the blades we carry

Summary: Voltron – Legendary Defender. By what is the depth of scars measured? OneShot- Keith. Throughout season 4.

Warning: Snippets, no plot, introspective.

Set: Companion piece to "all the lost things". Can be read separately.

Space looked different through the Black Lion's eyes.

At least, that was Keith thought. Maybe it was merely the arrangement of screens, the slowly-scrolling Altean text in the corner of his eyes that he still could not read. Maybe it was the subtly different cockpit, the pilot's chair that seemed just so higher.

Maybe it was him.

Did it matter, anyway?

In the back of his mind, Black growled. The sound rolled through Keith, heavy and dark, made his hackles rise. It was by no means a threatening sound - more a stern reminder. Red would have purred, given him the mental equivalent of a head-butt like a cat impatiently waiting for a hand to caress it; demanding attention. Black was not a cat. Black was a lion, proud and distant. Not waiting for anyone, not asking, not demanding. Not caring - but deigning to look out for the cub that had stumbled into his hunting grounds. Nudging it along, accepting it with a mixture of grace and aloofness. Black wasn't merely a fighter – he was a leader. And he fought alongside his pack, but he led the other lions, too. The reverence and submission Blue, Red, Green and Yellow showed towards him, the sheer respect he demanded in their minds, would never cease. They were a family, but Black would always be its head: respected, revered and acknowledged.

To the Black Lion, Keith was someone he allowed, patiently and distant, to use his powers.

To Red, Keith had been a partner.

And he missed her. Her fire, her fury and impatience; her temper that matched his. Impulsiveness blended with speed and agility in both of them, coupled with an almost giddy joy in fighting. The sensation of her rumbling purr in the depths of his mind when they were One. The warmth of her constant presence.

Sometimes, he wondered how she could have accepted Lance in his stead.

He stomped down on the thought quickly every time it came, because, really?

Shiro was gone.

Lost.

Again.

And the only thing he was doing was moaning over the loss of a lion mecha?

Of all the stupid, idiotic, selfish things to do.

Shiro had been there. The only person who had ever truly cared for Keith since his father had died. Shiro had been there, and then he hadn't been.

Keith had crashed, hard.

But Takashi Shirogane had been declared dead, and he'd come back – as if he'd done it just to stop Keith from going off the rails even further, as if it was his responsibility to save Keith from drowning in his own hatred and anger again and again. Of course Keith knew that he was far from the reason why Shiro had returned, and also that Shiro didn't see him as a project, as the messed-up kid that screamed at the world and fought the social workers tooth and nail and ran from the group homes again and again. Shiro just was that way, kindness down to the marrow of his bones. That didn't mean it didn't hurt Keith, but it also was something he had come to accept. Shiro was Shiro: bright smile, open arms, honesty shining from his eyes and lacing through his words until even a messed-up kid like Keith couldn't help but love him.

Space castles? Princesses and lion mechas and Galra, the ultimate enemy, that was part of him no matter how much he hated it? Keith could deal with all of it, as long as Shiro was there.

But then he had disappeared again. And Keith realized that he hadn't really dealt with the in-between. Had just shoved it down, down, down, locked it away and buried it so deeply he couldn't see it, but of course, that never meant that it was gone.

Our past is never buried and dead.

And now that Shiro was gone, again, it all came back.

All the empty phrases, the stupid meaningless things people had said when he had disappeared – died – for the first time came back to haunt him. Keith had thought he'd buried them deep enough for them to never see the light of – well, of day – again.

Piloting error.

Everybody makes mistakes.

You gotta let go, Keith.

That first time, instead of letting go, Keith had put his fist through a wall and had driven his career with the Garrison against it, for good measure. Had dropped out and run. Nobody had been surprised, the teachers had known him before Shiro, they'd whispered, they'd made up their minds about him. Messed up kid with a messed-up past and a messed-up mind – what else could he ever be? And messed-up he was. A shack in the desert, no population for miles. And still it had been too much: too quiet, too empty, too cold. Why? It had never bothered him before, moving around, changing places, changing people. How quickly one got used to things. One year of living in close quarters with other people, one year of being tutored by Shiro, of kindness and humor and laughter, and everything Keith the orphan had ever learned went out of the window and down the drain.

He should have known better when he'd finally got Shiro back.

Because of course Keith couldn't have nice things.

Instead of learning from his own mistakes, he just charged head-first into the next.

And this leadership thing everyone was pushing on him?

He couldn't do it. He saw it every day, in large and in tiny things. He just wasn't made for this.

Pidge, Hunk and Lance had gone off to play their console games, and Keith had the rec room to himself for a glorious half hour and had uselessly spent it trying to determine whether he was supposed to go train, or just hang around and read.

Then, Allura stepped through the door.

The Princess looked different in her new armor. A color for mourning on Altea, she had said when she first presented it, and it was the truth: she looked like she was grieving someone. An entire civilization, a whole culture. Allura, Princess of Altea, Last of her Kind: a requiem for the dead, whisper-sung by a living girl. Looking at her, now, Keith didn't see the arrogant and desperate woman he had first seen when they had met. Now, she was like a chipped block of ice, cool and collected and determined. And, underneath the surface: a raging fire, angry and all-consuming. Had the heat only been there since she had begun piloting Blue? He couldn't say, and didn't want to, either.

The princess stood in the door, her eyes raking through the room, until they focused on Keith. Something flashed through them – confusion, realization, denial and rage, all of them following in lightning-quick succession, faster than he could think and very, very familiar – and finally, a streak of bleak desperation that came with bitter acceptance.

And Keith, quite suddenly, knew why she was there.

He could see the second in which her shoulders fell, watched the fight go out of her as quickly as it had come. She entered the room fully, the door sliding shut behind her, and sat on the sofa across from Keith.

Cue Awkward Pause.

Keith hated himself, and his inability to communicate. How did Shiro and Lance make it seem so effortless?

"So how is it going with Blue," he finally asked, feeling like the stupidest person in the galaxy.

At the same time, Allura lifted her chin defiantly. "Keith. I have a question."

They broke off and stared at each other until Allura shook her head and cracked a tiny smile.

"It's incredible, flying with her. As far as I can tell…" She hesitated. "Blue is fine."

Keith had the sinking feeling that he had opened a can of worms.

"That's good."

"Yeah." Allura shook her head, decisively. "I never… I never thought I'd be piloting a Lion of Voltron. I mean, I dreamed of it, but…" Again, she broke off. Stared at the ground.

"Yeah."

Awkward Pause, The Sequel.

He probably was supposed to say something, here. Offer sympathy. Console her doubts. Nothing came to his mind.

"Do you think Blue would have preferred to keep Lance as her pilot?" It finally burst from Allura, who then proceeded to sink into herself after spilling the words as if the pressure built up by her doubts had left her in a rush after confessing them, leaving her empty and hollow. "Do you think they switched only because there was no other way?"

Keith froze.

So Allura hadn't been looking for Shiro, after all, or, at least: she had meant to talk to him about this, anyway. Because Keith was the only one she could talk to.

"I mean," she continued, almost mumbling. "Lance and Blue were undoubtedly perfect together, and they only had to switch because the Black Lion accepted you, and the Red Lion pretty much refused to choose me. So the Blue Lion gave up on Lance so I could partner with her. But I have this feeling…"

She bit her lip. It looked like she had been doing that a lot, lately.

"Maybe she'd rather have Lance back?"

Lance gave up the blue lion.

The silence that expanded between them this time was physically painful.

"I…" Keith said and hammered his brain for something, anything, adequate to say. "I think…"

Both stared down on their hands. His, Keith noticed, dimly, seemed to turn bluish when cold.

"Okay then!" Allura bounced up again like a jack-in-the-box, but her smile was agonizing. "That was a stupid question. Sorry to bother you with it! I'll get back to work. Coran mentioned some systems needed calibration, and after incident at Haxus Prime I tend to agree."

And then she was gone. And Keith sat there, frozen, knowing he had failed her.

Keith was the leader of Voltron, now.

And he couldn't help Allura overcome her doubts. He also couldn't cheer up Hunk and Pidge, other than going along with their schemes, or calm Lance, whose nerves seemed to fray slowly but surely though he hid it pretty well. He couldn't talk to Coran who worked tirelessly, endlessly cheerful, and couldn't pilot Black perfectly, who was slower and more massive than Red, couldn't quench the feeling of jealousy when he saw Lance flying Red so breathtakingly easily, like they were one entity, like they had been meant to fly together. He couldn't even calm his own heart.

