[fic] VLD - Third Time the Charm

[lysapadin]

Title: Third Time the Charm
Characters/Pairings: Shiro/Keith
Summary: Three times Keith tried to seize the day.
Notes: 13194 words, teen audiences. Beware of Feels. Sliding in under the wire before season six josses us all.

~~~~~~~~~~

Third Time the Charm

No one took the news that Keith was part-Galra very well once they got back to the Castle of Lions. Allura—the princess—went cold and hard when she had to be around him, and Hunk and Pidge had thousands of questions for Keith, none of which were comfortable and very few of which he could actually answer. Lance was—Keith tried not to think about Lance, who was having way too much fun at his expense. And even Coran was a little awkward around him, though he made the most effort to treat him the same way he had before.

Keith found himself spending most of his spare time alone on the training deck, or in Red's cockpit, or in his room, just to get away from the questions and the sidelong looks. There wasn't much time to be spared, though, not when there was so much planning to do.

Shiro found him in his room at the end of a particularly long day—Kolivan and a handful of his Blades had come to the castle-ship for planning, so the princess had been particularly prickly. Keith had thought about trying to eat his dinner in the face of that and had decided it would be better to avoid the whole ordeal and sneak a midnight snack later.

Shiro clearly had other ideas and had brought him a tray loaded with enough food for two. That made sense when he sat on the bunk next to Keith and dug in. "You holding up okay?"

Keith poked his fork at the space pasta. "I'm fine."

"Sure you are. Don't know why I even asked." Shiro forked up a load of pasta and gave Keith a sidelong look. "She'll come around, you know."

He was supposed to say something like I know or say It's just hard or something like that, but Keith couldn't bring himself to it. He grunted and ate some more pasta.

At least Shiro didn't try to push the issue. Or the conversation; he let Keith be quiet and the only noise between them was the click of the forks against the plate and the sound of chewing against the background hum of the ship itself. Shiro was good at being quiet, though. It was Keith's favorite thing about him. One of his favorite things.

Eventually they hit the bottom of the bowl, though not before Keith was replete. The food helped some, at least enough for him to unbend to say, "Thanks for bringing me dinner. Sorry I'm crappy company these days."

"Nothing to apologize for," Shiro said. The hell of it was that he meant it, too. "Hey, look what I found." He flipped over the napkin and revealed a couple of small, round things. "It's dessert."

"Okay, but what is it?" Keith picked one up; it was fairly dense in his hands, but the texture under his fingertips felt sort of like pastry.

"No idea, but Hunk was having raptures over them so I stole a couple."

"Huh." Hunk was generally a good barometer for food. Keith raised the thing to his nose and sniffed it; it smelled kind of sweet. He tried a cautious bite; the thing crumbled in his mouth with a taste of some kind of spice underlaid with the sweetness he'd smelled. It wasn't like anything he'd had before, but most space food was like that. He swallowed the bite and nodded at Shiro. "It's good."

Shiro smiled and picked up the other pastry. "Good."

Sweets seemed to be harder for Hunk to manage in space, so Keith took his time with the pastry to make it last. It was still gone too quickly.

"Here." Shiro offered his; it only had a couple bites taken out of it. "You can have the rest of mine."

Keith eyed him. "Don't you like it?"

Shiro shrugged. "It's okay. Kind of bland. I'd rather have chocolate."

Bland? Keith wondered about that but took it anyway. No, there was definitely some spice under the sweetness, though he didn't know enough about cooking to put a name to it. "Did Hunk make these?"

"No, it was one of the Blades," Shiro said. "They brought supplies with them."

"Oh." Keith looked at the pastry in his hands, suddenly ambivalent about it. Was it something traditional? Did it have a name? If Shiro were Galra, would it still taste bland to him?

"It was the skinny one, with the three spots and the vertical bars on their mask," Shiro said. "If you want to ask about it later."

Keith nodded at that and took a bite. "Thanks," he said, after a minute.

Shiro moved the tray to the floor and scooted close enough to sling an arm around his shoulders. "Welcome." He didn't move while Keith nibbled his way through the rest of the pastry, or after he'd licked the last crumbs from his fingers, and Keith didn't care to be the one to move first. They were all so busy lately that it was rare to get a moment alone with Shiro. If it was selfish to want to draw this out as long as possible, well, Keith was okay with being selfish about some things.

"Seriously," Shiro said eventually. "How are you holding up?"

Keith shrugged as best as he could without moving. "I've been worse. I'm only part of a race that's responsible for a brutal intergalactic empire. No big deal, right?"

"Keith."

Keith stared at the bulkhead opposite, conscious of the steady in-and-out of Shiro's breath. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"The truth, maybe?"

"Soon as I figure out what that is, I'll let you know."

Shiro sighed and turned enough that he could take Keith's shoulders and make him meet his eyes. "Keith, please."

It was Shiro asking, and Keith didn't know how to say no to him. He sighed. "It's weird, okay? I keep wondering how much of everything is me and how much of it is because I'm Galra. Everyone looks at me like they're waiting for me to turn purple and sprout a tail, when they're not looking at me like they expect me to start conquering the nearest planet."

"I did tell Hunk to stop checking you for a tail," Shiro said, mildly, but he moved a hand around to the back of Keith's neck. "I'll speak with him again."

"You don't have to—"

"I kind of think I do." Shiro rubbed his thumb against the back of Keith's neck, and Keith barely heard what he was saying through the haze of sensation. "You're still Keith and being Galra is part of that. You were as surprised as anyone to find out, and it's really about time for them to stop treating you like a circus sideshow."

"Good luck with that," Keith murmured, because Shiro was still rubbing the back of his neck and it felt too good to bother arguing about whether there was anything anyone could do to make him being part-Galra normal.

Shiro laughed. "You look like you'd start purring right now, if you could."

"Think I would, yeah," Keith said, leaning into his hand a little harder. Was this another Galra thing, or was it just a Shiro thing? He didn't know and for the moment he didn't really care.

"C'mere." Shiro pulled Keith back in to lean against him and went back to rubbing his nape. Keith sighed and leaned into him. "Wish I'd known this was all it took to get you to relax back at the Garrison."

"Mm." Keith pressed against him, tucking his face against Shiro's throat and breathing in the scent of his skin. Shiro's fingers faltered against his neck, but then he resumed what he was doing. Keith sighed and pressed against him, warm satisfaction unwinding through him.

"Are you going to fall asleep on me?" Shiro asked after a little while. "Only I have some things I do need to get done before bed—"

"Not falling asleep," Keith told him, shaping the words right against Shiro's skin. Shiro shivered, and—Keith was so tired of secrets. So tired of holding this last secret close.

He moved, shifting his head just enough to be able to press his lips to Shiro's skin, above the flutter of his pulse.

That flutter picked up speed immediately as Shiro took a sudden breath. "Keith—"

Keith hummed to him and kissed his throat again, parting his lips to taste Shiro's skin, the salt of sweat and the faint traces of Altean soap. That was good, and so was the way Shiro's breath caught in his throat when Keith brushed his tongue over his skin. His hand had stilled on Keith's nape, but that was fine, because this was better. Could be even better.

Shiro wasn't expecting him to move, to bear him down to the blankets, or to cover him with his own body. The breath came out of him on a startled sound, but he didn't recover before Keith had stooped over him and sealed their mouths together.

Shiro's mouth was much better than his throat; the movement of his lips against Keith's ran through Keith like quicksilver, and the strange softness of his tongue moving against Keith's was an entirely unexpected delight. Keith chased after it, pressing against Shiro and shifting against him, deepening the kiss until Shiro groaned and wrenched his mouth away, turning his face to the side. "Keith, stop."

"It was just getting good," Keith complained.

He was close enough to Shiro to hear the click of his throat as he swallowed. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped. Gone raspy. "Keith. What's brought this on?"

