That's the last moment they get together for what feels like days—for what must be days.

Keith pulls the cloth off the map board in the cabin and sees the exact moment Shiro realizes what the post-it notes say. There's no point keeping his expulsion a secret, either—Shiro puts two and two together, and the look he gives Keith is pained.

They don't get a chance to talk about it, and he's not sure if he's disappointed or grateful.

So much happens so fast, it sends his head spinning, and it never really stops. They find the blue lion, and the castle on Arus, and learn about Voltron, but it all pales after the initial shock of finding Shiro alive.

Keith takes the rest in stride, somehow. He keeps waiting for something about it to be surprising, keeps waiting for himself to catch up and need that moment to come to terms with it all, but it never comes.

Good, he thinks, but it's not until he's standing on Sendak's ship, trying to find the red lion that it hits him full-force—this isn't normal.

There's something wrong with him.

It's the Galra symbol that sets him off. He gets to the end of the hallway, and there it is. He stands there, bathed in the violet glow of it, trying to remember where he's seen it before, but it's like a half-remembered dream that slips away every time he gets it into view.

The color of it though—that's familiar as the back of his hand.

After he finds the red lion, after they form Voltron, when the castle is relatively safe and everyone's so tired they can barely keep their eyes open, and he's finally alone, he pulls the knife from his belt and unwraps the hilt.

The color, the glow of it, even the wicked curves of the symbol on the hilt are the same. It looks Galra, and it feels Galra. It sends his blood running cold and fast, and he falls asleep like that, right there, still dressed and curled on his side, staring at it like something will click if he looks hard enough, long enough.

It doesn't.

He can't get the cabin out of his mind, the weird familiarity of it and how little he remembers. How long were they there? Why did his Dad bring him there? Once he finds one gap in his memory, a dozen more follow it, a hundred little inconsistencies he never thought to question.

Trying (and failing, repeatedly) to form Voltron is a welcome distraction.

Shiro's presence grounds him, brings him back to basics. Piloting, with Shiro—that's his dream, and when they finally form Voltron, he's as giddy with it as the rest of them are.

When Shiro stands up to go to bed, Keith vaults over the back of the couch and hopes no one notices he's bee-lining for Shiro's room. Though it wouldn't matter either way.

He's leaning against the wall by the door when Shiro gets there. Shiro doesn't notice him at first. He's frowning, looking at the ground and Keith suddenly feels like an idiot. Shiro's been through more than any of them, and had less time to rest. It's too late to leave without Shiro noticing him, but he still contemplates it for a second, until Shiro looks up and sees him and a soft smile curves across his face.

He opens the door to his room and invites Keith in, no questions asked, like they're back at the Garrison.

Once he's inside, he doesn't know what to do with himself. He wants to sit on the bed next to Shiro, lean his head into his shoulder and breathe, but Shiro still looks like he has the weight of several worlds on his shoulders—and he does, Keith realizes.

He settles for leaning on the wall across from the bed, watching Shiro get his boots and vest off. Shiro shoots him a smile. "Good thing you had these, huh?"

The outlines of the box he kept Shiro's clothes in is burned into his mind, and he spent so many nights staring at it, trying to decide if he should throw it away or open it, bury his face in them, and drown in that grief. Keith tries to smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

Shiro looks away. "You left the Garrison," he says, finally, and there it is.

He nods after a moment—he owes Shiro an honest explanation, but he doesn't know where to start.

You left, and I couldn't hack it. You left, and I was alone. You left, and I fell apart.

But none of that was Shiro's fault, and he can see in the slope of his shoulders that he has enough on his mind. It hits him in full at that moment. What was he thinking? It's not like Shiro's busy recovering from a year of space prison, forced amputation, and torture. It's not like he's suddenly the leader of a rebellion against a ten thousand year old intergalactic dictator. It's not like he's tired.

Keith nods, finally. "Kerberos hit me pretty hard. I just—" He smiles at Shiro. "It's good to have you back."

Shiro lies back on the bed with a groan. "I don't know if this counts as back, actually." He waves a hand around the room, and yeah—this doesn't exactly count as a homecoming. "But I'm glad you're here."

It takes him aback.

"...Same to you." It's late, and he feels bad for coming here, at all. He pushes off from the wall, stretching so it's believable. "I should let you get some sleep."

He doesn't make it more than a step before Shiro stops him.

