a sacred place

by skyview

Summary:

Usually that look of distrust, of distaste, is rooted in the Galra blood. In the near-expectation people have that one day he’s going to lose himself to it.

But he’s never had them look at him like this because of his father, before. Because he dares to call himself human, because he dared to survive.

It’s worse. Somehow, this is so much worse.

- - -

(OR: hurt people hurt people, and after the war, there is plenty of hurt to go around. Keith's burden was set in stone the moment Krolia crashed down to Earth.)

Notes:

keith loves earth and always has even though it has never loved him amen

Keith is so tired of meetings. 

Wake up, shower, meeting. Breakfast, answering comms messages, meeting. Combat training, diplomacy training, meeting. Assembly, occasional intergalactic crisis, meeting. 

It never ends. 

When he was a cadet, a student at the Garrison, all he could see was the thrill. He’d race with Shiro, cliff dive day after day, attend classes on physics and planetary sampling and geomorphology and the possibility of life beyond Earth, and it would send a rush through his blood like nothing else ever had. All movement, all speed, the universe at his fingertips—so many possibilities. A chance to do something that would finally unbind him from the foster homes and the disappointments and the haunting, blank faces of a family he’d never known. 

For a while, it was just that: freedom. It was speeding through the eyes of the cosmos, flashes of color and sound and feeling so small and alive and connected to everything, all at the same time. It was skies and sights and stars, filling him from head to toe, taking his breath away every time. And it was his team—pieces of his soul—living and breathing beside him, gluing him back together piece by piece. 

It was the hum of Red, then Black, rolling through his ribcage—one and the same. The heart of a lion. 

But it’s different, now. Everything is different now. 

It didn’t take long being back on Earth to realize that all of this, to these people? It’s just a job like anything else. A necessary evil.

With the war over, the urgency that had been fueling so much—developments, research, training—has lost momentum. And it’s not a bad thing, he knows. Not really. After everything they’ve been through, the people of Earth—the people of the universe—have earned this. The space to breathe, to recover, to take their time. They’ve earned the right to put this down and remember who they are outside of this particular heartbreak. 

But it’s one thing to rest and another to realize that, to everyone else, this was only ever about survival. And they won. They survived. Which means all those trips through the stars, the thrill of the unknown, the delicious pressure that builds in his chest and sings through his blood in rushes of battle and flame and speed, are over. 

All around him people stand at the ready, eager to return to the lives they led from before, to get back to normal. But Keith never will. He can’t. Keith has no before, nothing worth going back to. He only has this. 

Maybe he’s a little fucked up for feeling this way. Maybe he’s a bad person for carrying this—longing? resentment?—around with him. Obviously he’s glad the war is over. The Empire has done such despicable, such unspeakable things. Of course he’s glad that the fight is largely won, that they cannot hurt anyone else. An era of healing has begun and all those lost souls can be, finally, laid to rest. But each day that passes, he believes more and more that he was never meant to stay here, safe and sound on Earth’s solid terra firma, for this part. 

He gets progress reports every few days from his mother and Kolivan, who are leading Blade missions off-planet and doing the work—sweeping Empire loyalists from still-standing colonies, scouring the galaxy for the last dregs of Zarkon’s scourge, putting their lives between the old regime and all those innocent people still in danger—and feels it in his bones. Deeper than longing, something that aches. Keith sits here on Earth in meeting after meeting and wonders, for the first time in his life, if this is what it feels like to be homesick. 

He found himself out there. Sometimes, he puts on these Garrison uniforms and forgets how to breathe. 

Maybe, he thinks to himself, that’s just what growing up is: holding onto those tiny things that make you feel complete, that make you feel whole and free, tucking them away deep in your chest for safekeeping and dragging your ass to meetings day in and day out for the rest of your life, longing for something more. Maybe that’s how it goes, and this weird, soul-wrenching thing is something everyone feels. 

He knows this is important, too, that he’s the head of Voltron and that that means something in these substantial, administrative ways. He’s a bridge, a liaison, between the Coalition and the Earth and the Blades, pieces of him laid out in all three worlds. It’s in his nature, in his very bones. But he really just wants to do something. His hands itch to curl around Black’s controls and take to the skies. 

It was always about survival for Keith, too, but in a different way. They had to survive the war. Keith just has to survive, period. He’s not sure how to do that here, in this peace, and it unsettles him more than he’d like to admit. When did Earth—this place that’s supposed to be his home—start feeling like some kind of cage?

Keith thought, with the whole defenders-of-the-universe gig, that maybe they would have more freedoms in this post-war world, would be able to travel and operate under their own autonomy without so much overhead by the Garrison. Voltron doesn’t belong to Earth, after all, doesn’t belong to human governments. It serves all, it serves everyone. 

To an extent, they do have some leeway. There is a level of independence and authority they are graced with in the heat of crisis because in many ways, they are the experts, here—

(Despite the protests of Garrison officers about their ages and their lack of official ranks and their meager handfuls of years of experience, most take one look at Voltron in action and default command to the Paladins—or Shiro—on instinct alone.

Which—yeah. Giant, nearly-indestructible mystical robots and all the cosmic wisdom of ten millennia rattling around inside the Lion’s soul-bonds tend to make statements, like that. Go figure.)

—but still they’re snagged in the politics of it all, and if there’s one thing Keith is worse at than dealing with people, it’s dealing with politicians. The Garrison treats them like a military unit under their command, structured and regimented like any other, because they’re human—mostly human—and so everyone wants them to yield to human rules, human regulations. 

But he just wants to fly. He wants to move, to help. It’s all he’s ever wanted. And he can’t, now, without submitting requests, and filling out forms, and scheduling it all out to the minute so he doesn’t violate Garrison air-traffic regulations, and he spends his days being dragged from one soul-crushing, mind-numbing meeting to the next in these rooms that have no windows and no sunlight and he can’t help but feel like he’s not supposed to be here, for this part. 

And the kicker is this, buried beneath his ribcage: he loves Earth. Sunsets over the desert heat, sweeping canyons, skies of red and gold and a horizon so vast it’s like looking at the edge of the universe. His oldest companion—long before Voltron, long before Shiro—has always been the land of his father, the dunes and the blooming saguaro. Part of him wants nothing more than to sink his toes in the sand and close his eyes, because  he’s never more human than when he remembers his pop and nothing makes him remember quite like the echo of that desert-rough laugh in the breeze. 

He misses that Earth, the one he once knew. But that Earth is gone. He doesn’t know where he fits into this new one, with all these eyes on him, looking right through him. Piercing. 

And he’s so tired of meetings. 

They’ve been summoned to another one—the third today alone, some kind of seminar—and he can’t believe this is what the rest of his life is going to look like. He is hit with a wave of envy as he thinks about Allura, the only paladin who managed to escape this administrative nonsense, off and celebrating the rebirth of her planet with Coran and the rest of her people on New Altea.