Keith didn't know how to lead Voltron.

He couldn't help anyone.

He had never learned how.

But the Galra did.

Learn, that was.

It was terrifying to watch.

Allura was a brilliant strategist, and Hunk and Pidge easily had the engineering and programming skills to draw out everything Voltron had. Lance pushed them, needled them, annoyed them, but whenever he pushed, they became better. They'd gotten so much better since Keith had taken over Black, they'd become better despite all his non-existent leadership skills, despite his rashness, despite his lack of calmness.

But whatever they did, it still wasn't enough to finish Zarkon off once and for all.

"Guys," Hunk said, his voice strained. "Yellow can't take more than three more of these hits. We're getting seriously blasted here."

"Hold on." Pidge's voice carried an undercurrent Keith had come to associate with her usual burning focus. "I'm almost done."

"Lance!" Allura's voice shrilled. "Get back here!"

Keith whirled around. Lance was head-on charging the thickest cluster of fighters, a red, flashing blurr.

"What are you doing, you idiot?" He yelled. You're long-range!

Lance's only answer was a choked laugh that was cut off as he seamlessly merged into a string of Spanish. It didn't sound like curses, but with Lance, one never knew.

A blade flashed – red, lethal – and two fighters exploded, flashes of light in the darkness, soundless, and with the same, startling clarity Keith remembered that Lance was piloting Red, and that, of course, Red was a fighter. Allura was just behind them, the blue lion roaring icy death down at their enemies.

Lance whooped.

"Got it!" Pidge announced, her voice stil tense but now carrying a note of triumph. "I can't get through the shields, but I can blast away those laser turrets, Lance, I need you to distract this bunch of fighters so I can drop my cloaking without them blasting me away first."

Finally.

With something that felt suspiciously like relief, Keith tightened his grip around Black's controls. "Hunk, fall back," he said. "Allura, Lance, keep them occupied. I'm going to help Pidge."

"What?" Lance asked, aghast. "No, Keith, wait-"

He sped forward, ignoring the rest.

A curse – Lance – and the red and blue lion attacked with new vigor, the emptiness of space filled with soundless fire.

The yellow lion veered off, towards the castle. Pidge dropped her cloak. Some of the Galra fighters saw her and turned to engage, and Keith dropped squarely between the green lion and the enemy, Black's blade expanding.

"Hit me," he whispered, his fists tightly clenched.

They did.

In the back of his mind, he could hear Lance curse throughout the whole fight.

For every mission that went to hell, there was one that was successful.

It wasn't like Voltron wasn't functioning anymore. It was just that… Well. It was easiest when Keith let Allura and Coran make the plans, and let Lance annoy the others into listening and doing exactly what they had to do. It left space for Keith to dedicate any of his spare moments to finding Shiro.

Their next mission went past almost without a hitch. (They weren't a bad team, just a very dysfunctional one. They could still fight. They still fought.) Hunk hesitated for a second and almost caused a refugee ship to explode under the barrage of enemy fire. Keith couldn't fault him; seeing his best friend's lion dance around the Galran ships so closely probably would have made anyone pause. (Would it have made him pause?) But Red was fast, nobody knew that better than him. And Lance had whooped loudly while shooting off again, successfully having maimed the Galran shield generator (Pidge and he were keeping a tally now), and Hunk had blown the large battle cruiser to pieces.

Keith very carefully avoided thinking in terms of cost and loss of life, because if he did that, he would not be able to face Hunk anymore. And then he would have to look at his own doing, and he didn't think he could do that. It wasn't cowardice, it was a survival instinct.

(He also, very carefully, had avoided thinking that even if Red was fast, it had been close.)

And Lance had offered him a high five afterwards, and Hunk had promised Pidge her favorite dessert, and Allura had majestically inclined her head towards Keith and said "Good job, Keith," even though he'd done nothing, he'd just fought, he'd just gone along with her plans and had done what he did best.

They'd eaten dinner, everybody still hyped up on adrenaline and success, until Pidge had crashed in the lounge. Hunk had carried her to bed, Allura and Coran had excused themselves and Lance had looked at Keith and said, "Get some sleep," and then yawned and left, presumably to do the same.

And Keith was left in the rec room, awake and exhausted at the same time, bone-deep tiredness and hyper-alertness mixing into a cocktail that made it impossible to just go back to his room and sleep.

The training room was empty, unsurprisingly.

Pidge had chatted away about a new training sequence she had installed. Driven by an instinct he did not want to think about, he felt his Blade morph into the sword he had used for the past few missions. The material under his hands felt cool, as usual, it would warm up during battle until its pommel was of an almost glowing heat that, still, never burned him. The Galran symbols flashed brightly, once, and then settled into a deep-violet glow.

A metallic voice rang. "Initializing simulation Three Musketeers."

Keith almost snorted. Pidge.

And then three robots attacked simultaneously, and Keith stopped thinking.

If he thought, he'd fall into the usual rabbit hole.

It could happen entirely unexpected, and sometimes he could feel the panic creeping up on him, cutting off his breath, caving in his chest. Shrinking the walls until he couldn't breathe.

Shiro.

Shiro: Shiro hurt, Shiro alone, Shiro fighting for his life. Shiro, dying.

When he'd disappeared for the first time – when the Garrison had announced his death, and had held a funeral – Keith had asked. He had asked, and begged, and shouted, screamed, demanded answers. What had happened? Where were they? Didn't the Garrison have any communication protocols? How could they not be going after them?

How could they just pretend it had been the end for the Kerberos mission and its people?

The Garrison commander and Iverson and the psychiatrist had looked at him with carrying degrees of pity, and stony faces.

We don't know.

What Keith heard, was: We know, but you don't want to know.

The same old song, a refrain, repeated from his earliest childhood. Where did Mama go? I don't know. Why did Daddy leave? You don't want to know, child. Why can't I stay? Because. Bullshit. Bullshit. So much BS, all over, so much it made him physically sick.

Knowing only hurts, boy.

Wrong. Not knowing was always worse than knowing. Always.

Shiro. Shiro. Shiro.

Where are you now? Why are you not here? Why did you leave? Was it something I did?

As usual, the universe had no answer for Keith.

The next time, Keith messed up. Badly.

He should have known. There was no way he would have been able to replace Shiro. He wasn't a leader. He was a fighter.

Black, in the back of his mind, growled, a sound that might have been supportive but came out as arrogant and slightly annoyed.

Sue me, Keith thought in direction of the lion. Sue me for not being as good as Shiro. Sue me for even trying.

The lion shook his flaming mane. Young one, be calm. The order was so clear it actually took on words, and it only incited Keith's fury further.

How old do you think I am? He threw at him. Don't Calm Down me, dammit. And how is it that you are so calm? Don't you care about Shiro at all?

No answer, and that, to Keith, was answer enough.

His wordless rage rolled off Black's mind like water from a Teflon surface, leaving no sign it ever had been there.

Everything had turned out alright, in the end. Lance had seen the trap. They had gotten away. Keith had wanted to rush in, not exactly guns blazing but almost. It had cost them a rebel supply ship – thankfully, they had been able to evacuate first – and a sizable chunk of trust, and all because Keith had fucked up.

He blew through seven training simulations in one hour, finally collapsing on the ground panting and sweating and completely and utterly exhausted. In the back of his mind, Black was terribly calm.

Still grasping his Blade like there was nothing else, Keith picked himself up, painfully aware of every scratch and bump and kick he had received, and dragged himself over to the far side of the wall where he could collapse again but this time against a wall. The blade dropped from his hand and shrunk back into his dagger as he pressed his palms against his eyes.

Of course, that was the moment Lance walked in.

They both froze.

Ten.

Twenty.

Twenty-one.

"Umm," Lance said, thirty heartbeats later. "Sorry. Don't mind me."

And backed up, quickly.

The words were out before Keith could say anything.

"Wait."

There was no reason for this, nothing logical, nothing explicable. Just the darkness swirling around him, Black's calm indifference fueling the embers of his anger at the same time that it vanquished them, making him feel bleak, tired, desperate and terrifyingly empty. There was no way having Lance here would make him feel better, rather the opposite; he might turn on the guy because he was so damn annoying and actually off him. There was no way– It broke from him, like water from a dam.

"Stay."

Lance froze, like a deer in the headlights. For many heartbeats, none of them as much as breathed.

Then, finally, when Keith felt like he would explode if Lance didn't say anything the next second, the silence shattered.