"Wait," he says. He's sitting up, watching Keith with that look that wrinkles the spot between his eyebrows, and it's so familiar it's—heartbreaking.

It was one of those memories that played behind his eyes for days, for weeks after Kerberos. It was one of those memories he turned over so often it started to warp out of shape, and then he'd tried to bend it back into place and lost a couple nights to mourning that—just that. Just the way the spot between Shiro's eyes wrinkled when he was concerned.

He realizes he's looking down and the edges of his vision are going wobbly, and tries to steady himself. He can't push this on Shiro right now.

"Hey." There's a hand on his shoulder, and Shiro is suddenly right there, right in front of him. He doesn't resist when Shiro takes his hand and leads him to the bed. He pulls back the covers, and—the offer is so welcome and so unexpected, it takes his breath away for a moment.

He strips off his jacket and boots and climbs under the sheets, but he can't make himself look at Shiro. It's only a minute before the bed dips and then there's a line of heat at his back. Shiro settles one arm around his waist and pulls him back into an easy embrace, tucking Keith's head under his chin.

"It's okay," Shiro says when Keith's on the edge of sleep, and it's so quiet he's not sure the words are meant for him at all.

—

It keeps falling apart. He keeps falling apart.

He puts his hand on a Galra scanner without thinking about it, and it works.

He gets hit by druid magic and his skin goes livid and violet; liquid quintessence heals him.

His world narrows to defeating Zarkon, and taking care of Shiro, and that's how he finds himself on the other side of a fight over when and whether and how to rescue Allura—not now, not yet, and not like this.

That's the first time Shiro looks at him like he doesn't know what he's thinking. It's—crushing, but they never get a chance to talk about it, and he never gets a chance to explain.

By the time they've taken on Zarkon and rescued her—by the time he's taken on Zarkon, with prejudice, like a mania that takes him and everyone else by surprise—it's just one one more idiosyncrasy in a list that's expanding out of control, each one a wedge between him and the rest of the team, and worse, between him and Shiro.

He rescues Shiro in the black lion, and Shiro looks at him with that same look he used to give at the garrison: like he's in awe of Keith, but this time it's edged with resignation, and he looks—

Tired. Like he's looking for any way out of this, but knows there's only one.

The only thing Keith can do is not add to it, which keeps seeming like a good idea right up until the moment the pod he and Allura are in blows up and he's floating through hell-and-gone empty space while the rest of the team takes on a Galra warship.

That's what does it, finally.

Shiro can't look him in the eye after that, but he doesn't give up on trying to convince Keith he's going to be the leader one day and it's almost more than he can take, because that means thinking about Shiro being gone, again.

When Shiro realizes there's something wrong with him, separate from everything else, Keith can't tell him.

The knife, the quintessence, the weird sense of missing time and a muscle memory for all things Galra that shouldn't be there—that's too much to put on Shiro right now. That's what he tells himself, but it's closer to the truth to say that he knows he's going to have to make a choice eventually, and he's running from it at a dead sprint.

You can't be Galra and a Paladin of Voltron—you can't be Galra and save the universe from Galra, he thinks.

By the time they get to the Blade of Marmora headquarters, he's almost sure that's exactly what he is.

—

"You're really going to do this?" Shiro asks, voice flat. He's angry, Keith realizes.

"Shiro—"

"Where's your head? I know you're going through something, but you won't talk to me about it and—this is nuts. Knowledge or death?" He's stops in front of Keith, kneeling in front of him and laying his hands over Keith's where they're wrapped around the blade in a death-grip. "Please, just talk to me."

But if he tells Shiro, what's next? What if he says he has to choose between being a part of Voltron and—this? Worse, what if Shiro stands sticks with him?

And he knows suddenly, with piercing clarity, that's exactly where this is headed. He can't be Galra and part of Voltron, and Shiro will leave with him. The Red Paladin is replaceable—Shiro isn't. If they lose Shiro, they lose everything, and that's not something he can be responsible before.

Knowledge or death, and for a moment he's not sure which one he's really after, because he's got a dozen bad options to choose from and no way out.

Shiro watches him, silent, but his gaze is shuttered, like he already knows Keith isn't going to say anything, and that's it. There's them before this, and them after, and he can't figure out how to hold it together anymore.

"I'm sorry. I have to do this."

Shiro pulls away and puts his helmet back on. He pauses by the door as he walks out and looks over his shoulder. "Good luck," he says, and he means it.

