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Chapter Text

The freak electrical storm has completely destroyed all of his ship's systems. Suddenly a routine trip to Daibazaal doesn't feel so routine, and Keith is kicking himself for not bringing Kosmo with him. Even life support is down. Keith only has a few hours, if that, of oxygen before things get dire.

He could try to jettison, engage his suit's open space abilities, but the jetpack barely has any fuel left. He wouldn't get very far.

This isn't how he thought he was going to die.

It's just so... boring. Keith was sure he was going to blow himself up.

He spends what he thinks is about a varga trying to jumpstart the electrical systems, or at least just the communications, so he could contact someone to come pick him up. But the radio is silent, not even producing static, and Keith is stuck.

And then, like a whale breaching out of the water, the nose of the Atlas peeks out from behind the last of the lingering storm clouds, and Keith slumps against his chair. The flares are mechanical, so he can shoot those off even when the rest of the systems are down, and the Atlas blinks in Morse at him in response.

Before the tractor beam even finishes dropping Keith's ship into the hangar, Shiro is there, sprinting across the floor. Keith braces for some kind of scolding, because he's probably wasting their resources. But then Shiro physically rips the door off of Keith's ship, and Keith realizes that maybe something is wrong.

Keith can't even get a question out before Shiro has swept Keith into his arms and carried him out of the ship, out of the hangar, and into the lounge area the former Paladins normally use.

"What's going on?" Keith finally asks as Shiro sets him down. Pidge and Hunk are already there, looking at Keith in shock.

"Three years," Shiro whispers, tracing the scar on Keith's cheek with incredible tenderness. "You've been gone for three years."

It certainly hasn't felt like three years to Keith, but then again his time in the Quantum Abyss had been maybe a movement for the others. Space and time are weird, and they're even weirder in combination.

Shiro is looking at him like Keith holds all the answers for every question in the universe, and Keith is only so strong. So when Shiro crushes him to his chest and kisses him, Keith melts into it, chasing Shiro's tongue and moaning into his mouth in a way that probably isn't respectable considering they have an audience.

But he's waited so long for this. In a minute, he'll pull back and make sure that everything is on the up-and-up, that Shiro had some kind of realization about his romantic partners when Keith apparently went missing. But right now, he needs this. And he gets the feeling that Shiro does, too.

It's a disgruntled throat-clearing from Hunk that finally gets them to separate, though Shiro keeps Keith tucked up close.

"I'm glad Keith is back and all, but seriously. Can it wait?"

"Sorry, Hunk," Shiro murmurs into Keith's hair. He does not sound sorry in the least.

"Shiro, is Curtis..." Keith starts, and then has no idea how to finish the question. How do you go about asking the man you've loved for years if he divorced his husband for you?

But Shiro pulls back, enough that he and Keith can look each other in the eye, and just says, "Curtis?" As if he's never even heard the name before.

"Um, yeah? You know, Curtis? I mean, is everything...?"

Shiro still looks baffled, but they're interrupted before Keith can actually spit the whole question out.

"Oh man, Keith!" Lance's voice accompanies the sound of a door being yanked open. "We came as soon as we heard!"

We?

Keith turns and he sees a woman with white hair and dark skin and a long, flowing gown, and he has a moment of surprise that Lance has moved on from Allura so quickly before he realizes that the woman is Allura.

He knew this was too good to be true.

"This isn't real," he gasps, breaking out of Shiro's arms and stumbling back several steps. He needs to get away before he gets lulled in by whatever hallucination or dream or figment of his imagination this is. Maybe his ship lost oxygen quicker than he thought it would. Maybe this is Death, giving him a nice, gentle gift before he really kicks the bucket.

"What? No, Keith, it's real, you're here, you're safe," Shiro soothes, his hands reaching for Keith again, but Keith bats them away.

"You can't even remember your own husband's name, and that's bad enough, but Allura! Allura's dead, I know that much. Whatever this is, I'm done with it."

"What?" Lance hisses, like he's offended somehow, but Keith isn't listening anymore. The door behind Lance is still open and Keith sprints for it, pushing Lance out of the way in the process.

He's forgotten, though, how strong and fast Allura can be when she wants to. She has Keith pinned on the ground before he even registers her moving.

"This is for your own good," Allura says as her knee shoves him further onto the floor. Or maybe not Allura. Maybe some kind of druid trick. There's a few of them still out there, causing havoc once in a while when the Blades run into them. This could all be some kind of illusion.