He sinks down to his seat, the rest of the team falling in around him. Keith squints across the hall to the presentation title card on the large display monitor: 

Earth’s First Contact Mysteries: The Lost Truth of Alien Life.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he pinches at the bridge of his nose. Out of all the idiotic wastes of time, surely this one will be especially pointless. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“They’re a little late to the party, don’t you think?” Hunk says from two seats away, voice colored with a frown, with confusion. “This is all public record, already. Why are we having an assembly on it?”

From the seat beside him, Lance makes zero effort to muffle down a snort of laughter. “Hey,” he whispers, apparently delighted, and knocks his elbow into Keith’s, causing him to look up. “You think they know that one of those first contact mysteries is sitting right here, at this table?”

“If they don’t,” Pidge smiles back, eyes bright with mirth from Lance’s other side, “they will soon enough. It’s hot gossip. It’s bound to come up at some point.”

“Nice,” Keith says dryly. “Thanks, Pidge.” She gives him a cheeky, two-fingered salute, and he moves his gaze towards Shiro. “Do I really have to be here, for this?”

“We all have to be here for this,” Shiro returns, but his smile is more sympathetic, far less amused by the idea. “But, hey—maybe it won’t be so bad? There wasn’t any time for these kind of seminars, before. I think they’re trying to catch up. Maybe it’ll be educational?”

“Educational,” Keith mutters back in disbelief, filled with quickly-mounting dread. He eyes the other attendants as they file in. There must be a hundred people here, maybe more. What he wouldn’t give to be out there with the Blades, right now… “Right. Because we’ve always been so lucky.”

The lights dim. Keith braces himself for the train wreck he can only imagine this will be. 

“Before the Galran invasion of Earth,” a voice begins, routed through a speaker system to project throughout the large conference room, and the chatter around him quiets, attentions drawn. At the front of the room, an unfamiliar-looking officer decorated with commander’s stripes approaches the monitor. Keith’s never seen him before and wonders, briefly, how someone who’s never met the Paladins themselves has enough information on Earth’s first contact with aliens to warrant a presentation this large, with the highest-ranking military personnel on the planet. 

With the room’s attention, the commander smiles. It strikes Keith as a weasely kind of thing, tight and dishonest, and he sinks further down into his seat, wishing the floor would swallow him entirely. 

“Before the Galran invasion of Earth,” he repeats, “the Galaxy Garrison had record of a handful of unexplainable celestial events in the last century, as well as one we now know dates back thousands of years.” 

He flicks the presentation forward to show a crude take on a timeline of events, circles drawn at particular years. Keith recognizes some of the dates: the day Shiro’s pod crashed down; the day they’d first traveled through that wormhole in the Blue Lion, off to a galaxy far, far away. Thrust into something greater than any of them had ever imagined.

“Some of these events have since been brought to light—others, we are still digging for information on. Today, I’d like to provide transparency in these endeavors with the community, present my working theses, and open the floor for a broader, more collaborative discussion.”

The commander—Frost, his badge reads, clear to Keith’s keen eyes—takes a few wandering steps as he speaks. The name does not ring a bell. 

“The first contact on record,” Frost announces, and clicks through to the next slide. There are photos of the caves by his pop’s old shack, the depictions of the Blue Lion that he’d found what feels like lifetimes ago. “This phenomenon was traced back to some deep desert canyons not far at all from the Garrison itself. Knowing what we know now, this contact was, for all intents and purposes, a supply drop. Alien lifeforms—the Alteans, excuse me—sent what we now know to be the Blue Lion of Voltron to Earth, many thousands of years ago, to find its new Paladin. Yes, you in the front, there?”

“That’s actually not… fully correct, sir.”

Frost pauses where he stands, narrows his eyes towards where Hunk had spoken up. “Pardon me?”

Hunk, hand half-raised as if in class, lowers it quickly to rub at the back of his head. “The Alteans didn’t—well, okay, two Alteans were there—but it was the original Voltron paladins who sent the Lions away, after sealing the Black Lion in the Castle. It wasn’t just the Alteans, it was a team of aliens from all over who were working together to prevent the Galra from gaining power.”

“Well they didn’t do a very good job, did they?” someone mutters snidely, under their breath but loud in the quiet, and Keith feels a heat bubble up in his chest. He sits forward, immediately defensive. 

“Excuse me?” Keith says, challenges, low and measured as his eyes cut over. 

The speaker of the voice—a young lieutenant, barely old enough to wear the uniform at all—just tips his chin down. “Nothing,” the boy feigns innocence, eyes averted. “Nothing at all.”

Narrowing his own gaze, Keith sits back in his chair. It’s not unfamiliar, the blatant hostility; as strong as the alliance between Earth and the Voltron Coalition may be, people still have their reservations after so many years of devastation. There are some who blame Voltron as much as the Empire—for not showing up sooner, for leaving Earth vulnerable to attack. There are some that blame Voltron for sending the Blue Lion here, getting Earth involved in their war at all. 

It’s not unusual to get that kind of pushback. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting, somewhere deep down, to sit there and take it when people treat them like they’re the enemies, here. They’ve given their lives to this cause, taken lives for this cause, and to some it still is not enough. It never will be. 

There’s a guilt he harbors, aching like a wound, when he thinks of everything they could’ve done better. It’s a motivation as much as it is a shackle, locking him in place. If he lets his mind linger there—all the mistakes, all the suffering they didn’t stop, every time they showed up too late—it would freeze him solid. 

“…Anyways,” Hunk continues slowly, eyeing the same boy analytically. “The old Paladins sent the Lions away, not to look for their next pilots necessarily, but to just—keep them away from Zarkon. It was just—lucky, I think? That Earth gave way to the next round of paladins? Right-place-right-time kinda situation?”

The commander, upstaged on slide one, scowls in Hunk’s direction. Clearly displeased by the interruption, he presses his lips tight. His eyes scan across them, the row that the Paladins have taken up, and if he knows who they are, his expression does not give it away. “Well, who’s to say what happened, anyway?” he deflects. “It was, as I’m sure you know, so very long ago…”

“Uh,” Lance says, frowning now, and it’s becoming increasingly clear to Keith that this can all become tenuous very, very easily.“Actually, we do know what happened? Voltron’s submitted some pretty detailed reports on it.”

“…As I said, it’s all speculation anyways… The point, here, officers, is that Earth has been known to the far galaxies long before we knew of them.”

And—well, okay. Apparently Frost’s idea of a collaborative discussion entails no discussion at all, really. 

Lance’s brow creases, and he sends quick looks the rest of the team’s way. “No, I mean—sorry, excuse me. It’s just that we got the accounts from that day. It’s a whole… magical space mumbo-jumbo thing. But it’s true. And not to mention, I know Coran doesn’t look a day over six hundred, but he was literally in the room where it happened, if you know what I mean—”

“Now!” the commander says, cutting Lance off. Taken aback, Lance opens his mouth as if to protest, but Frost barrels on without pause. “Twenty-five years ago, evidence arose of a strange and unidentified flying object arriving at this—” he clicks the presentation forward to a screenshot of a desert map, one very familiar region boxed in red, “—deep-desert dwelling. Again, not far from the Garrison, and not far from the caves, either. We’ve only recently acquired the technology to unscramble the extraterrestrial signals that had jammed up Galaxy Garrison feeds, but in doing so, we’ve recovered some very interesting frames from the satellites.”

