincts told him to leave Mervus with Kosmo on the Denebola, expecting heated negotiations, or air that wouldn't be safe for her to breathe (he'd gotten her her own custom space suit very early on, just in case, but she didn't like wearing it unless it was absolutely necessary), or something else that just made Keith feel like she'd be safer away from the action. It meant leaving Kosmo behind,which always caused Keith's own anxiety to flare up. He'd gotten used to having the wolf at his back in case anything went wrong, and suddenly that wasn't an option. It was still worth it, if it meant not leaving Mervus alone, even if Kolivan disagreed.

But it was still nice to take breaks, as well. Mervus seemed to adjust well enough to being carted around the universe, but Keith still tried to build in stops where they could both relax and where Kosmo could run around and get his energy out. So during a jaunt between the Trisona and Belldri Systems, Keith parked them on Triw's moon for a few days. Breathable air, vegetation he could forage while Mervus rode around on Kosmo's back, giggling the whole time. A nice chance to stretch their legs and not worry about diplomacy for a bit.

So Keith was a bit peeved when he tried to lay down against Kosmo's side for an indulgent little nap and was rudely awoken by someone pounding on the Denebola's door.

He really wished people would stop ambushing him like that. He had a datapad for a reason.

"Kosmo," he grumbled, still half-asleep, and the wolf obligingly poofed outside to see who their unwelcome visitor was.

It took Kosmo several minutes to return, during which time Keith got progressively more concerned that he'd gotten the wolf into more trouble than he could handle, but finally he reappeared in a shower of sparks.

There was a note tied around his neck, but what drew Keith's attention more were the two bows attached to his ears.

"What the f...." Right. Child on board. "...fudge."

Mervus looked over in confusion. "They gave him fudge?"

"No, it's..." Keith hesitated. Did the Evalüir even have a concept of 'swearing?' Besides, she'd probably heard worse with Treptor. Not that that made it okay.

"Never mind. No fudge," he settled on, finally pulling at the note at Kosmo's neck.

Ah. Well, that explained a few things.

One of them pounded on the door again. He might as well let them in before they started trying to shoot out the seal, because he knew they would. Eventually.

"Who do I have to thank for giving away my coordinates?" Keith asked in greeting as he yanked open the ship's door. Ezor immediately crashed into him, all but screaming in his ear.

"YOU HAVE A CHILD!"

"Ezor, calm down," Zethrid said from behind her. Keith was momentarily grateful, before Zethrid herself stepped up to hoist Keith into the air and shake him. "This is a better interrogation tactic," she explained.

"It was Kolivan who gave away your coordinates," Acxa said, still in the doorway, waiting politely for Keith to actually let her into his home.

Of course. Keith had eventually figured out that it was Kolivan who had spilled all the unhealthy beans to Pli about Keith's misadventures during the war. Apparently this was just the next step in Kolivan's plan to... Keith wasn't sure exactly what Kolivan's plan was.

"YOUR CHILD!" Ezor yelled again.

Keith debated lying and saying Mervus was sick or with Krolia or something, but he was pretty sure the sooner he let them examine her, the sooner they'd all go away.

And besides, Mervus wasn't doing much to hide away; she was mostly staring at them in abject confusion from across the room, which at least meant that no one had any murderous intent.

Small mercies.

"There you are!" Ezor said as she pounced on Mervus. "My name is Ezor," she explained, gentler, as she knelt down to get closer to Mervus's height, while Zethrid looked on with what Keith could only describe as 'besottedness.' "You have such beautiful hair!"

"We brought gifts!" Zethrid said, producing a large sack of toys, games, and candy like she was a Galra warlord version of Santa Claus.

Keith wondered how Krolia would feel if he told her that Lotor's former generals were better with kids than she was.

Best to just not tell her that.

"I tried to explain to them that you would have preferred a warning, but they thought you'd escape if you had advance notice," Acxa said as they both watched from the sidelines as Ezor, Zethrid, and Mervus all began to get on like a house on fire. It was probably true enough.

"Hey, are you still with Veronica?" Keith asked.

"If by 'with,' you mean..."

"Child present," Keith reminded her with a raised brow.

"Yes, Veronica and I are still together. She has begun hinting at an Earth marriage."

"Yikes. Good luck." Keith admittedly didn't know most of the McClains well, but he could imagine how extravagant one of their weddings would be.

"Thank you. But I can imagine that you had another reason for asking?"

"Can you... not tell her about Mervus?"

It wasn't that Keith cared so much about Veronica's thoughts and opinions. Keith had liked Veronica, what little he'd interacted with her. The much larger problem was that Veronica would undoubtedly tell Lance, and that just didn't sit right with Keith. Lance would either drop everything and show up, likely with the other Paladins in tow, just so he could tell Keith he was a horrible parent and whisk Mervus away. Or Lance would do absolutely nothing.

Keith wasn't sure which option would be more painful. Best to just avoid it altogether.

Acxa's face told him she was reading him as well as Mervus could, but she eventually nodded.

"No one will hear of Mervus's existence from me. I will pass on that message to those two, as well," she said, nodding toward where Zethrid was lightly tossing Mervus into the air and catching her while Ezor looked on with glee. Kosmo had several more bows in his fur.

"Thanks," Keith said. As strange as it was, he could trust these three.

"We have some gifts for you, as well," Acxa said, but before she could continue, Ezor had inserted herself between the two of them.

"Why didn't you tell me I was an aunty?" she cried, crocodile tears already on her face.

"Remember, Keith had to go through the Astoriaxkar first," Acxa said, lightly shoving Ezor away for some breathing room.

"Astoriaxkar?"

"It is the period at the beginning of Galra parentage, during which you and your child become accustomed to each other and you attack anyone who comes close," Zethrid explained. "You embrace your feral emotions to protect your kit."

Huh. Maybe that was why he'd been more pissed off about Kolivan's visit than normal. The whole adoption process had been a bit unorthodox, and while Keith called Mervus his child, she still called him "Keith" (given her former experience with parents, Keith had no desire to push for Mervus to refer to him as anything else). But maybe there were some things about this that were normal for Keith's Galra side.

"Still," Ezor said. "Hurtful, Keith."

"You'll get over it," Acxa said. "Anyway, we should give Keith his gifts before he kicks us out of the ship."

"You guys really didn't need to get me anything," Keith tried.

"Of course we did! Here," Ezor said, spinning around him and draping some kind of heavy blanket on his shoulders. The moment it fully settled, some combination of warmth and pressure squeezed into all his sore muscles, and Keith's breath punched out of his chest in surprised relief.

"That's supposed to be for new nesting mothers, but we figured you could use a bit of stress relief, too," Acxa said. Keith could only hum vaguely in response.

"Your other gift is that we're taking over your parental duties for today," Zethrid informed him. "Cleaning, making dinner, everything else. You can just go relax with your blanket while we take care of you. You are a fragile new parent, after all," she finished with a grin.

Keith didn't even have it in him to argue that he wasn't a 'fragile new parent.' Hell, maybe he was.

"How do you feel about that, Mervus?" he asked.

"I am intrigued. They are entertaining," she said. That was high praise, coming from her.

"Okay," Keith relented. "Don't set my ship on fire."

Keith wondered, as he shuffled his way down to his room to continue his nap, whether this counted as that "personal interaction and connection" bullshit Pli was talking about. And then wondered what it meant that his "peers" were former imperial warlords.

Maybe it made sense? They'd all been abandoned and hurt, in their own ways. Like attracts like, after all.

He'd worry about it when he woke up.

Little by little, Dr. Xenarien teased at the pieces of Mervus's past and experiences over the course of several sessions. Keith was present for most of them, but sometimes she (or, very rarely, Mervus herself) asked for Keith to give them some privacy. Keith's own therapy continued to be more of a punch to the face than anything else, but at least one of them was making progress. Now, in addition to Mervus blurting out Keith's emotions, or Krolia's, or those of the aliens Keith was called on to visit and assist for Marmora missions, Mervus would occasionally inform Keith of her own. It was a little stilted, and the first time Mervus sat there during dinner and said "I am content" Keith almost teared up. But it was a lot of progress.

And then one night as Keith was charting their course around an unexpected solar storm, he was suddenly shot through with debilitating terror.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong!

Keith made his way to Mervus's room as fast as his unsteady legs would carry him. It felt like the ship was being tossed from side to side, throwing him into the walls, even though Keith had just checked all of their headings and knew their flight pattern was stable.

He crashed to the ground when he reached her room, legs too weak to support him, fear clawing at his throat. It was dark, but he could see a huge, shadowy figure at the side of her bed. He needed to get up, grab his knife, protect her, but he couldn't.

Kosmo, finally roused from his own nap, darted into the room, but then faltered, whining in confusion. Keith pointed at the shape hovering over Mervus with a raspy command to attack, but all Kosmo did was follow Keith's hand and then snap back to Keith. Could the wolf not see it somehow? Maybe it was some kind of shade, something that was invisible to animals?

There was another stab of fear, and he found himself desperately wishing his dad were here. He wanted to be wrapped in his arms and protected and...

That didn't make sense.

Why his dad? Against a weird shapeless space monster, Krolia would be a much better candidate, and someone who could feasibly appear.

Oh, fuck.

Keith thought he understood what was going on, why Kosmo couldn't see anything. There wasn't anything there to see. It wasn't his panic that was choking him...it was Mervus’s. She must have somehow projected her fear onto him, and that was new and might be a problem but in the meantime, he needed to figure out how to wake her up. That would hopefully snap her out of whatever this was.

Only he was too terrified to think straight, even knowing what the cause was.

"Bed," he managed to gasp, and Kosmo immediately took the order in the way Keith intended it, wrapping around Mervus; not close enough to touch, but close enough for Mervus to recognize him as a source of warmth and safety.

Ever-so-slowly, the all-encompassing panic faded away, and Keith slid all the way to the floor in relief.

Mervus, thankfully, seemed to have slept through the entire thing. He wasn't sure how he would have explained his fear to her.

There was a very large part of him that wanted to crawl into his own bed and hide under the covers, but that would have to wait. He needed to know what this was and be prepared in case it happened again.

But all his searches turned up absolutely nothing. Given the cultural contexts on Evae, it might be that only the empaths who felt emotions could project them like Mervus had. If that was the case, he was basically stumped.

He considered, for a brief moment, contacting Coran, who, even without the Castleship’s databases, seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of alien races. But Coran was a busy person, and probably had too many other things to take care of already, and besides, Coran would inevitably make him feel guilty about the fact that he hadn’t seen him or any of the former paladins in years.

Dr. Xenarien, then. She had said to contact her in case of emergencies, and this definitely felt like an emergency. She probably wouldn't know anything more about the mechanics of why this was happening, but she might have some tips for dealing with the aftermath.

She picked up the videocall almost immediately, clearly alert and awake despite what Keith was pretty sure was the middle of the night for her timezone.

"Is everything alright?" she asked.

The residual panic made it hard to explain, but he managed to give her a basic account of what had just happened.

"Empathic projection is, as you probably know, unheard of among the Evalüir. However, there are some races that do experience this phenomenon in more documented ways. I'll look into the research on those and ask around, and I'll send you anything that seems like it might be helpful, either for preventing or mitigating these projective events."

"Thanks," Keith said. Already, it was helping just to talk to someone who had an actual plan as opposed to aimless fear.

"How are you feeling?" she asked. "This must have been a shock."

That was one way to describe it.

"It was rough, but I'm getting there."

"Good. I think this is all the help I can offer for now, but I'll send you anything useful as soon as I find it."

They disconnected the call and Keith moved around the ship feeling like an emotionally wrung out zombie, checking things that didn't need to be checked until he felt calm enough that sleep might be possible. It still took hours, but eventually he started to fall into a half doze.

It wasn’t until he was almost asleep that he jolted up with the realization. If he was feeling Mervus’s emotions, and he had imagined wanting his father, did that mean….?

Chapter Text

Kolivan had been keeping Keith's mission schedule pretty tame, all things considered. 'Go here and check up on this known planet. Go here and check up on this other known planet. Go here and rendezsvous with Acxa to investigate this somewhat unknown planet.' Keith was grateful, but it also meant he felt like he was getting a little bit out of practice with the more dangerous side of diplomacy, so he when Kolivan told him he was being requested for a solo meetup with Steriayns, a planet out in the Jeg System that hadn't been on the Blade's radar before this, Keith agreed. The fact of being the former Black Paladin meant that sometimes, Keith had to go into slightly dangerous situations, whether he liked it or not.

So off they went to Steriayns. It seemed like a pretty simple ask, from the mission brief. The planet's government wanted to get in contact with the Blade and see what they could mutually do for each other, but they were still hesitant to trust Galra. Enter Keith, the Blade's main bargaining chip.

Everything seemed fine, at first. They were met by the planet's ministers, the leader of of whom introduced herself as Shefhek.

Keith was looking at the governors, he really was, but he couldn't help but notice Mervus stiffening up at his side. He kept an eye on her as he continued to speak with the ministers, but she got more and more agitated as the conversation went on, until...

"Dad!" she cried, grabbing at Keith's hand, and it stopped him in his tracks.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked, willing his voice not to break. This was not the time to get emotional about fatherhood.

Mervus, it seemed, didn't expect to get this far. Eventually she settled on, "I'm sick."

He had the inane desire to reply with 'Hi Sick, I'm Dad,' but he highly doubted that Mervus would understand the reference. Instead, he knelt down; his immediate instinct was to press the back of his hand against her forehead, though he knew she couldn't get a fever like he could.

"Do you want Kosmo to take you back to the ship?" Keith asked.

"No, I want you, I'm afraid to go by myself," she said. And that was that.

"Sorry about this, but you know how it is," Keith told the governors. "I'll be back as soon as I can, but I'll radio ahead to you if it's going to be a while."

"Of course, please take care of your child," Shefhek said. The others seemed perfectly fine with the idea, except the one on the far right, whose name Keith had already forgotten. Keith noticed his face twist in anger out of the corner of his eye before the expression vanished.

Once they were well on their way back the Denebola and out of earshot of the governors, Mervus tugged on his hand again.

"I'm not sick," she admitted.

Keith had already suspected that was the case. "You sensed something up with their emotions?"

"Just the one on the end," she said, her voice hushed. "He felt... inky."

Keith wasn't quite sure what to do with that.

"Angry, but happy about it?" she continued. "I have not felt this type of emotion before."

Vengeful, maybe? Though vengeful over what, Keith wasn't sure.

"What about the others?" he asked. He wondered if it would be acceptable to just cut and run.

"They felt sincere. I didn't notice anything wrong with them."

So probably not ideal to cut and run. But definitely a situation in which Keith should have backup, and it probably hadn't been a coincidence that he had been asked to come alone in the first place. This had been planned out in advance, and Keith had accidentally thwarted some kind of plot by bringing his empath daughter and cosmic wolf along with him.

But it was one thing to know he needed backup and another thing to figure out how to get it. Keith was pretty far from any of the other Blade teams he would trust to have his back in a fight, and Krolia and Kolivan were both on Daibazaal.

Mervus's claws dug into Keith's palm, even through the Blade armor.

"He's following us," she whispered.

Well. So much for backup.

"Kosmo, take Mervus back to the ship," he commanded. The wolf barked once and did as he was told even as Mervus yelled that Keith would need their help.

And then he waited.

"I see the former Black Paladin is just as cunning and resourceful as I had been led to believe," the man said as he came into the clearing.

"I aim to please."

"Not that any of it will help you, in the long run."

"What's your deal?" Keith asked. He was only mildly curious about the actual plan. Mostly, he wanted to keep the Steriayn talking while he figured out how to handle things. Without the other governors there, Keith didn't know how he was going to explain killing one of their own in self-defense. This was one of those times when he'd need to reply on diplomacy instead of violence.

In other words, he didn't have high hopes for the situation.

"I didn't want to harm you. Yet."

"Hostage situation?"

"Yes. I need you to bring the Lions of Voltron back into this plane of existence."

"What?" Keith couldn't help but ask. If that was actually the plan, Keith might be willing to hear him out. He wouldn't mind having access to the Lions again.

"Indeed," he smirked. "I have been learning all I can of Altean alchemy, and I am certain that if I kill the previous Voltron Paladins, the Lions will attempt to come to their aid, and I can control Voltron myself."

Keith was less inclined to listen now, if it meant he was about to sacrificed on some kind of alchemic altar. He also kind of wanted to argue, because he felt like that wasn't how Altean alchemy worked, but the sheer amount of times Red and Black had gone and fetched Keith's impulsive ass out of trouble on their own said the man might actually have a point.

"Okay, interesting plan. But why start with me? The other Paladins are mostly civilians, at this point." As he said it, Keith hoped he hadn't missed the news that the others had already been abducted. Kolivan would have told him about that, right?

"You were the Black Paladin. If I tell the others that I've captured you, they'll come running."

They would not coming running. Of this, Keith was all but certain.

It felt like a mistake to say that to someone who had just admitted that he planned to kill Keith as some kind of weird blood sacrifice to entice the Lions to return to this plane of existence. Still, it was a relief knowing that he didn't need to worry about mounting his own rescue mission.

"What are you going to do about the Blue Lion's Paladin?" he asked instead. Getting Allura out of the aether of the universe in order to kill her was going to be no easy task.

"I believe using a proxy in her former advisor should be successful."

Ah, well. At least he was prepared.

"So, you're going to tell the other governors that..."

"That you had to take your child to the doctor and will return in several quintants. By the time they realize the deception, my plan will already be in motion."

"Right. Okay."

Keith wasn't concerned about needing to take the Steriayn in a fight. Keith kept his own fighting abilities in good shape—play-fighting with a cosmic wolf and sparring with former Galra warlords would do that to a guy—but it still meant trying to explain to the other governors why he'd killed their colleague in seemingly cold blood. They'd have to take Keith's word over their colleague's about crazy Altean schemes, and it didn't bode well.

Nothing for it, though.

Keith shifted his stance, unsheathed his blade, and sent up a useless call for help to wherever Allura currently existed for some advice about how to deal with the diplomatic aftermath.

And then a voice from behind them snapped "That's enough!"

There, hidden in the brush, were Shefhek, Mervus, and Kosmo.

Oh, thank fuck.

Maybe he should start sending up helpless pleas to Allura more often.

"I want to visit your home planet," Mervus said one day, out of the blue. He had no idea what had prompted the idea. Keith felt like he had always lived in the Denebola by this point, and it was certainly the only place he and Mervus had lived with the exception of short stints planetside for Blade aid work.

"Daibazaal?” Keith asked. He was probably being a little obtuse, but at times that felt more like a "home planet." That’s where his house was, at least, even if he hadn’t stepped foot inside it for nearly two years. Although Mervus had already seen Daibazaal, after spending a few days with Krolia during a rougher mission that Keith hadn't wanted to expose her to.

"No, where you grew up. ...Human?"

"Earth,” Keith corrected automatically. They'd spoken only briefly about it when Keith had tried to explain birthdays and Christmas to her. She had obviously gathered some information—some from Krolia but mostly from Keith's emotions—that Keith wasn't particularly comfortable thinking about it. But he also didn't have any meaningful reason not to take her to visit. It wasn’t actually that far from their current position, and Kolivan had ordered him to take a vacation. 'I don't wanna' seemed like too childish a reason to reject the request, especially when the request came from his own daughter.

If Kolivan had any thoughts about him requesting to land using the generic Blade of Marmora landing codes instead of his own personal one, he said nothing about it, just silently approved the request, unreadable as always over the videocall.

(Krolia thought he was for some reason training both Keith and Mervus to read his emotions without the benefit of Mervus's empathy. For what purpose, none of them knew. Maybe it was just residual intergalactic war-induced paranoia).

With the basic Blade landing information and Keith's mask fully activated, Kosmo begrudgingly teleporting to the shack before anyone can see him and put two and two together, no one bothered Keith and Mervus as they walked through the Garrison's halls and even borrowed a hoverbike. The Garrison had truly just gotten used to aliens popping in and out without batting an eye, and Keith was incredibly thankful. What would have been even worse than someone spotting them on the way in would be someone discovering Keith's deception and then asking awkward questions about why he didn't want to announce his presence on Earth.

Keith took them to the shack first, mostly to pick up Kosmo, but also to show Mervus what was left of his childhood home.

Nothing had changed much, with the shack. James Griffin, of all people, kept it in good shape, something he decided to do apparently as apology for how he had treated Keith at the Garrison. Keith had tried multiple times to tell Griffin that it wasn't necessary, but he had insisted, and Keith wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Kosmo was familiar with the shack but, to his dismay, was officially too big to fit on the sofa and had had to content himself with stretching out across the porch with a sad pout.

Mervus wandered the shack almost reverently, and Keith found himself wondering if she could somehow pick up on latent, old emotions. Gods knew there would be enough of them here, considering how Keith had spent most of the year after the Garrison booted him alternately wandering the desert searching for the Blue Lion's signal and lying on the couch, too bereft to move.

It always hurt to think about that year, moreso now than it had in the past. Back then, Keith had lost the one person who really mattered because he had been abducted by aliens. Now, Shiro was just off in retirement with his husband, while the rest of their friends went on with their lives and Keith tried not to feel upset and betrayed by their decisions. They were all adults. Everyone could do what they wanted, and it wasn't Keith's place to ask them to stay in touch just because he didn't have the support networks they did, but it still stung to compare his adult life against the fantasy he'd created while he huddled in the shack during that year, cut off from everyone else. That version of Keith had thought that maybe someday, he'd have a big, loving family of his own.

By the expression Mervus threw him from the shack's tiny kitchen, he wasn't doing a good job at keeping those emotions at bay.

"What do you think?" he asked her, mostly to distract himself.

She just raised an eyebrow and continued her exploration of the space.

He took her to the cemetery next. Not exactly a typical sightseeing excursion on Earth, but Mervus had asked about Keith's father enough times that she ought to meet him. And it was close enough to reach by hoverbike, Kosmo easily keeping pace as he ran alongside them.

"This is how humans prepare their dead," he explained as Mervus looked around the cemetery in confusion. "Or at least, humans where I come from. We bury their body underneath the ground, and then place these markers above the graves."

