Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Japan was cold. Before… Shiro had asked him several times to make the trip with him, but each was during Garrison issued leave that often coincided with a holiday. Each time Keith was warmly welcomed by Shiro’s little family, his Obaachan and his mom. His uncle’s family would visit briefly, setting loose a gaggle of small children that were never shy around their cousin’s friend. Though he had felt like an awkward intruder in beginning, those holidays were something Keith cherished deeply. 

But this time, Japan felt like a wasteland.

“He’s not dead,” Obaachan said. She and Keith were sitting on the engawa, her feet tucked beneath her and the black folds of her kimono smoothed under her wrinkled hands. The little porch was abandoned besides the two of them, while the other mourners stayed inside, their accusing silences contained by thin paper walls.

Keith turned his face fractionally towards her, but didn’t speak.

“I would know if he were dead.” There was a sneer of contempt, of anger, just beneath her voice. Pilot error, she seemed to scoff between her words. As though Shiro hadn’t been the best pilot Galaxy Garrison had ever produced.

Keith said nothing. He felt the same rage simmering below his skin, tempered only by the numbness that came with Shiro’s absence.

“My Takkun,” she murmured after the quiet stretched between them, and her voice was soft and full of longing. Her eyes filled with tears for a moment, before she dabbed them away with hem of her kimono. When she pulled her hand away, her eyes were once again dry. It was the most grief she had shown to anyone, even to herself. He wondered what it felt like to lose a husband, a daughter, and a grandson to the stars.

It was something he would never know, because he had only lost Shiro. Keith had long ago abandoned tears, and even now he couldn’t shed one for him. The numbness would soon fade, and what would be left was something Keith was used to.

Obaachan stood, nimble fingers fixing the lines of the mofuku back to a perfect straight hems, and clasped her hands in front of her. Keith fully turned to take her in, knowing this may be the last time he would see her, with her gray hair pulled back in a perfect round bun and the black starkness of the traditional wear falling from her thin shoulders. Obaachan would often wear kimonos, but never without the small beautiful patterns and colors of her komon. She looked like a ghost.

She smiled down at him, unbothered by his silence, and noticed his attention to her dress. “I’m still going to make you one,” she said. “You’ll match Takkun. I think you will suit each other well. He so rarely wears his, that seeing you in yours may get him out of that uniform. ”

Keith swallowed past the lump in his throat, and nodded. This was the only comfort they had for each other. The two of them certain that Shiro wasn’t dead, and equally certain that they’d never see him again. This little hope that was a kindness and torture in equal measure. They could pretend for now that he could come home, like he had promised.

Keith is flung from the portal with an almighty lurch, the Red Lion shuttering in a death spin through space. The controls don’t respond to him and he can’t get his bearings as the lion streaks through the emptiness. The comms that had been filled with the panic chattering of his crew are now disturbingly silent, and Keith feels his stomach sink. He can feel the Red Lion’s wavering anger in the back of his head until a sudden spark of frustration and fear has him noticing the growing mass through the screens as it spins in and out of his eyesight. A planet, and they enter its gravitational pull. They’re going to crash.

“C’mon, Red,” he growls, hands flying across the controls to find some piece of the lion that can respond to him. The lion’s frustration grows. Red cannot move, no matter how much she wants to.

They enter the planet’s atmosphere, with nothing to slow their descent. The lion rattles viciously as they fall. Keith truly begins to panic as he loses visuals, the intense friction knocking out most of his screens. He knows the ground is rising up fast to meet them, but there’s no chance he could fire the thrusters to save them. Screaming, he punches at his controls.

Just as the rattling suddenly began, it stops. Keith doesn’t remember the impact.

Shiro wakes up with a gasp, the Black Lion in the back of his mind steadily rumbling with urgency. Before him, the blackness of space stretches far out into the distance, with only small white specks of light winking back at him. The comms cackle but no voices come through. Shiro bows his head as low as it can go, and the pilot seat generously lets back so Shiro can put his head between his knees. He works on not hyperventilating, letting out a gust of air that fogs the visor of his helmet and holding onto the emptiness in his lungs. Sucking in a slow breath and ignoring the spinning of in his head, Shiro sits up. Black is still rumbling in the back of his head, comforting him the best way she can but also communicating her distress.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs to her. Her distress is three fold, stemming from Zarkon’s control, the separation of the lions and castle, and Shiro’s own panic. “It’s going to be okay.” He tries to sooth both her and his fluttering heart. “We’re going to be okay.”

Shiro can’t loosen his grip from the controls. He swallows and lets out another slow breath.

The comms suddenly flicker with life, and Allura’s face flashes in front of him, her brows pulled tightly together with worry. She must see him too, because her face lights up with the slightest relief even as the video feed blips in and out with static. “Shi-ro… read? Do…” Her voice dies with each burst of static.

“Allura! You’re not coming in clear. I do not copy. Repeat, I do not copy.”

Allura brows pull down again. “Hang… on… -ro.” And the comms go blank. Shiro has to take a few more calming breaths as his chest lurches.

He puts his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his eyes. “We’re going to be okay,” he whispers to himself and he waits, hating how his hands tremble against the console.

Keith wakes to a blinding headache, a harsh throb behind his eyes. There’s something slick and warm dripping down the side of his face. The cockpit is nearly pitch black, the only light from a small blinking dot on the dash of his console. It steadily pulses in and out. Red is silent, except for what feels like a weak heartbeat that keeps time with light. Keith feels a stab of worry and tries to call out to her, before his eyes close again.

Chapter Text

Shiro drifts. With nothing to tether them, the Black Lion curls into itself and lets them plummet through space. There is nothing to pull them in one direction or another, just endless blackness and the far off twinkle stars.