“Oh,” Keith sighs, expression twisting in distaste, “here we go.”

“It has come to light,” the commander continues, voice booming, “that the first proof of sentient life beyond our star system, the first extraterrestrial to cross into Earth’s atmosphere, was on-planet for as little as one and as many as two—two!—calendar years, according to the timeline of the other celestial events.”

The room oohs and ahhs and acts appropriately amazed, as if this is not common knowledge by now. Keith grimaces and shifts in his seat, skin too-tight around him. 

“Now hold on, here,” Frost shushes them, “stay with me. Because astounding it may be, evidence suggests that the inhabitant of this dwelling—an adult male, mid-thirties—not only broke the Intergalactic Species Accordance Act by withholding this information, but also harbored this illegal alien, unbeknownst to the world, for the length of its stay.”

Keith’s brows pinch tight, that trickle of annoyance swelling brighter, hotter, sparking to life in his chest like a flame. It’s one thing to talk about the history of Earth’s introduction to alien life, the first time humanity came face-to-face with the unknown; uncomfortable it may be to sit through, it’s not a story that belongs to any one person. Not him or his parents, even if they’re playing an unfortunate leading role in it. 

It’s another thing entirely to paint it like his father did something morally abject. To refer to Krolia as an it.

Keith sits forward. “Sir,” he begins, trying to stay as cordial as he can, “excuse me. The ISAA didn’t exist twenty-five years ago. You can’t criminalize someone for breaking a law that wasn’t a law at the time.”

“Astounding, isn’t it,” the commander goes on, as if Keith had not said a word, and pulls up a new set of images: recovered satellite photos that depict a crashed and mangled Empire fighter jet, torn open from the outside. Keith’s heart lurches. He’s seen it before, in those memories from the abyss, but it’s hard to look at the sharp wreckage of scrap metal and not picture his mother, trapped inside, so far from her home. Hurt, and stranded. “Though, please, I ask for your attention here, as it has become clear this first alien invader—”

Keith’s hands curl into fists. “Alien invader?” he bites under his breath, quiet enough that only Lance and Shiro, beside him, seem to hear. Their eyes land on him, but his vision is bleeding red and he can’t tear his own gaze away from that pinched, weasly face. 

“—was, in fact, a Galra scout sent by Emperor Zarkon himself! Twenty-five years ago, collecting knowledge of our weaknesses and feeding it back to the Empire. Priming Earth for conquer. Can you believe it?”

Keith is on his feet in an instant. “That’s not true,” he insists, and he doesn’t care if he’s making a scene, doesn’t care if he’s veered beyond the code of conduct. He’s got all the eyes in the room, now, and he tries to clear his head, clear his voice, before speaking. 

“That’s not true,” he repeats, more calmly. “I mean—yes, she was sent by the Empire, and yes she was Galra, but she was undercover. Working with the Blade of Marmora.”

“Ah,” Frost appeases, “yes, yes. The Blade of Marmora, the Galra rebel unit. Are we to simply believe that the next two events—a group of similar warships landing, and one retreating back to the stars,” he skips ahead a few slides, shows craters in the desert clay and ruined ships appearing nothing more than scrap metal, “were simply—what? A happy coincidence? Are you saying this Galra spy did not, in fact, confirm the location of the Blue Lion and then share that location with the Empire? Put Earth right into Zarkon’s crosshairs?”

“She would never do that,” Keith says, firm and insistent. “The ships that landed after—they were scouts that got ahold of the Blue Lion’s quintessence signature. That’s all. The Blade took care of them, ensured that they wouldn’t be able to send that information back to the Empire, and then she—” His voice goes rough, just a little, just enough. “And then she used one of their ships to leave Earth. She went back undercover in the Empire to try and take them down from the inside. To steer them away from us, and the Blue Lion. She has been instrumental in shielding Earth from the Galra.”

The commander takes in the words with something like an amused smirk, such a condescending little purse to his lips that Keith wants to punch it away. “Pretty convenient, is it not? That the one supposedly tasked with our protection was nowhere in sight, safe and sound while the Earth was brought to its knees?”

Keith’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “Who even are you? I’ve never even seen you at the Garrison, before. Who the hell do you think you are, here?”

“Woah, woah—Keith, hey.” And there’s Shiro, on his feet beside him with a displeased frown creasing his forehead, but civil to a fault. He spares a glance towards Frost and tips his head genially, guiding Keith back down to his chair. “Apologies, Commander,” he says, though his expression is sour, like he’s tasted a particularly strong lemon. “We know the relationships with our Galran allies have been tenuous, and that it’s a trust that will take time to build. But the Blade of Marmora have been vital to the resistance efforts and are some of the strongest forces we have. They’ve become our closest and most loyal partners in this fight against the Empire. It is… difficult to hear their character be questioned, like this.” 

His eyes trail towards Keith on that last part, as if, even all these years later, he feels the need to explain Keith’s outbursts away. He sinks back down to his own seat slowly, cautious. 

“Well that may be,” Frost responds, more respectfully than he’d spoken to Lance or Keith—because, Keith assumes, of those admiral’s stripes on Shiro’s shoulders—but it’s clear that his position isn’t changing. “But how are we to know that this spy did not double-cross its own organization?”

“This whole ordeal all been reported on in detail to the Department of Terran Security,” Shiro says, then. “Validated with Blade records by the Garrison’s top security advisors themselves. They can confirm this with you, if you’re worried about it.”

“And the human man who resided in this dwelling,” Frost carries on, ignoring Shiro’s suggestion, and his voice picks up something sharp, something fast. “He is just as much—if not more so—to blame. He withheld information of a brutal war that could destroy this planet from the rest of mankind. What do you think we could’ve done better, with twenty additional years of preparation? Do you think we could’ve fended the Empire off with less destruction, with fewer casualties?”

And Keith’s mouth goes dry. 

Because that part is technically true, isn’t it?

His father did withhold that information. Earth could’ve had more notice. But at the time Earth was so low on the radar, it was impossible to predict how far the war would progress, if it would ever touch them. It had been going for ten thousand years, after all.

“What was he supposed to do?” he asks, voice raspy, brittle. He feels Shiro’s eyes flick back to him, feels the air of the room change in an instant. He was on the attack, before—defensive, yes, but a bite in his breath. Now, he’s all prey. “How was he supposed to know they’d come here? And if he’d gone to the Garrison about it, they’d have—they’d have locked her up.”

“If you think the Galaxy Garrison would be so barbaric—”

“They strapped Shiro to a table,” Keith growls. “He’s their own officer, but when he crashed down, they restrained him like some kind of animal. What would they have done to her?”

