Chapter Text

The Galran cruiser is cold.

There’s hardly a difference between its shadowy hallways and the vast space outside. Keith tries not to grimace as he presses his back against the metal wall of the corner he’s tucked himself into. It’s frigid, even through his Blade suit. He has to concentrate to control his breathing from turning into haggard huffing and puffing.

“Kogane, proceed to door A-K6T. All clear.”

His earpiece crackles with the message. It’s from Kya, a Blade he hasn’t seen around. She seemed nice on the dingy jet they utilized for the journey. She kept to herself and kept out of Keith’s way without any unwarranted nasty looks, so yeah. Nice.

“On it.”

He’s quick to leave his hiding spot but not too antsy. He’s learned from his first few Blade missions how terribly inconvenient it is to be paranoid at all times. To treat each step he takes like he’s traipsing a minefield. It’s best to trust the Blade he’s with. To let them be his eyes and ears. It’s teamwork.

Ironically, it’s a little like Voltron. A far less enthusiastic version of Voltron.

Keith doesn’t want to think about that.

He trusts Kya, and he moves onwards.

There are no lights to guide him to his destination. It’s pitch black inside, with no windows lining the walls to allow even a glimmer of light from a nearby space shuttle. Galrans tend to live a little bit like this, with just enough light for growth and nourishment. Druids, however, cling to the night like the darkness is a fundamental anchor to their spine. Keith stays weary as he creeps down the hall. His shoddy night vision is only a little bit of help for navigation. It’s a constant reminder that squinting his eyes won’t help him see better and that he has to trust the directions whispered in his earpiece, trust that there isn’t an enemy waiting around the corner, and trust his teammate.

Keith’s never been anywhere so dark.

They can’t be sentient—these druids, for them to live in a place like this. Shot out in a lonely pocket of space, in the dark. Keith has seen the layout of the ship: there’s no kitchen, no bathroom, no training room, nothing . Just countless labs everywhere . Keith can’t imagine a species living like this, can’t comprehend their birth, their purpose and desire, or their existence. Surely, if he were to take the druids apart, there’d be some wires and gadgets in place of a heart, something inherently unalive to keep them going the way they do. It’s easy to pretend that they’re single-minded robots, that they’ve been wired to conduct experiments until they fall apart. It’s easier to think that, because the other alternative is that they live and thrive off the endless torment they’ve inflicted. That it is their divine nectar to dissect a creature and string its mind in countless directions. That what happened to Shiro was something that someone benefitted from, that someone enjoyed .

Keith couldn’t stand that. Not at all.

His fingers brush against a groove in the wall. A door handle, he realizes belatedly. Too soon and too quick, it shoots open without warning. Keith flinches back in expectation. His arms cross in front of his face like a shield, in anticipation for some sort of lash out. They’ve been caught, the druids got them, they’re going to do something worse than kill him: they’re not going to let him go home —

“Door A-K6T overrode,” Kya says, “You may proceed.”

Could’ve said that earlier , Keith almost grumbles. The words are on the tip of his tongue. He could’ve said it, would’ve said it if he were with, if he was at—

If he was with Voltron.

“You’re too slow, Kogane,” Pidge cackles over their comms. “The door is open and ready for you, your highness, whenever you are.”

“Your highness,” Lance guffaws at the same time Keith swears, “What the fuck, Pidge? You just told me that —”

“All I’m hearing are excuses. Chop, chop, little boy. Keep it moving.”

“Little boy,” Lance echoes. He sounds in awe, like he’s discovering a new language that has never been spoken before. Frankly, he’s having too much fun with this. Doesn’t he have his own quest to complete? Keith scoffs. Lance is — Lance should be on the other side of the ship, making his way past his own obstacles. Instead, he’s teasing Keith and laughing. God. He wishes he could keep him in sight, just to make sure that his stupid dumbass isn’t going to get his head blown off mid-joke. He makes his way through this maze of a spaceship and wills the fight to be over.

“Kogane, proceed.”

Keith snaps out of his trance. Shit, what is he doing? “O—okay,” he manages to stammer out and he hurries through the door.

It’s embarrassing, to keep his mind on these things like a record player that’s stuck. It’s unprofessional and dangerous; that’s what it is. To be daydreaming in the dark about a scenario that’s long gone and that’ll never come back because Keith left. He left, and he left them for good. They’re Voltron without him. He’s just a Blade. And he’ll be a Blade, a good one that doesn’t freak out at the slightest of noise or let his mind wander here and there. He’ll be a good Blade who helps liberate planets and gather intel. He’ll be needed here. Wanted, maybe.

“What now?” Keith asks.

It’s quiet. Keith’s heart skips a beat. He wonders what the difference is between inside this spaceship and the cold, empty space that hangs outside of it.

“Kya?”

“Wait.” His comms crackle. “You wait.”

Keith shifts from toe to toe as he awaits further instructions. It’s awfully odd to be standing, loitering about an enemy cruiser. Here he is, front and center, like a lamb presented to the wolf, all wrapped up with a bow on top. It’s an awful feeling, to be unknown and unaware. It’s the feeling of being prey.

Keith never felt like this in Voltron.

Now’s not the time . He grits his teeth.

It’s definitely not the time. He’s—it’s dangerous to be off guard. There could be eyes anywhere, watching him, waiting for him. The druids could be toying with him, for all he knows. Following him around, seeing the way he’s making a fool of himself sneaking and hiding when they’ve been right there the whole time. Keith can picture it: their sick, owlish faces lurking around a corner. Or maybe they’re out in the open, standing a few paces behind him. Standing, waiting. They wouldn’t even have to hunt him—he’s such easy prey. He wonders if druids ever smile, if the crooked satisfaction of catching a victim carves a sickle across their face. If they do, they must be smiling now. Eagerly waiting, dripping with joy, arms extended outwards for Keith to walk into their clutches. Keith’s heart picks up its pace. He feels it quicken, like there are horses galloping in his chest.

“Go left.”

Left? The idea appears to him that there could be a druid right there, right next to him. It’s instinctive to step backwards, but Keith stops when he thinks that one could be right behind him. He couldn’t—sweat blooms at his brow at the thought of walking backwards into something, into someone.

Keith swipes a cautious hand around him. It comes across nothing.

“What are you waiting for?” Kya asks. She doesn’t sound annoyed. She doesn’t sound upset. Her voice is equally as flat and cold as everything around him.

He can’t explain it to her. The fear. The inhumanity of this place. He can’t even begin to verbalize it.

Slowly, with one foot in front of the other, Keith starts to head left. He feels his footsteps in his joints and ears. It thunders and thuds away at his head. The movement he’s making feels foreign to him and it seems like he has hardly gained any distance. Yet he still reaches a far wall.

“What—” Keith clears his throat. “What now?”

Gears whir. Another door opens.

Light sears his eyes. Keith blinks like he’s been stung, it hadn’t—it—what was that? It’s such a contrasting glow to the nothingness of the rest of the spaceship. The lights in this room are loud and blaring. A purple so vivid and saturated attacks his eyes, even through his clenched eyelids. He hadn’t expected the change in scenery. Keith feels like a newborn fawn toddling into the open world for the first time. He stands wobbly and uncertain, relieved to have left behind the stagnant darkness but nervous to approach what comes next. Still, there’s security in the difference. Good riddance; Keith’s fed up with the god awful, dreadful atmosphere of this ship. Stumbling across something new must mean that he’s a step closer to completing the mission. He’ll—they’ll succeed, and then he’ll be able to fuck out of this ship for good. He’ll be done here.

Keith opens his eyes and is struck with the fact that he has never, ever been as wrong before in his life.

He’s been hunting before, twice. Once with his father, who did all the work while Keith bumbled about uselessly, only to cry once they strung up the dead rabbit to cook. Twice, when those lonely days at the shack blended together with the help of the desert sand and Keith was hungry, so, so hungry. It was a moment of desperation that led him to skewer a lizard onto his knife, but Keith remembers the look in its eyes all too well.

Distantly, he ponders if he looks the same now.

Limbs frozen. Hair matted and stuck to his forehead. Eyes bulging. Cold all over, as if in preparation for death.

At least he’ll be allowed to die in the light rather than fold away into some unknown corner of the ship, Keith thinks, before realizing with dread that no , what’s going to happen to him will not be death; it’ll be something far, far worse.

Keith has never seen a druid from so up close before.

They’re thin, like skeletons draped in black fabric. The edges of the druid’s body phase in and out of the air. A gust of wind might blow it away. It appears like a painting, a mirage, although Keith understands that the sight before him is real. He can’t make this up or wish this away.

The druid is hunkered down, low to the ground, but when it stands, it looms well over Keith. The room dims instantly, as if the druid has sapped away the light, consuming it like it’s going to consume him. It stands like a tower, a supporting pillar of the ship. Keith would have to crane his head upwards to look at its face. Keith does not do so. He doesn’t want to look.

Something catches his eye on the ground. Keith pales.

Struck to the floor, nearly hilt deep, is a Marmoran blade. And wedged between the floor and the blade is Kya’s limp body.

Keith staggers backwards. “How—what—” He doesn’t even recognize his voice.

Kya’s hair haloes her head on the floor. She’s face down, curled inwards,  in a naive attempt to protect herself long immortalized. Keith couldn’t look at her if he could see her face, if he could see her wound. He wishes he were back in those pitch-black hallways, where he was childishly frightened for no good reason.

How could she have died? When could she have died? Keith hadn’t even heard it, hadn’t even known it had happened. She was just speaking to him, muttering directions. She was just on their transport ship, alive and breathing. She was just at the base, getting debriefed for the mission. It was—it hadn’t even been that long ago. Nothing had been that long ago.

Turn left — turn right — proceed through —

She’s dead.

She’s still enough that she must’ve been long dead. There isn’t even an ounce of struggle or fight in her body. Should Keith reach out and touch her, she would be frozen cold. But how? How could she be long dead if she had just been instructing Keith?

He tears his eyes away from her body and braves a glance at the druid.

It’s closer than it was before, and larger even. It’s leaning downwards, staring at Keith. Gauging his moves. Keith thinks about the lizard, the rabbit, and their petrified fear. How they looked at him with desperate, pleading eyes. How their desire to live had been so large. How Keith saw all of that, understood all of that, and still killed them. And how this druid peers at him, head slanted to the side like its neck is breaking, with vacant, hollow eyes and a cracked, chipping face.

Does it understand what it means to want to live? Does it understand how it feels to need life so bad that it’s a physical ache, a weight dragging him down?

The druid moves. It’s just a slight motion, but Keith tracks it with hawk-eyes.

It curls and uncurls its spindly, clawed fingers out of a closed fist. It’s only then that Keith notices that it is holding something. There’s something crushed in the druid’s vice-like grip.

It’s a communicator.

Harrowingly slow, the druid brings the device to its lips. When it speaks, Kya’s voice comes out.

“Walk forward, Keith.”

Keith runs.

He flings himself into the dark, running aimlessly, mindlessly. He hasn’t got a single idea where he’s headed—he can’t even see ahead of him, but it doesn’t matter. All he knows is that he’s got to get away, away, away. He’s got to run. He’s got to live .

Keith places one foot forward and smacks straight into a wall. His nose throbs and his eyes burn, but the pain is just an afterthought. He spins around, frantically searching for an opening, an escape to slip towards. When he finds the bend of the hallway, he launches himself towards it, running with his hand trailing against the wall. His head pounds. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears. His breathing is animal.

“Where are you going, Keith?” Kya’s voice sounds across his communicator. It’s a reminder of the body he’s left behind. Keith grabs his earpiece and flings it away. Damn if he needs it—the one person to talk to, the one person that could help him is dead.

“Do you not like this voice?” The druid speaks again, and its words reverberate across Keith’s mind all the same. There’s no escape. “I can pick something different.”

Keith keeps running. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Left foot—

“Ah, what about this one? Come back, Keith,” the druid says, and that’s Lance speaking, it’s Lance , he’s become—how dare he—

Keith falls to the ground. When he scrambles to get up, his arms collapse under his weight. His palms, wet with sweat, freeze against the floor.

“Come back, Keith,” the druid says. “Come back. Don’t you miss us?”

“Don’t—” Keith stammers. His mouth quivers with the effort to speak. “Don’t be—you can’t be him—you don’t—”

“Struck a nerve? I can imagine. I was always so hard to read, wasn’t I? I’d say one thing and do something else. One moment, I was insulting you, and the next, we were laughing around and racing. Not to mention—”

“ Stop .”

“—all those kisses we shared, right? I never got to explain what it meant to me or what you meant to me. Hah, I’m just the kinda guy who acts first and talks later, except there is no later, well, since you left.”

Keith’s mouth is dry. How does it know? How does it know ?

“Get out of my brain.” He crawls backwards.

The druid continues speaking into the void. “What’s the name he calls you from time to time? That…Earthly term of affection? Ba—Baby?” It asks. “Baby,” the druid croons. Keith covers his ears. “Baby, you don’t wanna talk to me? I miss you. I miss you so, so much. I think about you everyday, and I think about our talks and our fights and I always wonder when you’re going to come back. I thought there was something between us, you know? Something real. But then you left and—won’t you come back to me?”

Keith wonders if the druid had tormented Kya before it killed her. He wonders when the druid will kill him. If he’s to die, he hopes it’ll be soon. He can’t stand leaving this universe with Lance’s voice tainted in his mind.

Selfishly, he wishes to hear Lance’s voice—his real voice—one last time before he goes. There’d be a comfort in dying next to something familiar. Instead, he’s out here, trapped in a dark and cold corner with the words he wants the most held tauntingly above his head by the hands that will murder him.

“Dying?” The druid asks. “Do you want to die?”

“Get the fuck out of my head,” Keith says through gritted teeth.

“I’d be so, so sad if you died. What would I do without you? Ugh, am I supposed to mope forever? You know I can’t stay single for that long. Who’s going to shower me with endless love and affection? Although…now that I think about it, you weren’t exactly loving and affectionate. Also… we were never together, so I was technically single even when you were there. Man, this is not a good look for the Loverboy Lance image. What am I supposed to do—”

“Get out!” Keith shrieks. “Get out! Get out! Get out ! You’re not him, what you say doesn’t matter to me! I don’t—” Keith sobs. “I don’t care! I don’t give a flying fuck what you tell me, I know it’s not real. It’ll never be real!”

“Don’t make me sad like that, Keith.”

Tough luck. Keith already knows he’s made Lance sad in so many ways. He knows he’ll make him sadder when he dies.

“What do you want from me?” Keith croaks. He feels wounded, injured, despite his body being fully intact. There are no holes puncturing his body yet he holds his hands over his chest to cover the chasm tearing into his heart.

“What do I want from you? Hmm?”

Keith shivers.

“There’s nothing that I want . There’s nothing that I need . And there’s certainly nothing I need from you.” With each sentence, the druid’s voice grows closer and closer, deeper and deeper. It no longer sounds like Lance, but there’s no relief from that. It sounds worse, hauntingly worse. The timbers of its scratchy tone reach such a low that Keith can feel it in his stomach.

“Your existence means less to me than the emptiness hanging in space. For you to be here in front of me is of equal value to there being nothing here at all. Do you understand?” Its voice distorts again. “Keith Kogane, you are nothing,” Lance says, “You are but a rodent to be swept away. To be frowned upon and then discarded. You exist by mistake, and you continue to exist by luck.”

Keith’s back hits a wall. “No,” he whispers, “That’s not true.”

A flicker of light blooms from the druid’s fingertips. It under casts its narrow face in an eerie glow. Keith can see every crevice running along its face, crisscrossing and spider webbing in all directions. Within a split second, it lunges down and crawls to him. He doesn’t even get to blink before it hovers over him, stick-like limbs caging him in. He’s trapped. He’s been trapped, but the cage has shrunk.

“Poor thing, offering yourself up to me,” the druid hums, “You wouldn’t even make a full meal. Not like that girl.”

The mention of Kya ignites something in Keith’s chest. It’s as if a hand has reached within and jump-started his heart. It beats with faint purpose. If he could just get around, run a little bit more, then he could get her body out of here. He can save her from the cruel fate that comes after death. He’ll die, and she’s already dead, but it’s the best possible outcome.

Keith can do it.

“Aw,” the druid coos, “So much fire. So much rage in that trembling heart of yours. It’d be a shame if I simply quashed it, wouldn’t it?”

Keith stares straight at the druid. He bores his eyes into the shine of its face and looks his reflection dead in the eye. “Fuck—you.”

The druid tips its head all the way back till its face is far out of sight and it laughs. It shrills and twitches and ticks and shakes. “So much fire!” It shrieks. “So much fire and it’s—”

The druid reaches forward and wraps its long fingers around Keith’s face. They’re like icicles searing his skin with blinding cold. It might’ve drawn blood. He doesn’t know.

“—all gone.” The druid faces him again. “All gone.”

Keith shivers under the touch. He doesn’t understand. “What?”

The druid strokes his face with a false pity. When it speaks, it’s Lance again. “Such an easy fix to what’s going to happen to you. All you have to do is tell me what you want. It’s so easy, and you won’t do it. I know you won’t.”

His breathing picks up in pace. What’s going to happen to him? What? Keith pictures the labs with their tubes and tables. He pictures hungry druids peering down at him like vultures waiting to eat. Picking at his corpse and then throwing it away. Reviving him only to put him down. Tearing his limbs off and reattaching them. He doesn’t—Keith doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want it. He wants to go home .

“Goodbye, Keith Kogane,” Lance’s voice whispers to him, “No one will even miss you.”

“—unsteady conditions—”

“Put him on—”

“—might deteriorate. We’ll have to—”

No one will even miss you.

Keith dreams of a snow covered lake.

He’s stuck under, he thinks. He watches air bubbles slip out his mouth and rise before they scatter and disperse against the sheet of ice overhead. There are no wild currents, nothing rapid. He stays stagnant. Keith’s not sure if he’s sinking—the water’s surface looks just out of reach. He could rush out and brush his fingertips against the ice. Keith’s sure he could.

He doesn’t. He stays still. In stasis.

The snow continues to fall. Tiny little flecks, landing like a smatter of freckles. They cover the lenses Keith gazes through and clouds his view. But he can make out the sky, although dim, although far. He can still see it. He can still see its blue.

“You did good today.”

Keith raises his head so fast it gives him whiplash. He massages a tense spot on his nape as he glares at the intruder in the dining room. It’s Lance — he takes a seat next to Keith without invitation and starts drumming his fingers on the table. Keith frowns so that Lance knows he’s unwelcome, in case he didn’t already know, but then his words register to him.

“What?” Keith asks.

“Can you not hear?” Lance raps his knuckles against his head. “I said you did good today.”

Keith doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get the joke.

He shifts around uncomfortably until he realizes that this is the part of the conversation where he’s supposed to respond. There’s no true script when it comes to talking with Lance; Lance is sporadic, like the wind up and changing directions and the ocean waves crashing in criss-crossing directions. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something Lance expects from him. Something Keith fails to deliver, time and time again.

Keith tries for another, “What?”

Lance sighs. “It’s like you have swords for brains.”

He scowls. It’s instinctive, like he had been holding this neutral facade and he can finally rest. He should’ve known this was a typical Lance-style jab, that it was nothing different. Their conversations always go the same way don’t they? At least, they always end the same way. In a fight. With a clash.

Keith doesn’t have the time for this. Not today. Not after the fucking failure of a job he did. He’s truly outstanding. An A+ paladin. The universe must be jumping with joy to have him as a savior.

He pushes his chair back and stands. It’s loud, but he doesn’t care. “I’m just gonna go, then.”

Abruptly, Lance stands too. “Wait, what?” He blinks at Keith. He looks confused. Why is he confused? “Why are you — you, what?”

Keith stares at him. Lance stares back.

“I’m going back to my room.”

“Oh. Why?”

He hadn’t thought this far. Keith thought he’d be well down the hall, through his bedroom door, and in his bed by now. He hadn’t expected Lance to actually hold him here, to want something tangible from him. 

“I’m just…” Keith shifts from toe to toe. “Does it matter to you? I’m leaving!”

Lance rolls his eyes. “‘The worst he’ll say is no,’ they say,” he mutters to himself.

“What?”

“Oh, you’re still here?” Lance spits. “I thought you were leaving!”

“I am!”

“Well, bye!”

“Bye.”

Keith storms off without another word. He’s angry, more than he had been when he was alone, more than he had been back when he docked Red, back at the meeting, back at —

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter.

The walk to his room is short and Keith trims off even more time with his aggressive, brisk pace. His senses must be off because it takes him a minute to hear the second set of footsteps trailing behind him. He turns around.

“Are you kidding me?”

“What?” Lance throws his hands in the air. “Can’t a guy walk down the halls of his own, humble abode?”

“Not your home,” Keith mutters before wincing. Why did he say that? Everyone knows how Lance feels about topics of home. Even he, who Lance guards his heart away from so harshly, has seen the messy, unkempt truths seeping out. It is Lance’s worst kept secret worn on his skin for all to see: his distant, lonely eyes, his flat laughter, and his longing words. Keith should’ve known better than to speak without thinking.

Now Lance is going to get hurt and offended, and they’ll fight, except this time, it’ll be borne out of Keith’s faults rather than any irrational reasons. He’ll have done this—messed it up. He’ll have widened the divide that splits them.

But Lance surprises him. “Not yours either,” he says, undeterred, “Which means there’s absolutely no issue if I do this.” Then he slips past Keith and into his room before he can say or do anything about it.

“Hey!” Keith cries. “What the fuck?”

He’s too startled to act. What is going on?

“You snooze, you lose!”

“What are you—” He rushes in right as Lance hops onto his bed. He lands with a bounce and flops over onto his back. “Lance,” Keith inhales tightly. “Get off my bed. Get out of my room.”

“Man, I think I could take a nap right now.”

“Lance.”

Lance crosses his arms behind his head and shoots him a cheeky grin. “Keith.”

He’s glad that Lance didn’t take his comment to heart, but he really, really would prefer him to take his oddly cheerful attitude elsewhere. Preferably to the other side of his door, away from Keith. He doesn’t have the energy for this banter. Not today. Not after Keith so horribly messed up an alliance treaty with that big, stupid mouth of his. Keith doesn’t have it in him to hold a conversation.

He sighs and gestures to the bed, where Lance is busy kicking around his blankets. “What do you want?”

Lance stops messing up his bed. “Well, I wanted to tell you that you did good today, dealing with those jackass nobles. Someone had to put them in their place, you know? If you didn’t do it, I would’ve. But then you basically told me to fuck off. I forgive you, B-T-W, because I’m starting to realize you’re in a mood.”

“A mood?” The fuck is that supposed to mean? What kind of twisted compliment is he receiving?

“Right there!” Lance jumps up and points at him. “That face you just did—where you snarl and scrunch up your nose—”

“I don’t snarl—”

“—that one! God, you look so pissed off right now.”

Keith schools his face.

“Nice try, Kogane.” Lance laughs. “You have a resting bitch face.”

He can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t know what Lance is saying and more importantly, he doesn’t understand why Lance is here. Aren’t there other places for him to be? His room? The holo-deck? The lion hangar? It’s not like they have frequently occurring hang outs for Lance to come here and drop in so casually. They’re not friends. Comrades, but not friends.

That jolts a pang of sorrow through his body. It strikes at his heart and the reverberations wash through his veins. Because it’s true. It’s so true, and not just with Lance, but with the whole team. They’re not his friends. Keith doesn’t hang out with them and he only occasionally sits with them for meals. He can’t keep a conversation going more than a few sentences before it hits a dry spell, unless it’s a debrief or—Lance doesn’t count, because his conversations with Lance are arguments. Keith doesn’t know things about them. Sure, he knows Shiro, and he knows him well, but it’s—that’s different. Shiro’s his brother, not his friend, and even then, he doesn’t know all the simple things about him.

He doesn’t know their favorite foods. Favorite seasons. Taste preferences. Favorite color—Keith would probably just assign them their lion colors. Lance looks like he likes the color blue. His eyes are blue, and he likes himself—or at least he pretends to, so he must like the color. The reasoning is so ridiculous and also so incredibly rude that Keith winces.

Why is he mean to Lance like that?

Lance isn’t terrible. He’s confusing and he occasionally annoys Keith, but beneath the shallow surface, he’s a loyal teammate who he trusts to watch his back. Lance isn’t terrible; he’s good. So good, even to Keith, even though he dislikes him. Lance can talk his shit all he wants, but Keith knows he’ll be there for him when he needs him.

He supposes he can excuse this…whatever this intrusion is. To hell if Lance’s chatter gives him a migraine. Keith probably deserves it anyways.

“Move over.”

Lance gawks at him. “What?”

Keith pushes him instead of responding again. Lance falls backwards onto the bed like an old-time cartoon character, which is ridiculous because it’s only a four foot drop. He’s jumped off buildings before, yet he waves his hands around and screams while going down.

“What was that for, asshole?” Lance scrambles to sit straight.

Keith shrugs. “You were in the way.”

Then, with a certain burst of spontaneity, Keith crawls into the bed and tucks himself under the covers that Lance had so haphazardly tossed around. “Good night,” he says.

“You’re sleeping?” Lance cries.

“Great observation.”
“I thought you—I thought—” Lance splutters. “I didn’t think you were going to sleep!”

Keith turns over his shoulder to see Lance’s agape expression. It’s funny enough that the humor distracts him from the pitter-patter of his heartbeat. “What did you think I was going to do?”

“Brood? Stare at your sword? Punch a wall?”

“Why would I punch a wall?” Keith frowns. “We literally have a training room.”

“Who knows?” Lance pushes himself away from the pillows. “I’ll…go then. I don’t—my bad, dude. Wouldn’t have bothered you so much if I knew you were headed to nap. I’ll go, then.”

“Wait.”

Keith’s breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t—what is he supposed to say? It occurs to him that he wants Lance to stay. That despite all his complaints and irritation, he wants Lance. Keith doesn’t want to go to sleep, at least not alone. He doesn’t want to be alone with his wicked, racing thoughts that hammer at his brain with every footfall. And he doesn’t—Keith’s mind roves through the faces of all his other teammates—want to be with anyone else.

It should be a shocking discovery, to know that he craves Lance’s presence, but Keith stumbles upon it like a natural truth that he has known all along. Like watching the laws of physics fall into place or the route on his father’s map lead to the Blue Lion.

He clears his throat. “Why did you follow me here?”

Lance blinks at him. “I…”

Keith’s heartbeat catches in his throat. He’s nervous. He doesn’t want to mess it up. He doesn’t want this one to be a fight.

Lance settles back down on the bed, right next to Keith. They’re shoulder to shoulder, and if they turned inwards, they’d be face to face. Keith has never been this close with him before.

“I’m starting to realize I might be overstepping with this,” Lance says, “But I’ve been bothering you for the past ten minutes and I’m also in your bed, so we’re a bit past overstepping.”

“Not bothering me,” Keith corrects.

Lance shoots him a look. “Dude. You totally looked bothered.”

It’s nearly instinctual to say, ‘because you’re bothersome,’ which is absurd because it’s not true. Sure, Lance bothers him, and yes, Keith was pretty bothered ten minutes ago, but those aren’t characteristics that represent him. Lance isn’t some stain to be swiped at to remove or a stench to be aired out. Keith might sometimes want him away, but he doesn’t want him gone.

But Keith never says that, does he? He makes some snarky remark and then Lance retaliates with even more fire. God, Keith is so mean to him. Lance isn’t exactly a saint, but he’s decent, and Keith’s just—

He sucks.

Keith stifles his thoughts and says, “You don’t bother me, Lance.”

It’s silent. Keith’s eyes rove the patterns on his ceiling until he realizes that it’s been a while since he spoke. Keith turns to face Lance. Their noses nearly brush.

“Uh, um,” Lance says. He’s not meeting his eyes. “Hah, thanks dude. That’s uh, yeah. Cool of you to say, man.” He starts furiously brushing his fingers through his hair, as if he’s fixing his curls.

“What’s up with you?”

“What’s up with you?” Lance shoots back. “What’s with the sudden compliment?”

It suddenly registers to him: Keith’s sleeping in bed with Lance. Oh god. He’s sleeping in bed with Lance, and he did compliment him. Is he making Lance embarrassed? Uncomfortable? They’ve never done this before—they’ve never even been friends before! Keith doesn’t think they’re friends now, or he doesn’t know if there’s any proper method of becoming Lance’s friend. This is their first one-on-one conversation that isn’t aggressive. Does that make them friends? Keith’s ready to consider him his friend.

There might be some procedure to it: first small talk, then inside jokes, and then deep life conversations. Is Keith starting off too strong? Where does complimenting fall in the directions to a friendship? Also, Keith wasn’t even trying to compliment him! He was just trying to be normal and nice.

“Are we friends?” Keith blurts out.

Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

That’s—

What an awkward and pitiful thing to ask. Keith wants to run to his room and hide under the covers, except he is in his room. With LANCE. If he hid under his covers, he’d never hear the end of it.

Lance stares at him. He stares like he’s come across something peculiar, or something fascinating. He studies Keith intensely, as if the answer lies plain on his face. Keith doesn’t get it; it’s just a yes or no question, but the fact that Lance has to think for so long already gives an implicit answer.

“It’s okay,” Keith rushes to speak, “I—that was weird of—I don’t—”

“Keith,” Lance says calmly. There’s a hand brushing against his shoulder and suddenly there’s arms around his back. “Yeah, we’re friends,” he says like there was no other possibility. “Of course we’re friends. I don’t—” Lance sighs. “I didn’t mean to make you think otherwise.”

Keith buries his face into the crook of Lance’s neck. It’s so, so warm and so, so natural to do. Instinctive. This comes easier than the talking, even easier than the petty banter. This is like breathing.

“Are you…” Keith starts, “Do I make you think otherwise?”

Lance shifts against him so that he’s holding Keith tighter. How did they get like this? What the fuck? It’s too much to think about that; Keith pushes those thoughts aside.

“A little bit,” he says, “I figured I always annoy you.”

“I thought you hated me,” Keith confesses, and then he quickly adds, “You don’t annoy me.”

Lance draws back. “Hate? What?” And then quieter, he adds, “No dude, never. I had this weird thing—ugh, it’s so embarrassing. I’ve had this complex about you for the longest—”

Keith wakes up disoriented.

It’s dark all around, but flashes of the memory flutter around him. A snapshot of laughter under a shared blanket. A glimpse of a crooked smile. They fade away with every blink. Keith clenches his eyes shut to let them linger. It had been nice . What he was dreaming of was nice.

It’s cold, wherever he is. Frigid, actually.

A door slams open and blinding white lights flash on. Keith glances around; he’s in a room, on a table —

A table —what? Reality slams into him like a sledgehammer against his head. His senses come back to him one by one. Bile gurgles in his stomach and the hairs on his skin shift and stand. The druid, it —

Kolivan stalks into the room. “You’re awake.”

Keith falls to the floor. He’s not in his blade uniform; he’s been stripped and changed into the one set of ordinary day clothes he brought with him to base. They didn’t put his gloves on, and the cold floor shoots pinpricks up his finger tips. Keith hisses. It hurts . Since when did it hurt to feel cold?

Kolivan gives him a moment to gather himself and stand. “You’re sick,” he announces.

No shit , Keith thinks as he huffs and pants and leans against the wall for support. He feels like sliding down it and curling in on himself. He wants something warm. He wants a bed, some blankets, and the hot desert sun. He —

Lance’s face flashes through his mind, all pretty and soft from the memory he just dreamt. Then Keith remembers that that was a long time ago, and that Lance is upset at him. He can imagine the resentment in the other man’s eyes even now, from so far away. The aftertaste of the bitter words of their last fight still remain on his tongue. It fills him with icy dread. He doesn’t — why did he say those things before leaving? All those untrue words? God, he hates himself. And Lance hates him too. All he wants is Lance, his tan arms wrapped around his shoulders and his reassuring words whispered in his ears. And he hates him. He hates him, he hates him, he hates him.

“Are you okay, Keith?” Kolivan asks. Keith nods.

He doesn’t feel okay. He feels lightheaded and nauseous. It hurts his head to keep his eyes open but closing them makes him dizzy. Every blink slants the axis of his  world,  like he’s a moon spinning out of control, away from the gravity of its planet. He’s drifting far from the hold that tethers him to the world he knows. Keith drifts away, unattached to anything at all, and he disappears into the shadows. There are no hands to pull him back.

Keith wants to sit down. He wants —

—blue eyes—

—”You getting shy, Kogane?” Lance laughs. “Are my smooth moves working?”

“Your moves aren’t moving shit,” Keith scoffs, but he doesn’t budge from Lance’s hold or pry his hands off his waist.

“Oh yeah?” Lance wiggles his eyebrows. “Then why were your lips on mine, like, a second ago?”

“Don’t remember it, it didn't happen.” Keith shakes his head. His heart feels full and it grows fuller when Lance leans in—

Keith wakes up on the table again.

This time, he’s not alone. Blades work around him, tinkering with gadgets and machines. Nurses, he belatedly realizes. Kolivan is still there.

“We’re moving you,” he says.

Keith’s mouth feels dry. “Moving me where?” He croaks. His voice is dry and hoarse, like someone has shoveled the entire Sonoran Desert down his throat.

He’s so tired of this. He hates this limbo that he’s stuck in. His hair is stuck to his face with cold sweat and he knows he should reek, yet he can’t smell a single thing. Not antiseptics, not artificial air, and not even his body odor. Keith hears everything like there are thick clouds covering his ears and he sees through a glassy lens. If there are tears trickling down his cheeks, he can’t tell. He can’t tell anything.

—”You’re cute, you know?” Lance flicks him on the nose.

Keith falters. “Huh?”

“Cute,” Lance repeats himself. “You’re cute, baby.”—

There’s vomit in his mouth before he knows it. Keith swallows it back down before he can choke. The word reverberates through his mind, bouncing around like a tennis ball. Baby, baby, baby. Baby , Lance had said. Baby , the druid had said. Its face appears in his mind and then it’s there, it’s there , in the corner of the room. A pitch black corner with two beady eyes pinning him down. It sits there silently, like a vulture hunkering down as it bides its time. There are blades all around him, prodding him with tubes and tools, but it doesn’t mind any of that. It stares dead on, only at Keith.

When did it get there? How did it get there? Keith heaves. He sees it more than he feels it—the ballooning of his chest lifting his back off the table with every breath he takes. It’s waiting for everyone to leave so that it can eat him. They’re going to leave the room and turn off the lights and it’s going to devour him whole.

“Do you hear me, Keith?” Kolivan asks. “I’m sending you back to the Castle Ship to recover. You will fare better under human care and Altean technology.”