The fight is brutal, and endless.

He fights for what feels like a days. Later he finds out they were on the base for two, and the Trial lasted for at least half of it. At the time it all runs together, like one long battle he's losing by degrees, until he starts to forget why he's there at all. When he throws his knife and jumps down the hatch, it's not a calculated move as much as an escape, because he has nothing left to lose in that fight.

He wakes up with Shiro's hands under his arms, lifting him, and when he sees the expression on his face, he feels dumb for mistaking the other Shiro for him at all—because he looks scared. And then he activates his arm and that's all it takes to put everything in perspective.

Shiro's already made his choice, and if Keith has to choose between Shiro and this, it's no choice at all.

—

They set him up in what passes for a bed if you're a Blade of Marmora—a blanket, and a flat place to sleep—and let him sleep off the worst of his exhaustion. Shiro's voice pulls him to the edge of consciousness.

"You did this to him. Can't you help him?"

"He did this to himself," Kolivan says, but it's almost fond.

"...Rest will help. The Trial was the same for all of us: fight, until you break. Only then can the blade be awakened." He pauses. "Though in the end, your friend had to give his up to prove he was worthy of it. It says much about what he holds dear."

Shiro doesn't respond, but Kolivan reads something in his face.

"Did you not see? He cared nothing for his own suffering. It was not until you moved to defend him that he was able to let go of it."

"So what? He didn't want me to get hurt?"

"No," Kolivan says. "He did not want to be alone in this."

—

By the time he wakes up and they're on their way back to the castle with Kolivan in tow, he feels better—but he starts to flag after introductions.

Kolivan says he wants to start planning right away, and Keith thinks he might actually fall over if he stands in one place for another minute. His legs hurt, his back hurts, and his arm is AWOL at his side. The world tilts an inch or two, before he catches himself, and Shiro shoots him a worried look.

Kolivan notices, and nods to Shiro. "You should take him and rest. It's only his Galra blood keeping him standing."

Keith almost misses the slip up, but in the silence that paralyzes the room he replays Kolivan's words in his mind and—oh. Shiro moves a step closer, like he can protect him from this.

Lance is the one that breaks the ice. "Excuse me—his what?"

Shiro is glaring at Kolivan, but Kolivan ignores him, turning to Keith. "They would have found out eventually," he says, and puts a clawed hand on Keith's shoulder—it dwarfs him.

Kolivan's right, he knows. The sooner the rest of the team knows, the sooner they can move past it, but he might have preferred to put it off until he could see straight again.

"His what?" Lance repeats. "Because it sounded like you just said—"

Keith steps forward, past Shiro. "I'm part Galra. I'm sorry. I'd have told you guys if I knew." He tries to meet everyone's eyes, but then he gets to Allura and Coran and, no. This isn't going to be that easy.

"You're Galra?" Allura doesn't sound angry—she sounds hurt. Coran puts a hand on her shoulder, and the look in both their eyes is betrayed. "How long have you known?" she asks, and there's the anger.

He can't meet their eyes. "A few hours." Shiro's a solid presence at his back, and he must be giving everyone a look that's appropriately threatening, because Lance is the only one ballsy enough to say anything.

"I knew it—I knew it." Lance punches the air with both hands. It's embarrassing. "This makes so much make sense now. I knew you were an alien! That's why your scores were off the charts! Wait, isn't that—" Lance raises one eyebrow and lowers his voice,"—cheating?"

Is it? It brings Keith up short, because maybe Lance has a point. How much of his life has this affected, how much does he actually know? HIs mind flashes back to the fight with the druid, and the mottled purple on his arms. Is that what he really—

Shiro steps in front of him again, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. "No, Lance. He kicked your ass—" Hunk gasps and moves like he's going to put his hands over Pidge's ears, before she glares at him, "—because he worked for it."

Shiro actually sounds mad, like he's finally at the end of his rope and maybe this has been a long day for both of them. Shiro turns to Allura and Coran. "This doesn't change anything. We're a team and we're not going to waste time bickering about this."

No one has anything to say to that. They've never seen Shiro angry—this is only the second time Keith's seen him angry, and the first time was that morning. Or afternoon. Time is nebulous at this point, and he's not going to fall asleep on his feet but his mental capacity is down to the level of the cow Lance and Pidge keep pretending they aren't keeping in the hangar.

He doesn't argue when Shiro puts a hand on the small of his back and guides him out of the room.