“It was Galra,” and it comes out like a slur. “He had no right to keep this knowledge from the rest of the world. It’s a crime against humanity. We need to put our own people first—someone has to pay for what he’s done.”

And Keith feels a little hollow, a little high, as the condemnation sneers from his lips. There’s no way they’re having this argument here, in front of all of these people, right? “Are you seriously trying to persecute a dead man, right now?” he gets out, stunned, rattled deep inside. Numb in his skin, in a terrifying kind of way. 

“As far as we know, he could have given us the proper knowledge and time to prepare. How much did he know? Would that information have saved lives today?”

“He couldn’t have known the Galra would come here,” Keith insists, but his voice is thin. 

“The Galra,” the commander replied, “already had. It was only a matter of time before they returned.”

Keith swallows, a lump lodged in his throat. Is he right? If his dad had told, would all of those people—?

No. No, he can’t think like that.

“This war was ten thousand years old,” he tries again. “It hadn’t touched Earth once, not until the scouts crashed down in their ships. Which was, by the way, just a coincidence.” He gives it a moment to settle, wets his lips before continuing. Tries to rally his resolve. “The Empire sent squads all over the known galaxies looking for the Lions, and the Blades sent their own spies in to work those expeditions undercover. That’s all it was. Speculate all you want on the nature of humankind’s first contact with aliens, or whatever, but don’t put the blame on them for all the pain this war has caused, here. He didn’t know everything. He didn’t know how bad it was. He helped her fight them off, and she left to protect the Earth. That’s all there is to it.”

Frost takes a step forward. Keith can’t help but see a predator, there, a mad glint in hungry eyes. The war has taken something from him, he suddenly understands. Someone. It’s a very particular fury, blind and all too common, these days. It’s written all over his face.

“You’re saying, now, that there were no ulterior motives to keeping the knowledge of this first contact secret from the rest of the world?” the commander asks, sharp with some twisted, vengeful thing, and it becomes crystal clear: Frost knows exactly who Keith is. He’s doing this on purpose, drawing him out like a pig for slaughter. The almost-smile contorts on his face into a snarl. “No selfish reasons to keep things quiet? Say—an illegally conceived child, perhaps?”

The presentation flicks to another screen as murmurs arise from the officers sat around the room, and pictures of them both—his father’s strong jaw, his mother’s keen eyes—fill the screen. It catches him off-guard, breath catching in his throat. A twist of grief in his chest. 

He’s only ever known them separately. He will continue only ever knowing them separately. Seeing them side-by-side—here on that screen, and in the flashes of memories brought forward in the quantum abyss—will never fail to shake him to his core, send him longing for everything that could’ve been. The family he almost had.  

“We know the identity of the owner of that dwelling,” the commander carries on, raising his voice slightly over the din of chatter that had risen. “And the alien that he harbored. Tell me, Black Paladin—how does it feel, to carry your parents’ shame within you?”

Keith’s teeth grind together. He could breathe fire. “My father was a good man. Don’t you dare—”

“Do you think,” the commander cuts him off, all venom, all acid, “if he hadn’t done something so disgraceful, that he would’ve come forward and told the world what he knew? That the shame of it held him back, that he knew what he did was wrong? Do you think he knew you would condemn all those people to die?”

And Keith can’t speak. His voice is lodged in his throat, too-full and quivering. 

“I had a son, too, you know,” Frost says then, drawn low and dark. “I had a son. But that didn’t matter to him, did it? The rest of humanity didn’t matter, our lives, our children’s lives. Too preoccupied with protecting some alien, some thing that should never have been born in the first place—”

“That is enough, Commander,” Shiro booms out, firm and commanding, shooting out of his seat and metal palm slamming against the table. Keith can’t help but flinch with it. “Who screened you for this presentation? Who is your CO? This is absolutely out of order.”

“I’m just posing the questions,” Frost replies innocently. “I’m just stating the facts.”

“You’re out of line, baiting for a fight, and degrading entire populations of people. I will not let you stand there and run a good man’s name—a good family’s name—through the mud. You’re done. Dismissed.”

“Admiral—”

“Dismissed.”

The commander’s eyes level on Keith once more. “This is what they do,” he says, all pretense stripped away, that thin mask of professionalism gone in a flash. His voice is low, bitter, as his eyes turn to daggers. “They breed this filth to infiltrate the resistance and take us down from the inside. Earth’s first contact was kept secret to ensure we’d be vulnerable to these attacks. We know. We know. This is just the beginning—our movement is only growing and soon you’ll all see! It’s their fault! It’s their fault my son is dead! He was human! He was beautiful!”

And it’s not a secret, who he is—he’s never kept it hidden from the Garrison or from anyone else—but it feels like someone has stripped him down, put him on display. All those eyes cutting into him, delicate flesh like he’s been unmade. 

Usually that look of distrust, of distaste, is rooted in the Galra blood. In the near-expectation people have that one day he’s going to lose himself to it, as if being a halfbreed makes him inherently duplicitous, unstable. As if hybrids and Galra alike aren’t people too, just wild, untamable things—animals, beasts—and when you combine the two, all you get is a live wire. All around him people eye him with caution, wait for him to snap. 

But he’s never had them look at him like this because of his father, before. Because he dares to call himself human. Because he dared to survive. 

It’s worse. Somehow, this is so much worse. 

“It should’ve been you,” Frost snarls, face contorting in a mask of blind rage. Around him, the rest of the paladins are on their feet, incensed on his behalf, there’s so much noise, a rushing in his ears, but Keith is glued to his seat, can barely breathe. Frost’s voice drills into him, full of hatred. “Get off our planet! Before you cost more children their lives! You don’t get to call Earth your home after what he did to us! It should’ve been you!”

And then, before Keith knows what’s happening, Shiro is crossing the room. Grabbing this man roughly by the collar and wrestling him out while he thrashes violently, lunging for Keith, while he yells about punishment and nature and how Keith should not exist. That this is Keith’s due, carrying his father’s disgrace, his parents’ shame, all those lives lost that might’ve been saved if only humanity had known about the war all those years ago. 

Why does Keith get to live when his son—his beautiful, human son—is dead? 

And Keith can’t deny it: it’s a good question. 

Is this blood on his hands? 

Once he’s pushed out the door, the room falls quiet, frozen. Keith feels eyes all over him, feels his own burn with fury, humiliation. He can’t speak. He can’t breathe. 

The silence stretches on and on. Blood rushes through his ears, an ocean trying to drown him. 

Finally, Shiro clears his throat, breaking the stillness, the quiet. He stays at the front of the room, leveling a glare around the gathered officers. “Does anyone else have something they’d like to say? Now would be the time to do it.”

A beat passes, then another. 