"Fine," Lance said, quietly. Nothing else. He slid down the wall across from Keith, settled onto the ground comfortably and just. Sat there.

And, for an inexplicable reason, the iron grip around Keith's heart loosened.

Not enough to let him breathe.

But enough.

Black was made for strength.

There was no subtlety there, little to no finesse. Just raw power and ferocity; focus and determination. One thought. One goal.

Keith could live with that.

(Don't think about Shiro.)

Keith could fight with that.

(Red had been gut instinct and agility and speed and don't. Think. Of it. Just don't.)

The red lights blinking on his screen did not disappear.

On the comm, he heard the others chatter, Lance's usual muttered commentary, Pidge's focus, Hunk's care, Allura's drive. Black cut through the Galran fighters like a knife through butter, again and again and again.

"…eith."

They didn't stop coming. Galra fought, Victory or Death, it was so stupid, so useless, he was half Galran, himself, shouldn't he be banned from piloting a Lion of Voltron, how could they trust him like that? And hadn't he been through this, hadn't they all, hadn't even Allura accepted him by now?

"Keith."

Keith surfaced from his battle tunnel vision, startling badly, waking up with shaking hands and sweat-coated forehead. Lance was looking at him from a screen – private channel, oh God – and his eyes were… serious.

He hadn't even lifted his voice.

"Yeah?" Keith had to clear his throat. His voice was gravelly, didn't sound right somehow.

"They're gone."

A glance through Black's eyes, and indeed: the Galran fighters were defeated. The heavy cruiser was beating a retreat, too slow to actually escape, too heavily armored for the Castle's weapons to get through its shield, too heavy for Voltron to defeat it entirely.

"They're right there!"

Lance's eyes were soft. "Let's get back to the Castle."

Black roared, angry, challenging.

Lance's eyes were soft. His voice was, too: a memory of darkness, and silence, and calm. "Keith."

Keith tuned out Black and yanked his controls to return back to the Castle.

Those nights:

Calm and silence, and Earth's night sky projected towards the ceiling, something Shiro had shown Keith one of the first nights they'd spent in the Castle, when Keith had been unable to sleep for fear that Shiro was gone again and Shiro probably just couldn't sleep.

Those nights:

Calm and silence, and Lance's presence on the other side of the room, his lanky limbs oddly drawn together into a tight ball, as if he feared he would fall apart if he not held onto himself, so different than during day.

Those nights:

Lance's voice, calm and sincerity. "I don't think he's dead."

And Keith –

Pidge stumbled into the rec room.

Her hair was even messier than usual, her glasses sat on her nose askew, and her eyes were suspiciously red-rimmed.

Hunk had been dozing off, screw-drivers, tablets and wires littering the ground around him. Allura and Coran were playing a strange board game that involved a frankly scary amount of staring at each other silently before moving colored blocks across a board, Keith would never understand the rules in this life. Lance was scrolling through one of the portable laptop-things Allura had given all of them, which seemed like a tablet but tended to surprise them at the most inopportune moments, like the one time Keith's had started reminding him that he had not slept in thirty hours – loudly and patiently, and while all others had been present.

(Lance had mercilessly mocked him until Keith had stomped off and had, in a furious huff, thrown himself onto his bunk, determined not to sleep just to spite everyone, and had been under for twenty-six hours straight.)

"It doesn't work," she almost-sobbed, her voice high-pitched and breaking halfway through the sentence. "I tried everything and it doesn't work, it's impossible, I can't find him! Shiro's vanished, and I still haven't found the slightest clue on Matt and Dad, it's hopeless, they're all probably dead by now and we'll never, ever know –"

Keith watched, frozen, as she broke down. Nobody seemed to know what to do exactly, he noted, dimly and ashamed. Coran was patting his pockets furiously, looking for something. Allura looked half-terrified, Hunk, as if he was going to cry himself.

Lance, though, had moved before Pidge even had finished talking. Keith felt the weight of the discarded tablet drop into his lap – only caught a glimpse of Altean before it switched off – and watched the blue – red – paladin wrap his arms around the weeping girl.

"Sssshhh," Lance whispered, soothing.

"Pidge. Hey, Pidge. It's okay. It's going to be alright. We're going to find them. We will, okay? If anyone will, it's you. You're brilliant and you're strong and you're amazing. You decided against going after your family when we first formed Voltron because we needed you so badly, and you were right. Who developed the cloaking technique for the lions? Who built a satellite out of space junk? Who scared the heck out of those flesh-eating monsters last week? That was you, Pidge. You're grown so much over the past years. There's no way you won't find them."

"There're, like, uncountable systems out there," Pidge sobbed. "Do you even know the odds they're still alive?"

"Shiro came back, against all odds."

"And now he's gone, again, without a trace! How is that even possible?"

Keith felt his fists clench. His finger nails buried into his palms; leaving half-moon-shaped marks. How had he missed this? Or course he wasn't the only one who missed Shiro. He wasn't the only one still looking for him. He'd seen light in the room Pidge had claimed as her workshop night after night, and it'd never occurred to him to ask her what exactly she was doing. Now, for the first time, he looked around, feeling as if he had only now opened his eyes: saw the tightness in Allura's shoulders, the nervous twitch of Coran's moustache. Saw the despair in Hunk's face, the terror in Pidge's. The exhaustion in Lance's. And yet there he was, comforting their youngest team member with everything he had got.

"I don't know." Despite his words, Lance's voice sounded sure. Keith caught himself, against every logic, actually believing the red paladin. Wanting to believe him so badly it was a physical sensation, like a pull, a drag. Towards something, perhaps, or someone. Or anything.

"Pidge. Listen." Lance pushed the girl away from him and took her by her shoulders.

"I cannot promise you anything. But for what it's worth, I still believe we'll find Shiro again, and we'll defeat the Galra, and you'll find your Dad and Matt. Don't give up, Katie, okay? Just don't give up."

And, finally, Pidge closed her eyes and nodded; once, jerkily.

She fell asleep on the couch in the rec room, a tiny, curled-up ball with flyaway hair and tired, cried-out eyes, and nobody had the heart to move her. Allura and Coran excused themselves for the night, and Hunk went to prepare the breakfast for the next day. Lance disappeared, wordlessly, and left Keith alone in the semi-darkness. Pidge sniffled in her sleep and curled up on herself even tighter, and Keith couldn't help himself: he scooted closer and put a hand on her forehead, the ghost of a memory dancing behind the lids of his eyes.

She relaxed, minutely, with a tear-laced sigh.

The door opened with a quiet hiss, and Keith almost jumped, tearing his hand away. But it was only Lance, two pillows and a blanket in his arms. He shot Keith a tired grin and covered Pidge's sleeping form, making sure not to wake her. Then, he looked at Keith.

"You going to bed?"

Keith refused to look at him. "I'll stay for a little longer."

As if on cue, Pidge shifted, scooting closer and bumping her head against his leg. Keith froze again, but she calmed immediately, fast asleep.

Something flashed over Lance's face, undecipherable.

"Night, Keith."

His smile was small, secret. Keith liked it. Keith was floored by it. Lance walked out, silently, and left Keith alone with a sleeping girl, his thoughts and the ghosts of three people.

We will get them back.

Where, he wondered, did the former blue paladin take his faith from?

…

Bits and pieces, like flashes of color through a dirty window. Not enough to cast a whole picture. Enough to be… startled.

"I miss my Mom."

Silence, broken. Like a knife cutting through the darkness surrounding them.

Keith would have answered, had there been anything he could have said. But missing a person you hadn't known in the first place wasn't really comparable to missing a person that had been there for you your entire life. At least, that was what he imagined Lance's mother to be: a mother in the truest sense of the word. No one else could have raised an annoying, enthusiastic and stupidly positive person like Lance.

The blue paladin was looking up at the ceiling of the training room.

Some time ago Keith had, while playing around, found that the software that powered the training simulation's illusory landscapes also was capable of creating a hologram of the stars, and had, in a fit of vindictiveness, chosen Earth's night sky. It was stupid. Keith had never cared much for the stars, too busy living in the harsh reality of the foster system after his father had died. Looking at the Sol system was not so much reassurance but a remainder of what he did not want to get back to; of what he had left behind without a backwards glance. But one of those nights Lance had walked in like he sometimes did, finding Keith in his usual state: sweaty and exhausted and spread out across the ground, and had looked up to see what he was looking at. Keith had watched the expression flashing over his features as he realized what he was looking at. Lance's face – there were no words to describe it. But it had felt like something opened up in Keith, small and vulnerable and terrified, and reached out.