"He was good?" Mervus asked.

"Yeah. He was good. He was the best dad I could have asked for. He would have loved you."

"You should tell him that," she said, grabbing hold of Kosmo and leading him down the path until Keith was alone in the cemetery.

Sometimes, he really did feel like Mervus was the adult in this relationship.

"Hey, Dad. I'm sorry I haven't visited you recently." Massive understatement. The last time he had been here was the time he'd gone with Krolia, after she had returned from rounding up members of the Blade of Marmora and Keith had healed up from the impact of the Black Lion slamming into the Earth's surface. He'd just been busy, after that. There was a war to fight, and then there were people who needed aid after the war. It didn't help that Earth no longer felt particularly welcoming.

Keith told his father's grave none of these things.

"I've had my hands full, as you can see. I wish...I wish you could have been here. I wish you could have met her. I'm making all this fatherhood stuff up on my own, and I know now that that's sort of how parenting works, but still, I could maybe use some advice."

The grave, predictably, did not give him any words of wisdom.

Still, Keith felt like his dad might have done that anyway. He could kind of picture it, if he thought hard enough to dredge up old memories of his dad's voice. 'There ain't no magic words, you just need to take one day at a time.'

He took Mervus all over the country after that, wanting her to see the different geographic diversity. Earth was a bit special in that regard, since most planets had one or maybe a few biomes at most, and he didn't want her to think that Earth was just the desert Keith had grown up in.

On their way to sneak through the Garrison and back to the Denebola, Keith took them on a detour to Platte City. As awkward as being back on Earth made him feel, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to get a bunch of snacks. Junk food for Keith and Mervus, giant milkbone treats for Kosmo. Probably wouldn't go amiss to pick up some more gorilla glue since it was weirdly hard to find similarly good adhesives out in space.

And then, as they were making their way out of the hardware store (Mervus had been fascinated by the concept of small metal keys so they had some of those now, because Keith was a sucker when she looked at him with those sad eyes), Keith he heard his name being called and remembered how stupid it was to think he could actually go unnoticed this whole time.

Keith felt like a school kid again, seeing his teacher in the grocery store. He had known the officers came up to Platte City for errands and whatever all the time; he just hadn't expected to actually run into anyone he knew here.

Whoops.

“Oh, um, Sir.” Keith cringed at himself for automatically saluting, but it had been a while since he saw Iverson, and some things were ingrained a little too much.

In all honesty, Iverson was one of the least annoying people they could have run into. Keith knew that Matt and Pidge, as well as Sam and Colleen, made frequent trips back to Earth. Shiro and Curtis, he was pretty sure, had a vacation place near the Garrison. As much as Keith didn't want to talk to Iverson, he wanted to unexpectedly run into Shiro or the Holts even less.

“You’re not a cadet anymore, Kogane, and we're not even on base,” Iverson reminded him, though he still saluted back, as well. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you outrank me at this point. I see the wolf hasn’t stopped growing yet?”

“No, he’s still going.” Kosmo gave him a droll look, as if Keith weren't aware already that he was horrible at small talk and even more horrible at small talk with his former commanding officers.
It was then that Mervus peeked out from her hiding place, completely obscured from view by Kosmo's long fur (could you take a cosmic wolf to a dog groomer?), giving Iverson a look that oozed disdain.

"Oh, hello there," Iverson said, bending down and taking on that slightly less gruff tone of voice he used to use on the first year cadets. "What's your name?"

"This is Mervus," Keith answered for her once it became clear that she wasn't going to do it himself. Iverson, for all his faults, probably wouldn't ask too many questions if Keith didn't volunteer more information than that. It was one of his few redeeming qualities.

"I don't like you," she told Iverson as Keith choked on a laugh. ”You were mean. I can tell.”

“You’re right, I was a little. If it’s any consolation, Keith punched me in the face once for it."

“Good.”

“Sorry about that," Keith said, trying to sound like he actually meant it. "We’re still learning manners.”

“Human social customs are stupid,” Mervus said. Truthfully, Keith mostly agreed. Why of all the alien races out there Keith had to be born into the one that made social interactions into an awkward dance where you only said what you actually meant a good half the time, he didn't know. But he did know that he didn't want to admit any of this to Iverson. It's not as if the man can go make him run laps on a Saturday morning anymore, but still.

Luckily, Iverson seemed to give them some leeway, or maybe it was just that he's more used to different alien customs now. But whatever the case, he didn't call Keith out on not disciplining Mervus.

And then Iverson asked what he was up to now, and Keith gave him some vague overview of his most recent Blade missions and aid work. Iverson volunteered some of what the Garrison was working on, as well as some updates about the officers and the MFE pilots.

It was like they were just two former coworkers catching up after a few years.

It was tedious as hell, and Keith hated it.

Iverson was in the middle of an explanation of their current plans to integrate Galra tech into some of the shorter range exploratory vessels when Mervus took matters into her own hands.

“You promised me ice cream, dad," she interrupted, tugging at his sleeve.

“That I did."

Keith did no such thing, but Mervus obviously knew he wanted an out. In all honesty, Iverson would probably appreciate escaping the conversation and getting on with whatever errands he had to run in the city, too.

It was at Iverson's shocked expression that Keith registered exactly what Mervus had said. The word, so impactful the first few movements that Mervus had used it, had just become a common part of their conversations. Keith was dad.

Of course, Iverson hadn't witnessed the intervening phoebs they'd spent getting to know each other. From his perspective, Keith had left Earth after the war as still the hot-headed dropout cadet, and now he suddenly had a child.

"...congratulations?" Iverson said. From his expression, he wanted to know much more about the circumstances of Mervus and Keith's relationship, but he gracefully wasn't going to ask.

"I'm adopted," Mervus informed him, and something that looked weirdly like relief washed over Iverson's face.

"That makes a lot more sense," Iverson admitted.

"Actually, Mervus," Keith said slowly, realizing that there were still some things he'd need to discuss with Iverson, "why don't you and Kosmo go ahead to the ice cream shop. I'll catch up with you."

Iverson had a doubtful look on his face and Keith could imagine the man's reaction to someone sending his child out on her own, but then Mervus nimbly climbed up Kosmo's legs to sit astride his back as if she were riding a horse.

"I will be fine," she told Iverson haughtily from her perch, and the two of them confidently marched off. Granted, they were going the wrong direction, but Keith was sure they'd figure it out.

"Something the matter?"

"Can you..." Keith cringed. The request was going to make Iverson ask more questions than Keith wanted him to, but it had to be done. "Can you not tell anyone else about Mervus? Especially not that she's my daughter?"

"Who does know about her?"

"Kolivan, my mom," Keith answered easily. "Some of the other Blades."

"The Paladins..?" Iverson prompted. Keith just stared at a spot somewhere above Iverson's left shoulder. Admitting to his therapist that he'd basically lost all connection to the Paladins was hard enough. He had no desire to tell Iverson any of it.

"I see," Iverson said. "Well, I won't tell anyone about her. Not sure they'd believe me, anyways. As long as we're on the topic, I know it might not seem genuine, coming from me, but I'm sorry. For after the war, and how things went with your team."

Keith hadn't thought that Iverson had been that perceptive. Maybe the team drifting apart (or, more accurately, drifting away from Keith) had been much more obvious to everyone but him.

"It is what it is," Keith said. "But I appreciate you keeping Mervus a secret. I'll tell people eventually, but for now.... She just doesn't need that kind of scrutiny in her life."

"You know, I misjudged you."

"I did punch you in the face," Keith reminded him.

"You were grieving," Iverson said with a shrug. "I should have known not to push your buttons so soon after the Kerberos loss. You know, you'd always have a position at the Garrison waiting if you want a change. Some more support, at least."

"Thank you for the offer, but for now I'm needed in the Blade." Keith did not add that he would rather gouge out his eyes with his knife than teach cadets and give weekly speeches about Voltron's history.

"I understand. It was still nice to see you and catch up. I'm proud of the man you've become," Iverson added as they said their goodbyes, leaving Keith dumbstruck and wrong-footed.

They managed to make it back into the Garrison without any problems, though Keith did breathe a very large sigh of relief when he made it into the pilot's seat.

"We don't need to go back, if you don't want to," Mervus said as they took off.

Keith just barely restrained himself from saying 'Oh thank god.'

Chapter Text

"The pedals?"

"Nope, not the pedals."

"Hmm," Mervus said, returning to her contemplation.

Keith had some reservations about teaching a very small child how to pilot a spaceship, but the practical side of him said that Mervus might need this information some day. It was just Keith, Kosmo, and Mervus, and as great as Kosmo was, using machinery was not one of his strengths.

They'd already gone over the basics of first aid and ship maintenance, both of which Mervus seemed to take to a lot quicker than the piloting. It made sense. Keith had mostly flown by instinct, which made him a less than stellar teacher here. And Mervus clearly didn't have that same instinctual response that Keith had had for his first time flying.

Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that they didn't have a simulator at their disposal, and Mervus was terrified that she was going to crash the ship and then they'd be homeless. Nothing Keith said had convinced her otherwise, despite the fact that the ship's engines were not even currently engaged and they were sitting in an open field on a deserted moon.

"The...." she trailed off and wiggled the yoke.

"Not the yoke, either," Keith said.

Mervus huffed in annoyance and continued fiddling with other parts of the control panel, before finally giving up with a slump of her shoulders.

Keith took pity on her, tapping the ignition button to the right of the steering column. "That's what needs to turn on first."

"I don't think I will ever be good at this," she told him a few movements of lessons later. She had at least memorized the sequences for ignitions and landings, but the actual steering of the ship was beyond her.

"You don't need to be a good pilot," Keith told her. "Lots of people aren't good at piloting." Hell, even Hunk and Pidge had been horrible pilots when they'd first started out as Paladins, though Keith refrained from telling Mervus that.

"But it is important," Mervus said.

"True," Keith shrugged. "But there's lots of important stuff that I'm not good at, too. Medical stuff, diplomacy. No one needs to be good at everything. Were there..." He hesitated. Asking about her experiences on Evae was always a bit like walking around a minefield blindly, but this probably a better comparison for her. "Were there some Evalüir that were better at sensing emotions than others?"

"Yes," Mervus said. "I was always much better than my peers. It came naturally to me in a way that it didn't for them."

Now that was interesting. He'd never thought to ask about that before, and he wasn't sure if Mervus had discussed it with Dr. Xenarien, either. He wondered if she was was better because she could also experience the emotions herself and was able to parse things out in a way that other Evalüir couldn't. Another reason why cutting someone who was a little different out of your society was stupid and hateful, but Keith wasn't going to go there right now.

"See, it's like that. Piloting for me is easy, and it always has been. I just sort of know what I need to do without thinking about it. If it's not like that for you, it's okay. If you decide you hate flying the ship and you want to be done trying to learn, that's also okay."

"But you..." She trailed off, fidgeting with the yoke, and the pieces fell into place for Keith. She didn't really care about needing to pilot for safety's sake. She wanted to pilot because Keith was a pilot, and she thought he would be disappointed if she couldn't do it.

"Hey," he said, kneeling down next to her to be more on her level. "You are good at so many things that I'm not and also I wouldn't care if you weren't good at anything at all, you're my kid and I love you no matter what."

It felt weird telling her this—baring his feelings like this was not his strong suit, and most of the time he didn't even need to do it since Mervus could sense all his emotions anyway. But this was one of those instances where it felt like he was talking to the little kid version of himself that needed to hear this, needed to hear that someone loved him for himself and not what he could do.

"I do not enjoy piloting," Mervus told him eventually.

"And that's fine," Keith reassured her. "I started teaching you just in case something happened to me, that's all. You don't need to do it if you don't want to."

"Nothing will happen to you."

Given Mervus's status and the cultural implications behind it, Keith was convinced that there were other Evalüir out there like her. Others that had been forcibly removed from the only home they had ever known because someone in charge decided they didn't count as real Evalüir.

Finding them, however, was considerably more difficult.

Keith had thought he might have found some kind of secondary Evalüir planet inhabited by others like Mervus, but no matter what he searched for and where he searched for it, he never came across anything. It could have been that such a planet was well-hidden, given less savory people like Treptor who would have abused the Evalüir for their own good.

Or it could have been that such a planet didn't exist, because the Evalüir diaspora was too powerless to create it. If most of them had been exiled from Evae young, like Mervus, it stood to reason that they just wouldn't have the political and financial capital to make such a haven for themselves. Maybe they didn't even know that they weren't alone in the universe.

In any case, Keith exhausted all the search possibilities he could think of.

And all he could feel afterward as relief.

And then guilt.

"Shouldn't I want her to be with others like her?"

"Did you try your best to find such a group of similar Evalüir?" Pli asked shrewdly.

"Of course I did."

"And if you had found somewhere, would you have kept that information from Mervus?"

"No, I would have taken her over there immediately."

"Hmm."

"What's that supposed to mean," Keith grumbled.

"Let's talk about Shiro."

"How about we don't talk about Shiro, actually," Keith tried, but he knew it was a pointless endeavor. It seemed like a non sequitur, but Pli always had a point when xe did this.

"When you were young, he took you in, yes? Even if you didn't live with him in a permanent capacity, he was still the closest thing you had to a mentor or a family figure?"

"You already know the answer to that."

"If Shiro, during this period of you life, had taken you to a group of hybrid Galra because they were 'like you,' would you have wanted to live with them?"

"Of course not. It took me months to warm up to Shiro. It would have felt like he wanted to dump me off with other people. Good riddance."

Pli didn't have eyebrows, but Keith got the feeling xe would be raising them if xe could.

"I'm not Mervus. It's not the same thing."

"True," Pli allowed. "But I still doubt Mervus would be particularly pleased with the implications that you wanted to find people like her. At the very least, you'd need to ask her what she wanted to do, in a way that wouldn't make her feel obligated to leave your care."

"She's an empath. She's a lot better with sensing those kinds of emotions than I was as a kid."

"Even so. I doubt she would want to move anyway. And it is natural for you to not want her to leave you. Plenty of parents experience this same phenomenon in cultures where their children leave home upon reaching adulthood. You are not unique."

"Gee, thanks," Keith said.

"You know what I mean. Do not go looking for reasons to hate yourself."

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

After the war, things were supposed to be safe. Sure, there were still weird agitators out there, and imperial royalists, but Keith was supposed to be able to handle anything the universe can throw at him. The universe had already thrown "immortal emperor tries to take over the world" at him and Keith had made it through that experience, mostly unscathed.

Bad things weren't supposed to happen now.

Keith had been minding his own business. Enjoying the fresh air, foraging some edible berries Ezor had tipped him off about. Things had felt nice and peaceful.

It was supposed to be safe.

So why was Keith staring at Treptor and his gang of thugs in the middle of a field on Iplaew?

They'd gotten the jump on him, because Keith had stupidly let his guard down because shit like this wasn't supposed to happen anymore. So now Keith had blaster wounds to remind him of his faults. They were grazes, at least, but they still hurt like a bitch and they were going to affect how well he can fight.

It could be worse. Keith threw gratitude toward every deity he could think of that Mervus was asleep, safe inside the ship with Kosmo where Treptor shouldn't be able to get to her no matter what
happened.

"One of your so-called colleagues let me know exactly where I could find the whelp who stole my Evalüir. No honor among former spies, it seems," he said with a sharp grin. Keith can already put together a shortlist of possible suspects, but it wouldn't help him at all now.

"If you think you can take her away from me, I'll cut you down where you stand," Keith snarled.

"Big words from someone who's outnumbered and outmatched," Treptor said. "You're not even using her to her full potential. She's a tool, and one that I will be reclaiming."

Fine, then. Keith had fought bigger threats than this. Granted, he'd done that when he had the other Paladins at his back, and the help of giant sentient robotic lions. But that didn't matter. Keith wasn't going to let them anywhere near Mervus.

But there were a lot of them, and Keith, as always, had brought a knife to a gun fight. He managed to take about ten of them out. whittling down their numbers, but he'd also picked up several more injuries in the process. At least one rib was broken, probably more, and his ankle was definitely sprained. He could keep going, though. That was about half of them left. He could do this.

And then Treptor shot him.

Keith had seen it coming and dodged, but not enough. The shot meant for his face ripped into his neck—not a graze at all—and Keith vaguely felt himself slam onto the ground.

That wasn't good.

"Out of practice, are we, Blade?" Treptor sneered above him as Keith tried to get his breath back. He could feel the blood oozing down his throat and onto the grass, and every gasp of air sent another jolt of pain through his whole body.

There would have been a strange sense of peace with it—Keith had managed to live for several years longer than he'd expected to—were it not for Mervus. Treptor shouldn't be able to get through the ship, and she should have enough supplies to wait things out before Krolia and whoever else she called could make it to their location.

But Keith hadn't wanted to do this to her. Hadn't wanted her to be another kid that grew up without her parents.

Keith's vision started swimming, and he nearly missed the large blue blur that flew over his head and slammed into Treptor, knocking him to the side and sending the blaster in a graceful arc that landed conveniently close to Keith's hand.

It would have been a relief, had a small, golden body not been perched on Kosmo's shoulders.

Keith tried to shout at her to get back inside, but his voice was destroyed, and all that came out was a raspy whine. He doubted she would have listened to him, anyway.

The terror and fear increased tenfold at the idea of Treptor actually getting his hands on Mervus, and Keith used it to painfully heave himself up onto his elbows. He was going to stop that asshole or die trying.

But when his vision cleared, all he could see was Treptor. The rest of his gang had disappeared. Had Kosmo managed to scare them off, somehow? Had Keith lost more time than he'd thought?

It was then that he registered this fear didn't feel quite like his own, and saw Mervus, next to Kosmo with her arms outstretched and baring her teeth.

Treptor was looking back at her, stock still, and afraid.

She was projecting. Keith wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Treptor's blaster was within easy reach, and while Keith wasn't great with a gun, even he couldn’t miss a stationary target from 15 feet.

His blood splashed blue and black across Mervus's body, and her dress, and Keith wanted to apologize, because he was a monster but she still shouldn't have had to see Keith kill someone directly in front of her, but he couldn't make the words come out.

He barely even registered Kosmo teleporting them back into the ship, straight into the kitchen for easy access to the medical kits.

Not that Keith could get much use out of them right now, his limbs refusing to respond now that the threat had been neutralized. Kosmo was whining at him and snuffling into Keith's hair, and it wasn't making things any clearer.

His vision started to go grey around the edges.

There was blood.

Blood was not new. But it was new in this context. There was blood where there should not be blood. Dad was bleeding, because Treptor had come back and it was her fault. She had been the one to call out to him at the casino and he had taken her away, but she should have known that Treptor would come back. She should have been paying attention.

Mervus could practically taste his fear, and not just from the thing she'd done. He was afraid. He had been afraid before, or perhaps better to say he had been skeptical—concerned—apprehensive—unsure—NOT THE TIME.

He had been afraid before, but not like this.

It did not matter. He had explained the medical equipment phoebs ago. Stem the bleeding, then call for help. These were manageable things. She could do them.

Only there was a lot of blood. In a lot of places.

Some of it was the blue kind, the stuff that was on her dress and her face (she felt uncomfortable—unpleasant—disgusted—queasy) and she could ignore that. His blood was the dark red. She could focus on that.

There was a list on the box of first aid supplies, written in dad's neat, blocky handwriting—she could read it because he was teaching her how to read and that made her happy and cared for this was not important, ignore ignore ignore—that described the steps to take in different medical situations. She jumped to the section on bleeding.

She could not apply the suggested tourniquets, because she lacked the strength, but she could apply the liquid wound sealant and attempt bandages. These things were within her power.

But there was so much blood. She was not sure where it was all coming from.

It did not matter. Apply wound sealant and bandages over everything, then.

She was aware that dad's demonstrations did not look so messy and crude, but she had done what she could.

Next step: call help.

"Stay there Kosmo," she commanded, running into the cockpit. He could keep dad safe while she was away.

She scrambled up into the pilot's seat and began jabbing at the ship's keypad. There was a program that would collate closest allies with appropriate medical facilities. All she would need to do was contact the one that the ship told her to.

But instead of doing any of that, it just spat out a series of numbers she didn't know what to do with. Had she done it wrong? She would just need to try again. A warning message popped up on the screen, and she clicked through without reading it. Whatever it had said, it wasn't important.

When she tried it for a second time, the communications system automatically issued a distress call. Good. It was working after all.

The man looking back at when the message connected her seemed capable, confident, but tired and sad and no, this wasn’t important, later later later.

“I need help, my dad is injured, he will not wake, he is bleeding a lot and I do not know what to do," she informed him. All the necessary information he should need to help them.

“How do you even have our contact info?" the man asked in confusion.

"I don't know," Mervus said. She didn't know most of the allies in the computer's system. If it wasn't Grandma Krolia, or Kolivan, or Aunty Ez and Aunty Zeth, or Acxa, or Chroptka, Mervus wouldn't know anything about them. "I need help," she reminded him.

"That's... okay. Alright. We'll help. What are your coordinates?"

That was a question she should have anticipated (foolish—distracted—inattentive—short-sighted).

"I don't know," she told the man again.

He looked apprehensive—worried—concerned, before it changed to decisive—in command—sure. "Okay, I should be able to get the coordinates from this call if you can grant me access to the ship's system, okay? You should get a message on your end asking if you will allow me access to that information."

Mervus imagined Dad would not want a stranger having access to their ship's systems. But this was an ally, and Dad was unconscious.

She nodded, and followed the prompts on the screen.

"Okay," the man said. "We've got your coordinates, and we'll be there in about five dobashes, okay? We'll use the teleduv."

Mervus did not know what a teleduv was, but she did not particularly care.

"You stay with your dad until then, okay? We'll knock on the ship's hull when we get there. Everything will be alright."

He sounded certain—confident—positive.

Mervus was not so sure things would be alright.

Chapter Text

Shiro wasn't sure what to make of the strange little girl that had contacted the Atlas despite never having been involved with any of the ship's workings or planetary visits, according to his own memory and the logs from when various Garrison officials had captained her. He didn't know how she had even known how to contact them, much less how she had known their current position was close to her own.