Keith opens his mouth, only for a dry sob to spill out. He wants to grab Kolivan by the shoulders and shake him. He wants to point and scream and tell everyone that it’s there .

Why don’t they see it? Why isn’t anyone aware?

Keith’s not crazy. He doesn’t — he doesn’t see things. He doesn’t do that. He’s all too familiar with the idea of desert mirages and things that appear there when they truly are not. Keith’s not naive, and he’s not easily deceived. If he sees something there, it’s there . Everyone knows that druids can teleport and hide themselves. They fizz in and out of thin air like the natural occurrence of reality is beneath him. It registers to Keith that perhaps only he can see it because it’s toying with him. It’s playing with its food before meal time. He is supposed to think he’s safe because he’s back at the headquarters, but it’s all a ruse. It played dress up with him and used his colleagues as dolls to fabricate a scene he’d fall for. It’s just a game to it.

Come to think of it, how did Keith get off that haunted spaceship? 

He didn’t. He didn’t ever escape. 

He’s still stuck here.

“Kya,” Keith croaks out.

Kolivan doesn’t say anything. Kolivan’s not there. The druid has whisked him into reality, just like he conjured up Lance’s and Kya’s voices. If Kolivan was there, Keith would be able to reach out and touch him. His arms stay laden and stuck to his sides like dead weight, but it doesn’t matter. Keith knows there’s no fucking way he got off that ship. This is either some absurd version of death, or he’s being prepared as dinner.

—”You’re messed up,” Lance snarls. “We needed to form Voltron and you were frolicking around with your blade buddies. Screw you.”

“Mind your business,” Keith says—

Again with the memories? God, he gets it. He gets that his thing with Lance, this good thing that he ruined, is some crude hyperfixation to the druid, but there’s no need for him to rub it in. He clenches his eyes shut and —

The next time Keith wakes up, it’s in a pod.

Someone’s forehead is smushed against the glass. He can make out pale, freckled skin, and wiry, round glasses. There’s more commotion in the background, but Keith can’t see anything past Pidge’s short frame.

He’s still cold. He’s sick of feeling cold.

Keith hears a rapid series of beeps and a sharp, “Pidge, move! ” before she’s yanked away from the pod and the glass slides open. He staggers forward on jelly legs that seem more liquid than meat and bone. Keith’s knees wobble with every step he takes out of the pod. His attempts to grab the lip of the glass for support are futile when his shaky hands miss each time. Keith drops his arms and soaks in his surroundings thoroughly, from the rumpled pillows scattered across the floor to the low-lit lamps casting glows onto stacks of paperwork. The scene is so familiar that it hurts his heart. There’s an unattended bowl of food on the floor with its accompanying spoon laying a few feet away. On a different table, Allura’s mice are hopping around on top of a radio transmitter. Random signals are getting punched in. No one notices it, despite the whole team being present in the room. What a mess , Keith thinks, and the thought lodges a lump in his throat. He hasn’t been in such a hurricane of an environment in so long.

He sniffles. The action is difficult; his nose is entirely clogged. It’s easier to breathe through his mouth, but even that comes with heavy effort.

Keith misses the next step he takes. He goes down silently and hits the floor with a smack. Tan hands dart in and out of his periphery, but it is ultimately Shiro who helps him up.

“Easy there,” he says. Shiro smiles like he’s happy to see him, but Keith’s more drawn to the sinking bags under his eyes.

“Have you been sleeping?”

“You slept enough for the both of us.”

Keith pries himself out of Shiro’s grasp. It’s a dreadful departure—he’s seeing his brother for the first time in months. Those critical eyes and his cropped hair only existed through memories for the longest time. Now Shiro stands in front of him and he’s truly there—although there’s the possibility that he’s not, that Keith dreamt this one up too. He’s turned into an artist, conjuring up paintings of the reunions he so desperately craves. Gaunt, hollow eyes flicker across his mind. Keith suppresses the other alternative: the idea that the druid might be the one holding the paintbrush.

He quickly scans the room to see if it’s lurking anywhere—maybe behind a pillar or under a table. In his search, Keith makes eye contact with everyone on his team. He’s quick to look away. Shame burns at his core.

“Hi,” he says quietly. Keith picks a point to stare at: the table that the mice are scurrying on top of. They race in circles around each other like toy cars, their tiny footsteps clicking the radio buttons left and right.

Pidge snorts. “Are you telling us, or the mice?”

“Huh?”

“Give him a break.” Hunk nudges her in the side. “He has a fever.”

“Sorry,” Pidge mutters sheepishly. She kicks around at the air in front of her.

Don’t apologize , Keith wants to say, you didn’t get me sick . But he can’t even look at her, much less speak. She’s sorry? He’s the one who made a scene and left them, only to scurry back with his tail tucked between his feet at the slightest sickness. He’s so weak and he’s so selfish—to come back to the people who took care of him, just to what? To use their fancy technology and then be on his way?

Keith pictures it: him in good health with a backpack slung over his shoulder. The team waving him farewell. Sad goodlucks from Shiro and Coran, a hug from Hunk and Allura, a punch from Pidge, and nothing from Lance. Them at his back and absolutely nothing waiting ahead of him. He imagines flying off until he’s a speck of dust, until the void eats away at him and he’s reduced to debris in their eyes. For a second time, he’ll float off, away, and he’ll watch them watch him leave.

The thought of the true future that’s certain to be drops his heart into a vat of molasses. It sinks slowly but steadily, getting heavier as it drowns deeper. Keith clenches his fists to restrain his arms from wrapping around his chest in a vain attempt to rescue his heart. He cannot stop the plummet. He cannot change the future.

The ache eats at such a large bite out of him that Keith falls again, despite standing in place.

He never meets his pathetic demise. Someone has grabbed his shoulders to prevent his collapse. Keith doesn’t need to twist around to know who it is. He’d recognize the arms wrapped around him at any time. Strong, lean, long limbs hold him up like pillars sculpted to support buildings through the catastrophes of time. Keith is a feather in his hold. And when Lance pulls him up and close, he understands now. He understands how Red so easily chose Lance without a doubt or test the second Keith abandoned her; Lance burns . Keith leans flushed against his chest and he has never been more lit aflame, not even in the heat of battle. Everywhere Lance touches him, everywhere that they’re connected, there’s a spark, as if he’s being shocked back to life, joint by joint.

Clarity strikes Keith’s mind. He pushes Lance off of him.

“Dude—” Lance cuts himself off and takes a step back. His distance hurts more than running away.

It’s their first interaction in months. It’s their first conversation in forever. Keith wants to capture the one word he’s spoken and find a vacant crevice of his chest to safekeep it in. Perhaps between the bridge of his lungs, right under his heart.

Then, he remembers the druid. Keith pales.

He can’t—he can’t store shit like that. He can’t turn these meaningless moments into something sentimental to be wielded against him. A druid doesn’t need a key to pry the clamped shut doors of his mind open. Fuck. Keith needs to forget. Keith needs a concussion.

He stares hard at Lance.

Could it—

Could he be—

Keith’s sure that he’s back on the castle ship, but it’s not…it’s not impossible for it to be him . For the druid to pour itself into Lance like he’s a vessel to be possessed. 

No. Absolutely not. Keith wouldn't be able to stand it. He doesn’t care how haunted he is, it can’t touch Lance. It can’t. It’s not him, it’s not. Lance is himself. He’s Lance McClain, pilot of the Red and Blue Lions, beach enthusiast, and flirt. He’s simultaneously good at conversation yet he always says the wrong joke at the wrong time, but it doesn’t matter because he’s great at most things anyways. He’s a sharpshooter, their sharpshooter, and he was once Keith’s—

The druid can’t become Lance. Any attempt would be a feeble mimicry and a laughable attempt at forging all that Lance truly is.

Lance folds his arms over his chest. “You’re looking at me weird.”

Keith whips his head to face the ground. “Sorry.”

“That’s not—”

“Can you say something in Spanish?” It’s a dumb question and an even dumber test, because what the hell—if the druid’s looking through Lance’s mind, it’s going to know Spanish. But Keith needs to know. He desperately needs to try to know.

“What the fuck?” Lance asks.

It’s not what Keith asked from him at all, but that’s all the more proof that he is himself. Of course Lance wouldn’t give him what he asked, at least not immediately. It’s always a challenge with him. Always an uphill battle. Besides, the largest evidence remains standing: the druid wouldn’t be hot to the touch. Keith remembers the druid’s slithering claws all too well. They were nothing but ice against his skin.

The druid isn’t Lance. Lance is Lance.

Okay, that’s okay. Keith feels a little less insane. Honestly, he’s actually starting to feel fine, like all his poor health has washed down the drain. 

Keith hears Hunk murmur, “I think he needs some more time in the pod.”

It’s then that Coran scurries in. “Not at all, Number Two! Any more than a few minutes in the pod and little Keith’s body temperature may drop so low as to freeze his organs!” With that, he drops a heap of blankets on top of Keith. It warms Keith more than necessary now that his chills have suddenly dissipated.

“ What ?” Hunk splutters, “Why did—why did we keep him there for so long? That—I thought it was supposed to make him feel better, not freeze him!”

Coran takes a fold of one blanket and drapes it over Keith’s head. It flops over his face like a large hood and covers his field of vision. He’s quick to move it off his eyes.

“We simply needed to run some readings to see what is ailing him.”

Pidge rolls her eyes. “Coran, we already told you. He has a fever . It’s a human thing. It goes away with rest and time.”

“It’s always better to be safe than sorry.” Shiro steps forward and places a hand on Keith’s shoulders. He’s already sweating under the thick layers of blankets, and Shiro’s hand only traps the heat further. He feels trapped, suffocated. It makes no sense; wasn’t he just shivering?

Shiro continues. “The Blades back up team found you collapsed on a ship that was crawling with the scent of druids. Who knows what they’ve done? Not to mention—” his face drops. “The passing of your teammate. I’m sorry, Keith.”

Everyone’s quiet. Everyone’s waiting for him to respond.

Keith doesn’t know what to say.

Kya wasn’t his teammate . They had hardly shared more than a few words together, much less a meal or a joke or a tear. Keith didn’t know her to mourn her—he hadn’t seen her through all her life, through her birth and her first steps, through her first mission and all the rescues she’d done, and the kisses and hugs she might’ve shared, and the pictures she may have taken. Keith simply showed up for the end. He met her and she died. That’s the story. There’s nothing more to it. No grief it causes Keith is grief of any importance because he had been the most insignificant aspect of her life.

He shakes his head. “I don’t—it’s fine.” Keith swallows. “It uh, it happens.”

“It happens?” Pidge echoes.

Keith’s head hurts. What else is he supposed to say? Do they want him to drop down to the ground and burst into tears? He’s already accomplished the first portion of that with how much he’s been falling over. Which is great. Fucking great. He’s been awake for five minutes and he’s already making a bumbling mess of himself. And he must look like a maniac, with his eyes darting around and asking random bullshit like, say something in Spanish . Keith’s starting to understand how he’s appearing to everyone. He left as this odd, lonely boy and came back as some crazy, apathetic, mutated version of himself. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, or if he’s transformed into this creature or has always been this way, but he knows that’s what they see when they look at him.

“I’m okay,” Keith says.

They all stare at him. They think he’s lying. If not with his words, then with every other aspect of his being.

“Do you want something to eat or drink?” Allura asks him. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve had a proper meal.”

He’d rather not. Coming to his senses has him feeling like he’s prying his way out of a shell, naked and bared for everyone to see. Keith doesn’t think he could stand the watchful eyes of the team as he arduously shovels spoonfuls of food into his mouth. The analytical assessments, the scrutiny and judgement, and the gentle prodding—it invades Keith like thorns burrowing under his skin. He feels fine anyways, far more fine than he did mere moments ago. He’s already recovering, and at the end of the day, it’s just a fucking fever. He’ll sleep it off and take a quick meal while everyone else is sleeping.

Keith shakes his head no.

“Are you sure?” She prods.

Strangely enough, that’s what does it for him. Keith’s throat clogs like he’s been made to swallow rocks. It feels unbearable, like he’s unable to breathe. He shrugs the blankets off his shoulders but remembers to catch them before they can hit the floor. He holds them away from himself, and his arms sweat extra for the sake of the rest of his body.

Do you want something to eat or drink? That’s the line said to guests. That’s the line said to people who don’t belong. There’s a few default ones: Hi! Welcome in, It’s so lovely to see you, Make yourself at home. Keith knows these lines by heart. He’s had them said to him on repeat, the phrases alternating and rotating just as fast as the homes did. How many times has he walked through a door to be met with courtesy and only courtesy? How many times has he been sat down on a couch and forced to exchange pleasantries that fall awkwardly off his tongue in the hopes that it’ll lead to something deeper?

It’s different here. They’re different, Voltron’s different.

Keith isn’t.

Keith remains a guest.

“I’m okay,” he says. He looks around for somewhere to place the blankets and sets them down on a chair. “I’ll just go to sleep in my room. Or something.” Does he still have a room here?

“Oh my god,” Lance mutters, “Would it kill you to accept some help?”

“I’m fine! Can’t I sleep?”

“Keith, you have been unconscious for over two days. You know how they brought you here? In a fucking stretcher. Because you were knocked out for the ride, and apparently knocked out at the base too. You need to eat.”

“I’ll eat later .”

Lance glowers at him. Guilt wraps around him like a snake going in for the kill, but it’s easy to shrug off when other things are making him feel largely worse. The heat from his stare falls upon Keith like a blazing heat stroke. Having Lance’s attention on him is like basking under sunlight, but the anger directed at him clenches at his heart. He’s sorry. He doesn’t mean to upset Lance. At the same time, to be in the same room as him and be near him—it’s a story pulled out of Keith’s dreams. He’s torn by the turbulence of his feelings.

“Actually,” Coran interjects, “Your quintessence charts are a little bit off. It would be beneficial for you to eat and get your vitals up so that we can measure and compare your levels again.”

“I—can I do it later? Please?” He asks.

How pitiful of him to have to ask. Like a guest , his mind echoes. He’s not in his own home.

Coran’s expression softens. “Yes, Number Four. Of course you can.”

The permission is enough to have him nearly bolting towards the exit. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do—whether he’ll actually sleep or pace laps or wander about until the fever catches back up to him and he’s made a shivering mess once more. All Keith knows is that he has to get out of here.

He doesn’t miss Lance’s following glare as he passes him. He ignores it.

The path gets colder and colder as he strays away from the med bay, as if he’s travelling underground. Hallways are quite similar to tunnels, aren’t they? Keith dismisses the thought and stumbles through the door to his room.

It’s exactly as he’s left it.

Well, not quite exactly.

His jacket is in the wrong place, for starters. It’s hooked onto the bathroom doorknob, a place where Keith has never hung any of his belongings from. It’s become a poor habit for him to toss his clothes onto the floor while changing, yet the floor below him is spotless and pristine. His breath catches in his throat—have they cleared out his room? But no, his belongings are still there. 

They cleaned it. 

Someone came into his room and maintained it for him while he was gone.

Keith  used to borrow books from the castle’s library, but in his haste to leave for the blades, he never returned them. They remained laying about, on top of his desk or bed. Now they sit as a tall, stacked pile on the corner of his table. The team could’ve put them back in their rightful place, but they didn’t. They kept the books in his room. His bookmark stays wedged between pages of his latest read, as if awaiting his return. Other things have stayed too: a few weights Keith stole from the training room for his late night workouts. They’re tucked by the edge of his bed frame. His bed is made and his datapad is charged.

It’s as if he had never left. It’s as if he only travelled to the kitchen and not the edges of the universe.

Suddenly, he’s ten again, walking home from school wondering if his luggage would be packed by the door or he’d be allowed to stay another day. 

A sob rips out of Keith’s mouth. It escapes him like a caged bird that can finally fly away. It’s forceful enough that it pushes him to the ground, and then he’s on his hands and knees with his forehead against the floor. It smells like cleaning products; this room was recently cleaned. It was cleaned for him. They heard the news that he’d be back and they cleaned his room before he came.

What did they mean by that? Why did they do that?  Were they looking forward to seeing him? Could they be? A hope so enticing glimmers on the horizon and Keith tosses it away before it can deceive him into believing any fantasies.

No one would look forward to someone who comes and goes like the waves pulling away and crashing forward. No one would stand at the shore and stare out into the open ocean for someone who didn’t even care to say goodbye before leaving. No one misses a grain of sand or a singular leaf; these kinds of things are easily looked over and replaced. There’s no need for anyone to stay lingering on them, on him. It makes no sense.

And yet, questions pour into his mind like a floodgate has been opened: Do they think Keith is a messy person? Do they want him to feel comfortable? Did they organize Keith’s things so that it’d be easier for him to move out completely? How often had they cleaned his room, or was it just for his reappearance? Did they go through his things? Do they think he’s weird? Do they want him to leave, or do they want him to stay?

Keith bawls like a baby. It’s so dumb—why is he crying over this? It makes no sense.

Tears cling to his lashes and stick to his face. He rolls over onto his back before they can drip to the ground. The water tracks on his cheeks chill his face enough that he has to furiously wipe them away with his sleeve. He’s cold again. What the fuck? Why is he cold?

A shiver racks through his body. It’s just as cold as that ship.

Keith freezes. No. No. The Castle Ship is nothing like that awful Galran spaceship. It’s vibrant and exists to sustain life and it’s—

Well it used to—

It used to be home.

Home is somewhere he lives, isn’t it? A little more than that too: it’s racing Lance around the training deck and pulling pranks that Shiro should be smart enough not to fall for. It’s getting unwarranted life lectures from Coran, who, by the way, lived a very different lifestyle than him. It’s blowing things up with Pidge and Hunk, and then getting reprimanded by Allura. It’s trying not to trip over the mice when they scurry past him.

The castleship is still like that. Keith is sure of it. But it’s like that without him, and the reminder punches a gaping hole through his torso.

Keith sighs. He doesn’t know what he’s making a big deal of. He’s the one who moved out. He’s the one who chose to leave.

Fever emotions, he supposes. He can’t wait to feel better so that he can stop feeling like this. 

But at the same time, once he feels better, he has to—

His team is full of heart. Voltron, for all that it is limbs and body, is made solely from the muscle pumping blood through its veins. And they extend their generosity to all corners of the universe, no matter how distant or far. Of course they’d think to do something so minute as to clean Keith’s room for him. Of course they’d give him a place to stay. That’s just like them.

Keith sighs and drags himself over to his bed. He’s not sleepy, yet lethargy pulls down at his body. He grits his teeth and hauls himself onto the mattress.

Keith is just here till he recovers. He’ll feel better, and no one will kick him out, but he’ll know his time will be over. It might pain him to do so, but there are worse pains in the universe. The familiar wound of leaving and being left is only a scar being reopened again and again. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing that Keith doesn’t know how to hurt from.

He’ll be out of here before he knows it. He may ache, but that’s alright. Keith doesn’t deserve to feel so deeply for the people he’s using. He doesn’t deserve them. 

Chapter Text

The banner hanging on the doorway reads: 'WELCOME HOME KEITH!'

“Who’s Keith?” he asks.

Josephina ‘Call me Josie’ Morell claps him on the back and ruffles his hair. He frowns—the man at the front desk spent so long styling it. “It’s your name, silly. Don’t just stand there. Come on in!”

His confusion grows. “But my name is Akira.”

She laughs. “Well, you’re in a new home now. Don’t you think a new name would suit you well? New year, new me, or something?” Her laughter peters off when Akira continues to stare at the banner.

He doesn’t think a new name would suit him well.

A stranger peeks his head out the doorway. It’s some bald guy. “Is Keith here yet—oh hey buddy! Come inside.”

Slowly, he shifts forward, one foot after the other. Akira’s mind spins questions faster than he walks, and he voices absolutely none of them. The folks up at the office got mad at him for all his asking, and they sounded extra mad when they told him to behave himself today.

Who chose the name Keith? What kind of a name is that? Isn’t that the name of some country singer? Why won’t they call him Akira? Did dad know about the Keith renaming thing? Do all kids get renamed when they move houses?

Akira keeps his mouth shut and walks through the front door.

It smells nice in the foyer, like some sort of fancy vanilla-and-something candle. The foyer is large and the windows lining the walls are equally as expansive, nearly floor to ceiling. They let sunlight spill into the room like he’s swimming in an ocean of sunshine. Akira watches his shadow on the floor. It looks like a nice house. An exciting house—it’s so much larger than his old one. It might be fun here. It’s enough for him to forget about the name switch up, but he still overhears the hushed conversation happening behind him.

“What do I tell him about his name?”

“Babe, it doesn’t matter. If it was on the papers, it’s his name.”

“But he said he’s—”

“Who cares? His parents gave him two names, so we can pick whichever one we wanna use.”

They stop talking when they notice him loitering. “Keith!” Josephina claps her hands together. “You can head on up to your room and put your things there.”

Akira doesn’t know where his room is and he’d rather keep his things where he can see them but he says, “Oh. Okay.”

He’s halted soon after he starts walking. “Wait!”

Akira turns around. The bald guy is speaking. “Shoes off,” he says with a thin smile. “House rules, sorry.”

Akira doesn’t get it—he’s never had to take his shoes off at his old home—but he knows the word ‘rules’. House rules means: the shoes have to come off, even if they’re comfortable to have on. House rules means: he’ll get in trouble if he disobeys. Akira tucks his dusty red sneakers by the corner of the doormat. He doesn’t really mind; the floor is sleek and shiny and lets him glide around on his socks.

As Akira marches upstairs, he overhears Josephina whisper, “Isn’t he Asian? I thought he’s supposed to know to take his shoes off.”

“He’s traumatized, Josie. It messes with you.”

“The fuck does that have to do with shoes?”

When Keith wakes up, it’s still dark. Pidge sits by his bed.

“Pidge?” He scrambles to sit up. “How did you—” There’s no point in asking how she entered his room. She’s always had her ways with the castle using means that remain a mystery to Keith.

Still, he’s unnerved. Her body is silhouetted by the faint blue glow of the exit lights lining the floor. There’s no shine on her glasses, and Keith’s got half the mind to realize that he’s shirtless; he tossed his shirt across the room in a fit of sweat. He’s completely drenched. His back is slick and his hair sticks to his forehead, and worst of all, it’s freezing. Keith reaches for the blankets, only to find them gross and icky too.

He covers himself regardless, like an animal yearning for shelter.

“What are you doing here?” Keith whispers.

Pidge scoffs. “Stop mumbling. Did no one ever teach you how to talk?”

“What?”

Josie said that once. Did no one ever teach you how to talk? She had been yelling at him for dropping his toys down the stairs. When he reached down to the floor to scoop them up, she couldn’t hear his response. She had smacked him on the head, just one resounding strike that echoed from wall to wall and left Keith’s ears ringing. It had hardly hurt, and Keith couldn’t care less for getting roughed up when Josie and her boyfriend weren’t attacking to kill. It was easy to get used to being jostled around once he accepted it. But the divide between them, the uneven split that let her stand on the steps above with her fist in his hair while he knelt in the ground—Keith couldn’t get past that. He couldn’t get the quiet rage to leave his mind or stop festering.

“You Chinese folks don’t know how to do shit,” Pidge says.

Keith shrinks back. “Josie?”

Pidge grips the bed rails and continues. “Y’all can’t eat right, can’t walk right, can’t talk right. What can you even do?”

“I don’t understa—”

“I mean, seriously. What’s the point of your existence? You just take up a bunch of space and don’t contribute shit . What are you gonna do after this, huh? Collect garbage scraps?” Pidge mocks and leans back. “Fucking waste of space.”

Keith presses himself against the corner of his room. There’s no further escape than the wall pressed to his back. Pidge continues to creep forward. He can see his chest rising and falling with each struggled breath. Where is—he needs—

“Pidge,” he chokes out, “Something’s wrong with you. Someone’s done something to—” Where’s his communicator? He sees it on the floor across the room. Shit.

“Pidge, stay there. Just—just stay there. I’m going to help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” Pidge snarls, “No one needs your help, Keith Kogane.”

“Pidge!” He cries. He doesn’t even know who is talking to him.

What did the druid do to her? To him? Is the rest of his team alright? Keith finds that there’s no way for him to know. If he seeks to fulfill his questions, he must leave. Leave this corner, leave this room, and he can’t— he can’t do that . Keith can’t move. He can’t move a single limb, and he’s back there again, he’s back in that damning ship, the one where he was supposed to die. The druid's body had hunkered over him and Pidge towers over him now, but it’s all the same, isn’t it? It’s all so, so alien. Keith is nowhere that he belongs and there is nowhere that he can belong. He’s just garbage, floating through space.

“Pidge, please,” Keith begs, “Please, please just— please .”

He doesn’t know what he’s begging for. He doesn’t even understand what’s happening, only that it’s not okay. Keith clutches at his hair tight enough to rip it out and clenches his eyes shut. He knew he had never left that stupid ship. They’re all just fucking dolls for the druid to play with. Keith’s heart splinters at the thought. The druid can’t have Pidge. It can’t. Pidge is—was his friend . They played dumb games together like tic-tac-toe and betting on different alien cultures. They fought battles together. They had a fucking handshake.

Keith curls his fingers into a fist and hits himself in the head. “ No ,” he sobs. It can’t have her. It can’t take her from him. He kicks and thrashes in his misery, but all it helps him do is push the blanket to the floor and bang his head against the wall.

The pain is fleeting. The pain is meaningless. Keith slaps himself again, across his eyes, across his cheek, on his shoulder, and on his chest. It doesn’t budge the grief from his body. It remains as large as it is, pinning him down to where he remains a pathetic mess.

Keith needs to help her. He needs to fucking do something.

He opens his eyes and—

The room is empty.

There’s not a trace of a single presence. Not one. Where Pidge had been looming over him, there is only blank space. Nothing else but air fills the room. It’s silent too, besides from the low thrum of the ship engines and the slight rumble of the vents in the ceiling. Keith’s eyes dart from side to side in hopes of finding something, but also in the fear that something might catch his eyes—something that wasn’t there before. It doesn’t look like there could’ve been a breach into his room. The door is bolt shut and the vent lids are perfectly screwed on and his bathroom door remains ajar, just as it was before. Keith shivers.

“Pidge?” Keith croaks.

He hadn’t heard footsteps or shuffling at all. Where did Pidge go? Where is she? Where is it ? Keith knows that this is the doing of the—that thing. He knows it was here. Or he’s there. He’s still there .

The sudden need to search brings him back to life. Where is it? He needs to find it. Keith needs to know.

As if pulled by a wire, Keith dives off the bed and onto the floor, on his hands and knees. Is it under his bed? He peers down and scans the hollow space beneath the bed frame. There’s nothing there. It’s no use looking from this angle; the bulky legs block his field of vision. Keith drags the bed away from the wall by the rungs of its frame. It’s tough work, tougher than it should be, but he doesn’t care. He checks again. Does another scan. Where is it? Where are those gaunt and vacant eyes?

He scrambles to the bathroom. He checks the tub, the cabinets, the closet, the fucking sink and toilet. Nothing.

Under his desk, nothing.

Between the folds of the clothes in the dresser, nothing.

Behind his books, nothing.

Keith lets out a strangled cry. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?

Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?

Where is it?

He is all alone in his room.

There is no one there with him.

Keith heaves. Bile rises up his throat faster than waves in a tsunami and then there’s liquid splattering on the ground between his legs. He retches and clambers backwards. In his haste, he bumps into his chair and flinches in defense. Is it there, behind him? It very well could be, with all the shadows dancing around. He pictures it: eyes behind a corner, eyes peering out of the desk drawer, eyes looking out from between the folds of the vent. Keith feels the outline of the chair up and down, waiting for his fingers to brush across something chilling, something different. There’s nothing. He throws up again.

It’s harder to evade the mess this time.

Vomit drips down Keith’s chest and onto the floor. God, he’s like a fucking baby. Had he even eaten anything for him to throw up? He wipes the spit off his mouth with the back of his bare hand. Keith feels disgusting.

“Turn—” Keith coughs. “Turn lights on.”

The overhead lights glow gradually, starting from a soft dimness till it becomes a harsh glare that stabs at Keith’s brain. They’re brighter than he remembers them to be. He watches as the room slowly comes to life.

It’s a mess. It’s as if a hurricane had hit.

His blanket is a rumpled mess on the floor. In his haste to move the bed, he had knocked it into the table. Several books had scattered out of the neat pile they were in. One landed on the ground, and to Keith’s dismay, was covered in his throw up. He hurriedly picks it up and wipes the cover with his bare fingers. It’s not—what is he doing? That hardly makes a difference. He’s so fucking dumb. He needs to disinfect it.

Other things were left haphazardly too. Nearly all the dresser drawers are wide open, with clothes spilling out. Keith moves to fix them up, before remembering the gunk on his hands. 

Fuck.

The throw up is everywhere. It spills across the entire center of the room like someone kicked over a bucket of liquid. It’s runny too—Keith hadn’t eaten anything before for anything solid to come out of his body. He watches as the puke trails away from the focal point before thinning out enough to be stopped by the grooves of the floor’s tiles.

Then there’s the mess all over him. Keith mainly puked water and it started to dry and stain against his dark sweatpants. It reeks .

Damn it.

What’s wrong with him? All of this, just because of a nightmare?

And it wasn’t even some egregiously horrifying dream, either. Josie wasn’t even scary. For all that she was racist, she was never racist towards Keith. She just happened to have a loud mouth and Keith happened to have ears. Josie never called him half the shit he conjured up in his mind. Chinese folks? Keith groans. Josie didn’t even like Chinese people—he vividly remembers her mentioning that she double checked that he wasn’t Chinese before fostering him. And he didn’t even care that she hit him; she had a weak hand anyways.

Pidge’s face flashes before his mind. Her darkened glasses and her ever approaching figure—he didn’t know what to make of that. Had she really been here? She couldn’t have been.

He needs to go check on her.

Pidge’s room is only two doors down from his. Keith knows this because she’d always leave little trinkets outside his room for him to trip on and he constantly had to dump them in front of her door. It would be so quick and easy to check on her. He’s a mess and it’s the middle of the night, but it’s an emergency. Should a member of Voltron be compromised, should something happen to Pidge, Keith can’t stand by and let that happen. He needs to do something.

Keith jumps to his feet and his knees wobble. He nearly slips on his own puke and he has to slam a hand against the wall to stop himself from falling over. His vision is hazy. Why is he dizzy? Or is it—is it back again? Is it back to torment him?

Keith slaps himself across the face, hard. His ears ring with the impact.

There’s no time for distractions.

Ensuring that Voltron is okay is of utmost importance. Even if it’s no longer his life and team, it is what the safety of the universe hinges on. It is Keith’s duty to make sure the team is okay. Even if his legs shake and tremble with every step, he must complete his job. Even if he’s covered in his own insides and it’s hard to breathe, he must go onwards.

If anything happens to Voltron, it’ll be Keith’s fault.

He is the one who brought this darkness onto the ship. If his failure of a mission has stained him and it’s refusal to leave him alone starts plaguing the team, then it’s on him.

Keith pictures Pidge, frail and ill, succumbing to death as the druid saps quintessence from her body. He imagines her laying on the floor the same way Kaya had been, left as a meal prepared for a monster.

He takes one step after the other, leaning on different furniture for support, till he reaches his door.

Keith pants. He’s almost there. He only has to walk a few steps down the hall and then he’ll have reached his destination. He’s done tougher things than this before. Keith has leaped across canyons and sprinted across exploding spaceships. A few steps down the hall is nothing compared to that.

He’s about to open his door when there’s a crackling sound. The intercom buzzes with static before Allura’s voice speaks into his room.

“Paladins!” She announces.

Keith clutches at his ears. It’s too loud.

“Please report for morning duty in the command center,” she says. After a few moments, she adds, “Pidge, you’re on equipment duty.”

A door bangs close nearby. “ Again?”

Keith perks up, because that was Pidge who just spoke. Pidge, who may very well be alive and alright outside, just a few feet away from where he stands. His heart races.

Another door opens and shuts. “It’s what you get for misplacing half of them with your weird experiments,” Lance taunts.

“I’d have put them back eventually!”

“Yeah, well you…”

Their voices fade away as they walk away from Keith’s room. He can’t help but want to overhear more. What are they talking about? What are they like when he’s not around? They sound the same, with their same old typical banter and snark. He pictures Lance and Pidge shoving each other down the hall until Shiro or Hunk come to pry them apart with a brief scolding. Lance will pout and Pidge will roll her eyes, before they team up to attack their unfortunate victim.

Some more voices float down the hall. They stop by his door.

“Do you think Keith will come to breakfast?” Shiro asks.

“Dunno,” Hunk says, “He should—I don’t think he ate anything yesterday.”

“You go on. I’ll knock on his door.”

Keith’s breath hitches in his throat and he steps backwards. They can’t see his room. The room that they cleaned so meticulously only for Keith to tear it apart like some ungrateful brat—they can’t know that he did that. He’s so horrible. Why didn’t he have any sense to stop himself? After his whole pity party on the floor about how kind it was for the team to look after his room, how could he take that niceness and throw it away?

He reminds himself of the alternative that this could be a trap, that just like how Pidge hadn’t been standing over his bed, it isn’t Shiro who stands outside his door.

Keith feels sick, like throwing up again.

Shiro knocks on the door. “Keith?”

He retches and cups a hand over his mouth. His fingers are still slimy with puke and the stench is unbearable but he grips his face like his hand was created to be a vice.

“Keith, are you in there?”

He has to say something. He can’t let the druid, or Shiro into his room.

“I—” Keith swallows and cringes at how his voice warbles. “Yeah.”

“Is everything okay? Do you feel alright enough to come to breakfast, or do you want me to bring something to your room?”

“No!” He shouts.

“No?”

Keith scrambles to control his tone. “I mean, uh,” he says, “I’ll come to breakfast. Of course. Yeah.”

“Alright,” Shiro responds, “Do you want me to come with you?”

Keith shakes his head. “No, it’s cool. I’m alright.”

“If you insist.”

He can tell Shiro is dubious of his claims but he doesn’t push it further. Keith has a free pass, for now. He’s still safe, and the team is too, which is what matters the most. He’ll clean himself up enough to appear at breakfast and see that everyone is alright, and then he’ll make a quick escape back to his room to scrub it spotless.

There’s a gnawing urge to double check, to whip open the door and grab Shiro with a desperate grip so that he can check that it’s really him, and that he’s truly okay. It’d be such a ridiculous sight: him, shirtless and drenched in vomit and sweat, prying his eyes open to stare into his pupils and search for discrepancies. Surely if he did that, they’d pack him onto the earliest ship ready to depart the castle.