Shiro hugs his knees to his chest and tries not to fall apart.

Time ticks by, sluggish. He tries not to count the seconds as they pass, but finds himself looking up at the numbers on Black’s screens as they clock the time since Allura’s attempt to contact him. The comms hiss softly in the background, interspersed with little crackles of sound or sudden silences. Each little anomaly has Shiro flinching in his seat, the trembling of his hands becoming worse. He struggles to breathe himself through the intense anxiety. Distantly, Shiro’s aware that he’s having a panic attack, but all he can do is take deep breaths, quietly counting each one in Japanese.

Ichi. Inhale. Ni. Exhale. San…

He vaguely remembers teaching Keith to count his breaths during his first few years at the Garrison, when Keith’s temper often got the best of him. But the memory feels fragmented, blurry, like he’s trying to see it in the sand and every time he gets a good look, a wave rolls ashore to wash a piece of it away. Just another thing that’s messed up in his head.

Inhale. Yon. Exhale. Go. Breathe…

How long has it been since he’d spoken any Japanese? A video call with Obaa-chan and his mom before the Kerberos mission? With Dr. Holt to pass the time as they made their way to the edge of the solar system? There are only blank spaces in his mind.

Roku. Breathe. Nana. Breathe! Hachi. Breathe!

Shiro gasps in a lungful of air — his heart thunders in his chest — and presses his face into his knees. His head begins to swim as he pants through the mounting swell of panic, fighting to swallow, fighting to breathe.

[Takashi…]

Warm fingers card through his hair, blunt nails scratching gently at his scalp. Shiro lets out a soft contented sigh, and uncurls himself so he can press himself into that waiting embrace.

[Takashi…]

“Hm?” Shiro hums, and nuzzles his face into the soft skin on his navel, nose ghosting over the soft peach fuzz on his flat stomach.

[Come home soon, okay? I’ll miss you while you're gone…]

Arms rest around his shoulders, solid and warm, a hand brushing against the buzzed hair on the back of Shiro’s head. It feels so nice, gentle, and Shiro wraps his hands around those hips, thumbs brushing at the curve of his waist.

[I love you, Takashi.]

He lifts his head to answer, a happy smile spreads across his face and his nose grazes a path past his bellybutton. He looks up, but there is no face above him.

Shiro wakes up suddenly with a gasp, fingers white knuckled, gripping the armrests. Black hums softly in the back of his head, soothing. There is still only emptiness past the lion’s eyes, but now it doesn’t press so hard on Shiro’s chest. He sighs, and turns his attention to a blinking message on a screen, dream already fading from his memory.

Allura has sent him a video message during his strained sleep. When he pulls it up on the screen, her face has the same look of irritated consternation, but she seems confident enough in the set of her jaw and line of her shoulders, that it puts a little more of Shiro’s anxiety to rest.

“Shiro, it seems as though we’re too far away for me to communicate with you directly. There’s a lot of interference and I’m not going to risk our messages getting intercepted by the Galara,” she says, and her eyes are blazing. “The castle sustained heavy damage, and we are working hard to repair it so that we can come find you all. All of the paladins have been split up. Pidge is already making their way towards us. Hunk is close by, but in a Galara occupied sector. I’ve told him to lay low until we can reach him ourselves. Fortunately, Lance seems to be fairly close to you, though I wasn’t able to make contact with him. I’m sending you his coordinates now, and I’d suggest making your way to him immediately.” Here, Allura pauses, her mouth ticks down into a worried line. “Shiro… I haven’t been able to find Keith.”

Shiro tramps back down the panic that suddenly tries to flood his chest again.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Allura continues, reassuring him despite the hesitance in her voice. “The lions are connected to me, and I can sense each of them. But the bond is thinner over distance. You and Lance are so far away that the connection feels… stretched for lack of a better way to describe it to you. Keith may just be too far for me to find the Red Lion.”

It feels like an excuse, or a false hope, but Shiro has no reason not to trust her. The panic is still trying claw it’s way up his throat, but Black’s soothing hum grounds him.

In front of him, Allura takes a deep breath. “Okay… Shiro, at this time I suggest you get to Lance. It may take you a few days, but hopefully we’ll have the castle back up by then, and we'll warp to you. Coran has supplies on each lion for this exact reason. I’ll contact you again when I know more. Stay safe out there,” she says, like a commander giving instructions to her troops, before screen goes blank.

Shiro fights for a lung full of air, before putting his hands to the controls. “Alright, Cadet,” he murmurs to himself. “We have our orders.”

“Let’s go.” The Black Lion lets out a responding roar, before the two of them dash off into space.

“Look alive, Cadet.” Keith stood from his position in Colonel Woodrum’s desk, hand automatically saluting for his commander, in one fluid motion. Woodrum gave him a pleased smile. She had gone to a lot of trouble getting him recruited from the orphanage, despite his lack of education or family prestige. “At ease,” she said, and Keith relaxed, allowing himself to look at the other cadet with her. He had dark eyes and hair that was buzzed short at the sides. Keith decidedly did not stare, and tried not to linger too much on the cadet's broad shoulders or easy smile.

“Keith, this is Cadet Takashi Shirogane, third class and Galaxy Garrison’s star pupil.”

Shirogane reached out a hand, and Keith took it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Keith,” he said. “Feel free to just call me Shiro, everyone else does.”

“Thanks,” Keith replied shortly. Shrio gave his hand a firm shake before releasing him.