But then Shiro says Keith's name in such a timid, gentle voice, and Keith can barely think straight. Something is going wrong, that much is certain, but how can a hallucination sound so real?

Hunk, or the person that looks like Hunk, picks up Keith's hand and scans it with some kind of device; the woman that looks like Allura is holding him too still for Keith to be able to resist it.

He can hear Hunk and Pidge doing something at the computer, whispering to each other as they presumably look over whatever data they got from the scan, but his face is still shoved into the floor. He's powerless to do anything.

He's not sure he wants to.

"Oh," Pidge finally says from the console, in a tiny, broken voice. "He's not...ours."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Shiro all but growls at her, but she seems to barely even pay attention to him.

"He's Keith, but he's from an alternate reality. He's not our Keith."

Ah.

So he's not dying.

He isn't sure how he feels about that.

But the alternate reality theory makes a certain amount of sense. They'd interacted with their fair share of alternate realities in the Voltron days, after all. He understands the basics behind the idea even if the how and why are beyond him. It also explains why everyone feels so familiar to Keith. They're his friends, just not his friends.

Not his Shiro.

Allura lets him off the ground and Keith pulls himself back to his feet just in time to see Shiro leaving without another word. Hunk and Pidge chase after him a few moments later.

And then he remembers what Shiro had said. That Keith had been missing for years.

"Who's Curtis?" Lance says, as Keith continues to stare at the now closed door Shiro walked through.

"He's Shiro's, um. Shiro's husband."

"Shiro's husband?" Allura asks, as if the word is foreign to her.

"He didn't marry you? Why not?"

"How the fuck should I know?" Keith growls. Lance flinches in response, but Allura just smiles sadly at him.

"You're probably tired. You can get some rest here while Pidge and Hunk figure out how to send you back to your own reality."

Right. His own reality. His reality, where Shiro married some stranger and Keith spends his days and nights mostly alone. Out there in space on his own missions, while the former Paladins, despite all living on the same ship, have mostly drifted away.

His own reality.

Great.

Chapter Text

There is a giant blue furry beast staring down at Keith. It is not exactly how he thought he would die.

"Good doggy," Keith whispers, "good doggy, good... horsey...."

The giant wolf snuffles into his hair and whines at him, licks his face, whines some more, and eventually Keith decides the thing isn't going to eat him. He tentatively pats its nose, and it snorts at him and then licks him again.

It isn't the strangest thing that's ever happened to him by far. He's been stuck in the astral plane for years, even if the memories of that experience are already getting fuzzy. A monster randomly appearing on the barren planet Keith materialized on is nothing.

And then the beast teleports him into the middle of the Atlas and Keith nearly throws up from the weird, unexpected movement.

Once he's recovered, he notices that Pidge and Matt are in the room with him, but they're too busy working out something on Pidge's datapad to notice him.

Keith clears his throat.

"Oh, hey, you're back," Pidge says, but there's no urgency. She immediately returns to the datapad. Matt barely even looks up.

It hurts a little. Maybe time was weird in the astral plane? Maybe he's barely been gone at all from their perspective.

And then Shiro walks into the room and Keith can't help but launch himself at the man.

He's stopped short before he can make it, Shiro keeping him very carefully at arm's length.

"You know you're not supposed to let Kosmo just teleport you onto the ship without clearance," Shiro says, a hint of reproach in his voice.

Cosmo?

"I missed you," Keith says, trying to worm his way out of Shiro's hold so he can finally just kiss the man. "I've been gone for ages from my perspective."

"You've interrupted my one free night this phoeb with Curtis."

"Who?"

"Curtis? My husband?"

Cold dread and hot shame floods into Keith's veins. Shiro has a husband. Shiro has a husband who isn't Keith.

"I'm glad you were able to move on," he says, trying to keep his voice from wobbling.

Shiro doesn't appear to understand what he's saying.

Lance comes into the room, too, then, and it's at least a distraction. He's alone, which is odd, since he and Allura are generally attached at the hip, but maybe she's taking care of some kind diplomatic Altean thing.

"Are you wearing makeup?" Lance asks. "Where's your scar?"

"What scar?" Keith asks without really thinking about it, and the Paladins around him freeze.

"What do you mean, 'what scar'?" Shiro asks, his grip turning slightly painful.