Still, Shiro wasn't going to just ignore a direct request for help, so he called over Veronica to meet him in the hangar, along with Lazora, an Altean medical officer that had joined the crew at some point after Shiro's retirement.

The alien's race had looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place exactly where he recognized them. The other Paladins were on-board, celebrating Shiro's "un-retirement" with what Lance had deemed a "return to space road trip," so he thought about asking them, but they were off having a nice party. No need to interrupt them with work.

They took a small pod and touched down gently on the planet. It seemed peaceful, and for a moment Shiro thought maybe this whole thing had been some kind of bad joke.

But then the ship came into view, and with it, the blood and dead bodies scattered around.

Shiro was even more curious about the ship itself. It was a model he'd never seen before, likely a custom job, but it looked absolutely beautiful. Sleek lines, powerful engines, state of the art warp drives, which were impressive on their own for a craft of that size. It meant that the shielding was incredibly minimal, to accommodate for that setup.

It didn't look like anything Shiro knew Earth's various allies to pilot.

They stepped across the grass field, careful to avoid the blood and gore the best they could. Shiro's hand was nearly on the ship's door when it opened automatically, the little alien girl glaring at him.

"If I had known it was you, I would have called someone else," she said sullenly, hands clenched in a way that looked painful and tail thrashing angrily behind her.

Shiro didn't understand what she'd meant. She had seen him on the videocall; had she just not recognized him? But again, if she had the right credentials to even know what and where the Atlas was, she should have already known who Shiro was, too.

Veronica gave him a raised eyebrow and very discreetly moved her hand to rest on the holster of her gun. The alien caught the gesture, lips curling into a snarl. She was perceptive, at least.

"You said your dad was injured," Shiro reminded the alien. She was just a little kid. Shiro was confused, but not suspicious.

Not yet, at least.

The alien hesitated, as if she was seriously thinking about telling Shiro to fuck off and getting medical help elsewhere, before she finally sighed and hurried off deeper into the ship. Shiro supposed they were meant to follow her.

She led them into what might have been a small kitchen, from the cabinets and appliances Shiro could see on the walls. The room itself was mostly blocked off from view by a hulking, blue shape taking up the entire doorway and then some.

Shiro's first thought, stupidly, was something along the lines of amazement at seeing another member of whatever unknown species Kosmo had been.

And then the wolf looked at him, fluorescent eyes seeming to bore into his soul, and the pieces fell horrifyingly into place.

An unknown ship that had clearance to access the Atlas's contact systems. A custom model ship that privileged speed and power at the expense of shielding. A large blue cosmic wolf who was currently giving Shiro the canine version of the "I'm not angry I'm just disappointed" expression.

Shiro had thought briefly, guiltily, about how he hadn't sent an invitation to Keith for his un-retirement space road trip.

it seemed like Keith would be joining them anyway.

"Kosmo," Shiro said, a hand reaching out to rest on the wolf's snout. Kosmo allowed it, but with none of the usual joy and whines for attention Shiro remembered. But eventually he huffed and moved out of the way, letting Shiro see what he already expected to see.

There was Keith, unmoving on the floor of the kitchen space, various medical supplies scattered around him. Shiro couldn't tell exactly what the injuries were from here, but he could see the blood pooling on the floor underneath him.

While Shiro stood dumbly in the doorway, Lazora pushed past him to get to her patient. She turned him gently onto his back and Shiro could see the evidence of inexpertly-applied first aid, though whether it had been done by the girl or a half-conscious Keith, he wasn't sure. There was a very concerning amount of blood around Keith's neck, which Lazora turned to first.

"Blaster wound," she said. "Luckily it seems to have mostly cauterized itself and kept him from bleeding out. At least one broken rib, as well, possibly more. General contusions. He definitely got into a fight with someone, though given his history, I'm willing to bet he came off better."

"He killed his opponents," the alien girl said softly, and Lazora nodded. Shiro could imagine those were the bodies dotted around the ship.

"Good. Veronica, tell the infirmary to get me a stretcher team and fluids, and confirm whether we still have blood and pain meds in our stocks that will work with the Vice-Lieutenant's system."

Veronica quickly relayed everything, reporting back that they had some Galra-safe pain meds on board and believed they could synthesize the correct blood if necessary.

All the while, Shiro's mind tumbled over itself in confusion. What had happened to lead to this? Keith was with the Blade, and he knew from Acxa that they no longer operated solo missions. Keith's team should have been there to give him backup and prevent whatever this was.

And what about the alien girl? She had called Keith her dad. Had Keith...? Shiro's attempts to calculate exactly how old the kid was and whether Keith could have fathered her failed, since he didn't know the specifics of her parentage.

Hunk, Pidge, and Lance met them on the way to the infirmary, since nothing on this ship could stay a secret for more than about three seconds if Lance and Veronica were both on board.

"What the heck?" Lance whispered loudly. Hunk and Pidge stayed silent, with the former looking a bit green at the sight of the blood.

"I don't know, Lance," Shiro said as they hurried to follow the gurney down the hall. "Keith hasn't been conscious to explain anything." He spared a glance for the small alien girl, but she didn't seem to be paying attention to him. Too focused on the doctors' words flying around them.

Apparently the Atlas still held some fondness for Keith, or perhaps she was reacting to Shiro's own tamped-down panic. Either way, she rearranged the corridors for them, getting them into the infirmary much faster than normal.

The doctors immediately wheeled Keith into one of the surgery rooms and Shiro was going to content himself with watching the procedures through the windows. He felt he owed it to Keith to at least keep guard and make sure he didn't die.

The alien girl apparently did not have such concerns.

"Hey, hold on, give the doctors some room," Shiro said, grabbing at her arm before she could follow them into the space, but then Kosmo growled and immediately poofed them away. They reappeared a moment later near the head of the bed.

They kept a respectful distance and didn't get in the way, so Lazora let them stay. Shiro couldn't hear exactly what was going on through the glass, but she was good with kids. She was probably explaining everything to Kosmo and the girl.

The other former paladins stayed at the windows, as well, though none of them commented on it.

One of the nurses took the girl away for a bit, and Shiro began panicking, fearing for the worst. But they returned just a few minutes later, the various blood cleaned off of her and in a loose but clean hospital gown. Luckily it seemed like the alien didn't have any injuries. Keith must have focused all his attention on protecting her and not himself.

Eventually, Lazora and one of the other nurses opened the door, Kosmo and the girl both hot on their heals, and began wheeling Keith's bed down the hall.

"As I told the girl, his condition is stable," she said as they made their way to the recovery rooms. "He'll need to take it easy for the next few movements, and it will be several vargas before he wakes up, given the heavy doses of painkillers we pushed into his system. But he should make a full recovery."

There was that, at least. Shiro had no idea what he would have done with a strange alien child and a very large cosmic wolf if Keith's condition had been worse. Not to mention that he was pretty sure Krolia would have somehow found that Atlas's position and murdered the entire crew.

Once they'd gotten Keith settled into the new room, hooking up some monitoring equipment, Shiro could start to think things through more. Kosmo and the girl both looked like they were about to crawl onto the bed with Keith, and Shiro should put a stop to that. If Keith needed rest, he'd recover better alone. He always had.

He shot a look in Lance's direction, who nodded subtly.

"Hey there, chica!" Lance beamed, kneeling down to her height. "Why don't we go get a snack or something from the kitchens?"

The girl responded by outright growling at him, and Lance reared back in shock.

"I should have expected that from Keith's kid," he said as Pidge laughed at him.

"I do not need to be handled," she informed them, popping up expertly onto the bed and sliding herself underneath Keith's arm. Kosmo responded by poofing onto the entire lower portion of the mattress, twisting himself into an uncomfortable shape to avoid putting weight on Keith's legs.

"She's an Evalüir, I think," Hunk said quietly. "No idea how that happened..."

"You don't think that he, you know..."

"We're not even going to go there," Pidge said.

"Well, how else would Keith end up with an Evalüir? Their society is so insular, and they're..."

"Creepy?" Pidge answered.

"Single-minded," Hunk said.

"Empaths," Lance finished. "If I were a Blade of Marmalade agent whose emotions flipped between 'angry' or 'emo' with no in between, I'd have sex with an empath, too, if only to figure myself out."

"I can hear you, you know," the alien said.

Right. Probably best if the others didn't antagonize Keith's daughter.

"I'll take care of things here," Shiro said. "Why don't the three of you get back to, what was it?"

"Trashing Hunk at the new Killbot Phantasm game?" Lance said.

"Aw man, you were going to join us, Shiro," Pidge pouted.

"There will be plenty of time for me to join you later. I just don't want to leave a strange child alone with no adult supervision."

"That's Keith for you, crashing the party without even being conscious," Lance grumbled as they walked off.

One of the nurses pulled a chair into the room for Shiro, and Veronica handed off his tablet for him to do some work, and that was that.

"What's your name?" Shiro asked after a few minutes of complete silence. The girl's lips curled in disdain, but otherwise she stayed the same, sitting at Keith's side and staring at him as if that would help him wake up faster. "My name is Shiro."

"I know," she said, and managed to make it sound like the worst thing in the world, that she knew about him. Keith must have told her something, but whatever it was, it couldn't have been good. Shiro found himself getting a bit offended at the idea. What gave Keith the right to badmouth Shiro when Shiro wasn't there to defend himself?

Then again, if Shiro had been there to defend himself, maybe this situation would have been a very different one.

"Can you tell us more about what happened to Keith? We need to know what exactly we're dealing with so the doctors know how best to treat him."

"I already told the doctors what happened."

Ah. Shiro hadn't thought about that.

"Well. Are you hurt at all? If not, we should get you somewhere you can clean up so Keith can rest and recover."

"I am not going to be interrogated about this situation," she said primly, with an unimpressed glare that was so "Keith" that Shiro could no longer doubt that they were related, in whatever way that was.

"Hey, we're trying to help you. None of this is my fault," Shiro told her.

"Then why do you feel guilty?" she asked.

Oof.

"I don't..." Shiro started, but it fizzled out before he could even think of an adequate response.

"Sometimes guilt isn't a good emotion, and it isn't necessary," she continued, as if Shiro were the child in this situation, "but I think it is an appropriate response for you now."

Shiro had no idea how to even reply to that.

But he couldn't just leave an alien kid alone, could he? She probably wouldn't do much damage on her own, but it was the principle of the thing. She was a child and Shiro was an adult.

What followed were the most awkward and uncomfortable two vargas of Shiro's life, as he tried to get some work done on his tablet without looking up at the alien girl every few seconds. She continued to glare at him whenever their eyes met.

Eventually the door swished open without even a knock.

"Ah," Iverson said as he stepped into the room to see Shiro slumped into the chair, a large blue wolf glaring at him.

"What part of confidential is so difficult for people to understand?" Shiro asked.

"This is the military, Shirogane. Nothing is ever confidential here. Besides, I thought you might need a little help."

"A little help...?" Shiro did not dare admit that Iverson was the last person he would expect to be helpful in this scenario.

"Hi, Mervus," he said. The alien poked her head up. "How is your dad doing?"

"He doesn't hate you," was her response.

"Huh. Good to know, I guess."

Shiro was much more confused about why Iverson, of all people, knew the name of Keith's daughter.

"You...?"

"You and I should go out in the hall and talk," Iverson said. "Kosmo and Mervus have this one handled." Iverson herded him out of the room, one hand around Shiro's flesh arm to pull him out by force if necessary.

"How the hell..." Shiro started once they were in a slightly more private place, but he couldn't finish the question. He didn't even know where to begin.

"I take it he hadn't told you about her?"

"Why did he tell you?"

"Didn't have much of a choice," Iverson shrugged. "I ran into them planetside last year. I was sworn to secrecy."

"I thought you were on Earth last year," Shiro said.

Iverson only hummed noncommittally, which meant he definitely had been. 'Planetside,' then, would have been Earth.

Keith had been on Earth (with his daughter?????) and hadn't bothered to let anyone know?

"What can you tell me about this?" Shiro asked. This wasn't the time for existential crises. Those could come later.

"Well, I don't know much. Krolia or Kolivan would probably be a better place to start. I know her name, I know that she's adopted, and I know that Kogane looks at her like she's the most precious thing in the universe. I only saw them together for a few minutes, but he's good with her. And I think she's good for him. I haven't seen him smile and actually mean it since before the war ended. They're an odd pair, but they work."

"Do you know how long she's been with him?" Shiro asked. Even with Keith unconscious, they looked like they fit together. This couldn't have been a very new thing.

"No idea," Iverson shrugged. "You can probably give the guard duty a rest, though. Mervus and Kosmo should be fine without the supervision. Besides, it's not as if they're going to go anywhere with him out like that."

True. There wasn't much either of them could get up to while they were keeping watch over Keith, and Keith wasn't likely to wake up anytime soon given the heavy duty painkillers he was on. Shiro might as well get a few tasks checked off his to-do list.

First among them was to call Kolivan, because what even?

"What dangerous mission did you send Keith out on with his daughter?" Shiro asked the moment the call connected. Kolivan barely even looked phased.

"Keith isn't on any missions."

"Bullshit."

"He isn't," Kolivan insisted with the subtlest of raised eyebrows. "He requested leave time after an altercation with a fellow Blade Vice-Lieutenant. Keith hasn't been on roster for the past two phoebs. Why?"

"Keith is currently unconscious on the Atlas after apparently being shot." Among other things.

"Ah," said Kolivan.

"And were you ever going to tell us that he had a daughter?"

"That was not my story to tell. Is Mervus alright?"

"Physically, yeah," Shiro said.

"Then thank you for the update."

Were it anyone else, Shiro would have thought maybe their connection had been cut short by a solar flare or something. But no, Kolivan had just decided they were done with the call.

Krolia was next on the list, and Shiro felt afraid for some reason to try to reach out to her. But she also deserved to know what was going on, and Shiro couldn't be sure that Kolivan would pass on the news.

It didn't matter in the end, since she didn't answer the call.

Shiro tried not to read too much into that.

Chapter Text

When Keith woke, sore but not dead, he decided to call that a success. Mervus and Kosmo were both there on the bed with him, neither of them looking worse for wear. Everything was fine.

His head was groggy and woozy in that way that spoke of "someone gave him pain medicine that was actually designed for his genetics," so they probably knew what they were doing. Maybe one of the Blade teams had been nearby and gone and fetched him.

"Dad!" Mervus had cried the moment Keith's emotions had settled into something coherent enough for her to realize he was awake. The way she burrowed into his chest was still a bit painful, sending a spark along all his nerve-endings, but it was dulled, and besides, Keith wasn't going to complain. They'd both made it out okay and Keith could take the discomfort.

"I'm sorry," Mervus whispered after several minutes of Keith breathing through the relief.

"Hey," Keith said, voice raspy and mind scattered, "it's not your fault. Treptor was an asshole" (right, he probably shouldn't swear in front of his daughter, but again, his mind wasn't quite working at full capacity) "and you didn't have anything to do with his choice to come and attack us."

"It isn't..." she shook her head and fell silent.

Well, if Mervus wasn't guilty about the Treptor thing, it must have been something that happened afterwards. Potentially something to do with their current location.

Keith hissed through the pain of recently-healed broken ribs to sit up and take in the space. On first glance, it just looked like a generic infirmary. Definitely not any of the Blade bases he knew.

And then he noticed the familiar walls and color scheme, the familiar medical beds, the familiar hum of large, powerful engines.

Ah.

Well. This was bound to happen eventually. Maybe they'd go easy on him since he was already fighting off an injury. If his luck held out, he might even manage to convince the doctors not to say anything to the former paladins and he'd get the hell out of dodge before anyone really knew he was here.

"It's okay, Mervus," he said. "You still did good. You got me medical attention, and that's the important thing, okay? Besides, you probably didn't know which ship you were contacting."

Keith had a warning message set, the "are you sure you want to contact the Atlas?" message, but she probably wouldn't have known what to make of that.

The door swished open and Keith looked up to see an Altean woman who was presumably a doctor or a nurse, coming in to check on him.

"I'm Dr. Lazora," she said, confirming his suspicions. "It's good to see you awake. Hello, Mervus."

Mervus nodded her head and then continued to hide her face in Keith's shoulder.

"I just need to take a look at how things are healing. If things are on-track, you're welcome to leave. You will need to take it easy for a while, and don't think I don't know who you are. I've informed your commanding officer and your mother of your injuries, and they have assured me they will be checking in."

Keith couldn't help cringing, imagining both Krolia and Kolivan on the warpath about Keith's health, but that was going to be a problem for Future Keith.

The doctor continued looking over him, checking his injuries, and eventually declaring him out of the woods.

"So I'm okay to leave?" Keith asked, already trying to lever himself up and out of the bed.

"The captain does want to see you off before you go," Dr. Lazora said.

Keith had no idea who the current captain was, but he also didn't understand why they would have the last say about Keith discharging himself from the Atlas's medical wing. Was it just that they didn't want to be responsible for anything if the former black paladin ended up face planting the moment he got out of bed?

"Knock, knock, Kogane," Iverson said as he poked his head into the room. It might have been the first time in his life Keith was happy to see the man.

"Are you the captain? Congratulations," Keith said. If it was Iverson, hopefully Keith, Mervus, and Kosmo would be able to get out of here without too much more trouble.

"Flattering that you think they'd let me captain this ship. I'm actually here to warn you about who exactly the captain is."

"Is it Griffin? Tell me it's not Griffin." James would never let Keith live it down.

"A little bit closer to home, actually," Iverson said, and Keith's mind was still too muddled to make sense of that.

Before Iverson could explain anything else, another man stepped into the room, and Keith's heart sunk through his stomach and into the mattress.

"And that's our cue to leave," Iverson said. "Doctor, you, too. Kogane, you want me to take Mervus and get her something from the kitchen?"

Mervus's response of a muffled growl answered that one.

"Atlas told me you were awake," Shiro said once Iverson and the doctor had left.

"What are you doing here?" Keith asked, still too groggy to be more polite. Shiro was retired. He was supposed to be on Earth with Curtis, not ruining Keith's plans to make a clean getaway.

"Well, I wanted to see how you were doing."

Keith's mind skidded over the information. For Shiro to know that Keith was here and be worried about his health...

"How long have I been out!?" Keith gasped. Had Mervus been ok while Keith had presumably been unconscious for days, if not longer??

"Just a few hours," Shiro said, which made even less sense. Why would Shiro have already been on board the ship if Keith had only been here for a few hours?

And then Iverson's words about the new captain finally caught up to Keith.

Shiro was the captain of the Atlas. Shiro, the guy who had retired as soon as it was politically possible and was supposed to be at home on Earth with his husband.

"Oh," Keith said stupidly.

"It's, a fairly recent thing," Shiro said, a hand on the back of his neck like he was nervous. "I haven't told a lot of people."

"But you told everyone else," Mervus mumbled unhappily from her hiding place.

"Yeah the others are... here," Shiro sighed.

"...others?" Keith's mind was still too jumbled to really participate in this conversation.

"Lance, Hunk, and Pidge," Shiro confirms. "Matt's supposed to come in too, in a few days."

So all the rest of Team Voltron had known about Shiro's re-entrance to the field and was on board the ship and Keith had known...nothing.

"Oh."

"Yeah," Shiro said again.

"How is Curtis taking the change?" Keith asked, trying to find a topic that wouldn't cut deep into that lonely, hurt part of his brain.

"Ah. Actually. He's not here. We got divorced."

So much for finding a topic that wouldn't hurt.

"Oh. I'm... sorry to hear that."

"Yeah..." Shiro said lamely.

This was maybe the worst conversation he'd ever had with Shiro, even including the first time he met the man and stole his car.

Pli was going to have a field day with this.

"So, I think I should head out," Keith said eventually. No sense just prolonging the inevitable.

"Actually, I know the doctor gave you the okay to get discharged, but do you want to stay here for a bit longer? Like old times? You could at least stay and have dinner with everyone."

'Old times' weren't ever going to come back, and Keith knew it.

But then again, his choices were either stay here and have very uncomfortable conversations with the Paladins, or leave and have very overbearing conversations with Krolia and Kolivan. Either he was going to have an incredibly awkward dinner with the other former Paladins, or he was going to feel incredibly guilty about turning down the offer.

Why exactly Keith felt guilty for turning down an offer from a group of people who hadn't given him the time of day pretty much since the war was over, he wasn't sure.

In any case, though, the decision was mostly made for him. And it wouldn't be the end of the world to have a doctor make sure everything was healing nicely instead of just sitting in the Denebola and hoping he wasn't going to get sepsis from an infection he didn't know he had.

So Keith shuffled off to dinner with Shiro, pretending not to notice how frustrated Mervus looked about the choice. Earlier on in their relationship, it would have given Keith more pause. But he'd long since been able to tell the difference between Mervus's "I feel very uncomfortable and overwhelmed by emotions and this scenario scares me" face and her "I think you're being a complete and total dumbass and I can feel how much you hate this from your emotions" face. Keith kind of felt like he owed the others, for some reason. He wasn't going to look too far into that until Pli made him.

Shiro led them into the Captain's quarters, which was helpful since it seemed to be in a different place than Keith remembered it being. Hunk was clearly cooking, going from the appealing smells coming out of the kitchen, so at least Keith and Mervus would get a good meal out of the whole thing.

"Fancy seeing you here," Lance said as Keith rounded the corner and gave a pitiful wave. Keith might not have been the best at emotions, but even he could tell that Lance meant it much as a jab than a playful tease. It didn't help that Mervus looked like she was a few seconds away from launching herself at Lance. Keith tried to subtly hold her back, a hand ruffling through her hair. She grimaced at him but took the hint and huffily made her way into the living area with Kosmo.

"So you have a kid?" Pidge asked. Very little tact, as always, but Keith preferred that over the way Hunk flailed at her from the stove.

Besides, this was the one topic that Keith was actually happy to talk about.