“Keith, I want Shiro to mentor you for the rest of this term, and he has obligingly agreed. Your simulator scores are phenomenal, but I can see that you’re already falling behind in coursework,” she said. She noticed when his eyes darted to the ground, and the embarrassed red blush blooming on his face. “Not that we didn’t expect this. I’m confident you’d get to the top of the class on your own, but there’s no shame in getting some help.”

He did his best to ignore his flaming cheeks as he nodded respectfully towards Shiro and was graced with another easy smile that made Keith’s insides swoop uncomfortably. 

He comes to consciousness when he realizes he had been staring listlessly at the faint blinking light on Red’s control. With a groan, Keith sits up slowly, like he's moving through molasses. His sides give twin stabs of pain that almost makes him pass out again. His left wrist throbs dully, and the fingers are numb. He takes stock of the dull pounding in his head, and thick, congealed blood sticking to the side of his face. His tongue is swollen and dry in his mouth, and he feels all around like a giant bruise.

“Broken ribs,” he lists to himself, voice cracking with the effort. “Broken wrist. Concussion, I guess. Dehydration.” He sighs. Purposefully trying not to think about it, he reaches for his left wrist and breaks the already healing bone into place. With a strangled scream, he curls over his hand, clutching it to his chest despite his protesting ribs. Nausea builds in the back of his throat, but he chokes it down and breathes through the painful trembling that dances down his spine.

The pounding in his head underscores the quiet beat in the back of his head that he recognizes as Red. He focuses the best he can on it, ignoring the lurching twist of worry on top of the pain. Her simmering rage and determination that Keith can usually feel boiling under his skin is absent.

“Dammit,” he hisses to himself as he straightens up. “What the hell did I do to you, Red?”

Keith swallows the lump in his throat, and pulls himself to stand on shaky legs.

Shiro took his mentoring duty seriously. It has been two weeks since Colonel Woodrum had introduced them, and Keith had seen Shiro no less than twice a day since. So far, Shiro has tutored him in the subjects that he was obviously struggling in. The fourth class curriculum was miles ahead of the small public school education the orphanage had given him. While Keith did well in flight simulations, mechanics, and any physical training exercises, his maths and science courses were pulling him quickly down the class ranks.

Thankfully, Shiro was a patient tutor, even during Keith’s rather violent outbursts of frustration. "Patience yields focus," he'd say when Keith snapped another pencil.  The other cadets tried to shame him for it, sneering at him whenever he set off with Shiro to study. But this didn’t bother Keith who was already used to disregarding everyone’s opinion of him.

What really drove him insane was Shiro.

They met every day at lunch and then after last class until it was time for dinner. Shiro had even dedicated five hours of his weekend to helping Keith through his coursework. Keith knew Shiro would be looked favorably upon for his service with a fourth class cadet, and it would be expected of Keith to be a protege of Shiro’s. The Garrison wanted a shining example of student excellence, and Shiro was the perfect candidate with his prestigious background, exceptional grades, and unerring composure. Keith, coming from an outreach program and getting by on scholarship, would be their underdog — a picture of hard work and determination, of overcoming all the odds. Keith was fine with that, as long as it got him in the pilot seat.

Even with all that in mind, Shiro really didn’t have to spend this much effort on Keith. He had already been passing his classes, but Shiro was taking the time to teach him the basics that he had missed in prelim schools as well as helping him through what Keith’s instructor was currently going over. He worked with Keith in calculus problems, star mapping and essays. He came up with ways to teach Keith that worked better than any other teacher Keith had ever had. Shiro was that thorough.

It didn’t help that Shiro was unspeakably handsome. And kind. And patient. And thoughtful. With his stupid smile. And terrible jokes. Keith really wanted to punch him. Or kiss him. Probably both.

“Hey Keith, what would you call purple and communicative?”

Keith stared at him. “What?”

“An abelian grape!”

“Holy crow,” Keith groaned, laying his head on the desk. “Do you look these up every day? Is there a terrible math joke newsletter that you’ve subscribed to?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny. That’s for third class cadets to know and fourth class cadets to find out,” Shiro said, grinning and embarrassed despite himself. He sat back in his chair and idly flipped through the calculus textbook. “At least this way you’ll remember my cheesy joke during your mid-term exam.”

“Hey, Keith.”

He couldn’t bring himself to meet Shiro's gaze.

“Why do you rarely find mathematicians spending time at the beach? Because they have sine and cosine to get a tan and don't need the sun!”

“I hate you.”

“Hey, Keith.”

“No.”

“Why does a moon rock taste better than an Earth rock? It’s a little meteor!”

“Shiro, this has to stop. I respect you too much for this.”

“Hey, Keith.”

“Don't.”

“Two kittens are on a sloped roof. Which one falls off first? The one with the lower mew!”

“That was terrible.”

“Hey, Keith.”

“End this.”

“I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves.”

Keith snorted so loud, the entire library — full of cadets studying for finals — turned to glare at him. He immediately clapped a hand over his face trying to hide how red it was. Peaking between his fingers, Keith caught Shiro’s wide triumphant grin and had to burying his face in his textbooks to muffle his groan.

“I knew I would crack you!”

“I don’t even have curves,” Keith mumbled into the pages, biting back a smile.

Keith lets out a snort at the memory as he wraps his wrist. The Altean equivalent to bandages are smooth and silky to the touch, and they carry a fresh scent like water in the fibers. On his swelling skin, it feels cool and the pain somewhat recedes.

Slowly, he peels himself from the paladin armor, and wraps his aching ribs to secure them as they mend. Keith gently wipes away the blood from his face hair, fingertips gently probing for the cut before he takes a lump of what Coran called a ‘healing paste’ from it’s container. It’s a blue goo that looks not unlike the food Coran is always serving them. The only difference is that it smells much more appetizing than the green goo. He smears it over the wound, and instantly the pain and throbbing dulls to small ache. He lets out a sigh of relief, before he leans back on the wall and just lets himself rest for a moment.