Keith stays still on his side of the door and stares at the mess he’s made. He doesn’t reach for the doorknob.

The shower he takes is agonizing. He’s only scrubbing gunk off of himself, but it feels like he’s peeling the layers of skin away, one by one. Keith’s body is flushed red, and he can’t get the water temperature to grow warm despite cranking the shower handle to the maximum amount. Keith pushes at the handle to no avail; it doesn’t go any further. He’s forced to stand under a pitter-patter of freezing water, with only his imagination to comfort him. Keith is hardly distracted—his mind constantly strays back to the shivers of his frame and the chatter of his teeth.

It’s even colder once the water is off.

Keith wraps the towel around his shoulders like he carries a blanket. He wishes he had a blanket, but his only one remains on the floor in a pile of filth. He narrowly misses stepping in a puddle of vomit on his way out of the bathroom. Keith carefully toes around his room to rummage through his dresser for clothes. Changing is an even more difficult feat; it’s actual hell to pry the towel from his shoulders. The few seconds of air on his bare skin are freezing enough for Keith's head to throb.

Okay, breakfast time. Okay, okay. Keith can do breakfast. He can do that.

He swallows.

Keith doesn’t want to eat breakfast. He doesn’t want to sit at the dining hall and choke down food when he has no appetite. He doesn’t want to clean his room, he doesn’t want to go to sleep, and he doesn’t want to see people. See the team. He hates this already—even though he’s been here for less than a day and has hardly interacted with anyone besides through formalities and one fucked up hallucination. Keith hates it—the pressed smiles, the forced help—he hates it before it can even happen.

He can’t act. He can’t pretend. How’s Keith going to sit at the dining table while hiding the way he retched through the night? How’s he going to show gratuity for Hunk’s cooking without wincing and grimacing? Most of all, how’s he going to answer when someone asks if he’s okay? They’re going to see through him.

No. It doesn’t matter.

He’s right—it doesn’t matter. What matters most is his goal, his self-imposed operation: make sure that Voltron is okay. Make sure that Pidge is alright. That priority comes before any gut-wrenching feeling seeping out of him.

He tries to get to the dining room as fast as possible. As much as he dreads it, there’s a part of him that needs to see his—the team. Keith craves it a little bit. Even if he’s separate from them, watching them like a movie, it’s a film he’s addicted to.

Keith’s not very fast. And not very strong either—he’s huffing and puffing by the time he arrives. He doesn’t get a chance to compose himself before someone swings the door open.

It’s Lance.

Keith flinches.

“Hey, man,” Lance says. He props the door open for him. “Are you eating with us?”

It’s so warm. What the hell? It’s so fucking warm. Ridiculously so. Keith tries not to lean into Lance’s space like a child hovering by a firepit in the dead of the winter.

“Uh, yeah.” Keith nods. “Food.”

Lance frowns at him. “Are you…okay?”

Keith doesn’t grace him with a response. He darts past Lance—this is in character for him, right? Being strange and avoiding questions? He knows how to do that. Besides, Keith doesn’t know what to do with Lance’s cordiality. Only yesterday he was swearing up and down at him. It’s like they’ve flipped over to a new page, but Keith knows that’s not true. The story between them is incomplete, stuck on a stubborn sentence because Keith decided to go away. There’s no way for him and Lance to simply move on from that.

He sits in a random seat. Lance follows after and sits next to him.

Yes! Keith is so glad. He’s so warm again. He might be glowing. 

He doesn’t understand it, but he refuses to complain. For the first time after such a hellish night, Keith feels a sense of stability. Something normal and okay. He can’t help but want to hold onto it, and he has to physically restrain himself from lunging out and clinging onto Lance with all his might. It’s easy to ignore his worries and let everything else fall away when he’s handed what he wants. What he needs.

Lance turns to him and asks, “What?”

Keith hadn’t realized he was staring. “Nothing.” He looks away.

A plate of food is slid in front of him. It’s a dish he doesn’t know and hardly has any interest in eating. Keith will give the team credit—the portion on his plate is considerably less than everyone else’s. It still doesn’t lodge the lack of appetite from his stomach.

Pidge walks around the table. It was her who gave him his plate. “Is that enough?” she asks.

It’s too much, but Keith says, “Yeah.” He’s too busy staring at her.

She looks different than how she did in his room last night. Her glasses are far more crooked and she’s short, a lot shorter than how he hallucinated her to be. Or how the druid conjured her. He has yet to figure out which option is the truth, but with the warmth Lance burns into his side, he prays it’s the former.

Keith can’t get the image of her long limbs and oddly symmetrically face out his head. The way she had eerily approached him—how had he imagined her wrong? Had, after his time with the Blades, Keith forgotten how Pidge looks? It couldn’t be. Her traits are so distinct, and he thought of Voltron so often that their faces were imprinted into his mind.

“Is there something on my face?” Pidge asks him when she catches his stare.

Keith shrugs and stabs a forkful of his food that he has no desire to eat. His lack of response shouldn’t be unusual; they’re used to not hearing his voice after his long absence anyways.

“I was thinking we could take the lions down to Duoiron,” Allura says between bites of food, “The air there is good for fixing metal corrosion.”

“How does that even work?” Hunk asks.

“Magic.”

“It’s not magic, Shiro. It’s—”

“You’re such a nerd, dude.”

Between all the chatter, Coran notices that Keith has hardly touched his plate. “Are you okay, number four?”

The nickname makes Keith shudder. Number four? He’s not even a paladin to be called that. He dismisses the thought and responds.

“Yeah.” To convince him, he takes a large bite of his food. It tastes bland and bleak in his mouth. Keith wants to spit it out. His body wants to spit it out, and his throat resists his attempts to swallow his food.

“Are you sure?”

He’s sick of that question. “ Yes ,” he presses. Why can’t they forget about him and go back to their own conversation?

Besides him, Lance slams his fork onto the table. “ Bullshit ,” he spits.

“Lance!” Allura admonishes.

“No!” He throws his hand out to stop the oncoming lecture. “I know! I know he’s sick and we have to be nice to him. We have to give him his space. I have been nice to him. Fucking held the door for him, said hi and shit, and didn’t even make a single fucking comment.”

Lance continues on his rampage. “He looks like shit? I didn’t say anything. He mumbles to himself and ignores half our questions? I don’t say a word!”

Keith frowns. He had been mumbling? When did he do that? He self-consciously presses his lips together.

“Lance, it’s not—”

“But he’s lying!” Lance points an accusatory finger at Keith. “You keep saying you’re okay, but you’re not!”

He’s so close to Keith. It makes his blood boil. It makes him want more. If he was only a little closer, if only they were touching…

Keith smacks Lance’s hand out of the air.

The contact sets him on fire.

“Shut the fuck up!” Keith cries. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I said I’m fine! Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“Because you’re pulling the same shit you did last time—”

“And what does it matter to you?”
“To me? What does it matter to me?” Lance snarls. “None of your fucking business, deserter, but I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you it matters so much to me, but that doesn’t mean anything to you because you’ll lie regardless!”

Keith’s eyes burn. “Lie about what? I’m fine!”

It’s a little bit true. Just a little bit. He feels alive, truly alive. He feels far from that dark corridor where he was running for his life. There might be suns powering him; Keith can picture it—Lance holding a star in his hands and placing it inside Keith’s chest. It shines so bright. Can’t he see it too? The light he radiates, reflecting off of Keith?

Lance stares at him in disbelief. His expression is so crushed that Keith has to do a double take. Had he said something different? Had he delivered bad news? But no, Lance looks defeated and it’s solely because of their argument. Keith doesn’t know how to ease away the creases of frustration on his face. He doesn’t even know how he put them there. How is this argument different from the ones they’ve had before? Why does Lance look so hurt?

Abruptly, Lance stands. “I’m taking this back to my room.” He takes his plate and leaves.

Everyone is left staring at Keith, but Keith only looks after Lance’s disappearing figure. He wants to chase after him. He wants to shout, to fight, to hold him—anything. As long as it has to do with Lance, Keith wants it. He doesn’t get why—he’s always had his dumb afflictions for the boy, but it had never been this terrible. He had never been so desperate.

He remembers the druid’s words. They are a bucket of ice water being dumped over his head. Keith shivers.

Such an easy fix to what’s going to happen to you. All you have to do is tell me what you want.

It was the druid who said that, but it wasn’t the druid itself. It was Lance. He has to tell Lance what he wants.

What does Keith want?

Shiro clears his throat to tear his attention away from the exit.

He wants to go away. He wants to stop feeling cold.

“Keith,” Shiro says, precariously. He sounds like he’s talking to a scared animal. Keith has half the mind to play into it, to snarl and snap at him. It’s so tempting.

“What,” he says instead. His tone is dangerously flat.

Shiro opens and closes his mouth a few times before speaking. “You…what Lance said to you wasn’t okay, but he’s not necessarily wrong.”

Keith wants to fight back and argue, but the cold is spreading across him like a wildfire. Is it because Lance is gone? Shit. He should’ve brought a jacket with him. It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference, especially if his persistent fever is druid induced. The whiplash of emotions and information in his head clash and confuse him. Keith feels dizzy. He needs to sit down, but he’s already seated. Fuck.

“Yeah,” Pidge adds, “No offense, but you don’t look okay at all.”

“But, I—” Keith doesn’t understand. He’s showered. He gave himself a once over in the mirror. There are no signs of the night he’s had showing on his face.

“Keith,” Allura says gently, “You’ve been shifty since you got here. Your breathing is erratic and you constantly stare off into nothing. Not to mention, you’ve been muttering to yourself this whole time. We’ve asked you to speak up or repeat yourself, but it’s clear that you weren’t addressing us.”

What?

Keith has no recollection of this. None at all.

“I even asked you to pass the napkins!” Coran adds. “Not a single chirp from you.”

“What?” Keith whispers.

He can’t believe it. He doesn’t—that’s just not true! He hadn’t been doing that. He’d been eating, or at least trying to eat, and occasionally giving his one word answers to everyone until he and Lance fought.

Keith knows it. He knows he knows it—Keith races through his recent memories to add the facts up. Lance walked him into the dining hall. Pidge delivered him his plate of food. He mainly ignored the conversations, but he had been paying attention; they were talking about going to some planet. That’s what happened. There’s no way that isn’t what happened.

Keith thinks back to the creeping hours of the morning, when he swore Pidge was in his room. He pales.

That damn druid—it’s come after him again. It’s not around him, lurking and shifting his surroundings. It’s inside of him. It’s in his brain.

Breathing suddenly becomes a very laborious task, as if something is lodged in his throat. Keith resists the urge to hit his head and scratch his scalp till there’s enough of a hole for the druid to leave through.

“Are these normal symptoms of a human fever?” Allura asks the table.

Keith doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, but he knows they’re all shaking their head no. He knows they’re all looking at him in pity, in confusion, and in disgust. And Keith is just there , this pathetic, crazy mess, with no answers to any of their misunderstandings because it turns out he has no clue what’s going on. Not a single clue! He’s just fucking deteriorating away. Away, away, away. Keith’s going away.

Out of all of his tangled lines of thoughts, one stretches across Keith’s mind in full clarity:

He wants Lance. He wants to see Lance.

He didn’t feel crazy when Lance was next to him. When Lance was there, talking and yelling, he felt real. Everything felt real. He didn’t worry that he was on the druid’s ship or about his dumb nightmares and his visions of Pidge.

“Keith?” Shiro calls again. “Can you say something? Please?”

“Uh—”

What does he say? How does he even respond to any of this?

“Am I—” He sputters out. “Am I still doing it?”

“Doing what?”

“You know…” Keith shifts in his seat and gazes down at his food. It suddenly registers to him that the meal is perfectly unbroken and his fork is completely clean. He hadn’t even taken a bite, despite explicitly remembering doing so.

What a taunting image.

Keith wants to reach out and poke his food to see if it’s really untouched, but he remains frozen in place. He had felt the slight mush of it as he chewed and the cold of the fork between his lips. He had tasted it down his throat.

What else had Keeith hallucinated?

“The mumbling,” he says. “Am I still uh, doing that?”

Pidge’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head. It’s a scary sight. “You mean you didn’t know?”

“I don’t—” He’s swiftly interrupted.

“Keith, what do you—”

“—know what to tell—”

“He needs to be put in—”

“Call up—”

“And where the fuck is Lance? We need him—”

“—Hunk, who knows what this will do to his body—”

Amidst all the chaos, all Keith hears is Lance’s name. Lance, Lance, Lance, Lance, Lance. It rings around his mind like a mantra or a prayer. It’s a frantic calling to find him, a desire that is being pulled from deep in his soul.

Someone turns towards him. He doesn’t know who.

“Did you say Lance?” they ask. “What about Lance, Keith?”

He swallows thickly. “I have to go.”

They don’t let him go.

Keith is held back from escaping to the door almost instantly. A hand wraps around his arm, and it’d be easier to restrain from the force if Keith had any idea if the things happening around him were real.

Lance is real. Lance, he needs to see —

They put him in a pod again.

It’s a seemingly quick affair. Keith’s pushed into the container before he can even question it and he’s blacked out before he can panic about what’s happening to him. It’s just a pod—he’s been in a pod before and he knows the procedure like the back of his hand, but it’s so hard to trust what he knows at the moment. What if the door closing him inside is not the glass of a pod but rather the hatch of a ship being sent away? Keith doesn’t get a moment to ponder the possibilities.

He’s out before he knows it. Gentle hands hoist him out, hands that are so comfortable and cozy. Keith leans into the touch. Lance. He knows it’s Lance, he just knows it. Lance came to help him. Lance is taking care of him even though he hates him.

Keith sighs. He ignores the words fluttering around him despite being the topic of conversation. It’s easy to shut the world out when his body is already doing it for him. His vision is blurred and his hearing is foggy, and honestly? It’s a little nice to feel like this. It’s nice to be detached, to not care where he is, or if someone had gone into his room to see his private mess, or worry about the anger being sent his way.

Keith just leans into the soothing circles Lance traces on his back. It’s nice. It’s so, so nice.

“What are you thinking about, space boy?” Lance asks and flops down on the couch next to him. He shoots Keith a grin.

Keith shrugs. “Space.”

“Oh really?”

There’s an arm slinging around him. “Yeah.”

“You’re quiet today. Must be thinking a lot.”

“I guess.”

Keith feels bad about all his one word answers. He knows Lance is here to check up on him and make him feel better. He’s doing this of his own volition too; no one has put Lance up to deal with Keith. This is just the kind of guy Lance is.

Keith just doesn’t want to talk right now. Or ever. Not about this.

Lance doesn’t say anything more. He only curls his arm tighter around Keith. Keith lets him.

It’s only been a few weeks since their “friendship” arrangement. Friendship is a light term for the way it worked out. For Lance to trail Keith into his bed and Keith to blurt out that embarrassing question of ‘Are we friends?’ God. What a fucking start. 

And what a fucking end too, Keith had thought as he stumbled down Red’s ramp a few days earlier with lacerations clinging to his body, only to be proven wrong.

The mission to visit the Marmoran Base had gone exquisitely terrible. Keith had gone in thinking the biggest issue would be getting let down. Getting denied, or getting told that there’s nothing there for him. That for all his searching, the one path leading to answers was a dead end. Instead, his knife turned into a sword and he finally understood something about himself, and it was the worst thing in the universe.

Keith’s not a racist. Frankly, he hardly even cares about things like race and ethnicity. They’re just random things to him. Cool things, but a little irrelevant for someone who has floated around for so long without an identity. He doesn’t care if Allura’s glare holds a little contempt towards him or the team doesn’t know how to address him, because it’s all things he’s used to.

But —

It’s just that —

He can’t fucking leave, okay? Keith can’t go away. It’s not like he’s back on Earth, and some dumbass kid called him a slur so he threw a rock at him to get moved homes and start over. If the team hates him, they’re stuck with him, and he’s stuck with them. The universe has decided that his place in the world is here, with the Red Lion. No matter who or what he is. Keith can’t chase the answers any further, no matter how much he wants to.

And the worst part is that Keith wants to be stuck here. He’s glad Voltron needs him. He’s tired of all his moving around, and this team finally seems like one thing he can be okay with after so long. Shiro is the same as per usual, but everyone else: Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Coran, Allura; Keith likes them. He really does. He likes tossing around a “football” with Hunk during their downtime and trying so hard to follow Pidge's technology-jargoned blabber. He likes Coran and Allura, even if he’s less close with them, and he really, really likes Lance.

Overall. In general. In most ways possible.

It’s so hard not to. Lance is so funny and there’s a bite to his humor that Keith can’t help but retaliate back to. He’s nice, unexpectedly so. Keith always assumes he’ll come in with a comment whenever he messes up, but Lance always surprises him with compliments and kind words. And spending time with him — it’s just so fun. So much fun.

Keith loves being friends with Lance.

He leans into Lance’s hold. “Thanks.”

Lance laughs. “For what?”

“Dunno.” He knows exactly what. “Thanks in general.”

“Okayyyy,” Lance says, “Well, thanks to you too. In general.”

“Okay,” Keith says, thinking it’s the end of their conversation.

But he continues. “Thanks for always having my back. And for being a good teammate. And always listening when I speak, for real. I’m always so surprised that you don’t just tune me out. Like —”

Keith lifts his head. “Why would I do that?”

“Uh, because I’m annoying?”

Is Lance fucking dumb or something? “No, you’re not,” he says, “You’re not. You’re very interesting and I —” I like you, he doesn’t say.

“Well, uh, thanks for that too. You know, I wasn’t done being grateful but then you threw me off my groove with your interruption —”

“ Next time I’ll just let you think you’re annoying.”

Lance pokes him on the cheek. “Interrupting again!”

“Whatever,” Keith scoffs. In a rush of impulse, he lays his head on Lance’s chest. He can feel his heartbeat from here. It thumps resoundingly against his ear. It feels right.

“Shiro, please.”

“No.” Shiro shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?” Keith feels like stomping his foot. He would, if that didn’t shift his balance. He wraps the fresh blankets tighter around his shoulder. “There’s levels to it. It doesn’t have to be anything difficult.”

“Keith, you are not training with us.”

He knows the emphasis of the sentence is on the training aspect, but his mind lingers on the with us . Keith can’t train with them. They don’t want him there. They’ll train by themselves, as they’ve been doing for the months that Keith’s been gone.

“Can’t I just do stretches, or something?”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Can you do stretches? Right now? At all?”

It’s a dig at the fact that he ran into a wall at least three times while walking next to Shiro and it has Keith scoffing. “Oh, fuck you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Keith sighs. He doesn’t know what to do with himself if he doesn’t go to team training. The priority option is to head to his room and clean up because there is still throw up on the floor—which, that’s fucking disgusting of him. What the fuck is wrong with him? How could he leave his room like that, to clean up later?

But Keith still doesn’t want to do it. His bones feel heavier at the idea of sweeping and mopping. And his bones should feel leaden and lethargic at the idea of training, but he can’t get past the excitement of being close to Lance.

The cat’s out of the bag, anyways. Most of it. Keith did a pitiful job at hiding his illness induced delirium and now the whole team knows how fucked up he is. There’s not much to hide, even if he really wants to. And more than he wants to hide, he wants to stop being cold. And Keith knows that the only way that’ll happen is if he’s near Lance.

“At least let me watch?” Keith asks.

Shiro sighs and pinches his nose. He tries not to get his hopes up as the other man looks to the side and thinks.

“Okay.”

It’s a deal.

It was explained to him a bit after he exited the pod, when his team deemed him fit enough for conversation, that he’d been mumbling to himself about leaving for a blade mission.

They didn’t recognize the mission name as they recited his words back to him, but Keith did. Keith knew mission AB-240 Trax.

That was his first Blade mission after Shiro’s second rescue.

Keith had visited various Marmoran bases several times before Shiro’s disappearance from the Black Lion. He was the most fit for it after all, being the only member of Voltron with Galran blood in his veins. Still, he was a paladin first. Any Blade missions he went on were mainly for observation purposes.

When Shiro was gone, Keith didn’t even touch the Blades. He didn’t interact more than his duty as Black Paladin called for.

But he came back. He came back and well, that was a wrap for Keith. His job with Voltron was evidently over. It was the clearest choice, with the war in mind, for Keith to leave for the Blades. He had been naive to think that Voltron, that the thousands of years old machines, actually needed him as a paladin. Keith was expendable, as he always had been.

Pidge told him as Coran took his pulse and checked his vitals. He was mumbling, should I go, I should go, should I go. Then there was more about the mission itself—the Blade member who didn’t make it, the cargo they were in charge of, the make of the ship they were taking. It was all rubbish muttering. Keith awkwardly averted his eyes as he took in all the information. He didn’t say anything back.

Keith twiddles his thumbs as he watches the team train.

How embarrassing. All that stuff he was saying—he’s so glad that no one understood. Keith would rather they think he’s insane than comprehend his foolish words. He doesn’t want them to know that even in his subconscious, his mind lingers on past decisions that should’ve been easy to make.

It should’ve been easy to leave. It was the right choice, after all.

Keith shouldn’t be plagued by it.

He shouldn’t be plagued by anything at all. He should be normal, not sick and away from his designated post with the Blades. He’s wasting a bunch of fucking time with his dumb issues. How many Blade members died in the time that he’s taken off? How many civilians have struggled or died because he hadn’t been there to do his work?

He feels sick again.

Keith laughs to himself. Sick again? Again? He’s been sick. It’s all just one continuous stretch of agony. Not to be dramatic about it.

Down on the training mat, Allura whoops and cheers. He’s never seen her so casually elated. Then again, he hardly knows her at all.

On the other side of the room, Pidge does cartwheels while Lance chases after her. She’s very fast, and Lance almost catches up to her when they’re both chastised for their tomfoolery. Their apologies are half-hearted and equally hilarious to each other, because they start snickering the second Shiro turns his back. He shoots them a narrow glare that they can’t see, but he doesn’t say anything more.

Today’s training looks like more of an open practice. The team readily works on any skills that need honing, occasionally teaming up for a quick spar or to give each other tips. Keith sees Lance showing Hunk shooting strategies, Shiro meditating, Allura doing a handstand, Lance holding Pidge’s feet for sit-ups, Lance doing push ups, Lance stretching, Lance hollering and laughing. He can’t stop watching Lance.

It’s honestly a little creepy, but no one looks his way, so Keith lets himself indulge.

“Everything good, Keith?” Hunk calls up to him.

He snaps his eyes away from Lance like he’s been caught doing something wrong. It’s such an instinctive flinch to look away. Keith tightens the blanket around him and says, “Yeah.”

He doesn’t know how to field all the probing questions, despite them all being the same at the root: are you okay? There’s no satisfying answer that Keith can give them that’ll also protect him. Protect him from what—he doesn’t know. Voltron is the safest people to be with.

Keith is lucky that the team isn’t watching him with hawk-like eyes. He’d have thought they would, after his stellar performance at breakfast, but apparently whatever readings came up on the pod scan were satisfying enough that they let him go with a loose leash.

Down in the room, Lance and Hunk are fighting on a mat.

It’s a very casual affair; neither of them are actually putting any force into any of their strikes. They mark all their steps and pull all their punches. It honestly could look more like a play-fight than serious combat training had Keith not recognized some of the patterns in their steps. He considers opening his mouth to give some critique before registering the possibility that this scene, the very one displayed before him, could be fake too.

How would Keith know what’s real or not? What proof does he have to ensure the legitimacy of the events unfolding in front of his eyes?

But Lance, Lance is —

But what? Lance had been there at breakfast too, when Keith had his freak episode. And oh god, Lance had watched that. He had watched him lose his shit and mutter nonsense under his breath and twitch and lie. Keith was too busy thinking about how warm Lance was and how nice it’d be to get into his fucking lap to notice.

Nausea rolls in Keith’s stomach like turbulent waves in the ocean. The feeling brushes against the barriers of his body like it cannot be contained.

What did Lance think of him?

The contempt had been obvious and easy to detect through harsh scowls and biting words. Evidently, Lance was pissed at him for leaving Voltron. Evidently, he was mad about their terrible fallout and arguments. Evidently, he must’ve been a little sad that Keith ended whatever nice, sweet thing was going on between them. Easily, all of that could channel into hatred.

Keith was used to the hatred. It had become normal to feel it burn away at his heart. It was far from pleasant, but whatever was pleasant in a war?

But disgust?

He didn’t know how to handle the idea of Lance being revulsed to him.

The aversion that so many people in his life held towards him—social workers, foster siblings, classmates, teachers, cops—to see that expressed on Lance’s face would be like a death sentence. Keith would rather walk out of the airlock than be looked at like that by him . Anyone but him.

Lance hadn’t even been repelled when he found out that Keith was Galran. Where others hesitated, he rushed forward. Where others bit their tongue, he spoke onwards to fill the empty space that isolated Keith.

Now Keith has done it. He’s really done it. He’s pushed his limits with the one person with the largest tolerance.

He clenches crescent moons into his palm and plays through all their shared memories with this newfound revelation. That first kiss they shared in the lion hangar in the quiet of the night cycle? Keith can imagine him recollecting that scene with regret and shame. Lance must feel vile having put his lips and hands on Keith. He must feel so gross having even wanted to do something like that with someone like Keith. All of their camaraderie, their hugs, the comforting words they’ve shared with each other—does Lance reflect on them with the disbelief that the Keith he’d been with all that time is the same Keith who caused a scene at breakfast? Does he lament about how Keith has changed for the worse?

And Lance doesn’t even know the most of it; his hands only skim the surface of Keith’s sickness. He has yet to take the plunge. Keith’s not just as terrible as Lance makes him out to be. He’s worse. He’s so distasteful and ugly and abhorrent. If Lance could see the state of his room right now, it’d only lock in and secure the sentiment of repugnance directed towards him.

It’s not even because Keith is sick. This is just the way Keith is.

Even if he had returned to the castle with a top tier physique, he’d have travelled to this very same outcome. Him, crawling with self-loathing, surrounded by the scrutinizing gazes of the eyes that once might’ve adored him. Tried adoring him. Appreciated him. Tolerated him. Whatever. It was like this at every house, at every school, at every place Keith has gone to, and he had been naive to think it’d be different up in space.

Nausea floods his body. Keith strains himself trying not to hunch over and convulse. He can’t throw up in front of everyone. He can’t pause their training and have them clean up after him, and he can’t lie his way out of that.

With shaky hands, he pushes himself out of his seat. The blanket falls from his shoulders and drapes over the back of the chair. Keith pays it no mind. He’d rather not bring it to the bathroom and get it all gross.

If he can even make it to the bathroom in time. Keith shudders.

He passes Coran on the way out of the training room. “Bathroom,” he manages to force out with a hoarse voice and a wavering smile.

Keith finds himself doubled over a toilet bowl in the blink of an eye. He hadn’t even remembered his journey or collapsing to his knees. The toilet water is a murky, distasteful yellow. What the hell? He hadn’t even remembered throwing up. It’s as if he evaporated into thin air and landed up here.

He retches again.

He heaves, gags, and spits for enough time to pass that he wonders if the day has ended. Keith only pauses to flush the toilet when the acrid stench becomes unbearable. He familiarizes himself with the swirl of the toilet water rushing down the drain and the checkered pattern of the bathroom floor. It becomes all that Keith knows at one point. He’s glad for it—he’d rather not think about anything substantial.

The bathroom door swings open and closed with a swift creak. Like clockwork, Keith clamps a hand over his mouth and gathers himself away from the stall door before anyone can see him.

Hunk’s bellowing voice floods the room. He’s singing.

“ Weeee are the champions, my friends.” He walks past Keith’s stall and towards the sink. “ And weeee’ll keep on fighting till the end.”

“It’s rising not fighting , Hunk,” Lance says. Keith’s breath hitches in his throat. He huddles closer to the wall. “Wrong verse.”

“Uh, no? I don’t think they ever say rising in the song?”

“Bro, they literally do.”

Someone turns on a faucet. “Why would they be rising? They’re already champions, Freddy Mercury literally said so.”

“It’s metaphorical—”

“Well why don’t you look it up?”

They’re both quiet for a few seconds. All Keith hears is the running tap water. For a second, he wonders if the bathroom is empty just like his room had been earlier in the middle of the night. Maybe if he cautiously edges his way into the open, he’ll find absolutely nothing.

“Fuck,” Lance says.

“Fuck,” Hunk sighs.

Keith lets out a relieved breath.

“I forgot we can’t look it up,” Lance grumbles. He’s pacing around. “God damnit.”

“Maybe we could build an ouija board to ask Queen?”

Lance snorts. “Please. Allura could probably resurrect all of them to get a live demo.”

“Should we ask her to?”

The tap handle squeaks and the water stops flowing. “Nah,” Hunk says, “She won’t get the joke, especially not with how stressed she is about Keith.”

He perks up at his name. What?

“Dude. I’m stressed out about Keith.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Guilt constricts his heart. He’s glad it’s his heart and not his throat—it’d be terrible if he made any sounds.

“Like,” Lance says, “I don’t even know what to do with him.”

“You don’t need to beat yourself up, Lance. He’s sick. Allura says he should feel better in a few days and that his vitals are alright.”

“I know.” From under the stall door, he sees shoes and clothes dumped across the floor. They must be changing.

Lance continues. “But Keith is so frustrating! I can’t find a single fucking way for us to take care of him. He’s barely fucking eaten—I don’t know if he ate anything after I left today—”

“He didn’t.”

“Great!” Lance exclaims. “ Fan-fucking-tastic. Of course he didn’t. He’s just wallowing alone and he came to training when he should be in bed. Like, horizontal in bed. Like, eyes closed in bed. Like, sleeping in bed.”

“I know how people sleep, Lance,” Hunk says.

“I’m just saying! Because I don’t think he knows. Motherfucker probably didn’t sleep at all the entire five and a half months he was away from us.”

That isn’t true. He wants to protest the claims. Keith was doing just fine at the Blades. He got his ration of two meals a day and five hours of sleep a night. It was a mandated schedule.

But then Lance says something that makes Keith’s blood freeze.

“I just don’t get why he came back! It’s made no fucking difference. It might as well have made him worse. There’s no reason for him to be here.”

The words are venomous to Keith’s ears. No reason for him to be here? Keith had come here to feel better, which—let’s be honest: he’s never going to feel better . Maybe the symptoms will go away and he’ll be cured enough to be posted for work, but there will always be a certain part of him that’s constantly rotting away. But for Lance to dismiss that as completely unnecessary? Did Lance truly find him repulsive enough that it’d override any semblance of care he once held towards Keith?

And primarily, what about the war effort? Doesn’t Lance want him to be well enough to contribute to something?

Hunk doesn’t respond for a brief moment. When he speaks, he says, “Lance…don’t say that. No—look at me, dude. You don’t mean that.”

“I know,” Lance sighs, “I don’t.”

“You were the one who wanted him back the most. You’d get so relieved every time we heard any news about him.”

Lance grumbles, “I know! But it doesn’t matter what I want. Keith, he—” There’s some rustling. “Keith chose to leave. He picked his path and it’s not with us. We can’t force him to stay here and take our care when it’s not even what he wants.”

“Do you really think that?”

“I do.” Lance’s voice is dull and flat. “It’s what he told me.”

It takes Keith five hours to clean his whole room.

He’s meticulous about it. He ensures that every inch of the floor is pristine and that everything is exactly where it had been before. Still, Keith knows that’s not why he took so long.

Lance and Hunk’s conversation play in his mind over and over again. It’s not a voluntary decision to keep thinking about it; Keith’s brain is simply stuck on their exchange like an old, scratchy record player. He keeps feeling salt brushing over his wounded heart from ‘ There’s no reason for him to be here’ only for the gentle balm of ‘ You were the one who wanted him back the most’ to heal it over. The two sentences conflict and clash again and again.

Who knows what Lance meant by that. Keith is starting to realize that not only has he changed in a way that makes him foreign to others, but he’s changed enough to not be able to read the people he shared a bond with.

Keith shivers as he picks up the last book on the floor. His wrist bends with the weight. It’s not even that heavy—it’s just a simple chapter book. Still, he struggles as he places it on the top of the pile on his desk.

How is he going to hold a sword if he can’t even hold a book?

Keith shudders. Who cares about things like staying and leaving? He needs to get better fast so he can get back to fighting.

Dinner comes and goes with the same request that Keith join them for mealtime. This time, Keith denies. He even opens the door to show Shiro and Allura that he’s okay and that everything is clean, not that they were aware in the slightest of the tornado that had occurred here.

They bring a plate of food to his door. He places it on the desk. It remains untouched.

Slight goodnights are wished as people pass his door. First Pidge, then Shiro, then Allura and Coran, and then Hunk. There’s no Lance. Keith tries not to feel hollow about it as he lowers himself into his bed. He tells himself that he doesn’t care.

Lance was right. He made his choice to leave. After that, nothing else he feels matters.

Keith swallows, shivers, and pulls the fresh blankets over his head. It seems like it’ll be a colder night than usual. “Lights off,” he says, and the room is enveloped in darkness.

“Keith.”

He stays still, as still as he can while he’s shivering.

“ Keith,” he hears again.

He doesn’t recognize the voice addressing him. He’s too afraid to lift his head from under the blankets and see who might be there. Or worse—who might not be there at all.

“Come here, Keith.” He presses his palms over his ears.

Why is this happening to him? Why? Why? Why couldn’t the druid have just killed him? That’s what it did to Kaya. It’d have been so easy. He even had the blade for it to kill him with. Even if he hadn’t, it could’ve easily thrown him into space. Or blown him up. Why is it tormenting him, even days later? Keith blinks tears out of his eyes.

“Come out, Keith. Come out from under there.”

The voice is so soft, like a lullaby floating through the air. It echoes in all directions. Keith can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from.

“Stop it,” he chokes out. His own voice is so ugly and harsh in contrast.

Keith groans and turns so that his face is pressed into the mattress. The sheets are cold, despite him laying awake on top of them for so long. As a matter of fact, his whole body is cold. He can barely feel his joints, and most of the movements he makes are jolts and flinches when shivers aren’t enough to sustain his body. His limbs have grown numb, and his chest feels open and exposed despite being buried under a blanket, a sweater, and a shirt. There might as well be a snowy tundra inside of him, with icicles instead of bones and a layer of frost coating all his organs.

“ Keith ,” it sings.

“Go away.” His voice is nothing more than a whisper. He sniffles.

Keith knows it’s not real. He knows it can’t be—he’s very well aware of his delirium by now. Still, even his self awareness isn’t enough to rescue him from the clutches of his mind. He’s trying so, so hard. There’s nothing he can seem to do to make the voice go away and nothing he can do to succumb to sleep. Not to mention, the sheets of ice piling on top of him.