What kind of question was that? "Nothing brought this on. It's been like this for me for a long time." If anything, he was wondering why he hadn't done anything about it before now. All that wasted time—all that time they'd lost because he'd thought there would be time after Shiro came home from Kerberos.

Shiro swallowed again, said his name again, soft. "But why now?"

"Why not now?" Keith countered, moving against Shiro, rearranging himself over him to drape against his chest more comfortably. If that meant Shiro could feel the hardness of his cock rubbing against his hip, well, Keith always did play to win.

Shiro definitely noticed; his eyes went even darker and he took a very deep breath, one that he held for a solid count of ten before releasing. "Voltron," he said. "The fight against Zarkon. Taking down the rest of the empire."

"If Lance and I can fight all the time and still form Voltron, this—" Keith permitted himself to grind against Shiro to illustrate the point and hummed with the curl of sensation "—won't stop you and me from forming Voltron." As for the rest… "I can think of five different times one of us had nearly gotten killed in the past month alone. This is a war. If I end up losing you again, I don't want to have to regret not taking every chance I could get before that."

"You're not going to lose me—"

"You can't promise that," Keith snapped. "I wasn't supposed to lose you when you left for Kerberos, and that was only supposed to be an exploratory mission. This is war, Shiro. People die in wars. They die and they don't come back. I got lucky once, but no one gets the same miracle twice." He stopped because his voice had gone thick; Shiro was staring up at him, wide-eyed. Keith cleared his throat. "Say no if you want to say no. Don't say no because you think it's what you're supposed to do. All right?"

It's not at all what he wanted to say—there was a part of Keith's brain howling a protest at the bare suggestion of letting Shiro go now that he had the man where he belonged—but Keith quashed that part of himself. It wasn't any good unless Shiro chose this for himself.

"I hadn't quite thought of it in those terms," Shiro said, slowly, after a moment.

"Bullshit." Keith scowled when Shiro looked startled. "You wouldn't keep telling me you want me to lead Voltron after you if you hadn't thought about dying in this fight." It took everything he had to push himself up, away from Shiro; he ached with the loss of that contact, ached with how much he wanted to pin Shiro down and kiss him, to peel him out of his civvies and taste his skin and learn every part of his body with hands and mouth. The realization that Shiro was all set to reject this—him—ached even more than that.

Damn it.

Shiro sat up, moving slowly. "Keith—" He stopped on that and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not saying no, I'm just saying—not now. Okay? This isn't the right time for—it's not the right time."

"What is the right time, then?" Keith didn't actually want to ask, but he couldn't stop himself, either, not when there was hunger for Shiro etched into his bones.

"After we beat Zarkon, okay? That's—it needs to be our primary focus right now." Shiro reached over and squeezed his shoulder. "The universe is depending on us to get this done, but after that… we'll talk then, okay?"

It wasn't okay—Keith could hear the echo in his memory, Shiro before Kerberos, before the weight of captivity and Voltron had pressed the innocence out of him, saying that they'd talk after he came home from Kerberos. It wasn't okay at all.

"Okay," he said, even though it was anything but. "After we beat Zarkon. We'll talk then."

"Yeah." He caught the flash of Shiro's grin, almost as carefree as it had been before Kerberos. "It's a date."

"Sure," Keith said, and fisted his hands against his thighs as he watched Shiro stand and leave.

 

 

 

Keith just wished he could be surprised that Shiro ended up breaking their date after all. He wished it, but honestly… honestly, he wasn't surprised at all.

The worst part—one of the worst parts, there were so many worst parts of this and English grammar could go fuck itself—one of the worst parts was that they just didn't know what happened to Shiro this time. With Kerberos, at least Keith'd had some kind of closure. He hadn't believed the official line about pilot error causing the Herakles to crash, but that Shiro had died? Yeah, he'd been able to believe that. Space was cold and physics were unforgiving. There were lots of memorials to the people who'd tried to reach the stars and never made it home again. He'd grieved, and raged, and gotten himself expelled while he was at it, but he'd known that Shiro was gone and not coming back.

But Shiro had come back.

This time they didn't know what the hell happened—it was as if Shiro had vanished into thin air. Was he dead? Did the Galra have him? Had Black absorbed him? Had he been transported to an alternate reality? They just didn't know. There weren't any answers. There wasn't any closure.

There'd been a time when Keith would have said there wasn't anything worse than knowing that Shiro was dead. He knew better now—not knowing was worse by far.

This time there was more, so much more, hanging in the balance than his scholarship to the Garrison—there was a whole universe hanging in the balance. As much as Keith hated doing it, he bowed to necessity and traded Red for Black, tried to lead the way Shiro had wanted him to (not the way Shiro led—had led—but it wasn't like Shiro had left him a manual for this and Keith certainly hadn't been command track even before he set his Garrison future on fire).

It was hard, harder than Shiro ever made it look and even harder than what Keith had suspected Shiro was hiding from the rest of them.

He didn't think anyone is happy with the new normal, not really, but they made it work as best as they could—they had to. Lotor was out there, the Galra Empire was still out there, and the plan to defeat Zarkon—well. There was work to be done, lots of it, and at least Keith could exhaust himself on that to save himself from dwelling on the things he'd lost—let slip from his grasp—again.

And then Black nudged at Keith on the way back to the castle-ship—Black, who was reserved and distant with Keith, because they both knew who the real black paladin was supposed to be—and Keith payed attention, saw the tiny blip of a struggling Galra fighter on Black's console—and together they brought Shiro home.

 

 

 

Shiro was in rough shape when they brought him in, on the verge of asphyxiating, severely dehydrated, injured, exhausted. They got him into a healing pod in a flurry of giddy disbelief and rejoicing. No one got any sleep that night; they dragged chairs and pillows and blankets to the infirmary and kept vigil together, speculating on where Shiro had been and how the Galra had been able to capture him again. Hunk and Pidge pulled the fighter's logs and pored over them.

It was all Keith could do not to put his fist through a wall when the logs showed them how close Shiro came to catching up with them at Thayserix, but he froze, sick with horror, when they played the last recording and he heard Shiro say, weary and resigned, "This will be my last entry."

So close. Too close. If Black hadn't noticed—if they'd been any slower—

Keith put his head between his knees and just breathed. They hadn't been too late. Black had noticed and now Shiro was safe in a pod, eyes moving behind his eyelids as the Altean tech repaired the damage done to him. Shiro was home, and safe, and Keith was for damn sure not going to waste any more of his chances.

It was just past dawn, castle-ship time, when the pod signaled that it'd reached the end of its cycle, just past dawn that the cover slid down. Shiro opened his eyes to see them all waiting for him and smiled. "Hey, guys. It's good to see you."

"You too, Shiro," Lance said—Keith couldn't say it himself. His throat was too tight for that. He could move, and did; he was right there at Shiro's side when he stepped out of the pod and offered himself up for Shiro to balance against as everyone moved in for hugs—brief hugs.

"No offense, Shiro, but you're a little ripe," Hunk apologized.

Shiro just laughed. "I'd kill for a shower," he confessed.

"I don't think we'll need to go quite that far." The princess smiled at him. "You'll need to rest and recover from your time in the healing pod. We can have a proper reunion after you've done that, I'm sure."

"That sounds great," Shiro said. "Really great."

The princess clapped her hands together. "Well, then. Soonest done the better."

"It's just about breakfast time," Hunk pointed out. "I'll fix you a tray and bring it to you, okay?" He was moving before Shiro could answer, striding off with purpose.

"I'll walk you to your room," Keith told Shiro. He got a smile and a squeeze to his shoulder in reply.

It wasn't a long walk to the quarters they'd chosen back at the beginning of things, which was probably for the best. Shiro's stride was slowing noticeably by the time he palmed open his door.

"You need anything?" Keith asked him as the lights came up inside. The air probably wasn't actually stale, but he could almost imagine that it was.

Shiro gave him a crooked grin. "Stick around and make sure I don't pass out in the shower?"