Red’s heartbeat, as Keith has begun to call it, thumps faintly in the back of his mind.

“What have I gotten us into,” Keith murmurs to her, before gathering his strength to get back up. He reaches for the small emergency hatch just above the pilot chair. As he wrenches it open, sand falls into the cockpit. Dry air hits him in the face, and he looks up through the hole to see stars.

Keith sticks his head out into the night. The world around him is lit by the faint glow of the neighboring star that sits just below the horizon. At all sides, there is nothing but flat lands and sand. He can feel the residual heat rising up from the ground all around him.

“Well, Red,” Keith says. “Looks like I’ve gotten myself stuck in another desert.”

Keith fumed as he made his way around the track for another endless lap. He had lost count somewhere around twenty-eight, but the amount really didn't matter when the order was “Give me 300 laps until you drop.” His legs were burning unpleasantly at this point, but Keith was too pissed off to pay much attention to it. He'd already missed his session with Shiro anyways. And dinner.

If asked by one of the instructors, Keith would say he wasn't thinking when he broke Johnson’s nose. But in reality, he had done his best to hit the cadet with just enough for to make a spectacular spray of blood without breaking his smug face too badly.  Punching him felt good, but didn't really dampen his rage. Keith was never one really for revenge, just action. He could be petty though, and if he was supposed to run until he dropped, he was going to be running all night.

He hadn't notice when Shiro had shown up at the track until he was jogging beside him. Shiro, for his part, remained quiet for a good mile, before Keith finally spat out, “Go ahead and say it.”

“What do you want me to say?” Shiro sighed.

“How much of a disappointment I am? How I'm going to throw away my potential? That I've got an attitude problem that's going to get me expelled? Save it, the commander already gave me that lecture.”

“Well I wasn't going to say any of those things.”

Keith huffed.

“Though I might agree with the attitude problem. I was going to ask what happened. It doesn’t look good.”

Clenching his fists, Keith came to an abrupt halt. His legs were burning and aching. Sweat stuck the hair to the side of his face, and he was sure he was red with exertion and anger. “Well, I'm so sorry if I damaged your precious reputation,” he snarled.

Shiro stopped as well, looking genuinely perplexed. “My reputation?”

“I thought that everyone thinking I was sucking your dick for favors would hurt it more, but what the hell do I know?”

“What the hell, Keith? Is that why you broke Johnson’s nose?”

“What do you think!” Keith yelled. “I know that's the only reason you’re here with me, to make you look good!”

“No!” Keith couldn't stand the hurt look in Shiro's eyes. “Is that what you think this is? I've been helping you because you're my friend, you ass!”

Keith reeled back, before he spat, “Colonel Woodrum asked you to be my mentor! That doesn’t require you to be my friend!”

“Holy crow, Keith, yeah I was doing it as a favor, but all she asked me to do is to show you where you could get more help and answer any of your questions! I decided to tutor you myself because I wanted us to be friends!”

“Why would you want to do that!?”

Shiro let out an explosive groan, hiding his face in his hands. Taken by surprise, Keith took a step back, anger suddenly gone and leaving him with the empty feeling of embarrassment. He crossed his arms and turned away. “Sorry, don’t worry about it,” Keith said, dejected. “I’ll be better.”

Dragging his hands down his face, Shiro groaned again behind him. There was a beat of silence. Then, “What are you doing for the break?”

“What?” Keith asked, twisting back around to stare at him.

“What are you doing for the break?” Shiro asked again, with a small helpless smile on his face. “If you didn’t have… If you didn’t want to stick around here, I wanted to invite you back home with me.”

“To Japan?”

“Yeah. My mom already said it was fine.”

Keith stared at him. What in the hell was Shiro on? Of all the things to ask him, Shiro wanted him to come to Japan with him? To meet his family? With a frustrated sigh, Keith finally fell back on the ground, his tired legs giving beneath him, and laid out on his back against the cool dust of the track.

Shiro snorted, and sat next to him. Together, they looked up at the night sky, it’s edges drowned out by the Garrison’s lights. Even so, they could see more stars here than in any city either of them had been to. The silence stretched between them, not uncomfortable but not quite relaxed.

“Hey, Keith.”

“I swear if you make a terrible joke right now, I’ll punch you.”

Laughing, Shiro said, “No, please don’t… I just wanted to say, that I didn’t mean for you to feel like I was only doing this for my sake. You’re not some– some stepping stone to better my career. Colonel Woodrum did ask me to kind of mentor you, but it’s nothing official. She really just wanted to help you out. I think she cares a lot about your success.”

“I’m not a charity case,” Keith grumbled, even as he knew that, truthfully, he was.

Shiro hummed. “And I don’t see you that way. She doesn’t even see you that way. I had just noticed… It seemed like you didn’t have many friends, and I thought you’d like to have someone you could talk to. Then Woodrum asked me on your behalf, and I… Anyways, that’s why I tried to schedule us to spend so much time together.”

Keith sighed in response. Shiro was looking at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look back. He may have been lonely, but he wasn’t really here to make friends.

“So you noticed me?” He said instead, glancing at Shiro from the corner of his eye.

“Huh?”

“You noticed me,” Keith said, rolling his head towards him. “Before Woodrum introduced us.”

Shiro’s entire face went red, and he snapped his gaze back onto the stars. Keith grinned as he watched Shiro chew on his bottom lip, now the one refusing to look at Keith. It wasn't long before he, too, looked up to the sky.