Keith has many scars, picked up from their time with the Lions and his aid work after the war officially ended. None of them should be visible while he's wearing his Blade Armor.

"I don't know which one you're talking about," Keith tries.

"The one on your face?" Lance says. Shiro narrows his eyes.

Keith does not have a scar on his face. There have been several times when he's come very close to taking a hit there, but someone (usually Shiro) had always been there to stop it.

"Something's wrong," Keith says.

Pidge comes as close to Keith as Shiro will allow, inspecting him without a lot of concern for Keith's personal space. She taps in rapidfire at some kind of readout, and it isn't exactly the way Keith would expect her to act. She'd gotten a slightly better bedside manner after the whole thing with with Matt being captured by the Druids.

Ah. Actually...

Keith turns to Pidge and says, "alternate reality" at the same time she does, and it's an enormous relief.

But yikes, he feels sorry for this universe's Keith. What had happened between them that Shiro had married someone else? Keith doesn't even know a Curtis, except for that one guy who works comms sometimes when Veronica is busy.

The others mostly disperse now that the mystery has been solved, and Keith already feels lonely. He's used to group debriefs and the near constant comradery from the others. This version of them feels cold in comparison. They must have things to do, he supposes. But don't they care about getting their own, correct Keith back?

The giant wolf thing has stayed, at least. Keith has no idea what to do with it, but given the way it keeps whining at him and nudging him, it must have some kind of connection to this universe's Keith.
Keith is just about to turn toward where he hopes his room is and maybe get some rest when he turns and realizes that Lance is still there with him.

"Hi," Keith says, unsure.

"Allura," Lance says, and then cringes at the bluntness. "Is she... I mean... is she there?"

Keith has no idea what he's asking.

"Alive," Lance says eventually. "Is she alive?"

Oh.

That explains a lot about Allura's absence, then.

"She's alive," Keith says. "She and Lance - my universe's Lance - got married a few phoebs before I got sucked into the astral plane. It was a whole big intergalactic event."

"They're still together?"

"Yeah. Lance kept calling them the universe's ultimate power couple. Allura looked just as confused about that title as I felt but she went along with it because it made you happy."

Keith's memories of his time in that astral plane are already disappearing like smoke, but he thinks maybe Allura was there. Maybe even this universe's version of Allura? He's not going to tell that to this version of Lance, though. Not until he knows more, both about the situation and how this Lance will react to the possibility that she's out there, somewhere.

"Is there somewhere I can get some rest?" Keith asks instead. "My brain feels like mush."

"Yeah, of course," Lance says. "You can take Keith's room. I mean, your room. His room?"

That's going to get confusing, isn't it?

When Lance brings him to the room, Keith wonders even more about this universe's version of him. The room is bare, and it looks hardly lived in. It reminds Keith of his quarters during his brief stint at the Blade of Marmora headquarters. There's no personality, no mementos. Just empty space.

Well, empty space and a giant wolf thing.

"What is..." Keith asks, and then trails off and just waves at it. He doesn't even know how to characterize the beast.

"What, Kosmo? Oh man, do you not have a version of Kosmo?"

"Is it Keith's?"

"Well, sort of. He disappeared for a bit and then came back two years older with this wolf following him everywhere and we never really asked. Kosmo's a good boy, though. He won't hurt you."

The story sounds completely unfamiliar. Keith wonders where the break is - what event changed the course of the experience he knows and whatever happened to this Keith?

It's too much to think about this early in the process. Keith just mostly wants to go home, and Lance seems to get it.

"I'll let you get some sleep. Tell Kosmo to find me if you need anything, okay? I don't know what your version of the Atlas looks like."

And then Keith is alone, save for the giant wolf already lying on the bed and looking at him sadly.

It's most definitely not the homecoming Keith was hoping for.

Chapter Text

Keith wakes up in the paladin lounge, having cried himself to sleep at the injustice of it. A universe where Shiro loves Keith, and there isn't a Keith to love.

He resolutely doesn't allow his mind to wander down the path of just staying here. Staying in this universe, where a version of Keith is loved, even if it isn't exactly him.

During the night, someone—he thinks it was Allura but he's not sure—draped a blanket over him and tucked a pillow under his head. Now there's a cup of coffee and some kind of pastry waiting for him on the table.