"Sure, no problem." Keith followed him inside and stood out of the way while Shiro retrieved a set of what must have been his sleep clothes—loose pants and a tank top, nothing Keith had ever seen him wear since Voltron but looked a lot like what Shiro had used to wear before Kerberos. "Ten minutes and I'm coming in after you."

"It won't take that long," Shiro promised.

Keith took the desk while Shiro ducked into the attached facilities. After a moment, he heard the water start up. It was only then that he was able to put his face in his hands and let himself shake. Jesus, Shiro was back. Shiro was back.

He pulled himself together after a minute of this—there would be time later to get it out of his system—and was relatively okay when Hunk knocked on the door. He had a tray with two plates and a grin for Keith. "Figured you'd be here. I brought you breakfast, too."

"Thanks, Hunk." Keith accepted the tray and raised his eyebrows. "You made burritos that fast?"

Hunk rubbed the back of his neck. "I pulled them out of stasis. Figured quick trumps fresh today."

"You're probably right about that."

Hunk grinned again. "Just yell if that's not enough. There's more in stasis if you need it."

"I will, thanks."

Hunk nodded and left him to it.

They weren't burritos, not really, but they weren't entirely unlike burritos, either, which was good enough for Keith. He started on his about the same time he heard the water go off in the bathroom—he wasn't going to have to go rescue Shiro from drowning in the shower, which was probably for the best.

It was a little jarring that Shiro hadn't done anything about the stubble or his hair, but on second thought, maybe he'd just wanted to get clean and leave the finicky stuff for after he'd rested. God knew that going through a round in the healing pods was weirdly exhausting. Shiro certainly didn't take a seat on the bunk so much as he collapsed on it. "Is that food?"

"Space burritos." Keith brought the tray to him.

Shiro lit up. "No kidding? I was all geared up for a bowl of food goo."

"Hunk wouldn't do that to you," Keith said as Shiro picked up the burrito and tried a first, cautious bite. It must have met with approval, because Shiro went after the next bite with gusto. "I don't think he'd do that to Zarkon."

"If anyone deserved it…" Shiro said between mouthfuls.

Keith snorted and took a seat on the edge of the bunk. "Maybe." There were a thousand things he wanted to know, starting with what had happened to Shiro and where he'd been, but those things could wait for later, when Shiro had gotten some rest and figured out what he wanted to say and what he wanted to avoid talking about. For now it was enough to finish his burrito and watch Shiro plow through first one burrito, and then a second. He could almost think he was dreaming this, but this wasn't the kind of thing his subconscious would come up with—Shiro, bearded, shaggy-haired, and devouring a space burrito was both too strange and too prosaic.

Shiro sighed with contentment after the last bite and licked his fingers clean. "So much better than food goo." He raised his eyebrows at Keith. "You're staring, buddy. Have I got something on my face?"

"A pretty awful excuse for a beard," Keith said, picking up the tray and setting it safely aside.

"I never could grow facial hair worth a damn—Keith?" Shiro left off rubbing his chin as Keith moved up the bed, looking confused. His eyes went wider when Keith reached out and cupped his hands around Shiro's face. "What—?"

Keith rubbed his thumbs through the prickle of Shiro's stubble. "Sorry. I've waited about as long as I can."

"Keith, I—"

Keith kissed him before he could finish that thought, muffling the startled words with his lips and stroking their tongues together, tasting the spices Hunk had used to mimic a burrito on Shiro's lips and devoutly grateful for this second chance.

Shiro was still under him, frozen, and then he lifted his hands and closed them on Keith's shoulders, pushing him back. He shook his head. "Keith, no."

No? Keith stared at him, not understanding that protest or the way Shiro was twisting away from the hands on his face. "Shiro—"

"I'm honored," Shiro said before he could figure out what he wanted to say. "Really, I'm honored, but I can't be this for you, Keith."

"I don't understand," Keith said, because he didn't, he didn't understand at all. They'd had an agreement. They'd had a date.

Shiro closed his eyes; all of a sudden he looked exhausted. Pained. Part of Keith noted that, was already worrying over it, but the larger part of him was frozen in disbelief. Confusion. When Shiro opened his eyes again, he squared his jaw the same way he did for anything he thought was necessary. "This is a line I don't want to cross."

"But I thought you—" Keith clicked his mouth shut when Shiro shook his head. He couldn't have imagined it, could he? Shiro had agreed that they would talk again after defeating Zarkon. (Though they hadn't exactly defeated Zarkon after all, had they?) "Shiro, I—"

Shiro squeezed his shoulders. "I'll always be your friend, Keith. I promise you that. But this is something I don't want."

Keith stared at him, searching his eyes for some sign, some hint that Shiro didn't mean what he was saying after all, was saying this out of some misbegotten sense of duty, but Shiro met his eyes steadily. Apologetically. Regretfully. But honestly. "I thought—you did. Before."

"I think I did," Shiro said after a moment. "But I've—it's too much, Keith. I'm not—I can't do this. Not any more. I'm sorry."

There was blood roaring in Keith's ears, a hundred protests at the tip of his tongue, but this wasn't the same Shiro who'd tried to argue that they shouldn't. This was Shiro saying he didn't want to. And that—there wasn't anything that he could argue against that. If Shiro didn't want him any more after he'd failed to rescue him from another captivity, had only barely managed to rescue him from his failing Galra fighter, then—Shiro didn't want him.

He pulled out of Shiro's hands and stood. "Sorry. I thought—I guess it doesn't matter." He stooped to pick up the tray of dishes; the plates rattled against it with the shaking of his hands. "I'm sorry. I won't bring it up again."

"I know you won't." Shiro's voice was soft, gentle even. "I wish things could be different. You're a great guy. Someone's going to be very lucky to get you."

"Maybe," Keith said. How was he supposed to ask why Shiro could think that and not want him? He couldn't. "I only ate one of my burritos. I'll leave it here for if you get hungry later."

Shiro accepted the change of topics; he was probably relieved that Keith wasn't going to fuss. "That would be great, thank you."

Keith put the tray down and used all of the practice he'd had at holding himself together to lift his head. He couldn't quite smile at Shiro, but he could at least seem calm. Accepting. "You need to rest, though. I'll get out of here so you can. But later… if you feel up for it, everyone will want to see you. They need you, you know."

He needed Shiro too, but—well. That wasn't going to happen now.

"I'll see what I can do," Shiro said, a little too kindly.

"They'll appreciate it," Keith said, making for the door. "Sleep well—"

"I didn't say thank you, before," Shiro interrupted him. "For saving me. Thank you, Keith."

"Hey, no problem," Keith said. Somehow he even managed a smile. "As many times as it takes, you know?"

"Yeah," Shiro said. "Yeah, I know."

Keith nodded at him, short, and escaped while he still had his dignity.

 

 

 

After a failed confession like that, the only thing Keith could see to do was try to act as though it had never happened, like everything was back to normal now that Shiro had come home. The only problem with that was that he didn't quite remember what normal had been before—before he'd found out he was Galra, before he'd confessed the first time, before he'd lost Shiro and got him back again. He did his best, but it was like putting on a set of clothes he'd outgrown. Nothing fit right.

He thought it might have been the same for Shiro, who was different after his second captivity, different enough that for all his efforts, Keith couldn't seem to find the easiness of their former rapport. Though maybe he'd ruined it himself and that was the problem. Whatever it was, he couldn't seem to find the right footing, kept focusing on the wrong things and making the wrong choices and setting Shiro on edge with them.

Honestly, by the time Shiro reconnected to Black and cleared him to join the Blade full-time, it was a relief to just go. And maybe, if Keith kept his distance for long enough, he'd stop mistaking this new Shiro for the old Shiro and learn to stop wanting what he couldn't have.

 

 

 

The moment their craft set down in the hangar, everyone's gauntlets chimed with the various notifications that had been held for them during the mission. Like everyone else, Keith tapped his cuff, expecting very little other than the location and time for the debrief and perhaps some notes toward the next mission on the horizon. Maybe there would be a message from Krolia, though he tried not to feel too hopeful about that.