“I didn’t really have any plans for the break, anyways.”

Chapter Text

It takes Shiro eighty-seven sleepless hours to reach Lance. The first star system he comes upon is vast, an enormous red sun at it’s center and giant planets with rocky, unforgiving landscapes. He finds the Blue lion just outside a band of rock and asteroid, floating listlessly. Her particle barrier isn’t even active and any of Shiro’s attempts at communication are met with silence. But as Black steadies herself alongside Blue, he notices a figure lounging on the back of the other lion.

Lance bounces up when Black’s mouth opens to let Shiro out. He’s clutching his bayard in his hand, though he hasn’t activated it. When Shiro pushes himself out into open space towards him, Lance visibly relaxes before waving frantically at him.

“Oh man, am I glad to see you!” Lance cries, grabbing Shiro’s hand to pull him down on Blue’s back. “I thought you guys had forgotten about me.”

Shiro grins at him. Another thread of tension loosens in his chest. “Good to see you, too. What happened to Blue?”

“Dunno, my dude. She seems fine, but when we try and move, everything jams up,” Lance says, rubbing the back of his helmet. “Honestly Shiro, and don’t be pissed, I may or may not have given Coran’s ‘Magic Lion Engineering Lectures’ my full and absolute attention because I may or may not have had much more serious, important, life-or-death things to think about.”

Shiro’s eyebrow shoots up. “Like?”

Lance grimaces at him. “I ran out of exfoliating cream?”

“Lance.”

“Joking! I’m joking!” Lance cries, ducking Shiro’s swipe. “I’ll get Coran to give me a crash course when we get back, I swear!”

Shiro sighs, “You better. Now show me what’s up with Blue. I actually paid attention during Coran’s magic lion lessons, so maybe we can figure it out.”

Lance grins at him. “Yeah, yeah, ace pilot and ace student, I hear you poster boy,” he says, and leads him to Blue’s emergency hatch. Inside, the paladin’s emergency supplies are neatly spread along the floor of the cockpit. The organization isn’t what Shiro expects from Lance, but he suspects the Blue paladin must have felt the severity of the situation despite Lance’s relieved joking now.

“I actually tinkered around in here a little bit,” Lance explains as he directs Shiro to the opening under Blue’s control system. “Before Blue, very firmly, let me know that I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Scrutinizing the nigh minimalistic machinery, Shiro says, “Well, just make sure she doesn’t eject me out into space.”

The insides of the Voltron lions are all clean lines and glowing crystals that don’t really make much sense to Shiro. Hunk and Pidge were endlessly fascinated, and Coran had loved getting into every little bit of science and theory behind the equipment. Shiro, however, was no engineer or computer specialist, and liked to stick to what he could actually learn. So, he, Lance, and Blue played a game of hot and cold as Shiro smoothed out connections, straightened the crystals, and found what looked like a burned fuse box deep in Blue’s mechanics. Cleaning it off gently, he began reconnecting loose ends.

With a sudden, deep shutter and a victory cheer from Lance, the Blue lion comes fully awake with a rumbling purr. It sets Shiro’s teeth on edge, knowing he wasn’t necessarily welcome in another lion’s inner workings, but Blue seems to tolerate him well enough as he eases himself out from under her console. Under their feet, the lion stretches and moves the previously locked joints on her own.

Lance smacks him on the shoulder, his face split into a wide grin. “You did it!” he crows, and breaths in a deep sigh of relief. Nervous laughter bubbles out of his mouth. “Oh man, that was tense. It’s been a really rough few days.”

With an indulgent smile, Shiro says, “We’re going to be fine, Lance.”

“Yeah,” Lance agrees, still grinning before his face sobers. “So… Have you heard from the others?”

Shiro tenses, but before he can say anything, Blue’s comms come to life and Allura’s face fills the screen.

“There the both of you are!” she exclaims. “Lance, what happened to the Blue lion and why couldn’t I contact you?”

Lance smiles sheepishly and shrugs. “Sorry, baby, I know how much you were missing this body, but I had to take some me time,” he says, as he dodges the smack Shiro aims at the back of his head. Allura’s eyebrow twitches dangerously before she smooths the irritation from her face. Behind her shoulder, Pidge and Hunk are waving frantically at them with pleased expressions.

“Regardless, I’m glad you’re both in one spot.” Her eyes shift to the side, looking at their coordinates. “Hang on a few ticks, and we’ll be at your...” she trails off, and her eyes take a far away look.

“Princess?” Shiro asks.

Allura says nothing for a moment. “I didn’t realize,” she begins slowly. “When I gave you Lance’s position. You’re right... where Altea used to be...”

Silence descends on them. Lance gapes at her, before he turns slowly to Shiro. Together they look out at the scattering of rocky asteroids and empty space. Anything that might have lived here is ten thousand years dead and abandoned. Even now, they can see the rubble that holds some semblance of architecture, not unlike the clean, polished lines of the castleship. The Galara left nothing behind.

“Allura…” Shiro says. “I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t smile, even as Coran steps up along side her, with a hand on her shoulder, but simply takes a steadying breath. The look in her eyes is heavy and full of sorrow. “We’ll warp towards you momentarily. Be ready to board, as we’ll head out immediately.”

“Do you have anything on Keith then?” Shiro asks before he can stop himself.

Somehow, her eyes go softer and sadder. “No, Shiro. I’m sorry.”

Beside her, Coran clears his throat. “We’ve done a few calculations, and while we can’t pinpoint where he is, we have an area that he could be. It’s a large area, and under Galara control, but it’s a place to start.”