It's just...unfamiliar in the worst way, at this point. Years ago, during the war and while they still had the Castleship, this might have happened. They seemed to care about each other more. But Keith has been on his own now for decaphoebs, just him and Kosmo, and Kosmo doesn't have the opposable thumbs to bring him breakfast. It pulls at him, that his own life could have been like this were it not for some different choice. Maybe something as simple as turning left instead of right.

Pidge wanders in halfway through Keith's cup of coffee and just sits with him on the couch, leaning her weight against him like a cat.

"Where's Shiro?" Keith forces himself to ask. He hasn't seen him since yesterday, and the absence hurts like a physical thing.

"He's out looking," Pidge says. "He gave up the captaincy of the Atlas so he could spend all his time out in space, searching. He's been doing it everyday for the past three decaphoebs."

"What happened?" Keith isn't sure he wants to know, really, but he needs to.

"He just disappeared, one day. No explanation, no clues, nothing. We have his Marmora Knife, though."

It seems like there's something she isn't saying, and then it occurs to Keith that the knife is tied to his quintessence, his life force.

"Is it..."

"It's dark," Pidge says.

"Does Shiro know that?"

"Yeah, he knows what it means. Kolivan has tried to tell him to give up for ages. He won't. He's committed, that's for sure. You two were... I mean, he and our Keith. They got on my nerves sometimes, being so sappy, I walked in on them having sex in the kitchen once for god's sake, but they also just. They loved each other so much. I don't know how to get Shiro to stop."

"He won't," Keith says. It's maybe overstepping—this isn't his Shiro, after all—but he knows that much. "It's just like when I wouldn't stop looking for him after that fight with Zarkon."

"Which fight with Zarkon?" Pidge asks with narrowed eyes. "Did your Shiro disappear?"

"Yours didn't?" The break must have been earlier than he expected.

"Nope. Tell me about it."

"It was... kind of the same, I guess. We launched a massive attack on Zarkon, it was the first time we worked with the Blade of Marmora. We won, we dealt a major blow to Zarkon and the Empire, but after the fight Shiro was just, gone. I found out years later that he had died and his consciousness was stuck in the Black Lion, but until I thought I'd found him, I didn't give up searching. Drove Allura mad."

"Shit," Pidge says with feeling. "Your Shiro died?"

"It ended up being fine, Allura did some Altean magic and put his soul into the body of his clone."

"Of course she did. Well, I think I know the battle you're talking about, but we didn't lose Shiro. I wonder what the difference was."

Was that it? Was that the major breaking point? If Shiro hadn't disappeared, Keith wouldn't have been forced to become the Black Paladin against his will, wouldn't have run off to the Blade of Marmora, wouldn't have had to fight Shiro's clone to the death. Would that have placed Keith on the right path, or had there been something else?

"There's no use thinking about it," Pidge said, nudging him. "The difference, I mean. What's done is done."

"Easy for you to say," Keith grumbles.

"It really isn't," Pidge says. "Our Keith is dead, remember?"'

Oh. Right. Insert-foot-in-mouth now.

The parallels are too obvious to ignore, though.

"He's not stuck inside the Lions, is he? Did you check?"

"Keith disappeared after we sacrificed the Lions to save the fabric of reality," Pidge says matter-of-factly.

"Is that why Allura..." He doesn't finish the sentence, but Pidge sees through him anyway.

"Your Allura sacrificed herself? Was it still the whole fabric of reality thing?"

"Yeah, yeah," Keith says, "Haggar trying to find Lotor and all that."

So much was different. Could they have done that and saved Allura, or had something prevented them? Why hadn't they even considered another alternative? Allura had offered, and they'd just....gone ahead with it.

"I told you not to think about it," Pidge says, but Keith can't help it.

What could he have done to have this universe, instead? A loving relationship with Shiro, Allura safe and sound. It wasn't fair.

He doesn't see Shiro for the rest of the day, either, but Pidge, Hunk, Allura, and Lance stick to him like a particularly anxious pack of yelmors. Like they're afraid Keith will disappear if they look away from him for too long.

It's a legitimate fear. Keith has no idea how he ended up in this reality, so it's entirely possible that he'll just pop back to his own without warning.

The thought makes a sharp bubble of fear rise up in his chest.

Hunk keeps them fed, and Lance and Allura keep them entertained with games and stories, but everyone feels subdued. He's a replacement for them, and they're a replacement for him. It won't last.

Will it?