He certainly wasn't expecting a series of messages from the Castle of Lions—messages that were as cryptic as they were terse:

Number Four, we've run into a bit of a situations and could use your expertise.

Number Four, please contact us to arrange a wormhole as soon as you are able.

Yo mullet where the fuck are you we kind of need you right now

Keith, I've spoken with Kolivan and understand that you are on assignment. He will notify me as soon as you return so that I can wormhole you to our current location.

And then, finally, most alarming of all, a message from Kolivan that was flagged as urgent: See me immediately.

Two messages from Coran, one from Lance, and one from the princess, all telling him that he needed to get back to the Castle of Lions as fast as possible. Kolivan's apparent willingness to go along with that. There was only one thing that could mean.

Keith's gut twisted and he tasted acid in his mouth. Shiro.

Verdun glanced up from her cuff. "Leader needs to see you, Keith."

"Yeah. I know." The words felt like lead weights on his tongue. Was Kolivan going to break the news himself or just send him back to the Castle of Lions to be greeted by it?

Verdun flicked her tail, tapping his knee with it. "If you know, why aren't you moving?"

Because moving would bring him that much closer to making it real, and Keith didn't want it to be real. Not again. Not knowing that he'd left and hadn't been there to keep the promise he'd made—as many times as it takes? He'd barely even tried.

Verdun flicked his knee again. "Leader is waiting. Get moving."

Keith rose, prodded into it by the knowledge that she'd order one of the other Blades to pick him up and drag him to Kolivan if she felt she had to. "I'm going."

Walking felt like wading through waist-high water. Keith trudged down the ramp and through the hangar, vaguely aware that someone had called a greeting but unable to bring himself to lift a hand to acknowledge it. The mask on his face felt too hot, too close, though he didn't dare release it—at least it offered a semblance of privacy.

Christ, what had he been thinking? He'd lived his whole life not knowing who he was, and Kolivan had enough real Blades that he wasn't really necessary here. Hell, half the time he was the reason missions deviated from the plan. What good was he doing here? Why had he let himself think that Blade training was a good idea? He could've gone back once Shiro'd re-established his bond with Black, his place at Voltron's head. Could've found a way to work around whatever had happened during Shiro's absence, could have found a way to keep himself from tripping over the new things that set Shiro on edge. Could've found a way not to want too much, a way to make it work again. Should have found a way to keep his promise.

But he hadn't.

Kolivan waited for him in the planning room that doubled as his office; the door opened at Keith's approach. He was alone, had his mask lowered, and waited for Keith to come to attention in front of him. They regarded each other silently and for once it was Kolivan who spoke first. "The Altean princess has requested that we release you from duty and send you back to Voltron."

"Yes. I know." His voice creaked, too quiet in his own ears. It was all he could bring himself to say.

Eventually Kolivan realized as much; the lines on his face deepened as he frowned. "Do you have some objection to this request?"

"No, sir." What was there to object to? What did it matter if he served as a Blade or as—as—what did it even matter?

Kolivan studied him, frown deep, but accepted that. "I've sent word to the princess. They will have a wormhole for you in a varga's time. Ilun will pilot you to their ship."

"Yes, sir." Ilun would like that, dropping him off and leaving him.

Kolivan waited—and waited a little more—before sighing. "That is all. You may go and prepare for your trip."

"Thank you, sir." There was a certain relief in the refuge of formality—at least he didn't have to think, didn't have to string together coherent sentences when his brain was stuck on a single phrase (as many times as it takes).

Kolivan waited a moment and sighed again, waving him out.

Moving as slowly as he was—what was the point of hurrying?—it took a good portion of the allotted varga to gather the small accumulation of his belongings and trudge back down to the hangar. Ilun was already there. Even though she was perfectly still, Keith could tell she was impatient. "There you are. Come on."

Keith boarded the little shuttle and stowed his bag before taking the copilot's seat. Ilun was equally silent but for the quiet exchanges with the communications Blade who cleared them for departure. "Be quiet and let me focus," she ordered as she aimed the nose of the shuttle at the route out to normal space.

Keith didn't bother pointing out that he hadn't been speaking to begin with. He didn't bother fretting about Ilun's piloting, either. She was getting it done, if without much finesse.

Normal space bloomed before them all too quickly, and it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes before the wormhole spun into existence.

"Timed that well," Ilun noted, steering the shuttle through.

Keith didn't have anything to say about that, either.

Ilun allowed him his silence and handled the business of hailing the Castle of Lions on the other side of the wormhole. Coran was the one to answer; his cheerful voice seemed to fill the cockpit of the Marmora shuttle. Keith flinched from it and couldn't even be bothered to care that Ilun probably noticed. "There you are, Number Four! Welcome home. You can dock your craft in the guest shuttle bay."

Ilun waited until it was clear that Keith wasn't going to respond; her voice was clipped when she answered. "Acknowledged. Requesting further instructions for this shuttle bay."

"Er—yes, of course. Transmitting those in just a tick—there you go." Coran paused. "Er. Is Number Four with you?"

"I am accompanied by the one called Keith, if that is what you mean," Ilun replied as she directed the shuttle towards the designated bay.

"Oh, yes, that is. Very good. You had me a bit worried there." Coran did sound relieved. "I'll just send someone down to the guest bay to meet you and conduct you to guest quarters—"

"There will be no need for that. I must return to headquarters and my duties."

Ilun meant for that to cut, no doubt. It did, if not for the reason she thought. She would carry out her duties and not be swayed from them, no matter the cost.

"Ah. Very well, then. I'll see to it that we have a wormhole for you, in that case."

"Acknowledged," Ilun said before closing the connection and piloting the shuttle into the airlock, and then into the bay proper, bringing it to rest on the wide, empty deck. She didn't say anything else until the indicator confirmed the presence of breathable atmosphere outside the shuttle. "There you go."

It sounded more like Get off my ship to Keith.

"Thanks." Keith slung his bag over his shoulder and disembarked—that was that, wasn't it? He'd barely got clear before the shuttle was lifting away from the deck and pivoting for the airlock again with the kind of haste Keith associated with failed missions.

It stood to reason.

Lance met him on the other side of the bay doors, breathing fast like he'd had to run to make it in time. "About time you showed up."

Later, maybe, he'd have enough energy to let Lance pick a fight. Would welcome a fight, maybe. Just then he didn't have the wherewithal for it. Didn't have anything, really—so what else was new? "What happened?"

Lance opened his mouth and stopped. "No," he decided. "Better let someone else explain it. I'll just get it mixed up. Besides, everybody is waiting."

Not everybody, but Keith didn't say it. He fell in with Lance, willing his sluggish legs to keep up with Lance's longer strides.

"So where the heck have you even been?" Lance asked, and promptly kept talking like he didn't expect an answer. "Kolivan said you were out on a mission and couldn't be recalled, which is great and all, but sucks for the rest of us when something comes up and we need your special brand of damn the torpedoes, you know?"

Keith did know; why did Lance feel like he had to rub it in?

It was Lance, that was why. He didn't know how to let anything go.

"Like, I know you're all about getting in touch with your inner ninja alien and all, but that seems like the kind of thing that's an ongoing project," Lance continued as they came to one of the lifts. He punched in a code as the doors swished shut. "In the meantime, there's an awful lot of empire out there that wants nothing to do with Emperor Lotor, first of his name, and a lot of former commanders out to grab what they can get, and we could use you here, too. Red misses you."

Red missed him? He missed Red. He missed a lot of things, but there wasn't much point in dwelling on them.

Lance puffed out his cheeks on an expelled breath when Keith stayed silent. "Anyway, think about it, would you? Like, I never said this and if you repeat it I will deny it, but the place isn't the same without you."