"Yeah. I met her on a Blade mission" (untrue) "and adopted her a little while later" (also untrue, unless you count 'cussing out her biological parent and then just absconding with her' as adoption). "That was a few years ago, now." (Not untrue, but Keith didn't want to admit that he knew the exact date that Mervus had come into his life).

"You're the last person I would have expected to have a kid," Lance said. There was an undercurrent of something unpleasant there, but Keith wasn't going to touch it. Lance needed to actually say whatever he was upset about if he wanted Keith to play along. Keith wasn't the little kid he used to be that took whatever bait was hung out for him like mistletoe.

"I didn't expect it either," he said truthfully, "but I wouldn't change anything. Mervus is the best thing that happened to me, and I love her." (Gross understatement, but a gross understatement Mervus was well aware of, considering the look she shot him from where she was buried under Kosmo's tail).

Pidge called him a sap and rolled her eyes at him while Hunk started cooing and Shiro sent him a very heartwarming smile, and it almost felt a little bit like home.

Shiro was astounded when Keith didn't leave that night, electing instead to take one of the empty rooms with Mervus. Shiro didn't say anything about the choice to pass up Keith's own personal room, which was still baked into the Atlas's room plan regardless of whether anyone was staying in it. It was a miracle that Keith was here at all. Shiro didn't want to push it.

Then again, Keith was... different from what Shiro was expecting. He was still Keith, still the biting, dry sense of humor, the resolute desire to do good. But he was much more settled than he had been when Shiro had last seen him. It seemed what family life hadn't done for Shiro, it had done for Keith. No longer a firecracker just waiting to go off at the slightest provocation, but a gentle flame, burning small but continuously. Responsible in a way Shiro would privately admit he never would have guessed was possible.

It was much harder to get a read on Mervus. She stuck to Keith's side like glue, glaring at anyone who dared to get too close to them. Shiro wondered if he should be concerned about that, given that Mervus was an empath. Was there something she could sense in people's emotions that meant they were a danger to Keith? To the Paladins? To Galra in general?

When Shiro gently asked Keith about it, he just scoffed and called her overprotective.

"Sometimes she forgets that she's supposed to be the kid, not the adult."

When Mervus gave an affronted hmph in response and didn't backup her concerns with any specifics, Shiro supposed that was good enough.

This new version of Keith was also much more careful about his own health, actually waiting to get Lazora's approval for physical activity. Shiro found him in the training deck later, expecting to need to scold Keith and drag him away from a combat droid set way too high for his recovery. But instead, the doors swished open and there was Keith, running slowly through his forms and doing the Galran version of yoga while Mervus and Kosmo sat against the wall, looking at something on a tablet.

"Can I join you?" Shiro asked, before he could think better of it.

"Don't you have captain stuff to do?" Keith said with a skeptical eyebrow raise, but he moved over to give Shiro some space on the mat. Shiro let himself stupidly think that maybe his friendship with Keith could be salvaged, after all.

And then the doors on the opposite side of the room opened with a clang, and in strode Lance. Pidge and Hunk came up behind him, looking unhappy, and Shiro could only imagine what fireworks were going to erupt now.

"You've got some nerve, Kogane," Lance snarled, stalking forward and shoving Keith out of his stance.

"You know I'm not great with people skills, Lance. You're going to need to be more specific about whatever I've done."

“Is that why you picked up an Evalüir girl? Because you still don’t understand how feelings work?”

Keith's eyes flashed with a familiar snap of anger and Shiro prepared himself to need to step in and prevent a fist fight, but then Keith's expression blanked out.

"This wasn't about me," he said, more calmly than Shiro would have expected. "This was about her needing a home."

"And how convenient that you just happened to be in the right place at the right time."

"Lance," Hunk said warningly, a hand reaching out to tug on Lance's shoulder and pull him back.

"No, I'm sick of it! He abandons us for the Blade and a random alien kid and then just shows up and expects us to be all buddy-buddy again?"

"I abandoned you?" Keith growled, and there was the anger Shiro was expecting.

But before Shiro could even move, something... happened.

A wave of intense, debilitating grief and loneliness washed over him. He was immediately certain that he was unlovable, that everyone would abandon him, and he would die alone. Shiro had time for a sharp prick of panic that his PTSD was returning before he realized vaguely that Lance and Hunk were both sobbing brokenly, and he could hear Pidge muttering and whimpering under her breath.
Whatever was happening, it wasn't just in Shiro's head.

Even Keith looked affected, though he weathered the storm much better than the rest of them.

Keith dropped to his knees, crying silently, before crawling across the room, away from Shiro and the others. Shiro wanted to cry out, wanted to yell at Keith to stay with them, because the loneliness hurt, but he couldn't move. Frozen in place.

Eventually, Keith made it to where Mervus and Kosmo were huddled against the wall, and Shiro expected Keith to run and disappear in a flash of cosmic sparks. But instead, he took Mervus into his arms, rocking her back and forth with little soothing, shushing noises.

The feelings began to taper off until eventually they were just a harsh, frigid memory of pain. Lance and Hunk stumbled into a desperate embrace, but no one else moved.

“Sorry,” Keith said after a few minutes, voice wrecked. “She gets overwhelmed sometimes and...projects. Being around this many people for so long has probably worn down her defenses.”

“Did it on purpose,” Mervus grumbled.

“Oh. Well in that case, you owe them all an apology. It isn’t nice to make people feel things like that.”

“Just copied what they made you feel,” she said, face buried in Keith's shoulder as if to avoid the scrutiny.

“Still not nice. Please apologize.”

“Won’t.”

The conversation between father and daughter barely even registered for Shiro. If that was true, if Mervus had forced them to feel what she'd sensed from Keith...

Shiro had known, deep down, that Keith wasn't really happy after the end of the war, but to viscerally feel just how miserable he'd been...

“Shiro,” Pidge whispered from behind him.

“I know.”

“Sorry,” Mervus grumbled, interrupting Shiro's thoughts and sounding distinctly not sorry, and Keith rolled his eyes a bit.

“That’s probably as good as we’re gonna get. Anyway, thank you, you know, for coming to get me and treating my injuries, but I think it’s best for everyone if Mervus and I went on our way.”

No one could bring themselves to answer him, or move to stop him, and after a few moments of silence Keith nodded to himself and swung Mervus up and into his arms, a fluid motion that it seemed like he'd done a million times.

Mervus peeked over Keith’s shoulder as he walked toward the door. “They feel regret,” she said, frowning at them.

“Yeah, well,” Keith replied, quietly but still audible in the echo chamber that is the training deck, “sometimes it takes a lot more than regret to fix things.”

And then they were gone.

Chapter Text

Four quintants after leaving The Atlas, Keith got an incoming message.

It wasn't all that uncommon: Krolia and Kolivan had been calling more often since he took in Mervus, and there were still plenty of planets calling out to the Blade for assistance.

Still, it had been a long time since someone from Altea tried to contact him.

Keith shared an apprehensive look with Kosmo. He wasn’t above having Mervus get him out of these kinds of situations; she had done it before, calling for his help with lunch after sensing his discomfort on a call with an Arusian who was coming on just a bit too strong for Keith’s liking. Unfortunately, Mervus was asleep right now, and she’d been out of sorts since the whole situation with Treptor and meeting the other former Paladins so Keith didn’t want to wake her up now that she was finally getting some rest.

So he guiltily ignored the call, letting it go to the automated system. He'd listen to it. Later. Eventually.

Whoever it was called back again less than a dobash later.

"I suppose it could be important," Keith muttered, half to himself and half to Kosmo. The wolf stared at him with an expression that felt kind of insulting.

Fine.

“This is Keith, Vice-Lieutenant of the Blade of Marmora,” he answered in a voice he hoped came across as confident and aloof. “Do you need assistance?”

“Oh!” the voice on the other end said, the image flashing onto the screen a moment later.

Coran.

This, too, had only been a matter of time. The others had certainly contacted Coran the moment Keith left the Atlas, and now here the man was, ready to give Keith his own scolding.

"I uh, didn’t expect you to answer," he said.

“Well, you called twice in a row, so I sort of assumed it was urgent," Keith said.

"Well. Not urgent, I suppose. Although not, not urgent..."

“Coran.”

"I feel the same," Coran said eventually, leaving Keith to stare at him in confusion.

"The same about what?" he asked.

“Everything on Altea is fine, no need to worry," Coran told him. "This isn’t an official Blade of Marmora call. This is a ‘former Altean advisor and former Black Paladin’ call. I asked Krolia for your contact details, which I hope is alright. I’d just...I heard about what happened with everyone.”

“Coran,” Keith said, hands massaging his temples, knowing what was coming next and trying to head it off at the pass. “I am really not in the mood for a lecture right now.”

“Well that’s good, because I’m not here to lecture you. I'm not here to dig up old memories. But as I said, I feel the same."

"I know that I haven't seen you lately, and I'm sorry..." Keith started, but Coran cut him off with a shake of his head.

"This isn't about you, Number Four. It's about them. The war ended and I lost Allura, and of course I gained Altea back in the process but it wasn’t...it’s not my Altea. And everyone went their separate ways and now it’s… Well. I'm a bit, shall we say, lonely?"

Keith peeked up and through his fingers.

"Yeah?"

"Indeed," Coran said. "I see the other Paladins on the anniversary of Allura's death, and it's a somber affair. Beyond that, it feels a bit as if I don't exist to them. I had no idea Shiro was back in the field; I'm assuming you hadn't heard, either."

"No, I hadn't," Keith said, trying not to sound bitter.

"Well. All of this is, I suppose, to say that I thought you and I could... talk? It might do us both some good. I'd like to know what you've been up to."

It occurred belatedly to Keith that the other Paladins hadn't even asked that question. Maybe that was unfair, considering they were all wrong-footed by the appearance of Mervus, and they were celebrating Shiro's return to captaincy. But none of them had bothered to ask what Keith had been working on, or even what had happened to land him in the Atlas's medbay.

“Just talk?”

“Just talk,” Coran confirmed.

Still, Keith hesitated. He thought he'd gotten over his fear of social situations as traps to get him to say something embarrassing or incriminating, but it seemed that had returned with a vengeance since the war ended.

"How is Kosmo doing?" Coran asked, not giving Keith any grief for failing to initiate. Keith relaxed into the pilot's seat a little, grateful for a pretty nonlethal topic to start.

"Pretty much the same, only about twice as big as the last time you saw him," Keith said. "If he keeps growing, I'm going to need to modify the ship."

Kosmo huffed at him, but curled back up in his dog bed (a massive, custom-order dog bed, because Keith loved him even if he was getting so large it was unwieldy).

"And I heard you have a new family member?" Coran said gently. This, too, was an easy topic.

Keith filled Coran in on the story, giving him many more details about Mervus—how they'd met, who she was, how things were going as a new single parent—than he'd felt comfortable giving the other Paladins.

And then Coran volunteered information about how Altea was doing, since Keith's visits to the planet tended to be brief trips to pay his respects to Allura's statue and then get out before anyone noticed him.

They ended up taking for hours, something Keith didn't even really notice until his voice started cracking from overuse.

"I'll let you go," Coran said, and Keith felt an irrational stab of fear that this would be a one-off. Coran had done his duty, he'd checked in on Keith, and now they would part ways.

"It was good to catch up," Keith said in an even tone of voice, one that Coran saw right through.

"Lad. I know you're busy, but to be honest, I'm retired. If you wanted to do this again soon, that is perfectly acceptable to me. Shall we say same time next movement?"

"Actually, why don’t you call a little earlier, so you can see Mervus before it’s her bedtime. I think you'd like her, and it would be nice for her to meet you. She could use more trustworthy people in her life."

“I’d like that. Be well, Keith.”

Someone was knocking on the door of their ship. Keith had just been minding his own business, trying to make dinner like a good parent, and now someone was invading their space. Again.

Keith shot Mervus a look from where she was seated at the kitchen table with a coloring book. He hated using her like a walking doorbell camera, but she had insisted, after everything with Treptor. And besides, Keith really didn't want to open the door to Shiro or Lance or whoever, informing him that he was a failure as a Paladin and a person.

"Aunty Zeth and Aunty Ez," Mervus told him, padding off to go answer the door herself.

"Acxa told us what happened with the other Paladins," Zethrid said as she forced her way into the kitchen, grabbing Keith into something that was maybe supposed to be a comforting hug.

"Do you need us to punch someone? We can punch people. We're very good at it," Ezor said from behind her.

"Yeah, I know," Keith said, remembering times in the Voltron days when he'd been on the receiving end of said violence. "You can put me down, by the way."

Zethrid did it, though with a put-upon huff.

"You should punch them," Mervus said later, once they had delivered more gifts for her, and Keith, not for the first time, wondered if he was actually a competent father.

"No, no, please do not punch the former Paladins. We do not need an intergalactic incident."

"They were mean," Mervus told him.

"They were mean," Ezor agreed.

"Just because someone is mean doesn't give you the right to inflict bodily harm."

Three sets of blank stares met his words.

God, what was Keith's life?

"Can we... threaten to punch them without actually hurting them?" Zethrid asked.

Keith opened his mouth to automatically shoot her down, and then stopped.

He should really tell them not to do it. He didn't need them to terrorize people on his behalf.

But still. The idea was appealing as hell. Zethrid and Ezor marching onto the Atlas, guns blazing, wreaking havoc without actually causing any injuries?

"We never had this conversation," Keith said finally. Ezor and Zethrid shared a high five over the dinner table, and Keith hoped they showed at least a little restraint.

Who was he kidding? They wouldn't know restraint it if shot them in the face.

A day later, there was another knock on the door. It was late enough that Mervus was asleep, but Keith's datapad pinged with a message from Kolivan:

It's me. Official Blade business.

Well, that wasn't ominous at all. He really hoped Zethrid and Ezor hadn't shown up and slaughtered half of the Atlas's crew.

"If this is about Zethrid and Ezor, they promised me they wouldn't actually cause any harm," Keith said as he let Kolivan in, trying to cut him off before he could go into full-on Lecture Mode.

"They are adults, they can do as they please. Personally, I was glad to hear their report. Most of the Paladins seem suitably chastened. But I am not here to talk about them."

"Okay. So, what do you need to talk about?" Keith asked. Kolivan seemed to need to steel himself, hesitant in a way he very rarely was.

Something was wrong.

"Vronazk is dead," he said eventually.

It very much wasn't what he was expecting to hear. Keith guiltily wanted to respond with 'good riddance,' but he was a Vice-Lieutenant, and he was supposed to be diplomatic about these things.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Keith." Kolivan leveled him with the kind of glare that Keith hadn't seen since he constantly went off-track on missions during the Voltron days.

"Uh. I'm... not sorry to hear that?" Keith amended.

"Krolia cut off his head and then ate his heart."

"Jesus, Kolivan. That's not really an image I needed."

"You do not understand what I am saying, do you?"

"Not really, no."

"You have my utmost apologies for the situation in which I placed you," he said, but then failed to actually explain.

"Kolivan, please start from the beginning because I don't have a clue what you're trying to tell me."

"Shirogane contacted me to alert me of your physical condition once it was clear you were stable and would heal," Kolivan said. That was nice of Shiro. Keith had completely forgotten to contact Kolivan or Krolia until the next day. Krolia had almost shot daggers out of her eyes over the videocall when Keith said he was going to stay a couple days on the ship.

"I knew that you were on leave and should not have had any Blade-related trouble, but I still felt that the situation must be investigated. You are a capable fighter; very few people could put you into such a situation."

"They caught me off-guard," Keith said, feeling the need to defend himself, but Kolivan waved it off.

"Your skills are impeccable and are not my concern. However, Acxa reported back to me about the state of the field outside your ship, which you corroborated when we spoke. I then felt obligated to confirm exactly how Treptor had determined your location. No one should have been able to find you without assistance."

"Vronazk handed my location to Treptor and his goons," Keith realized.

"Yes. As a former Vice-Lieutenant, he had access to ship movements and locations, even those on leave. I did not realize he was capable of such actions."

"You're not infallible, Kolivan."

"Stop. You do not need to comfort me. I am aware of my shortcomings. Not to mention that your mother has made her own displeasure with my choices clear. Regardless, we made sure he would never be able to compromise the Blade of Marmora or its operatives again."

"By apparently decapitating him and then resorting to cannibalism?" Keith couldn't help but ask.

"Grave offenses must be met with equally grave punishments," Kolivan informed him.

The first time Keith needed to change his meeting schedule with Coran, he barely had the strength to do it.

He had tried this, the first Paladin anniversary that he had missed. Tried to suggest that maybe they could do it on a different day when Keith wasn't trying to broker peace between two warring planets, both of whom had enough munitions stockpiled to blow up an entire galaxy. It wasn't an acceptable excuse, apparently, and they'd gone ahead without him.

Keith had made the trip himself a week later, sitting at the foot of Allura's statue and giving her his apologies.

"I... need to change the schedule for next movement," Keith said, barely able to look up at Coran through his bangs.

"Oh, are you busy? What would work instead?"

Really? Simple as that?

"Number Four, I've informed you, I am retired. Whatever works for you will work for me," Coran said, as if he could read Keith's thoughts.

They slipped into a pattern, generally chatting once a movement, depending on Keith's schedule. Keith thought it would be hard to keep up a conversation like this—a friendship like this—after so long, but Coran made it easy. Keith talked about his missions, Coran shared bizarre stories from before the war. It worked.

And then Coran called right in the middle of a long, tense aid mission with a planet that still didn't trust the Galra, and Keith realized that he had completely forgotten to reschedule the call.

"Oh darn, I meant to ask if we could reschedule. Sorry Coran, it slipped my mind."

“Keith, lad, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, it’s just…”

Mervus popped into frame next to him, giving Coran a cheerful wave before informing him that "Dad didn't sleep for the past two nights and he feels guilty because he hasn't made dinner yet even though I know that he is busy with the Feltesk."

“Hey, I’m the adult, it’s my job to make dinner,” Keith argued.

"Ah, the Feltesk," Coran said sagely. "I presume they are still insisting on hosting grand parties during the day and diplomatic talks in the middle of the night to ensure that everyone barely has their wits about them?"

"Ugh," Keith said, letting his head rest on the counter.

"Do you need help?" Coran asked.

“Krolia and Kolivan are on Daibazaal, there’s some kind of riot going on right now, Axca isn’t answering which makes me think she’s out with Veronica, and Zethrid and Ezor are too far out to get here anytime soon. I'll be okay.” He had to be. He didn't have much of a choice.

"I meant me," Coran said with a raised brow.

“Coran, I couldn’t ask you to.”

“You are not asking, because I am offering. I’ve told you, I’m basically retired, and you seem like you need a hand right now. You handle your Blade duties, and I’ll take care of everything else for a while. With a wormhole I could be there in three shakes of a Yelmor's ears.”

"He really wants to say yes but he doesn’t want to impose," Mervus informed him. Keith just groaned again.

"Excellent. What are your coordinates? I'll pack some things and be over as soon as I can."

True to his word, Coran waltzed into the Denebola where it was parked out in a field on the outskirts of Feltess less than five dobashes later, and proceeded to make himself right at home.

"I don’t think so, young man," he said when Keith told him he was about to start making dinner. "You are going to bed. You’ve a meeting tonight and you're dead on your feet. I’ll take care of dinner, you rest. I’ll save you some for when you wake up."

"Don’t let him make anything weird for dinner, Mervus," Keith said as he stumbled down the hall and toward his bed. He could hear Coran murmuring something from the kitchen and Mervus giggling softly in response as he faceplanted onto bed and let sleep rush up to meet him.

He could maybe get used to this.

Coran woke him a few hours later, a bowl of some kind of pasta that Keith was still too groggy to really taste and the strongest Altean coffee imaginable thrust into his hands.

"According to your notes, you're meeting with the prime minister and the president in a little under a varga," Coran told him in a low voice, letting Keith wake himself up slowly. "I just got Mervus tucked into bed, and Kosmo is waiting to accompany you."

Keith wanted, for a long moment, to crawl back into bed and let Coran just take over the meeting, as well. But no. This was Keith's job as Vice-Lieutenant and former Black Paladin. He couldn't ask Coran to do this on top of taking care of Mervus.

So off he went to his meeting, still feeling awful, but at least fed and slightly less sleep-deprived. When he returned to the ship at dawn, having barely accomplished anything (this was all about diplomacy, and Keith was still shit at diplomacy. He missed Allura), Coran ushered him back into bed with a promise that he'd wake him with more coffee in a couple vargas for his breakfast meeting with the prime minister and prince.

The pattern continued for several days, with Keith snatching bits of sleep here and there and making incredibly minimal diplomatic progress while Coran took care of everything else. When they had finally,finally reached an agreement that everyone could be happy with, it was after a meeting that had gone on for nearly two days straight.

Coran caught Keith's arm as he stumbled back into the Denebola, vision blurry and mind foggy.

“Is he ok, Pop-Pop?” The question came on the periphery of his senses and Keith was half-asleep already, so it took a long time for the gravity of it to hit him

"He'll be just fine," Coran assured her. "He just needs some sleep. And you sleep as long as you need to, lad," he said, this directed at Keith.

Keith's mind was reeling, barely comprehending anything other than the easy way Mervus had referred to Coran. She was getting a family, a real family, outside of just Keith.

Maybe Keith was getting a real family, as well.

Keith expected Coran to head out, now that everything with the Feltesk had been taken care of. But when Keith finally dragged himself out of bed in the middle of the night, fairly certain he'd slept for at least a day, Coran was still there, waiting for Keith in the kitchen with a meal of basic staples. He must have been tired, as well, waking up at all hours the past movement to take care of both Keith and Mervus, but he didn't show it. Still his chipper, energetic self.

And then Coran said, "Do you want to talk about the Paladins?"

Had it been anyone else, Keith would have shot them down. Krolia, Kolivan, hell even Pli, he would have told them all to fuck off and leave him alone.

But this was Coran, and he was carrying around the same kind of grief that Keith was.

"I thought things would be different, this time," Keith admitted. "That we'd stick together. It was... it was a war, you know? I thought that would mean something, when it was all over."

"Yes, I understand. And you were the Paladins of Voltron, after all. You were all connected."

"Exactly. So then, why...?"