When Keith wakes up again, alone in the lounge in the middle of the night, he formulates a plan.

It is not a good plan, nor a smart plan, but no one has ever accused Keith of making good decisions, especially when he's stressed and on edge.

It helps, that the corridors of the Atlas line up and take him exactly where he wants to go, and he finds himself staring at a door that immediately swooshes open for him.

"Shiro?" Keith whispers, voice loud in the stillness.

"Hmm?"

"I know this is a horrible idea, and you can say no, but I was wondering..." Keith trails off, unable to finish the request.

But Shiro knows him, understands him even if Keith isn't his, and lifts up the blankets for him.

The relief of it is almost painful. Keith burrows into the opposite side of the bed, resolving to stay there. The bed is huge. There is plenty of room for them both without needing to get closer.

This is enough. This is more than he's ever had with his own universe's Shiro.

He wakes up alone.

It's still the best sleep he's gotten in ages.

Chapter Text

Keith wakes in a bed that feels both familiar and not. At least he has a physical presence, now. His whole body feels heavy and achy and staticky.

The wolf thing, Kosmo, is already awake. It was awake each time Keith woke up during the night, reaching for someone who wasn't there. Does it even sleep?

Lance had said to come find him, but Lance is clearly dealing with his own demons, his own loss, and Keith doesn't need to bother him. He can find his way around the ship. it's the Atlas, after all. It's his home.

But when he goes out in search of Pidge, Hunk, or Matt, hoping one of them at least has an idea about how to send him back to the correct universe, he gets hopelessly lost. The ship is full of people and places he doesn't recognize, people that salute him in the hallways as he attempts to find his way back to the lab he appeared in last night.

It's almost as if the ship itself is rearranging rooms and corridors on him, but the Atlas has always loved Keith. Why would she mess with him now?

Or at least, the Atlas in his universe. Was this another difference? Did the ship hate Keith for some reason, the same inexplicable reason that Shiro married someone else?

What if this universe's Keith didn't even love Shiro? What if they were just... coworkers?

He can't stay here. He cannot.

"Kosmo," he tries, "take me to Pidge's lab."

The wolf gives a little arf and suddenly Keith is in a completely different room on the ship, still dizzy with the aftermath of the teleportation. Not quite what he'd meant, but that's on him for not wording the command better.

But he's in Pidge's lab, at least. Mission accomplished.

Pidge herself is seated in the same place she was yesterday, sans Matt, and Keith clears his throat again to get her to notice him.

"Oh, hey Other Reality Keith," she says, not turning around. "Is there something you need?"

Is there something he needs, she asks, as if Keith hasn't been dumped into the worst of all possible worlds. But this is normal to Pidge. Reign it in.

"I need to get back home. I need to get home to my universe, right now," Keith says instead.

"Great. What do you want me to do about it?"

"Send me back?" Keith asks.

"I have no idea how to do that. Didn't you just appear here? You'll probably just need to wait. I'm sure it will all work itself out."

Keith can't wait. Not when each moment of waiting brings him closer to a possible universe in which Shiro gave up on him and married someone else. It's what Keith would have wanted, in all honesty--for Shiro to move on and find love again. But not yet.

"Waiting isn't an option."

Pidge sighs, as long-suffering as she can be, and finally turns around.

"Okay, fine, I'll get on it. I still have no idea how to do it. Reality-bending was Allura's thing, and well... And, sorry to say, it's not a huge priority for me. My to-do list is massive."

"Pidge, help a guy out," Lance says from behind him, and Keith jolts. He hadn't even heard Lance come into the room.

He hadn't expected Lance to be his greatest asset here, but Lance could be very perceptive when he wanted to be. Could Lance tell how much he missed his own version of Shiro?

"You know I'll need to contact Slav to figure this out, right? Slav. Forgive me for not wanting to open that can of worms."

Keith has never cared less about the need to involve Slav in a plan. If that's what it takes to get him home to the proper universe, Keith will search Slav out himself and listen to every single unhinged rambling.

"Pidge," Lance says again, and some kind of unspoken dialogue passes between them.

Pidge slams her head against the console, and then tells the computer to start writing a message to Slav. She glares at Keith while the computer dictates the message, but all Keith can do is smile at her in return.

Once done, Pidge pointedly returns to her previous task, and Keith can understand a dismissal when he sees one.

"I thought I told you to come find me," Lance says, walking with Keith in the direction Keith hopes will lead them to the dining hall.