They haven't shared a room since everything started to fall apart, but he's relieved when Shiro comes in with him, no questions asked and starts helping him get the armor off—until Shiro starts trying to work off the sleeve of his hurt arm, and he can't hold back a hiss that has Shiro frowning.

Their eyes meet, and he can tell by the set of Shiro's jaw that they're about to have a talk, but he hasn't even had a chance to sort through his own thoughts yet—which is probably exactly what Shiro is trying to get ahead of.

The knock on the door has them both startling.

"Ah, just me." Coran steps inside, almost gingerly. "Kolivan mentioned you might need this." He holds up a little canister of something that Keith desperately hopes is some kind of Altean pain cream.

Shiro takes it, and there's an awkward silence, where Coran isn't leaving, but no one is talking, and Keith just wants to get his armor off and sleep for a year or so.

Coran clears his throat. "Give Princess Allura time. This will be—difficult for her."

Keith nods. He'd already gotten that memo. Coran finally seems to realize he's walked in on something private and high tails it.

They get the rest of the armor off in silence. Shiro's hand pauses at the top of the seam that runs down the spine of the black under-armor like he's coming to a decision, before he unzips it in one smooth motion.

He gives a low hiss, and Keith doesn't want to imagine what his back looks like. "They really did a number on you."

There's an edge to his voice when he speaks again. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh, yeah. Hey, Shiro, I think I'm one of the aliens we're trying to save the universe from," Keith laughs, but there's no humor in it, and apparently Shiro's having none of it.

"No, we're not doing this." Shiro says, and spins him around. His eyes are hard, and a little wounded. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Because a Galra can't be part of Voltron. Because you've got enough on your mind.

"Why do you keep talking about leaving?" he counters. "You keep acting like you're going to disappear, and I can't—" Shiro's eyes go wide. "You can't—I can't do that again."

Shiro stares at him another moment, before he closes his eyes and settles his hands on Keith's hips, pulling him just close enough to rest his chin on his unhurt shoulder. "Sorry, I didn't realize—sorry. But the next time you think you're half alien, could you maybe come talk to me about it before you blow yourself up in a pod and get stranded in the middle of space, or fight some crazy alien secret society until you pass out? That was—" his grip tightens, "really hard to watch."

Which—what? "Watch?"

Shiro sighs and pulls away. "They had it projected on a screen."

"Wait—the whole fight? Everything? It took—"

"Hours. Yeah, I know, please don't make me watch you get beat up until you pass out again."

"...Deal."

Shiro lets him go, and turns him back around, spreading the ointment over the lesions on his arms and shoulders. Keith doesn't realize his legs are shaking with the effort of keeping him upright until Shiro sighs. "Come on."

Shiro gets Keith seated on the bed and sits down behind him—and now that he's not in a constant state of low-grade agony, Shiro's touch is front and center. All his attention is caught up in that sensation, hyper-focused on the slide of fingers against his ribs—it's a line being crossed, in a way that his breaths going shallow.

He feels Shiro follow a bruise to the hem of the unzipped under-armor, right above the jut of his hip bone, and hover there, fingers still but pressing lightly. It sends an involuntary shudder up his spine, one he knows Shiro feels beneath his finger tips because he hears his breath catch, feels the tickle of it on the back of his neck. His own breath stutters, and he can't figure out if it's fear clouding his vision or anticipation—

The fingers dip lower. He hears himself gasp, feels Shiro's face press into the back of his neck, and the unmistakable press of Shiro's mouth over the knob of his spine. He presses back into the touch and—this is it, this is them giving up all pretense.

Shiro brushes the hair away from the nape of his neck, presses a kiss there that has Keith sighing. The hand against his hip is like a brand, and he wants to turn around and see Shiro, but breaking this moment feels impossible.

It's Shiro that pulls back. "Is this ok?" He whispers the words against Keith's neck. And—is it?

"I've never—done this before," he says finally, because that suddenly seems important.

Shiro laughs against his skin. "Me neither."

It breaks the tension, because it's completely ridiculous. Keith turns enough to glare at him through one eye. "Really? You—" he gives Shiro a pointed once-over, "—never brought any cute cadets back to your private bunk?"

"I already had a cute cadet in my bunk," Shiro quips, and then has the gall to blush, like he's the one embarrassed.

He stares at Shiro, open-mouthed, until he has to look away. "Are you going to be this sappy the whole time?" he asks when he can speak around his mortification.