Keith’s so cold. He’s so cold that he doesn’t care that he’s crazy. He’s so cold it hurts. He’s so cold he wishes he had never gone to space and never ever left the sands of the desert shack.

Everything hurts. His fingers shake and throb. He can’t even apply enough pressure to cover his ears properly. Keith’s hair is slick with sweat, and the sweat is cold enough to chill his forehead and give him a headache. He’s curled in on himself to the most his body will comply and he’s fully covered. It doesn’t make a single fucking difference. He’s cold. He’s freezing.

Keith whimpers. Lance . He wants Lance.

Lance can make it better. Lance always makes everything better. Every poor situation they’ve been in, Lance has somehow managed to fix. He’s bridged miscommunications with diplomats and covered the team in tight spots in battles. He’s spent so much time comforting every single one of them and he’s Keith’s friend. He’s Keith’s something.

Keith wants the radiance he felt earlier in the day so bad. Back at breakfast, where he had turned into Icarus—he misses that so much. He’d rather feel ridiculed and crazy than cold like this ever again. He’d take public humiliation, he’d take it over this any day.

He wills himself to move. Not a single joint lifts.

The voice continues to sing in his ears. “There’s no reason for you to be here, Keith. None at all.”

Slowly, he’s able to bring his fingers to the edge of the blanket. Keith is unable to creep them any further into the open air.

“You are nothing.”

What is Keith trying to do? Where is he trying to go? There is nowhere that he belongs, after all. Even if he makes it to Lance’s room, it doesn’t change anything. Keith can beg on his knees all he wants and collect scraps of heat thrown his way; at the end of the day, he’ll be boiled down to a convulsing mess all the same.

Lance doesn’t want him. He doesn’t want him at all.

That’s what he had said during their last fight before Keith officially left Voltron.

“Go!” Lance flings his hands into the air. “See if I care! Spoiler alert: I don’t.”

That’s what he had said.

Keith rubs his face against his pillow to get the tears out of his eyes. It’s better to stay here for the night. In the morning, he’ll do something. He’ll figure it out. Maybe wear another sweater. Or two. Maybe walk back and forth past Lance’s room a few times. Keith is supposed to be strong—he can thug out the cold for one night.

A sudden force wills his body forward, like he’s teetering on his feet. Keith frowns. Forward? What—

He blinks a few times to see that he’s standing upright in front of a door. His fist is raised to knock.

The door makes way to reveal Lance’s groggy and confused face. Keith staggers backwards.

“Yo, who da fuck is—” Lance rubs at his eyes. “Oh shit. Keith?”

Keith’s breathing quickens. When did he get here?

“Hey, Keith,” Lance says slowly and cautiously, “What’s up?”

There’s a very large chance that he’s still in bed, and that he’s disintegrated enough to have painted the picture before. That he yearns for Lance so much he turned his dreams to fruition.

“Keith, is everything okay?”

He takes another step back. Assesses the make of the halls around him. They’re dark, but not druid galran ship dark. Keith is in the castle. He hasn’t woken up elsewhere. The Lance in front of him looks worried and nervous, nothing like the manic and cold Pidge that had visited him last night. Lance moves towards him.

Keith throws his hands up in defense. “Don’t—”

“Keith,” Lance says gently, “I’m really sorry about yesterday, when I called you a deserter and said you didn’t care. That was mean of me. I’m sorry. You were struggling and I was being rude to you.”

Is it real or is it not? Is it the druid or is it not? The last time Keith spoke with Lance in a dark hallway, it wasn’t even Lance at all. And it’s the worst; he’s hearing all the soothing words he’s always wanted to hear and he doesn’t even know who is saying it.

“Can we please put it behind us? Please? Even the fight from ages ago—let me just help you out.”

Keith doesn’t say anything. He only shuffles backwards.

“Keith, please,” he begs, “You don’t have to say anything to me. I’ll bring Shiro, or something. Or Coran, he’ll know how to help you. We can figure something out.”

In the case that there's a druid in front of him, he has two exit options: down either side of the hall. There’s three, if he forces the druid out of the doorway and locks himself in the room, but it’s better not to test that. Druids can phase through walls. It makes any escape arduous, but Keith knows the layout of the castle ship. If this is the map it’s picked, it’s a map he knows well.

He’ll run if it makes any sudden movements. He won’t doubt or underestimate it.

He’ll run.

“You’re breaking my heart, Keith. Tell me what to do, baby. Please .”

There’s not a single thought to his next actions. Pure instinct drives his body.

Keith doesn’t run.

He swings.

It only registers to him what he’s doing when his fist is an inch away from his face. Keith sees the picture clearly: Lance’s wide, hurt eyes, just a second away from getting smashed in. His own trembling, clenched hand, which travels at a force that physically hurts him.

What is he doing?

This is Lance.

This is his Lance.

Keith’s fist skims past Lance’s cheek and crashes into the doorway. His shoulder aches with the effort needed to divert the punch.

Lance looks alarmed. “Bab—”

“Don’t call me that!” Keith screams. He clutches at his hair and bends over. “Stop it!”

“O—okay.” Lance swallows and nods. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Stop it,” he begs, “Just stop.”

Stop talking, stop looking at him, stop thinking, stop apologizing, stop hurting, stop thinking, stop talking, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop being sick, stop hallucinating, stop feeling cold, stop talking, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop being hungry, stop throwing up, stop muttering, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop blacking out, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop looking at him, stop loving him, stop wanting him, stop calling him that, stop worrying, stop trying to escape, stop talking, stop leaving, stop wanting, stop staying, stop looking at him, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop existing, stop being useless, stop feeling cold, stop hallucinating, stop being sick, stop hurting, stop hurting others, stop being so pathetic, stop being so useless, stop throwing up, stop worrying, stop talking, stop calling him that, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop trying to escape, stop living, stop fantasizing about death, stop thinking, stop hurting people, stop hallucinating, stop throwing up, stop feeling cold, stop worrying, stop wondering what’s real, stop hurting, stop being hungry, stop shivering, stop worrying others, stop talking, stop looking at him, stop thinking, stop apologizing, stop hurting, stop looking at him, stop thinking, stop apologizing, stop hurting, stop thinking, stop talking, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop being sick, stop hallucinating, stop feeling cold, stop talking, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop being hungry, stop throwing up, stop muttering, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop blacking out, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop looking at him, stop loving him, stop wanting him, stop calling him that, stop worrying, stop trying to escape, stop talking, stop leaving, stop wanting, stop staying, stop looking at him, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop existing, stop being useless, stop feeling cold, stop hallucinating, stop being sick, stop hurting, stop hurting others, stop being so pathetic, stop being so useless, stop throwing up, stop worrying, stop talking, stop calling him that, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop trying to escape, stop living, stop fantasizing about death, stop thinking, stop hurting people, stop hallucinating, stop throwing up, stop feeling cold, stop worrying, stop wondering what’s real, stop hurting, stop being so pathetic, stop being so useless, stop throwing up, stop worrying, stop talking, stop calling him that, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop trying to escape, stop living, stop fantasizing about death, stop thinking, stop hurting people, stop hallucinating, stop throwing up, stop feeling cold, stop worrying, stop wondering what’s real, stop fantasizing about death, stop thinking, stop hurting people, stop hallucinating, stop throwing up, stop feeling cold, stop worrying, stop wondering what’s real, stop hurting, stop being hungry, stop shivering, stop worrying others, stop talking, stop looking at him, stop thinking, stop apologizing, stop hurting, stop looking at him, stop thinking, stop apologizing, stop hurting, stop thinking, stop talking, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop being sick, stop hallucinating, stop feeling cold, stop talking, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop being hungry, stop throwing up, stop muttering, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop blacking out, stop worrying, stop throwing up, stop muttering, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop blacking out, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop looking at him, stop loving him, stop wanting him, stop calling him that, stop worrying, stop trying to escape, stop talking, stop leaving, stop trying to escape, stop living, stop fantasizing about death, stop thinking, stop hurting people, stop hallucinating, stop throwing up, stop feeling cold, stop worrying, stop wondering what’s real, stop hurting, stop being hungry, stop shivering, stop worrying others, stop talking, stop looking at him, stop thinking, stop apologizing, stop hurting, stop looking at him, stop thinking, stop apologizing, stop hurting, stop thinking, stop talking, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop being sick, stop hallucinating, stop feeling cold, stop talking, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop being hungry, stop throwing up, stop muttering, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop blacking out, stop worrying, stop caring, stop fighting, stop looking at him, stop loving him, stop wanting him, stop calling him that, stop worrying, stop trying to escape, stop talking, stop leaving, stop wanting, stop staying, stop looking at him, stop apologizing, stop thinking, stop existing, stop being useless, stop feeling cold, stop hallucinating, stop being sick, stop hurting, stop hurting others, stop being so pathetic, stop being so useless, stop throwing up, stop worrying, stop talking, stop calling him that, stop hurting, stop feeling cold, stop trying to escape, stop living, stop fantasizing about death, stop thinking, stop hurting people, stop hallucinating, stop throwing up, stop feeling cold, stop—

“Help me,” Keith cries. He collapses to the ground and falls over his knees. “Please, help me.”

Lance is crouched next to him in an instant. “What do you need?” There are tears in his eyes.

Keith can’t look at him. He can’t stand to know the way he’s hurt him. “I don’t know,” he heaves out between broken sobs. The truth of the statement slams a wave of despair into him. “I don’t know—I don’t, I don’t know. ” He sits on the ground and wails.

“Hey,” Lance says, not unkindly, not at all like the way he had yelled at Keith yesterday morning. “We’ll figure it out.”

Why is he helping him? Why is he still here, next to him? Lance should be ringing the alarm bells and announcing to everyone what Keith has done.

“Can I…” Lance stalls on his question. “Can I hold you? Nothing weird! Just like how we used to.”

Keith nods. Damn if it’s all made up; he wants Lance so badly. He doesn’t even care if it’s fake. He’ll take any version of Lance that he can get.

Lance scoops him into his arms. He has one hand buried in Keith’s hair and the other by his waist. Keith might as well have been dumped into his lap. And it’s warm. It’s warm! The fire is small, but it’s there. It’s Lance. It’s real. Holy shit, it’s real. Which means—that means that—

Keith really tried to hit Lance.

He doesn’t know how long they sit on the floor as he thaws. He doesn’t say anything. Lance doesn’t say anything. They sit in silence, with Keith’s head buried into the crook of Lance’s shoulder and Lance’s chin tucked over his head. He forgot how much he missed this. All the times they had wounded up next to each other, molding into shapes that allocated just enough space for the other to crawl into. Those soft, intimate touches feel like centuries ago. Like a dream from a past life.

“Keith?” Lance’s voice wavers. He sounds so distraught. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t do that,” he bites out. “Don’t apologize.”

“My bad, dude.”

“That was…that was an apology.”

Lance pulls back and gives him a brisk smile. One hand is carding through Keith’s hair. For a second, it looks like he’s going to kiss his forehead, but instead he opens his mouth to speak.

“You feeling better?” Lance continues talking when Keith nods an affirmative. “Good. Is it, uh, not cool for me to call you that anymore? You know—”

Keith rapidly shakes his head no. Even the idea of it, the pet name that once had him fluttering with giddiness, makes his insides crawl with disgust. He mourns all the beautiful past memories that have been tainted, all because that one word.

“Is it because we’re, you know,” Lance coughs awkwardly. “Not together anymore?”

“No!”

No one says anything. An embarrassed flush rises to Keith’s cheeks. He tells himself he doesn’t care. He’ll take it—anything warm is better than how he had felt ten minutes ago. Still, his heartbeat races. He can’t help but be affected by things like this.

“Are we together?” Lance asks.

“I don’t know,” Keith whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

He doesn’t know what they are. This is the first time they’ve talked, seriously talked, since Keith left. And there’s hardly been any talking. All Keith did was attack Lance and then cry until he consoled him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Keith clambers backwards to take a good look at Lance’s face. “Are you hurt? Did I get you?”

Lance brushes him off. “Nah, don’t sweat it.”

“I tried to hit you!”

“Yeah, well.” he shrugs. “You always used to try and hit me.”

Keith continues to study Lance’s face. He hovers over him and traces his fingers alongside his jaw. There are no blemishes. “No, that was you. You were always the one picking fights.”

“Oh really? Then who was called the resident hot head?”

Keith doesn’t waste anymore breath talking. He surges forward and hugs Lance. They nearly fall backwards, but he doesn’t care. Lance is solid between his arms. Lance is real. He tries to feel as much of him as he can before he’s snatched away from this moment. It’ll end soon. It always ends eventually. This is only a moment of reprieve before he’s handed back into the druid’s claws. Keith will take any morsel of sanctuary he can get.

“Hey look,” Lance says, “I’m cradling you in my arms.”

“Shut up,” Keith says. What he doesn’t say is, you’re so warm, Lance. I love you, Lance.

What he doesn’t say is, I want to stay, Lance.

Chapter Text

They spend the night in Lance's room.

Keith is not too sure when they move. Sometime between the nonsensical chatter and worn out apologies, he is hoisted to his feet and walked out of the hallway. Lance seats him on his bed and bundles him in the fuzzy blanket sprawled across the mattress. He spends an unnecessary amount of time dashing around the room to look for more blankets, pillows, and snacks. Keith tries to protest his efforts, but his voice is too weak compared to Lance’s drive. He can only watch as Lance makes a mess of his room just to fit Keith into it.

“You’re cold, right?” Lance asks as he tosses another pillow in Keith’s direction. He’s unable to dodge it and it smacks him straight in the face. “Sorry.”

“No, I’m—only a little. It’s okay.”

“Like hell it’s okay, you icicle.” He wraps another blanket around him.

“You’re going to suffocate me.”

“I would never .”

That’s another thing Keith can’t wrap his mind around: the banter. It comes to him almost naturally, instinctively. The witty lines fall from his mouth like they’re his mother tongue, but leave a bitter aftertaste. Him and Lance—they aren’t cheesy conversations and late night sleepovers. They haven’t been that in a while. Even sitting here, wrapped in blankets like a little matryoshka doll, feels like a bizarre yet pleasant dream. Any second now, he’ll wake up.

“Where the hell are the pillows…” Lance mutters under his breath. He ducks his whole head into a drawer in his search.

How long has it been? When is Lance going to kick him out?

Keith waits in anticipation. After all, it is the middle of the night and Lance needs his rest. He’s keeping him up with his unexplained desperations and actions. Keith has woken him up, has swung at him, and is now taking up space on his bed. Lance hasn’t said anything other than sweet nothings yet. He certainly must be biding time to come up with demands: answers at the very least and exile at worst.

Lance spins around to wrap Keith in another blanket. How many blankets does he have?

“Is that enough?” Lance steps back to stare at his work before sitting on the bed next to Keith. “It looks like enough.”

Keith is practically immobilized in his cocoon. “What about your blanket? Where will you sleep?”

He’s glad the blankets restrict his hands from slapping himself. How foolish of him. Not only did Keith assume he’d be staying over, but he said it too. He openly invited himself into Lance’s space without even asking. This whole thing, from start to present, has been one big intrusion. And the worst part is that it feels so good to be near Lance that Keith doesn’t feel as bad as he should.

Lance blinks at him. “I hadn’t…thought that far.” He gulps.

It shouldn’t be such a tense topic. Sharing a room is such a casual thing; Keith has roomed with and even slept in the same bed as some foster siblings when funds were short. It’s meaningless and fleeting. They’re just sleeping.

But it’s not like that with Lance.

It’s not just sleeping . Stumbling through a bedroom door and getting ready for bed together—these are all familiar actions. Repeated patterns hardwired into all of Keith’s systems. He had shut all these circuits down, or at least tried to, but when he sits on Lance’s bed and stares into Lance’s eyes, they quietly thrum with life. They buzz inside of Keith so loudly that he might be vibrating. And Lance knows. And Keith knows that Lance knows. And Lance knows that Keith knows that he knows. It’s one sickening, cyclical reflection of Keith’s feelings bleeding out onto his bare skin. Not even all the blankets covering him can conceal his raw longing.

“I’ll go,” Keith offers, “Thanks for the blankets—or do you want them back?”

He’s never wished more to retract his words. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want that at all. His heart rolls in agony at the awaiting response. Keith craves to stay in this moment, this one second before Lance opens his mouth to agree and show him the door.

Keith wants to stay. He wants to stay so badly. He wants to cling to the door frame with bruised fingers and come back again and again. He’ll wait out front like a dog if he has to. It’s pathetic, terrible, and it makes him weak and selfish—Keith knows. He knows. But he can’t go into the hallway again. Lance’s room is so lovely and ambient with his little rock collections and pictures hung up—it’s nothing like his own room. Most of all, Lance is here. Keith can’t stumble through the dark, waiting to brush against death when he knows what he’s turning his back on. He’s not strong enough to do it.

“No, don’t!” Lance blurts out. “You can stay. You should stay. I’ll—we’ll figure it out.”

Not for the first time in the night, Keith apologizes. “Sorry.”

Lance strides forward and brings his hands towards Keith, only to let them fall at the last moment. He feels pitiful for leaning into the potential touch that never came. Lance crouches down in front of him instead. “Don’t be.”

“But I woke you up,” Keith whispers, “And almost decked you.”

His heartbeat sprints under Lance’s attentive gaze.

“I know,” Lance says, “I was there. It’s okay, Keith.”

“No it’s not! You keep saying that, but you’re wrong—” Teammates don’t swing at each other. Lovers don’t try to hit each other. But Keith and Lance are neither of those things. “Why doesn’t it matter to you? Why are you letting me waltz around doing whatever? I know you’re mad at me— you’ve been mad at me since forever and you’ve never failed to let me know. And now that I’m back, acting like some sick fuck, you don’t mention it? You’re gonna let me walk all over you?” Keith’s voice rises as he speaks.

“Keith, you—”

He’s not done. Damn him, if Lance is letting him stay. Damn him if he wants or needs that. Keith doesn’t deserve it. He’ll wreck what’s left of this precious thing just like he did last time. That’s how terrible he is; Keith will want something to the point that he’s consumed and then he’ll light the flames that turn it to ash.

“I know what you think about me. I overheard what you told Hunk—you don’t even want me here. So there’s no need to put on this—” Keith splutters. “—this act , okay? I know you’re a nice person. You’re a giving person. Congratu-fucking-lations. But you don’t need to do that for me.”

Lance doesn’t say anything. Tears pool in his eyes like puddles after fresh rain. Keith regrets opening his mouth just for that. Here’s another terrible thing he’s done: making Lance cry. Probably not for the first time. He should never, ever speak again.

“Well?” Keith taunts, but his voice trembles.

“I don’t,” Lance starts, “I don’t know how to say it in a way that you’ll want to hear.”

“No need to coddle me. Just say it!”

Keith is so mean. This is always how it is. He bites the hand that approaches him, no matter for what reason. He lashes out irrationally and unexpectedly. It’s why nothing or no one has ever lingered for him. Keith’s whole life has passed by in phases. Lance is just one of them. He can see their ending and it’s in plain sight. It’s easier to tip himself over the edge with his eyes closed than draw the slow conclusion out any longer. Keith tries to convince himself of that.

But he’d rather not. He’d rather stay, is the truth.

Keith’s wants stem from a naive hope that has been crushed far too many times for him to fall for. It doesn’t matter how badly he wants to stay. At the end of the day, Keith is going to get shipped off in a tiny vessel away from Voltron. Lance could grip his face with two hands and sear his mouth with a kiss and that wouldn’t change a thing.

Lance changes the direction of the conversation. “Are you cold?”

“No.” Keith shakes his head.

“Are you sure you—”

“Lance, I’m not lying ,” he grits out through pressed teeth. He’s being ruder than necessary. “I’m not cold.”

“I didn’t say you were lying.”

“Good. Because I wasn't.”

His cold tremors have died down a lot. It’s unbelievable to him that only an hour ago he had been shivering so hard he couldn’t move. Residues of Keith’s chills linger in different ways: through aching joints and a slightly pounding head. Both are faint and far from the worst injuries he’s faced.

“Why…” Lance speaks up. “Why did you come to me?”

“I don’t know.”

Abruptly, he stands. “What do you mean, I don’t know ?” Lance cries. “What do you know?”

That’s the question of the year, isn’t it? What does Keith Kogane know? Does his knowledge constitute of anything valuable and worthwhile? Or like the stray dog he is, is any information he devours only discardable scraps? Keith can hunt for answers all he likes; it has only led him to further disarray. The only good that he has searched for and found was the Blue Lion, and that too was made meaningful by Lance’s touch. At the end of the day, he’s in the dark. Sometimes he thinks it’s better that way.

The yellow glow from the lamp in Lance’s room casts a warm outline around him as he faces Keith. “You come to me, sobbing and crying. It’s the middle of the night. You try to punch me—which frankly, I care the least about in this situation. You’re cold, trembling, and shivering. And then you won’t give me anything to work with. Anything!”

“I try to give you some room,” Lance continues, “Because I know you don’t like being around me that much, at least not anymore. But you wont—you won’t tell me anything at all! Please, Keith. You don’t need to be with me, but I’m not a stranger, Keith. At least take my help.”

Keith tests his luck. “Are you kicking me out?”

“ No !” Lance shouts. “No! Did—does nothing go through your thick skull?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I just asked you to accept my help and you heard that as, I’m kicking you out .” Lance does a lap around his room before facing Keith again. “Are you slow?”

“I don’t know, Lance,” Keith bites, “I don’t fucking—” His words dissolve into a fit of coughs.

The hacking doesn’t go away after a few seconds. Keith’s throat is strained and hoarse. Every time he pauses to take a breath, the air comes in wrong and is forced right out with even more coughs. “I’m not,” Keith struggles to speak. “—cold. I wasn’t lying.”

The blankets honestly make it worse. Keith wiggles a few layers off of his shoulders. He keeps one wrapped around him, despite the discomfort, because he feels bad about rejecting Lance’s sweet efforts.

Lance sits back down. “I know, b—Keith. I’m sorry.” He sighs. “What am I doing interrogating you? You’re sick.” He puts two hands on Keith’s shoulders and presses them towards the bed. “Lie down, Keith.”

“What? But where will you sleep?”

“Lie down.”

“No, I—”

“Can you—” Lance snaps, but he doesn’t need to finish what he’s saying. Keith has laid down already. He knew what he was going to say. Can you stop being so difficult? Can you listen for once in your life? Quit it!

“Keith, hey.” Lance hovers over him. “Fuck,” he mutters to himself. “I keep messing this up.”

“You’re fine, Lance,” Keith mumbles into the heap of pillows and blankets around him. “I didn’t mean to end up here, anyways.”

“You didn’t?”

He squirms under the question. “I’m not too sure.”

Those words are the last to touch the open air for a while. The two of them linger in silence, Lance seated and slumped facing the room, and Keith curled in on himself by the very pillow Lance rests his head on every night. Even with the thick turbulence muddling their conversation, it’s still pleasant to be here. Keith can’t believe this used to be a regular occurrence for him. How lucky he used to be.

If he closes his eyes, he can pretend that he’s back here again. Here , as in the moment rather than the place. Keith can travel back in time and flutter his eyelids open to childish sleepovers and sweet kisses. He thinks that if he went back to then, he’d say it. Those three words. He’d tell Lance before it ended.

“I didn’t mean to interrogate you,” Lance says slowly. “I…”

Keith lets him continue. There’s clearly more he has to say.

Lance’s mouth twists and closes as he picks and chooses his words. Struggle is evident on his face. Keith wishes to make it easier for him. He knows he’s a tough person to talk to. He wishes he could understand Lance’s mind so that he could help him pull the words out of his mouth.

“I want you to be happy, Keith,” he says, “And I know you say you’re okay. Maybe you are—maybe I just see you wrong. But I want more than okay for you. I want you to be happy and I don’t know if I’m the person who can do that for you.”

His mouth is dry. Lance’s voice hits him like a torrential melody carrying a dissonant message. The words are wholly unexpected, but then again, nearly everything related to Lance catches him off guard.

Keith doesn’t know how to tell him that he’ll probably never be happy.

Satiated, maybe. Alright, maybe. But he’ll always have to settle somewhere . Give up something. There’s no such immeasurable joy for him that’ll come without a catch. Keith has to pay his dues eventually. He’s sure that even his pain now is simply another transaction he’s been late to conduct while he was off frolicking with Voltron and minding his own business with the Blades.

It’s sweet, though, a nice sentiment to hear from Lance. Lance has always been a pleasant person like that, even back in the day when he spoke with such repugnance.

“You’re wrong,” Keith croaks, because he has to say something. Lance is down and it’s because of him. “You do make me happy. Sometimes.”

Lance snorts. “Only sometimes?”

“You’re funny. You always make me laugh.”

“That’s because you’re laughing at me.”

Keith can’t help but slip a small smile at that. He doesn’t let it show. “Maybe.”

He stares at the way Lance’s dark curls gather around his neck and the way shadows divide colors on his skin. He’s beautiful. Lance is so beautiful. From time to time, he’d look at him and be amazed at how such a person could exist. It’s as if the threads of his DNA were intricately extracted from the brightest spiral galaxies. Keith feels this awe now too. It’s unfathomable that someone like him could even be allowed to exist near Lance.

“I’m sorry we fought,” Lance says, “Before you left. I’m sorry I made it such a hassle.”

There’s nothing for Lance to apologize about. His nagging and biting words were structured with logic and need. There was a time when Voltron did need Keith. They couldn’t exist without him, after all. Everything Lance fought for was all for the right reasons. He just didn’t get that it wasn’t worth it—Keith wasn’t worth it. It was a waste of space for him to stay.

“I’m sorry too,” Keith replies earnestly, “I caused a bunch of issues.”

“Nah. That stuff sorted itself out.”

“But I could’ve been nicer.”

Lance gives him a look. “Me too.”

“Okay,” Keith relents. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“Is it nice there?” Lance asks. “With the Blades?”

It could be. It’s everything Keith used to imagine about space—being stuck out away from almost all life, in a cramped and narrow bunk, and with a team he’s at most cordial with. That was what he spent most of his grounded days dedicating himself towards. Space was the most important thing about space. Stars that grew larger and larger, then smaller and smaller. Nebulas contorted into such labyrinthine and elaborate structures that Keith contemplated the possibility of a god who played architect in their free time. He’s come close enough to know it wasn’t the doing of divine intervention; stellar winds and magnetic fields could only be warped by time, space, and nothing else. Rocket engines and speedometers and approaching black holes—these all came as a priority before niceties and lifestyles such as liking the Blades. And then came the war, and that preceded all else.

“It’s nice,” Keith says.

Lance’s responding smile is sinusoidal. “Really?”

“Uh, yeah.”

He leans towards Keith. “Is Kolivan super mean?”

“What?” Keith hadn’t been expecting that question. “He’s normal.”

“Normal?” Lance scrunches his face up.

“Yeah,” he says, “Like Allura.”

Surprise splatters all over Lance’s face like someone has doused him with a bucket of paint. “ Like Allura ?” He squawks. “No way. No, no. I can’t accept that.”

“Why not?” They’re both leaders. They’re both strict. They’re both aliens to them.

“Does Kolivan also guzzle food goo straight out of the nozzle?”

“No.” Keith frowns. Then Lance’s words catch up to him. “Allura does what?”

“She thinks we don’t notice, but we do. I’ve walked in on her doing it at least twice.”

“That’s…” How does he respond to that? Keith can’t even envisage it. Goal-oriented Allura. Serious Allura. He thinks of the girl cheering on the training mats yesterday. The images clash in his mind. “Cool.”

“ Cool ?” Lance parrots. “Let’s see if you’d find it cool if you had to take your meals from the same uh—that.” Lance clears his throat. “What do you—”

“I’m sure I’ve—” He’s cutting Lance off. “Huh?”

Lance drums inconsistent rhythms onto his pajama pants with his fingers. He’s fidgeting. “I was going to ask what you eat at the Blades.”

“Oh.” He struggles to think of a good description. He can’t call them rations; that sounds too miserable and serious. “Something like food goo. But it was a different color—grey. And these crackers. I’m not sure what they were.”

“Do you like it?” Lance whispers.

Keith shrugs. What’s there to like? Food is food. He’s had delectable meals fit for kings and he’s had insipid, dry meals that could hardly constitute as food, and sometimes he had nothing at all. At the homes it was truly a gamble to see what he’d eat—it was like jumping from slot machine to slot machine at the Las Vegas strip. He’d have a meal snatched out of the day for the sake of funneling his foster money towards someone else’s cigarette addiction, only to be packed up and shipped off to another house with foods cooked in unpronounceable sauces served on porcelain dishes. He’s eaten ham sandwiches, knuckle sandwiches, dirt, wagyu beef, unfiltered water, edibles, old burritos, fresh pastries, rotten fruit, and plain air. What’s the difference between space food one and space food two? It’s the same to Keith.

“I suppose.”

“Bring me some,” Lance says, “The next time you visit.”

“Visit?” Keith snorts like the suggestion doesn’t make his heart leapfrog. “Should I just ask Kolivan for a vacation?”

“Maybe he’ll give you paid leave.”

“Lance, I don’t even get a paid stay.”

Lance laughs at that. He’s loud, but his voice doesn’t pierce the air. It floats around like leaves down a stream. Keith could fall asleep to the sound. He finds his eyelids lingering lower and lower. He doesn’t want to sleep, no matter how much he needs it. It could be an easy sleep. A peaceful sleep. There’d be something far more tangible about waking up in Lance’s room rather than his own desolate room that’s stained with memories of hallucinations and the touches of druids.

But he wants to be awake with Lance.

Even if they fight. Even if they don’t even talk, Keith doesn’t want to waste a single second of their time together doing something stupid like sleeping. Rest doesn’t come as a priority when he’s with Lance.

Faint worries cramp up the back of his mind. Is he bringing plague to Lance? What if the druid is haunting him and he’s put the rest of the team in danger? What if he’s a conduit for the druid to pour through and corrupt the castle?

Most of all, he wonders: is this truly real?

It could be death. Just a little bit. The body and mind need something comforting as they drift away. Keith needs a candle to travel through the dark and narrow passage leading him away from life. Here in this room, it burns brighter than ever.

Abruptly, Keith stretches his arm and brushes it against Lance’s face.

Lance blinks. “Huh?”

His skin is so soft. He’s so beautiful. Keith wants to hold him. He lets his hand dawdle.

“Keith?”

He hums in response.

“Are you getting sleepy?”

“No,” he lies.

Lance sighs and leans towards him. It’s easier to reach him this way. Keith finds his hands tangling in his hair. “Have you slept at all, recently?”

“‘m not sure,” he mumbles.

“You comfortable here?”

“Yeah…”

Slowly, as if guided by the hand Keith has connected to his face, Lance lowers himself into the bed. He wrestles with the blankets and throws them over his horizontal form. They’re just laying next to each other under the covers. If Keith is dying then he thinks it might be the best experience ever.

“Scooch,” Lance says, “I’m on the edge of the bed.”

“Okay.” Keith frowns. “Do you really not want me to leave?”

“Never.”

“Oh.” Lance must be telling the truth. He’s always honest, even if it makes him brash or crass, and he certainly doesn’t hold his words back when speaking to Keith. He might truly want Keith to stay.

It buzzes a little bit of the sleep out of Keith’s nerves. He wills himself to feel it more. He wants to be awake. Keith hasn’t had something like this in forever and he knows that their moment might end at any second. An alarm could blare or an attack could invade and then this feeling would be ripped from Keith’s holds, leaving him with only memories. It’s for that’s sake that he rigorously commits Lance’s complexion to mind. He studies the subtle bump along the bridge of his nose and the slight thinness of his downturned lips. He watches the grooves of Lance’s ears spiral inwards and the way his eyelids crease and fold when he blinks. Keith wishes he had some sort of canvas and paint on him to carry a physical copy of this image at all times. He’s not too bad of an artist.  Keith’s sure he could create a semi-accurate drawing of Lance, but he’s empty handed, so he resorts to solely looking.

Keith lets his hand stay close to Lance, just because he hasn’t made him move it. He doesn’t think about what that could entail. All that occurs to him is how close they are.

Lance’s soft breath brushes against his face. It smells like some strange fruit from a faraway planet they once visited. His curls fan against his forehead and his cheek is squished against their shared pillow. Keith has missed this sight.

I miss you , he doesn’t say.  I miss you when I’m away. I miss you when I think this is fiction. I miss you when I remember I’m leaving.

“What are you thinking about?” Lance probes.

“Nothing…”

Lance smiles. “Well I’m thinking about before.”

“Before?”

“When we first became friends. It was just like this.”

Keith recollects the way Lance barged into his room when he was headed to sleep, with no explanations whatsoever save a few baffling words. To think they became friends just like that. And they really were friends. It wasn’t anything muddled like what came after that.

“I remember that,” Keith whispered.

“Are we still friends? Even if we’re not together.”

Keith isn’t sure what together means. Together, to be in the same place? Or together, to sleep in a bed so small that their legs tangle? Together, when they used to taunt and jest, or together when they’d kiss?

“I…” What does Keith say? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if they’re friends, or what Lance thinks of him, or why he’s still allowing Keith’s stay in his room to extend. “Do you want to be friends?”

The question sounds odd rolling off the tongue. It’s not quite what he wants to ask. It’s not exactly what he wants from Lance.

“Y—yeah.” Lance swallows. “Of course. We never stopped. Just because we—because—”

“We fought,” Keith supplies.

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Because of that. That doesn’t make us not friends.”

Neither of them mention what came in between the friendship and the fighting, or what the fight had been about. Keith pushes the reminders of chaste, blood smeared kisses after battles out of his mind. He wills himself to lose the memory of Lance telling him that if he’s better off at the Blades, then he’s better off dropping any future where they could be together. Not together, in friendship, camaraderie, or unnamed affection. Together . Something more than what they didn’t speak of.

And Lance—Keith doesn’t know what Lance does as they face each other, as he wraps a sluggish arm around Keith’s torso, or as he mutters goodnight. Whether he has any hideous memories to burn or regret. It’s an untraceable line of thought leading through such byzantine paths that Keith doesn’t know what to make of. He’s in the dark when it comes to Lance, but at the same time, it is Lance’s hold that is anchoring him from slipping away to somewhere unknown.

Keith wakes to a weight draped over his body.

The suffocation alarms him. He’s been trapped under enough buildings and bulky bodies that his initial assumption is that he passed out mid-battle, but the weight shifts and soft locks tickle the underside of his chin. Long arms are secure around his back. This is Lance.

He’s in Lance’s room.