"I didn't want to bother you. I know you're going through your own loss."

"What, you mean Allura? Buddy I've been mourning Allura for literally years. I can help you out and mourn at the same time. I've gotten good at multitasking like that."

"What... happened? I mean, if that's...."

"It's old news," Lance says. "It's weird to meet someone who doesn't know how Allura died. But yeah, she sacrificed herself to save all realities everywhere and time and space and all that jazz."

If the timeline is what Keith thinks it is, that means they choce to sacrifice Allura instead of the Lions, and yet Keith hasn't seen any evidence that the Lions still exist in this plane of reality. He wants to ask, but doesn't want to offend Lance.

He wants to go home, where everything makes sense and he doesn't need to keep two timelines in his head.

But if this universe's Keith was apparently okay with sacrificing Allura, maybe he's alright with other things? Maybe this universe's Keith doesn't even love Shiro.

"Oh no, he's a wreck," Lance says when Keith clumsily asks about the feelings between him and Shiro. "We should.... here, let's head to one of the observatories. People have given it a lot of space since I had a major breakdown in there a few phoebs ago, so we should have some privacy."

"Keith loves him?" he asks.

"Oh, yeah," Lance says, "but it's a one-way street. I thought in the early days, the early Voltron days I mean, there was something there. But then Shiro disappeared, and he came back wrong, and Keith ran off with the Blade of Marmora, and everything fell apart."

None of that makes sense to Keith, but his head is already too full of questions to even voice them, so he just nods and Lance takes it as permission to continue.

"Shiro and Curtis got married pretty soon after the war ended. Shiro asked Keith to be the Best Man and it was rough. And because Keith is a masochist, he said yes. I don't think anyone else could see it, but I don't know. Maybe losing Allura made me recognize Keith's loss, too. Keith was... man, it was hard to watch. He made sure everything was absolutely perfect for the wedding and then each night he'd come to my room and just break down, and then do it all over again the next day. I'm pretty sure he asked Kolivan for the longest, most dangerous mission possible the day after Shiro's wedding just so he could get away from it all."

"And Shiro....?"

"Doesn't seem to notice a thing," Lance finishes for him.

That settles it. Worst reality ever.

Chapter Text

"I heard that you aren't where you're supposed to be and thought you might need a little bit of a hand," the woman says. Kosmo perks up at his side and bounds over to her for pats and scritches.

Keith has no idea who the woman is. She looks vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough for him to dredge up her name. He hates this, being put in this situation where the people he knows best are mostly ignoring him while random strangers come up for advice and support and he needs to pretend that he knows who they are and what he's doing.

She's clearly part of the Blade of Marmora, going by the uniform. A high-ranking member, at that. What can Keith possibly offer to her in this situation?

"Right, thanks," he says, hoping the inner turmoil isn't obvious.

No such luck. The woman gently pushes Kosmo aside and narrows her eyes, sizing Keith up.

"You don't know me." She looks upset, almost stricken.

"I'm sorry, I don't..."

"No. That you don't know me is my own fault. Or the fault of some other version of me, I suppose. You are not to blame. Apparently I've made poor choices in more than just this universe."

She must be close to him, somehow, for her to be this upset, but Keith's mind is still a blank.

"I'm Krolia," she says eventually, and that's when it all clicks.

Keith's mother, or at least the one in his universe, died on a mission before Kolivan even told him who she was. Keith never had the chance to talk to her, to question why she left.

It's the one, tiny positive difference he's discovered between their universes so far.

"Oh," he says dumbly.

She huffs at the reaction in what might be amusement, but she's also almost impossible to read. "The Keith in this universe did a lot of yelling and screaming at me when we met, and then we were stuck in the Quantum Abyss for two years to work out our differences. Would you like to yell and scream at me, as well? It seemed to help him."

"Uhhh."

Years ago, maybe, he would have yelled and screamed. But he's never met his mother, never known anything about her except the tidbits that Kolivan and Thace have let slip. That and he's desperate for any kind of contact with another person. Lance has been gone for a couple of days, doing something for Coran on Altea, and the other former paladins might as well be ghosts for all he's seen of them. The wolf has been his only real companion lately.

"You need time," Krolia says, and Keith almost panics when she makes to move away.

"No! No, it's fine, it just caught me off-guard. Um, what do you want to talk about?"