"Probably." Shiro presses another kiss to the back of his neck and pushes Keith down with a hand on the center of his back until he's almost flat on the bed and has to brace himself on his knees and elbows. Keith goes tense, and Shiro must notice. "Just gotta finish here," he says softly.

Keith shudders at the smooth slide of fingers working their way under the black cloth still clinging to his hips, at the cool air against his skin—

Shiro pauses. "...Actually, can you turn over? I can't get this off."

Keith has to take a breath before he can comply, and then there's an awkward tangle as they try to accommodate each other, the half of the black under-armor still hanging around his waist, and Keith's lovely collection of bruises, but once he's settled on his back he's faced with the sight of Shiro kneeling by his feet, bright red and struck—

Keith grabs the pillow by his head and weighs whether he should throw it at Shiro to get that look off his face, or hide his own in it instead, and settles on the latter. He waits for Shiro to pull it away, but instead he feels hands on his thighs and cool air on his legs as he pulls the rest of the cloth away and tosses it aside.

The feeling of hands running down his legs is so foreign he has to resist the urge to pull away, but then Shiro starts massaging the ointment into the bruises there and it's almost too much. He feels a hand on his ankle—

"I don't think I got hit there." He pulls the pillow away and tries up work up a glare that misses and lands somewhere fond. Shiro's got one hand wrapped around his ankle, eyes half lidded and mouth open just enough to draw in shaky breaths, like he can't get enough air.

It's a look he wants to drown in.

The only thing wrong is that he's still dressed. "Clothes," he says, and pulls his leg away to maintain a facade of dignity, because Shiro's hand is big enough to wrap all the way around his leg and that's—devastating.

He rolls his head to follow Shiro with his gaze. He's military-efficient about getting his armor off, but he let's everything fall in an untidy mess. There's something nervous in his movements and in the set of his shoulders when he turns back to Keith. It throws him for a moment before he realizes it's everything—the scars and the robotic arm he's trying subtly to angle out of view, probably without even knowing he's doing it.

Keith smiles and holds out a hand, relieved when Shiro takes it without hesitating.

He pulls Shiro onto the bed, into a loose hug. It's—different. They've sparred and cleaned each other up, but this blanket permission to look, to touch is new. But it's easy. He presses a kiss to his Shiro's temple without thinking about it. "You've got cool scars; I've got cool bruises. You're part Galra; I'm part Galra," he mumbles there. "It's ok."

Shiro huffs a laugh. "Guess we make a good pair, huh?" But his mouth is set in a line.

It's nothing to move the extra inch, press his lips to the corner of his mouth. Shiro turns into it.

The kiss moves from sweet to open mouthed and messy—they're not great at it, but they want it so bad hardly matters, and then Shiro gets a hand in his hair and pulls. The sound that tears out of him is new and mortifying but he doesn't have time to think about it because Shiro's got his tongue and his teeth on his neck.

He makes that sound again and Shiro pulls away enough to give him a hazy glance. "Ok?" His voice is pitched low and tight, like it's hard to speak at all. Keith gives a shaky nod, and Shiro repositions him so he's lying back against he bed, and then stares.

"You're—beautiful."

Keith laughs, disbelieving. "Yeah, I look like a punching bag."

"No." Shiro lowers himself over Keith, bracing himself on his elbows, and presses a kiss to the hollow of his throat before he starts moving his way down Keith's chest, lathing his tongue over the mottled bruises, just on the right side of painful, until he has Keith keening. By the time Shiro gets to the intersection of his hip, he's wrecked, but Shiro keeps moving lower, lifting his leg up and over a shoulder, like Keith's weight is afterthought—god—and presses a wet kiss to the inside of his thigh.

"You are beautiful," he repeats, voice rough. He pauses there until Keith meets his gaze. "What do you want?"

It's funny that he thinks Keith is still capable of speaking, or of rational thought. Keith rolls the word around in his mouth, wets his lips and tries, "Anything." It comes out broken, but Shiro gets it, and his eyes go dark.

"Anything?" he laughs, and presses another kiss to his thigh, right over the bruise there. "I guess I can do that." He moves back up, pressing an open kiss to his mouth, like he can't help it and Keith surges up to meet him, wrapping his good arm around Shiro's shoulders for leverage.

It's already sloppy, because he's exhausted and strung out on want, but then Shiro reaches down and takes them both in hand, and he's gone.

