Enjoy the angst, because this was concerning to write.

I'll add on a second chapter if it receives well! Likely it'll be the Paladin's finding him!

The reason why the shack was still standing, was because the Nevada wilderness was bleak and empty.

Open and sprawling, miles and miles of sand and rock with barely any rain each year. Nevada encompassed two deserts, the Mojave stretched across as one of the largest in the continent.

It was unremarkable, nondescript, and every cliff looked like the one before it.

Maybe that's why the Garrison never found the shack, or maybe they didn't care to look for it.

(Maybe that's why the Paladins hadn't either.)

His shack was just how it had been before he had left so hastily.

The coffee table was supported by the cinder-blocks still- although he had to shoo out two scorpions that had taken residency under his couch.

His conspiracy board was still standing, patches of paper bleached from the harsh sun where it poked through the sheet he had used for blinds.

The sticky notes were clinging to the map, adhered from the heat of the desert sun.

'It's killing me when you're away,' written hastily with a half dead pen on a bright pink sticky note half hidden by his photos of the lion carvings.

He tore that down, and he tore down his conspiracy board.

'Mystery solved' he thought to himself almost hysterically, thinking of the Galra ship he had half hidden under scrap metal outside his storage shed.

The one he had stolen away, hopping from galaxy to galaxy to mooch gas and scurry home with the reminder from Kolivan that "The Blades of Marmora do not allow self-sacrifice. You were not wrong with your actions, and we thank you, but the symbolism of your choice has left us no options."

"You're kicking me out?"

"We are not dismissing your help, unfortunately your future help would only hinder our movement."

"I- No! You can't! I did what I had to do!"

"We will permit you a ship and a passage guaranteed for safe voyage."

And that had been that.

The blade felt warm against his back, nearly searing as the desert sun began to rise and the air began to warm.

Somewhere, an eagle screamed and broke the silence.

All of the food in his shack had expired, except for a few cans that looked more questionable than the pureed space worms he'd been eating for months.

He had enough emergency rations in his ship still, sealed and regulated like a fridge in the one back compartment. It was a novelty, since his shack didn't have a refrigerator.

The well had dried up, the bucket was drawing up sand and dirt and one rather perplexed spider that skittered away in search of a dark crevice.

He sighed, looking forlornly at his hover-bike- blasted by sand and chipping paint in his absence. He'd need to thoroughly clean out the exhaust and engine, as well as anything else that crawled up in the years left alone.

Fortunately for him, he knew one system of caves that had a rather impressive waterfall under a hole Lance activated after touching carvings.

Keith ran out of food after four days, and fixed the speeder after five.

He didn't mind the work, it was mindless and so painfully simple it was something relaxing. Something for his hands to do- to work.

(The knife burned on his back until he wordlessly practiced in the sunrise, shifting from advanced pose to the next as sweat and tears slid down his face.)

The hover-bike wasn't pretty, and it looked as if something with claws had taken to clawing the one side out of boredom. It started with a low whine, grumbling poorly as it slowly lifted off the ground with the hesitation of a newborn dog.

Kieth loaded the empty jugs he had used before for his well, strapping it to the sides of the bike and hoping it wouldn't mess with the balance too much.

The bike was slow, it skimmed over the ground with a guttural groan that was nearly painful after the near silent swishing of warp capable cruisers.

The cave was untouched, the markings untouched.

'I'm better off alone. They would have left you eventually, they would have left you eventually.'

Something in him throbbed painfully; he ignored it the best he could as he lugged the jugs back to his cruiser.

He didn't return to the cave for weeks.

Keith knew that there were laws about hunting seasons, or regulation on wildlife.

The reality was that he was in the center of nowhere, hundreds of miles from major civilization, The Garrison wasn't that much closer.

He knew that he likely was committing some sort of crime, walking about with a long stick in one hand and his knife in the other.

A rabbit stirred, surprised out from where it had hidden under a tumbleweed. It ran, and Keith watched it sprint for a few seconds.