Lance's eyes had been full of longing.

And, for the first time, Keith had realized that there was, maybe, another facet to the red – blue – whatever – paladin he hadn't really regarded so far.

(Like he had never realized so many other things, too.)

Lance's home-sickness wasn't evident.

But once Keith started to look out for it, he could see it clearly. Lance seemed to forget about it completely during day, talking a mile a minute and to anyone who wasn't able to run fast enough, about his achievements as blue-slash-red paladin, about his experience and intelligence and ability. He got weirdly enthusiastic over the strangest things, and annoyingly competitive about anything he could imagine. He flirted with Allura – and with any remotely female-shaped being – as if he had a serious chance with them; and went off on disturbingly incoherent tangents with Coran. He joked around with Hunk. He made Pidge laugh and listened to Shiro. He was anything but subdued.

It was different, at night.

"I miss her cooking, you know? And her smile, and her voice. I even miss her getting mad at us."

He leaned back against the wall, talking up towards the stars.

"I miss Marco, and Luis, and Veronica. I miss my cousins, aunts and uncles. And it's probably unfair, but" – he barked out a laugh that did not sound humorous at all – "But I miss 'Livia most."

Keith blinked.

"Who?"

Lance had spoken of his family. His siblings came up every fifth sentence – When Marco tried to sneak out, he crashed Dad's car, Luis once brought home a stray cat that turned out to be pregnant, I helped Veronica braid her hair – but he couldn't remember any mentions of a Livia.

And then he bit his tongue, because she probably had been Lance's girlfriend or something –

Lance shot him a glance that, very clearly and despite everything Keith had thought for the past hour, said duh. "My twin, dumbass."

"You have a twin?"

Keith could not, for the life of him, picture a female Lance. Nope. No-no-no. Not going there.

There was something like a smile at the edge of Lance's lips. But it was a faded smile, somewhat, full of old grief and wounds so deep Keith couldn't say whether they were already scarred over or still fresh.

"Yes. She always wanted to see the stars. It was her greatest dream to join the Garrison. She'd have kicked your ass, absolutely."

Keith knew Lance wouldn't have said anything if not prompted by the darkness that surrounded them like a blanket, covering the worst of their antagonism. But at night, they were both different people. And that made this possible.

"What happened?"

"Accident. Drunk driver. She pushed me out of the way." Lance's voice sounded thick, but his face did not move. Keith watched Lance, who watched the holographic stars above them. "She will eventually be able to walk again, the doctors say. But she'll probably never fly."

The grief in Lance's voice was so raw Keith felt a shudder race through him. He tried to shake it off, quickly, and found he couldn't. All his bravado, the façade he had learned to put up as a child already – the pretense and the mask – they all failed him that moment.

What kind of blade cut this deep and refused to let the wound scab over and heal?

"Why are you telling me this," he whispered, his voice cracking.

Lance shrugged, not looking at him.

Keith lashed out, angry and desperate.

A story for a story.

"I can't even remember my mother."

Allura was pale, but her eyes were burning.

"That was reckless and stupid and insane, how could you–"

"I made a decision," Keith interrupted her, curtly. He was so tired. They'd flown missions for eighteen hours straight, only stopping to assemble in the Castle's control room for some exchange of information with other rebel factions, his body suit was stuck to his skin and itched, and despite the fact that he hadn't eaten in maybe ten hours he didn't feel hungry at all. Keith was ready to collapse on his bed, not bothering to undress, and to simply sleep for twenty hours straight.

Of course, Allura had other plans.

"I cannot believe you went charging off again like that. Haven't you learned anything? We're a team! We fight together! If Lance hadn't – you could have died! All of us would have! Shiro would never have –"

She stopped, dead, her expression something between beaten and horrified and heartbroken, and Keith couldn't look at her.

The anger was familiar. It felt dead, though, like bile in his mouth, rotten and dark and ugly.

"I'm not Shiro, dammit."

They faced off, Keith pointedly staring at a point behind her left ear, and pretended to not see the slight tremor in her fists and the way her shoulders were way to tight. Pretended not to see the flash of guilt on her face, followed by devastation.

"I'm not Shiro, Shiro is gone, he left, and you keep trying to push me into his role. You keep telling yourself that it will be okay, but you know what, it won't, nothing is, he's not coming back this time, not for –"

He would have said it. Would have spewed out all the hateful, painful words, the bitter acid churning in his guts, would have thrown all those agonizing thoughts at Allura just to see her flinch, to make her see that she wasn't the only one here hurting, that she had no claim on missing Shiro, that she wasn't in any way better than Keith. It didn't matter that Allura was worrying about the team, didn't matter that Shiro's name made her face go dark. Keith just wanted to hurt her, put some of the pain he was drowning in on her shoulders, make her see that –

"Hey, guys."

Lance stepped from the shadows like a ghost. Had he been there the entire time?

"Keith didn't go charging off just like that this time, 'Lura. You didn't hear it, but we planned this beforehand. We shouldn't have used a private comm channel. I am sorry about that. But don't blame him, okay? He really had a plan."

He turned to Keith.

"Keith? Come on, you look like you're collapsing, and you're bleeding into your armor."

His face was gentle, and Keith just – Keith just felt so tired.

He let himself be led out of the hangar by Lance, following like a puppy.

"Where're we going?" He mumbled, when he realized they were walking in the wrong direction.

"My room," Lance said. "You hate the med bay, right?"

Keith fell asleep on Lance's bed, waiting for Lance to put away the first aid supplies. He did not dream.

He woke up hours later, still feeling bleary and empty, but still better-rested than he had in a while. The room was dark – it must still be the Castle's night time – but Lance had left on a small light in the corner. Its soft, yellow shine was warm.

Lance was nowhere to be seen. Keith got up and crept from the room, and only realized he was not going to his own when he found himself in front of another familiar set of doors.

Lance was in the training room.

Of course.

He was sitting in his usual corner, his knees drawn up to his face. How did he do that? Standing, the blue paladin was all awkward legs and bony arms and knubbly shoulders; like one of these wooden figures people used to model the human body's proportions. Sitting, he shrank, falling in on himself easily. Keith had no idea where the rest of him went, maybe that part stayed in front of the door, like so many other parts that had seemed, from the beginning, to be ultimately Lance, but that he now was beginning to question whether it was just like him or not.

"I'll apologize."

His voice felt thin in the dimness of the solar system dancing through the room between them. Lance was so far away.

He shrugged. "She understands. It's not easy for her, either."

Keith shrugged, looking at the ceiling above them, at the other side of the room. At the constellations dancing through the darkness. At the windows, darkness before them.

"She misses him, too. We all do."

Silence.

"Maybe you don't want to hear this," Lance said, softly. "But you're really nothing like Shiro. And that's totally okay. It absolutely is, you know? Because he's Shiro, and you're Keith. And you're always gonna be Keith, no matter how much you want to be like him. Not being like Shiro is okay, too, you know? You don't have to be him to have us follow you. Because we'd do it anyway. We trust you. All of us do. You've shown that you care, and that you're willing to learn. You're learning. You're a good black paladin."

Follow you.

The words echoed painfully, and Keith's hard twisted, high and sharp in his chest. He hadn't known he needed to hear those words, until he had. How had Lance known?

"Shiro wouldn't have let happen what–" He swallowed. "Shiro wouldn't have messed up."

"Dude." Lance leaned his head back. "Shiro messed up big time before, too."

"Shiro didn't mess up!" Keith flared up, and Lance chuckled. "God, you are so predictable." He sobered, immediately. "My point is–"

"You actually have one?" Idiot, he cursed himself. Stupid idiot. Why can't you keep your mouth shut for once, why –

"Shut up, Keith. I'm trying here, okay?"

There was no hint of anger in Lance's voice. No wheedling, no teasing, no rivalry. Any acidic retort Keith had ready, result of years and years of furious anger and hurt, died in his throat, still-born.

"Nobody's perfect. But – remember? Shiro told us, that day, when we almost blew up the castle cause we were fighting again? He told us we could be better than that. And I think he was right. You can be better than that, Keith. You've already shown it. You've been leading us for months now, and we've managed to free half a dozen planets and severely hurt the Galra. You made sure Pidge came back from that last mission. You calmed Hunk down when we thought the Galra had gone back to the Balmera. And I don't know what you said to Allura, but she and Blue have been much closer since then. Maybe you never wanted to lead Voltron. But guess what? You're doing it, and you're doing fine. You need to stop trying to do what Shiro would have done, and do what you'd do. Stop trying to find all the answers. Nobody has them, literally, like, nobody. Everyone's just looking for them. What matters is that they do their best. And you're doing your best, and more. We can't ask for more from you. Yeah, we miss Shiro. But not cause you're where he used to be, but cause we want Shiro back. Same as you. So, like – chill, dude?"