Shiro's presence is overwhelming—his weight pressing Keith down, his breaths coming in shudders, and they're not kissing anymore so much as breathing the same air. Keith gets both legs wrapped around Shiro's waist, digs a heel into his back to pull him in closer, until there's almost not enough room for Shiro to stroke them both off.

"Keith—" Shiro gasps on his name and thrusts into him, and it's simultaneously the best thing he's ever felt and agonizing because he really is a wreck, in more ways than one, and his back is still a solid bruise. He gives an cry that's part moan, part pain, and Shiro jerks off him. "Sorry, sorry."

But god, he's so close. "Don't stop," he gasps, voice ragged, and Shiro has to be right on that edge with him—

He gives Keith a half-lidded, assessing gaze, and then pulls away. "No—" he whines, and wraps his arms and legs and Shiro as tight as he can, feeling them quiver with the effort, exhaustion dancing around the edges of his vision—but it's not like he has any dignity left to hold on to anyway.

Shiro laughs and presses a kiss to his temple. "I've got you," he says, and then maneuvers the robotic arm under Keith's shoulders and lifts.

And he must have memorized where every bruise was, because there's not a bit of pain as he sits back, and positions Keith so he's seated right in Shiro's lap. Keith hisses a curse, because Shiro lifting him with one arm like he's nothing is ridiculous, and now there isn't an inch between any part of them. The way he's draped over Shiro's solid frame, like he's something that's hanging together by threads, like he's something precious and breakable and Shiro knows exactly how to hold him together—it's too much.

Shiro takes them both in hand again and it's different like this, because Shiro's at eye level now, and he's watching Keith like he wants to see the exact moment he goes over the edge. Keith buries his face in the nape of Shiro's neck, shaking.

Shiro brings him right to edge and then slows down, keeping him right there for what feels like minutes, not relenting even when Keith digs his heels into his back and his nails into his shoulders, and tries to force him into some kind of friction. It's torture. "Shiro—please—"

"You're doing so great, baby," Shiro whispers in his ear, and it takes Keith's muddled mind a few seconds to catch up—

He heaves back to glare at Shiro, and Shiro gives a tiny grin like he did it just to get a rise out of him, even when they're like this. "Really? Baby?" His voice is ragged, but defiant. Jokes on him. "Ok, Takashi."

Shiro's eyes get wide, his breath catches, and then he moans and lowers his head, burying his face against Keith's chest. Keith doesn't get it until he feels the wetness between them, and—oh, well. That's useful information.

Shiro doesn't waste anymore time, brings him off and then strokes him through it until he's so played out he feels tears start to sting at the corners of his eyes.

"You're—really good at that," Keith whispers against his shoulder afterward, when they're both lying down but still a mess of limbs and sweat.

Shiro brings up a hand to card through Keith's hair absently. "I had a lot of time to think about it."

It's incredible that he still has the capacity to be embarrassed, he thinks as he feels himself blush. Shiro reads his silence like he's born to it, and clarifies, "Not just that—well, yeah, that, but everything else. After Kerberos, after the Galra took us... It was difficult."

Keith tenses; Shiro never talks about it, and he wasn't even sure how much Shiro remembered, but it makes sense that it would remember more than he let on.

"I kept thinking about you. When I got back to Earth and you were there—I didn't believe it." The words, you kept me going, go unspoken, but the hand Shiro has in Keith's hair stills and pushes him in close, and Keith gets it.

Shiro's not done, though. "That's why—I just want to know if something happens, that you'll be okay. It's not about something happening to me. It's about knowing you'll be okay, no matter what."

There's absolutely nothing he can say to that, not then, so he reaches up and tangles his fingers with the hand in his hair, and kisses the palm of it. His track record post-Kerberos isn't stellar, but he hopes the message gets across: I'll try—but I'm not letting go of this again.

—

That's what comes back to him, as he's tearing across the floor of the hangar to where the black lion is lying, lifeless, like a toy someone dropped on the floor and forgot about.

He already knows what they're going to find when they open the hatch, feels it in his gut, like an old wound he's been careless with.

"He's gone."

Keith doesn't register who says it, too busy trying to get his thoughts to line up in a way that can make this make sense in any version of reality. They stand together like that for a long, still moment, staring at the empty cockpit like Shiro's going to crawl out from under the seat, until someone has to break the tension, until someone has to move, or do something, and Keith's done wasting time.