Finally, a different voice rises from down the aisle. Iverson. “Whoever screened that man for clearance needs to be suspended,” he says, short and gruff. “The day we have conspiracy theorists and political extremists briefing high-ranking personnel is the day this whole goddamn place unravels.“

“But it’s not really a conspiracy theory, is it?” that young officer from before pipes in. His eyes flick down the row, find Keith’s briefly. He holds them for only a tick before looking away. Fucking coward. “They had motive for keeping it secret. Maybe if they hadn’t, we’d have had enough time to—”

“That man laid his life down to protect others,” Iverson cuts the officer off. “And if he were alive when the Voltron Lions were reawakened, I’m sure he would’ve done everything he could to protect this world, just as his son has. And the Blade—General Krolia—has been a pivotal ally in this war. They are not the enemies, here, and never have been. We owe our lives to the sacrifices they’ve made. The Blade of Marmora has been nothing but transparent with the Garrison about this whole ordeal. The records are public. No one is trying to hide anything.”

The lieutenant presses his lips tight, but doesn’t respond. 

Shiro’s eyes burn as they regard the room. He looks furious, dangerous. “Anyone else have a problem with them?” 

No one responds. 

A muscle in Shiro’s jaw twitches. Barely-constrained, it rolls off of him in waves. At his side, mechanical fingers creak in protest as they clench and unclench in an iron fist. “Anyone else have a problem with Keith?”

The silence is stifling. He feels it, his own eyes on fire. 

Shiro’s voice is like cut steel. “Dismissed.”

The room clears faster than any room Keith’s ever been in. And they look at him on their way out, some with pity, some with renewed and feverish offense, and he can see them coming to their conclusions all at once. He can see this new and horrible concept of him solidifying, taking root. It’s a haze of motion, far away. He can’t breathe. 

And then only the paladins and Commander Iverson remain. 

He stands to go, as well, but pauses at Keith’s chair. And for all their messy history, it is with nothing but understanding that Iverson places a kind hand to Keith’s shoulder. 

Keith lifts his eyes, burning in shame, pinpricks building behind his vision. Iverson meets his gaze, offers a nod. One man to another. 

Swallowing, Keith returns the gesture, lips pressed tight and chin lifting. He can’t speak, doesn’t even try. 

The hand at his shoulder squeezes, just briefly, before pulling away. “Admiral,” Iverson bids farewell, a tip of his head. “Paladins.”

And then they’re alone. 

Shiro sinks down to the nearest chair, half-collapsing in exhaustion. “Jesus Christ,” he exhales.

“I’m gonna put his fucking head on a spike,” Pidge growls without preamble, and then they’re all exploding with it, the rest of the team around him, furious and alive like a firestorm, and Keith feels it in his bones, his skeleton trying to rattle free. A trembling deep, deep inside. 

Gooseflesh rises on his arms, a chill down his spine that has nothing to do with the cold. 

“Is he right?” Keith asks quietly, and as if casting a spell, it breaks through the noise. The team falls silent, eyes turning to him. He wets his lips, repeats the question. “Is he right? If he’d… if my dad had told—”

“If he’d told,” Shiro cuts him off, an edge still clear in his voice, “there’s no guessing what could’ve happened. I can’t imagine you’d be left out of it, though.”

“Why does that matter?” Keith returns, stomach in knots. He lifts a shaking hand, rubs at his face, flushed and hot. “If it means saving millions of lives down the line, why would that matter?”

Shiro’s expression twists, flickers briefly. Caught between that cold rage and something softer, something worried. “Keith, you said it yourself. They treated me like an enemy when my pod crashed, and I was one of their own officers. Do you think just because you were a kid they wouldn’t look at you like some kind of… case study?”

“So what?” Keith presses, emphasized. “Would it have—would it have made a difference? Saved those lives? Is he—is he right?”

“Keith,” Shiro pleads, but Keith is on his feet, breath thin. He paces away from them, towards the aisle, but he doesn’t leave, can’t leave, not now. He can’t go out there after all of this. 

Is it their fault? Should they have told? 

The memorial wall flashes in his mind’s eye. All those names, filling his vision edge-to-edge, larger than life. All those people who died, all the others that are still missing. The bodies that will never be found and Shiro on his knees, crying like Keith had never seen before. 

He shakes his head. His voice, when he finds it, is a croak. “All those people—Adam—”

“Hey. Hey.” Shiro’s back on his feet as well, meeting Keith towards the front podium, the others scurrying on behind him. “It’s not your parents’ fault, and it’s definitely not your fault.”

“They should’ve told,” Keith breathes, eyes hot. “God—why didn’t he tell?”

Lance steps in, reaches a hand out like he wants to calm him, wants to offer an assurance, but doesn’t know if he’s allowed. The hand drops limply to his side. “He was just trying to protect you, man,” he says anyways, and his voice is strained. “He was trying to keep you away from this.”

“I am half fucking Galra,” Keith bites out. “I was never going to be away from this.”

“Keith—”

“No,” and the word is firm, steady, as he cuts Shiro off. Pressure swells in his chest, tries to choke him. “He should’ve understood that. I wouldn’t exist without this war—do you get that? It’s not a coincidence that I ended up in space. And there’s no version of this where I’m not involved by default. I don’t get to be protected from this.”

For a long beat the words hang over them, heavy in the air. It resonates through his own ears, breath thin and raw and voice brimming in honesty. 

He’s a product of war. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but he can’t believe his father would be so foolish to forget that. So naive.

There comes a time in everyone’s lives, he supposes, when you realize your parents are only human. 

He wets his lips, shakes his head. “I was born into this,” he continues, rough, breaking the silence. “I was always going to be a part of it. It was always going to be part of me. He should’ve known there was never going to be a world where this doesn’t touch me, and he should’ve fucking told. Maybe this all wouldn’t—the Garrison could’ve—”

“Keith. Keith.” Shiro’s found his voice again, and it’s almost pleading as he shakes his head. “The what if game is always going to be there, about every step we’ve ever taken. It doesn’t do anyone any good to play it like this. This isn’t your burden to carry.”

“You don’t understand,” Keith denies, words cracking. “My—my parents,” and he fumbles the words, only having strung them together out loud once or twice in his life—he’s known them both, he’s loved them both, but always separately, always apart, the two halves of himself never quite coming together into one whole— “they knew what this was. They were the first on Earth who knew, and they didn’t do anything about it.”

“That’s not true. You know it’s not. This is just Frost, getting in your head.”

“But Shiro—”

“They did what they could,” he cuts Keith off, calm and steady. “Your mother protected the Blue Lion, protected Earth. Your father protected you. If either of them hadn’t, who knows what could’ve happened.”

But Shiro’s wrong. It was never about Earth. Krolia left for him—I left to protect the one I love most. His father stayed silent for him. 

It’s his fault. Frost was right. Their focus was narrow because of him, and the rest of the world has suffered for it. 

Keith just shakes his head, pulling back on something that wants to crumble, just under his skin. He lifts his hands, pushes his hair back with both of them, pacing away.