Keith couldn't finish the question, but he had a feeling Coran knew what he was trying to ask anyway.

And indeed, Coran didn't verbalize a response. Just came around to the other side of the kitchen and gathering Keith into his arms.

How long had it been since he'd had gentle, loving contact like this? Not the teasing roughhousing from the warlords, nor Mervus clinging to his legs out of nowhere when she got a spurt of energy, not his mother's still hesitant displays of affection. But something calm, in control, letting Keith let go, just for a little bit?

Keith broke.

He had gotten through all the shit that he'd been through at the end of the war by shutting off his emotions, and then putting everything away for Mervus's sake when she had come into his life. But sometimes, Keith needed an adultier adult. Krolia was trying, but her response was much more 'kill the problem with fire' than comfort.

But Coran just silently held on, letting Keith cry embarrassingly into Coran's shoulder and leading them onto the couch for a more comfortable spot.

"Do you know why the Feltesk insist on having meetings like they do?" Coran asked eventually.

"To torture Blade of Marmora agents," Keith sniffed.

"To lower inhibitions. To get people to admit to things they wouldn't otherwise admit to, or do things they wouldn't normally do. I have a feeling this has been a long time coming."

"You're not wrong," Keith said.

"Ah, hello," Coran said, and Keith winced, hearing Mervsus's and Kosmo's claws clicking on the kitchen floor.

"Sorry about that," Keith managed.

She only scoffed at him and inserted herself in between Keith and Coran while Kosmo wrapped himself around them all. "Took you long enough. Your emotions were beginning to feel like dishwater."

"Sorry?" Keith said.

She huffed and got comfortable, slipping back to sleep soon enough.

And Keith might have followed her down into slumber like that.

Just maybe.

Coran wouldn't ever tell, anyway.

Chapter Text

"We fucked up," Pidge said the moment the doors swished closed behind Keith. "We fucked up so bad."

"Yeah," was all Shiro could say in response. How had they even let it get this bad? Was it possible to even repair things at this point?

"I didn't know..." Hunk said shakily, and Shiro silently agreed. He hadn't known the real depth of Keith's feelings, either. Keith had always been good about hiding his pain.

"What do we do, Shiro? You know him the best," Pidge said.

"I'm not sure of that, anymore." Years ago, Shiro would have agreed.

Years ago, Keith would not have left the Atlas with a child in tow.

"We shouldn't have let him leave," Hunk fretted. "We should have held him down and apologized."

"Hey, he's the one that abandoned us first," Lance said. "Couldn't even take time out of his 'busy schedule' to come celebrate Allura's memory with us."

"Lance," Shiro said, rubbing his temples. One former Paladin at a time was enough for him to deal with.

Of course, Lance wouldn't leave it alone.

"No, Shiro. You always used kid gloves with Keith. Whatever's happened is just as much his fault. It's more his fault. You can't keep babying him like he's teacher's pet."

The doors swished open, and Shiro's heart leapt into his throat. Was Keith coming back? Could they still fix things?

But it was Matt at the door.

"Uh, is everything okay?" Matt asked, looking between them all and finally settling on Shiro.

"Keith was here," Shiro said.

"And...?"

"I didn't invite him."

"So he found out and was upset?" Matt said.

"No, he..." But Shiro couldn't finish. Couldn't admit all the failures, on all sides, that had led them to this point.

"He was injured, and ended up in the infirmary here," Pidge said. "And also he has a kid."

"He just left. It wasn't like, a fight or anything. He just... I think we messed up," Hunk said.

"Let him leave," Lance grumbled, and Hunk jabbed him none-too-gently in the arm.

"You know, I wasn't going to say anything," Matt started, "because 'Saviors of the Universe' or whatever, but none of you have really been doing well, and this just proves it. You're all sort of, I don't know. Regressing, maybe?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Pidge said.

"Pidge, we spend over half the year living in the same house and I don't see you for days at a time, because you're closing yourself off from people and just focusing on your projects. And same to you, Hunk. You're so focused on your culinary empire that you've forgotten about the diplomatic aspect that you started it for. Shiro, I'm not even going to get into whatever was going on in your head to think retiring and shacking up with a dude you barely knew was a good idea. And Lance, I know you and Keith had your differences, but you've been extra tetchy about him the past few years."

"Lay off, Matt. I'm grieving."

"Which you can do without lashing at Keith," Matt pointed out.

"It's him that's the problem, not me. He wouldn't even bother to show up for the Allura anniversaries. He just moved on, or something, but I can't."

"Wasn't he on aid missions at the time?"

"Well, he could have tried to reschedule those," Hunk started.

"I've been doing some work with the Blade recently, and I know that most of those missions he was on were pretty time-sensitive. And people are always asking for him, you know? Not a random member of the Blade, but the former Black Paladin. Keith is doing everything he can possibly do in order to help keep the very fragile wartime peace in place. If anything, I think Allura would be proud of him."

"He isn't on missions all the time, though. He could come visit when he has a break," Hunk said.

"Exactly. If I'm closing myself off from people, then Keith is building the Great Wall of China" PIdge pointed out. "Friendship is a two-way street. Or, I guess a five-way street in Paladin terms."

"Okay, true, Keith's not innocent in this, either. But I mean, it's not really a surprise for him to react this way, is it? Mom isn't in the picture, dad dies, Shiro dies, Keith gets booted from the one stable living situation he's had in years and lives by himself in a fucking shack. And when he accidentally yeets himself into space, he finds out he's an alien, Shiro dies again, comes back wrong, Keith joins a super fatalistic Galra organization and then decides to try to use his own ship as a missile because he thinks his entire worth is based on his ability to fight. And you're surprised that the guy with major self-worth and abandonment issues leaves first after the team breaks up the moment the war is over?"

"Don't make him out to be some kind of kicked puppy. Keith has just been gallivanting around space, like always, only caring about himself," Lance grumbled, but Shiro's mind had short-circuited in the meantime.

"What was that about using a ship like a missile?" he asked.

"The Naxzela thing, I mean," Matt said, as if that clarified anything.

Shiro glanced at the others, looking for confirmation. Lance still seemed mostly pissed, but Pidge and Hunk appeared to be as lost as he was.

"Did you never actually talk about this?" Matt asked.

"What happened?" Shiro asked, even as he was suddenly sure he didn't want to know the answer.

"It was Naxzela, like I said. We couldn't break through Haggar's shield, since we'd lost control of the cannons. And we didn't know that Lotor was going to come out of nowhere and save the day. Keith had the idea to try to ram the shield with his ship, instead. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen. If Lotor hadn't shown up when he did, Keith would have done it. Thing is, I ran the calculations afterward. It wouldn't have even worked."

Shiro couldn't say anything for a long time.

"I made him promise me that he would talk to you all about it. Guess he never did," Matt said eventually.

"I didn't..." Shiro whispered.

"Shiro, you weren't even there. I mean, you were stuck inside the Black Lion's mindscape or whatever. It was the clone who he would have talked to at the time," Pidge pointed out.

Was that supposed to make it better? Keith almost died, knowingly and by his own conscious choice, and Shiro hadn't done anything. Hadn't known anything.

No, worse than that. Because as Shiro parsed through the clone's memories, he realized that at the very moment Keith would have attempted to ram his ship into Haggar's shield, the man he thought was Shiro had told him he did a good job.

"Shiro, you have Krolia's contact info, right?" Hunk asked. "Can we get Keith's info from her? Call him back before he gets too far away?"

Shiro didn't have high hopes, but it was the best plan they had.

The others (even Lance, though he looked grumpy about it) gathered around the tablet.

"I got the information from Kolivan about Keith's injuries. Thank you for providing medical attention," Krolia said once the call connected. No greeting. Very stilted, even for Krolia. "If that is all, I am quite busy."

"Wait!" Shiro cried, just before the screen went blank. "Can we have Keith's contact information?"

"No," Krolia said.

The call disconnected.

"I can hack it," Pidge said, already making grabby-hand motions toward Shiro's tablet. "If he's got our info in his ship's system, then I can trace it back and find his."

"I'm not sure violating his privacy is really the best way to show Keith we want to try being friends again," Hunk said.

"Well what are we supposed to do? He’s not going to come to us…" Pidge said.

"I know you're Paladins and everything, and you defeated a millenias-old empire, but this might not be something you can win," Matt said gently.

Shiro didn't want to admit it, but he was probably right.

The rest of Shiro's un-retirement was a hushed, somber affair after that. Lance had reacted badly, complaining about Keith ruining the vibe, but after a few hours even he laid off the anger. How had they been healthier and better-functioning during an active war than they were in peace? Was it only the common goal of defeating Zarkon that had held them together?

A few days later, toward the end of Matt's time with them and when they were just starting to get their bearings back, they had another visitor.

The ship's clearance came from the Blade of Marmora, and Shiro held out hope that maybe, just maybe, Krolia had told Keith they wanted to contact him, and Keith had returned.

He wasn't the only one who was thinking along those lines, given how the others silently followed Shiro out to the hangar to greet the new arrival.

But the ship wasn't Keith's sleek vessel, nor the political one Kolivan and Krolia normally used. Shiro didn't recognize it, and apparently neither did the others.

So it was a surprise when Ezor and Zethrid stepped off the ramp and into the Atlas's hangar.

"Hello," Zethrid said, managing to make it sound like a threat, and Shiro frantically wracked his mind for the notes left by the previous captains. Had they switched sides again?

"We won't be here long. No need to get out the red carpet," Ezor said, hanging artlessly off of Zethrid's arm. "We're just here to hurt you."

"You see, we were going to beat you to a pulp for what you've done to Keith. I had a whole list planned out."

"But Keith is nicer than us," Ezor said. "He said no physical violence. And anyway, we realized something else was going to hurt a lot worse."

"We were there for Keith at the start. We've known Mervus for ages."

"She calls us her aunties," Ezor supplied.

“We were there for all the traditions.”

“All the birthdays. The holidays. Where were you?”

"He trusts us. He doesn't trust you."

"How does that feel?" Ezor said.

"Doesn't it hurt to know that you lost to someone who tried to kill him once?" Zethrid asked.

"Doesn't it make you feel just awful?"

"Alright, you had your fun," Acxa said, getting out of the ship behind them. "Thanks for the ride, but you can stop now. I think they got the idea."

"Awww, are you sure?" Ezor said, somehow pouting and smiling at the same time.

"Yes."

Shiro would have felt grateful toward her, if he had any positive emotions left.

"Alright, well, say hi to Ronnie for us," Ezor said.

"Bye, former Paladins!" Zethrid grinned.

And then they were gone, and Shiro and the others were left standing in an empty hangar, wondering how things had become this broken.

"Why didn't he come to us?" Lance asked at dinner that evening. "When he suddenly got a kid. Why didn't he come to us for help? Was it because of me?"

"I think things were already messed up by that point. I don't think it was your fault," Hunk said gently.

"Lance kind of has a point though," Pidge said, shrugging a bit when Hunk threw her a look. "Lance was the one that insisted that first time that we couldn't change the Allura memorial service date. It was all downhill from there."

"I just..." Lance started. "I don't get how he doesn't... it's like he wasn't grieving. Or maybe he was grieving... better?"

"I think," Shiro said, trying to tread very gently and not reveal any of Keith's secrets while he wasn't there to defend himself, "that Keith has always prepared for the worst. Always expected people to leave him, whether by some tragedy or by their own choice. So in a way he did a lot of his grieving before it ever happened. It wasn't that he wanted Allura to disappear, but he had already processed some of the feelings."

Matt nodded. "It's like I said, the man has abandonment issues a mile wide. Something like a space princess being absorbed into the fabric of the universe was probably just par for the course for him."

"And we proved him right. I proved him right," Lance said glumly. "I was just jealous, I guess, that he was weathering the storm of losing Allura better than I had. He just had to one-up me one last time and grieve better than me. And I ended up pushing him away, from all of us."

"Sooooooo... now what?" Pidge asked.

Shiro didn't know the answer.

"Dad?" Mervus asked, wandering into the cockpit long after she should have been asleep. Coran had returned to Altea a few movements before, with the strong instructions that Keith was to call him for assistance before things got to that point next time.

"Hey," Keith said. "Can't sleep?"

She shook her head and wordlessly clamored into the pilot's seat with him.

"Tell me about the Paladins?" she said eventually.

"About how we used to be? Or how things are now?"

"Before. When you loved them."

Keith's immediate reaction was to argue. They were apparently soldiers, work colleagues, and nothing more.

But he had loved them, in his way.

He still did.

So Keith told her. About how Shiro had taken him under his wing and taken care of him. How Pidge was so smart and so dedicated to finding her family. How Hunk was so brave to overcome his fear. How Lance did really have a good heart, underneath it all.

"Was there someone missing? There was... grief, I think."

"Yeah. Her name was Allura. We lost her, at the end of the war. I think that's why Lance was so upset with me, though I'm not really sure why."

"Will you tell me about her?"

That was somehow an easier request than thinking about the relationships he'd lost with the Paladins. Allura had gone before they could drift apart on their own. So Keith told her about Allura's role as the princess, how they'd had their differences but reconciled, and how much he missed her.

"I know her," Mervus said, half-asleep, when he'd finished.

Keith nodded, thinking that Coran must have told Mervus all about Allura while Keith had been dealing with Felstesk, but then Mervus continued:

"She's the nice lady that visits us sometimes."

What?

"What?" Keith asked, positive he'd misheard.

"She visits sometimes."

"She... what does that mean?"

"Sometimes she is here, and sometimes she is not. I think she's just here for fun. Or maybe she's lonely, too."

That didn't sound like an imaginary friend, or just stories about Allura she'd picked up from Coran. If Mervus was right, if Allura was somehow here, did it mean that she was trying to get home? Trying to get back onto their physical plane? Or was she just truly lonely? Wanting to take some time out of her Reality-Protecting Duties to visit them?

"Do you talk to her?" Keith asked, mind still racing.

"Only a little. Mostly she listens. But her emotions are very nice. I like her." Mervus was falling asleep in his arms, but Keith had to know.

“Is she physically here, or just in your mind?” You never knew, when it came to empaths.

“She’s here when she needs to be. She woke me up when Treptor came.”

And then Keith remembered.

It was before Keith had found Mervus. He was still mostly functioning solo, too unpredictable and admittedly snappish for Kolivan to think of assigning any of the other Blades to be his partner. An aid mission on the outskirts of Daibazaal had gone sideways in a hurry, and Keith had found himself unarmed, alone, and staring down the barrel of a blaster.
The shot had gone weirdly wide, giving Keith the time he needed to recover and get the Hell out of Dodge. He'd never figured out what exactly had happened. Maybe the gun had misfired, or the man had intentionally just fired a warning shot. Missing at what was almost point-blank range... In the moment, Keith had been too busy to look a gift horse in the mouth.

If it was Allura...

"Can she touch things? Interact with things?" Keith asked. This was not the sort of thing he wanted to jump into without some more concrete proof. But if she could interact with the world around them, why hadn't she made her presence known to him? Why hadn't she made her presence known to Lance?

"Only if someone is in trouble," Mervus said. "Like with Treptor."

Or like with Keith's experience on Daibazaal.

"Do you know why she's here?"

Mervus shrugged. It was late, and he'd already kept her up too long.

"Okay," Keith said. "Bedtime for you."

They could pick up the conversation tomorrow, anyways.

When he returned to the cockpit after tucking Mervus in, there were new coordinates already plugged into the ship's navigation system.

Chapter Text

"You said I didn't need to reconcile with the Paladins."

"You don't, and I certainly won't make you," Pli said.

"What if I... want to?"

"I would recommend spending a lot of time thinking about motives. Why do you want to reconcile?"

"I miss them," Keith said quietly.

"Do you miss them, or do you miss your memories of them?"

By unspoken rule, none of the Paladins had left after Shiro's un-retirement party officially ended. None of them were reinstated on the ship, though they also weren't really civilians. They were just... there, taking up their old rooms and inhabiting the Atlas as if they'd never really left.

(Well. Not quite as if they'd never really left, or there would have been two more bedrooms occupied).

But it seemed like Matt's words had affected them all. Even without considering Keith, they'd drifted apart after the war. They'd done different things, and that was fine. But somewhere along the line, they'd stopped being friends. It felt wrong, to dismantle an alien empire together and then just... stop.

Everyone on the Atlas was just going to need to get used to a few more slightly chaotic people around.

"I'm going to be sticking to a set course for a while," Keith said, while Kolivan stared blankly at him on the screen. "If there's any aid mission you need me to take along that path, or close to it, that's fine. But anything that's more of a quintant's deviation will need to wait or be taken by a different Blade."

"And you're planning to return?" Kolivan asked.

"Of course."

"The last time I heard something like that, you and your mother spent two years in the quantum abyss."

"I don't know what's waiting for me at these coordinates, exactly," Keith admitted, "but I'll certainly try not to end up in a time rift or something."

"Will you be safe?"

The question shouldn't have surprised Keith, and at least it wasn't quite as unexpected as it would have been a few years ago, but still.

"I think so." Allura wouldn't knowingly send them into danger.

If this was actually Allura...

"Good enough, I suppose. Keep in contact, or Krolia will murder me."

After that, it was just Keith, Mervus, and Kosmo, and the promise of uncharted space.

"Paladins, I respect your role in dismantling the Galra Empire, but if you insist on continuing to call me every single day, knowing I will say no, we will soon have a diplomatic incident."

"We just want to talk to Keith. Krolia, please," Shiro said. "We're not asking for his contact information, we just want him to know that we're reaching out. Can't you at least tell him that?"

"And I want you to know that I will do no such thing."

"You don’t think he’d meet us?" Hunk asked.

"I left Keith once," she said, "out of duty to the war and a desire to protect him. It took two years alone in the quantum abyss to reconcile that relationship, and you want to do it in one single meeting? No."

"So what can we do?" Lance asked. He was still a bit iffy when it came to anything Keith-related, but he was working on it.

"Prove that you deserve my help, and I will give it to you. Grudgingly."

"So you want us to keep calling and harassing you?" Pidge said.

The screen, tellingly, went black.

"So what have you been up to recently, lad?" Coran asked on their once-a-movement call. Keith had already told Mervus not to say anything about their potential mission to find Allura. They had no idea if it would be successful, and Keith knew Coran couldn't handle losing her twice.

He wasn't so naive to think that bringing Allura back into their physical reality would mend all the broken relationships with the Paladins, given that they hadn't even attempted to contact him since he'd left the Atlas. But he still felt like he owed it to her. And if anything, he owed it to Coran, as well, who had taken Keith back into his life and supported him, no questions asked, no hard feelings.

"We're on a bit of an exploratory mission right now," he said instead. "Going way out, past the Kiriseter System."

Coran whistled. "That's farther out than any of our maps can even project. What are you doing out there?"

"You know Kolivan, always wanting information. He doesn't like not knowing things, like what's out there in the universe." It was throwing Kolivan under the bus, a little bit, but all things considered, Kolivan deserved to get thrown under the bus sometimes.

"Well, you be careful, young man. Once you get much farther out, it will get more difficult to send any aid."

"I will make sure he is careful," Mervus said solemnly.

"I know," Coran said, teary-eyed for some bizarre reason, and Keith frantically changed the subject to the next Altean festival.

"I have an idea," Hunk said, one evening after scouring the ship's information about Galra customs. Shiro was hesitantly optimistic. Hunk knew plenty about the topic from his time as a culinary diplomat. But then he said: "We need to ask for Keith's hand in marriage."

"We?" Pidge asked.

"Marriage?" Lance asked.

"Why?" Shiro asked.

"Ok, so Krolia said we had to prove ourselves, right? Well there are a whole bunch of Galra customs for when you want to marry someone, kind of like asking their parents for permission like some people do on Earth, only like, way harder. So I figure, if we could prove to Krolia that we would be a good match for Keith's mate, then she would have to agree to let us talk to him, right?"

"What do these customs entail?" Shiro asked, hardly believing he was even considering it. But on the other hand, they were getting a little desperate.

"Someone would need to fight Krolia in hand-to-hand combat, I was thinking Shiro could do that because Krolia scares me too much and Pidge and Lance are useless at hand-to-hand. We would also need to build a house for him ourselves, I was thinking Lance and I could do that, and then Pidge would need to write the wedding vows."

"So your solution to this problem is Galra polygamy?" Lance asked, as Pidge said, "I am not writing mushy wedding vows, he'll be getting very specific and analytical descriptions of love and friendship."

The pathetic thing was, Shiro was willing to try it.

“Are you going to be ok by yourself?” Keith asked. He didn't particularly want to be going on this aid run, but he had told Kolivan that he'd be okay with the idea of an aid mission that didn't take them far off-course.

“Yeah,” Mervus assured him. Keith could almost hear the implied ‘duh’ at the end, and had a sudden image of her as a teenager.

He had no idea how he was going to handle that.

Did Evalüir go through puberty?

“Are you ok?” Mervus asked after Keith had been staring into space for a good three dobashes. “You’re worried. What are you worried about?”

“Uh, it’s nothing. Just thinking about the future. You’ll be fine?”

“I have Kosmo with me. We will watch the new episode of Bii Boh Mornings.”

“Alright, have a good time. I’ll keep the comms line open if you need anything. Kosmo, you’re in charge.”

He heard Mervus’s indignant ‘Hey!’ and smirked as the Denebola’s door closed shut behind him.

He didn't like leaving her behind like this, but the Crosians had been very clear in their missive. Keith only, because the monster they were asking him to deal with was dangerous. Hopefully not dangerous enough that Keith was going to regret leaving Kosmo behind, but he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Only when he got to the capitol building, he was met with confused looks.

"We will always welcome your presence, Blade, but we did not request it in this instance. We have no monsters, and certainly none with the name you mentioned."

Keith suddenly had a very, very bad feeling.

When he tried to connect to the communications line on the ship, there was nothing but static.

Ice settled into his veins and he took off without another word to the Crosians.

It could just be coincidence. Maybe Mervus got engrossed in the show and didn’t hear his message. Maybe there was some faulty wiring with the Denebola’s communications systems. Maybe she was already hitting her teenage angst and just wasn't answering.