Keith stared for what felt like eternity. When Lance finally finished, he opened his mouth, having no idea what would leave it once he spoke. And then–

"When the heck did you get so freaking wise?"

And then Keith almost swallowed his own tongue in surprise. Because Lance – loud, boisterous, arrogant – ducked his head and folded in on himself, hunched his shoulders and stared at his hands. His smile was wobbly, and so was his voice.

"Bullshit."

"Are you sure about this?"

Keith was pretty sure he was not supposed to be the one asking this question, he was not the responsible one, not cautious and careful and calculating.

Keith was the Red Paladin.

Except he wasn't.

Anymore.

He was nothing – not black not red, not responsible, not a role model, he couldn't replace Shiro, wouldn't, didn't want to.

Maybe you don't need to, a voice whispered in his mind. Keith chose to ignore it. But he did not banish it. Yet.

Hunk's face was stretched into a huge smile. "Pretty much, yeah."

Pidge's voice was high with exultation. "It's starting!"

Her robo-drone was hovering in the air, patiently waiting. Keith had no idea how their two tech freaks were able to determine a change. A few similar bots were suspended in the air all around them, hovering.

Allura blinked up at them, suspiciously. "And this is supposed to be safe?"

"Come on, Princess," Lance drawled. "It's gonna be fun!"

Which, as Keith noted, was not really the answer to the question she had asked, and also very much not reassuring.

"I must say," Coran said, "I do not see how –"

That was when the first drone lit up.

Someone gasped.

First, it was an explosion of light, almost blinding, multi-colored and unrecognizable. Then, one by one, different colors became visible: red, green, blue. Yellow. White. In between, they blinked out, leaving darkness in its wake. Multi-colored dots still danced in front of Keith's eyes.

Lasers.

Another flower of fire burst in a shower of sparks; lasers programmed to a second, merging into a flawless, mesmerizing light show.

Hunk hit a switch, and the music started.

Speechless, they watched.

When the lights finally abated and the music faded, nobody spoke a word. It was like they had just observed something that could not be put into words: too beautiful to do anything else than bury the memory in their hearts.

Only slowly, slowly, Keith became aware of a yellow light that flickered in the edge of his vision.

"What –"

That was when the sirens started.

"What the heck?" Lance yelled, pressing his hands onto his ears. Pidge was frowning, typing into her keyboards wildly, while Hunk had dropped to the ground and was disappearing underneath the cable-laden console.

Allura was exchanging shouted words with Coran, both desperately trying to be heard over the sirens.

Keith's glance swept upward, towards the ceiling. His eyes raked over it and were caught by a small, unidentifiable object that was blinking red rapidly.

"What's that?" He yelled, poking Coran and Pidge alternately.

Both looked up, Pidge's face scrunched in annoyance, Coran's suddenly slacking in understanding.

"OH, THAT IS WHAT IT IS!"

He sprinted over to the main console at the far side of the wall and began typing into the display wildly.

The sirens switched off.

The silence that followed was ear-splitting.

"Hell and high water," Lance said, finally, almost whispering.

"So that." Pidge pushed up her glasses. "I did not anticipate that."

"What," Keith said, dangerously calm, "was that?"

Hunk shifted uncomfortably. "Well, it seems…"

Lance began to laugh.

"Will someone tell me what is going on?" Keith exploded.

Lance was laughing so hard he had to hold his sides. He pointed at a corner, where pieces of unused tech had haphazardly been dropped. Black smoke was rising in a thin trail, apparently caused by some sort of freak cable fire incited by the lasers.

"Fire alarm."

Pidge looked defiant. Hunk, guilty. Coran and Allura, like they were unsure as to how to react.

Lance was still laughing.

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered how Shiro would have dealt with situations like this.

But Shiro was gone.

This one was on Keith.

But looking at his team – family, a traitorous voice in the back of his head whispered, and he was too comfortable to contradict it and swat it away – he felt that maybe? Lance was right? He didn't need to be like Shiro. Maybe it was okay just being Keith? Doing stuff his way? He was pretty sure Allura would hold them together, and Hunk would shield them, and Pidge would come up with fancy solutions and Coran would force horrible food goo on them and Lance would smile. And he would try to not be too reckless, and do anything in his power to protect them. Maybe Keith was kinda okay with that.

Maybe Keith didn't know how to lead Voltron.

But heck if he wasn't going to try.

(It seemed almost the easiest thing, compared to what he couldn't do.)

In the back of his mind Red rumbled softly and Black hovered, a silent, watchful presence.

That, of course, was when Shiro came back.

Hollow-faced, dark-eyed and gaunt; but still familiar, still Shiro. Still projecting calm and authority, wearing it like a cloak.

The Voltron lions and their pilots – the entire castle, it seemed – breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Keith felt his nails bite into his palms and held back, back, clamped his mouth shut against the onslaught of things that were expanding in his throat. Making it hard to speak. Making it hard to breathe.

"We need you, Shiro. The team needs you. The lions need you."

The smile Keith received was a pale imitation, and something inside Keith – something he had reserved for Shiro, always and forever, something that spelled like family and home and you were the first one who cared – froze in terror.

I need you, dammit.

"I am fine, Keith. You keep on piloting Black. You are Voltron's leader. Allura told me you are doing a great job, and I believe her. I will lend assistance and advise from the Castle until we have figured out the chain of command, okay?"

With all the unsaid things choking him, Keith nodded, quietly.

And desperately wished for Shiro's words to be true.

It didn't work.

Keith should have known because, whenever he found a place for himself, everything went to hell.

Pidge worked on her projects with manic energy and then collapsed, dead to the world, exhausted to a point where she just would pass out where she sat. In her sleep, tears ran down her cheeks, but she did not make a sound.

Allura was busy with the rebellion, and the Galra, and Lotor's latest ploys. Her glances at Shiro were frequent and laden with so many things that Keith could not bring it over himself to talk to her.

Hunk watched them all with haunted eyes and wrung his hands like he was trying to crush his fingers, and cooked food that almost tasted like home but just so didn't.

Lance… The others didn't notice, because Lance was one hell of a good actor when it came to it, loud and boisterous and hiding away all the little parts of shame and loneliness and insecurity he was carrying around with him like little pieces of burning stars; their ice burrowing in his skin and burning him and still refusing to let go. Lance offered to step down from the team, and everything in Keith went still.

And Keith didn't know what to do.

Something was broken, something that had been since Shiro had disappeared and he had become the black paladin, something was irreversibly shattered that he had no idea how to repair and also not what exactly it was. There was something he needed to do and he had no strength to do, something he was so terrified of that he woke up at night, sweating and gasping, the echo of the hollowness burning through him like a stab wound –

"I'll be down here," Shiro said, smiling. "You've been leading Voltron in my absence. Lance told me what a job you've been doing. I'm proud of you, you know? I always knew you could do it."

Shiro was smiling, but his eyes were dark.

And Keith…

Keith knew what he needed to do.

"I can see what you're doing."

Lance was sitting across from him, leaning against the wall of the training room. His knees were drawn up to his chest; his arms were wrapped around them and his chin rested on his knees. He looked smaller, that way, and strangely and terrifyingly young.

But his eyes.

There was nothing young in them, nothing innocent and naïve. There was darkness in them, glaring, screaming, reaching out to Keith in a way he thought, distantly, should feel overly familiar but did not. Darkness that was alive, and private, and, at the same time, very, very much like what Keith knew only too well.

(And that was frightening, because Lance was annoying, Lance was aggravating, Lance was arrogant and idiotic and over-enthusiastic and childish, and Keith definitely, definitely, couldn't be anything like him.)

Almost too late, he realized he still owed the blue paladin an answer.

"I'm not doing anything."

Dark eyes looked back, steadily and unimpressed and pretty much calm, and that too-quiet and too-rational Lance was an impossibility in itself. Lance wasn't quiet. Lance wasn't rational.

"Stupid, if you'd be a liar as good as you are at moping, you'd be pretty much perfect."

Keith sighed. It was something about the darkness and the quiet desperation of the training room that made him give in. He did not even question how Lance knew he had been lying, just accepted it as another one of those little weirdnesses that cropped up late at night after a battle, in the darkness of the training room.

"We need Shiro."

