Disclaimer: Voltron Legendary Defender belongs to Dreamworks and Netflix.

Okay, this has to be one of the angstiest things I have ever written, but I'm glad I did. Look out below, much of this are headcanons I hold for Space Dad, but don't let that deter you!

Read, review, and enjoy!

EDIT: I altered number 7 a bit. I like this one better.

Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane.

Twenty-five years old, former ace pilot of the Galaxy Garrison, and is currently the Black Paladin of Voltron.

He is stoic, occasionally goofy, has a taste for cynical humor, and has been through more suffering than a man like him should.

However, did you know...

1.) He has always had a love for the stars.

Shiro still remembers the stories his haha-ue- mother- would tell him. She told him about how, as a baby, he would start crying then wouldn't stop until she removed him from his cradle and sat down with him next to the big window in his room. There, the stars and the moon were visible in all their magnificence. His baby self would see the night sky and immediately settle down.

He would stare at the stars, she had described, as if he were wondering why he wasn't up there with them. He would never look at the morning sky like he did the night one, so his mother knew it was the stars he loved. She claimed he would babble in nonsense speak and reach as high as he could from her arms.

His mother had admitted, when he signed up for the Garrison, that she knew he was destined to be among the constellations and planets he adored.

Given what the Black Lion is supposed to be the guardian spirit of and Allura's own firm belief in destiny, Shiro can't help but wonder if haha-ue was more correct than even she realized.

2.) ...But not so much anymore.

Where they once held promise of adventure and freedom, the stars now only serve to remind him of distance. The more stars he sees means he is only that much farther from Earth, that much farther from his family, and that much deeper into Zarkon's empire.

Sad thing is, after being enslaved for a year and what occurred after he crashed, Shiro isn't sure he even has a place on Earth anymore. He's too different from the man his friends and family no doubt remember (Keith obviously doesn't care and that means the universe to him) and he doesn't know if he can trust the Garrison anymore.

But if he doesn't belong on Earth or with the stars he used to love so much, then what's he supposed to do when all this is over?

Still, there are days he heads down to the Castleship's observation deck and stares out the windows into space. He thinks that, maybe if he does this, he can remember why he had been taken with the stars to begin with.

3.) He gives off that brotherly aura because he is one.

Shiro has one biological brother- Ryou. They're identical twins and are fifteen minutes apart from each other, Shiro being the elder.

They couldn't have been more different from each other- where Shiro is level headed and charismatic, Ryou was hot-tempered and stand-offish. This often got the latter into trouble. Shiro always did his best to look out for him- give him advice, steer him away from the wrong crowd- and for a time Ryou appreciated it. But as the two grew older and Shiro grew more prominent, Ryou began to resent his brother. Shiro was practically a legend at the Garrison's academy and was clearly the favorite in their family. It's hard to be constantly compared to someone who shares your face.

It came to a head when both men were eighteen and Shiro had graduated from the academy early. Ryou had gotten himself arrested and Shiro was the one who came to bail him out. No one is sure what the argument had been about- they could guess, but Shiro never said- but it led to a fist fight and Ryou taking off on his own on his hover-cycle. He never went home.

Last Shiro heard, his brother owned a mechanic's garage in southern California somewhere. He sometimes wonders how Ryou reacted to the news that the Kerberos crew died due to pilot-error. Laughed about how Perfect Takashi finally screwed up instead of him, maybe?

Shiro regrets never trying to patch things up between the two of them. Now that he's fighting in an inter-stellar war, he may never get the chance to.

4.) ...But with his team he actually feels like a brother.

Ryou may be his flesh and blood, but with Team Voltron...

Keith, Pidge, Lance, and Hunk ground him and he them. They need guidance and Shiro provides that. They need someone they can look up to and Shiro provides that. They're kids fighting in a war and Shiro wants nothing more to protect them, but they want to protect themselves so Shiro sees to it they have the ability to do so. In turn, they support him and protect him and always make him feel like he can be better than what he is.

Sometimes they make him laugh and sometimes they make him want to tear his hair out. But they're capable, strong, and Shiro is so, so, proud of them. Looking back, he realizes one of the reasons he looked out for Ryou because he felt he had to, being the relatively elder and more responsible sibling- a sentiment his twin both resented and rarely returned.