And then he saw the Denebola.

The door was missing—it had been ripped of its hinges and tossed several feet away from the hull.

Just inside the doorway was Kosmo, lying on his side and whining in pain. Keith skidded to a stop and took a moment to kneel down and check his wounds. Bad, deep, bleeding heavily, but not life-threatening as long as he got treatment soon. The wolf tried to lift his head and howled a little, piteously, mournfully.

Keith absently ran a hand over his ears, and then stumbled further into the ship, calling for Mervus.

Even though he knew, deep down, that she wasn't going to answer.

The inside of the ship was a disaster. Blaster marks scorching the walls, furniture toppled over.

Blood on the floor, the particular shiny maroonish color that Keith came from Mervus.

He searched the entire ship four times before he finally admitted to himself that Mervus was gone, and that he needed help.

The Denebola's communications systems were completely shot—it looked like someone had blown up the entire console—and there was no hope of getting any message out, not to Kolivan or Krolia or anyone else.

And that would have been the end of it, had Coran not shared the latest Altean communications upgrade with Keith just two days ago. The main communications system might have been dead, but Keith's personal tablet had a direct line to Coran. He'd be able to rally the troops, get aid to Keith's location, and take care of everything else that needed taking care of while Keith had a mental breakdown.

The tablet was still where he left it, still in his room, in perfect working order.

Coran appeared just a few moments afterward, looking like Keith had woken him up in the middle of the night, and Keith didn't even have the ability to feel bad about that. He just took a deep breath, willed the words to come out, and said,

"I need help."

Chapter Text

It was nearly time for the daily videocall to Krolia (she had lightened up, albeit only slightly, when they'd revealed their marriage plan), so all the former Paladins were huddled around the datapad when it rang with an unexpected call.

Kolivan was calling him.

Maybe Krolia had finally gotten sick of the constant communications and had handed them off for him to deal with?

“Shiro," Kolivan said, "and former Paladins." He sounded strained in a way that Kolivan never sounded.

"What's happening?" Shiro asked, already dreading the answer.

"I am calling in reinforcements, so to speak. I need the Atlas to wormhole to these coordinates as soon as this call is completed. Is that possible?"

"We're en route to New Olkarion right now, but it's just a routine trip. They can wait a bit if there's an emergency. What's going on?" Shiro asked again.

"Mervus has been taken," Kolivan said. "Keith has refused the assistance of the larger ranks of the Blade of Marmora, so I am asking you. He trusted you once. Do not make me regret this."

"We'll be there, whatever he needs," Shiro promised. They barely knew Mervus, and if Shiro was being honest, he wasn't sure they knew Keith anymore either. But Keith needed their help, and they were going to give it to him.

"This is not the time for reconciliation, Paladins," Kolivan warned. "You will take whatever Keith decides to give you, do whatever Keith decides to task you with, and nothing more. This is his mission, and his daughter. Am I understood?"

"Crystal clear, Kolivan, now shut up and give us the coordinates," Lance said. Whether it was impatience to help Keith, or impatience to get this all over with, Shiro wasn't sure.

The coordinates Kolivan gave to them seemed like they were in the middle of nowhere. What had Keith even been doing out here? The wormhole jump was unexpectedly long, but they made it without a problem, and took one of the smaller ships down to the surface of the planet.

Shiro had Veronica with him, and Lazora, in case a medic was required. The other Paladins also insisted on shoving themselves into the pod with them.

Keith's ship looked like a war zone, with blaster marks scorching the hull and bits of the plating physically torn off. Keith himself was outside on the grass along with Kolivan, Krolia, Ezor, Zethrid, Acxa, and a few people who must have been locals. In all the rush to get here, Shiro hadn't even checked the name of the planet.

Keith paused his pacing long enough to shoot them a frazzled glance, and then freeze. His eyes flashed, and when he snapped at Kolivan, his fangs were visible.

"You asked them?"

"You need help, end of discussion," Kolivan told him. "The Atlas has greater capabilities than anything else we could hope for on such short notice."

"Calm down, Keith," Zethrid said, her voice surprisingly gentle. "If they are not helpful, I will end them for you."

Shiro didn't doubt her.

Still, Keith wasn't quite as accepting.

"Shiro I do not have time for this right now," Keith said as he stomped over.

"We don’t need to talk about things now. We don’t need to talk about things ever, if you don’t want, but use us, Keith. We’re your team, what do you need?" He looked toward the other former Paladins for their agreement, and got sturdy nods back from all of them, even Lance.

Before Keith could tell them what exactly he needed, Coran and an unfamiliar Altean stepped out of the ruins of Keith's ship.

"They've hidden their trail well, unfortunately," the stranger said. "I don't sense any quintessence except for your own and your daughter's."

"It's an unpleasant idea, but Alteans could be behind this," Coran said. "For someone to disguise themselves like that... perhaps there are nefarious forces at work on our own planet."

Keith stopped looking pissed off for long enough to consider the new information.

"Is it possible for someone who isn't Altean to learn alchemy? Or at least learn enough of it to do this?"

"Possible, but very unlikely," the stranger said.

"It's just that, there was someone before, who was trying alchemic bullshit. I thought he was a lone agent, a one-off, so I didn't follow up on it. But if he had been working with someone else, could they have done this?"

"The Steriayn, you mean?" Coran asked.

"Yeah, him. He wanted to sacrifice me to bring the Lions back using alchemy. I thought he was just nuts. I didn't think... Last time, he was only after me. I didn't think he'd go after Mervus, or I would have destroyed him."

"What do you mean, someone wanted to sacrifice you?" Shiro asked, not liking the implications of that statement at all.

"It was fine," Keith said with an impatient wave of his hand. "I made sure Kolivan told you all to be on guard about it."

"He wanted to kill you?" Hunk said.

"Yeah, it happens sometimes, and it's fine, and it's not the point right now. The problem is, if he was working with others, then we don't know what we're dealing with. It might be just a few, or it might be an entire army."

"I'll contact the Steriayn and see if I can get any information about the whereabouts of their previous governor," Coran said, plucking Keith's tablet out of his hands and wandering a few paces away.

Which left just an awkward chasm between Keith and the rest of the Paladins.

"If they are using alchemy, there might be a way to track it. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with technology to create something that would extend beyond my own alchemic abilities," the stranger said.

At the idea of technology, Keith turned toward the others, seemingly in spite of himself.

"Pidge, Hunk, is there a way to track a lot of Altean alchemy? To pinpoint it? Especially if it's being done by someone who isn't Altean by blood?"

"Maybe," Pidge said, sounding much less sure than Shiro would have preferred. "We might be able to figure something out, but it would probably take a while."

"Start on it, then. Take Farora with you and try it with the Atlas's systems," Keith said, waving at the strange Altean as he switched grudgingly back into his role as Black Paladin.

"What do you need from us, Keith?" Shiro asked.

Keith's lips curled, and Shiro was prepared for Keith to tell them they were useless to him and to just leave him alone. That they weren't helpful like Pidge and Hunk.

But then Coran came back, a grim look on his face.

"Seems like he wasn't just a lone wolf. The Steriayn told me that he escaped, with help, several phoebs ago. They attempted to contact the Blade and warn you all, but the messages kept getting rerouted."

"How large of a group?" Keith asked.

"At least twenty. And they said..."

"Coran," Keith said, a hard edge to his voice.

"The Steriayn said that they needed 'the child.'"

Presumably, that meant Keith's child.

"Coran, can you, Shiro, and Lance, look at some flight charts and figure out which planets would be possible candidates for this kind of secret cult group to live? Somewhere they'd have a lot of access to quintessence."

"You should come with us," Coran prodded. "It won't do you any good to sit here and stew and be anxious."

Keith shook his head. "Later. I need to check on Kosmo, first."

It was then that it occurred to Shiro that Kosmo, usually stuck to Keith's side like velcro, so attentive of Mervus, was nowhere to be seen.

And maybe what Keith needed was for someone else to take over for a bit.

"Alright, team, we have our orders," Shiro said. "Keith, let us know when you want a lift up to the Atlas."

When Shiro, Lance, and Coran made it back to the control room, Pidge and Hunk were already animatedly talking to Farora and Lazora, and there was a computer screen with code Shiro could never hope to understand, so he hoped they were making progress and not getting sidetracked about the possibilities of alchemically-altered technology.

Meanwhile, Coran led them over to one of the other stations, and pulled up Keith's flight charts. He'd been aiming at a sector of space even farther out than they were now, and Shiro had no idea why.

"Kolivan says it's an exploratory mission," Coran said, apparently on the same wavelength, "but I've no idea what Keith is supposed to be exploring out there. I suspect it's a coverup for something."

It didn't bode well, but this version of Keith certainly wasn't going to tell them what he was up to unless he needed to for Mervus's sake.

"So Keith thinks the alchemy cult thing is somewhere in the same area?" Lance asked.

"Yes, and I'd tend to agree," Coran said. "They at least would have been close to Keith's general position to know when he'd landed on Crosius. They only had about 20 dobashes to take her."

So they got to work—Pidge, Hunk, and the Alteans on one side, Shiro, Lance, and Coran on the other—to try to pinpoint where exactly this group could be. Coran's knowledge of other planets, even out here, proved invaluable.

Eventually Keith migrated back up to the Atlas, but it was clear he was too distressed to be of much help to either team.

It was alright. They owed Keith this, anyway. And Krolia was with him now, attempting to calm Keith down and get him focused on the mission. Whether she was successful was another question, but at least someone was focusing on Keith's own well-being during all of this.

With the alchemy-locating program and Shiro, Lance, and Coran's data, they narrowed the field down to about a dozen potential planets. Which felt like a success, a dozen planets out of millions, until Shiro saw Keith grit his teeth at the news and realized the issue.

The problem was, the planets were all pretty close together. And if these people had the technology to block and redirect messages, they probably had the technology to know when a spaceship was in their airspace. If they chose wrong, the alchemists could panic and flee, or worse. They'd lose Mervus.

"We could go out with teams," Hunk suggested.

But Keith bristled at the idea, his hair almost literally puffing up like a cat. Krolia shot them a tiny headshake for 'no,' and Shiro understood, even if it wasn't convenient. Keith needed to be there, wherever Mervus was. Besides, with a dozen possibilities, the teams could be spread too thin to be effective.

"Try to hone in the parameters," Keith said. "Narrow the search."

"We've already done that," Pidge told him. "We're as narrow as we can get."

"Then do it again, and do it better," Keith snapped.

"Hey, we're trying our best here," Hunk said. "We literally invented a searching program that didn't exist two hours ago. Cut us some slack, okay?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, my mistake. I'm just focusing too much on losing the only person in the universe that fucking matters," Keith snarled.

"You wanna go, buddy?" Lance asked, stepping right into the bubble of space they'd all been consciously or unconsciously leaving around Keith. "You don't get to yell at the people that are helping you."

"Not now, Lance," Keith growled.

"Oh, because you're too busy being useless while we look for your kidnapped daughter?"

"Lance..." Hunk said, a sharp tone to his voice. Shiro was sure he was going to have to pull them back, before Lance flashed a subtle wink in his direction.

This was intentional, forcing Keith out of his panicked state to focus on something else. Lance always had been good at antagonizing Keith.

"I said not now."

"Well, what else are you doing?" Lance jabbed. "Because I don't see you -"

He was cut off by Keith ramming into him like a football tackle. Lance admirably stayed on his feet, but it was clear that Keith was still in top form, or at least close to it, and Lance didn't stand a chance. The most he could hope for was blocking at least some of the punches and kicks that Keith was not even thinking about pulling.

Keith only stopped when the sharp crack of a broken bone rang out.

"You feel better, champ?" Lance asked through a bloody nose.

"Oh god, I'm sorry."

"Well, I was kind of expecting that would happen," Lance said as Lazora fussed over him.

"Idiots, both of you," she said under her breath.

"Fuck you, you did that on purpose," Keith said. "I wasn't even aiming for your nose."

"Worked, didn't it?" Lance said cheekily. "I was your right hand for a while, I know how to... handle you."

"Fuck you," Keith repeated.

But he did seem much less anxious than before. A bit more centered.

Maybe Shiro should try that technique more often.

"Hunk is probably right," Keith said, once Lazora had brought Lance back after resetting his broken nose. "Teams make the most sense in this situation. Are the MFEs still -"

Keith cut himself off in the middle of the sentence, suddenly much calmer than Shiro expected him to be, his eyes weirdly bright, and said, "I know where she is."

The Atlas lurched and jolted forward, the ship listening to telepathic commands not from Shiro, but from Keith.

"He can do that?" Hunk whispered loudly.

Shiro didn't know exactly where Keith was directing them, especially since it seemed Keith himself wasn't in a position to explain any of his actions, almost trancelike on the bridge as he commanded the ship.

Coran frantically brought up their charts, and eventually it became clear that Keith wasn't even aiming for one of the planets in the area they'd collated. They were going farther out, into deeper, unknown space, but Keith seemed to know what he was doing. Maybe he was connected to Mervus in some way that Shiro still didn't understand.

"There," Keith said finally, putting them in orbit around a large rocky planet they didn't even have a name for. "Inside the cave systems."

Shiro didn't insult him by asking whether he was sure.

"Any idea what we're dealing with?"

"A bit like Haggar was," Keith answered. "Powerful, but their minds have been altered by the quintessence they've been playing with. About twenty of them, like Coran said."

Again, Shiro wasn't going to ask how Keith knew any of that.

"You want us to go down there with you?" Lance asked, and Keith blinked as he snapped out of the trance, disconnecting from the Atlas.

"Yes," he said slowly, as if he was unsure of the answer.

Shiro would take it.

"The Blade as well?" Shiro asked. It seemed like Keith needed a bit of direction again.

"Kolivan, mom, the warlords," Keith said, and they all stood at attention. "The MFE fighters can come too if they want," he said, almost as an afterthought. "Coran?"

"I shall stay here and monitor the situation from above," he told them. "Bring her back safe."

They took several pods down to the planet's surface to accommodate everyone, as well as a couple of the MFEs for aerial backup.

But by the time everyone got situated and Shiro turned to Keith to ask if he had a plan, he had already bolted into the caves.

Chapter Text

He should have known that Keith wouldn't sit still and wait, wouldn't hold back when his daughter was somewhere in these caves. But Keith was also still not necessarily up to his full game, and he didn't have a magical teleporting space wolf backing him up this time.

"Follow him, give him back up!" Shiro shouted, but the others were already moving before the words were even out of his mouth.

As they moved forward, however, they discovered a rather large obstacle.

This was a cave system. System. With multiple caves. The path branched off into no less than ten different options, and Shiro and the others didn't have the added benefit of whatever connection Keith had to Mervus to know which way to go.

"Split up," Shiro reluctantly told them, realizing they'd need to go solo if they were going to check each of these twists and turns. "Use the comms to keep in touch, let people know when you find a dead-end, and regroup if you can."

He waited just a moment for their agreement before he took off into the leftmost tunnel, hoping he'd picked correctly. He wasn't sure they were going to get a second chance at this.

By the time Shiro was making the first twist in his chosen path, Keith's voice, viscerally angry, came onto the comms.

He'd never heard Keith sound like that. Not speaking any words, just... sounds. Animalistic. Feral.

"Keith, which tunnel did you take?" he tried.

The comms went silent. Whether they'd been destroyed or Keith had muted them, Shiro had no idea.

They needed to hurry up.

"The rightmost tunnel is clear," Krolia said, panic evident in her voice. "Trying the next one."

"Third from the right is clear, too," Griffin said.

"So is the second from the left." That was Hunk, slightly out of breath.

Progress, at least, but who knew what Keith was facing in the meantime?

The chatter on the comms continued, eliminating options as Shiro kept going forward.

And then -

"Fourth from the left, fourth from left, I've got him," Lance said. "I've got him, I've.... oh, Jesus....."

"Lance!" Shiro barked, at the same time that Krolia growled over the comms, "Report, McClain!"

"Hold on, hold on," Lance said, his voice suddenly low and gentle. "Hey, buddy, hey, you're okay. Everything's okay, the others are coming soon. Can I see her?"

There was a low rumbling snarl in the background of Lance's comms, and then he yelped.

"Okay, alright, no touching, got it."

"Report!" Krolia repeated.

"Your son just bit me," Lance whined over the comms. "The alchemists are, um. Well most of them are dead. Some of them might be unconscious, I'm not sure. Mervus looks bad, but I can't get close enough to check."

"We're all on our way to you," Shiro said. "Just don't antagonize him in the meantime."

"Too late for that."

Shiro and Krolia made it to Keith at the same time, Zethrid and Ezor right behind them.

It was absolute carnage. There were limbs torn off of bodies, blood and gore spattered on the floor and the cave walls. In the middle of it all was Keith, growling under his breath, Mervus in his arms. Lance was a few paces away, sitting on the floor. Making himself less of a threat, Shiro realized.

He felt a little unnecessary. All this, and Keith hadn't needed their help at all. He was the one who had found Mervus at every step of the process. The rest of them had mostly been decoration. Keith hadn't even needed his help to pilot Shiro's own ship.

"Kit," Krolia whispered, inching forward, "kit, it's alright. Let me take her. I will get her to the medics. She will be alright."

Keith hesitated, still. He made some kind of weird, low rumbling sound in his chest, like a low-pitched wail. Krolia made an answering noise, a sort of series of click-chirp things, and something in Keith shifted.

He still looked like he was about to bite someone again, but at least Krolia could get close without any issues.

Eventually, she coaxed Keith into giving up Mervus.

"She's alive," Krolia said. "I'll take her back to the ship."

That in itself was a relief, but then Krolia pinned Shiro with a look, tipping her head back toward Keith before she ran off with Mervus. The meaning was obvious, even if Shiro didn't quite believe it at first.

Krolia was leaving Keith in their care. Trusting Keith with them, after everything.

Without Mervus as a shield, Keith started to deflate. He looked wretched and gruesome, covered in blood, some of which was definitely his own. He was also favoring his right leg and holding himself like his ribs hurt. It was clear that he hadn't come off quite unscathed in this fight.

It was also clear that he was about three ticks away from an adrenaline crash.

Shiro stepped forward, tucking himself under Keith's arm and shouldering some of his weight. He tried to ignore Keith's startled flinch, the way Keith's eyes flashed a harsher yellow and his lips curled back into a snarl. But then Ezor reached out and tapped him on the cheek before she slipped herself under Keith's other shoulder, and he seemed to shake himself out of it.

It was slow going, Keith limping between them but refusing to be carried out of the caves. Kolivan, Pidge, Griffin, Zethrid, and Acxa stayed behind to check on things, especially once Keith managed to tell them that he thought a couple of the alchemists got away. Lance took up a scouting position in front of them, making sure the way back to the Atlas was clear and there weren't any alchemists laying in wait to ambush them.

Luckily, they didn't run into any trouble, and were able to get Keith into the Atlas's medbay quickly, bypassing several hallways that should have been in the way.

Shiro didn't even try to put Keith in his own room, instead steering them toward where Krolia was waiting, several doctors already surrounding the bed where Mervus must have been.

Keith finally shrugged off both Shiro and Ezor's help, limping forward and standing at Krolia's side.

"How is she?" he rasped.

"Still unconscious, though most of the injuries appear superficial," Krolia answered. "The doctors here are unfamiliar with treating Evalüi, so Kolivan has sent for Chroptka to join them. Until then, pain medicine and IV fluids."

"And don't think I haven't noticed the state of you, Vice-Lieutenant," Lazora said, pulling Keith none-too-gently toward a different bed and shoving him onto it.

As long as Keith had a clear view of Mervus in the bed next to him, he docilely let Lazora do whatever she wanted, though he drew the line at anything that would knock him out. Shiro wanted to protest and tell Keith to just take the pain meds and get some rest, but he didn't think it would be taken well. Especially not after Krolia shot him a withering glare the moment Shiro opened his mouth.

It was alright. Lazora didn't take any shit, regardless of who her patient was and whether they were currently fretting over the health of their child. If she was okay without Keith taking the meds and resting, that was enough for Shiro.

The Blade doctor arrived less than an hour later, and with them came Kosmo, limping into the room and barely managing to drag himself onto the bed with Keith. Shiro couldn't ever remember seeing the wolf like that, bedraggled and lackluster.

"He looks much better," Krolia said, and Keith nodded in agreement before burying his face in the wolf's neck.

What had he looked like before, Shiro wondered.

The new doctor also seemed much more familiar with Mervus's medical needs, walking the others through the medication she could take and how to treat the rest of the injuries. Keith relaxed a bit as they discussed whether they could treat the wounds that were still bleeding with Altean technology, and finally noticed the fact that Lance's hand had been bandaged.

"Did I.... bite you?" Keith asked, squinting at the injury.

"Yes. Yes, you did."

"Eh. You probably deserved it," Keith said, the tiniest bit of a smirk pulling at his mouth.

"Hey!"

Shiro couldn't help smiling at the exchange. It felt more natural than anything between Keith and Lance had been in years.

The Blade doctor, Chroptka, had pronounced Mervus "okay," albeit needing a lot of bed rest and calm before she had really recovered, so Shiro had reluctantly gone around the ship to perform some of the duties he'd been putting off. Mervus would sleep for several days, the doctor said, an Evalüi healing mechanism that Keith seemed to already be familiar with.

When Shiro stopped by later to see Krolia half-heartedly glaring in Lance's direction, he expected the worst.

But what he found was Keith and Lance sitting on the bed, talking in low voices.

Apologizing, Shiro realized. Lance was actually apologizing.

Maybe things weren't quite as broken as he feared.

"You were trying to reach me?" Keith said as Shiro approached, a weird mix of emotions on his face.

"Well, yeah. We even tried to marry you," Lance said.

"I'm sorry?"

"What Lance is trying to say is that we were doing everything we could to be, worthy, I guess?"

"Worthy of who?" Keith asked, before something else crossed his face. "Mom..."

"What?" Krolia said, unapologetic. "Wasn't there something your dad used to say? Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, something about murder?"

"We're not murdering anyone. How long have they been trying to contact me?"