That was a fact, he knew. Voltron had two arms and two legs, and, with Coran and the Castle of Lions, even quite possibly a heart. And he had been trying hard – so, so hard – to become something like Shiro, something like the head, the leader, the commander. He had even thought that he had started to grow into the Black Lion. Black had accepted him, after all, and after that first disastrous mission they had been better, and had improved vastly. The missions after that first one had gone off smoothly – not without a hitch, but without major fuck-ups, at least. The others hadn't shouted at him, or looked at him with hate in their eyes, or even refused to work with him. Lance had even said he was doing well, and from the other's gestures and faces, he'd thought they'd agreed. And Keith had thought, stupidly, that, maybe, maybe, he could do it.

Lead Voltron.

Pilot Black.

Black had accepted him. Allura, Coran, Hunk and Pidge – they had all accepted him. Lance had accepted him.

But despite everything, Keith wasn't Shiro.

And with all the mess with Zarkon and Lotor and the Galra, the team was better off with Shiro. Needed his level-headedness, his compassion, his strategic genius, his strength. Needed constancy. Needed Shiro, not Keith, and Shiro needed constancy, as well. Because Keith was so freakin' terrified that he'd leave again, and giving him a place to stay was a way to tether him to the castle and to them, and he'd done anything – anything – to not lose him again.

So maybe it had been that thought that had allowed Keith to make up his mind.

Shiro needs this.

Lance was still looking at him, dark, dark eyes and wearing silence like a cloak, and Keith knew he knew. His words cut through the silence between them, soft and toneless.

"Shiro feels like he lost himself."

And with the blue paladin's words, Keith finally accepted the truth, as well. Closing his eyes, he leaned back until his head touched the wall. The silence and darkness between them was twofold.

"Everyone is lost in space."

And that was that.

It was frightening, how easy it was to detach himself from the team.

After an initial period of doubts, Kolivan sounded almost warm when he welcomed Keith into the ranks of the Sword of Marmora.

Of his fellow pilots, nobody seemed to notice how he withdrew, gradually taking on more and more missions; coming back later, leaving for longer and longer periods of time.

Lance didn't even start fights with him during the day anymore.

Keith knew he was only seeing what he himself had set out to create, but still. It…

It hurt.

Frighteningly so. Like he was slowly cutting himself with his own blade. Like every drop of blood running down his skin was acid, etching into his skin and bones and down to his marrow.

The cheerful good-bye calls and reminders to be back for dinner gradually ceased, to be replaced with annoyed looks. Which, in turn, were replaced with aggravated questions and angry accusations when he did not return as promised; stayed away longer and longer. When he, in a culmination of his own self-hatred, did not show up for a mission that required all five paladins.

Black was silent in his mind, wordlessly disapproving.

And then he was gone.

Losing Black was nothing like losing Red.

Even for days, weeks, months – even now, when it was the last thing he expected, the last thing he wanted – Keith could still feel Red's presence like a shadow in the back of his mind. Her presence was impatient, like barely contained fire. Blazing and yet somehow – sorrowful? Warmth that when through him like a flood, a familiar sensation of someone to lean back into in order to replenish his strength if he so wanted. Dimmer than when they'd been bonded, like the ghost of a skyline through the midday dust of a dry, Texan desert, perhaps due to her new connection with Lance. But still, undeniably, unfathomably: there. While Black…

Black was gone.

Keith was glad.

Keith was devastated.

Red purred – hot, soothing, burning into an already inflamed wound despite her best intentions.

Keith shut her out.

The blade at his hip burned, and this time, he could feel the heat. He wrapped his hand around the hilt and refused to let go.

Blade missions were different than Voltron's.

The Blade of Marmora was different than Voltron.

He should have thought about that. He had.

(He hadn't thought it'd matter, but it did. Oh, it did.)

The few other members Keith got to know by name remained distant and curt. But maybe that was just because in three weeks Keith had been with them so far, they'd lost two members already. He wouldn't have been surprised if they'd tagged him as bad-luck charm, but actually, he'd done pretty well.

Except for the one time.

Until almost the very end of the mission – smuggling weapons and supplies to a rebel camp hidden on a hollow asteroid, something that was very cool and very sci-fi and turned out to be anything but cool because the base was cold and without both air and gravity, and Keith hated how the silence expanded around him when he went drifting – he didn't realize something was wrong. Until the last moment, when he crashed against the hull of their stealth ship and a few of Lance's choice swear words flew from his lips, unexpectedly, when Mirax – one of the few Galra who actually acknowledged him as a fellow Blade in full – dragged him inward, slammed shut the hatch and gave the go and they sped away under a hailstorm of laser fire – until the last moment, when he turned around and, force of habit, made a headcount – Green, Yellow, Blue, Red – he didn't notice.

Then, it dawned on him.

"Hey."

Nobody reacted.

"Hey," Keith hissed, louder this time. "Where's what's-her-name – Tetra?"

Still, nobody reacted.

"Where is she?!" He demanded, loud enough to make himself wince internally. Mirax turned around, her eyes distant.

"She didn't make it."

"What do you mean?" Keith demanded. "Was she hurt?" Something cold slid down his back, settled low in his stomach. "Did she die?"

"No."

"Why isn't she here then?"

Mirax pressed her lips together until they were a fine line and did not reply. Somehow, he read the answer from her face, anyway, the cold dread pooling in his guts making him feel sick.

"We have to go back."

Needless to say, nobody answered. Nobody even as much as listened.

They knocked him out with a well-placed hit to his head, before he could actually follow through with his threats and hurt the pilot.

When he woke up in his own, tiny bunk a few hours later, his head sporting a serious bruise and ringing with pain, he put his fist through the wall and vomited up his meager lunch, and then wandered through a base that never slept, unlike the castle, where the lights were glaring and bright and people walked with purpose and veiled eyes, and where all the warmth seemed to get sucked from his bones, until he collapsed in a corner and was out like a light again.

He'd thought he'd been past the nightmares.

It'll be fine, he told himself. You'll get used to this.

He didn't, and it wasn't.

And nobody cared.

Keith had been prepared to die for a long, long time now.

First, it had been because – well, why the heck not? It wasn't as if someone was waiting for him back on Earth. And this way, he'd at least have a purpose. What could be better than dying while fighting, saving the innocent and battling evil?

(Keith, at heart, was not a romantic.)

And then, at one point, it had become about something else. Someone else. Multiple someones. At some point in the past Keith had decided it'd be best if he died protecting the others – Pidge, Allura, Hunk, Coran and Shiro – Lance – because fighting was what he did best, and. They. They had, somehow, become his family. And Keith, who'd never really had something like one in the past, not since his father had died – Keith had decided that they were worth dying for. Absolutely.

He was prepared. He was ready.

It still felt wrong.

The liquid running down his face kept dripping into his eyes, obscuring his vision. The mask wasn't helping. His left arm was broken – one Galra sentinel had got him in his side with a blaster – and he'd reacted too slowly to block the blow to his head when it came. He had no idea why he even was still alive – presumably, the sentinels had been called away and had left him for dead – but here he was, and he was just realizing that dying like that was a seriously shitty way to go out. Especially since he wouldn't have achieved anything. His initial mission plan hadn't been fulfilled and, judging from the blaring alarms, any attempt at stealth had been foiled, anyway. Keith was reckless, but he wasn't stupid. (Keep telling yourself that, a voice in his mind sneered.) He knew when he needed to leave. This was one of these moments.

Trust him to realize he didn't want to die when he actually was about to do so.

Keith lifted his hand to look at it. His black glove was soaked through with blood from his head that had run down his arm; his side hurt agonizingly and his arm – temporarily anesthetized by a stim shot he'd injected clumsily himself – was dangling sickly with each step. He blinked as the corridor blurred before his eyes and it cleared again, only to tilt sideways. A crash that would have alerted enemies had they been there, and a searing pain in his side. Next thing Keith was looking at the wall from below, too disoriented and weak from blood loss to do anything, much less think.

So. This.

He closed his eyes, dizzy.

This is where it ends.

He'd always thought his life would flash before his eyes. Instead, something else came: a sensation like an exhalation, like a gentle breeze ghosting over glowing embers. A feeling like an ocean: cool and steady.

Unmistakable.

"Damn, boy," a voice whispered above him. "Can't I leave you for twenty ticks without you trying to get yourself killed?"

Keith closed his eyes, unable to keep them open any longer.

"That was unnecessary," Kolivan lectured him, over the broken arm and head injury and serious burn in his side that another member of the Blade was currently treating.