All's fair in love and war.

And Keith was tired of war.

He aimed and threw his knife, and it hit with terrifying accuracy.

He served his time already.

Keith knew how to live alone, he had done it all his life.

He didn't rely on anyone, he didn't need anyone.

'Better to leave first, than to be abandoned by everyone around you.'

He had gotten used to waking up and seeing people, to casual contact or small remarks over whatever space coffee they had available.

He had gotten used to that.

Despite it being a desert, he was cold inside.

He kept up with his practice, activating and deactivating his dagger to its blade form back to knife. Over and over, halfway through combat with a cactus, or various forms he had learned.

He was better, he knew that he had improved dramatically since joining the Blades of Marmora.

He practiced, his skin sweating and blistering under the sun, his breaths coming in labored pants as he forced himself again, again, over, again.

A bird was flying high above, giant with dark brown feathers. An eagle of some sort, he didn't know the species.

Again.

He practiced again.

He found a tortoise, a month after landing and seeking refuge in his shack.

It was a large thing, although smaller than the alien species he had seen before. He had expected it to sprout wings, or spit venom. His paranoia forced him to prod it with his stick, shifting it through the gravely dirt as it peered around confused.

It paused, then continued on its walk, lumbering under the grasses and over broken pieces of bedrock.

Something about the reptile was strangely endearing, the way it battled on and pushed forward even when struggling over a crevice in the ground, or to free itself from where a low branch snagged its shell.

Keith walked with it for hours, managing a few miles away from his shack. When the sun set and the tortoise nestled down in a patch of dead thorns, only then did Keith return to his shack.

Two months and he cut his hair, chopping it with his knife which never lost its edge.

His hair had grown long, mangled and snarled and a disgusting oily sheen he knew he'd never have enough water to wash out.

He destroyed his ship, tearing out pulsating Galra pieces and modifying his hover-bike into something with acceptable levels of speed.

He removed half a dozen safety features, ramping the speed and the accelerator into something he knew wasn't street legal.

A voice in the back of his skull that sounded eerily like Shiro disapproved loudly.

He had tried to ram a Galra battle cruiser.

He was going to di-

'Let me have this, Shiro.'

The closest town was something called Goldfield, scattered along an antique highway that served more as a line on a map than an actual road.

The townspeople were polite enough, gathering outside on wicker chairs under awnings to escape the heat. Keith doubted they had plumbing either, half of the buildings looked boarded up or deserted.

There was something outside of town, a graveyard marked with old cars and buses stacked upwards like obelisks to modern art. A few hover-bikes were thrown in, balanced precariously on the hood of a flipped truck.

The "International Car Forest", marked with spray paint over one side panel writing in blocky graffiti Fuck the Garrison

Keith smiled, and thought with a laugh Quiznak would have fit better.

His slight smile fell, and once again he looked away.

He forgot nobody knew what Quiznak meant.

Four months and his Hover-bike was breaking records, although that was likely due to the Galra tech incorporated into it.

He wasn't a mechanic or an engineer, but give him half a dozen weeks in the desert with only scorpions for company and he would figure out how to restore a bike.

There wasn't anything for the paint job, or anything in terms of safety gear.

He had his Blade of Marmora outfit still, glowing supernaturally purple in the dim lighting of his shack. He had used it for a short while as a lamp, enough illumination in the dark to look at the blank wall where he used to map out the energy field.

He kept the sticky notes up, because they were still applicable.

"They told me it was Pilot Error. I know you're still alive."

His aim had improved, throwing knives hadn't been something that the Blade really emphasized training on.

It was a dangerous risk, for the Galra empire to take possession of a blade.

The Mojave desert had no mercy, and didn't care when his knife lodged deep in a crooked dead tree, rotting where it baked.

He didn't have anything to do most days, nowhere to go, nobody to fight.

He ran, he took his knife and strapped on his boots (They were wearing thin and busting at the seams, leaving blisters that bled and bled) and just...ran.