That was… that was an odd thing for him to say, wasn't it? It seemed odd to Keith, somehow, though he couldn't put his finger on why it was odd.

The lift opened before he could puzzle through the problem. Lance stepped out and Keith followed. He frowned behind his mask. "This is the Lions' deck."

"Yeah, duh, of course it is." Lance was already striding down the corridor. "C'mon, we're burning daylight here."

He hadn't been away for so long that he'd forgotten the way the ship was laid out. Lance was heading for the Black Lion's hangar.

No. God. Were they going to throw him right back into Black? There was something clawing at Keith's throat, but he couldn't say whether it was a sob or a scream. He didn't dare open his mouth to find out, either.

"Come on, Mullet!" Lance called over his shoulder.

Keith set his teeth against his lip and forced himself to move, to trudge after Lance, each step heavier than the last.

Lance reached the hangar well ahead of him; his voice came booming back down the corridor to Keith: "Hey, guys, guess what the cat dragged in!"

Keith heard the reply, though it was faint. Pidge, by the sounds of it: "Lance, we've talked about your self-esteem problem. It's never going to get better if you keep putting yourself down like that."

Lance laughed, unruffled. "Yeah, okay, I left myself open for that one. Seriously, though, Keith's here."

"We were here when Coran paged you, y'know." Hunk that time. As Keith stepped into the hangar, he saw that Pidge and Hunk were both poring over a set of computers and one of the holographic Altean interfaces that were set up at Black's feet. Allura was standing a little way off, talking to Shiro.

"What the fuck," Keith said as his knees gave out beneath him. That was Shiro turning away from Allura with a smile that was flashing over into open concern. Keith dismissed the mask from his face, desperate to see with his own eyes. Shiro didn't disappear. "What the fuck?"

Lance was the closest and therefore the first to where Keith was distantly aware of the ache in his knees, so much less pressing than the maelstrom of relief-confusion-disbelief that Shiro was there, Shiro was fine, Shiro wasn't—hadn't—Shiro was fine. "Whoa, Keith, dude, are you all right?"

"I thought Shiro was dead." It came out in a croak, more than Keith wanted to share, really, but he couldn't stop himself from saying it, just like he couldn't keep his eyes off Shiro—Shiro, who'd started forward a few steps before stopping, expression twisting into uncertainty. "You called me and said you needed me and I thought that it meant Shiro was dead."

"Oh. Oh, shit—" Lance rocked back on his heels; Keith hated the dawning sympathy on his face. "Wait, didn't anyone tell you what's going on?"

Allura covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide. "Oh, quiznak. I'm afraid it didn't occur to me. I am sorry, Keith. You must have been incredibly distressed."

Incredibly distressed. Hah. That was one way to put it. "Forget about it, it's fine." Keith ignored the hand Lance was offering him and pushed himself to his feet, uncomfortably aware that they were all staring at him.

"Still, I am very sorry," she said, sincere and contrite and sympathetic, just like the rest of them.

It made Keith itch to be the focus of that much sympathy, sympathy mingled with curiosity. It was too much like his last few days at the Garrison. "Never mind, forget about it." The faster they moved on, the happier he'd be about the whole thing. Keith folded his arms across his chest and wished it wouldn't be too obvious that he was hiding if he brought his mask back up. "Why am I here?"

That worked; they started exchanging uneasy glances. No one seemed to want to be the one to start explaining. Pidge and Hunk very pointedly buried themselves in the computers and Lance held his hands up, shaking his head. "Nuh-uh, this one is way above my paygrade."

Which left Allura and Shiro conducting some kind of silent negotiation through raised eyebrows, small frowns, and the tilting of chins at Black, at Keith, at Shiro himself. She won, maybe, because Shiro sighed, shoulders slumping, and rubbed his hand over his face before meeting Keith's eyes. "So you remember that new quintessence you were working to track?"

"Yeah, of course." Shiro hadn't seemed all that interested in in before, had shut him down every time he'd wanted to discuss one of the leads a Blade mission had turned up. Keith was still too relieved to see him safe and sound to be more than mildly annoyed by the thought.

"Figured you might." Shiro smiled, the expression strangely tilted. "We found out where it's coming from."

"Okay…?" That was the kind of information that could have been relayed in a report. It didn't need him to come back to the Castle of Lions to receive it in person. It should have been routed to Kolivan, who'd have decided whether the rest of the Blades needed to be made aware of the information or not.

Shiro rocked on his heels just a bit—was he fidgeting? "Yes, well, it turns out it has an organic source. And that it was one of Haggar's projects."

He was definitely fidgeting. And doing everything he could not to look at Keith. Ominous. Keith took a deep breath to brace himself and said, "Spit it out already. What is it?"

(He was glad, later, that he'd resisted the impulse to add, "How bad could it be?")

Shiro winced but got to the point. "She's using clones. Of, um. The black paladin." He met Keith's eyes for a split second and looked away again just as fast. "And I'm one of the clones."

"What?" There was no way he'd heard any of that right. It was impossible. This had to be a joke, Shiro was standing right there—

"It's more space magic masquerading as science bullshit," Pidge said sourly while Keith reeled. "It shouldn't be possible, but here we are anyway."

A hundred little things that had bothered Keith at the time, little things that had seemed strange but had made sense, maybe, if he chalked them up to a second round of Galra captivity—those things came back to Keith in a rush, making a new, horrible kind of sense. "If that isn't Shiro, then where's Shiro? The real Shiro?" He'd stopped looking when Black had found that little Galra fighter drifting in space, he'd stopped looking, God, he really had broken his promise to Shiro without even realizing it—

Lance slapped a palm against Keith's back, jarring him. "Keith, breathe."

Keith sucked in a shuddering breath, but that just spawned a different train of thought. He pointed at Shi—not Shiro. The clone. "What's that even doing here, if it's not Shiro? If it's one of Haggar's creations, then—"

The clone flinched but didn't protest. It was Lance who moved his hand up and gripped Keith's shoulder, heavy even through his Blade armor. "Gonna need you to dial it back like ten notches there, Mullet, and aim your whole emotional crisis away from the innocent bystanders." For all the easy tone, his jaw was set and his eyes were hard. Serious. Keith couldn't say he understood Lance on a good day, but Lance was definitely standing up for—the clone.

"Indeed, Keith, we understand that you must be upset by this," Allura said, "but please don't jump to any hasty conclusions." Lance snorted and muttered something under his breath that Keith decided not to hear. "Certainly Haggar meant us no good with this phase of her project, but we have taken steps to neutralize the danger, and all of our allies are aware of the breach within our network."

The breach—oh, God. Keith stared at the clone, gut twisting. "It was a spy?" That meant that Haggar, and who knew who else, knew that he—

"He was being used to spy on us, yes," she said crisply. "However, as it was Ryou himself who realized the problem—"

"Lance, actually," the clone said, not looking at anyone directly. "He was the one who put it all together."

"Yeah, but you were the one who knew that there was something to put together in the first place," Lance said, bizarrely cheerful.

The princess sighed. "If I may be allowed to continue? Thank you." She folded her hands together and cleared her throat. "Ryou is no longer a threat to Voltron, you may be assured of that. And we need your help because we think you're the only one who'll be able to help us retrieve Shiro himself."

Okay, Keith had questions—so many questions, starting at what the fuck and going all the way through no really, what the actual fuck—but he set those aside, and the sick, violated feeling aside for the most important question of all: "You know where Shiro is? What do you need me to do?" There would be time enough for everything else later, if only they could bring Shiro safely home.

Hunk passed Pidge what looked like a wad of GAC; the princess smiled. (The clone—Ryou, had they given it a name?—smiled too, but Keith ignored that.) "If we're interpreting our information correctly, we need someone that the Black Lion trusts to ask for Shiro's return."

"Ask the Black Lion for Shiro's return," Keith repeated.