“Voltron wouldn’t be what it is today,” Shiro continues, following Keith across the floor, “and who knows what kind of chance we would’ve had against the Empire? What if they’d gotten here earlier, because Krolia hadn’t left to divert their attention? We know they were surveying the sector. If it wasn’t for Krolia, someone much worse would’ve gotten their hands on the Blue Lion, Keith.”

But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t land, doesn’t strike the chord Shiro probably hopes it does. 

“We got Red back from the Galra,” Keith dismisses, voice wavering. “You would’ve gotten Blue, too.”

Shiro sighs, grey and weighted. “But we might not have you. The Garrison never would’ve let you out of their sight if they knew who you were.” 

“So what? What difference does that make?”

“What difference does—Keith.” Shiro steps forward, places both hands on Keith’s shoulders. Keith ducks his face away, hides from those insistent eyes. “Do you think we could’ve done any of this without you? Do you think we would’ve stood a chance?”

But Voltron existed before him, and it would’ve reawakened whether Keith was there or not. Someone else would’ve found Red, would’ve gained her trust, would’ve taken over for Black. Keith is—and always has been—replaceable. “You would’ve been fine. We’ve already seen that Voltron doesn’t need me.”

Someone—Pidge—makes a pained noise at that. Shiro, likely the only person alive more stubborn than Keith himself, shakes his head. “You’re wrong. Voltron does need you. It always has. Besides, what if you hadn’t been there to break me out when my pod crashed back to Earth? What if the Garrison kept me here all that time?”

“The others were coming for you. You would’ve been fine.”

“You were the one who found the Blue Lion,” Shiro stresses. Keith thinks back, remembers the bulletin board and the red string and the unmistakable tug in his gut, drawing him out to the deepest canyons. 

But she would’ve tugged on Lance, too, eventually. They would’ve found her, with or without Keith’s help. 

“And you were the one who secured the Blades as our allies,” Shiro continues, pushing and pushing. “Do you think we would’ve gotten this far without them?”

“Ulaz became your ally long before I got involved,” Keith murmurs, but he’s struck by Shiro’s words, too, oddly thrown at how readily the examples come free. As if Keith’s contribution is never far from his mind. His mouth is dry when he, less confidently, musters up another, “You would’ve figured it out.”

Shiro’s fingers tighten—one side warm, the other cool—on his shoulders. “And when I died? Would I have just figured that one out, too?”

Any argument, any further adamancy building in Keith’s throat, vanishes in an instant. Shiro’s voice doesn’t break often, and the crack through his words steals all the breath from Keith’s lungs. He lifts his gaze to the quiet devastation in those dark eyes. 

“I could still be trapped there, watching the universe unravel, with no one to find me. I died, and you were the only—” Shiro stops, closes his eyes. Inhales deeply, breath shuddering, and tries again. “You were the only one who didn’t give up on me. You’re the only one who’s never given up on me, Keith. Nothing—nothing—would’ve been the same, if we didn’t have you in this with us.”

Keith presses his lips together, can’t bring himself to speak. He blinks quickly, the burn in his eyes pulling forward, blurring his vision. He wipes it away quickly, a lump lodged in his throat. 

Shiro’s eyes open again and his gaze stays locked where it finds Keith’s, and Keith wants to hide from it but doesn’t. Voice lowered, more composed, Shiro says, “Even if your father had come forward, even if they’d believed him, the Garrison wasn’t equipped back then to respond in any way that would’ve been effective against the Empire. Earth knew nothing about life on other planets, let alone how to combat advanced intergalactic armies and technologies millennia in the making. Before the integration of Olkari and Altean tech into the Garrison prototypes, nothing was coming close, even with the guidance of the Altean blueprints. Maybe the gap would’ve been narrower, with an extra ten or fifteen years, but Keith—on its own, the Garrison would’ve fallen. Earth would’ve fallen. A decade or two is a grain of sand, in the context of this war. The amount of development that would’ve had to take place that quickly to actually make some kind of difference would’ve been impossible without the help of our allies—which we didn’t have at the time.”

Still looking at Shiro, Keith swallows another protest. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Earth wasn’t equipped, then, to make the knowledge mean something. Even now, Earth technologies pale in comparison to what they’ve seen from other civilizations, other galaxies. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference at all, having some kind of earlier notice. Maybe it wouldn’t save all those lives, spare those gravestones. 

“I’m not just saying it to make you feel better,” Shiro says, low and earnest, refuting Keith’s next protest before it can even fall from his lips. “I don’t think it would’ve stopped this, Keith. I really don’t.”

He hears the commander’s voice, though, echoing through his skull. It’s not every day you get publicly accredited with the suffering of millions, and it’s not something he’ll forget any time soon. The humiliation of it is burned into his skin, another scar for all to see. My son is dead. He was human, he was beautiful. It should’ve been you. 

Shiro squeezes his shoulders again, gentle, when Keith doesn’t respond. “I think you should talk to Krolia,” he murmurs, letting his hands drop, and that pressure swells again in Keith’s chest, in his throat, a shame that wants to choke him. “She’d want to know. She’d want to help.”

His mother, once hearing what Frost had said, will want to do something far worse than help. If nothing else, Keith is sure of that, at least. The only thing that would surprise him more than Krolia taking this sitting down is if Frost is still left with his limbs intact by the time she’s through with him. 

Still, he nods, blinking quickly and dropping his gaze low. His hands, at his side, still tremble. “Okay,” he gets out, little more than air. “You’re probably right.”

“This isn’t your burden to carry. Yours, or your family’s.”

Keith closes his eyes, doesn’t let his expression waver. His family. Something that will always be trapped in this in-between—a first contact mystery, a tangle of wrenching what ifs. Torn apart by war and one-third in the grave. “Okay.”

And he wants to run. Away from all of it. 

The politics, the public eye. The opinions he doesn’t want and the judgement he pretends not to care about, but that eats through him nonetheless. 

“I just—” hoarse, his voice falters. He furrows his brow, blinks his eyes open and swallows all the emotion back. His parents’ visages still watch from the screen, impossible to ignore. His gaze lingers there: his pop’s smile, the creases around his eyes. God, he misses him. He wants to curl up in the soil beside his bones. “I don’t know what to do, with this.”

Lance steps closer, footfalls loud in the tense quiet. When Keith reluctantly shifts his gaze to regard him, there’s a set to his shoulders, a hard edge to his jaw. Lance seems angry, tired. He seems so much older. 

“You don’t deserve to be spoken to like that,” he says, quiet, that rare seriousness leaking into a steady timbre. His eyes, when they scan down Keith’s face, are sad. “Okay? You, or your parents.”

Your parents, they keep saying. Your parents, your family. Present-tense, as if Keith’s father is still in it, still a part of this. As if they still can exist together, the three of them as one unit, even now. But Keith knows better than that. He’ll always be stuck somewhere in between them both, and his father is dead. So many people are dead. 

For some cruel reason, Keith is still here. After everything the Galra have done, all the lives that have been lost, Keith is still here. 