Until his muscles burned and the air seared his throat and the closest thing to an adrenaline rush burned in his blood.

(And when he found a cliff just high enough, just dangerous enough...he'd dangle his legs over the edge and scream until the coyotes would howl back.)

'You know, I don't know what I was expecting.

I mean, I just, I knew that I had to- I mean, not...I told them I wanted to leave, well… I didn't want- no,...I don't

I don't know

Lance was worried about the, the six of us, and…

And nobody told me not to go'

Keith's closest neighbor was an older man with two old hounds, each looking slightly more hungry than they should.

His neighbor, Garland O'Conner, was a leathery skeptic man who didn't seem to care when Keith emerged from the dust and sand on a battered hover-bike.

Garland had a working well, as well as a generator that was broken more often than it ran.

He also had money, which he coughed up for Keith to fix one of the broken fence posts way out on the edge of his land.

And food, Garland had food.

'I wouldn't have gone if they told me to stay.'

Keith ran, he ran more in the open air and slight morning chill than he ever had the opportunity to in space.

Before, the training decks were small, confined between the metal hulls that protected him from death.

Here, he could run and run and run.

His muscles burned but he found that he could just...keep going.

"Do you ever take a break, mullet? What did those training bots ever do to you!"

Keith kept running.

"Instead of accepting people into my life I push them away before they rejected me."

At night, there was nothing to ever disturb him.

In space, he was used to the sounds of the ship, the ticking, the faint rattling of the vents.

He heard the crickets, faint and far in between.

At least at night he could see the stars, and if he tried very hard, he could almost pretend that he could feel the vibrations of the castle under his back.

"I guess I have some walls up."

Keith fixed a window, where it hadn't fit right and was constantly leaking grit into Garland's house.

"You done?" Garland asked, his voice hoarse and gruff either from the dryness of the environment or the years of spitting tobacco. That was one benefit of being kidnapped by Blue, Keith didn't have any cigarettes on him and quit by force.

"Yeah," Keith responded simply, his voice was raspy as well.

One of the hounds padded near, pawing him lazily. The bottoms of its paws were coarser than sandpaper, the nails chipped and broken beyond repair.

"Here," Garland grunted, passing over a paper bag with a small grimace, "Haven't gone to town recently."

Which meant he hadn't the money, which was fine. Keith didn't travel to town that often.

When he got back to his shack, shoving the cloth out from the door hinges to keep the bugs out, and sat heavily on the couch he slept on.

Garland had given him liquor, something he didn't recognize but looked like something from one of the southern reservations.

Shiro wouldn't approve, Keith could picture his face.

'Keith, what are you doing? You know that stuff isn't good for you.'

It would have been the same face Shiro made when he caught Keith smoking the one time, ducked under an overhang to stay out of the single rain-shower the Garrison experienced per year.

Then again…

Shiro was all he had, Shiro was the only family he really had.

(And he lost him once before, Pilot Error my ass.)

He found him, and he finally had a rag tag group he considered fam-

(And he lost him again.)

He was forced to replace Shiro, it was only logical that they were forced to replace him.

(They did they did they did they did-)

Keith cracked the seal on the bottle and threw it back without hesitation.

It burned only half as bad as he expected.

"So...is everyone okay?"

"Yeah!" Lance shouted, sounding half amazed and half victorious.

"We showed those bastards!" Pidge cheered, whooping loudly alongside Lance.

"Language!" Hunk shouted back, although he was joking.

"Alright everyone, that's enough," Shiro chuckled, voice warm over the link.

"Well done, everyone." Allura spoke, voice firm yet somehow restraining joyous laughter.

Keith's eyes flew open, words on the edge of his lips.

He was on the couch, alone in his shack.

No Voltron, no victory, no nothing.

Tears pricked the edges of his eyes as he started blindly into the dark.

One hand searched for the half empty bottle, the other half curled to his chest to keep the loneliness away.