Mirax was at his side, her arms crossed over her chest, glowering silently. She'd injected him with another stim shot when she'd found him. Which had the unsettling consequence that anything Keith saw was shining brilliantly, pulled into focus so sharply he winced at any loud noise. Fortunately, however, it dimmed the pain. It actually felt a lot like floating.

An ocean, blue and endless, white sand under his naked feet and –

"You take too high risks and, in the process, endanger not only your mission but your fellow Blades. This needs to stop."

Keith supposed he should be honored that the head of the order would deem him important enough to come down here just to lecture him. Not after he had failed in his mission, and had been brought back by Mirax.

He couldn't bring it over himself, not even in that drug-induced state of startling clarity and brilliant haze – to regret that she'd gone against the rules for him.

And he wouldn't apologize.

He glowered back at Kolivan, matching the Blade's First Blade, silently daring him to go on. Kolivan regarded him, eyes darker than the black ink the Order sometimes used to relay information, his lips a thin line.

But then he left without saying anything, Mirax following on his hills – not before throwing him a secret wink and a thumbs-up – and Keith was left in the presence of the masked Blade that was wrapping his side in bandages. He looked up at Keith, his eyes only a glimmer through the mask. Keith's hackles rose.

"What?" He barked.

The masked man – or maybe it was a woman – just shrugged, and went back to work.

He hadn't brought anything along when he'd left the Castle, nothing but the clothes on his back, some spare change and his Luxite knife.

Keith wished he had.

Anything.

Something.

His connection to Red remained still and lifeless.

Maybe he'd imagined it.

"Keith!"

There they were, on the screen, and Keith hadn't realized they'd be there, hadn't even thought about the possibility that Kolivan had ordered him into the comm room for anything else but his next mission briefing.

But there they were: Hunk, glowing, and Pidge, so small and so alive. Allura, in her pink armor as regal as she was with open hair and a dress. Coran, grinning broadly. Shiro, his smile small and not quite genuine, but still, looking better than he had the last time they had seen each other, and, finally – Lance.

"Hey," he breathed, uncaring that he sounded cold and unfamiliar and distant. Their wonderful, beautiful, beloved sight set something loose within him he hadn't even realized had coiled tight. God I miss you guys –

Next thing, he realized what he was doing, and embarrassment rolled over him like a truck. He glowered.

Something in the back of his mind laughed, calm and open and free and soothing, laughter like waves returning to the shore.

Red hummed, welcoming and warm.

I missed you so much.

Maybe that was it, finally.

Maybe.

Because, damn every stupidly loyal Galran soldier, damn Lotor and Haggar and Zarkon, damn the entire universe – because this plan just might work. At best, they'd have won. At worst, they'd damage the Galran supply lines to a point that it would hurt even the huge, seemingly unending source of reinforcements.

And maybe, just maybe - they were winning.

Whatever it was, they were in control of the two Galran gunships and the Resistance was pretty much decimating the enemy fighters. The only Galran backup in the system was keeping its distance, something in the back of his mind was screaming a warning but Keith couldn't care for it just now. Because there was something strange going on on the surface of the planet, something that made his instincts scream even louder, and Voltron hadn't answered any hails for the last ten minutes.

The frequency on which Keith had heard his friends before hummed with static, and Keith's entire body vibrated with it.

The shield generators Voltron had been supposed to eliminate were still active, too, and–

Through the now-finally-open-again connection between Keith and Red, her single-minded determination blasted through. Her fiery heat was laced with steady oceans and fresh wind, and Keith thought only one thing, realized, with a start that made his stomach drop to his feet.

Lance.

In reality, he and the fighter would probably only have put a tiny, temporal dent into the huge Galran ship's shield.

As it was, Lotor was faster.

"That," Lance said, calmly and coolly and so collected Keith had the odd feeling he was talking to someone completely different; not the blue paladin.

"That was the stupidest thing in the whole, wide galaxy I ever saw, and, believe me, for a human, I've seen a lot. As do you, which is why I still can't believe that you actually tried to ram a Galran cruiser with nothing but a tin foil fighter."

And Keith did believe him.

Red purred, warm and reprimanding at the same time, reinforcing Lance's words. It felt like they were teaming up against him, and yet he could not muster any strength to feel angry.

"You needed help."

"We got it covered!" The last word exploded from Lance, bounced off the walls of the dark training room. Echoed in his mind, reinforced by Red's fury and Keith's own sensation of helplessness, of utter and complete terror, even days later. "We were in a pinch, and Allura found a way out! There was no need for you to play the fucking hero, but you just had to try and get yourself killed, what, in the name of everything that is fucking holy were you thinking?!"

Keith thought that he had never heard Lance curse this much, but he couldn't say that, could he?

So he said the first thing that came to his mind, and, the second they left his mouth, knew he had never said anything more honest.

"I'm sorry," Keith said, and Lance shut off mid-rant, aghast. "I'm really sorry. I just… I couldn't let them kill you. You're my family."

In the back of his mind, Red was a warm, soothing presence, curling up around him and tucking him against her like a cat tucking her kittens against her. Only it wasn't only Red anymore. The sensation of her was threaded through with blue, calm winds and peaceful water and contagious laughter, with sadness as deep as the sea. There was Blue in it, and Lance, and it merged seamlessly with what Red was and Keith. And… it wasn't strange, not by far. Instead, if was quiet and calming and soothing, acceptance in its purest form. It made the realization of what he had said far less frightening. Still, Keith's eyes hurt as if he was going to cry. He took a breath, searching for anger and fire and counterarguments, and realized he had nothing.

There was no anger left, only honesty. He took a deep breath, repeated it, and the words became true.

(Or they always had been. It didn't matter. Not anymore.)

"You're my family."

Lance didn't say anything else. But when Keith managed to look up at him he was watching him, the dark blue of his eyes soft.

He ended in a group hug again when he left, despite trying to sneak out undetected.

Pidge pinched his side, strong, little fingers leaving a purple bruise. Hunk had sandwiches. Coran had advice. Allura and Shiro smiled, and told him to come back. Lance said nothing.

In the back of his mind, through their now-open connection, Red hummed deep in the back of her throat, satisfied.

The bastard had known.

The fucking bastard had known, all the time.

Keith felt distantly like he was turning into Lance – not the bubbly, stupid Lance of the day, but the calm and detached Lance of the night – due to an excessive amount of very unimaginatively and repetitive swearing, but there was no other way to even remotely describe his feelings in regard to that matter.

The fucking bastard Kolivan had known, all the time, and had not said a goddamn word.

The mission comes first my fucking ass.

The funny part? It hadn't even been Keith who had endangered the frankly terrifyingly important mission to destroy one of the Galran Empire's most dangerous weapons by letting emotions factor into the play.

Still.

The even funnier part? Keith still was brooding over the embarrassing confession he had made, accidentally-on-purpose, to Lance in the darkness of the training room, a few nights after his disastrous attempt to single-handedly defeat a heavily shielded battle cruiser. The part about – well, about how he felt towards the rest of the team, about his reason for leaving, his reason for everything. Now, that same reason came back to bite him in the fucking ass.

Stop cursing, dammit.

So. Family.

When it rains, it sure pours.

The woman in front of him had the purple skin color that was typical for Galra, red markings bright on her high cheek bones. Her eyes were dark, her face thin and expressive, and Keith could see a certain beauty in her, and steely determination. He could see how someone like her might work as a spy undetected for years. He could see why people obeyed her commands. He could even see how his father might have fallen in love – if it had been anything like that, at least – with a person like her.

What he could not see was anything of himself in her.

"So."

Krolia turned away from the ship's controls and faced him, a mixture of off emotions flashing over her face and then disappearing again.

"You must have so many questions."

Keith had grown up knowing his mother had left him. He'd had questions aplenty, silent ones, loud ones, demanding ones, pleading ones. Angry questions, tear-filled ones.

Now, he had not a single one left.

At his silence, she shifted. Good, he thought, angrily. Be uncomfortable. Feel like the shit you are for leaving your newly born son.

Krolia sighed softly, her fingers drumming an unheard rhythm on the arm of her chair. Keith, thunderstruck, stopped his own fingers from moving, his heart suddenly threatening to jump out of the confines of his rib cage.

"Maybe I'll just start telling you the story from the beginning."

There were stories about children growing up without parents.

The nice and hopeful Pollyanna- and Anne-style ones, the Great Expectation-like ones. The sob-stories, Little Princess and the likes. The ones with sad beginnings and even sadder endings.