He presses his lips tight, swallows that lump in his throat. “It’s fine.”

“It is absolutely not fine.”

“I just—” Keith voice falters again, withered. He feels it begin to fray, shaking around the edges, and he tightens his jaw against it. “To say it in front of all those people like that, I—”

But again, the words fail. He lifts trembling hands, scrubs at his face, still flushed in emotion. He breathes deeply, the effort to keep it steady harder than it should be. 

It’s going to spread, what happened in here today. He’s all too aware that this won’t be contained, that pretty soon the whole Garrison will be buzzing with it. This is just the start. It twists in his gut, rises like acid in the back of his throat. How is he supposed to look anyone in the eye, after this?

He’s never fit in with his peers, not here, and it’s only compounded tenfold since their return. He’d been advised—by Shiro and Kolivan alike—to wait it out and be patient, but any hope of settling, of ever feeling at ease in these walls, dies in his chest. 

There will always be someone who doesn’t want him here, for one reason or another. It doesn’t matter how much good he does, how hard he tries. He will never fit. It was stupid to think he ever could. 

And he’s so tired of defending himself to these people. It feels like all he’s done, his entire life, is try to prove himself to the people in these very uniforms and fail, time and again. Even out in space, there was some stupid part of him that was still trying to make them proud, trying to build something he could show them upon his return: You were wrong. Look at what I can do. Am I good enough yet?

He understands, now, that he’ll never be able to make up for it—for who he is, what he is. What he’s not. It’s nothing new. He should be used to it, but still it curls in his chest, tight and wounded. 

Part of him wants to shake his own shoulders. Toughen up. People have always looked down on you. Don’t just stand there feeling sorry for yourself.

Another part of him just wants to leave Earth, maybe forever. The thought breaks his heart—but why endure this for a place that has only ever shown him its teeth? Why put himself through this? He has a spot with the Blades. His mother, Kolivan—they’d take him in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

But Shiro’s here. The team’s here. His father’s old shack and his laugh in the desert wind, and he remembers why. 

“We can’t change the past, Keith,” Shiro says, gentle and steady, drawing his attention back. “We’ll never know what could have happened if things had gone down differently. All we can do is focus on getting through right now, with the cards we have to play.”

Keith scrubs at his face once more before dropping his hands. His eyes burn, but he doesn’t have energy left to cry. “Sounds easy, when you say it like that.”

Shiro’s smile is sad where it ghosts at the corner of his mouth. Understanding shadows through his eyes. “It’s not. But sitting in that uncertainty for too long, all of those unknowns…” He shakes his head. “You have to find a balance. It’s important to reflect, to consider the big ways what we do can impact so many others, especially given the roles we have. But you can’t take responsibility for choices you had no hand in. You’re the one who taught me that.”

His gaze drifts lower as he speaks, lingering on the side of Keith’s face. It takes him a moment to realize Shiro’s studying his scar, fully healed but still gnarled and stark against his pale skin. 

It hadn’t been Shiro’s choice to try and kill Keith, but the guilt, Keith knows, still eats at him like it was. He had all the memories, all the physical remnants from that fight at the facility—echoes of sensation, how it felt holding that blade against Keith’s face, pinned like prey, all that rage. The curling stench of burning flesh. 

Now, Keith feels his expression soften, the etched lines in his face smooth. He knows Shiro understands how it feels to be powerless, but he shakes his head. “That’s different,” he murmurs, because it is. 

“None of this was your choice,” Shiro reiterates anyways, eyes finding Keith’s again, insistent and sure. “You don’t have anything to make up for. The only one responsible for the Empire’s actions is the Empire. Not your parents. Not you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”

But Shiro’s wrong. It does matter what they think, what they feel. And what Frost feels is real. That pain is real. The guilt Keith feels is real. 

Keith’s voice wavers on the way out. “His son died.” 

Shiro takes a step closer. “And that’s a tragedy,” he says, and there is empathy there, laced through the words. Of course Shiro has grace for him, for his suffering. “Every life lost is. And grief can be blinding. But that isn’t an excuse to do what he did here today. It doesn’t make it okay, and it doesn’t make him right.”

Frost is just looking for someone to blame, Keith knows, somewhere to put all the pain, the rage, the heartbreak. He’s trying to put it down, direct it out before it consumes him. Keith’s been in those shoes, before.

“He was innocent,” he manages, a little choked. “His son was innocent.” He was human. He was beautiful.

“So were you.”

And he feels it, his expression crumpling, tightening all over. His mind flicks through those memories from the quantum abyss, Krolia’s hands cradling him so carefully—so small, so human against her skin. 

But it’s not that easy. It never was. He furrows his brow, ducks his gaze, shakes his head against it. He was never one to believe in fate or higher powers or fortune, but he’s overcome with the terrible realization of it, now: his burden was set in stone the moment Krolia crashed down to Earth. He’s never been innocent, not in this. It’s his birthright. He has to carry it. 

“Not like that.”

“Keith,” Shiro sighs, searching for Keith’s gaze. His voice is so gentle that it aches. “Keith, you were a child. A child with just as much of a right to survive this as anyone else. Of course you were innocent.”

But Keith doesn’t want Shiro to be gentle with him. Not now, not about this. He wants Shiro to understand. He wants someone to understand so badly that it hurts, shoots straight through his chest like a bullet. 

“No,” Keith repeats through gritted teeth, a tight jaw. He shakes his head, gesturing to the large screen, his parents’ images still filling the monitor. It splits through him, this too-full swell of heat like he could explode, right here and now. And the air transforms with it, the grief and frustration and despair compounding into something more than guilt, more than rage. “I’m complicit in this. Don’t you understand? Can’t you be angry about that with me, just this once?”

Because no matter how hard he tries to do good, to be better, there is one fundamental truth he cannot escape: it does not matter how desperately he wants to belong, how hopelessly he loves this planet. It does not matter how good he is, it does not matter how hard he tries to make up for the discretions of his people. He will always fail. 

Keith does not belong here. They do not want him here. They’ve been telling him as much all along, his whole life. He wants so badly to belong and none of it matters, in the end. There is nothing he can do to change this. 

He can’t help but feel small, childish, as it circles his mind on loop: it isn’t fair, this isn’t fair, it’s not fucking fair. It makes him want to stomp his foot in tantrum—it makes him want to weep, big crocodile tears that he hasn’t let himself shed since his father was there to soothe them away. He wants to be loud in it, I never asked for this, I was just a kid, I was only a kid, it’s not fair. 

Every time he’s been sneered at, every black eye, every split cheek and hateful word and lonely panic—

—every abusive foster parent, every hungry night, every locked door—

—it rolls through him, now. A wildfire. The people who have treated him the worst have all been human. The Empire has done unspeakable things but the people who have hurt Keith the most intimately, that have cut him to the bone, have been right here on this planet he’s desperate to call home. They’ve known all along, have been telling him his whole life that he doesn’t get to claim this—that Earth doesn’t belong to him. 