"What do you want to talk about? I was going to offer to spar to help take your mind off things, but I can imagine you have questions. I don't know if I'll be able to answer them all, but I'm here."

With the sudden possibility to ask his mother, or at least a version of his mother, all his questions, Keith finds his mind empty.

"Sparring sounds good," he says instead. She raises a brow but doesn't respond, and it feels almost like looking in a mirror. He can't believe he didn't immediately know who she was.

Of course, Krolia is a high-ranking member of the Blade of Marmora, and this universe's Keith must be an excellent fighter. Keith, on the other hand, was out of practice even before getting stuck in the astral plane for who knows how long.

She puts him on the mat within 20 seconds, if that.

Great. Super. A top-notch first impression for his mother.

"Don't apologize," she says, despite the fact that Keith verbalized nothing. "You live a life of peace. That was my wildest dream, that my son would be able to grow up not needing to know how to fight."

"Why?"

He didn't mean to say that, but she knows what he's asking, anyway.

"I don't have a good explanation. I believed that returning to the war effort would keep you safe. I could never have imagined you would have gotten yourself onto the frontlines. Nor could I have imagined that your father would pass away. If I had known--if your version of me had known, I am sure she would have come back to Earth in a heartbeat."

He wonders if she had known. If Kolivan had told her about him being a Paladin of Voltron and she hadn't cared enough to stop her top secret death wish mission to meet him.

"Don't," Krolia says. "Don't think about what might have been."

"If you get too worried about what might go wrong, you'll miss a chance to do something great," Keith recites. He'd connected with the Holts after the war, and both Sam and Colleen had instilled that phrase into his brain.

"Wise words," Krolia says.

He doesn't tell her that he got those words from the closest thing he had to parents in his own universe.

He wonders where Sam and Colleen are in this universe. They must be around somewhere, but he hasn't seen them on the Atlas so far. Granted, he hasn't seen a lot of people he knows lately.

"You seem upset," she says after they go a few more rounds, Keith barely holding his own.

"I'm just..." He doesn't know how much he wants to tell his mother, this mostly stranger. But she's here, she came for him, and she's the closest thing he has to any kind of connection right now. "I don't like this universe."

He's spat it out before he thinks about the consequences—he just told Keith's mother that he'd rather be in a universe where she's dead—but she only blinks at him.

"Tell me more."

And then words are spilling out of Keith's mouth. He's telling her about his relationship with Shiro, about his connection to the other former Paladins, about Allura being alive. About everything he's been missing since he found himself in this godforsaken reality.

"I must admit," Krolia says slowly, "that I would prefer for my son to be in that universe, as well."

Keith feels weirdly relieved. It seems like everyone has gotten used to this reality, like frogs in a boiling pot of water, and the people he should be close to are cold and aloof and all focused on their own plans and problems.

"I just want to go home," Keith says, feeling childish for it. When Krolia hugs him, it's awkward, but it's also the only affectionate touch Keith has had for several days other than Kosmo.

They stay like that for a long time.

Chapter Text

Hunk gives him a look when he catches Keith leaving Shiro's room in the morning. It's not a disapproving look. If anything, there's some pity in it, but it still makes Keith bristle. He isn't used to this kind of scrutiny anymore. He essentially lives alone, with no one but Kosmo to judge him.

For that matter, where is Kosmo? Had he disappeared along with this universe's Keith?

When he asks Lance and Allura about it at breakfast, they just seem confused.

"Yeah, I picked him up when my mom and I got stuck in the Quantum Abyss."

"Quantum Abyss?" Allura asks, at the same time Lance makes a surprised, sort of guilty face.

"What?" Keith asks with narrowed eyes. Is there some kind of secret horror that happened to Kosmo that only Lance knows about?

"Your mom... she's, uh..." he says, but doesn't finish the sentence.

"What about her?"

"What happened to her, in your universe?" Allura asks with a bit more tact.

"Nothing? She's fine, as far as I know. Why?"

But the moment he asks the question, he realizes. This universe's version of Krolia hasn't been on the Atlas to see him, hasn't even made contact.

"She's dead, isn't she?" Keith asks. He doesn't have the emotional stamina to wrap it in gentler words.

"Yes. You - that is, our Keith, he never met her. I take it that isn't the case for you?" Allura says.