Keith had never been that kind of orphan.

Sure, he had lived in an orphanage for a few years. Mostly, he did not remember the places anymore; they had been interchangeable, he guessed, neither good nor especially bad. Just… places. When his memory set in, he had been living in a foster family; along with two other kids, and while it hadn't been all sweets and flowers, it had been good. A place to live, a bed to sleep in. A foster mother who had kind hands, and a father who took them out to build kites and to play explorer in the fields and forest. She read them stories, in the evening. But then she had fallen ill, and Keith had returned to the orphanage. Until another family picked him – a childless couple, determined to lavish their love onto a young child in need. And maybe it would have worked out, who knew? But the mother got pregnant, and it turned out her child was disabled. And she needed all her time and her strength to care for it, and Keith… Well, he got it. In a way. He went back to the orphanage, perhaps a little bit bitterer, a little bit more disillusioned. But. Life could be worse. He had a place to stay, and food to eat, and he could read. And a family further in he actually found a place to stay, with foster parents who didn't mind when he was too-quiet and too-withdrawn and didn't really show his affection; a family that cared for his dreams and did everything in their power to let him visit the Garrison, despite their own, meagre income. And Keith loved them, loved them in the same way he had loved each one of his foster parents. So when he was expelled from the Garrison there was no way he could go back and face them, no way he could tell them that all their work had been in vain. They'd hug him and smile at him and tell him they were proud, regardless. And Keith would forever feel like a traitor, an actor. A fraud.

"Do you miss them?"

"Whom? My parents?"

"Yeah." Lance's eyes were dark, as always, but their intensity was still startling.

Keith shrugged. "How can I miss someone I never really knew? My mother is the woman who raised me, and my father the man who is her husband."

"But did you never – you know – dream of finding them?"

Once, he had. The first time he had returned to the orphanage, barely six years old. Night after night he'd lain awake, begging the stars to send him his real parents. But they'd never come, and Keith… Keith had learned to live without them. He'd made his own family, instead, Mariana and Pete and some friends from school, and, later, Shiro. He'd entered the Garrison because Shiro had been his role model. He'd been expelled over Shiro's disappearance, with the catastrophic failure of the Kerberos mission.

Something inside him had snapped.

Mariana and Pete had helped him in any way they could. They also had never – not one single time – blamed him for anything, or accused him for using up their money. You're our son, Keith. We love you. Of course we'd do this. As it was, it was so hard protecting the little family that he had that Shiro's loss had shattered something in him.

Mariana and Pete had smiled.

"Sometimes, I wonder." He didn't realize he was speaking until he heard the words slip through his lips, drop into the silence like stones into a calm lake.

Usually, the darkness felt like a living thing around him. With Lance, it was bearable.

"Why would anyone leave their child? How could they? Did they not want me, or couldn't they keep me?"

He shut his mouth with an audible snap, mortified.

Lance remained silent, a steady presence on the other side of the room.

"Well, at least they left me the knife," he finally said, breathing out deeply. "So now I know my parents probably were Galran. Or, one of them was. Great."

"Not all Galrans are Haggar's and Zarkon's evil minions," Lance reminded him. "In fact, Kolivan is pretty chill."

Keith huffed a laugh. "Not the term I'd use, but yeah." He shifted, uncomfortably. "Sometimes…"

"Yes?" Lance's answer was so quiet he almost missed it. Still, the question reverberated in his mind, impossible to ignore. The words burst out of him, unchecked. That way, he thought, briefly, perhaps he would minimize the very public humiliation that was about to go through.

"What if I am like that, too? Galran. Like Zarkon."

"Your foster parents, Mariana and Pete. They brought you up, right? They trust you. I don't think you'd do anything to hurt them."

"They've never seen me like this."

This: bleak, weary and exhausted, jittery, hot-headed, too-rushed. Worn out.

"What, you afraid you'll turn into one of Zarkon's generals or something?"

Keith didn't answer.

"Come on. You know yourself better. You're nothing like them."

"I carry one of their blades."

"That doesn't make you anything like a Galran soldier."

That caused a brief silence. And then:

"The blades we carry cut ourselves the deepest," Lance said, quietly.

Keith hadn't known what he'd wanted to say, back then. Now, he slowly was starting to think that he actually understood.

I left you once already. I am not leaving you again.

How strange that he could no longer look at Lance without thinking family, but he could look at his mother and see a stranger.

Will you give me a chance to be your mother?

Keith wanted to believe her, and he didn't. He wanted to scream at her and hate her for leaving him in the first place, for abandoning a child just like that. And he didn't want to, because he understood: in a weird, twisted way that felt faintly familiar and agonizing. She hadn't wanted to leave him, but she had been forced to. He wanted to crush this… something and hold it in his hands at the same time, careful, oh-so-careful not to break it because beautiful things shattered so easily.

He…

There were so many things Keith desperately wanted, and, at the same time, did not.

"What do you want to do right now? I guess that's the question, isn't it?"

"I…"

A chuckle.

"Typical. Let's put it like this: where do you want to go next? Because hey, I'm sure it's great floating around in space aimlessly, with a mother you haven't seen for years and only a few days' worth of rations. I'd prefer a quiet place to think this over, but maybe that's just me."

And, the heck, why did his inner voice sound like Lance?

"Shut up."

This time, the laughter was clear. Kind, though, warm and soft and familiar.

"Huh. There you are."

Red, in the back of his mind, purred.

Keith dreamed.

Or, he was pretty sure he was dreaming, because he could still sense the darkness in the cabin around him, the un-silence of the small space craft. The purring engines, the occasional bleep of the controls. Somewhere, on the other side of the cockpit, there was another person, and that person was asleep, as well.

Or, maybe not.

All those things that made up a person: the blood running through the veins, the exhalation of breath. The heart, beating, living proof for life.

Sometimes Keith wondered whether this new sensitivity of his was part of his Galran heritage, or whether he was just imagining things.

Anyway, now. Dreaming. Yeah.

Darkness.

Space.

The lights of distant stars would never be enough to light it up.

Usually, Keith had no qualms about being in space, but now…

Terror clawed at him, ate itself through his sinews, flesh and bones within seconds, coming from nowhere, having no aim. Agonizing, marrow-chilling, heart-shattering fear. Mixed and tempered with ancient, eternal loneliness, and painful determination, and endless kindness, and driven intellect, and Keith realized, and, with a shuddering heart, understood, what it was he was sensing. Five minds, melded into one, each individual and yet together. And, underneath the barrage of emotions that choked him:

Trust.

Five lions lifted their heads and roared in defiance.

Five paladins set their sights on their target.

Six minds flowed into one.

Keith woke up, something on his lips he could not yet define, shivering and sweating and terrified and elated.

In his hand, his blade was glowing warmly.

Krolia watched him with hooded eyes, an expression that looked oddly familiar to Keith without being able to say wherefrom.

"You are sure about that?"

"Yes."

"Okay." She accepted without any qualms. "May I accompany you?"

Keith froze.

She saw that, too.

"No, of course not. I'd better leave, now. I have to report back to Kolivan. But maybe I can visit you sometime? I'd like to…" She hesitated, a heartbeat, and suddenly Keith could see her insecurity, her hesitation. But also, in her eyes: deep, desperate longing.

And that made her more familiar to him than anything else could have.

"Yes," he said, his voice hoarse. "Please visit."

Relief shone in her eyes. "Thank you."

She hesitated in the middle of the corridor, and then leaned down. Her lips touched his hair. It was the briefest of kisses, barely a touch. Still, Keith felt it, warm and alive on his skin.

Krolia turned and walked towards the docking port, and Keith watched her leave. When her tiny craft wasn't visible anymore, he returned to the pilot's chair and placed both his hands on the consoles without actually touching anything, and stayed like that.

So what is it that you want, right now?

The conviction was there, utterly and completely.

I want to go home.

Like something that had been off just so for the past months had been corrected, and he hadn't even noticed that something had been wrong but now he just knew.

Something around his heart just… disintegrated.

In the depths of his mind, through the connection with Red, he could hear the huge lion roar, urgency and reprimand and longing and welcome all in one.

I'm going back, Keith thought, giddy with realization. Warmth flooded him, welcome; there was no doubt, no hesitation. I'm going back.

Lance's eyes, dark and warm. Soft laughter. Family is a choice.

Lance. Allura. Coran. Pidge. Hunk. Shiro.

It was time. Keith opened his eyes, his hands already flying over the controls.

I am going home.

It would take him two years.