The trepidation is washed away as guilt floods his body. Keith doesn’t even spare a moment to appreciate the loveliness of the scene he’s opened his eyes to. He doesn’t even let himself feel grateful. Keith freezes, like he’s gotten caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar. Any moment now, the door will burst open and someone will come drag him out. He’s taken advantage of the team’s kindness by now, surely. Why the hell did he run to Lance’s room in the middle of the night? Would he have gone door to door, asking for refuge if he didn’t let him in? Probably—Keith has never been above begging. 

As Keith holds his breath, Lance exhales soundly. His face is tucked next to Keith’s collarbone. It hardly looks comfortable, still Lance all but doesn’t bury his nose deeper like he’s trying to drill a hole towards his heart. Lance is all over him. Keith can feel the rumples and creases of his sleep shirt, and where it rises, he can feel Lance’s skin. By his waistline, his stomach, his shoulders. It feels illegal. Keith is pervading Lance’s space layer by layer. First his room, then his bed, and then him. His greed is disgusting.

Then Keith encounters another realization: he is cold again.

Chills trickle along Keith’s back like icy water is dripping from the ceiling, despite Lance’s proximity to him. It frightens him. His limbs are far from petrified and his fingers can flex and curl without intense effort. Keith is fine—he’s functioning. He can’t help but feel like someone had come by and pinched the candle flame in his chest to smoke while he wasn’t looking. There is an inexorable urge to hide his face in Lance’s hair and will it back. It instills a toilsome sense of ignominy in him.

This isn’t—it’s not—Lance is supposed to make him warm.

These past few days, the only semblance of heat he’s felt has been around Lance. And it hasn’t been some shallow comfort, like soft gloves you wear to play in the snow, only for them to drench cold. Lance’s presence has been hanging over him like a fierce sun. And now there’s—well he’s not exactly chattering, but Keith is cold. He wants a jacket, despite being under a plentiful amount of blankets.

He doesn’t understand what this means.

Keith wants to cry. Why isn’t he getting better?

Fatigue presses him down to the mattress. None of his symptoms currently ache him, but Keith is so tired of this sickness. He wants it to end. Everyone around him is so insistent that his body is healing and adjusting slowly and the pod scans keep coming up clear, but Keith knows better. He knows he’s getting worse.

His self-hatred isn’t so vile and all-consuming that he’s intentionally sabotaging his health. Truthfully, Keith wants to live. He wants to feel better. A small part of him chases the novel aspect of a life after the war, no matter how ludicrous the notion is for a soldier like him. Keith has been stumbling down what he thought was the right path to recovery—he went to breakfast, he tries to sleep, he hasn’t thrown too large of a fit about getting in the pod, and most importantly, he’s next to Lance. That’s what the druid had said—had been: Lance. His illness revolves around him. How else could Keith explain that the only time he’s felt okay has been near the other boy?

Such an easy fix to what’s going to happen to you. All you have to do is tell me what you want. 

That’s it, isn’t it? Is that what he’s missing?

He has to tell Lance…

Would it really work? If he tells him, will he never feel cold again?

The temptation sickens him. The idea that he’s okay with using Lance to make himself feel better is humiliating. He’s past simply being okay with it. He’s already doing it.

What’s he going to tell him?

Hi Lance. The truth is that I’m a lying piece of shit and I want more than your friendship. I want you to want to keep me forever, even if you’ve already let me go. I’m not even telling the truth to come clean. I’m just trying to make myself feel better.

Keith can’t tell him that.

But that is the deep actuality. If he cuts the rotten fruit down to the core, this is what remains. His love, all wrapped in ugly feelings like a present ready to be delivered. This is what the druid wants him to say.

And Keith…

Keith wants to say it too.

No matter how it affects Lance, Keith wants to confess. How sick is that? That he doesn’t even care. No, no—he does care. Keith cares so much. Lance is so precious. Simultaneously, he’s tried to hit him and he’s contemplating disregarding Lance’s feelings. Someone who cares wouldn’t do that, even if they’re sick. Keith has to be better than that.

But he’s so depraved. He’s so ugly. He feels transformation clawing at his organs and rankling and rupturing his muscles. His bones carry decay and his skin sags. It’s all one big chemical reaction that had been brewing inside of Keith and quietly awaiting ignition. And the druid simply came by and started it.

Keith doesn’t want to rot. He hates this slow and frigid death. It’d be better to die swiftly than to be like that. How convenient it would be if a sword just came and sliced his throat right now.

But no—that’s a selfish wish too. Keith has to work. There is a young alien out there he’ll encounter whose life is in danger. Keith will save them. But if he’s dead, then they’ll die too, and that would be his fault. He did that to them, stopped them from living onwards just because he was too self-serving to continue saving others.

Keith finds himself at the crossroads of despair. He finds that no matter what path he takes, there is always something he has to forsake. Choice is an illusion; suffering will come regardless.

How overdramatic. It’s just a cold.

Lance groans and stirs. “Mhm, Keith?”

Keith doesn’t move.

Lance’s eyes flutter a few times as he rouses. “Whatcha up to?”

His tongue is shriveled dry and glued to the top of his mouth. Keith is too afraid to speak for the words he might say could cut deep regret into his heart. It already beats through its wounds from past events that he wishes he could change yet cannot undo.

The question was rhetorical, it seems, because Lance simply rolls further into Keith’s space, effectively cutting off conversation.

Then he does something devastating.

Lance presses a chaste kiss against the hollow of Keith’s neck and mumbles, “I missed you.”

Keith can’t breathe.

Lance weighs down on him like an anchor dragging him to the sea floor. He has the sudden impulse to shove him to the ground, but Lance’s soft, sleep-woken expression looks too serene to snap. And Keith can’t hurt him—or anything that looks like him.

“How did you sleep?” He asks, unaware of Keith’s panic.

This can’t be real. It’s just like yesterday morning, when he woke up to a fabrication of Pidge hovering over him. She had taunted and chided him, only to vanish. Now he wakes up to Lance holding him in bed, Lance kissing him, and Lance saying such nice things. Will he vanish, too?

Keith vividly remembers falling asleep here, so it has to be different. There’s something concrete to what’s happening. He’s not going to blink and wake up alone or blink and wake up elsewhere. But there are chills clinging to his body and Lance’s mouth was just on him—which is impossible—and come to think of it, he still doesn’t know how he got here last night. Keith couldn’t even move his body. He couldn’t even lift a finger from all the cold. How the hell would he have made it to Lance’s room? Crawling is a stretch and walking is out of the question. All the spots where he should have memories of stumbling down the Castle Ship hallways are hollow and blank.

Keith is so stupid. Why did he trust his senses when that has been the one thing failing him time and time again? He saw Lance’s pretty face and felt one ounce of summer sun and he immediately surrendered to his daydreams.

Now he’s cold. He’s cold again, just like he was on that druid ship.

An idea occurs to him. 

Keith might be dead.

Corpses are cold, aren’t they? Especially out in space.

Keith has never held any religious superstitions about a life after death. The possibilities of outcomes are infinite. Ideas like metempsychosis and an afterlife have only been fleeting subjects of his mind. Even when Keith has been pushed closer and closer towards the grave, the questions circling him revolve more so on the whats and the hows . How will death snatch him? What will be the thing to finally do him in?

A druid isn’t an improbable killer. In fact, it is more likely that it’s had its way with Keith and has finally expelled him. Perhaps boredom from his pathetic misery has compelled it to throw Keith out. There’s no reason for a druid to keep a flimsy blade member alive—Keith’s no longer a limb of Voltron. There’s no relevance to his existence, at least not to the empire. Most likely, the druid had ensured that he was shipped back to Voltron for the sake of checking whether any lion still responded to him. When they didn’t, it had no more use for Keith, so it let him die.

Keith must’ve died in his sleep, then.

That makes the most sense. It explains how he got here and why Lance is being so sweet to him. His eyes hardly hold any of the contempt they did when Keith left. It’s because this is the reality that Keith wishes for. Death is an eternal slumber and it is only through that that Keith can live his dreams. Of course the only way a war could be kind to him is by taking his life.

Tears well up in Keith’s eyes.

He doesn’t want to be dead. Not if it’s this—if his plagues follow him into the afterlife. He doesn’t want to have such a hopeless existence that the one nice thing he’s recently gotten has only been a result of his passing. Keith thinks about how beautiful Lance looked last night. Was that just a welcome gift from death’s door?

Keith doesn’t want to be dead. He wants to escape.

He wants out.

 Lance notices the tears clinging to his lashes. “Hey, what’s wrong?” It’s only after that does he take a look at their tangled limbs. He works fast to pry himself away from Keith and Keith has to resist chasing his hold. “Shit, I’m so sor—”

“I love you,” Keith blurts out. His breathing is ragged.

Lance gapes.

It all tumbles out of his chest. Keith throws up his heart right there on the bed. It is bloody and dirty. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m in love with you.”

Nothing happens.

Nothing changes.

“Keith?”

“I’m so sorry,” Keith heaves, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Vomit rises up his throat like a turbine has started churning in his stomach. Keith can’t throw up on Lance’s bed, even if the setting belongs to a post-mortem reality. He scrambles over the alarmed boy and topples onto the floor. His landing is painful for such a short fall; his knee strikes the ground and shoots pain up his joints while his hands slip instead of catching him. Keith’s face smashes against the floor. To his dismay, there is a dribble of spit travelling from the corner of his mouth. He hurriedly wipes it away. The churning in his stomach doesn’t stop. If anything, it quickens.

“It’s okay, Keith. Don’t be—Just—”

Keith can’t even look at him. It’s not even the real-life Lance and he still can’t meet his eyes.

“Keith, can you please come here?”

He stays on the floor. What’s the point of listening? The point had always been to stay alive. To survive, day by day. But now that he’s dead, all action becomes futile. Eating, sleeping, playing, and talking are activities for animals with a beating heart.

He cautiously brings a trembling hand up to his chest. There’s no resonation. He reaches for his pulse point—he can’t feel anything there either.

Keith tries to reason with himself: it’s not because he’s dead, it’s only because his hands are too shaky and cold to feel anything. He’s too terrified to have a monitor check it and see a flat line. Keith feels around his chest, neck, and wrist once more. He even makes sure to take deep, long breaths. It’s silent inside of him.

He starts to cry in earnest.

“Hey, woah!” Lance leaps off the bed and comes to his knees next to Keith. “What’s wrong?”

“My heartbeat!”  Keith wails. “It’s gone . It’s not there—I can’t—I can’t feel it anymore!”

“What are you talking about?”

He doesn’t know why he’s even responding to a figment of his imagination, but he’s too distraught to care. “I’m not—it’s not—” Keith clutches at his hair and screams.

Lance’s hands have been cautiously hovering around him, but at that they close around his wrists. “You’re going to hurt yourself, please!”

“Who cares! I’m dead!”

“What?”

“I’m dead,” he spits out again, “I’m gone. My heart isn’t beating. My body is cold.”

“What are you saying?” Lance asks. “Keith, you’re worrying me. I can feel your pulse, you—”

Keith rips Lance’s hands off him. “What can you feel? You’re not even real !”

His harsh actions register in his head. How could he fling away Lance’s gentle touch so rashly? What if that hurt him? Keith quickly picks up Lance’s hand again to inspect it for injuries.

“Sorry,” he babbles, “I’m so sorry, Lance. I’m always hurting you. Even when I’m dead, I hurt you. I’m no good, Lance.”

“ Keith ,” Lance cries, “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Is something hurting you? Are you in pain? I called your brother—maybe he can help you out better.”

It doesn’t matter who was called. The druid gave him false hope about escaping his curse. Either Keith was too late to confess or the confession wasn’t even a real cure, because he’s deteriorated completely. Nothing will fix him.

Idly, Keith ponders what a space funeral would be like. He’s never been to one—all deceased blade operatives have died in the line of duty and all of their bodies have been left behind. Maybe since he passed in Voltron’s care, they’d host a nice memorial in his name. He doesn’t know how they would dispose of his body. A cremation sounds the most lucrative—the team is too sentimental to toss his body out of the airlock and it’d be too depressing to keep a corpse on the space ship. Keith wonders if his funeral has already happened.

He considers asking Lance, before remembering that this isn’t that Lance. This isn’t the one mourning him in real life. It’s the replacement copy that’s stuck with him in this weird afterlife.

Even if this Lance is hollow, Keith still pities him for waking up to this unwarranted situation.

“Sorry,” Keith croaks, “I was the wrong person to care about.”

“No, Keith. Don’t say that about yourself. I—”

“I know you cared,” Keith says, “Even if it wasn’t like that. Your heart—” Keith places his hands on Lance’s chest. He feels the steady thump for every second of silence inside of his own ribcage. “Your heart is so big. It’s full of so much love. I’m sorry you wasted it on a dead man walking.”

“ Wasted ?” Lance chokes out.

He brushes Keith’s hair out of his face. “Don’t say that about yourself. Keith, I don’t know what’s happening to you, but we’ll figure it out together. Don’t be too mean to yourself. You’re not a waste, you’re not hurtful, and I could never regret caring about you.”

Death is so sweet to him. Why had Keith ever been scared of it?

“Promise?” Keith rasps. “You promise?”

“ Of course .” Lance looks so torn. The furrow between his eyebrows is so deep it could be a ravine. Keith wants to put his mouth on it. He wants to kiss him gently between his brows and erode the tension away.

“Even though I’m dead, you promise you’ll still care? You won’t forget me?”

“Keith, you’re not—”

When the immediate answer isn’t a yes, Keith lets out a guttural sob. “ Please ,” he cries, “Please, you can’t—I was your—don’t forget me, Lance. I’m sorry if it makes you sad, but don’t let me go.”

“I—”

“I was in Voltron ,” Keith barrages on with more pleas. “Doesn’t that make me enough to remember? Doesn’t that make me big? Please I don’t—you can’t take away the one thing stopping me from vanishing completely.”

Lance shakes his head. “Keith, I could never forget you.”

“Good,” he sighs, “I was worried. I hardly existed outside of that and now I don’t exist at all—it lied to me, can you believe that? It told me that if I told you—if I said what I wanted, that I’d be fixed. It lied. My love is broken.”

“Who lied to you?” Lance shakes his shoulder. “Keith? Who said that?”

“Maybe I didn’t love you enough. But that’s impossible—I think about you all the time—it could be that I just love wrong . It must be. My mind’s focused on all the wrong things and I’m too angry.”

There’s a commotion at the door. Voices float around the periphery of the room. Keith’s vision is too hazy to make out who’s there.

“I’m so tired, Lance,” he mumbles, “Can you hold me? I don’t think…I’m not…”

Akira Kogane sits on the couch in his living room as he does every night, waiting for his father to come home from work.

The Jaws movie plays on the old box TV across from him. He’s technically not supposed to watch adult movies, but the nonsense cartoon playing before had ended an hour ago. Akira knows better than to go behind his dad’s back to watch bloody movies, but he also knows how to quickly turn off the television and feign sleep when the doorknob rattles. His father is always too exhausted when he comes home to pay any mind to minor details like these. He just scoops Akira up with his strong arms and tucks him into the twin bed in their shared room.

Akira watches Alex Kintner get devoured on screen with an enraptured focus. There’s an awful lot of blood splashing around the ocean, but it doesn’t disturb him. He knows it’s fake. He’s old enough not to fall for movie effects.

The microwave chimes. Ding! That’s Akira’s dinner—he hops off the couch and sprints to the kitchen. It’s a short distance but he needs to be quick. He can’t miss what the shark does next. Akira reaches on his tip-toes to open the microwave. His silly dad kept it on top of the fridge—who keeps a microwave on top of a fridge? He told Akira that it’s to help him grow taller. Well, he’s not any taller and he nearly spills his hot mac and cheese on his way to place it on the counter. The plastic container is flimsy and burns his fingers to hold. When Akira finally puts it down, his finger tips are red.

He cranes his neck to see what’s happening on screen. A woman is pacing on the shore. Akira wonders if she’ll die next. He hopes his dad comes home a bit later than usual so that he can see everything unfold without having to search up movie clips on YouTube.

Oh—his dad’s dinner! Akira completely forgot. He hurries back to the open microwave to extract another hot container of mac and cheese. Except this one is too scalding and it slips right out of his fingers and splats on the wooden floor.

“Shit,” Akira blurts out. He whips his head around to see if anyone caught his foul language, before remembering he’s home alone. He’s not out in town where he would get dirty looks and his dad isn’t home to make him sit in the corner.

“Shit,” he says again, a little gleefully, just because he can. “Shit, shit, shit —”

Akira remembers the fallen mac and cheese and looks down. Gooey pasta elbows are scattered all around his feet. None of them landed on him, thankfully. Some have splattered all the way under a few cabinets. The little box is face down on the floor.

He glances at the door and really hopes that his father doesn’t walk through the door any moment.

Unease gnaws at his stomach. What should Akira do? That was their last box of mac and cheese. They have a few packs of the frozen broccoli alfredo, but his dad doesn’t even like that! And neither does Akira; the sauce is too runny. He doesn’t want to heat up another thing. And there’s the other problem—he can’t simply scoop up the mac and cheese and throw it in the trash. His dad is going to see that he wasted food and he’s not going to have any dinner. Akira could throw the dish outside and cover it with sand and pretend that it was his own meal that he finished, but what if a coyote comes after him? Again? His dad said he could easily fight one off, but he’s not too sure.

Akira eyes the mac and cheese on the floor. There’s still steam rising from it.

What’s the difference between the food in the box and the food on the floor? A man screams on the TV. He’s missing more and more of the movie. Akira really doesn’t want to waste more time with extra chores like cooking and throwing trash outside.

Slowly, he lowers himself to the ground.

The first handful of mac and cheese Akira scoops up is warm and slimy. The texture is gross but hey—it smells great. He brings it cautiously towards his mouth. Akira knows he’s doing something wrong. He knows . He’s watching an adult movie and he cursed and now he’s eating mac and cheese off of the floor. His dad is going to be so mad at him if he finds out.

Akira better eat quickly.

He takes the first bite with trepidation. It tastes…like mac and cheese. It’s just like regular mac and cheese. What does he know, there’s no extra seasonings added by the floor. What did Akira expect?

He speeds up after that. Akira uses both hands to shovel mac and cheese into his mouth. He’s making a bit of a mess, but the kitchen floor is already dirty. Any time a stray pasta piece falls away from his lips, he’s quick to pick it up and eat it immediately.

From this angle, Akira can’t see the door. He keeps his ears alert for the familiar rattle. On screen, the Jaws theme gets louder and louder. He thinks about getting up and lowering the volume, but his hands are coated in cheese sauce. Maybe he should wash them off, but then he’d get cheese sauce all over the faucet handle too. Akira decides to lick his hands clean.

He really likes mac and cheese. He likes it enough that he doesn’t even mind that he’s eating it off the floor. As long as he doesn’t get in trouble, he’ll be okay.

The Jaws theme is blaring through the shack now. That must mean that the shark is about to do something—Akira can’t miss it. He darts into the living room.

“...is unresponsive…have to…”

What?

Akira turns towards the bedroom door. What was that noise?

On screen, a scuba diver just found a severed head underwater. Where did that come from? Akira doesn’t get it, but he lets his attention be captured by the frantic action. He hopes the shark shows up again soon.

“Maybe he’s confused…”

“No, I’m telling you Hunk! He was completely out of it.”

Okay, he definitely heard someone’s voice just now. Multiple voices, all coming from inside his bedroom.

Akira freezes and strains his ears. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring bullets into their closed bedroom door. There’s nothing much he can hear over the television. Occasionally, his ears will catch onto a stray noise—their ticking clock, the howling wind, the thrum of the generator—but he doesn’t hear a distinct voice again.

Akira settles his gaze back on the TV. What the hell is going on now? Brody is arguing with that dumb mayor again, and—the mac and cheese on the floor! How could he forget? The sticky remnants of cheese are drying on Akira’s hands.

He toes over to the kitchen, careful not to step on any food. The scene has hardly changed, except for the number of pastas having reduced. Akira meticulously piles the remaining ones into one palm and then throws it into his mouth all at once like he’s popping some pills. It occurs to him then that he could’ve used a spoon.

“And he’s not getting better…”

“...don’t say…”

The murmuring is back. It’s fainter this time and it’s not coming from the bedroom. The sound almost feels like it’s travelling around him like a loyal moon. It continues, rising and falling in volume like a bellowing police siren travelling across the road. At times he can make out the words but at other times, the voices turn to gibberish that blends in with the movie and the wind.

Akira doesn’t like it.

“Who’s there?” He calls out with a shaky voice.

He’s not scared of any people breaking into the shack. He’s not. Plenty of stoners have come by their place, thinking of it as some abandoned smoke spot, only to have been shooed off by him and his father. And besides, Akira knows where his dad keeps the gun. He knows how to use it; although, he’s never shot a person before.

“You don’t know the type of shit he was saying, okay? He thought he was dead!”

That voice comes quick and sharp from Akira’s right side. He jolts up like he’s been electrocuted. That almost sounded like it came from the cabinet right next to him. He stares at its wooden door. It looks innocuous and unsuspecting. Last Akira checked, they used that to store pots and pans. How would it fit a person? He doesn't even think he’s small enough to fit in it himself.

And when would someone have hid in it? He has been crouched here for a bit. It’d have to be while he was watching the movie or when he looked towards the bedroom. Surely, he would’ve heard a racket then.

If there are people in his house, then does that mean that they’re seeing him watching Jaws and cursing and eating mac and cheese off the floor?

“It’s not…we…”

“...don’t have to do that…”

The voices are further this time. They sound from the living room—Akira won’t let them escape and hide. He’ll catch them this time.

He leaps out from behind the counter dividing the two rooms. He’s fast—he gets to the living room in one large step.

It’s empty.

“What the hell?” Akira mutters, before cupping a hand over his mouth. Oh no . He cursed. His hands are still cheesy. He wipes the mess on his face with his t-shirt.

Did they hide behind the couch? But no—there’s no one there either.

Panic balloons up in Akira’s chest. He wants his dad to come home. Even if he gets in trouble, he wants him here. He lied before; Akira is scared. He’s scared to investigate, to grab the gun, or venture outside. He’s scared to call the authorities because he knows they’ve always held some grudge against his dad, despite the fact that he works in the fire department. Akira knows that they call him a man-whore , whatever that means. He just knows that it’s mean and he doesn’t want them to call him that too.

“Dad?” Akira calls out. Maybe this is an elaborate prank to teach him a lesson about doing something he’s not supposed to. “Daddy?”

Suddenly, the shark jumps on screen, mouth open all wide and bloody. Akira falls to the floor with a cry. His heartbeat is pounding in his ears and he slaps his palms over them. He watches as large teeth chomp like crazy. A lot of blood sloshes towards the camera and Akira flinches like it’s going to bespatter him.

A character is screaming. But instead of calling for help, he says, “How is this going to keep him warm? Is this an incubator?”

That doesn’t seem like the lines for the movie.

“Holy shit—that’s burning! Is this okay for humans?”

“It’s a temporary solution.”

“—princess, I think Lance should stay with him.”

“He’s—”

Akira watches in shock as the TV box speaks to him. The movie continues playing—someone just died—but the audio continues to crackle through the television speakers. It speaks over the soundtrack and the bloodshed. Akira doesn’t know what to make of it.

“What if he dies?”

“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”

“God, I wish—we should’ve checked up on him more.”

“It’s not like he’s irresponsible. He’s an astronaut as much as we are.”

“But he’s—uman—we’re still a team. He’s a part of it.”

“Keith, can you please wake—”

There’s an insistent banging on his front door.

Akira freezes.

“El Paso County Police, open up!”

Akira looks at the television and then at his messy hands. Police? How did they know what he was doing?

“Is anyone home?” A flashlight pierces through the little window nestled in the door.

He doesn’t know what to do. The police have never showed up when he’s home alone; usually his father answers the door for any business while he lurks around the corner. Is Akira allowed to be home alone? He’s sure Texas has some laws about seven year olds and supervision. He can’t get his dad in trouble.

“...think there’s some kid inside.”

They saw him. They saw Akira. He quickly turns off the television in case they can see that too and hesitantly approaches the door. Even if the police arrest him, hopefully they can do something about the people talking in the TV.

Akira pries the door open with slippery hands. “Hello?” He calls out.

“Hello, my name is County Officer Fred Rogers and I’m here to announce the passing of Fire Lieutenant Texas Kogane.”

The two men outside are so tall. Their heads nearly touch the door frame. “Huh?” Akira asks.

County Officer Fred Rogers kneels down. The other man remains standing. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Akira,” he says slowly.

“Well, Kira,” the officer says, “I’ve got some bad news for you. Your—”

“Am I getting arrested?” Akira blatters.

“What?” He draws back. “No, your dad is dead.”

 “What?”

Fred Rogers speaks like it struggles him. “Are you—are you Texas Kogane’s son?”

Akira nods his head. He still doesn’t get why they’re here, if not to arrest him. If they wanted something from his dad, then maybe they should’ve waited till he got home. It’s not terrible timing on the officer’s behalf; Akira’s dad is usually home by now, relaxing on the couch with dinner and a beer. He supposes today is their unlucky day.

“Your dad,” he says slowly, “Was a hero. He died in a fire tonight.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Akira talks to them like they’re a pair of idiots. “My dad doesn’t die in fires. He stops people from dying in fires.”

Akira looks between the two officers to see if they understand. They know what a firefighter is, right? They should—they’re cops. It’s their job to know a whole bunch of things.

“He—”

The standing officer nudges him. “Look son, I’m sorry. Your dad died while saving someone. There was a big fire and he didn’t make it out of there. He saved lots of folks tonight, but he’s not coming home.”

He’s not coming home? “But what about the mac and cheese?”

“Sorry?”

“His mac and cheese,” Akira insists. “His dinner! I made it, I—” He almost mentions how he ate food off of the floor just so that his dad could eat a fresh meal.

“Is that what’s on your hair?” Fred Rogers reaches a hand out to brush some drying cheese out of his hair. Akira hadn’t even noticed that it was there. “It’s all over your mouth too. Kid, what were you doing?”

“I…”

What was he doing? Making food for someone who’s not making it home? Running around chasing voices? Eating from the ground? Akira is so weird and gross. This is why the folks down in town always give him and his dad nasty looks. They already give his dad problems for not having a wife and now he has to deal with a crazy son looking like a mess in front of strangers. Police officers at that too! His dad’s going to be so mad at him. Akira can already imagine it. He’ll walk through the door and shrug off his heavy fireman jacket and say, Son, I heard something about you today. You wanna tell me about it? Oh, he’s going to be so pissed off. He’s not even going to let Akira put chocolate chips in his cereal tomorrow morning. He—

His dad’s not coming home. None of that is happening.

“Dad?” Akira asks.

“Sorry kid.”

The standing officer kicks Fred Rogers. “Give him a hug!” He hisses.

“He’s covered in cheese!” He whispers back. “Why don’t you hug him?”

“Because he’s covered in cheese! I don’t—”

Their argument halts when Akira starts crying.

“But why won’t he come home?” He asks. “He always comes home.”

“Uh, do you have a mom or something—”

“His—his beer is still in the fridge! And his food’s getting cold. And—” Akira blubbers. “We’re supposed to go hiking on Saturday. What about that? And he even bought salami from the store so we could make sandwiches together on his day off. That’s tomorrow! Will—Can’t he come back for that?”

The officer frowns. He doesn’t hug him, but he at least pats his back. “Do you…know what it means to die?”

“Yes,” Akira snivels. He knows. He watched the people die in the Jaws movie. Of course he knows.

“It means— shit. ” The officer bows his head. “How do you even explain this?” He whispers to his colleague.

“Just take the kid in. Some social worker can take care of the details.”

“I didn’t expect to see a kid!”

“Yeah well, me neither.”

Abruptly, Akira throws up.

Chunks of mac and cheese splatter all over the front steps. Some spill onto the sandy dirt to the sides. Snot dribbles from his nose and when he wipes his nose with the back of his hands, he finds that it’s harder to breathe with all the sauce on his face. It’s hard to breathe in general and the only thing that might make it better is his dad. Akira’s dad would tell him, chin up, soldier , and gently wipe the mess away.. But he’s not here to do that.

“No!” Akira shrieks. The food—he can’t waste food! He can’t have eaten all that mac and cheese off the floor just to throw it up. Then his efforts were pointless. “ No ,” he sobs again. He can’t stop crying.

“I think he’s waking up.”

Keith opens his eyes to a blindingly bright room. It looks nothing like the yard out front of the shack or any part of the Chihuahuan Desert. His face feels clear and his hands aren’t sticky. The bed he’s laying in is white and far more softer than the stiff mattress he’s slept in for seven whole years. Is he in the hospital? He doesn’t remember blacking out in front of those officers.

He looks at the person closest to him. His vision is blurry and it refuses to clear up even when he squints.

“Dad?” He asks.

The person becomes more clear. It’s a large man with deep brown skin and a square face. His eyes are reddened. It’s not his dad, but—Keith frowns. Does he know this man?

“Where’s my dad?” Keith asks. “I left his dinner out. Where is he?”

“Does he recognize us?” Someone murmurs.

“Keith,” the man next to him speaks gently. “Do you know who I am?”

Keith? Oh, his American name. The hospital always picked that one over Akira. It’s funny—he didn’t even know he had an American name until he got put in the—he—

Where is his dad? What happened to him? Where is Keith ?

“No, I don’t.” Keith struggles to sit up. “But my dad—is he okay? The police officers said—”

“Hunk, why don’t you sit down?” An even taller man pries him away from the bedside and takes his place. “Do you know me?”

“You’re pilot Takashi Shirogane,” he says, “But how—”

“We’re br—friends,” he says, “We’ve been worried for you. You haven’t been waking up and we’ve been trying to reach you for a long time.”

“Reach me?” Keith slurs. “But I’m right here…”

The next time Keith wakes up, he remembers.

He’s in space. He’s absolutely nowhere near the desert shack. He’s nowhere close to being seven years old. And his dad has been long dead.

That night had been ages ago. His dream had completely replicated it, aside from the foggy voices that must’ve been his subconscious picking up on his surroundings. Those anguished words—they must’ve been from his worried teammates.

A steadfast beeping rings through the room he’s in. The pitch is low but frequent. When Keith opens his eyes, he finds that he’s in the med bay. He’s not in the pod like he had been the last two times. And he’s not—Keith looks to the monitor tracking his vitals—dead. At least it doesn’t look like it. The image he’s been thrust into is that of an alive human.

His body is sluggish and lethargic. When Keith tries to wiggle his fingers, they don’t move. There’s a level of disconnect between his mind and his limbs. When he tries to lift himself from the bed, his body doesn’t comply. He’s only able to do miniscule actions, like blinking and breathing. Even that comes with effort.

Well, Keith certainly isn’t dead, but he’s not sure what life pertains to if he’s restricted to being bedridden. Disability isn’t a death sentence, but Keith’s ability is his whole use and purpose. Flying and fighting are half of his existence; Keith doesn’t know what he’d do if he couldn’t do those things. It’s very likely that, since he’s not getting better, he’s going to live as a vegetable for the rest of his short life. He’ll shrivel, rot, and eventually decay. For Keith to be sick like this and stay sustained, he’d need a caretaker, which is certainly not happening. His chances of getting taken care of would be low even if on Earth  and is absolutely negligible in this war. Would the members of Voltron take shifts babysitting him while the rest are out fighting? Would the Blades? The idea is laughable.

It grieves Keith to think about his immobility, so he turns to other pathways of thoughts. He thinks about how he’s alive despite being so convinced he had passed. He thinks about how much time has passed and how much time he’s wasted since he passed out. Everything appears so clearly now, like he’s looking at a torrential storm from far away. Keith can imagine that he gave the team quite a scare. And Lance—

Oh god.

He confessed to Lance.

Keith told him that he loves him.

Disgrace bubbles within him. It’s a hot feeling, but not a pleasant one. Keith’s egregious gaucheries have never surprised him; tactlessness is a trait that has practically been embedded into his character. Mistakes have been woven into his actions with such precision that one might assume Keith is intentionally horrific.

There’s nothing terrible about love. Keith is not so wounded that he finds all love spear-sharp and sinister. He loves love when Hunk presents blueprints for refugee centers with a smile on his face. He adores it when Shiro ruffles his hair and is then irritated when the gesture is returned. He finds it amazing to watch Pidge, Allura, and Coran play a card game that the rest of them can’t even decipher. He loves it when he can hear Lance singing in the shower from halfway across the Castle Ship. Keith enjoys babysitting the mice and watching them do tricks for him and he likes when it’s his turn to feed Kalternecker and they take turns moo-ing at each other. It’s so pleasant to see all these scraps of emotions float around the castle: hope, eagerness, anger, glee, spite, despair, numbness, cheer, tranquility, joy, and shock. They all come together to forge such a beautiful thing. And that’s so cheesy of Keith to think, but he still believes in a love like that.

He believes it exists.

Whether Keith is a part of it or not, he’s not too sure. He probably was. He probably sabotaged it when he left and absolutely burned the severing remains of their connections when he came back like a lunatic.

Leaving changed things. It always does; Keith isn’t so callow to be deceived by promises of permanence. He’s sure they’re made with sincerity, but just like the edge of a blade, the sentiment it comes with dulls over time. Keith remembers one boy from a foster home whom he’d play with every single day. Hardly a moment was spent apart, but when the time came for Keith to leave, they never spoke again. The team waved him off to the Blades with teary eyes and smiles and Keith believes the waterworks. Keith doesn’t expect anything like that again. He’s positive that the gap he’s left in Voltron has long bridged over. There’s no space for him to throw around a term like I love you .

Regret buries itself in his gut like an arrow has struck him deep. Keith wishes he said it before he left.

If Keith told Lance, or the whole team for that matter, about his unending love for them, then maybe coming back would be more meaningful. Even if he came back sick. It could’ve mattered more.

Most of all, Keith wishes he hadn’t said it in vain. His words were a shallow and futile attempt to save his own skin. There was nothing valuable about his feelings at that moment. There was only hurt.

Footsteps pad into the med bay. Keith closes his eyes.

“—and you’re sure this is a viable solution?”

“Temporary, but yes. While the charts hardly change, he seems in less distress when he’s closer to you.”

“...okay, princess.”

A chair is dragged out close to his bed. He hears a deep sigh as someone settles into it. Keith already knows who it is.

“Hey, Keith,” Lance says.

He sounds morose, like someone has extracted his spirit and crushed it up with a mallet. Keith has to repress the urge to jump up and apologize. It’s his fault Lance is  down. Although, he doesn’t think he’d be able to move or shape his mouth around the words. It exhausts him to even think about attempting it.