“We’ll begin searching immediately,” says Allura. “Pidge is working on equipping the castle with their cloaking tech. Get ready.”

Nodding, Shiro puts his helmet back on, and gives Lance’s head a little nudge towards the pilot’s seat. He makes his way to the lion’s mouth, that agreeably opens for him, and launches himself back into emptiness of space. As he kicks off towards his waiting lion, Shiro turns to take one last look at the scattered shards and debris that used to be Altea. Ten thousand years ago, there was a flourishing society here. Peaceful life, that wanted to spread that harmony across the universe. Now, it’s gone.

Shiro makes a small promise to himself, and to the long dead aspiration of the peoples that used to thrive here in this corner of the universe, before he turns his back.

The graduation was four hours ago, but Shiro was still in uniform when Keith knocked on his dorm room door. The new, crisp stiffness of the second class uniform was still evident in creases of the fabric. The three golden stripes on his shoulders sat in pristine lines. The black cord on his left shoulder was still sitting a little crooked where Commander Iverson had placed it during the medal ceremony. He grinned at Keith before motioning him in.

“Sorry, I just have to change and we can head out,” he said as Keith stepped through the door.

Shiro’s roommates had already abandoned the place, and each of the beds were stripped down, ready to be redistributed to third class cadets after the break. Shiro and the other cadets that graduated to second would be moved to the two person dorms for the next term. Keith set his duffle bag next to one of the empty bunks and sat at the abandoned desk at the foot of it.

“Iverson wanted me to meet some of the brass that handles missions,” Shiro was saying, shrugging out of the uniform jacket and folding it neatly. “A few donors were there as well that wanted to talk to me.”

Keith smirked. “All interested in meeting Ace Pilot Shirogane?”

Blushing, Shiro chuckled a little awkwardly and said, “No, I think they were more intent on my mother, honestly. A lot of them used to be friends with her.”

“Oh,” Keith said, sitting up. “Your mother? Is she a pilot, too?”

Shiro smiled sadly at him. “Yeah. She died six years ago on a mission.”

“Oh.” Keith really wished he hadn’t asked.

“So, you would bow and say ‘Hajimemashite’ as you introduce yourself,” said Shiro. He popped another one of the complimentary peanuts in his mouth as he flipped through the movies on the little screen in front of him.

“I don’t think I can even say that.”

Shiro snorted. “Well, lucky for you, we usually speak English if it’s just us in the house. Unless Obaa is mad. So, you won’t embarrass yourself too much, I promise,” he said with a grin.

Sighing, Keith thumped his head back on the chair. They’d only been in the air for thirty minutes and he was already restless. It was his first time on a commercial flight, and he thought at first that it would have been a little exciting to be in the air. However, they were sat in the center aisle, and the only excitement Keith had felt was during take off. Everything else had been boring.

Knocking shoulders with him, Shiro said, “Hey, we’re only up here for four hours. Obaa-chan used to always complain about how it would take eight hours just get to California. So this isn’t too bad.”

“I guess,” Keith grumbled, trying to stop his fingers from twisting together.

Keith can't catch his breath.

Red is a twisted, burnt shape in the sand, her red accents blending with the russet color of the desert. Their impact left a deep gorge in the ground that Keith figures is a few miles long. Nothing that he can cover up. The lion is half buried in the sand, almost camouflaged. If it weren’t for their obvious impact crater, Keith would consider them sufficiently hidden. Any form of communication or even a map is impossible with the state Red is in. Her inner workings were a mess of charred metal and broken wiring.

Her heart beats stubbornly on in the base of his skull, his pulse jumping along with it.

“The princess can fix you,” Keith says, more trying to reassure himself than her. “And then I’ll find away to make all of this up to you.”

From his perch standing on Red’s shoulder, Keith turns in a slow circle, scanning the horizon for any kind of outcropping in flat swathe of desert. There is nothing but the red sand and the waves of heat that are already coming off the ground. No mountains or cliffs, or even sand dunes. The air is perfectly still and thin. There is no wind. Just endless silence that sits on the precipice of something. Keith can feel it in his fingertips, as if the ground beneath them is only sleeping, lethargic.

Keith carefully climbs down from his high point, over-aware of his aching ribs and broken wrist. His head pounds angrily in his skull. He breathes in shallow little gasps. Keith walks a little ways east towards the rapidly rising sun, to where the sand hasn’t been disturbed by his crash landing. It sits flat on the planet’s surface, except for small little ridges every few feet. They look almost like waves. He crouches to drag his fingers through the sand. It parts easily for him, completely dry.

“So there is water here, somewhere,” Keith murmurs to himself. “Just not for a while.” He stands, looking back towards his lion, a lonesome figure where the red desert reaches up to meet the blue sky.

The small altar held a picture of Shirogane Michiko in her flight uniform, her helmet tucked under her arm and a blinding grin on her face. Her dark hair was cropped close to her ears, and her eyes were bright, as if she had just been laughing before picture had been snapped. Shiro greeted her softly in Japanese, with a small bow and his hands clasped in front of him.

“This is my mother,” Shiro said. His smile when he looks a Keith is small and wistful.

“You look a lot like her.”

Shiro’s smile widened, reaching all the way to his eyes, and he turned back to the little table in the center of the room as his grandmother set down with a tray of tea in ornamental ceramic cups. The two of them began discussing the Garrison and Shiro’s graduation, in English for Keith’s benefit. Instead of really paying attention, Keith took his cup hesitantly and sipped at the green tea, trying not to flinch with the scalding liquid hits his tongue.

“And what about you, Keith,” Shiro’s grandmother asked, startling him by abruptly as she brought him into the conversation. He locked eyes with her accessing gaze and small smirk. “Shiro tells me that you’ll certainly have your own graduation soon.”