"Space magic bullshit," Pidge said yet again, sounding just as frustrated as Keith felt. She leaned back from the computer she'd hunched over and pushed up her glasses. "All of that time we—you—spent hunting for Shiro and it didn't occur to anyone that maybe the Black Lion's whole teleportation thing—which is also bullshit, matter doesn't work like that—might have had something to do with why we couldn't find anything. And for the record, 'You didn't ask' is not an acceptable defense when Black tries to pull it on you, because how the fuck would we have known to ask?"

"Pidge, the Lions have a completely different frame of reference from us." It sounded rehearsed, like the princess had said as much before. "Much as we don't understand everything about them, they do not understand everything about us."

"And I'm still with Pidge on this one," Hunk said. "If Red and Black couldn't suss out how much Keith wanted Shiro back and toss him a bone, then yeah, that's bullshit."

"I think there was a reason," the imposter said. "I'm not sure what it was, but I get the impression that maybe it wasn't safe for him to come back."

"Sure, because we should take your word for it," Keith snapped, chest tight—he'd mistaken a clone for Shiro, hadn't had the trust of Red or Black, hadn't know that Shiro was still out there—

"Lay off him, Keith," Lance said, shaking his shoulder, not gently. "Beat yourself up later. Right now we've got bigger fish to fry."

Keith took a breath, trying to get a grip on himself. "Fine. What is it that I need to do?" Surely there was more to it than asking Black to give Shiro back.

"Go sit in the pilot's chair and ask the Black Lion to give Shiro back," Hunk said.

Or maybe not. "You seriously called me back from Marmora headquarters for that? Didn't any of you try?"

"Of course we tried," Lance retorted. "We all tried. Black isn't talking to any of us right now. You were the black paladin for a while, thought, so we're hoping that maybe you can get through to her."

"Space magic bullshit," Pidge muttered; Hunk reached over at tapped his fist against hers.

"Please, Keith," the princess said. "All we ask is that you try."

Of course he'd try. He just didn't see why he'd have any more luck than the rest of them. He wasn't even a paladin any more. "All right." Keith shook his head over it all, though objectively speaking this was no more ridiculous than anything else that had happened since he'd seen a ship enter Earth's atmosphere just like the stone carvings in a forgotten cave had said would happen. "Why not?"

He skirted around the princess and the clone; Black was already crouched, jaw open to admit him. It'd been months since he'd been inside any of the Lions, but it still felt familiar—the sound of his boots against the ramp, the dim Altean lighting that guided him to the cockpit, and the chair that sat empty the way it had after their battle with Zarkon.

Black's presence folded around him, too, so different from Red's—Black was deep and old and vastly patient where Red was the crackle of flame and motion, the desire to hunt and fight and the joy of battle—

Yeah, that wasn't getting him anywhere. Keith took the pilot's seat; Black's cockpit lit up with the soft purple glow of the consoles. Keith rested his hands on the controls and closed his eyes, trying to calm himself enough to reach out to Black.

Black was already there, waiting for him. One of the homes he'd been placed in for a while had had a cat who'd learned to like him enough to come greet him. Black felt a little bit like that now, a vaster version of the welcoming twine around his ankles and the reproof that felt like she was saying You left, you've been gone, why were you gone for so long?

It didn't seem ridiculous to reach back to Black the same way he would have done to that cat so long ago, to run mental fingers through Black's fur as a silent apology for what he'd thought he'd needed to do so that the rightful black paladin could have his place back.

Black's presence rippled with a sense of affront. Had she not chosen him? Anyone she had chosen was surely her rightful paladin.

Keith's breath caught on something like a sob, because it was supposed to be Shiro, Shiro was the black paladin, Shiro was supposed to be sitting here, not him—

Black relented; he could feel her twining around him, curling around him as if to shelter him, purring to him, apology and absolution all at once, and a promise that all would be well.

It was clearly meant to soothe, but it had the opposite effect. Keith choked on another of those sounds that weren't sobs because he would not permit them to be and pressed the heels of his palms against his treacherous, burning eyes. "Please, I just want him back."

At first he thought the sparks of light he saw against the darkness behind his eyelids were nothing more than the result of grinding his palms against his eyes, but they multiplied exponentially, exploding outwards to fill a dark sky with stars. The ground beneath his feet wasn't ground at all, it was a smooth surface of water that reflected the starlight back at the sky.

As much of the universe as he'd seen as a paladin and then as a Blade, he'd never seen any sight to compare to this. It was enough to ease the ache in Keith's throat and the sting of his eyes with wonder. He turned in place, staring at the patterns of the stars, and stopped short.

He was used to the Lions as mechanical creatures, beings of metal and magic, but this Lion looked like the pictures of lions he'd seen in books on Earth, a creature of—not flesh and bone, those weren't made of a darkness so profound that it made the eyes ache, nor were they spangled with stars. But it was a Lion all the same, resting on her paws and belly, the very tip of her tail twitching slightly as she regarded Keith.

Shiro was nestled between her forepaws, dwarfed by her size, looking for all the world as though he'd curled up there and decided to take a nap.

Keith didn't decide to move; one moment he was staring at the impossible Lion and the equally impossible man sleeping between her paws, and the next he was stumbling forward, trying to get to them before they wavered like a mirage and disappeared.

They didn't disappear.

Black watched him come, watched him skid to a stop at her paws, and lowered her head to him. Her breath gusted over him, hot. Keith heard a voice inside his skull that reverberated like a purr. There you are.

It was a voice, it was words, when he'd never gotten more than flashes of impressions from Black. It was more than he'd ever gotten from Red. "Black," Keith said, stupidly, because he didn't know what else he should say.

She chuffed and butted her muzzle against his chest. Keith had to put his hands up to keep from being knocked off his feet. She chuffed again when he touched her nose. His fingers were bare, he realized as he sank them into velvet fur. He wasn't wearing his Blade uniform any more—he was in the same civvies he'd been wearing when they'd fallen into Blue's cavern.

It made as much sense as the endless field of stars and water did, so Keith let it go as he rubbed his fingers over Black's muzzle. She slitted her eyes and her voice in his head sounded pleased. Speak, cub.

There were half a dozen questions that Keith could think of, like Have you had him this whole time or Why didn't' you say something or Why did you do this? But in the end, there was only one question that truly mattered. "Please." His voice cracked on the word, but he plunged on regardless. "Please. Can I have him back?"

Black butted his chest, gentle enough that he kept his feet. He sleeps now. Wake him. He will be glad to see you. She lifted her head, making way for Keith.

The water didn't seem to soak the legs of his jeans when he dropped to his knees between her paws. Shiro was wearing his civvies, too, when by rights he should have been in the paladin armor he'd disappeared in. More of Pidge's magical space bullshit, Keith figured, dismissing the thought as quickly as it had come.

Shiro had his cheek pillowed against one of Black's forelegs and his arms folded across his chest. His breathing was deep and even and the shadows Keith had grown used to seeing under his eyes seemed to have vanished.

Black rumbled when Keith simply stared. Do not fear.

Easy for the giant psychic Lion to say, but Keith steeled himself anyway and leaned forward to close a hand on Shiro's shoulder. (It was warm and solid; Keith shuddered with the wash of his relief.) "Shiro?"

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then Shiro stirred under his hand, the steady rhythm of his breathing changing, and he opened his eyes. "Keith," he murmured, unfolding himself and sitting up slowly. "Is it time to go home already?"

"Already?" Keith asked, faintly aware that he was probably supposed to take his hand off Shiro's arm at this point, but not inclined to do any such thing. "It's been months."

"Joking," Shiro said, eyes crinkling at the corners just a bit, the way they did whenever he was fighting not to smile. He covered Keith's hand with his own, squeezing it. "Only joking."

"Not funny," Keith gritted out—no, no, his throat was not going to start aching again, he wasn't going to do this, he wasn't—

"Hey." Shiro let go of his hand, but only so he could rock forward and pull Keith in. He wrapped his arms around Keith, tight enough to press a startled breath out of Keith. "Hey, Keith, buddy, it's all right."