“I don’t really know what to talk to you about. You got yourself into a hell of a situation. Caught us all off guard. I think it caught you off guard too. You looked confused all the time. Confused and sad. I assumed it came with the sickness and I wasn’t wrong. But still, I should’ve kept a better eye out for you. We all should’ve.”

Lance laughs to himself. “Just a fever , huh?”

“We’re literally humans—how did we not detect that this was something worse? I should’ve known, that day at breakfast, that something was terribly wrong. Instead I said some bullshit out of my ass and left. What the fuck?”

It’s unbearable to watch Lance blame himself over things that aren’t his fault. Keith wants to comfort him so bad, but he doesn’t even know what words he’d say if he could.

“I don’t know why I’m saying all this. I just can’t stop talking to you,” he says.

Lance has yet to bring up his confession; the fact is a double edged sword. Keith doesn’t want to be reminded of such a shameful moment by the one person whose opinion on it matters the most. At the same time, he needs to know what Lance thinks. 

“I missed you a lot,” Lance says, “I really missed you when you were at the Blades. It’s not the same without you. It’s worse. It always feels like something is missing, you know? A part of me. I mean, I guess we did share the body of a semi-sentient space robot, but it’s more than that.”

Lance holds his hand. He encloses it between both of his smooth palms.

“I didn’t want you to go,” he whispers, “Space is so big. If you went away, it really could be forever. And you looked like you wanted that. To go away forever, I mean.”

“That’s selfish of me,” Lance continues, “Who am I to tell you what to do? Especially when the Blades are your one chance of finding out more about yourself. Who am I to deny you of that? And they’re good too. They’re good allies who are sincere in their work. I can tell from speaking to any of them. They wouldn’t be deserving of you if they weren’t as diligent as you are, anyways.”

Keith shouldn’t be hearing this—it sounds personal. But at the same time, he can’t speak. All he can do is flutter his eyelids.

Keith opens his eyes to find Lance slouched over the bed with his head bowed down. He’s…crying. Keith hadn’t even noticed.

“What’s happening to you?” He asks. “Why you?”

“Grghrh—” Keith responds.

“ Keith ?” Lance stands in shock. “You’re awake?”

He can only croak back. Lance spins around to wipe the tears off of his face and grab a water bottle. He uncaps the lid and freezes, as if unsure of how to proceed.

Lance looks awful.

Ghoulish circles have been painted around his eyes. His hair is frizzy and his skin is pale. He looks sick.

He leans over Keith and secures his hand behind his head. Slowly, he tilts Keith’s head forward until he’s mildly upright. It sores his back to remain forward, but Keith finds that when he relaxes into Lance’s hold, there is less of a struggle.

“Drink,” Lance instructs. He holds the water bottle to his mouth.

Keith drinks slowly. A lot of the water simply falls from his lips and puddles around his shirt and the blankets. He doesn’t let that deter him. He’s parched. Keith tries to take in as much as possible before the task exhausts him. When he’s done, Lance puts the water bottle down and wipes Keith’s chin. Slowly, he lowers his head back down.

“Don’t thank me,” Lance says before Keith can even open his mouth.

He frowns in protest. What else is there to do except be grateful?

“I…” Keith is surprised to even be able to use his voice, even if half the sounds he’s trying to produce are missing or muted. “What happened?” He rasps.

“You passed out a few days back. The reports showed malnutrition and fever. Coran has created a placebo environment to trick your body into not fighting itself. Don’t ask me how that works. I don’t know. You’ve been hooked up to crazy amounts of pain relievers. And food. Also food.”

“Oh…”

That explains why Keith has been so out of it. Have his ailments been human issues this whole time? He’s run the malnutrition and fever combination a few times in his childhood when he was with foster parents who hadn’t had the slightest idea how a child’s health works. Maybe it’s because he’s in space that his symptoms are more severe.

The logic seems too perfect to be true.

It implies that Keith is going to get better, but he doesn’t feel like he’s getting better at all. Even lying in this recovery bed is only one level above how he felt the last time he was sane and conscious.

“Keith, what did that druid do to you?” Lance asks.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Did it tell you anything?”

Even recollecting his memories of that mission makes his vision dim. Keith gulps. “It killed Kya and pretended to be her. I don’t know how. It was a trap. It led me right to it.”

Keith remembers the frantic chase after, where it had been Lance’s voice he’d been running from. He doesn’t know how to tell him the extent of how much the druid has woven Lance into his trauma.

He decides to rip the bandage right off. “And then it became you.”

“Me?”

Keith studies Lance’s expression. He’s surprised, but he looks like he’s trying his hardest to school it. Poor boy. He’s far too expressive of a person to be able to master stoicism.

“Yeah.” Keith swallows. “It went through my mind and picked you. It talked like you really well, uh, sorry about that. I guess it was trying to hurt me badly. Or play. I think it was having fun.”

Lance stays silent. Listening.

Keith suddenly feels exposed, like he’s been stripped of all blankets and clothes and forced to walk barefoot through an icy tundra. The content of the druid’s mocking words run through his mind.

The attention is too much. Keith wants to hide.

“It told me—” The struggle must be evident on his face. “You told me—”

“It’s okay, Keith,” Lance says, “Take it easy.”

“Lance,” Keith whispers. It’s the easiest thing to say.

“It told me to tell you what I want,” Keith confesses, “That only then would I get better.”

There.

That should paint the whole picture. Or enough of it for Lance to connect the dots.

“What do you want?” Lance asks.

Isn’t it obvious? Hasn’t Keith’s heart been bared enough?

It didn’t work the first time he said it, but maybe that was circumstantial. Maybe in all of Keith’s paranoia, his words and wants had lost its meaning.

Lance waits patiently for him. Lance might know the words that are coming and still he asks Keith to say them again. He hasn’t shunned him away yet.

Keith watches the deep blue of Lance’s eyes. They’re so pretty even in the artificial lighting. He’s so pretty. I love you , Keith thinks, before he opens his mouth to speak.

“I want—”

Alarms start blaring and the room is immediately cast in a red glow. The ruckus overshadows his words.

“Paladins!” Allura announces over the speakers. “There are intruders in the castle!”

Chapter Text

Lance first kisses him in the kitchen late at night.

The act is a blunder.

Soft, yellow lights line the edges of the kitchen ceiling. It casts the room in a sandy glow and washes the harshness out of all shadows. With such low contrast, all objects seem monochrome. Even Lance is painted golden—his tan skin is gleaming and his brown hair shines bright with wiry strands bejeweled. If Keith squints, he looks entirely radiant.

He watches Lance methodically dice up Yuvrian gotto-tree roots on a messy cutting board. The vegetable is juicy and leaks beet-pink fluids everywhere. The table is stained, the board is stained, and even Keith’s hands are stained from his initial attempt to chop the vegetable. Trickles of juice run down the planes of Lance’s arms. Sometimes he pauses cutting to lick it from his skin before it travels too far. Other times, he lets it drip and plop onto the floor.

“You’re making a mess,” Keith points out, “Let me help.”

“Nope.”

“Please, Lance. I’m literally the knife guy.”

Lance whirls around with the knife clenched in his hand. The sight is atrocious; the vegetable smeared blade is drenched so dark that its coat looks red and there are finger-print stains all over his shirt from the countless times he’s wiped his hands on them. Lance is a walking murder scene.

He’s unbothered by his appearance. “Is Keith Kogane using manners?” He drawls. “Who are you?”

“Sorry, I don’t give my name to people who belong to a true crime story.”

Lance cackles. He tips his head back so far that Keith can’t even see his face. There’s only the curve of chin and the slender ridges of his adam's apple. Lance’s shoulders shake when he laughs, Keith notices. This is not a new observation.

“Will you quiet down, you fucking seagull?”

This compels Lance to laugh even more. He’s hysterical—Keith didn’t even say anything funny. Keith looks around for anyone lurking by the doorway who has suddenly been drawn in by their rambunctious chatter. He doesn’t know why he’s searching. It’s not like cooking is a crime. But murder is, and Lance is getting very close to it with the way he’s swaying and holding the knife.

“Okay, let’s just…” Keith places a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. He puts the other one on his wrist. “Calm down a bit.”

“I am calm!” Lance protests.

“Okay,” Keith nods, “Why don’t you calmly put the knife down?”

Lance huffs, but he relents. He sets the knife on the cutting board next to the bleeding vegetables. Then, he turns back to Keith. Keith is still touching him.

“Happy?”

“Sure.”

Reluctantly, he detaches himself away from Lance’s space.

It’s far from the first time they’ve hung out like this. Late at night, all alone—all their hang outs linger in this time frame. Daytime is for the war, after all. They suit up and head out to new places everyday: technological hubs, illegal trading rings, deadly enemy ships, top security prison systems, royal balls, and refugee camps. Many times the war steals night away from them too, with endless hours of coding, reporting, and strategizing. Sometimes the times blend together, with alarms jumpstarting them out of bed when sleep is right around the corner. The pressing issue isn’t always the Galra; the deep and vast space gives them problems enough with soul sucking blackholes, venomous planet formations, and blooming supernovas. Rest is never a guarantee.

When Keith does have time to rest, he finds himself seeking out Lance more often than not. Being with Lance is more calming than sleep. Keith isn’t sure why—the boy just cackled like a hyena out of nowhere—there’s no tranquility in that.

But Keith is so drawn to him.

He understands the idea of a crush very well. Keith isn’t unfamiliar with notions of romance and he has caught and let go of feelings like passing fireflies. No crushes have stuck around too long—correction: Keith has never stuck around anywhere long enough for something meaningful to grow out of his feelings.

  Out here, things are different.

Forget about not sticking around. Keith is stuck here.

It’s so ironic. He’s been thrust into a universe so expansive that he can travel anywhere he wants. Keith can book it. There are constellations calling his name and Blade missions travelling to the borders of the known universe. Keith can leave. It’s tempting.

But the Black Lion reached out with its sentient metal claws and shackled Keith to the Castle Ship.

Stay, it demanded.

Fight, it ordered.

Keith wishes it hadn’t chosen him. Selfishly, he wants to escape.

More than anything, he wants Shiro back.

He’s complacent with the new developments between him and Lance. They train together, one on one. Oftentimes they’ll nap in the same room, curled up on opposite sides of the same bed. Maybe even right next to each other. It’s comfortable next to him. Cozy. If Keith notices Lance powering through reports without having taken a meal, he’ll drag a chair next to him and feed him while he works. If either of their muscles are sore, they’ll slug over into each other’s space and demand a massage. It’s nice. It’s not friendship anymore; they’ve left friendship a while ago. Keith is not naive to his romantic feelings for Lance, nor the depth of them, no matter how much he ignores that aspect. He doesn’t particularly know what Lance wants or feels, but it’s nice.

Keith wants more.

But if he gets more, Lance might be taken from him, just like Shiro.

He can’t get everything.

“What are you thinking about, Samurai?” Lance sidles up to him and slings an arm around his neck.

The hold is uncomfortable because his hands are still wet. Keith doesn’t move him. “I’m not a samurai.” he scowls.

“Sorry, sorry,” Lance says, “Cowboy, then. Since you’re from Texas.”

Keith shoots him a glare that doesn’t deter his shit-eating grin. “I’m not the one who grew up on a farm.”

“What do I call you then?”

“Keith.”

Lance ignores him. “Knife-man? Keither? Oh—we could do cowboy with a K, or—”

“Not a cowboy.”

“—kneith? Keife? Keith-knife? No, that one sounds dumb—”

“They all sound dumb,” Keith interjects.

“Okay then,” Lance says, “How about…” His smile widens. “How about I call you babe? Huh, baby? How does that sound?”

They’re really close now. If Keith moves half a foot forward, Lance would be speaking into his mouth.

He clears his throat. “Sounds dumb. Obviously.”

“Baaaaby,” Lance croons.

Keith presses his palm against Lance’s face. “You’re obnoxious.”

“But you like it.”

Keith doesn’t deny it. His jaw remains clamped shut. He can feel Lance’s giddiness reverberating off of his skin. He’s buzzing with excitement. It’s so endearing to see him so worked up from happiness. Lance is smiling and it’s directed solely at Keith. He’s the only one presented with this undivided attention. The distinct dimples pushing into his cheeks and the wrinkles crinkling by his eyes have only arisen for Keith.

“Hi baby,” Lance whispers.

“Hi,” Keith responds. To redirect some of his flusteration, he cups a hand on Lance’s cheek. “You’re red.”

It works like magic. Lance flushes further. He’s practically burning to the touch, but Keith doesn’t let his hand fall. Why should he? He’s allowed to have at least this much. He’s not acting out of his bounds. Late nights on the Castle Ship are reserved for affections like these. Keith isn’t letting his feelings seep into his Black Paladin duties.

“Liar,” Lance accuses, “You must be color blind.”

“No, you’re—” Keith brushes his hand to the side and incidentally unveils a splotch of vegetable juice staining his cheek. The patch is hand shaped and lines up with the outline of Keith’s fingers like a glove. “Uh.”

“Uh what, Keith?”

“Nothing.” Keith traces gentle circles on Lance’s cheek in hopes to both placate his curiosity and undo any implications of his hand in painting a third of Lance’s face.

“Suspicious.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lance covers Keith's hand with his own and curls his fingers around the gaps between his palm and his face. They’re holding hands. It’s not the first time they’ve done so—sometimes Lance will seize his hand captive while they’re walking down the hall and swing their connected arms between them. It’s mostly him who initiates this gesture, but Keith has reached out for him too, precariously under shared covers.

“What?” Keith asks.

“Just wondering why you’ve suddenly become so shifty. Suspicious…is—” his words come to a halt when he feels his face. “Keith.”

Keith looks to the table. “Yes?”

“Why is there vegetable piss on my face?”

That catches him off guard. “Vegetable what? Lance that’s not—” Lance is so weird. Keith likes an absolute weirdo. “Do not call it that.”

“It’s excreting liquid. What else is excreted liquid?”

“Juice! It’s fucking juice!”

Lance jabs a finger at the center of his chest. “Your incorrectness is not going to distract me from the fact that you smeared it all over my face. Here you are, acting all nice and flirtatious, but really it was a ruse so that you can sabotage my good looks.”

Lance sounds insane. And he’s really close. Really, really close.

Keith wants to kiss him.

“What good looks?” He asks instead, to be mean.

“Okay, so you’re not color blind. You’re just blind.”

He knows Lance doesn’t believe his fraudulent jests for one second. If it isn’t for the smile that hasn’t left his face for one second, then maybe for the fact that Keith called him handsome the other day. The word slipped from his lips without a single thought. He meant it thoroughly, but he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“Okay. Sure.”

Lance groans. “Do you think this is going to come off my face?”

“Worry about your clothes first. You might’ve invented a new tie-dye pattern.”

That gets him a flick to the forehead. Keith can feel cool juice splatter against his skin. When he swipes at his face with the back of his free hand, it comes away pink. He’s not surprised.

“Got you,” Lance taunts.

“You’ll regret that.”

He comes closer. “Oh yeah?”

Lance smells so good. Even though he looks ridiculous, he looks so beautiful.

His lips are so near. They’re right there. What’s the difference between a few inches? If Keith closes the gap between them, would that be okay?

He doesn’t have to ponder much longer.

Lance surges forward and presses their lips together.

There wasn’t much room for him to move forward, but he still travels with enough momentum to topple Keith backwards. Keith grabs the edge of the table with slippery fingers to catch his fall. It works, but now he’s halfway to the floor and his back has slammed against the table. It presses harshly into the ridges of his spine.

They part quickly.

“What was that?” Keith gapes. He has to be sure.

Lance looks just as shocked as him. His eyebrows have skyrocketed up his forehead and his lips are part like he’s walked in on something appalling. He’s so frozen that Keith doubts the events that just occurred and wonders instead if he had done something odd.

“I—” Lance stammers. He looks uncomfortable. “I fell.”

“Onto my face?” Keith cries.

“Such is the natural occurrence of physics!” He throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know. Oh look, the vegetables are—”

Keith sinks down to the floor. “Oh my god.”

Lance’s back faces him as he resumes making their meal like the past ten minutes hadn’t existed. He’s not looking at Keith.

From here, Keith can only see the narrowest sliver of his side profile. It’s not enough to reveal any expression. The rhythmic thud of the knife hitting the cutting board is the only noise to fill the air, but it’s not enough to mask the heavy drumming of his fast beating heart. His pulse throbs so much that he fears his veins might burst with the pace of his blood flow. Keith feels alive in every part of his body. This sleepy and docile nighttime scene has been jumpstarted within a split second. It has derailed like a runaway train car.

Keith is on that train car. He’s abruptly been pushed onto a track with no knowledge of his destination.

What’s so bad about a kiss? What makes it different from the rest of their affections?

Lance has not spoken once since turning away. Their playful banter has plunged into cold, silent waters.

That’s what is different.

Despite Keith’s earlier eagerness, remorse clouds him. It brings chills around his shoulders and neck. He doesn’t want Lance to have kissed him if it means that he’s not going to talk to him. Already, it feels like he is slipping away.

Keith musters up his courage. “Lance?”

The knife clatters onto the table. It’s far from the edge, but Keith still winces as it teeters and wobbles unevenly. Lance spins around. His face is etched in some sort of agony and his clothes are more stained than before.

“SORRY!” He exclaims too loudly for the time of night. “I’m sorry. I panicked! Or—I don’t even know.”

He doesn’t know what Lance is apologizing for. He’s too confused to find anything to be upset about. “It’s okay?”

“I’m embarrassing myself.”

“Not really.” Keith shrugs. He just wants to know if his thing with Lance has drawn to a conclusion. He doesn’t want it to, but these kinds of talks tend to be decisive.

“I…” Lance trails off. “I think I read into our interactions too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, you know,” he says. He seems to be struggling with his words. A twang of sympathy strikes Keith’s chest, but he desperately needs to know what Lance means. He chases everything that comes out of his mouth.

Lance slowly lowers himself onto the floor next to Keith. “We’re always together. I thought you’d get sick of it, but you didn’t. I mistook your patience as something else.”

“As?” Keith prompts.

“As you wanting to kiss me.”

Lance huffs and hangs his head low. Keith worries that he’s crying, but there’s no shake to his shoulder or any other movement. Even without any tears leaking from his eyes, there is a sense of shame and dejection looming over him. Lance looks like he’s on trial, waiting for the judge’s verdict. It occurs to Keith that this conversation is equally as decisive for Lance as it is for Keith. It’s not just Keith facing uncharted seas; Lance also has to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Keith takes a deep breath in and tosses all his fears, paranoias, and impending sense of doom out the window.

“I do want to kiss you.”

“WHAT.” Lance’s head snaps up. “What?”

The shift in his mood is so drastic that it gives Keith whiplash. “I want to…kiss you?”

“Well, why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“You were being so confusing!”

Most of the tension seeps out of Keith’s body. They’re on the same page. Good.

Then why does it still feel like something bad is going to happen?

Lance lowers himself on the ground next to Keith. His pupils flutter around to all corners of the room, but at least he’s looking at him. Every now and then they’ll make eye contact that flickers faster than a camera shutter. To Keith, those milliseconds seem so slow and steady, like someone has pinched the two ends of his lifespan and dragged it longer.

Lance’s lips are slightly parted. He can make out the faint ridges travelling from the top to the bottom of each lip. His lips are thin but not so narrow that they’re only a gateway to his mouth. The surrounding color is a brownish pink, like the color of lotus petals that have fallen astray and gotten muddled by lake water. Keith has never seen a lotus in real life. He thinks it might be just as pretty as the boy in front of him.

“So…” Lance says.

Keith clings to every word. What is he going to say? Will he explain why he wants to kiss him?

“Wanna make out?”

“Huh?”

Lance’s wicked grin is a testament to how genius he finds his plan. “I want to kiss you. And you want to kiss me. You catching my drift?”

His logic is sound. Keith wants to kiss him. He really does. He wants to seize the collar of Lance’s shirt to tug him in and have lean and muscled arms rove up and down his back. Keith wants to be held. He wants to be hugged. He wants Lance’s mouth all over him.

He wants Lance to tell him that he loves him.

Love is a bold word. It’s audacious to assume that’s how Lance feels just because he’s asking to kiss him. Keith settles for like. It’d be nice if Lance would let him know if he likes him. Even that’s an outrageous idea—Keith is not someone very sought after. He’s not very pretty either. His face is plain and his features look like they’ve been haphazardly tossed on rather than carefully adorning his skin. The only thing that stands out is his bushy eyebrows. His skin has an underlying pallour that doesn’t go away even when he drinks lots of water and eats vegetables, so he always looks a little sick. Keith supposes his hair is alright; it’s easy to maintain and has its own flair of style, but it’s the one aspect of him that Lance always disparages.

He can understand why Lance is eager to spend so much time with him. Proximity plays a huge role in their friendship as does the structure of their team. Keith is certain that back on Earth, even if he hadn’t gotten expelled from the Garrison, he’d never have a chance to experience Lance like this. Or the rest of the team, for that matter, but Keith doesn’t dally on the ‘what if’s too long. There is a solid reason why Lance is always seeking him out.

But kissing him?

Calling him petnames?

Holding hands and clinging to each other?

Keith has never traversed such an uncharted path before.

He’s sure this is a familiar routine for Lance. He can’t even tally the amount of aliens Lance has flirted with and who knows about the number of boys and girls he’s charmed back on Earth. Not to call him a conniving swindler or treat the love he shares like shallow dirt water—Keith would never do that.

Lance is authentic as they come. His wit and charisma are a part of the full package deal, so of course Keith would fall for him. Anyone would fall for Lance.

But that’s just his confusion—why him?

Why Keith?

The question is too loaded. Asking it would be like playing a round of russian roulette. He would be handing Lance the gun and asking him to shoot with the knowledge that the answer might kill him.

Instead, Keith says, “Sure. We can make out.”

He trusts Lance.

He trusts him not to hurt him. And he’s positive that any heartbreak he may face would come from his own foolish decisions.

“Sweet.” Lance claps his hands together.

“Yeah.”

“Awesome!”

“I agree.”

“So…” Lance leans towards him. “Are you going to kiss me?”

“Me?” Keith exclaims. He points a finger at himself. “I have to do it?”

“Well don’t act like it’s a chore!”

“I’m not—I—” Keith sputters.

Lance rolls his eyes. “If you don’t want to do it, just say so! I’m not forcing you to kiss me.”

“But I want to kiss you!” He shouts.

His voice rings loud and clear. Keith feels overexposed all of a sudden, like he’s unveiled himself to a daunting force waiting to collect tidbits of his fragile heart. Keith wants to shrink and hide inside the cabinet behind him.

“Alright,” Lance says, softer this time. He cups Keith’s face with both of his hands, one resting on each side of his mouth. His thumbs trace random patterns along his cheeks while the rest of his fingers loiter by his jawline and neck. Lance is settled between Keith’s legs. He tries widening his stance to allow more room for him, but Lance stops him by simply plopping down onto his thigh.

“You scared, baby?” Lance whispers.

“Of you? Hardly.”

Keith is a liar. His heartbeat is frantic.

Lance laughs. The sound is full of cheer and none of the mockery and derision he’d have expected a year ago. It’s comforting. It compels Keith to lean in and close the gap between them. He drinks in Lance’s voice straight from the source.

This kiss is different.

It’s sweet from the vegetable juice staining Lance’s face and lips. Keith didn’t get a chance to have a taste before, but now that they’re taking their time, he lets himself buzz around the minute observations he makes. The soft sighs puffing out of Lance’s nose and the way wisps of his hair tickle Keith’s forehead—he soaks it all in.

Keith doesn’t know much else to do other than letting his mouth linger and closing his eyes. After a moment of consideration, he draws his arms around Lance’s waist. It’s a move replicated from the many times they’ve shared a bed, yet it feels so foreign paired with this new scene. Lance lets out a happy sigh.

“I love it when you do that,” he says.

Keith tries to catch himself from lingering on the word love. “Hm?”

It’s a poor attempt to get the elaboration he really wants.

“Holding me like that,” Lance explains, “It’s so nice. You have really nice arms.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks.”

He takes a look at his arms. They seem pretty normal, but he’ll take the compliment.

“Anyways, where were we?”

Keith draws him in for another kiss. One of Lance’s hands travels to his hair and starts gently combing his fingers through the strands. He opens his mouth to comment on the act and Lance seizes the small space between his lips before he can speak. He sucks on Keith’s bottom lip and tilts his head to kiss further into his mouth.

It’s so pleasant.

Keith had never thought kissing would be like this. It’s just another kind of touch. But it’s so nice.

He hopes they get more moments to kiss after this. He doesn’t want it to come to an end.

Lance abruptly pulls away. “So? How’d you like it?”

“Nice,” Keith says. He should supply more of an answer. “You kiss good.”

“You too, dude.”

The ‘dude’ throws him off guard. So does the compliment. “Really?”

“Yeah!”

“That was my first kiss,” Keith confesses. Saying it out loud makes him realize how embarrassing it is. He’s probably the first nineteen year old Lance has met who hasn’t kissed anyone before. Shit. He shouldn’t have mentioned anything.

Lance is gobsmacked. His jaw hangs open.

“You’re shitting me.”

“No?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Okay?” There’s not anything he can do to conjure proof and Keith’s not very interested in finding evidence of how little people on Earth wanted to put their lips on his.

“That is insane,” Lance says. “Insane!”

“Alright, Lance,” he mutters. The heavy attention to this specific topic boils humiliation in his guts. “It’s not such a big deal. You don’t have to—if it was such a bad kiss, then why don’t you tell me what to do for next time?”

“No, no, Keith.” Lance speaks in a hurry. “Keith, babe. Honey. Sweetheart.”

“Uh, yes?”

“You are not a bad kisser. You are so inexplicably good at it that it blows my mind that you’ve never done this before. It actually pisses me off a bit. Did you know that during my first kiss, I backed up against a vase at church and shattered it?”

Keith blinks, bewildered. “Why were you kissing people at church?”

“Because there were hot girls in my youth group! Twelve year old me had an agenda!”

There is so much information to take in all at once. The conversation is escaping him. There’s the main aspect of Keith somehow being a good kisser, despite being convinced that he just sat there while Lance went at it. Then there’s the fact that Lance is still in his lap. He’s all over Keith and he’s still not sure why. The excessive pet names coming right after being called ‘dude’ don’t help either. What does it mean to be called that? Or just like kissing, is it something trivial to Lance too?

Keith urges himself to open his mouth and ask.

What does Lance want from him?

The words aren’t terribly tricky.

Keith can say it. He can.

“Did your agenda work?” He asks.

Keith is a coward.

Lance nods. “Oh, for sure. All the girls loved Leandro. And a few dudes too, but I was too dense to realize at the time.”

“Leandro?”

“My first name,” Lance clarifies. “Lance is a middle name. Did you know Leandro means lion man?”

“How fitting,” he says. He lets himself be sidetracked by this blooming conversation. The information fascinates him anyways. Keith greedily gobbles up everything new he’s learning like a scavenger searching for treasure. “Why do you go by Lance?”

Lance shifts in his lap. “Technically, I had a lot of options to pick from. Leandro Lance Charles McClain. Would’ve been Leandro Lance Charles García Diaz, but my dad changed our last name to placate the Americans when we moved to Florida. But it’s because…”

Keith is unable to understand the rest of Lance’s sentence. “What was that?”

“I chose the name because I thought lances are cool! Like the sword! Spear! Whatever.”

Keith raises his eyebrows.

“Don’t judge me.” Lance sulks.

“I’m not judging. It’s just—”

The reasoning is so…cute?

“That’s sweet,” Keith says.

“Yeah, sure.” Lance rolls his eyes. “Tell that to my siblings. They find it hilarious.”

He pictures a younger, more awkward Lance who watches action movies in his free time and plays pretend with make-shift weaponry. It’s so like Lance to center his identity around things he finds cool. Keith can imagine him boldly declaring to everyone that he’ll only be addressed as Lance like it’s a government sanctioned policy.

“My name used to be Akira,” Keith supplies.

Lance looks surprised. “Akira? Really?”

He’s never mentioned this to anyone since the first few homes he’s been to. Keith hasn’t even told Shiro; by the time he met him, the fact was discardable enough. The name became meaningless after the social workers refused to address him as such. ‘Akira’ got demoted to a second name and then to a fun fact he carried around but never spoke of.

“I don’t know if it ‘used’ to be Akira or if it still is. My legal documents could have both names—Akira and Keith, but no one calls me that anymore.”

Lance nods like he’s hearing something very important. He stares attentively at Keith. Unlike during his previous flusteration before their second kiss, he does not break eye contact at all.

Keith continues. “I didn’t even know my name was Keith.” He precariously toes around the conversation of his father’s death and the foster system. It’s no secret to Lance and the team, but he doesn’t want to dampen the mood of their conversation with those topics. “I found out when I was seven. Really confusing time.”

“I can imagine,” Lane remarks. “What does it mean?”

“It’s a Japanese name, which also doesn’t make sense, because I’m Korean. I used to think that my mom was Japanese until I found out I was part-Galra. She still could be Japanese if she was part-Galra, part-Japanese, but—” Keith is getting side tracked with rambling thoughts that are supposed to stay inside his brain. They belong to his nighttime spirals where he longs to figure out just a little bit more about himself.

Keith clears his throat. “It means bright.”

“Bright? Like smart?”

“Could be,” Keith says, “Or like light. Something very illuminated. I don’t know what my dad—or mom—had in mind while naming me.”

“Like the sun,” Lance muses, “Or the Red Lion! It’s pretty bold and bright.”

The mention of his former lion chips a fracture into his heart. Keith misses piloting Red, but she’s not his lion anymore. She belongs to Lance. And it’s truly suitable for him: a bright lion for a bright boy.

The reminder of the lion switch brings him down from the high of their kiss. It plagues him with the thoughts that he tries to keep at bay when he’s not focused on the war—Shiro disappearing, his frantic search that he feels guilty for slowing down on, and leading the team as the black paladin.

Lance doesn’t notice. “It makes sense that you got named that. Cause you’re hot.”

“I’m what?” Keith asks. “That’s not even what it—what?”

“Yeah. You see…”

Lance used to daydream about Keith’s return.

There was never any guarantee that he would be back, but Lance always functioned under the assumption that he would. Impermanence exists in all aspects of life, so surely Keith’s absence would be temporary too. It’s a dreadfully naive way to think during a war as it is obnoxiously callow to long after someone who had no intent to look back even once during departure. Lance is a fool to go out day after day with his index finger curled to kill and still pretend that there could be a chance for Keith to willingly return in a way that wasn’t in a body bag.

Daydreams crept up on him mainly during menial chores and tasks. Activities like sweeping the floor, writing reports, and coding Castle Ship software often left room in his mind for wandering. Lance’s mind is very spacious, and he himself very antsy, so it is a natural occurrence for him to roam his own brain. His eyes would glaze over and he’d meander through memories like he was browsing through books. Their fight was the freshest memory and it stung so violently that Lance had no choice but to return to it again and again to lick his wounds. Even now, with Keith back, he recollects it just as painfully. The rest of the memories ache like a dull bruise—flirtatious kisses and heartfelt conversations—he comes across them like spoiled fruit he had been looking forward to eating.

As time passed, other wounds cut deeper. 

Transporting dead hostages to their home planets like they were typical luggage sitting in the back of his plane—how ironic that his cargo pilot training came in handy for a task like this. Lance remembers teaching his struggling teammates how to load and unload the bodies because truthfully, it wasn’t that different from how he worked with regular junk and cargo, and how sick is that? It further cements his role in the universe and stains his hands with unscrubbable blood. 

Lance has made the mistake of getting too close to his target before shooting them—that haunts him too. Running down winding hallways of enemy ships in an exhilarating chase, only to spin on his heel and shoot his pursuer dead between the eyes. Lance can see them then, when there’s only a few feet between them. The general, the common foot soldier, the well-trained assassin—their vibrant yellow eyes shine with a plea when they realize where the path they’ve followed is taking them. Lance sees their life. He sees it and wonders when he had turned the tables from being the hunted to the hunter. He escapes death and delivers it to others enough that he struggles to find a difference between the two.

Struggling to comfort his teammates is a grief Lance carries as well. He had prided himself during the youthful days of Voltron on being the team glue. On being the cheerleader or the emotional support. Their group is well varied with engineers, scientists, fighter pilots, space explorers, diplomats, and so-called magic users. Lance is hardly any of that and war does not spare him much time to grow into any field. His knowledge of everything is enough to get him by, enough for him to do the work that matters, but not enough to be significant. So he had resigned, reluctantly, to be the boy that boosts morale. Lance wanted to be more—needed to be more—but he accepted his role.

He was a fool. The funny roles in his mind are futile and meaningless. They are all just soldiers racing towards their graves.

Lance keeps this in mind when he feels envious of the tasks distributed to others, when they get jobs like hacking, undercover espionage, and retrieving parts, while he gets a gun. He knows they all kill. He knows. They’ve blown up ships with more soldiers than there are people in Varadero.

But—

Lance doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s different for him.

It’s different. 

A successful mission means that Voltron has achieved their goal, but it almost always means that Lance has shot his targets before they can hurt his friends. It’s a necessary death and it especially feels necessary when he watches them jump out of their lions with joy and cheer.

Lance would kill to keep that expression on their face. He has killed to keep that expression on their face.

But Lance doesn’t want to kill.

He wants to go home.

That’s his selfish want; there’s his other main desire as well: to save as many folks as he can. The two dreams tug at his brain and rip him apart when he thinks too hard.

So Lance doesn’t think.

Lance trains. Lance studies. He learns Altean pretty fast, enough to impress Allura and Coran alongside any esteemed planetary diplomats they’re subjected to entertain. He gets well versed in the Castle Ship’s coding language to help Pidge with her pattern prediction programs. He cooks team meals for when Hunk is too tired and he drafts out multiple strategy ideas for when Shiro is too dead on his feet to think.

It drains him.

Just like the water swirling in a sink basin, it drains him.

Lance is spread too thin.

They all are.

Sometimes, in a hasty search for her family, Pidge will direct the team to a prison facility where they find the most abominable and unspeakable torture being performed on hostages. In the days following those missions, she will refuse to leave her room, shower, or even eat. How could she, after seeing that? How could she, knowing that might be happening to her father and brother too? When forced to reappear, she lashes out. One time she had even ripped out a chunk of Shiro’s hair in her distress. It had snapped her out of her animus state, but her wretched agony carried on long afterwards.

One day, abruptly, Allura had innocuously dropped a book and that had been Hunk’s last straw. He had become inconsolable. No one knew why—they hadn’t gone on any tolling or exhausting missions recently. Nothing had even happened. They had been sitting around a table and he had started sobbing. Lance is supposed to be his best friend and even he couldn’t get a word out of him. Eventually he got up and left. When he came back, he acted like nothing had even happened.