"I'm going to look for him."

He's half way back to his lion before Coran stops him. "The princess can't maintain a wormhole right now; it's too dangerous—"

"Coran," she says, and puts a hand on his arm, looking at Keith. " I can open one, but—"

"And what? Leave him stranded out there?" Lance asks. "It's gonna be crawling with Galra."

"We still need to look," says Pidge, and her voice sounds so small and unsure. She shoots a frantic glance to Hunk, who's still staring into the empty cockpit, dead still.

That's what shakes Keith out of it, what let's him see past his own panic, because he's not the only one losing here. "No." He closes his eyes, forces himself to take a deep breath. "He's right."

Pidge shoots him a betrayed look. "If we don't go now, they're going to take him."

If he's alive. He still can't get the events in order in his mind, can't figure out how this is a logical result of anything that's happened to them so far. It's ridiculous, in some distant way, that the one thing he was most terrified would disappear is gone, without a trace, without any semblance of reason.

"Pidge." His voice cracks.

She glares at him, bright-eyed and—the look slides off her face, leaving her wide-eyed and staring, which is the exact moment Keith realizes his own eyes are wet.

—

They wait a full, fatal day to open the wormhole again. He doesn't get changed, or leave the hangar, so he's the first one in his lion and the first one through.

The Galra are gone, but the debris field is massive, and finding anything is going to be like picking a grain of sand out of a desert—there's no way. The corpse of a Galra floats by, twisted and frozen. It hits him in full, that if Shiro is out here, that's what he might be.

"Shiro?" he asks over the radio.

There's nothing but dead silence.

The rest of the lions come through the wormhole, and no one says a word as they start sorting through the debris and calling his name over the radio. Pidge sets up a grid system that she projects over their HUDs, but it makes the task seem endless.

They stay out there for hours, come back the next day and do it all over again.

On the third day Pidge and Hunk stay behind, because Allura's right—they've had a massive victory and they need to do everything they can to capitalize on it, before the Galra regroup.

Lance takes one look at Keith and decides to come along anyway. He tries to make small talk a couple times, but Keith can't bring himself to play along.

"It doesn't make sense that he'd disappear and not have his bayard with him," Lance says finally, after an hour of solid silence.

It brings Keith up short. There's something deeply wrong about the entire situation. You don't misplace a human, you don't misplace something that precious, and he didn't have his eyes off the black lion for more than a second. He would have seen something. He knows all this already, though.

"Keith." Lance's face appears on the screen, and no—they're not having a heart-to-heart about this.

Keith turns off the video feed. "Go back, if you want. I'm gonna keep looking," he says over the radio, and then turns that off, too.

Lance stays for another hour before he heads back, leaving Keith alone in the wreckage.

They've covered less than a tenth of it, so he closes his eyes and veers off the grid, trying to follow the same sense of purpose that lead him to the blue lion in the first place—that he's starting to think led him to Shiro, too, but there's nothing. He goes back one more time, but he already knows he's not going to find Shiro out there—that he's not going to find Shiro anywhere he knows how to look.

This is what happens, he thinks, and it almost crushes him right there.

He breathes through it, one step at a time. It can't undo him again—there's too much riding on them, on him. He doesn't have a year to waste chasing ghosts in the desert, and he promised Shiro—

No, he didn't, he realizes. Neither of them promised anything.

It's a petty thought. He closes his eyes, feels something wet and hot hit his hand, blinks it away.

Shiro deserves better than this.

—

"You know that he would be the first one to tell us that we have to move on," Lance says, and Keith wonders for a moment if that's true—

But he knows that it is.

Allura steps forward, eyes wide and sorry. "Our mission is bigger than any one individual." She looks down. "Even those who are—completely irreplaceable."

For a moment he thinks she's talking about Alfor, but there's something else in her eyes, and he remembers her eyes on Shiro and him, and realizes that she knows.

He's not sure if that makes it better or worse—there's no way he's going to talk about it, not with her, not with any of them. It's too private, too precious, and suddenly he can't imagine letting that go like this, with sympathetic words and a whimper.

Shiro deserves a fight.

The black lion is still lying where they dropped it. He piloted it once for Shiro—he can do it again, because last time Shiro came back to him it was pure luck, but this time it's going to be on him, and there's no way he's giving up Shiro. Not for a minute, not for a breath.

He stares down the black lion and thinks:

If there's a fight coming, I'm going to win it.