"You were gone," Keith said—gasped, really. "You were gone again, Shiro—"

"Shh, I know, I'm sorry." Shiro curved his hand around the back of Keith's neck, gripping it. "I didn't mean to, I promise. I'm sorry."

"You were gone," Keith said again, burying his face against Shiro's shoulder as though that was going to camouflage how thick his voice had gotten.

"I know," Shiro said against his ear. "I know, I'm sorry, I really am. I never meant to leave you, I promise."

But he had, though Keith couldn't quite get the words out.

At least Shiro didn't seem to mind the mess Keith was making of his shoulder. He kept his hand on the back of Keith's neck, rubbing it gently until Keith was able to catch his breath again. "Better?" he said then, though he didn't move his hand.

Keith didn't know whether he'd recognize better if it smacked him in the face, so he ignored the question. "I was crap at leading Voltron, you know."

"You were inexperienced," Shiro countered, squeezing his nape. "And emotionally compromised. Which is something I should have thought about, maybe, when I was worrying about what would happen to Voltron if something happened to me."

Black rumbled above them. Still my choice in the end.

Keith felt Shiro tip his head back. "Yes, but if I'd had my head on straight, I'd have pushed for the princess instead."

Perhaps, Black said. Perhaps.

Keith raised his head for Shiro's shoulder and scrubbed the cuff of his jacket across his eyes. Shiro let him do it without remarking on it, which was something, anyway. Keith latched on to what he could in order to save his dignity. "How do you know I wasn't crap at leading Voltron? You weren't there."

It was both an accusation and not, but Shiro just nodded his his head, accepting the charge. "Black was," he said, as though it were just that simple. "And I was here."

Safe, Black put in.

Keith pushed back from him. "You were here the whole time?" Better to seize on that than the fact that Shiro was making it sound like anything Black had witnessed, he'd witnessed too. It was better for what was left of his self-respect that way.

Shiro winced and reached out, catching Keith's hands and gripping them. "Yes, I suppose I have been. Not because I wanted to be, it was—" He stopped and shook his head. "I'm explaining this badly. Let me start over." He squeezed Keith's hands. "That fight against Zarkon—you remember the blast that knocked us apart?"

"The komarr, yes." Impossible to forget Red's terrible unresponsiveness afterwards or the bone-deep, aching weariness of being drained of his quintessence. "I remember."

"And you remember that Black and I managed to swipe the black bayard right out of Zarkon's hands?" Keith nodded and Shiro smiled, rueful. "All that and the last of that battle took a lot out of me—out of Black, too—so she did the only thing she could think of to keep us both going and brought us here."

Keith sucked in a breath so sharp that it felt like it would leave him bleeding. "You mean—"

"It was pretty close," Shiro admitted. He didn't wince when Keith gripped his hands tightly. "But what she wasn't counting on was the stowaway." Black growled; the harmonics of the sound put chills down Keith's spine and made his hair stand up. "Zarkon came along for the ride, or his mind did anyway, and he made himself pretty annoying there for a while."

Pretty annoying, in the mouth of the king of understatement himself, probably meant that Shiro had been fighting for his life. "He's dead now," Keith said—or was he asking for confirmation? Maybe both.

Maybe no one else would have noticed the way Shiro's shoulders dropped the tiniest bit, but Keith had been studying Takashi Shirogane for a very long time. The news came as a relief. "Is he? We'd hoped it was true when he disappeared, but it was hard to be sure. Black isn't very good at reading—the other me."

"The clone." Keith watched Shiro take a deep breath and try to look nonchalant, like having a clone of himself take his place on the team was just another day and not yet another profound violation at the hands of the Galra. "I should have known he wasn't you, I should've seen that he was all wrong—"

Not all wrong, Black interrupted. She reflected. Not all right.

Shiro snorted, mouth curling, wry. "What Black said. It's not your fault. He's a lot like me. And he was supposed to be able to fool the rest of you."

"I should have known," Keith insisted. "After—I should have realized." Shiro didn't break promises; that wasn't who he was, that was why he was so careful when offering his word.

"After?" Shiro prompted, because that was the other thing about him. He always, always seemed to know exactly how to get straight to the heart of whatever it was that had Keith tangled up.

God. He thought he'd understood how much he'd missed Shiro, but he'd forgotten what it was like to feel so known.

He didn't realize he'd let the silence drag on too long while he coped with the rush of relief until Shiro said his name, jolting him back to—not reality, exactly, but the moment. Keith shook his head, trying to clear it or at least rearrange his thoughts into some coherent order. "After we got you—him back. Or not back. After I thought I'd gotten you back." That was probably the best way to think of it. "After that—after—he—was out of the healing pods and back on his feet, I tried to have that conversation you promised we'd have after putting Zarkon down." As Shiro's eyes went wide, comprehending, Keith looked down at their linked hands. "It didn't—he, um. Shut me down. I just… figured that you'd changed your mind."

"Well," Shiro said after a moment, "now we know for sure that the two of us aren't the same person, even if he is my clone." Keith looked up from their hands to catch the edges of Shiro's grin. "I've really been looking forward to picking that conversation back up, when I wasn't kicking myself for putting it off in the first place."

"You—what?" Cautious hope was one thing, but this was—so much more than what he'd dared to hope.

"After Zarkon—disappeared, or died, or whatever—there wasn't a whole lot to do around here but think," Shiro said. "I… had some time to work through some things."

Time for healing, Black purred. Time for resting. Time for what was needful.

Shiro glanced up at Black, the smile he gave her fond. "And eventually just time for us to work on getting his attention. And time to wait." He lowered his eyes to meet Keith's. "And time to hope."

Time to—time to hope. That really did sound as though Shiro—"Are you sure?" Keith blurted; it seemed to surprise him. "Please, you have to be sure, I can't do this again if you change your mind—"

Shiro's expression cleared. "I've never been more sure of anything."

And Shiro didn't break his word. God.

"Okay," Keith breathed, barely able to say that much. "Okay." It was all he could manage against the thudding of his heart against his ribcage, against the aching hope and the possibility that it might be fulfilled.

"Yeah," Shiro said, equally hushed. He tugged on Keith's hands, the barest coaxing pressure, but it was enough. Keith flowed into the movement, releasing Shiro's hands to reach for Shiro instead. Shiro caught him, pulling him the rest of the way in, and threaded a hand into his hair. "Hey," he said, close enough that Keith could feel his breath on his lips.

"Shiro," Keith said, closing that last tiny distance and pressing their mouths together.

Shiro pressed his thumb against the corner of his jaw, coaxing him into tilting his head so that their mouth moved against each other, fitting together perfectly. Keith closed his hands on Shiro's shoulders and licked his way into Shiro's mouth, hot-slick-soft, and felt the tremor move through Shiro in response.

Black purred to them both, her satisfaction nearly tangible in the way it wrapped around them.

Keith didn't know how much time had passed by the time they broke away from each other, but his mouth felt tender and Shiro's lips were red and wet. Shiro leaned his forehead against Keith's and stroked his thumb against his jaw. "I'm ready to go home, how about you?"

"Yeah," Keith said. "Yeah, let's go."

Black lowered her head to them, nosing at them. Go, she said. Be well. Be happy. The darkness of her fur seemed to ripple; Keith wasn't sure whether he and Shiro were falling into it or it was reaching out to them. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and found himself kneeling in Black's cockpit, halfway into Shiro's lap. The suddenness of the transition gave him vertigo—or maybe it was the fact that Shiro was there, solid and real enough that Keith could feel an edge of his paladin armor digging into his knee firmly enough to be painful.

That didn't stop Keith from biting the inside of his cheek until it stung to assure himself that he was awake, or from running his hands over Shiro's cuirass, up his throat and over his face to confirm that yes, Shiro really was there, warm and safe and smiling at him. He drew a shaking breath. "You're really here."

Shiro leaned into Keith's hand, smiling at him. "Yeah, I really am."