Shiro looks out for the members of Team Voltron because he wants to, and they do the same. They balance each other- this is how siblings should be.

That, of course, also makes him utterly terrified of letting them down, just like he did Ryou.

5.) Shiro has never been in a real romantic relationship.

You wouldn't think this, considering what kind of person Shiro is. He's smart, kind, confident, and arguably drop-dead gorgeous. That had nothing to do with it- while Shiro was never opposed to dating, he simply had never found the time.

He's an overachiever, plain and simple. Before leaving Earth, his life was a whirlwind of academy classes, graduating, Garrison missions, acting as a mentor/brother-figure to Keith, training, and whatever plethora of other tasks he took on for himself. The few occasions he did allow himself some free time was spent taking his hover-bike through long rides in the desert, usually accompanied by friends or Keith.

Additionally, the few rare dates he had either accepted or been tricked into by friends never went anywhere, and once he was chosen for the Kerberos mission his free time vanished altogether. Additional training, press conferences, and the publicity tour took up all his time. The little time he did manage to find was dedicated to either his family or assuring Keith he was going to be fine on his own for a year. Dating would have only complicated things by that point, anyway.

And if asked if his fan club back at the academy acted as any kind of deterrent, Shiro would flush crimson while Keith laughed in the background.

6.) ...But he made plans to settle down after Kerberos.

He never told anyone besides Matt and Commander Holt, but Shiro made the request that he be removed from Galaxy Garrison's active roster once he returned from the mission.

He felt that, after serving the Garrison faithfully since graduation and completing as monumentous a mission as Kerberos, he needed to take time to live his life more sedately. He'd already had a semi-permanent position lined up at the academy, training cadets in flight and self-defense. He'd hoped that the relaxed lifestyle would allow him a chance to meet the right woman, get married, and start a family. Then after a few years, when his kids had grown some, he would start taking missions again.

He spent much of the trip to Pluto's moon fantasizing about this possible domestic life- spending time with a beautiful woman whom he loved, taking his children out to the desert for stargazing or visiting their Uncle Keith. He wanted to watch them grow up to become whatever they wanted.

Shiro had wanted to be a dad.

Shiro no longer entertains such optimistic goals. If he can stop the Galra, find the Holts, and get his team back to Earth, he'll be happy. Anything else is secondary.

7.) He doesn't have as many nightmares as you might think.

He doesn't, honestly. Most of the time he closes his eyes to sleep and opens them to see it's day again. He doesn't even have the brief period between sleep and wakefulness most people have first thing in the morning. He's asleep, then awake- no inbetween. This kind of sleep is hardly restful and he goes around tired most of the time. (And that's when he does sleep- he more often than not goes without any thanks to insomnia.) He knows this should bother him- that he has apparently trained his body to become alert at a moment's notice- but it's useful so he doesn't mind it.

Even when he does have nightmares, they're rarely anything specific. They consist of dark flashes and sharp sensations, and while Shiro suspects he's actually seeing more than that, when he awakes the dreams slip from his grasp like smoke. He catapults awake, feeling breathless and frightened, but he does not remember why. But when he does have a true nightmare... one he remembers and is fully immersed in...

-the torture he and the Holts were put through after they were captured, interrogated for any information the Galra may have found useful. Battles in the arena, which are filled with so much pain and exertion that Shiro wakes up exhausted. Being in Haggar's lab, where alien drugs are injected into him and make his blood feel like fire, where he's kept on the vestiges of consciousness as she slices into his arm. The worst are where he either fails- where his team is captured or killed and it's all his fault because he wasn't strong enough- or turns on them because Sendak was right and he's a monster and how dare he play Paladin when he's just like-

...Shiro thinks he prefers his flashbacks to his nightmares. Though more frequent, at least the flashbacks he knows are accurate- with the nightmares he's never quite sure what's real and what's something exaggerated by his stress-addled mind. He's just thankful that the night terrors are infrequent, because he knows- undoubtedly having PTSD- that he could be far worse.

Thus when he gets out of the cryo-pod and Hunk asks if ever has other nightmares, he lies and says no.

8.) ...But he does have as many scars.

The Galra already have a list of transgressions as long as Shiro's arm, but you could tack "inadequate medical care" to it and place a picture of Shiro next to it as proof.