There are times when Allura will ignore everyone. She’ll float around the castle like a ghost. Lance is never sure if it’s intentional. Or Coran, always helpful Coran, will simply disappear into a corner of the Castle that they had never even known existed. He’ll refuse to be found.

The worst is Shiro, who hardly ever reacts to anything.

The mutilations don’t faze him. The breakdowns don’t deter him. Lance can’t find any traces of grief on his face—only duty and diligence. It scares him the most because he has no idea what goes on in their leader’s mind.

Hardships like this layer upon his longing for Keith and bury it altogether. Lance’s sentiments become meaningless. He still daydreams about Keith. He still wants him.

But what does that even matter?

It’s good that Keith is away so that he doesn’t see the way the team is crumbling.

Adversities struck them plenty while he was still around, but it impacts them more now as Voltron becomes more prominent and there’s a race to eliminate Zarkon. They fall apart under the weight of the task. Lance is sure that he too displays behaviors that concern his team, even if they never mention it. He’s glad Keith isn’t here to witness that. He’s glad Keith doesn’t have to undergo any heartbreak of a similar vein.

At the same time, Keith is the missing component that could restructure the team and give them stability. They need him here.

Lance needs him here, no matter how unimportant that is.

Keith chose to leave.

He doesn’t want to come back.

He doesn’t want Lance.

It bubbles a little bit of resentment in his gut. It’s childish and immature, especially since Keith is a sincere and good guy who only wants to end the war and chase stars. He’s allowed to not want Lance. He’s allowed to dismiss what they had as irrelevant. It is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Lance is the only one stuck on their stupid, small not-relationship.

Then, Keith comes home in a stretcher.

There is no warning about his return. First, their radio intercepts the subtle hum of a Marmoran spacecraft frequency. Then, Kolivan hails them. Mere minutes later, a cot is lugged into the hangar. Keith lays limp in it.

For a moment, he’s unrecognizable.

Lance doesn’t know what to make of the body his teammates are gathered around as he stumbles into the hangar. The announcement for a meeting sounded urgent and his teammates’ voices are frantic. They swarm the bed like flies. In the midst of the commotion, Lance is finally able to get a glimpse of his face.

That’s Keith.

His hair is swept across his face like a hurricane has come and wrecked him. Long, messy strands spill across the flat bridge of his nose. Keith’s hair is a lot longer than before—he must not have cut it while he was away. His braid, which must’ve been made neat for a mission, is tangled and falling apart. 

Lance surges forward to see him. It’s instinctive.

“What—” His voice dies in his throat.

Shiro grabs his arm and drags him towards the head of the bed. “Lift,” he instructs, “We have to carry him to the med bay.”

“What happened to him?” Lance cries. He wedges his fingers under the mattress to find the metal frame to hold onto. Shiro grabs one side and Pidge holds the foot of the bed. They lift together to get him off the gurney.

He’s not too heavy. The three of them carry him with ease. It’s not their first time carrying a body, after all.

But this is Keith.

This is his Keith.

“I don’t know.” Shiro shakes his head. “They brought him here like this. Said he needs to recover.”

“From what?”

Questions bounce around his mind and make his ears ring. They form and disintegrate too fast for Lance’s mouth to form a coherent string of words. He wants to chase the answers to things he doesn’t even know how to ask. He wants to shake Keith by his shoulders and demand an explanation. Lance wants to wake Keith up for the sake of waking him up, just so that he can stay sure that he’s not asleep forever.

Lance can’t stop staring down at him.

His hold on the stretcher allows him a direct view of Keith’s face. There’s a furious, feverish flush decorating every exposed sliver of skin. It varies in shade—his cheeks are splotchy with dollops of vibrant red, but his forehead remains a steady pink. His eyebrows are furrowed and his eyelids clenched shut. His breaths come out audible and raspy. Keith looks like he’s fighting a deep struggle, even in unconsciousness.

“Allura and Hunk are talking to the Blades. Surely they’ll say something.” Pidge gestures. Lance makes out the motion out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t let his gaze stray too far from Keith.

They set him down on a table in the med bay. Pidge immediately races over to Coran, who has already started preparing a pod. They speak to each other in hushed murmurs.

Shiro reaches out and strokes Keith’s hair out of his face. “He’s burning up like crazy,” he mutters, “He has a fever.”

“They wouldn’t send him home for a simple fever, would they?”

“I don’t know. Things work differently up here and who knows how his body is reacting to—” Shiro sighs in frustration. “God knows what. There’s crazy stuff out in space.”

“No kidding,” Lance whispers.

He watches as Shiro cards gentle hands through his little brother’s hair. Keith doesn’t look like he finds any reprieve from the action. His face continues to contort in discomfort.

Lance wants to touch him.

There’s an itch crawling through his fingers to reach out and drag them down the planes of his cheeks. To hold his face and study it so intricately. A delusional part of him is convinced that if he does so, Keith might wake up. Keith might react if Lance calls out to him. His eyes will flutter open, he’ll let out a groggy groan, and smack Lance’s hand out of his face with a complaint and some swears.

He missed Keith so much.

Keith’s here and alive—all he has to do is wake up.

“I’m glad he’s back, but I wish he had come under different circumstances.” Shiro smiles sadly.

“Huh?” Lance says. “Oh—me too. Me too, dude.”

“Did things ever work out between the two of you?”

The question startles him so much that he snaps his eyes away from Keith. “No—no way, uh. Keith’s not…he’s not a long distance kind of guy. And I don’t really think dating is his thing.”

Shiro looks at him blankly. “I was talking about your last argument.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t know you guys were together.”

“We weren’t,” Lance confesses, but that feels like a lie. “We were—”

What could he even call it? Could the thing between them be considered substantial if it was just Keith agreeing to do all the sweet things Lance wanted without it meaning anything to him? Like a stranded piece of driftwood, he went with the flow. He never had much to say about the two of them, except during that last fight. Only then had Keith’s face been painted with hurt. But Lance had hurled so many cruel words at him—he told Keith to get lost, for goodness sake—of course Keith would look hurt. And he too lashed out with equally as much vitriol, calling Lance selfish, calling Lance ridiculous and dumb, and calling him all the true things that he is. There couldn’t be anything too meaningful between them if that was the image of Lance stuck in Keith’s mind as he left. That is, if Lance even occurred to him out in deep space. Why would he ever think of him?

“I don’t know,” Lance ends up saying.

“That’s okay,” Shiro responds.

It is okay. It’s not what matters. What matters is that Keith needs to wake up.

As long as he wakes up, as long as he’s okay, Lance will be fine.

Bitter, but fine.

Angry, but fine.

There are worse things to feel in space and war than shallow heartbreak.

Two days later, Keith wakes like a newborn hatchling. The pod doors ease open and cold fog spills out like an egg cracked open . He wobbles and teeters without walking at all. Keith raises his arms to steady himself, only to bump them into the glass and stumble forward.

Lance wants to hold him.

Keith is struggling so much. His eyes are only half open and his hands are shaking—he’s shivering. It’s hot inside the Castle Ship and he’s shivering. Lance can see the rise and fall of his chest from the deep breaths he’s trying to take, even from a distance.

Keith trips.

Instinctively, Lance goes to catch him.

Shiro is quicker. He scoops his arms under Keith’s armpits and hoists him to his feet. They talk softly. Lance can’t hear about what, but his heart cries at the faint sound of Keith’s voice. When his currents don’t catch the swift winds of rage, Keith is often soft spoken and mellow. His words are far and few as he sticks more so to listening, scattered throughout the conversation like little treasures. Lance missed their talks. He would ramble for hours on end and Keith would soak it all in—he’d actually listen, something Lance hasn’t been experiencing much of recently. He’d chime in with agreements, disagreements, and his typical, monotone comments.

The urge to whisk Keith away is powerful. To grab his hand and steal him to somewhere hidden. There, they could escape just like they used to. They could be what they once were.

“Hi,” Keith says.

His addressment hits Lance like a lightning strike.

Keith speaks to the masses with averted eyes, but to Lance, the singular word echoes around his mind as if it's been shouted into the basin of a canyon. It’s almost palpable; if Lance reaches out, he swears he could touch the sound. He has the frenetic urge to jump forward and catch it like a frivolous bridesmaid chasing after a wedding bouquet. It’s mine! Lance wants to push everyone away and shout. His words! They’re for me!

They’re not. Keith hardly spares him a glimpse as his eyes rove the room.

Lance tries to scrub his mind of his spurious delusions as Pidge and Hunk shower Keith with affable jests and comforts. Keith looks off put through it all, standing as stiff as a board. His arms cling superglued to his sides and he remains in one spot like he’s being punished. Truly, if the man before them is a reluctant sojourner and not the comrade whose blood and tears have many times stained the inside of Lance’s lion, it wouldn’t nonpluss him at all.

He’s sick, Lance reminds himself.

The reminder twangs at his heart like an out-of-tune guitar. Lance would rather catch the scorching flames of being spurned by Keith time and time again than see him limp on a stretcher.

The team exchanges concerned glances the longer Keith remains unresponsive. He blinks, breathes, and keeps his lips sealed in silence. Mentally, he seems to be far away. Lance wonders if he’s left his mind back in outer space. It’s where Keith would rather be, isn’t it? Anywhere but here.

“Should we have him sit down?” Allura whispers.

Hunk frowns as he assays him. “Give him a minute, maybe.”

“It’s already been a minute.”

Abruptly, Keith tips over.

A chorus of “Keith!” ring out as the team leaps forward to catch him with outreaching arms. Ultimately, Lance is the lucky man—he darts ahead and seizes Keith by the shoulders.

He’s unbelievably cold.

Keith leans into his touch. His lack of disdain and belligerence is alarming; Lance hasn’t been sought out like this in forever and certainly not by him. Keith tilts his head towards Lance’s chest and sighs against his chest. It’s all too much.

The moment shatters an instant later.

Keith shoves him away. Lance can tell when the fog rolls out from in front of his eyes and is replaced with guarded anticipation.

Just like that, his repulsion is back.

Just like that, they’re back to contention.

“Dude—”

Lance can’t stop himself from speaking up, but what would he even say? He takes a step back.

Keith looks like their interaction plagued him. He’s tense all over. Each of his limbs, his individual fingers, and his throat all constrict—Lance can see it. He sees the bold definitions of his rigid tendons. Keith is shaken.

He vacillates between reaching out again and leaving the room all together. Lance doesn’t know what he wants to do. He could lend a helping hand and have it rejected again or he could storm out in a big fuss. Both actions carry layers of selfishness but neither fulfill him nor Keith. Keith doesn’t want him. Why would he accept his help? He’s already pushed it away once. But he’s sick—he’s scared and confused. Lance wants to take care of him. At the same time, he wants to shout. Tell Keith to piss off. It’s not what he really wants at all.

He supposes there's no satisfaction in anything.

Lance ends up doing neither. He says, “You’re looking at me weird.” This receives a glare from Shiro.

“Sorry.”

Keith stops looking at him altogether. He tears his eyes away like he’s committed a wretched sin. His head hangs low like it’s bowed for execution. Lance can’t stand it—what the hell happened to him? Is this a part of the sickness? He wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

“That’s not—”

“Can you say something in Spanish?”

It’s not remotely close to what Lance was expecting to hear.

What?

Lance would’ve been less perplexed if Keith came around with fur, a tail, and claws. At least there’s some sense in that, he thinks. He isn’t well versed in Galran anatomy.

He doesn’t understand. This conversation gives him whiplash.

“What the fuck?” Lance asks.

There’s genuine desperation in Keith’s eyes.

For some unfathomable reason, he holds such a conviction that he’ll die if Lance doesn’t immediately burst into Spanish.

Hunk murmurs, “I think he needs some more time in the pod.”

Coran flutters over with objections and a lofty blanket in his hands. He tosses it over Keith like he’s draping a tablecloth and it falls over his face entirely. The man babbles of technical procedures and testing as he runs encroaching circles around Keith. Keith is wholly unaware. He shrugs the blanket off of his face and stares around the room. His pupils dart from direction to direction with erratic twitches. Sometimes, Keith stares at the team while they take turns speaking, but never once does he return Lance’s gaze again after his sudden outburst. It’s like the spot where Lance stands has been carved away and filled with nothingness.

He ponders if he should circle back to their jolted conversation and pipe up with Spanish phrases. If that’s what will make Keith feel better, what the hell—he’ll do it.

Thinking about it is onerous. It gives Lance a headache. It’s arduous to comprehend Keith as he stands before them. He’s the same as ever—absent-minded, laconic, diffident, and awkward—but all his sharp edges have been dulled down. The fight appears to have bled out of Keith. Whatever sickness he has shriveled him up. He carries no vigorous retaliation, even as the team discusses his medical conditions right in front of him. Lance expected Keith to be snappish about people being his business, albeit a little dazed from waking up in a pod, but not unmoved altogether. The only flare of demand he’s shown had been that odd question he asked Lance: Can you say something in Spanish?

“—not to mention the passing of your teammate.”

That pulls Lance back into the conversation.

Right. Keith’s mission.

The one that was so horrendous it killed a Blade member and afflicted another so deeply that they shipped him back to the closest, most adjacent species for repairs.

Keith shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t—it’s fine. It…happens.”

“It happens?” Pidge echoes.

“I’m okay,” Keith says.

No one believes him for a second.

At the risk of making a biting remark, Lance keeps his mouth closed. There’s no point in reproaching Keith, and certainly not in his hazy state. He grows increasingly antsy as Allura offers him options. It is nettlesome to see Keith fidget and refuse aid. The urge to demand him to stay becomes exorbitant.

Lance finally snaps after Keith’s second or third I’m okay. 

“Oh my god,” he groans, “Would it kill you to accept some help?”

“I’m fine! Can’t I sleep?”

Keith’s audacious blindness is baffling. Can he not see the extent of his unwellness? He sways on his feet like a tree ruffled by brisk winds and his voice wavers with every word.

At the same time, it's welcoming. Keith’s lack of complaisance, for the first time since waking, is the only familiar and not unnerving aspect of their conversation.

Lance doesn’t let it deter his tirade.

“Keith, you have been unconscious for over two days. You know how they brought you here? In a fucking stretcher. Because you were knocked out for the ride, and apparently knocked out at the base too. You need to eat.”

“I’ll eat later.”

Lance could cry. He’s not listening. Why won’t he listen? It’s truly no big deal whether Keith eats or sleeps first—all are forms of rest. The food will be there for him when he wakes. Keith won’t drop dead any time in between. The notion is ridiculous, he’s safe on the Castle Ship and in sight, whether it be with Lance’s naked eye or through the biological scans showing a fifth figure of human life. Leaving and shutting a door behind him won’t mean that Keith is gone forever.

He knows his pleas are more selfish than giving. Lance wants to keep seeing Keith. He wants to talk to him longer than their few confusing and acrimonial exchanges. That’s what this is.

He’s sick. Lance has to keep reminding himself. Sick. 

He doubts there’s a bone of socialization in his body at the moment, not that Keith has ever been gregarious. Keith must not even have the energy for enmity, if the tell-tale droop of his eyelids indicate anything. Lance tries to put himself in his shoes: waking up disoriented, plagued by a comrade’s death and a botched mission, and weighed down by lethargy and fever. And after all that pain, being subjected to concern and questioning by the whole team—Keith’s least favorite thing.

Lance winces at the harsh sting of regret. He shouldn’t have been so condescending and harsh. The castigations weren’t necessary.

Keith eventually leaves the room. He’s quick to go, but Lance doesn’t let his eyes leave him once, not even after he’s travelled well down the hall. Only once he turns the corner and disappears from sight does he let his gaze stray.

The night is sleepless.

Keith’s return does nothing to deter the heap of work Lance is tasked with. In fact, it barrages him with an even heavier downpour of paperwork and legislation. He spends hours scribbling reports onto his datapad in strict, encrypted code to send out to different Marmoran outposts. Lance understands the Blade’s need for tediousness and secrecy, but as he feels the hinges of his eyelids grow weak and his blinks far and few, his aggravation expands.

Lance is the most suitable for jobs like this—mindless labor that’s a necessary yet undesirable chore. Everyone does everything, but eventually, certain delegations stick to different team members. Coran, Pidge, and Hunk take command over their spaceship’s upkeep. No one is better at it than Coran, but Pidge and Hunk follow quickly on his heels when it comes to technological maintenance. Shiro and Allura work tirelessly on battle strategy and diplomatic endeavors. It’s a taxing job. Lance knows this personally; it was him planning most of their attacks and events with the aid of Keith and Allura when he was his right hand man. He still pilots the red lion, but he’s been unofficially relegated from those tasks with the return of Shiro.

It makes sense. Shiro has always been a strong leader. He’s most becoming for that kind of work. Not Lance.

He sighs and scrolls on his datapad. Coran had uploaded Keith’s medical transcripts alongside his personal annotations onto the med bay logs. They’re painstakingly descriptive—breaking down each aspect of Keith’s anatomy and ailments to the smallest components. Although his biology is primarily human, the jargon is nothing Lance can understand. The records detail everything in quintessence-metrics. If Lance took a minute to digest what he’s reading, it might drive him mad to wrap his mind around the abstract perceptions the aliens have of human bodies.

At least Lance understands Coran’s scribbles.

Volatile heartrate for this one. Like a dominomining kango-fox!

He’s positive no Blade member has ever heard of that animal before.

Fluctuating quintessence levels. Monitor for stabilization at the end of the movement.

Strange brain movements. Run tests on number two to compare and contrast.

Lance shudders. What tests does Coran want to run on Hunk?

It takes him another hour to wrap up the reports on Keith and shoot them out to the Blades. Lance has yet to finish his work; he has to detail the casualties from last week’s mission on Roneroa and draft up a letter to the Duke of Sopnaterii for Allura to approve. He tries to reorient his position into something more comfortable for an all nighter, but his spine feels permanently curved from hunching over his desk and his head throbs. No matter how hard he tries—despite having gone on the mission and seen the Roneroan civilians get mauled with his own eyes—he is unable to conjure any points. Lance’s mind has been desiccated of all thoughts.

He groans. This isn’t efficient. Lance has to get shit done. The universe quite literally depends on it. For every minute he dallies and delays, more civilians are displaced and killed. Paperwork is the simplest task out of all things, so why is Lance struggling with it so much? His team is counting on him.

Lance powers off the datapad. He’ll work tomorrow, early in the morning, and he won’t be empty handed when prompted at the team meeting.

For now, he needs to rest.

His bedsheets rustle as Lance trudges onto them with lethargic limbs. “Lights off,” he commands. The dark does little to ease his headache.

Lance wonders what Keith is doing.

He hopes he’s resting—Lance doesn’t need to look at Coran’s concerning notes to understand that he needs it. 

Despite his lassitude, he urges himself to pry off the covers and toe across the hall to Keith’s door. Lance should check up on him. Maybe his company will be appreciated.

Yeah, right.

It’s the middle of the night. No person in their right mind would display gratuity for having their sleep interrupted, especially not if sleep is crucial to their convalescence. Lance just wants to visit him for the sake of his own fulfillment.

He doesn’t go. He stays in bed and succumbs to sleep.

When Allura’s morning announcement broadcasts across the Castle Ship, Lance has already been awake for many hours. The intermission between his work couldn’t be called a night’s rest and was rather a fitful nap. He tossed and turned with his eyes closed, spinning concerns around his mind like he could weave a solution. Waking up felt more like a long, exhausting blink. Lance’s mind remains slow even after his attempt at sleep.

At least his work is done—for now. The mission report and the letter have been uploaded to the rest of the team. Whether it lives up to Shiro and Allura’s standards is a matter out of Lance’s hands.

He runs into Pidge on his way to the command center. She grumbles about being put on equipment duty, but it’s a deserved punishment for disappearing their tools into thin air every time she borrows them. Lance reminds her of exactly this as they walk down the hall. He hopes Pidge doesn't take notice of the dark circles that have made a home under his eyes, but truly, she has no room to judge him with her inveterate late-night experiments.

“Have you seen Keith?” Lance inquires as they walk into the command center.

“I just woke up.”

“You and I both know that that is a lie.”

“Fine.” Pidge rolls her eyes. “I was awake mapping correlations between galaxies of different volumes. Sorry for having a hobby. And no, I haven’t seen Keith since he came out of the pod.”

“Oh,” he says.

“I’m worried about him too, Lance.” She adjusts her glasses and gives him a sympathetic smile. “You just have to give it time.”

“Yeah, time.”

They part ways to do their respective tasks. It’s no strenuous affair—for the most part, it’s simple monitoring and maintenance. Lance wraps up within ten minutes and heads to the dining room. He walks as fast as possible without breaking into a full sprint. His appetite has no end after his exhausting night and he needs to see Keith.

“You didn’t encounter Keith?” is the first question out of Shiro’s mouth when Lance enters the room. It seems as though he’s on everyone’s mind.

He shakes his head no. “I’ll go get him.”

Lance only makes it to the door when his task is snipped at the bud. Keith stands on the other side of the opened door, huffing and puffing. His hair is swept in wayward directions, as if arranged in a frantic rush. His eyes are glazed over. It takes him a second to register Lance’s presence.

Keith flinches.

It takes all of Lance’s strength and will not to react. His body is stuck between reaching out with gentle hands—a muscle memory habit that seems to be ingrained into his body—and evaporating on the spot. He’s sick. He’s sick, he’s sick, he’s sick. Stop taking every minute action so personally. Keith would probably flinch if wind blew in his face.

Lance puts on an air of pleasantude. “Hey, man,” Lance says. He moves out of the doorway and props it open with one foot. “Are you eating with us?”

Keith mutters under his breath. Lance can’t hear him.

“Huh?”

He continues to mumble softly. Keith is talking, that’s for sure, but it gets to a point where Lance can’t tell whether he’s addressing him or himself. His words are incoherent and far from cogent and succinct.

Lance glances at the dining table to see if anyone else has taken notice of this nonplussing behavior, but the rest of the team is too immersed in eating their meal. When he looks back, he nearly butts heads with Keith.

“Woah, uh—”

Keith leans towards him like there’s a magnet drawing them close. The space between them is insubstantial.

“Are you okay?” Lance asks. Concern doesn’t even begin to capture the extent of his worries.

All of a sudden, Keith straightens up, zips his lips closed, and darts away from Lance. He’s sitting at the dining table before Lance knows it.

…what was that?

Lance sighs and shakes his head. He must be seeing things. It’s not hard to believe his stress is so fatiguing that it’s made him delusional. He follows Keith into the dining room and sits in the last open chair right next to him.

Breakfast is uneventful for five minutes before a disruption strikes the normalcy.

Lance digs into his meal with vigor. His nerves have him hungry. He sneaks looks at Keith between bites. Keith isn’t eating. In fact, he hasn’t even touched his food. He swirls his fork around the plate in a trance.

That’s alright, Lance supplies. He can recount a plethora of times when his mother scolded him for ditching meals while sick. At least Keith is present with a utensil in hand. It’s only one step down from eating.

The more time passes, the moore antsy Lance gets. His stomach gurgles.

Hunk takes notice. “Do you want seconds?” He asks.

“Piss off,” Lance scoffs, but he doesn’t deny it when the food is pushed in his direction. He takes another serving and eats a bite of food.

Looks at Keith.

Takes another bite.

Eyes Keith.

Chews. Swallows.

Keith is staring at Pidge. Hard.

Then, his mouth starts moving.

“AB-20 Trax,” he whispers. “AB…”

Lance roves his eyes across the table to see if anyone else has taken notice of this behavior. But no, the chatter amongst the team is too loud and clamorous.

Keith takes a few erratic breaths. His chest seizes like the action is unnatural and not instinctual. “Have to go…Got to go.”

Lance nudges him. “Go where?”

“The mission…”

He can feel his hackles rising. Mission over individual. Even now, with Keith safe and recovering at the Castle Ship, the Blade’s motto chases him like a persistent shadow. What exactly did he have to face on those missions? Why do they haunt him?

It occurs to Lance that after Keith’s health is reinvigorated, he’ll take his leave once more. He had pushed that thought away to make room for the relief of seeing Keith awake and alive, but now it returns tenfold. Lance knows he’ll leave. For all that has become unfamiliar between the two of them, there are some dogmas so deeply rooted in Keith’s soul that Lance is certain haven’t changed. The need to be of pivotal use, to fight for justice and safety. The desire for open space. The relish of independence.

Keith is going to leave.

He’ll be gone, and they’ll have no choice but to let him go back to this organization that tosses him around like spare trash. The next time he’ll return will be in a similar fashion, or he’ll never come back at all.

All of a sudden, the bitterness of their last fight rushes in like someone has opened a floodgate. The memory becomes all the more clear with Keith right next to him.

“Number four,” Coran addresses Keith, “The napkins, if you will.”

That’s when everyone’s attention turns to Keith.

He’s still mumbling. Still the same bullshit—still about the Blades.

Coran frowns. “Number four? Keith?”

Pidge leans towards Allura and asks, “Is he okay?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” she stammers, “I was under the impression that this is a human condition. Keith?” Lance doesn’t like the way her voice wavers. Allura’s worry is a signal for alarm.

The more Keith rocks back and forth, shaking his head and muttering mission this and mission that, the more Lance’s temper rises. His choleric mood is irrational—he understands this. His rage isn’t directed at anyone in the room, not even Keith. If Lance takes a moment to sort his bilious emotions, he knows he’ll come to the conclusion that he’s not mad at the Blades or Kolivan either. After all, they do the brunt work that eases the battles for Voltron, and that requires sacrifice. To repudiate their effective contributions would be abysmally ignorant.

But not Keith. They can’t take Keith and turn him into just another number for a statistical report. Lance doesn’t want to spend all night transcribing a file with Keith’s name on the top again, and certainly not for his death. Anyone but him.

Call Lance selfish. Call him craven. Lance doesn’t care.

“Keith?” Shiro tries. “Can you hear me?”

“I have to go…”

“Go where?” He asks. There’s pain in Shiro’s voice. Lance winces at the way it stretches thin. “Where do you have to go?”

“The mission…”

“What mission?”

“The mission…”

“Shall we prepare a pod?” Hunk asks. He murmurs lowly to be discreet. It’s a thoughtful but unnecessary gesture; Keith can’t even register comments made straight at him. His attention is off the radar.

“Keith!” Coran finally snaps his fingers in front of his face.

That shocks him out of his stupor.

Keith’s blinks are somnolent. Is he even present? Lance awaits a reaction—anything—with baited breath.

“Are you okay, number four?”

“Uh, yeah.” Keith nods.

“Are you sure?”

Keith seems to take this like a personal diatribe and not an earnest question. “Yes,” he presses. Offensive is splattered all over his face. He must find it outrageous that someone would dare to doubt his health.

Because Keith is always okay. Because Keith, no matter the symptoms he demonstrates, will be fine. Surely the next words out of his mouth will be a refute to leave him alone, that is, if he doesn’t fall under another muttering trance.

Is Keith that careless of himself?

Lance is going to kill him.

He’s going to fucking kill him.

“Bullshit.” Lance slams his fork onto the table, else he might snap it.

That has Allura gaping. “Lance!”

“No!” He’s sick of—he doesn’t even know. It’s been less than a day since Keith has come back. It’s as if every pent up feeling from before his initial departure the Blades has slammed into his body like a boomerang hurtling back.

Once Lance starts, he can’t stop speaking. “I know! I know he’s sick and we have to be nice to him. We have to give him his space. I have been nice to him.” He huffs. He doesn’t even know who this rant is for; he’s not even looking at Keith. “Fucking held the door for him, said hi and shit, and didn’t even make a single fucking comment.”

It’s aimless. Does Lance want a fucking award? Thanks for doing the bare minimum for your traumatized, hallucinating semi-ex boyfriend! As a treat, you get to yell at him about perfectly normal life choices he made months ago.

The mental taunts only fuel his aggression. “He looks like shit? I didn’t say anything. He mumbles to himself and ignores half our questions? I don’t say a word!”

At that, he points an accusatory finger at Keith. Someone tries to interrupt him. They fail.

“But he’s lying! You keep saying you’re okay, but you’re not!”

They’re so close. So close. If a thread tying both of them together was tugged on, they’d run their noses smack into each other. It reminds Lance of their first kiss, which had happened not so far away, but so long ago.

Lance looks Keith in the eyes. He prays that he digs through the rubble of his anger and finds understanding. He hopes that Keith takes the fight, as heartbreaking as that might be. Or even more naively, he hopes that Keith listens.

Keith stares at Lance’s finger. It remains centered on him like Keith is his true north.

Then all of a sudden, he smacks Lance’s hand away.

If Coran’s snap woke Keith up, Lance’s commentary has him burning alive. “Shut the fuck up!” Keith cries. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I said I’m fine! Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“Because you’re pulling the same shit you did last time—”

Keith scoffs. It’s so natural, as if he’s not sick at all. Lance relishes it. Lance hates it. “And what does it matter to you?” He asks.

Is Keith fucking joking?

What does it matter?

What does it matter?

If Lance had any less ego, he’d stop in his tracks and tell him. He’d tell him about loving him and the nights spent missing him. He’d tell him that he didn’t even care for their lachrymose romance—he’d be happy with just knowing Keith’s alive, wherever he may be. Lance would mention that it’s hard to keep track of the wellbeing of everyone he cherishes. Everyone seems to be drifting away recently, like there’s no gravity tethering them together. He’s long since left his family behind, Keith stepped out of Voltron, Hunk and Pidge have grown distant, and Shiro, Allura, and Coran treat him more like an errand boy. Even if the errands are important, which—that doesn’t matter. It’s far from the point. If Keith is back in Lance’s realm, how can Lance deny himself an attempt to keep him around?

He’d tell him. Lance could fling his dignity away to the ends of the universe and bare his heart raw and aching to the team. There’s so much to say—not just to Keith. To everyone.

Instead, Lance hones all the fire in his chest at Keith. He says:

“To me? What does it matter to me? None of your fucking business, deserter, but I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you it matters so much to me, but that doesn’t mean anything to you because you’ll lie regardless!”

“Lie about what? I’m fine!”

No, you’re not! You’re not! Lance wants Keith to see so badly. He wants him to care. He might be a hypocrite for asking Keith to let go of this reckless selflessness, but at least he’s not the one existing like a zombie that only bounces back to life to fight anyone that tries to do something nice for him. It’s different, Lance insists.

Lance could cry.

He’s caused enough of a scene, having almost loosened his lips entirely and confessed every woe that’s ever lurked in his mind late at night. He needs to leave, take a breather, and come back when he’s ready to work again. And not yell at Keith again—Jesus Christ, what a warm welcome. Second day back and Lance is already calling him a deserter and a liar. No wonder he left him.

Lance’s throat is dry. “I’m taking this back to my room,” he says, and stands up with his plate. With that, he leaves the dining hall.

“You’re early.”

Allura finds him in the training center well before their team combat practice. Lance had been running drills with a blunt sword until his shoulders and wrists ached. Exhausted, he spent his remaining time alone aimlessly swinging it around.

“Hey.” Lance nods at her. He rests the tip of the sword against the floor.

Allura walks around the perimeter of the room towards the benches. She takes a seat, and Lance follows.

“What’s up?” he asks. “Just watching?” It’s very unlike her.

“I came to check up on you.”

The admission catches Lance off guard, but he wipes the surprise off of his face. “Wrong guy, dude. I’m not the one who’s sick.”

Allura blinks at him. “Do you have to be sick for me to ask you how you are? Can I not check up on a friend?”

Friend. The word bounces fondly around his head. Lance knows he and Allura are friends, but hearing it from her mouth makes it tangible. They share meals and laughter together—not to mention the ginormous, sentient space robot they mind link to form. All of these signs point towards evident friendships. Still, it warms Lance’s heart to remember. In the midst of the war, it’s often easy to forget his teammates care about him for more than what he brings to the table.

“I guess you can,” Lance says.

“Good.” Allura smiles. “How are you?”

He gives it a moment. “I’m alright,” he confesses, “Pissed.”

“Training didn’t help you cool down?”

It really didn’t. In fact, it only served to aggravate Lance further. The more he messed up basic skills and steps, the more his temper rose. It’s only now that Lance is talking to Allura has he found a moment to collect himself. He shrugs at her question.

“I don’t know if it’ll help to hear, but Keith truly didn’t know.”

“Hm?” That piques his attention.

“About all the muttering and fidgeting,” she explains, “He wasn’t aware he was doing that at all. Although, I don’t think this is good news, but it may offer some conciliation about your squabble.”

It’s not good news. It’s not good at all.

“What?” Lance’s throat is dry. “What do you mean by he didn’t know?”

“He was confused when we called him out on it. He was in total disbelief.”

“Oh my god,” Lance mutters, “Oh my god.”

Allura spares him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry. I wanted to keep you updated. I know how much he means to you.”

“It’s not—don’t—” Lance doesn’t even know what to say. How could Keith have been wholly naive to his blatant actions? His mouth was moving and forming full words. Where was his mind throughout all of that? What was feeding him his thoughts—had he been thinking at all? There’s too much for Lance to wrap his mind around.

The worst is the suffocating guilt, which quashes all lines of theories and rational thoughts. Keith had to have been conscious when arguing with him. He had to—there was so much fire in his eyes. Lance wouldn’t know what to do if that conversation was also a result of delirium. He doesn’t know what to do, regardless. He had sat there and belittled a guy who didn’t—he didn’t even know. All he had done was awoken to Lance’s bitter words.

“Don’t apologize.” Lance shakes his head. “I—fuck.”

“Fuck, indeed.”

Allura’s use of English swears is usually droll enough to bring him to sudden laughter, but not at the moment. Lance keeps his lips pressed together in a thin line.

“What does this mean for Keith?”

“The pod scans say he’s okay. We should give him a few days. His actions might just be a sign of severe trauma and delirium.”

“But what if—”

“We’ll be closely monitoring him,” Allura reassures him. “And you can’t tell anyone, but—” she looks around as if someone might be spying on them, “I’ve been researching exposure to druids ever since he came back. I haven’t ruled out the option that there could be something else at play.”

Lance swallows. “You think he’s not just sick.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Allura says, “I don’t know what aspects of Keith’s behavior are his natural disposition to a traumatic event and what are symptoms of an ailment. I’m sorry—it’ll need more observation and research.”

Lance nods. He’s grateful for Allura. He really is. They’d be doomed without her, or dead, probably. He’s glad she’s there to help Keith out. Lance can’t stand the idea of something worse happening to him.

“I wish he never left,” Lance whispers, “I wish he stayed with Voltron.”

Allura rubs a soothing hand on his back. “I know.”