"Ages!" Lance said, flopping onto the bed dramatically.

"Since you left the Atlas," Shiro clarified.

"Huh," Keith said, shooting an exasperated look in Krolia's direction. "So what's this about trying to marry me? I'm happily single, just so you're aware."

"It was Hunk's idea," Lance complained. "Shiro was going to fight your mom in hand-to-hand combat and everything."

"Would you look at that," Krolia said, "Kolivan is requesting my assistance in rooting out the last of the alchemists."

And then she was gone, Keith shaking his head in disbelief as she went.

"Please don't actually marry me," he said.

Two days after they'd rescued Mervus, Keith still hadn't slept.

His injuries had been healed, mostly—they'd looked worse than they'd actually been—but Mervus's own recovery was a slow process. She would be alright. It would just take time. She'd been moved into a private recovery room, and for now, she was sleeping peacefully.

Keith, on the other hand...

“Hey,” Shiro murmured, trying to be as gentle as possible, “we’ve put another bed in here with Mervus. Why don’t you get some sleep?” But then he reeled back as Keith snarled at him, teeth bared and eyes momentarily flashing yellow. It reminded him of how Keith had reacted when they’d first found Mervus, but she was safe now. What was the issue?

“It’s a Galra thing,” Hunk answered for him. “It’s like a pack instinct. If someone in the family unit is hurt or sick or threatened, they make sure that at least one person is awake at all times for protection. Since Krolia and Kolivan left to deal with the alchemists, I guess Keith figures he’s the one that needs to stay awake.”

“He doesn’t trust us,” Shiro realized numbly.

“Did you really expect him to?”

Well, no. But he thought they'd at least been making progress on that front.

Keith turned away from them and resumed pacing the large private room Mervus had been given, which Shiro now saw for the protective act it was rather than the worry he’d assumed. This was Keith on patrol, bound and determined to make sure that nothing got past him again. It was admirable, and it made sense now that Hunk had explained, but eventually Keith was going to crash, whether he wanted to or not. They could and would protect Mervus while Keith rested, but Shiro had no idea how to convince Keith of that.

The door opened quietly, though Keith whirled around at the sound, grunting and resuming his pacing once he saw it was only Coran.

"Hello, gentlemen," Coran said.

“Careful, Coran,” Shiro warned with a hand on his shoulder before Coran could make it farther into the room. But Coran shrugged it off, something sad in his eyes.

“It isn’t my place to judge, but I think I understand a little bit more of what’s going on than you do right now, Shiro.”

When Coran approached, Shiro braced for something to happen. Keith wasn't dangerous to them, he knew, but Keith also wasn't exactly in his right mind at the moment. He could seriously hurt Coran if he pulled out his knife right now.

That wasn't what happened.

When Keith noticed Coran approach, he paused in his pattern and slumped where he stood, the tension dropping out of his shoulders.

“Hey, Coran.” His voice was a bit rough, but it was a far cry from the feral growling from earlier.

“Hello, lad,” Coran said. “I brought you some tea.” Coran held out the mug for Keith's inspection, but Keith ignored it in favor of tilting forward, just enough to rest his forehead on Coran's shoulder.

Hunk and Shiro shared an incredulous look from across the room.

Eventually Keith stood back up and took the mug out of Coran's hands with little fuss.

“This is drugged, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly,” Coran said. “It’s not a sedative, but it is used for anti-anxiety purposes. It’ll help you relax and get some sleep, but won’t keep us from waking you up if we need to.” Keith hesitated, glaring at the liquid in the mug. “I’ll stand guard for now.”

“You’ll stay here? You’ll be awake?” Keith checked.

“Yes.”

Keith waited a moment longer, then knocked back the entire contents of the mug in one go. Coran took the empty mug and set it aside, then gently led Keith over to the empty bed with a hand on his back for some stability. Keith balked, though, and dug his heels in as Coran leaned down to turn down the sheets. As if he'd expected it, Coran turned them toward the other bed, the one where Mervus was already asleep, Kosmo curled up at the foot of the bed, and let Keith get settled.

Shiro could see from across the room the moment when the tension completely drained out of Keith and he sunk down into the mattress. Finally asleep.

Coran took the spare bed, leaning against the headboard and crossing his ankles. He peered at Shiro and Hunk over the top of his datapad, halfway between annoyed and remorseful.

The meaning was clear. I have this covered. You aren’t required.

Shiro left the room, pulling Hunk along after him. He knew Coran would keep Keith and Mervus safe, but he still wondered what the hell had just happened all the same.

Chapter Text

When Shiro went to check on them later, they were all still in the same place. Mervus, Keith, and Kosmo crammed onto a single bed, Coran keeping a watchful eye over everything.

"Are they okay?" Shiro asked quietly. He didn't want to wake Keith up after what it took to get him to sleep in the first place.

"You know she's the only reason we didn't lose him, right?" Coran said.

"Coran?"

It didn't seem like the answer to Shiro's question, at first.

"Kolivan told me. Keith was always so reckless, but after the war... Aid work might not be as dangerous as Voltron was, but Keith had completely gone off the rails. No regard for his own safety. For his own life. I don't think he would have killed himself, but I also don't think.... he would have minded if he had died. It wasn't until Mervus started traveling with him that Keith's behavior suddenly changed. It was what made me try to start up a conversation with him again; the possibility that we could salvage that friendship was worth the risk of Keith’s rejection. I’ve already lost so much from this war, Shiro, I couldn’t bear to lose anyone else."

Maybe it was the answer to Shiro's question, after all.

"Why is Keith..." Shiro trailed off, suddenly realizing the question felt too probing and too awkward to voice. Coran answered anyway.

"He wasn't the only one that felt a bit betrayed and abandoned by the former Paladins of Voltron," Coran said with a sharp look. "We both needed someone who understood the grief. You all apparently had each other. Well, so did Number Four and I."

"We didn't mean to shut you out," Shiro said. "Either of you."

"And yet."

And yet.

When Keith woke up, groggy from the long sleep, at first it seemed like nothing had changed. Kosmo was curled into a painful-looking ball at the end of the bed, and Mervus had flipped over in her sleep so she was facing Keith. Nothing had happened, nothing had gone wrong while Keith hadn't been awake to protect her. Without looking, Keith knew Coran was still in the other bed, keeping watch.
Everything was okay. Maybe Keith could even get a little bit more sleep.

And then Mervus started waking up.

"Hey, there," Keith said, quietly, tenderly, but her eyes still squinted in pain at the sound.

She clumsily made her way into his arms, and it was a relief, but then she made that specific little whimper. The 'too many emotions around me' noise, and Keith's brain shortcircuited.

Of course. He should have expected this. She was already weakened from her time with the alchemists, and now he was asking her to deal with the emotions of an entire giant ship, with all its crew and passengers. She would never be able to handle it all in her current state.

Keith stood up, Mervus in his arms, ready to steal one of the MFEs and get out of emotional range, politics and paladins be damned. But then the ship sort of pulsed, and a new doorway appeared on the side of the room.

Keith didn't think. He just took the door, followed the hallways the Atlas provided for him, and suddenly he was in a very familiar space.

His own set of rooms. The ones the Atlas had made for him when he was still the Black Paladin.

Mervus sighed out in relief against him, and Keith realized that the ship was somehow shielding the rest of the emotions from them. Now he just had to calm down his own emotions to keep them from hurting her.

He flinched and nearly dropped her when someone's hand settled on his shoulder, but it was only Coran, silently asking if they would be alright. Keith nodded, his face brushing against Mervus's feathery hair, and then Coran was gone.

Just Keith and Mervus. Father and daughter.

Keith carried her over to the lounge that was just as soft as he remembered it and got them both settled, Mervus in his arms all the while. Letting them both sink into the relief of being back together.

"Knew you would come," Mervus said eventually.

"Always."

The one downside to the emotionally-shielded rooms was that Mervus seemed a bit on edge, not being able to sense who came through the doors until they were already there. Keith tried to convince her that the ship wouldn't let anyone in that would hurt either of them, but the concept of a partially sentient spaceship was lost on her. The Denebola was great, and it was home, but it was no Red Lion.

It meant that they were both caught unawares when Ezor and Zethrid sauntered into the room the next day.

"If you needed someone to take over so you could sleep, you just had to ask, you dum-dum," Ezor said, an affronted air about her.

"Aunty Ez! Aunty Zeth!" Mervus said with a smile, lifting her arms up for one of them to throw her into the air before Keith put a stop to it.

"You're still recovering. No acrobatics just yet."

"Awwww," all three of them said in reply, but Keith knew neither Zethrid nor Ezor would do anything to hurt her.

It was a strange thought, after everything, but it was true.

Eventually, Keith and Mervus both migrated out into the large common space that appeared in the middle of all the former paladins' rooms. It was mostly for Mervus's sake, Keith reasoned. This room seemed to have a lighter emotional shield around it, and Mervus needed to be gradually brought back to a point where she could handle more emotions than just Keith and Coran.

It was logical.

It had nothing to do with the fact that the other former paladins often occupied this space, as well.

It was just nice sometimes. To sit out there with other people, all doing there own things. Shiro looking over old captains' logs, Hunk and Pidge tinkering on something, Lance and Coran discussing New Altea.

Mervus wasn't up for much as her body continued to heal and recover, but she did want to stay close to Keith at all times. Keith wasn't opposed to this at all, so often they sat in the common room and read together, books from Earth and Altea and Daibazaal, Keith's voice quiet so as not to disturb the others. Half the time Mervus just fell asleep while listening, but when she was awake enough, she was enthralled.

It was during one such reading that Keith's tablet pinged with the reminder of an appointment, and he realized that, in all the craziness of the past few days, he had forgotten to tell his therapist about what had been happening.

Oops.

"Oh man, I completely forgot about that doctor's appointment," he said out loud. Coran nodded sagely, but the others seemed weirdly upset.

"Given everything, I think you should take it," Coran suggested.

"Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Mervus, is it ok if I talk to the doctor by myself for a bit?”

"Pop-Pop can finish reading me the story," Mervus nodded.

"I would be honored," Coran said, deftly picking Mervus up out of Keith's lap so Keith could retreat to the privacy of his own room.

"What's wrong?" Pli asked immediately. Keith could never get anything past xem.

Keith didn't mean to start bawling at the doctor. It was maybe the first time he'd ever seen Pli surprised, and he weirdly felt a little victorious about it.

But he just started thinking about the what ifs. What if they had never found her? What if she had been killed? Mervus had become his whole world, and imagining a scenario in which he was too late - it wasn't pleasant.

Once he got everything out in words to Pli, Xe actually praised him for crying. They talked about how Keith's fears were valid, but that he also needed to live in the present and not worry about something like this happening again in the future.

"And you're staying with them for now?" Pli asked toward the end of the call, something that looked like judgement on xir face.

"At least until my ship is repaired. And they've been...better," Keith admitted. "Apparently they've actually been trying to contact me for phoebs, but my mother refused to give them my info."

"Huh," Pli said.

Keith couldn't decide if it was a good or bad 'huh.'

"He has standing doctors appointments that he doesn't want Mervus to be in the room for!" Lance hissed as the former paladins huddled together in Shiro's quarters. "There's something fucky going on!"

"It is... concerning," Shiro admitted.

"Concerning? Shiro we're way past concerning. And of course he didn't say anything to us, and he probably won't tell us what's wrong, because we've been awful friends, but what if he's dying?" Hunk said.

"HIPAA doesn't exist in space. I'll figure it out," Pidge said.

"But Keith has been seen by Dr. Lazora and the others twice now," Shiro reasoned. "If he were sick, they would have said something."

Wouldn't they?

Pidge pulled up the video feed from the common room (Shiro really didn't want to know how she did that) to see Keith exiting his room, crying freely in a way Shiro had never seen before, and kneeling down to take Mervus back into his arms.

It didn't look good.

Lance was apparently operating on a similar wavelength, though his approach was a bit more direct.

"What gives, Kogane?" he said, striding into the common room and shoving at Keith's shoulders.

Coran immediately stood up in Keith's defense, glaring daggers at Lance and plucking Mervus away to get her out of the line of fire.

"Take her back into my room," Keith whispered, and Coran nodded once and did as told. Mervus just stared at them with big, wide eyes as Coran bustled her away.

"Keith you can tell us anything," Shiro said, trying a more diplomatic approach. "I know we haven't always been the best, but we're trying now."

"Are you sick!?" Hunk wailed, shoving Shiro out of the way. "Are you dying?!"

Keith, previously pissed off through the tears, now looked completely lost. "I’m fine?" he said.

"That’s bullshit, you have standing doctor’s appointments that you take in private and now you’re crying afterward. Tell us the truth. We can take it," Pidge said.

Keith stared at them all, moving from one face to the next for several ticks, before he burst out laughing.

It probably wasn't a good sign.

"You don't need to tell us, just know that we're here for you," Shiro tried. "I know you might not want to share with us."

"Guys," Keith said, still laughing, albeit a little bitterly now, "where was this concern back when I actually needed it?"

"We're trying," Shiro said lamely.

"Try a little harder next time," Keith said. "Anyways, it's fine. I'll tell you."

"You better," Lance grumbled. Keith shot him a look, but it seemed more annoyed than angry, so Shiro would take it.

“It’s um. Pli isn’t that kind of doctor. I’ve been...seeing a therapist.”

Oh.

"Oh," Shiro said dumbly.

"Yeah, it's actually been really helpful. I'd uh. Recommend it? I guess? I mean it sucks ass, but I know it's good for me."

"So you're not dying?" Hunk checked.

"Not dying," Keith confirmed. "Mentally a little bruised, but that's par for the course with Pli."

Lance opened his mouth and Shiro nearly jolted forward, expecting him to insult Keith for the display of weakness. But then:

"Do you... have any names of people you'd suggest?"

Keith's eyebrows very nearly disappeared into his hairline before he schooled his expression.

"I've got a list, yeah, from when I first started looking. I can share it with you."

Four days after Mervus woke up and into Keith waiting for a combination of Atlas and Blade engineers to repair his ship, Kolivan had requested Keith to return to the cave system now that he was of sounder mind and give them a debrief of what he remembered of the experience and any descriptions of the alchemists he believed might have escaped.

Which would not have been particularly eventful, were it not for the fact that it overlapped with a meeting Coran was having with the Altean alchemists to discuss how to prevent this misuse of alchemy from happening again. Krolia was chasing after some of the remaining alchemists, Ezor and Zethrid were back on roster, and Acxa was still cleaning up elements of alchemy gone wrong.

So, the unthinkable happened.

Keith asked the Paladins to look after Mervus while he was gone.

Strictly speaking, he'd asked Shiro to look after Mervus, but it wasn't as if the other former Paladins were going to sit idly by and let Shiro have all the fun.

Mervus herself was much less amenable to the plan, but Keith had promised her something—Shiro wasn't sure what—and Kosmo was still recovering on a fluffy dog bed in the corner of the common room and watching every single thing with a very intense stare.

The good news was that Mervus was somewhat self-sufficient. Shiro still wasn't sure exactly what her background had been before Keith found her, but he got the impression she hadn't been well taken care of. The biggest hurdles were getting her to stop glaring at them each time they asked if she was hungry or cold or tired or in pain.

It was easier, once the other Paladins backed off. She clearly didn't particularly like Shiro, but he seemed to be the least offensive option to her.

“How are you feeling, Mervus?” Shiro asked eventually. Maybe that would be easier than asking for specific ailments like pain or hunger.

“Doubt,” she said. “Distrust, hesitation, uncertainty.”

“You’re...worried about someone trying to hurt you again?” Shiro guessed, and Mervus gave him an incredibly unimpressed stare that looked so much like her father’s that he couldn’t help chuckling.

“Sorry, Mervus, I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Dad doesn’t think this will last.”

Ah. He should have known asking an empath about what they were feeling wouldn't exactly get him the answer he was looking for.

And yeah, Shiro had sort of suspected that from Keith, but hearing Mervus lay it out so plainly still didn’t feel great.

“I think you know Keith a lot better than I do, at this point. What do we do? How do we let him know we mean it?”

“Dunno,” Mervus shrugged.

It was a longshot anyway. Shiro wasn't sure whether Mervus truly didn't know, or if she didn't feel like being helpful.

Maybe it was time to just ask Keith, plainly and directly, what they could do.

Shiro didn't want to lose him again.

Chapter Text

Shiro had a fixed amount of time while Mervus and Kosmo recovered and Keith waited for the Denebola to be repaired, but he wasn't going to wait and miss his chance, this time. He had to take responsibility.

So, he sought Keith out. Mervus was asleep, Coran was taking care of things, and Keith was back in the training deck.

"Spar?" Shiro asked once he'd warmed up, and Keith agreed with a subtle nod of his head.

Of course, Keith had kept up his form while Shiro had been retired, so it wasn't much of a fair fight even though Shiro could tell Keith was going easy on him. The sparring wasn't the end goal, anyways. It was a means to an end.

"What are your plans once your ship has been repaired?" he asked, panting and gulping down water while Keith had barely broken a sweat.

"I've got a mission I need to take care of," Keith said. "Then I guess it's back to normal."

"You could... you don't have to..."

Keith must have known what Shiro was trying to say, but he didn't give him the easy out. Just continued to stare at Shiro while Shiro attempted to spit out an offer.

"You could stay here," he finally said.

"I really couldn't," Keith replied.

"You could, though," Shiro continued, finally picking up steam. "You wouldn't even need to stop your Blade missions. With the teleduv, you could get anywhere you needed to be, and then come back here. And it would be great having another person on board who can mentally pilot the Atlas." Shiro didn't add that he was still incredibly confused and a little concerned about how Keith had managed that. It wasn't the time. "You don't need to keep doing any of this alone."

"Just because you haven't been involved, doesn't mean I was alone," Keith said.

And it hurt. Because Shiro knew now that it was true.

"Besides, I can't keep Mervus cooped up in my rooms all day. Her emotional control is getting better, but it's still not strong enough for her to handle an entire ship this size day in and day out."
Shiro hadn't thought about that angle. If anything, Keith and Mervus's life out in space was one of the healthiest options for her.

But two could play at this game.

"Okay, new plan. I'll come with you."

“You...what? Shiro, you’re the captain of the Atlas, you can’t just up and leave.”

"I did it once before," Shiro shrugged. Keith opened and closed his mouth several times, but didn't actually manage a coherent response. “Retirement didn’t work out for me, but on the frontlines of an aid mission would probably be just fine.”

"You'd give up all of this, just to wander around the universe?" Keith asked skeptically. "All the comforts of home and the safety of one of the largest ships ever created?"

"You've given up a lot more than that to save me countless times."

"Don't, Shiro," Keith warned, his voice suddenly hard. "This isn't about anyone owing things to anyone else."

"I do owe you, though. We all do, really. We... let you go. We abandoned you. And I won't let it happen again."

"By forcing yourself onto my ship on a whim? And what happens when we eventually start fighting and get tired of each other?"

It was too personal, Shiro realized. Too personal to have Shiro in his space, the space he’s made for himself and Mervus and Kosmo and apparently, without anyone else realizing it, Coran.

"I'm not saying 'no,' Shiro. I'm saying 'I need to think about this.' I'm saying 'not right now.' There's something I need to do out there, okay? And also I want you to actually think about it, too. Think before you make a decision this time."

"Ouch." It hurt more, coming from this new, responsible, look-before-you-leap version of Keith.

"You walked into that one and you know it."

It hurt, seeing Coran with someone he treated like a grandchild.

It hurt, that it was Keith's child. That Keith had somehow replaced Lance in a future-that-could-have-been.

It hurt, that Lance had been too self-centered to see that Coran was in pain, too.

It hurt, that Lance had been too stuck up his own ass to realize that Keith drifting away from them all had been Lance's own fault.

But, now what? Keith and Coran and Mervus were a little unit, one that was unlikely to take kindly to Lance trying to force himself into their little circle. He doubted they'd believe that any apology from him was sincere.

Maybe it was better to look through that list of therapists sooner rather than later...

Seeing them there was so natural, he realized. It never would have even occurred to Hunk that of all of them, it was Keith that was the best 'parent' material. But whenever they were together, Mervus looked up at Keith with the certainty that he would never let any harm befall her. That even if something horrible happened, he would save her, come hell or high water.

It felt at first that Keith had modified his entire personality to suit her. But then Hunk remembered Keith's gentle, if awkward, interactions with children on planets they had liberated as Voltron. Children who couldn't find their parents, or who had become orphans. Keith would visit the latter group whenever they stopped at a refugee planet.

It was obvious, looking at it in hindsight.

Hunk did what he could, leaving bowls of soups and stews on the side table while Keith read to her, trying to show them both in his own little way that they were welcome here and that he'd take care of them.

He knew it was too little, too late. But that wouldn't stop him from trying.

Pidge was not good at emotions. She knew this, heck, everyone knew this. She knew machines and technology, not matters of the heart.

But even she had noticed how they had, unconsciously or not, cut Keith out.

She hadn't thought much of it at the time. A few instances of Keith missing an event weren't anything to be concerned about.

And then time got away from her, and she spent more and more nights in her workshop, and suddenly it had been years since they had seen each other. She'd been guilty, but then realized that even Shiro hadn't seen him for almost that long. It stupidly made Pidge feel better about the whole thing. It wasn't just that she had failed at being a friend, it was that they had all failed at being friends.

And that made it okay, right?

Keith had even gone off and found himself a daughter in the meantime, and that meant he must have been doing fine. He didn't need them, and they didn't need him. He'd always been the loner. So they let him... be alone.

It was a mistake Pidge was never going to forgive herself for.

"So, they've really been trying to get a hold of me for phoebs?" Keith asked as he and Krolia moved through their two-combatant forms on the training deck.

"They have been very annoying about it, yes. Called me every day, even after I continued to hang up on them. They were like... what are those little Earth bugs? The ones that survive nuclear annihilation?"

"Cockroaches?"

"Yes, those."

"I know you meant well, but..."

"I'm aware of my shortcomings, both as mother and grandmother."

And that was that. They didn't need to hash out each other's mistakes.