Not to say he never got any- after all, it wouldn't do for a crowd favorite such as the Champion to die outside the arena due to something as mundane as blood loss or infection. After a match, Shiro was taken to a small infirmary where his wounds were treated. That being said, all treatment was cursory. They were healed enough that he wouldn't die from them, but not so much that they wouldn't leave a permanent reminder behind. The Galra saw scars as marks of pride or shame depending on who bore them. As both a slave and a gladiator, it went either way for Shiro. He has scars from having made it through duels forced on him by the Galra, and scars from punishments inflicted on him for being disobedient.

Shiro had both won and been punished many times. Although, in the long run, those scars are paltry. He doesn't remember how he got most of them and would like to keep it that way, but he knows they're a sign he survived the Galra long enough for Ulaz to free him and for him to get back to Earth. Those ones, as far as he is concerned, are nothing to be ashamed of until proven otherwise. It's the scars he obviously didn't get from the arena that unnerve him and make him want to hide everything under his clothes- and he's not referring to the scars surrounding the port of his prosthetic.

He does not want to dwell upon the large, dark Galra symbol burned into the center of his back.

That goes double for the thin, neat cuts spanning his body and the long vertical line going down the center his torso.

9.) Shiro almost didn't accept the mission to Kerberos.

Shiro is a massive overachiever, but he's also humble to a fault. He's confident in his abilities while at the same time always thinks there is someone better suited for the task than him. Still, if it's expected of him, he'll sure as hell see that said task is done to the best of his ability.

It's a good thing people love that quality in a leader, otherwise it would be terribly annoying.

When Commander Holt presented him with the Kerberos mission- the mission the Garrison had been preparing for for decades- he almost hadn't believed it. This was going to be a historic assignment and they chose him to pilot it. In the moment, Shiro hadn't known whether to get down on his knees in gratitude or ask if they were out of their minds. Sure, he was considered one of, if not thee, best pilots Galaxy Garrison had to offer and he was already a decorated officer, but at the time he was only twenty-three. The mission wouldn't take off for another year and he had time to prepare, but still. There had been a selection pool- there must have been someone more experienced than him to choose. He brought this up and Commander Holt merely laughed.

He told Shiro they'd been preparing him for this mission from the moment he passed his first simulator and if anyone could handle it, it was him.

It was that piece of encouragement that convinced him to accept, combined with his own personal desire. Shiro joined Galaxy Garrison to explore the stars he loved since infancy, and now he had a chance to travel farther than any human had ever gone before him. It would mean leaving his family and friends for a year and there was always the chance he may not return, but Shiro couldn't turn down the opportunity when it was everything he ever hoped for.

Had he known what would occur after they landed on the ice moon, he would have turned it down faster than a wormhole jump.

10.) ...But even after everything, he's glad he did.

The year with the Galra was the hardest time of Shiro's life. He still can't remember most of it and it will probably haunt him until the end of his days, but he can't bring himself to regret accepting the Kerberos mission.

He regrets the pain it brought to Pidge and her family. He regrets leaving Keith alone. He regrets that Commander Holt and Matt got caught up in all of it. He regrets the Paladins are fighting in a war when they're so young. But he does not regret going to Kerberos. Had he never accepted the mission...

He would have never been able to cheer Lance on when he made his hundredth bullseye in the Castleship's shooting range.

He would have never been able to sit with Pidge in her workshop and listen to her ramble on about what new mod she's made to Green Lion.

He would have never been able to praise Hunk when he somehow replicated the Garrison's macaroni and cheese out of alien ingredients.

He would have never been able to catch sight of Keith sleeping in the Red Lion's hangar, curled up against her paw in total comfort.

He would have never been able to wake up to find that Platt and the other mice had piled themselves next to his head in the night.

He would have never been able to trade stories of happier times in the military with Coran, whose own stories were wild.

He would have never been able to drink tea with Allura on evenings when neither can sleep, the weight of their traumas keeping them awake.

And above all...

Had Shiro never accepted the mission, he would have never become the Black Lion's pilot and a Paladin of Voltron. He would have never joined this team and explored the universe with them. He would have never gained his bond with the Black Lion, who makes him feel safer than he has in forever. He would have never become part of this family of space-faring misfits he's damn happy to be with. He's their leader, their brother, and their friend.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

...

...

...

...

... 11.) He thinks his friends will do just fine without him.

Shiro hopes they find him soon, though.