"God," Keith said, or choked, before he flung himself forward, wrapping himself around Shiro and holding onto him as tightly as he could, dizzy with a relief that he barely dared believe in. "God, Shiro."

"I know." Shiro hugged him close and nuzzled his way under the edge of Keith's hood to kiss his temple. "I know."

"Please don't ever do this to me again," Keith said once he felt a little steadier. "Please. As a special favor to me."

"I'll do my best, I promise." Shiro pressed another kiss to his temple and sighed. "God, I've missed you."

Keith drew back a bit so he could look at Shiro. "You missed me?" Only it came out sounding incredulous: you missed me?

Shiro nodded. "More than anything."

"Oh," Keith said, astonished by the enormity of that, by the implication that it wasn't just him who felt—who felt.

"Yeah." Shiro leaned in and kissed him, quick and soft, the barest pressure of his lips against Keith's. It felt like a promise. "I'll tell you all about it later, okay? But the rest of the team are waiting."

They probably were, at that. Funny, he could think of going out to meet them without any tightness in his chest. "Later, then. Since we have the time." They were going to have time, he thought, giddy.

He untangled himself from Shiro and stood; he wasn't entirely sure, but he thought that Shiro's gaze followed each move he made. That was certainly a thought to tuck away for later consideration, so Keith did and stretched his hand down to Shiro, bracing him as he came to his feet.

Shiro didn't let go of his hand. Keith glanced at him, raising his eyebrows. "Shiro…?"

"I don't want to hide this," Shiro said quietly. "Do you?"

Keith considered it. "I don't think I could if I tried," he admitted, turning his hand so he could lace his fingers with Shiro's. "Come on, everyone is waiting."

Hand in hand, they left Black's cockpit to go out to where the others were waiting to welcome them home.

 

 

 

An Epilogue in Four Vignettes

"Wait," Lance said after the first round of hugs and tears had abated some. "Wait, are the two of you holding hands?"

Keith glanced down at his and Shiro's hands, which were indeed clasped together. It had felt only natural to reach out for Shiro's hand once he'd had one free to hold. "…yes?" Why did Lance need to ask when it was obvious?

"Oh my God. Oh my God." Lance waved his hands around wildly, causing Pidge to duck and Hunk to take a quick step out of range. "When did this happen? How long has this been going on? Why wasn't I informed?!"

"Maybe because you have eyes just like the rest of us and we all assumed you knew how to use them?" Pidge suggested.

"Yeah, this has been going on since forever, dude," Hunk added.

"What?!" Lance screeched.

Keith couldn't help himself; he threw his head back and laughed.

 

 

 

Eventually Shiro looked around and frowned slightly. "Aren't we missing someone?"

Huh, now that he mentioned it, Keith noticed it too. The clone, Ryou, whatever he was calling himself, he was absent.

"Ah, yes," Allura began. She hesitated before continuing. "Ryou thought that perhaps it would be best to save any introductions until later."

"We weren't sure whether you'd show up knowing about the clone thing already or we'd have to figure out how to break it to you gently, so he cleared out to keep you from having a freak out first thing," Pidge supplied. (Allura grimaced slightly.)

"That was thoughtful of you, but I think I'd like to meet him," Shiro said.

The other four exchanged glances before Lance shrugged. "I'll go get him."

He wasn't gone long and came back with Ryou trailing after him—no longer wearing the black paladin armor. Ryou had switched into civvies, but not the familiar blacks and greys that Shiro favored. His shirt was a vivid royal blue that Keith found rather shocking on someone wearing Shiro's face and Shiro's neutral expression.

Shiro eased his fingers free of Keith's and went to meet him. "So you're Ryou?" He held out his hand. "I'm Takashi."

Ryou was slow to react, giving Shiro a long, searching look before taking his hand. "I'm glad to finally meet you."

It was strange to see two Shiros staring each other down, but—it wasn't two Shiros. It was Shiro, and Ryou, and though they looked nearly identical, it was clear they weren't now that they were standing next to each other. Shiro stood straighter; Ryou's expressions were more open.

After a moment, Ryou materialized the black bayard and offered it to Shiro. "I think this belongs to you."

Shiro accepted it gravely. "Thank you for looking after it for me." He dismissed it and leaned forward, close enough to murmur something to Ryou that Keith couldn't hear.

Whatever it was surprised Ryou, who widened his eyes before ducking his head a bit, smiling. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

(Keith did try to ask what it was Shiro had said to him, later, but all Shiro would say was that it was between him and Ryou, and he had to be content with that.)

 

 

 

"So," Keith said once he'd finally managed to corner Ryou.

Ryou eyed him, clearly wary. Well, that was reasonable.

Keith cleared his throat. "Sorry. I was an asshole before. I shouldn't have been, you didn't deserve that."

Ryou's wariness turned into surprise and then something else that Keith couldn't name (he'd never seen it on Shiro's face). "Oh. It's already forgotten."

"Thanks." Keith stuffed his hands into his pockets, realizing too late that he should have planned out this conversation a little more thoroughly, or at least prepared an exit strategy, or something.

Then Ryou surprised him: "I'm sorry too, you know."

He was? "What for?"

"They sent me to destabilize Voltron." Ryou wasn't quite looking at him. "So some of the things I did, some of the things I said… if they were strange, not what you expected them to be, that was why. I was supposed to be alienating all the other paladins, but I had the most success with you, I think."

"…so all those times you didn't want to—" Keith couldn't figure out how to describe how Ryou-as-Shiro had been, closed-off and impatient and always questioning his judgment, so he left it there.

Ryou seemed to understand what he meant anyway. "Yeah. It wasn't you. It was me. Or Haggar, I guess. I'm sorry. I can see now… I see a lot of things differently now."

All the time he'd spent trying to figure out how to be what Ryou-as-Shiro wanted—well, no wonder he'd never managed to figure it out. "…thanks," Keith said. "I—yeah. Thanks. It's good to know that."

Ryou nodded and looked down. He took a breath, the same way Shiro did when he was gearing himself up. "And—sorry. About the thing right after I got out of the healing pod. I—yeah. I'm sorry about that whole thing, I just—didn't get any of those memories. Though it's probably for the best that I didn't, in the end."

Yeah, the twist of nausea in Keith's gut said that Ryou was right. If Ryou had—if they had—Jesus. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."

Ryou looked up at him. "So… friends now?"

Keith considered it and then nodded. "Yeah, I think we're getting there."

 

 

 

Keith cleared his throat. "Mom? I'd like you to meet my boyfriend, Shiro. Shiro, this is my mom, Krolia."

"An honor to meet you, ma'am," Shiro said.

Krolia looked back and forth between the two of them, eyebrows drawn together just a bit. "Huh," she said finally. "This makes so many things make sense now." She offered Shiro her hand. "I'm glad to finally meet you, Shiro. I believe the human custom is to ask you what your intentions towards my son are."

"Mom," Keith protested, feeling his face go hot, but she ignored him. "Shiro, you don't have to—"

Shiro ignored him, too, standing just a little bit straighter. "To love him with everything I've got for the rest of my life, ma'am."

What? To—what?

Krolia's smile kicked up the corner of her mouth the tiniest bit while Keith stared at Shiro, stunned speechless. "All right," she said, "I think we're going to get along just fine."

Shiro hooked his arm around Keith's shoulders and pulled him closer. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Call me Krolia." Her smile ticked wider. "And do please feel free to tell me all the stories about Keith that he's too embarrassed to tell me himself."

Shiro lit up. "Has he told you that I met him because there was this first-year cadet who absolutely destroyed my flight sim scores on his first run?"

"He has not," Krolia said, glancing at Keith. "Tell me more."

Shiro was only too happy to oblige her.

Keith just groaned and buried his face in Shiro's shoulder so that neither of them could see the way he was smiling.

end

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