"Are you going to allow Shirogane to travel with you?" she asked later, because of course she knew about that.

"I don't know."

"Are you going to allow any of them back in your life?"

"I think... maybe."

It wouldn't ever be the same as it had been, back in the Voltron days. Back when they knew they could depend on each other for everything from fighting to alien shopping mall trips.

"I will support whatever you do, just make sure you do it wisely. Or I will kill them."

"You'd need to get in line behind Ezor and Zethrid."

Keith shouldn't have been surprised, when he checked up on the progress the engineers were making on repairing the Denebola, to see both Hunk and Pidge working on it. It still threw him for a bit of a loop. It was as if they were back in the Voltron days, and Pidge had decided she could enhance Red's flamethrower and then just... did it, without asking Keith or Red how they felt about it.

He had no idea what they were doing, and he was more than a little peeved that they had just decided to start modifying his ship without Keith's consent, but he knew they meant well.

"I had them add extra shielding. I've done the numbers," Pidge said, not looking up from her computer. "It's going to impact top speed, but only by a negligible amount. I worked with Coran and some Unilu to source a bit of luxite dust, which has resulted in a very strong, durable, flexible shield without much extra weight."

"You found luxite dust?" Keith couldn't help but ask. It was nearly impossible and required a lot of black market connections. Hence the unilu, he supposed.

"It was a bitch, but we did it."

"And!" Hunk popped up from where he was buried in one of the ship's electrical panels, "with my additions to the thrusters, you should actually be able to make farther warps. Still not the same kind of jump you'd get from a teleduv wormhole, but better than you were making before."

"I've been making sure they don't impact things too much," Coran said from where he watched, eagle-eyed, next to Pidge.

"Yeah, I wanted to about five more distress beacons, but Coran put a stop to that," Hunk admitted.

Keith continually thanked Allura and whatever other higher powers existed out there that Coran was back in his life.

"What do you think Keith is really doing out there?" Shiro asked.

"I wish I knew," Coran said. "I don't think it's overly dangerous, or at least I don't think Keith expects it to be overly dangerous, or he wouldn't have brought Mervus along in the first place. But there are things he still doesn't trust me with."

"It could just be an exploratory mission," Shiro tried.

"Kolivan wouldn't send one of his top operatives out on an exploratory mission, not when Keith already has a backlog of things to take care of, according to the schedule on his tablet." Coran didn't seem the least bit guilty about that level of snooping. He must be concerned.

"He'd tell us if it was really dangerous, wouldn't he?"

"Would he?"

Keith hadn't forgotten.

The way he'd been panicking, no idea how to find Mervus. The way he feared that she was already dead and he was sitting there useless on the Atlas.

The way that Allura's voice had suddenly been in his head, whispering that he could trust her, and suddenly feeling like a passenger in his own body.

He knew, in a vague sense, that he had piloted the massive ship to an unnamed planet, had pinpointed exactly where Mervus was being kept in the tunnel system. He knew Allura had led him straight to the alchemists, and he knew that he had utterly destroyed them.

But the next thing he really remembered was standing there as Krolia took Mervus to the medics and Keith's whole body and mind started shaking, ready to collapse. There had been a brief, faint feeling of an apology as Allura left and he was alone again, before Shiro and Ezor had stepped in and kept Keith from falling flat on his face.

Even if he hadn't already planned on finding Allura at those coordinates in the middle of nowhere, he owed it to her now.

Besides, Mervus herself was getting restless, being cooped up on a giant ship like this. They had both grown used to setting their own schedule and exploring whatever they came across.

It was time to go.

The still hurt part of him, the petty and bitter part, thought about leaving without saying goodbye. But he truly didn't want to ruin the fragile, tentative attempts at friendship they'd started forming in the last few days.

The moment he stepped into what had been christened the "paladin lounge," everyone seemed to know.

"I'm going with you," Coran told him. "Kosmo is still recovering, and you might need another set of hands."

The idea was appealing, and Keith was still a little shaky from losing Mervus in the first place. But it was too much of a risk. He still didn't know exactly what he was going to find at those coordinates, and he didn't want to put Coran through the uncertainty.

"Confidential mission," Keith said, shaking his head. He noticed Shiro and Coran share some kind of subtle look across the room and left them to it. They probably had their own ideas of what Keith's actual mission was.

As Hunk tearfully packed the Denebola full of pre-cooked meals and staples, and Pidge ran him through a last overview of the new systems she'd installed, Mervus looked over the assembled crew seeing them off.

"They feel less guilty than before," she said, interrupting Pidge's explanation. "Do they deserve it?"

All movement and conversation screeched to a halt, and all eyes turned to Keith.

"Uh," Keith said eloquently.

Shiro, bless him, took pity on Keith.

"Are you all set? Got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Thank you all again, for everything."

"Don't be a stranger, okay? We're here if you need anything, or if you want to visit. Alright?" Shiro said. The implication that the other former paladins would be staying on the Atlas, despite Keith being fairly sure they didn't actually do anything for the crew, wasn't lost on Keith.

"I'll stay in touch," Keith said.

He'd try, this time.

Chapter Text

Keith had really hoped that those coordinates were actually from Allura and not some final trick from those alchemists, but things weren't looking good. He'd dutifully followed the path the ship's computer wanted him to follow, weaving through things that didn't seem to be there, but upon coming up to where the coordinates actually led there was... nothing.

Nothing at all. Barely even any stars and one measly, barren planet. No sparkling nebulas or wormholes.

It truly felt like they were at the end of the universe.

"Is something supposed to happen?" Mervus said, clearly unimpressed.

"Maybe the coordinates are wrong," Keith said, reaching forward to pull them up on the console.

But as he did so, he felt a tug, like something was pulling him along, and a blink later he found himself in the astral plane. He half-expected one of the Lions to be looming over his shoulder, but the landscape was empty.

Empty but for the glowing pink being that was waving at him from across a gorge.

The moment he thought about reaching her, he was already there, Allura in his arms and laughing in his ears.

"It's good to see you in the flesh," she said as they pulled apart.

She looked just like how Keith remembered her. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting. Some royal, reality-bending air about her? But she just looked like Allura.

"It's good to see you at all. Are you alright?"

"I'm doing just fine, thanks for asking," she smiled. "The universe and all the realities are holding together. Everything is well."

That was a relief. In the back of his mind, Keith had been bracing for some kind of universe disaster that he'd somehow need to take care of without knowing how exactly to take care of it. Same as always.

"Why here?" he asked.

"The fabric between realities is thinner here," Allura explained. "Easier to cross over. I'm sorry for the trouble I caused you along the way. Is Mervus alright?"

"You know she is. You're the one that helped me find her."

"True. And I do apologize for the momentary takeover, but I didn't know how else to show you where she was."

"No harm done."

"I'm just, sorry, I suppose. I've been watching how things have happened, and they haven't gone how I expected them to."

"It's not your fault," Keith said.

"It feels like it might be, a tiny bit," Allura said with a wry grin. "Things were going fine before I left."

"You didn't leave," Keith protested, "you sacrificed yourself to save reality."

"Still."

"So, what happens now?" Keith couldn't help but ask. "Is this just a chat, or did you need some help coming home?" Even this, just talking to her, settled some part of Keith he hadn't even realized was anxious. But he had no idea how this level of alchemy worked. Truthfully, he didn't know how any alchemy worked.

"Things are still in flux, and I'm still connected to the universe, but I must admit I find myself a little lonely. It just isn't the same, watching you all from afar. We're pretty sure that I can leave my post for a little bit. A few phoebs per decaphoeb. It isn't perfect, but it's better than nothing."

"It will be great," Keith said, imagining Allura back in the Land of the Living, even if only temporarily.

"Then let's go," Allura said with a smile. "I'll need you to think about Mervus. She's our link back to your plane of reality."

That was a simple enough request. The astral space around them disintegrated and Keith was back in the cockpit of the Denebola, this time with Allura at his side.

The moment they had fully settled back into reality, Mervus launched herself at Keith, leaping into his arms. Kosmo was half a second later, tackling Keith and Allura both to the ground.

"You disappeared!" Mervus cried, shoving her face into Keith's chest. Kosmo huffed his own agreement above them.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you," Allura said. "I had to pull Keith to me momentarily. It must have been scary, feeling him vanish like that. I should have warned you."

"I suppose it's alright," Mervus said shyly. Apparently seeing Allura in the flesh wasn't quite the same as interacting with her in whatever astral form Allura had taken to communicate before.

"Now, I'm afraid I must commandeer your ship's systems again. I'd like to speak with Coran."

"You don't have to ask," Keith said, already pulling up the contact systems. Coran's name was first, something Allura noticed and lightly nudged him in the shoulder for. She stepped out of view just as the call connected.

"Are you alright?" Coran asked after the initial pleasantries. "Not that you can't call, but you're a few days earlier than we had scheduled."

"Are you sitting down, Coran?" Keith asked.

"What's going on?"

"That exploratory mission I was on," Keith started.

"You mean the one that most certainly was not an exploratory mission?"

"Well, I was exploring," Keith argued. He had been taking notes and creating maps all the while. "But I was doing something else, yeah. That's what the alchemists picked up on, I think."

"You were doing something foolishly dangerous, weren't you?"

"Kind of..." Keith said, but then Allura stepped into frame.

"I was keeping an eye on him," she said.

The scene on the other side of the call flipped and tumbled as Coran dropped his tablet in shock.

"Allura?" he whispered eventually, once he reclaimed the tablet.

"I'm here, Coran," she said.

Keith quietly slipped out of the cockpit with Mervus and Kosmo.

Allura called him back after several vargas, tears still on her cheeks.

"Coran is going to meet us at the Atlas," she said. "Is that alright? I know your relationship with the other Paladins is..."

"A mess?" he answered for her. "But it's fine. They deserve to see you, too. And without the teleduv, it would take us a long time to get back from this corner of the universe."

"Then may I ... surprise them?" she asked with a grin. "I think perhaps they deserve a bit of a shock."

"For the last time, you can go to bed," Veronica said. It was what passed for night on the Atlas, and the Bridge was mostly dark. Veronica's doing, as she tried to herd him off to his own room.

"I'm the captain," Shiro protested.

"And part of being captain is delegating tasks like sitting here and waiting for nothing to happen in the middle of the night."

She was interrupted by a call coming through. A call from the Denebola.

Keith said he might try to contact them. But Shiro admittedly didn't think would actually follow through.

"Keith!" he said as the call connected, probably a little over-excited.

"Shoot, what time is it there?" Keith asked, a skeptical eyebrow raised at the darkened, half-powered down bridge, giving Veronica a nod as he did. "What are you still doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep," Shiro said.

"Couldn't delegate, is more like," Veronica grumbled.

"Is everything alright there?"

"Yeah, we're fine," Keith said.

"Hello," Mervus said, popping up into frame with a scowl as Keith choked on a laugh.

Baby steps.

"Anyway, can we get a wormhole? The mission is over and we're currently in the middle of absolutely nowhere."

"You... want to come back to the Atlas?" Shiro checked, hardly believing it.

"Yeah, Coran wants to meet up. We're basically using your ship as an intergalactic truck stop, sorry about that."

Shiro would take it.

"Now?" he asked.

"No time like the present. Though we can wait a few vargas if you'd rather hold off until morning ship time."

"Now is fine," Shiro said. He didn't want to give Keith the opportunity to change his mind.

The moment the call with Keith disconnected, the Atlas's systems pinged in warning as another wormhole opened up almost on top of them. Coran hailed them a moment later, and Shiro let it slide. Technically, Coran should have gotten permission before just popping up like that. But he must have been eager to see Keith, as well.

Shiro let Veronica set up Keith's wormhole and went to meet Coran in the hangar. He looked spooked, jittery and anxious in a way Coran very rarely was, and Shiro was suddenly worried about Keith. Had something happened on that mission, something Keith had neglected to say in their short call?

But when the Denebola docked in the hangar, it wasn't Keith that walked down the ramp.

"Oh my god," Shiro breathed.

He should have known Keith would pull a stunt like this.

"Hello, Shiro," Allura said.

"Hi," Shiro said stupidly.

Coran pushed past him, vaulting up the ramp to sweep Allura into his arms, and Shiro had the visceral realization that Coran had never actually gotten the chance to say goodbye to her. He hadn't been on the astral plane with them when Allura made her decision, but he had lost her, just the same as they all had.

Which reminded him...

"Paladins, you're needed in Hangar Bay 5," he whispered into the comms Pidge had set up. The message would go directly to their rooms, and they'd complain about Shiro waking them in the middle of the night until they realized why he was calling them into the hangar.

Coran eventually let Allura go and then made his way into Keith's ship to drag Keith himself out and onto the ramp for another hug.

Which was right about the time that Lance ran into the hangar, Pidge and Hunk trailing close behind.

"Shiro, what's going on? Is Keith okay?" Lance asked.

Shiro could only point mutely at Allura, still standing regally on the ramp as if it was the red carpet of an intergalactic fashion show.

Lance let out a painful-sounding breath as the three of them took in the scene: Allura, Keith, and Coran all gathered together at the top of the ship's ramp, halfway through the motions of leaving the ship but distracted by all the emotions.

Surprisingly, it was Pidge that made her way up the ramp first, only to be brought to an abrupt halt by Allura's hand.

"Nope," she said. "Not until you all apologize to Keith."

"Huh?" Keith said, still standing in the ship's doorway. "Some of them already-"

"A better apology," Allura said. "I heard the first ones. And an apology from everyone."

"You heard...?" Lance asked.

And that was the end of a discussion about anyone apologizing, as Shiro and the others all came to the realization that Allura had somehow been watching and listening for who knew how long, talking over each other in alarm and disbelief. Something Keith had apparently discovered earlier, given the slight smirk as he looked down at them, Mervus peeking out from behind him.

"DInner!" Hunk eventually shouted over everyone else, dragging Allura down the ramp and into the Atlas proper. "This calls for dinner, a big, grand dinner!"

"It's like, three in the morning," Pidge pointed out.

"Brunch, then!" Hunk said, not dissuaded. "Shiro, I'm taking over your kitchen again."

"Come on," Allura said, holding a hand out to Keith as Coran headed down the ramp. "You are not staying on your ship, and you're not leaving before the meal. I'll get an apology out of them yet."

Shiro watched, breath in his throat, fully expecting Keith to cut and run now that he'd delivered Allura to them. But then Keith and Mervus shared a look, both of them sighed in exactly the same put-upon fashion, and without a word, Keith picked Mervus up and walked her down to where Allura and the others were waiting. Kosmo flashed into existence next to Allura, and she allowed one swipe of his tongue on her face before putting a stop to that.

"I believe Hunk said brunch?" she asked. "I don't remember which meal that was, but I do recall pancakes being involved."

"Very mysterious meal, this 'brunch,'" Coran agreed.

Hunk had already started preparing them a massive brunch by the time they all made their way to Shiro's quarters, though Shiro had no idea where all the ingredients had come from. He maybe didn't want to think about what their food stores were going to look like after this, but he also couldn't deny them the celebration.

Shiro wasn't sure if this was a permanent thing or just a quick visit, but it would certainly do all of them some good.

Allura. Back among them.

Chapter Text

Keith had been convinced to stay on the Atlas, at least for the day. Mervus was starting to flag after brunch, since they were on a different timezone than the rest of the ship, and Keith put her to bed in his rooms to protect her from the slew of emotions he knew had to be bombarding her.

When he came back into the Paladin Lounge, Allura was there, immediately dragging him toward a table set up with some kind of holographic fantasy setting.

"You are playing Monsters and Mana with us or so help me, Keith," she said, sitting him down in the empty chair next to her.

"What?" was all Keith could say in response.

It was a lost cause, after that. Shiro tried to explain that it was a game they'd played while Keith had been with the Blade, but Hunk and Pidge were already designing a character for him, and Lance was too busy making dreamy eyes at Allura to actually pay attention to anything happening.

It felt like home in a way that the Paladins hadn't felt for a long time.

"Thank you," Shiro said later, once the game was done and before Keith went off to join Mervus for a nap, knowing how weak it was for the monumental accomplishment.

"I didn't do this for you, or Lance, or anyone. I did it for her. Turns out she's been talking to my daughter for literally years."

Which explained how Keith had known that any of this was possible.

"Will you stay a while?" Shiro asked.

Keith's mouth twisted unhappily. "I need to go back on roster. I've got a giant backlog of missions to deal with. And actually, I should let Kolivan know I'm back in known territory."

It was an excuse if Shiro had ever heard one.

"You don't need to tell Kolivan you're back just yet. Stay a while. Allura is here."

"I know, I brought her here," Keith said.

"Exactly. So you don't want to just disappear now, right? It's been so long since all of us were in the same place."

"Fine, fine," Keith sighed. "A few days, but you know Kolivan probably already knows I'm back, right? You've got Blade liaisons on your crew."

That might have been a threat in the old days, but Kolivan had mellowed out after the war. Or at least, Kolivan's version of mellowing out. He wouldn't force Keith back on roster until Keith was ready.

"Have you thought more about letting me travel with you?" Shiro asked.

"Have you thought more about it?" Keith replied with a huffy sigh.

"I have," Shiro said. "And I do want to. But I won't force you into something you don't want. I want to repair the damage I've done, not cause more of it."

"I'll talk to Kolivan about it later," Keith said.

It still wasn't a 'no.'

When Keith woke up to Mervus sitting on his chest and tapping his cheek, he expected something to be wrong. An attack, or maybe the Paladins had decided that since they had Allura they didn't need Keith now and he could go.

At the very least, they needed to deal with whatever this was, because Mervus was getting heavy and Keith was having trouble breathing.

"I can feel their anxiety," Mervus told him.

If she could feel that through the emotional wards in their room, it either meant that the Paladins were extremely anxious, or the Atlas was filtering in some of the emotions for her.

"Any idea why?" he asked.

"Aunt Allura is excited."

It wasn't really an answer, but it was also unfair to expect Mervus to get to the cause of their emotions.

Keith wondered when Allura had become "aunt": whether it was just another subtle dig at the Paladins or if it predated Allura's return to their reality. Had she been "aunt" all along?

At any rate, if Allura was excited about something, it probably meant that they weren't under attack, and that Keith should go investigate whatever was happening.

Only when the door to the paladin lounge swished open, the room was covered in balloons and banners that read "Sorry Keith" in multiple languages.

Keith had the very strong desire to just turn around and go back to bed, but Mervus jumped gleefully into the space and Allura yanked on Keith's arm before he could retreat.

"I helped!" Allura said as Keith stared dumbly at the display. It was somehow like a mix between a birthday and a funeral, with a dash of wedding thrown in.

"As did I!" Coran said. "I had no idea humans didn't have a version of Plyadrith to celebrate apologies, so the Princess and I walked them through everything that was necessary for such a festival."

Sometimes Keith wondered if Coran was fucking with him about Altean customs. An entire event designed for apologies? That couldn't actually be a thing, could it?

"This is a start," Mervus said loudly.

"I thought so as well," Allura said, tugging Keith more gently into the space. "Here at this first station, all of the Paladins are going to apologize to you, in-depth, for the pain they caused by abandoning you. At this next station, you will sit with me and Coran and decide whether you accept their apology. And then finally, you'll fight them in hand-to-hand combat to determine whether they're worthy."

"Sorry, what?" Keith said. Apology festival was one thing, but he should have expected there would be a fight or something. Probably a blood sacrifice, too.

"Yeah, can you go easy on us for that part?" Pidge asked. "You could have trounced me on my best days during the war, and I'm sure I've only gotten worse and you've only gotten better."

"After all the festivities, then there's cake!" Coran said.

"I baked four different ones because I wasn't sure what your favorite flavor of cake was, and then I baked two more because I felt bad about not knowing what your favorite flavor of cake was."

"Hunk, you didn't need to..."

"Yes I did!" Hunk said. "We all did, because we all were awful to you and now you're going to punch us, okay?"

"Are we sure this is actually a thing?" Keith tried, but he would have been lying if he said it didn't feel a little nice, having the others practically groveling at his feet. He wasn't sure he deserved it; he'd abandoned them, too, after all. But Allura, Mervus, and Coran refused to listen when he tried to explain that.

He still decided to go easy on them in the hand-to-hand combat portion, though.

"You're going to put me back on roster now, right?" Keith asked.

"Do you want to go back on roster?" Kolivan asked.

"That's not what I asked."

"I am well aware."

Truthfully, Keith liked working with the Blade. Liked helping people, seeing other worlds, repairing the physical and emotional damage done throughout the war. He could do with fewer meetings and bureaucracy, but he didn't want to stop this.

It gave him purpose, a purpose he had been sorely lacking at the end of the war. And while he had Mervus now, while she was there to help him fight through the worst of the gloom, this was still part of who Keith was, as a person. Blade of Marmora agent, through and through, even before he'd known what it meant.

Of course, that didn't solve the problem of what to do about the Paladins, and Shiro specifically.

And what if Shiro did start traveling with them? If he upset Mervus? Or if the others kept wanting to see them, but they were really just in it to see Shiro, and not Keith, the lone wolf who always tagged along with Shiro at the Garrison?

Keith was happy with how things were, he realized.

It wasn't the happiness he had dreamed of as a kid, nor was it the kind of happiness he thought he might find at the end of the war. Keith had carved out a life for himself, with his daughter, and Coran, and a giant space wolf. And it was his. Not Shiro's or Kolivan's or Krolia's or anyone else's.

"Yes, I want to go back on roster."

Kolivan gave him a signature Look, and Keith was almost certain the man would go blabbing to Pli about this. It was pointless. Keith was planning to tell xem anyways.

"Will Shirogane be joining you?"

"No."

Because Shiro was an idiot, and if the universe needed the Blade of Marmora, it also needed a former paladin at the helm of the Atlas. Because Keith's life was his own.

Shiro would be unhappy about it, but he could deal. Maybe the shoe was on the other foot, now.

"Wait a couple movements, though. I'd like to stay here with Allura."

Kolivan blinked at him, and Keith realized he had maybe forgotten to mention the end goal of his mission.

"Yeah, about that..."