Keith glanced sideways at Shiro, who smiled encouragingly at him. “Um, I just started this term, and I’m very behind on the curriculum, so I’m not going to get to third class any time soon,” he said, scowling into his cup. “My simulations are better than everyone else’s, but my grades aren’t so good.”

Beside him, Shiro snorts. “Don’t listen to him Obaa-chan. He passed his exams with top marks. Though he’s right about the sim scores. He’ll start beating my records soon,” he said with a nudge at Keith’s elbow. Keith swatted back at him, definitely not blushing. “I bet he’ll graduate in three terms.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Really now,” she said, watching as they grappled with each other. Shiro wrapped his arm behind Keith’s neck to ruffle his hair while Keith dug his knuckles into Shiro’s side. “Doesn’t it usually take four?”

“Usually,” Shiro agreed. “But he started mid-semester and there’s no way he’ll wait to do it in five. Plus he has such a great friend like me willing to help him out.”

Keith growled, ducking under Shiro’s arm to flick his ear. “Shut up.”

Amina breezed into the house the next day, with her dark skin and placid smile. She placed a kiss on Shiro’s head where he was sitting for breakfast before she dropped down beside him. Keith, who was struggling to tame his chops sticks, gaped at her from across the table. In that traditional Japanese house with it’s rice straw mats and paper walls, she was an alien spot of otherness in her black slacks and crisp white top. Regardless, she sat, kneeling at the table just the same as Shiro’s grandmother did, looking nothing like Keith had pictured Shiro’s other mom from his stories.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Keith,” she said in a measured English accent.

“Um, y-yes,” Keith stuttered, still a little foggy from Shiro’s early morning wake up call in the form of a day break jog. “Uh, you too, Ms. Shirogane.”

She smiled pleasantly at him, her head tilted a little to the side. “Please, feel free to just call me Amina,” she said. “Shiro talks about you constantly when we have a chance to chat.”

“Mom,” Shiro hisses.

“Ah, there you are Ami-chan,” Shiro’s grandmother said cheerfully as she brought her breakfast to the table. “I had hoped you would get in today. Would you like some breakfast?”

“Ohayou, Obaa.” The foreign syllables flowed off her tongue gently, like water. “I’ve already eaten, thank you.”

“Good, good.” She reached for Keith’s hand to fix his chop stick form. “These two have already been up and about, stinking up my house with their sweat,” she said with a teasing smile. The three of them bantered back and forth, catching up with each other from their long separation. Keith reveled in the strangeness of it, watching as this little family talked about Amina’s engineering lectures and Shiro’s grades. They politely left him to struggle with a slice of rolled scrambled eggs until Shiro kindly slid a fork his way. Keith scowled at him and snatched it up.

The night air is bitingly cold. Keith curls around himself, emergency blanket wrapped tightly around him except for where he clutches his bayard to his chest. Unable to sleep and head still spinning, he watches the stars through Red’s open hatch, picking out the unfamiliar constellations. When the silence sits too heavily on his chest, he sings and tries not to let his homesickness or his worry take over.

“Do you want to borrow some pajamas?” Shiro asked as Keith slid into the futon beside Shiro’s bed. Keith shrugged, internally peeved that Shiro had finally noticed he only had so many clothes, most of them Garrison issued. “Here,” he said as he held out a pair of soft sleeping pants and a t-shirt. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

Keith sighed and stood, deftly stripping out of his PT uniform. He grabbed the clothes from Shiro’s out stretched hand, smirking because Shiro was staring fixedly at the ceiling and blushing.

“Okay, I’m decent now,” Keith said as he pulled on the shirt. “Prude.”

Shiro smacked him with a pillow.

Keith estimates that he’s around sixteen miles from the landing site. He marks it with a thin line from where he’s mapped out Red’s location on as scrap of bandages that he didn’t use on his ribs and head. Red is barely visible from this distance, but the heartbeat in his mind never slows it’s rhythm. His head throbs with it.

Everything aches. Every time a foot step sinks into the red sand, Keith struggles to pick it back up. Stripped of his armor and with nothing to cover his head, the desert heat sears him, his skin already an angry red. His limbs feel like lead, pulling him down to the ground. He doesn’t sit, afraid that he won’t get back up again.

The air on this planet is thin, constantly keeping his head scattered and unfocused. Dancing under the heat of the bright, white sun high overhead, the horizon sits barren in the distance. With a sigh, Keith marks the area as blank on his makeshift map.

Nearly every morning, Shiro woke him up an hour before dawn to jog through the deserted streets in the Shirogane’s quiet neighborhood. Keith had nothing like headphones or a music player, and Shiro didn’t use them — either because he noticed or he legitimately didn’t like to listen to music during his run. In any case, Keith didn’t let it bother him.

It was easy to keep pace with Shiro. He wasn’t as fast as Keith, but he instead kept a steady rhythm that Keith could stick to in his early morning fog. And it was… nice to get up with Shiro for this morning ritual, even if he wasn’t really awake until after breakfast. They didn’t speak, the only sounds between them were heavy foot falls and panting breaths. Shiro was solid and there beside him.

“You can gave the first shower,” Shiro said, every time, when they finally came to a stop at the front door. Keith, with his forehead pressed to Shiro’s shoulder, only grumbled as he kicked back his foot to yank off his running shoes. Shiro’s bright laughter was worth the embarrassment.