"Yeah, she's fine," Keith says. It does something weird to his head to imagine it. Never meeting her, never getting the answers he had always wanted. Never, apparently, spending two years together on a space whale with his new dog.

It also explains what happened to Kosmo. If Keith and Krolia never went to the Quantum Abyss, he never would have found Kosmo in the first place. That hurts, too. Kosmo has become his one constant companion. Keith can't imagine going through life without him.

Then again, this universe's version of Keith probably hadn't needed the emotional support. He still had the former paladins, after all.

He had Shiro.

"So this version of Keith never went to the Quantum Abyss?" Keith asks to distract himself.

"Never heard of it," Lance says.

"What were you doing there?" Allura says.

The thought stops him in his tracks. If this universe's Keith never went to the Quantum Abyss, never discovered the Altean colony, do the others even know about it?

"Allura, did you ever... I mean, the Alteans..."

"Oh," she says. It isn't the excited, exuberant kind of reaction he was expecting. "Is that where Lotor was hiding the Altean Colony?"

"What happened to it?" Keith asks, though he can imagine it's nothing positive.

"We believe Haggar destroyed it, cannibalized it for parts in her attempt to resurrect Lotor."

"We can still go investigate," Lance says, his hand on Allura's arm, "see if there's anything or anyone left. Where is it?"

Keith gives them coordinates and the warnings to avoid getting sucked into the time distortions and then they're off, leaving him alone.

The solitude hurts more than he expected it to.

He sleeps in Shiro's bed again that night.

He still wakes up alone. It bites into him, having Shiro this close but never seeing him. But this isn't his Shiro, this isn't his universe. He'll take what he can get.

"I need a taste-tester," Hunk says the next morning, catching Keith's arm and dragging him into the little kitchen the Atlas seems to have made just for Hunk's culinary endeavors. Keith knows full well that Hunk doesn't actually need a taste-tester. This version of Hunk seems to be an even better chef than the one in Keith's reality, if that's possible. No, this is a ploy to have "Quality Alternate Reality Keith Time," as the paladins have taken to calling it.

Keith's enjoying it too much to complain about it.

So he docilely lets Hunk sit him down at the little breakfast bar and enjoys a buffet of fruit tarts and peanut butter cookies for breakfast.

Pidge steals him away after breakfast and proceeds to beat him handily in several videogames. It's not Keith's fault that they didn't have these games in his reality. At least, he doesn't think they did. Videogames have never been his strong point, anyway.

Hunk takes him back to make sure Keith gets lunch—four different types of salads, this time—and by then Allura and Lance are back from their exploration of the Quantum Abyss.

From their expressions, nothing good came of the visit, and Hunk and Pidge are immediately on "distraction duty." Keith wants to help, but it's been so long since he was around people, really around people, that he's out of practice at comfort.

Who is he kidding? He was never good at comforting people.

He suddenly feels incredibly out of place. These aren't his versions of the former paladins, this isn't his universe, and he doesn't belong here. He's just a poor replacement for the Keith that they lost.

As if Lance can read his thoughts, he grabs Keith's arm before he can pull away from the group and marches him down to the paladin lounge.

"We're having a movie night," he says, instructing Keith to pick several "feel-good but not Altean" movies and spread cushions all over the floor. Keith doesn't quite know what he's doing—half of the movies are unfamiliar, and he can't decide whether that's due to the alternate reality or just that Keith barely ever watches movies. But he picks out a few Galra ones that should be humorous, and one of the "so bad it's good" horror movies he recognizes from Earth. Lance gives him a satisfactory nod when he looks over his choices, having returned with skincare supplies and popcorn.

They all stay up way too late, and it feels like being back on the Castleship. It feels like Allura should yell at them to go to bed because they have training tomorrow morning.

It feels like Shiro should be there, too.

Keith knows this was mostly meant to cheer up Allura, but he does feel a lot better after letting everything go and enjoying the movies with the others.

"Do you want us to show you someplace you can sleep?" Hunk asks with a raised brow once they've put everything away, and Keith loves him a little bit for not mentioning where he's slept for the past couple nights.

"No, I think I'll stay here for the night." The lounge is comfortable, and he's bothered Shiro enough. Besides, he has a feeling that Hunk was about to offer to let him sleep in this universe's Keith's room, and that feels too much like he'd be sleeping in someone's grave.

He's half-asleep when a metal hand gently shakes his shoulder, and a quiet voice asks, "are you coming to bed?"