She continues speaking. “But truthfully, I must admit. I don’t think Keith was happy here.”

“Yeah, I know he wanted to join the Blades and find out more about himself, but—”

“No, I mean,” Allura interrupts, “I think he hated it here—being the Black Paladin. I think he felt stuck and needed an out.”

Not for the first time in the conversation, Lance is rendered speechless.

“But…it was mainly because Shiro disappeared. Right?” He doesn’t know why he’s looking to Allura for confirmation. The person with the real answers is deep into sickness and would only lash out if Lance approached him. He turns to his memories with Keith for answers.

“Probably,” Allura muses, “It’s hard to be thrusted into a position of power after losing someone you love.”

“Do you feel like that, princess?”

“Yes.” Her answer is instant.

“I…”

“Not that you need to worry, Lance.” The dourness slips off her face as she gives him a brisk grin. “I love my team. I’m hardly some leader—it’s more collaborative, anyways. And ever since Blue has accepted me, it’s been so lovely to be able to help with the leg work.” Her eyes glimmer. “Did you get the joke? Leg work?”

Lance groans. “Yes, I got it. God,” he smears his hand down his face, “You’re worse than me.”

The conversation turns somber once more. “You know Keith more than I do,” Allura says, “So I might be wrong in my thoughts. But I think that…while Keith might’ve enjoyed fighting alongside us, he didn’t want to lead us. He always looked miserable. I know it got better—we all got better with the new changes, especially thanks to you, Lance. But I—I don’t know,” she huffs, “I’m just rambling.”

“That’s alright,” Lance says. He stands up. “I’m going to go to my room for a bit and come back.” He doesn’t mention how her words gnaw at his chest. He had never thought about it—he didn’t think Keith had been unhappy with them. Lance’s understanding was that all things corrected themselves when Shiro returned, which is why Keith’s desire to leave completely caught him off guard.

“Oh, and Lance,” Allura calls out before he exits the room, “Keith was asking for you. Before we put him in the pod. Give him a visit, will you?”

Lance ruminates over Allura’s words for the rest of the day. He pours over their implications throughout training, dinner, and more late night work. He doesn’t heed her advice and seek out Keith. He assures himself that he’ll run into him eventually, and he does, when Keith shows up to watch them train. It’s only for a little bit, before Keith darts out of the room to go who knows where. A part of Lance wants to follow after him, but he doesn’t. He continues onward with his day as if everything is normal.

It’s not normal. It feels wrong. Off.

Even as his friends theorize different strategies and talk shop over a shared meal, Lance can’t shake off his unease. It’s strange to live through his day with Keith in walking distance, and it’s even more odd to not see him around. His return has made things even more incomplete; Lance finds himself burdened with a bottomless pit of unanswered questions. He’s confused about Keith’s ailments, his feelings, and his—everything. There’s so much that Lance doesn’t understand.

Had Keith been unhappy in the times leading up to his departure for the Blades?

Allura claimed he looked miserable, but when Lance looks back on those times, he remembers late night kisses and wide, cheesing grins. Things were looking upwards during the latter half of Keith’s Black Paladin days. Him and Keith had been fighting less. In fact, they hadn’t been fighting at all. What had been so terrible that would make Keith upset?

Lance constantly hurls criticism at himself about how Keith wants nothing to do with him and that he wasn’t good enough for Keith to want to stay. Some invectives are too histrionic to be believable, but others are reasonable enough that Lance accepts it. Keith didn’t want to be with him. Accept. He wasn’t a useful right-hand man for him. Passable. Then there’s the less self-centered notions: Keith didn’t think he was a good enough leader, he wanted to be by himself, and he wanted to find out more about his mother. Those are the reasons Lance uses to reassure himself that Keith leaving was not a result of his own incompetency.

Throwing in the idea that Keith was unhappy scrambles everything up.

Lance sighs. What the fuck is he doing?

There’s no point coming up with hypotheses. Lance won’t get any answers from anything or anyone but Keith himself.

He reminds himself that his curiosities are unimportant. There are larger, more pressing priorities than demanding answers.

Like checking up on Keith and apologizing, for instance.

He spends a decent portion of the night collecting his courage to visit him and backing down with different excuses. Lance often made it halfway to Keith’s room before deciding that he must be asleep or that their conversation will most likely end in a fight. He knows he’s not sleeping a wink tonight if he doesn’t see him.

Keith, I’m sorry for blowing up at you.

Hi Keith. Are you feeling better?

I don’t think you’re a deserter.

What can I do to make it better?

Nothing. There’s nothing Lance can do to make him feel better. This is aimless. He’s just wasting Keith’s time. Keith won’t even want to see him.

Allura’s words replay in his mind. Keith was asking for you.

Does Lance even know what Keith wants?

Lance assumes so much about him—what speculations truly represent him? What is a conjecture and what is Keith?

He finally musters up enough guts to visit Keith, regardless of the rejection he may face, when there is a knock on his door.

Lance pauses. It’s so late at night. Who’d be there?

If his team wants him to do something, they generally notify him on the datapad. The last time anyone had visited his room so late had been—well, it had been back when Keith was still on the team.

Lance opens the door. “Yo,” he calls out, “Who the fuck is—”

He halts when he sees who stands in the hallway. “Oh shit. Keith?”

Just like when they ran into each other before breakfast, Keith seems completely out of it. He sways back and forth on his heels with a nebulous gaze centered in no particular direction. He’s not muttering. Lance is honestly not too sure what he’s doing. 

His heartbeat quickens. “Hey, Keith. What’s up?”

At that, Keith looks around, but he doesn’t speak. His eyes drift over Lance’s face a few times. Lance wonders if Keith sees him.

“Keith, is everything okay?” Lance considers getting Coran.

He reaches out with precarious hands. Keith flinches like Lance is going to strike him. He shields his face with his hands. “Don’t—”

Lance’s heart aches. What had been done to Keith for him to react this way?

“Keith.” He tries to speak as gently as possible. “I’m really sorry about yesterday, when I called you a deserter and said you didn’t care. That was mean of me. I’m sorry. You were struggling and I was being rude to you.”

His apologies are met with silence. It doesn’t sting as much as Lance expected it to. He knows his chances of being forgiven were low. Lance had caused him too much damage since coming back—since even before, actually. If he wanted Keith to forgive him, he’d have to repent for so much more.

As the silence grows, Lance gets desperate.

“Can we please put it behind us? Please? Even the fight from ages ago—let me just help you out.”

Keith takes a few steps backwards. The glow on his face from the light emitted from Lance’s room dims. He’s leaving. He’s retreating back into the shadows. This visit to Lance must’ve been a fit of sleepwalking or a coincidence. He’ll be gone again soon and Lance will be alone, wondering if he was ever here or if it was just a trick of the light.

Lance doesn’t want him to disappear.

He’s suffering. It’s evident. He can’t—how can he let him be alone?

“Keith, please, you don’t have to say anything to me.” Lance thinks of alternatives that Keith might be more receptive to. “I’ll bring Shiro, or something. Or Coran, he’ll know how to help you. We can figure something out.” He sighs and runs a frustrated hand through his hair. ““You’re breaking my heart, Keith. Tell me what to do, baby. Please.”

The pet name slips out instinctively. Lance’s eyes widen.

There’s no time to gauge Keith’s reaction before his fist is in Lance’s face. He never punches him—no, the arc of his swing is only a few centimeters short of colliding with Lance’s nose. Keith’s fist crashes against the doorway with a loud thud. The impact echoes like it would hurt.

Keith stumbles backwards, hunched over and clutching his hand to his chest. He turns his head left and right like he’s trying to escape.

Lance speaks without thinking again. “Bab—”

“Don’t call me that! Stop it! Stop! Would you just—”

Keith curls further in on himself and grits out a scream through his teeth.

Shit. Okay, shit. Lance needs to watch his mouth. They’re not together anymore. He’s only making things worse.

“Okay, I’m sorry. Sorry.” He nods. He doesn’t know what else he can say or do. He can’t take his words back.

It’s not enough to satiate Keith. “Just stop it,” he says, without looking at Lance.

Keith sobs and lowers himself to the floor. He kneels down with his forehead pressed to the floor and his hands clenched over his ears. His dark hair falls around his head like a halo. He won’t stop crying.

Lance doesn’t know what to do.

It’s wired into his system to drop down and console Keith, but that might only serve to frighten Keith more. He hadn’t just been unreceptive to Lance’s pet name—he had been downright defensive. He tried to attack him in an attempt to save his own skin. Keith had seen Lance as some sort of threat to protect himself from. He still does, judging by the way he cowers and cries. In which case, Lance should immediately get Shiro—at least Keith wouldn’t be so scared of his brother.

But even as Lance contemplates getting him, he stays stationary.

How can he just step over Keith’s shaking body and walk away, even if it’s to get help? What if Keith has vanished by the time he comes back? What if he faints or dies?

Lance wishes there was someone else there with him. Someone more competent.

Keith keeps wailing on the floor. He’s never seen him react like this before, not even when Shiro had disappeared. Back then, he had been all vacant eyes and motionless. Now, sobs as loud as thunderclouds rip out of his body. Keith cries up a storm.

To think that Lance had caused him to react like this.

He’s so terrible. For all his care, Lance hasn’t done a single thing right for Keith since his return.

Just as Lance is about to turn back towards his room to retrieve his communicator to page Shiro, Keith tears himself off the floor and clutches at sleep pants. His nails scratch Lance’s knees through the fabric as he looks up at him with desperation.

“Help me. Please, help me!”

Keith slumps back onto the ground. Lance cautiously lowers him to his level, anticipating a change in decision or rejection. When it doesn’t come, Lance sits on the floor next to him. 

“What do you need?” He’ll do anything for him. Anything to stop his hurt.

“I don’t know,” Keith heaves. His chest rises and falls like massive tides swelling up and crashing down. Lance sees it when the truth and severity of his statement hit him. He looks to Lance in a panic. “I don’t know. I don’t—”

“Hey, hey,” Lance hushes him. He’s panicking too, but he can’t show it. He has to appear calm and benign. He can’t express any bewilderment about Keith seeking him out in the middle of the night, Keith standing stoic and unresponsive, Keith swinging at him, and Keith crying and begging for help. All of that must stay inside.

“We’ll figure it out,” he reassures. Truthfully, he still doesn’t know what to do.

When Keith used to come to him to rant or cry, way before when he was still the Black Paladin, Lance would just hold him close and he’d let it all out. They wouldn’t speak much; oftentimes, they wouldn’t say anything at all. Lance would hold Keith in his lap and run his hands up and down his back. Keith would do the same for him after his nightmares—and boy, did Lance nightmare. He’d run to him nearly every night to be held. Keith would barely stir as he’d open his arms in a welcome for Lance to crawl into his bed.

After he left, Lance’s nightmares didn’t stop. He found different ways to cope with it. He started sleeping less.

Briefly, Lance wonders what Keith had done at the Blades when he needed to cry or vent. He had presumed that Keith was better off and didn’t need his support. Now, Lance imagines that he might’ve spent lonely nights crying by himself.

“Can I…” He hesitates before speaking. If he plays his cards without thinking, he might freak Keith out even more. “Can I hold you?” Lance rushes to clarify, “Nothing weird! Just like we used to.”

To his surprise, Keith nods.

Lance wraps his arms around him and pulls Keith towards his chest. He moves slowly to give Keith a chance to protest his actions. He doesn’t. He buries his face into the crook of Lance’s shoulder and shudders out a sigh.

“Keith?” Lance calls out. He whispers against Keith’s hair:
I’m sorry.”

He’s sorry for his volatile reaction from when Keith announced that he was leaving for the Blades indefinitely. If Lance hadn’t been so harsh and rude, then maybe Keith wouldn’t have felt so alone and shunned. Maybe he would’ve felt like he had something to come back to. They could’ve worked something out.

He’s sorry he told him to leave. He’s sorry he said he didn’t care if he’d leave. He’s sorry for things even prior to that: never elaborating on the depth of his feelings, always acting lackadaisical, and his initial antagonism during the incipient days of Voltron.

Keith shakes his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t apologize.”

“My bad, dude.”

“That was…that was an apology.”

This conversation is so trivial in the grand scheme of Keith’s breakdown. It’s grounding. Lance can’t help but pull away and smile at him. Keith hardly reacts, but his tear tracks are drying and he’s not pulling away.

“You feeling better?” he asks. Keith nods.

“Good.” Lance nods back. He blurts out without thinking, “Is it not cool for me to call you that anymore? You know—”

Shit. Why would Lance circle back to that? Keith literally—ugh, Lance is going to blow himself up. He had a fucking fight or flight response to being called baby, and Lance is still talking to him about it? Is he insane?

But Keith doesn’t fight him or run away.

He shakes his head no. Vigorously. Lance takes it like a champ. Pet names off the table. Cool, Cool. Obviously. They’re not together.

Lance pushes his luck a little further, because he’s a dumbass. “Is it because we’re, ya know, not…together anymore?”

“No!”

Keith’s objection rings loud and clear in the hallway. It cuts a wall of silence through their conversation and takes Lance by surprise. Keith had spoken so defiantly that Lance played back his question to check if he had asked something else like, do you love me or do you wanna stay here forever? But he hadn’t—Keith was responding to what he had explicitly asked.

Oh.

“Are we…together?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Lance can’t even fault him. He doesn’t know either, and he doesn’t know why he bothered asking. Keith seeking him out for help has nothing to do with that.
“Oh.”

They spend the rest of their time on the hallway floor exchanging sparse conversation. Keith profusely apologizes for trying to hit him and Lance waves it off. It’s really no big deal. They’ve done worse to each other when they first started working together, and if that had been nothing to deter their coming camaraderie, then this slip up was nothing too. Still, Keith seems reluctant to accept that it was alright, so Lance doesn’t press it. He’s been exhausted enough for one night.

Eventually, Lance invites him into his room. It’s partially a courtesy and partially a plea; he wants Keith to have the option of sticking around, but he also desperately wants Keith to stick around in case he—Lance doesn’t know what. In case he needs him. Or something.

It’s awfully reminiscent of how things used to be between them.

Lance doesn’t bring it up. He leaves all his unfed curiosities tucked deep into the crevices of his heart. He has no clue what Keith feels, needs, or truthfully—what does Keith want?

Lance doesn’t ask.

Keith doesn’t mention anything either.

Such an easy fix to what’s going to happen to you. All you have to do is tell me what you want.

“What do you want, Keith?”

The med bay tanks into darkness as the main lights flicker off. A deep, red glow replaces the saturated, hospital glare from before. It’s not bright enough—the distinction between objects and their shadows grows blurry. Keith can’t make out the end of his bed, the edges of his finger tips, and Lance’s location in relation to him. Even after his eyes adjust, he has to strain to see. He swipes a shaky arm across where Lance had been previously sitting. When he only comes across open air, Keith’s breath hitches in his throat.

Lance isn’t there.

He’s gone.

He—

“Keith!” Lance grabs his shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s okay, calm down. I’m right here.”

“What’s happening?” he croaks.

“Shit—” Lance swears. He hasn’t let go of Keith yet. “Okay, shit. Shit. I, what do I do?” The question is directed more towards himself.

Even Keith, caught half in a dazed dream, knows the evident answer. “You should go, Lance.”

“And leave you? Are you crazy?”

“You’d be crazy for staying,” he insists, “Intruders aren’t—this isn’t a light issue, Lance. It’s all hands on deck. You can’t just sit around here.”

“I’m not leaving,” Lance presses. “You need me.”

“The team needs you.”

“You are a part of the team, Keith.”

Keith doesn’t know what to say to that. The natural answer, the truculent defiance, sits ready on his tongue, but he’s too tired to argue. He’s too tired to deny that Lance’s words are what he wants to hear. It aches him not to accept them like a delicate blanket falling gently over his shoulders.

After the silence between them stretches thin and Lance’s touch on his shoulders becomes faint, Keith panics.

“Lance?” He asks. “Lance?”

“I’m right here.”

“Oh…okay.”

“How are you feeling?” Lance asks.

“I don’t know,” he confesses.

“That’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

Keith blinks back tears. “How can you be so sure?”

The room is so dark.

“I know you, Keith. You’re a fighter. You never back down from a challenge or a problem. You always make it through.”

“I guess,” he chuckles, and he’s embarrassed by how wet it sounds. “This one is kind of a tough one, though.”

“Nothing is too tough for you.”

Even with the alarm lights roving across the room, it feels like the room is growing darker by the second. In fact, Keith needs to squint to see any light at all. It feels like he has his eyes shut. Keith rubs at his eyeballs; he can feel its slimy surface. His eyes are open.

“What was that thing you were telling me earlier?” Lance asks. “The thing you wanted. Didn’t you wanna let me know?”

“I do,” Keith says.

“What is it?”

“It’s…”

“There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed. I just need a moment. It’s—”

“Take your time.”

“I want…” This is the culmination of everything that has been plaguing Keith. Everything. All of it can be traced back to this one root. The druid had found this deep desire in his head and picked and prodded at it until it became an open, festering wound. If he said it out loud, he could seal it.

“I want…you,” Keith says. He repeats himself more firmly. “That’s what I want. I want you.”

Keith waits for a change. He waits to feel warmth in his heart.

He waits.

And waits.

And waits.

“Lance?”

Had Keith been…wrong?

Nothing happens. Just like that wretched morning however long ago, when Keith poured his chest out into a flimsy I love you, only to feel his chest hollow of a heartbeat, all remains stagnant and stationary. There is no change. There is no healing.

How could Keith have been wrong? About this? About himself? Perhaps he doesn’t understand druid sorcery or quintessence, but at the very least, he understands himself. He knows he loves Lance. He knows he wants him, in all ways imaginable.

Is it not enough? Are his feelings, the vast emotions so deep to flood him entirely, simply fickle and shallow in the grand scheme of things?

Perhaps that’s why the druid had cursed him this way. It knew that he’d desperately scramble for a cure that doesn’t exist, because nothing can fix Keith. He’s a broken thing—the druid simply came along and bent him till irreparable destruction. It sang him a song of easy remedies that dangle under his nose, all while knowing that there was nothing there at all. It tied a string of life between him and Lance for the sake of watching how he’d chase a love story.

Keith is such a fucking idiot.

“Okay,” he clears his throat, “nevermind. That—it didn’t work.”

“It didn’t work.” Realization strikes Keith. “It didn’t—Lance,” he cries.

There’s no response.

“Lance?”

The room is pitch black.

“Lance? Where are you?”

Keith was just talking to Lance. Lance said he wouldn’t leave. He said so. Why is he gone?

“Lance? Lance?”

…

Where is Keith?

Is he…where is he?

Has the past few days even happened?

“Oh my fucking god,” Keith mutters. His head spins. He clenches his eyes shut. “Oh my god.”

He waits.

And waits.

And waits, except this time he’s not waiting for his health or for a response.

He’s waiting for it.

Keith knows it will come.

It has been waiting for him.

The druid.

It has been watching him chase his own tail until he becomes frail and thin. It’ll visit him once before he dies. Keith knows. He will not get a gentle death.

Keith wishes he had been dead, that morning, when he woke up next to Lance and threw a tantrum. It would’ve been so nice for that torture to have finished up then and there. And that too, for him to pass in such a beloved place, surrounded by the people he cherishes. It would’ve been a lucky death.

Why the hell would Keith ever deserve something so nice like that?

Dissonant banging echoes outside of the med bay. It rises and falls in volume. Keith doesn’t know if his hearing has become spotty or if something is travelling rapidly in all directions. The noise scrapes against the walls of his ears like metal screeching. Keith’s head pounds.

He hears bangs. Crashes. Shouts. They blend together like a plangent cacophony of funeral bells.

Should Keith pray?

He’s run dry of options. As a last ditch attempt to save a part of his soul, it’d be fit to clasp his hands together and beg a few pleas to whosoever may listen. Although, just thinking about it reveals the hopelessness of the idea—Keith doesn’t believe in any god. He doesn’t believe in fortune or fate.

He doesn’t even know how to pray.

The obstreperous racket crescendos louder.

Louder.

LOUDER.

LOUDER.

LOUDER.

LOUDER.

LOUDER.

Keith’s heartbeat is in his throat. He could choke on it.

He wishes it would stop. His head feels like it’s splitting down the middle.

LOUDER.

LOUDER.

LOUDER.

LOUDER.

He can’t with this. Where’s his blade? Keith will just end it himself. On his own terms. It might be his last chance to save himself.

He—where is it? Come to think of it, had Keith ever had his blade since returning to the castle ship?

Fuck. His—

The room explodes into blinding light.

It’s all too much. The contrast from the pitch black to full power is agonizing. Even closing his eyes does nothing to reprieve Keith. It’s as if there has been a massive eruption at the culmination of an escarpment and Keith is centered at the precipice of it. His senses are ruptured and torn in all directions. He presses himself against the cot in hopes to melt into it and disappear from this orchestra of light and sound. It continues to pulverise Keith for every second that he remains exposed.

The first thing Keith sees when he opens his eyes to the harsh med bay lights is Lance rushing towards him. He is covered in blood.

“What…”

“Keith! Don’t look, Keith!”

Keith is too late to heed Lance’s warning.

His pupils adjust and he sees.

Coran staggers in first. He’s hunched over like he’s carrying a heavy weight. There is a metal arm slung over his shoulder.

Then, through the doorway appears Shiro and Hunk. Shiro is wedged between Coran and Hunk with his head bowed low. He’s unconscious; they’re supporting his full weight. The scene unfolds before Keith piece by piece. Blood is smattered over all of them, but all the signs indicate that it comes from Shiro. His armor is doused in a slick red, like he’s been dipped in a vat of blood. Keith can’t tell what part of him is injured. The three of them drag a trail of blood in their wake as they stumble past Keith’s cot.

“Get him to a pod! Quick!”

“How the fuck did the Galra—”

Shiro.

Keith watches, helpless and immobile, as Coran and Hunk work tirelessly to wedge open a pod door. When Coran types in its security code, he smudges the screen with blood. It’s a scene out of a nightmare.

“Keith,” Lance pleads. When it doesn’t capture his attention, Lance guides his chin away to face away from the chaos unfolding right next to them. “Keith, don't look. I’m sorry I left—the power went out and I had to manually open the med bay door.”

“Shir—Shiro,” Keith gasps.

“He’s going to be okay.” Lance gives him a wavering smile. There are tears in his eyes and a cut on his cheek. He’s hurt too.

Keith reaches out and grazes his wound with his finger tips.

“You—”

Another crash distracts him. A galran soldier smashes their way through the med bay entrance, carving a crater into the doorway. They carry a gun.

Purple blaster fire zips across the room and pelts the back wall of the med bay, missing Coran, Shiro, and Hunk by a long shot. Lance shoots off the offending gunman with his bayard—his bayard? When did he retrieve that? He fires twice more at opponents that are out of Keith’s field of vision.

Another galra bursts into the room and leaps on top of Hunk. Lance is too late to shoot him. Hunk lets go of his hold on Shiro to fend him off. He locks the soldier in a chokehold.

“Take the shot, Lance!”

“No way,” Lance warns, “The bullet will bounce onto the pod glass and break it. Come this way!” He braces one hand over Keith’s bedframe in a guarding gesture while the other trains the gun on the galran soldier writhing about in Hunk’s arms.

Coran finally pushes Shiro into the pod. Now that he’s upright, Keith is able to get a proper glimpse at his face.

He is completely mauled.

Jagged gashes rip across his cheek, starting from the base of his hairline till the slope of his jaw. The lacerations ooze and drip. Blood both plops onto the bold, black V of his paladin armor and seeps down his neck and into the flight suit under. They haven’t taken off his suit before putting him into the pod—either a sign of a mistake made in remiss haste or an injury so severe that removing armor would prove fatal. The latter is far more likely and far worse. The team has only ever stuffed someone into a pod fully geared up when they’ve been crushed or impaled. Keith can’t tell what exactly is wrong with Shiro; no matter how hard he strains, he is unable to read the pod’s screen.

What happened to him? How could he have gotten so injured?

Shiro was supposed to be safe. Keith found him. Nothing was meant to happen to him again. Ever.

He desperately wants to crawl out of his cot and drag himself towards the pod. Keith wishes he could do something—anything that isn’t uselessly laying around while his teammates fight their damndest to keep his brother alive and keep him and the castle ship from harm.

Keith thinks about how often something like this might’ve happened. Someone else getting hurt. The team hadn’t taken too many injuries since the explosion that marred Lance’s back during the embryonic days of Voltron. Then with Keith as a leader, they took blows left and right. People were rotating in and out of pods in shifts. Injuries littered the bodies of his teammates at all times from following his poorly thought out orders. Keith thought that the pattern might’ve broken with him out of the picture.

He thinks about a situation like this happening after he leaves—dies.

He’s not the only one susceptible to hurt, after all. This is a war.

When Keith dies, there won’t be anything he can do to stop a scene like this from unfolding.

Not that there’s much he’s doing while alive either.

In the midst of it all, Keith hears Hunk’s voice: “What is Keith still doing here? It’s unsafe! Get him out of here!”

Out? No, no, Keith can’t go. He won’t. This very well may be the last time he sees his brother’s face. One of these blinks will be his last, and then he can never see him again. Never laugh at him again. Never fly hoverbikes or spar together.

Lance shoots the soldier and turns towards Keith once again. “Keith, hey. Hey. Can you hear me?”

Keith nods.

“Do you know where you are?”

Does he ever know anything? “Med bay,” Keith whispers. His answer is met with a bright smile. It’s anachromatic against the destructive backdrop playing behind Lance.

“Good!” Lance says. “That’s great, uh—”

“Take him out, dude!” 

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea, Hunk,” Lance stresses, “He’ll be all alone out there. I don’t know where Pidge and Allura are.”

Keith doesn’t want to get out. He doesn’t want to be alone.

“Okay, well there are soldiers flooding into this place. Lance, you can’t seriously—”

“What if a soldier finds him outside? There’s nothing we can do to stop that!”

Hunk grits his teeth. “Fuck, I know. The risk’s no good either way.”

“Keith.” Lance leans down to talk to him. Is he stupid? His back is completely exposed. Keith wishes to spring out of bed and cover him. “Keith,” he says, “What do you think? Do you want to stay or go?”

“I want to stay,” Keith insists. The weight of his truth is so substantial that it tumbles from his lips.

He wants to live long enough to witness Shiro exit the pod alive and well. He wants to fight alongside his teammates. He wants to share meals with them and argue over battle strategies. There’s so much to do—Keith wants to live to do it.

“Please,” Keith says, “Let me stay.”

Keith dreams of a snow covered lake.

He’s hit with a peculiar sense of déjà vu. He’s been here before, he thinks. The frigid waters and the bubbles swimming around him are familiar. Keith is underwater, trapped below a sheet of ice. It is thin enough that he can peer up at the sky, as if he’s distantly gazing through a window instead of kept hostage by deep waters. Flecks of snow fall on the surface of the ice one by one. They cover up his only view of the outside world.

It’s so cold.

Dark.

Lonely.

He wonders if it will be like this forever.

Slowly, Keith reaches up and brushes his finger tips against the ice.

It cracks.

The days after the intrusion pass by slowly.

Keith absorbs it all passively. The way the med bay entrance is reconstructed and the rest of the team comes by to make small talk and stare at Shiro’s sleeping face. It all floats by like puffy clouds travelling across the sky. It all blends together.

Something is different within him. Something feels different, but it’s hard to pinpoint what. It’s better? Maybe? Keith is too sluggish to tell. If he gives it too much thought, he gets a headache. He tries not to think much at all.

If Keith thinks, he might get his hopes up too high. If he thinks, he might fall down a spiral of paranoia.

He’s all better now. The sickness is gone.

He’s still sick! It’s all a figment of his imagination!

No, no—that’s wrong. Totally wrong. He didn’t think about the druid for ten whole minutes, so obviously it’s stopped haunting him.

FUCK. FUCK! He coughed once. Keith is going to die in twenty seconds.

A noise in the middle of the night? What’s that? Kya’s voice?

He’s so warm, he doesn’t need the blankets. He’s all better.

It’s cold again…

Is Shiro alive in the pod? Is he alive? Or is that just a corpse in a casket?

Lance smiled at him. He wants Keith so bad.

Lance smiles at everyone…

Is his heartbeat working? Let’s check with a stethoscope.

How can he be sure he’s not cold? Is he REALLY not cold? Think. THINK.

It’s been days since he’s been mobile. Days. He has to be better.

If he’s mobile, then why is he still in bedrest? What is the team hiding from him?

Today the team had an emergency meeting? Are they talking about him? Are they going to throw him away?

Keith is so useless…he just sits around in a bed all day. Even the Blades won’t want him after this! Ha! Ha! Useless fucking coward bitch! Ha! Die, stupid bitch with no purpose in life!

It’s so nice that his friends visit him everyday. They take turns cooking for him, meals that he likes, and they talk to him about all sorts of stuff. Pidge and Allura even played board games with him.

The druid should’ve killed Keith.

Keith tries not to think much.

Shiro wakes up in the middle of one of Keith’s medical check ups.

“And you aren’t feeling these symptoms anymore?” Coran scribbles onto a notepad as he sits by Keith’s cot.

Keith doesn’t know what he’s feeling anymore. All he understands is that he might be alive. His limbs function like a rusty bike being used after years of sitting in a shed. When he wiggles his fingers, they’re stiff, but the action is doable. He’s able to sit upright in his cot. He’s able to chew and swallow food and talk to people. When Keith stares at his food, he can see evidence that it’s being eaten. When he looks away and glances back at it, the composition of the plate doesn’t change.

He thinks.

He doesn’t really know.

Keith shrugs at Coran’s question. “I’m not cold.”

“Oh, thank quiznak,” Coran sighs, “That means I can turn off the balmera-powered heater. It’s been blasting enough heat into the med bay to melt an entire worby-dorby panooni-gooni.”

Keith doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just shrugs.

“When did you stop feeling cold?” Coran asks.

“I don’t know.”

“And these voices and images? When did those stop?”

Did they stop? “I don’t know.”

“That’s okay,” Coran nods, “I’ll go and—”

Shiro’s healing pod beeps thrice. Keith hears the distinct hiss of a glass door opening.

The glass slides open. Tendrils of wispy fog tumble out of the pod and vanish after mixing with the castle ship air. Shiro lays inside with his eyes closed. His face is entirely intact. Dried blood still coats his armor, but Keith has had three days of bed rest in front of the pods to get used to the image. His heartbeat quickens as he waits for Shiro to wake up. Coran clutches his notepad to his chest in anticipation as well.

Slowly, Shiro groans and scrunches his closed eyes. The sound of his joints popping as he stretches his neck and shoulders echoes across the room.

It galvanizes Keith instantly. He rips his blanket off his lap and swings his feet onto the floor, ignoring Coran’s stupified shout. The ground is so icy against his bare feet that he hops and stumbles into the bedframe after the first contact. It takes him a moment to acclimate to the temperature, and another to adjust to the weight pressing down on his wobbly knees. It’s Keith’s first time walking in almost a week.

“Shiro!” He yells.

“Give him a minute, number four,” Coran suggests. He does not scold Keith for jumping out of bed.

Shiro blinks a few times before he seems to register the feeble crowd in front of him.

“Shiro,” Keith laughs, “You’re alive. You’re awake.”

Shiro croaks. “Keith, it’s—” Alarm crosses his face. “You’re awake?” he cries.

“He woke up just before your sleeping spell, number one. You missed him by a few doboshes.”

“And you’re—you’re—” Shiro stammers. “Okay?”

Well, his brother is standing before him when Keith had once assumed he’d never get to see him again, so he thinks he’s pretty okay.

Even if Keith doesn’t know.

“Yeah,” Keith nods.

“How?” He asks.

Luckily, Coran chimes in before he has to explain that he doesn’t know if he’s okay, and he doesn’t know whether this is real or not, and he doesn’t know if this is truly life or an artificial fabrication of it. It feels real, but so has everything else before.

“Come over here, Shiro.” Coran hurries over and ushers him to a chair. “I need to do a check up. Keith, I paged number three to come and continue yours in the meanwhile.”

Number three? That’s—
“Shiro!” Lance’s voice rings through the med bay. “You are looking SO SEC-C. Drop the skincare routine, my goat.”

Secant of C? Huh? What does trigonometry have to do with anything?

“Thanks, Lance,” Shiro drones, “It’s called getting mauled by mutated galran wolves that were set loose in your home.”

“Yikes, dude.”

“You were there, Lance.”

“Don’t remind me,” he shudders.

Keith watches the exchange with rapt attention. They’re so…entertaining.

It’s fun to watch his team banter like this. Like they used to. Keith hopes it’s real. He thinks it is. He doesn’t think he, or…it, has enough imagination to compose a scene like this nor Lance’s ludicrous arsenal of so-called ‘jokes’.

“Hey, Keith,” Lance turns to him.

Keith loses the ability to speak. He tries to say hi, but what comes out is: “yes.”

Is he a fucking dumbass? Those two words aren’t remotely similar sounding at all. 

Lance doesn’t think anything of his gaffe. He smiles at Keith and says, “You’re on your feet.”

Keith looks down at his bare toes. They’re still cold and his knees ache. He’d like to get back in bed. “Yes, I am.”

“Is it fun?”

“I guess?”

His taciturn responses seem to satiate Lance. “Good,” he says, “That makes me happy.”

He sounds like he means it.

It’s too much—too good. Keith can’t help but look around the room for signs of artifice or falsehoods.

“Whatcha looking at?”

“Don’t know,” he mutters.

He thinks about everything he’s spilled to Lance—starting at the top of the mountain with his fucking I love you down till every single jab or remark he’s made in passing. Whether it’s about his disease, their withered relationship he keeps trying to reignite to no avail, or just—everything. Keith could write a book on all the things he needs to discuss with Lance.

If it’s real.

After all, if it isn’t, does it matter?

“Hey,” Lance grabs his attention. He takes hold of Keith’s hand. Before, the plains of his soft palms were fiery like an oil lamp in the middle of the winter that he’d stray close to to escape cold winds, only to burn himself with the sting of the fire. It had scorched him and then fizzled out entirely, leaving him with no warmth whatsoever.

Now, his hands are…Keith can’t really tell. Hand-like. Alive. Comforting. He intertwines their hands in acknowledgement.

“It’s going to be okay,” Lance says, not for the first time.

Keith doesn’t know if he believes it. Can things just right themselves? Just like that? Can the pieces fall into place and work out?

It’s so hard to tell if it’s possible. But, he decides, after all this struggle, it’s worth believing.

With a shaky smile, Keith says, “Okay.” He repeats, “It’s going to be okay.”