Shiro was flat on his stomach with an arm hanging of the side of the bed, just inches from where Keith laid. In the soft glow from the window, he could pick out the little freckles on the back of Shiro’s hand, trace the nimble strength of each finger, the tiny scar over a knuckle. Keith reached out and softly drug his fingertips along the inside of Shiro’s palm. The hand twitched and the fingers curled around Keith’s in response, holding them there. Blushing, Keith didn’t pull away, and closed his eyes, savoring the warmth flooding up to his wrist where Shiro’s knuckles barely brushed against his thundering pulse.

He doesn’t want to think about it, but the second night he dreams and everything rages in the front of his mind for the rest of the day.

“Don’t think about it,” he murmurs. While taking deep calming breaths, he rations out his supplies into small piles, two rows of ten. Twenty days. A jug of water for each row and half a bar of protein for each day. There’s a small bag of what he thinks is something like nuts and chocolate — though the pieces are purple and cherry red — that he sets to the side along with the last half empty container of water.

Keith swallows around the lump in his throat. “Don’t think about it,” he says to himself. “Is twenty days even enough? Whatcha think, Red?”

The Red lion stays silent.

“Will you go to the hanabi festival with me?”

Keith looked up from his textbook. They had been studying on the little dinner table with the television on low volume. In four days, they would be heading back to the Garrison, and Keith had been determined to get a head on the planned coursework. With Shiro’s help of their two week break, he had successfully familiarized himself with everything up to mid semester.

But now, Shiro was staring at him, and his face was a deep shade of scarlet.

“Hanabi?”

Somehow, Shiro’s face went redder. “Oh, um, there’s a fireworks festival. They hold it every year down by the river, and a lot food vendors set up. And we can stay down there for the actual show, but it’ll be really crowded. I usually go up to the roof to see it, since we have a really good view. But I mean, it’s no problem if we —”

“Shiro.”

Shiro’s mouth shut with a click.

“I…” Keith could feel his face heating up. “I would like that. I would really like that.”

“Really?” Shiro smile was big and stupid and only made Keith blush more.

“Y-Yeah,” he stuttered, and hid himself behind his textbook so Shiro couldn’t see his big, stupid grin in return.

Keith sets out towards the north on the third day, meeting nothing but flat sand. On the fourth, to the west with nothing but the same. And again to the south.

He aches. He tries to catch his breath in the thin air. His head spins.

Red’s heart beats weakly at the base of his skull.

The sixth night, he spends twisted underneath the emergency blanket, biting back against the lump in his throat and ignoring the stinging in the corner of his eyes. Keith refuses to cry. He hasn’t cried since he was six. He didn’t cry at Shiro’s funeral, and he didn’t cry when he found him on that table.

He sure as hell didn’t cry when he realized Shiro didn’t remember.

Biting the flesh of his forearm, he curls around himself, shaking and twisting the thick blanket around him. The red bayard is pressed tightly against his chest, his knuckles white as he grips it. A part of him waits, trembling, for the sound of Galara ships. Another part trembles in the emptiness of the vast, deserted world he’s crash landed on.

But most of him just longs to could curl around a familiar body, with strong fingers threading through his hair and a soft voice asking him to sing.

“Takashi,” he chokes.

“Hey, Shiro,” Keith started. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

“What, to the roof? So we could see the fireworks better.”

“No, stupid. I mean to come here, to Japan… To your home.”

Shiro didn’t say anything, and sighed. Above them, the festival’s fireworks lit up the night sky in vivid colors as they formed intricate shapes over the river. Shiro laid back on the roof with his hands resting on his arms, their thighs flush while Keith reclined back on his elbows. The only sounds between them was the soft night breeze and gunshot like clap of explosions in the distance, peppered with the far off cheers of the festival goers. Keith was mostly focused on the line of warmth that stretched up his side, and Shiro’s soft breathing.

At some point in the night, the fireworks dwindled out. Below them, Keith could hear Amina and Shiro’s grandmother leave the balcony to go inside, the sliding door closing with a sharp snap. But Shiro didn’t move to get up, so neither did Keith.

The muffled sound of Tokyo at night descended on them, stretching out as the air cooled and sent shivers up Keith’s arms. Abruptly, Shiro sat up and turned to him.

“Keith, what do you think of me,” he asked.

Blushing, Keith straightened and turned away. “That’s a weird question,” he grumbled. He twisted his fingers in his lap.

“Yeah,” Shiro agreed. “But it’s important.”

Keith felt the warm weight of Shiro’s arm around the small of his back, before soft fingertips touched his cheek, turning him to look into Shiro’s face. They were just inches apart, and Keith couldn’t stop his eyes from drifting down from the bright red of Shiro’s cheeks to his lips. Idly, Shiro chewed on his bottom lip, and Keith could feel the heat creeping up his neck before he brought himself to look back into Shiro’s dark eyes.

“Our flight back is tomorrow,” Shiro said, breath ghosting across Keith’s face. “But I just wanted to tell you that I…” Shiro swallowed, worrying more at his bottom lip. “Even if it…”

“Oh,” Keith said. And he jerked forward to press his lips to Shiro’s, their teeth clicking together. They both froze at the unexpected kiss, eyes wide in shock. Leaning back, Shiro stared at him, bewildered, his face was flushed in the soft glow of the street lights. Keith insides clenched. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…” he started to say, when Shiro grinned brightly at him.

Shiro leaned forward, shocking Keith into scrambling to meet him halfway, and they knocked their noses together. The two sprung back and away from each other, gaping. Keith snorted as Shiro began to laugh, flopping onto his back.

“Sorry,” Keith said again, leaning over as Shiro’s laugh died down to a chuckle. This time when they kissed, it was soft and gentle, the warmth of it set Keith’s insides to melt.

“I’m not,” Shiro said when they pulled apart.