And they’re right. He’s always been complicit, he’ll always be a reminder, he’ll always fail to make up for it. And he’ll always end up right back here: loving Earth so terribly, so gently, but trapped on the outside. Never able to touch. He just wants them to understand.

Keith shouldn’t be here. He wants to be at home here so badly but he lost that right a long time ago. It was never his to claim. 

It should’ve been you. 

Frost’s voice cuts through his mind, get off our planet, my son is dead because of you, he was human, he was beautiful. It should’ve been you.

He could work forever to try and make up for it—he could lower his hands and be the punching bag they’re all looking for, absorb all that hatred and grief one blow at a time—and it still wouldn’t be enough. There are too many hurt people, and he’s always been tough but his skin is pale and human, quick to bruise. He can only take so much.

The Galra have done too much damage. Somehow—because he is human, maybe, his fatal flaw, his killing wound—he’s shouldering it here alone.

Why is it, even in this, he is alone? Where is everyone else? And why is no one else angry?

He can’t direct it. But it broils up inside of him, unbidden. 

“I am part of the problem whether you can admit it to yourself or not,” he gets out. “It doesn’t matter that none of this was my choice, because I’m still here. And why do I get to live—to be protected here, on your planet—when your children—innocent, human children—are dead? Can’t you please just be mad about that, with me?”

There’s a beat of silence, then, before Shiro’s eyes close. He lets out a long, grey sigh. “Oh, Keith. Is that what this is about?”

“Of course that’s what this is about!” Keith barks out, voice ragged. “Did you not hear him? It’s what it’s always about!”

“You don’t have to earn your right to survive,” Shiro says firmly, shaking his head. “You deserve to live just as much as anyone else—it’s not mutually exclusive. And this is your home. You don’t have to earn that, either. If they knew all you’ve done, if they knew everything you’ve sacrificed for Earth—”

“I don’t need them to know!” Keith cuts him off, gesturing helplessly. “I don’t care if they hate me, Shiro! I’ve been looked down on my entire life, I can handle that! But this is different.” His heart is in his throat, blood rushing through his ears. “His son is dead. He is going to blame me for that for the rest of his life. You can’t fix that, and I’m not asking you to. I just need you to understand.”

A pain webs through Shiro’s dark eyes. “I do,” he assures, but it’s leveled and even, painfully patient—so clearly he doesn’t, because if he did, he’d be as livid as Keith is. “But that doesn’t make it your fault.”

“It’s still my responsibility. It’s still something I have to live with.” 

“Because you’re complicit, in this.” He says it like a statement, echoing Keith’s own words back at him. Not quite a challenge, but not acceptance, either. Just trying to see the facts as Keith sees them. 

“Yes.”

“Because of your parents. Because you’re Galra.”

“Because I’m both. And please don’t say it doesn’t matter,” Keith protests, before Shiro can get his usual affirmation in. He feels it through his own expression, this desperation. He needs them to understand. “It does matter, Shiro. To them, and to me. I need you to get that I’m part of this. It’s important.”

A man has buried his child—assuming there was a body left to bury at all—and Keith is still here. Which means he doesn’t get to look away. It’s not survivor’s guilt, not quite. But it’s something complicated and tender, something that bruises. He does not get to be sheltered from this. 

“You’re right,” Shiro murmurs quietly, after a long moment. His expression has softened further, a shadow in his eyes. He shakes his head. “You know, we’ve spent so much time telling you that it doesn’t change how we feel, that it doesn’t matter to us, it’s easy to overlook the ways it does. I know it matters, Keith. I do. But you have to know that what Frost did in here today was not okay. It’s not fair to take it all out on you, just because you made it out.”

“I know it’s not,” Keith agrees. “But those are the cards. They took his son from him, Shiro. How am I supposed to look him in the eye, after that?”

The words settle, for just a beat, with no response. As if no one knows what to say, what he wants from them, what is safe ground to walk on or what will lead to disaster. Keith presses a long breath out through his nose, forces his eyes shut, counts to five. 

“Look, I’m—I’m sorry for getting upset,” he apologizes, when no one speaks. “But this isn’t something a pep talk can fix. I don’t want a lecture, or-or a solution, or for you to tell me that it’s all going to be okay.”

“Keith…”

“Did you hear him?” And, yeah, okay, the anger is back. He puts a hand out, gesturing towards the door Shiro had, not ten minutes ago, wrestled Frost through. “He’s publicly blaming my dead father for the millions of human lives lost to the war. Earth’s first contact mystery, priming the planet for conquer. This isn’t where this ends, this is where it starts.”

“He’s wrong,” Pidge says, voice firm. “You know he’s wrong, the Garrison knows he’s wrong. The people who matter—”

“The people are who matter, Pidge,” Keith stresses, because they’re still not hearing him. “Frost matters. And the planet—the universe—is filled with people just like him. Don’t you see how desperate he is for someone to blame? Someone here, that he can punish, that he can see be punished? Do you really think people are going to take my side—my mother’s side—over a decorated Garrison commander who just buried his human child?” 

“Keith.”

But Keith’s on a roll, can’t stop the flood of words spilling from him. “It doesn’t matter if he’s right or wrong—what matters is that people are going to follow his lead. They want to see someone hurt for this. And they listen to people like Frost. They don’t listen to people like me.”

“You don’t know that,” Shiro denies, almost on autopilot, and Keith knows he regrets it instantly because a grimace flashes across his face. 

Still, Keith can’t help the scoff that cuts loose from his throat. “I don’t know that?” he echoes, voice edged in something red-hot and a little hysterical. “The only people on Earth who have ever had my back are either dead, or standing right here in this room. And you’re telling me, what? I should just trust that it’ll be different this time? Are you kidding me, Shiro?” 

Shiro takes another step closer. “Things are different, now. You’re the leader of Voltron. That matters to people, Keith. You have a voice. People will stand with you on this.”

He lifts a hand, throws it again in the direction of the door. “Iverson—Iverson—is the only one who spoke up. And not even to Frost’s face. This whole fucking assembly of people, officers we’ve been working with for the better part of a year, and the only person besides you guys who stood with me is the man who made me homeless at seventeen years old, after I had just lost the only family I had left.” 

He shakes his head, pacing away again. It storms through him, this righteous indignation, this exhaustion. 

With his back turned, he lifts his hands, scrubs at his face. He hates it when he gets like this, all agitated and ugly, often directed at the people who deserve it least. But he’s bursting at the seams and there’s nowhere else to go. He can’t leave this room, can’t show his face out there. 

Taking a few deep breaths, he tries to calm himself again, tries to recalibrate. A twist of shame coils in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles into his palms, and turns to them again, hands dropping. “I’m sorry. This just—this fucking sucks, but I’m not angry at you. And I’m not angry at my parents. But I am fucking livid, and all I want is for someone else to be angry about it too, and all you’re doing is soapboxing at me.”

Shiro, to his credit, does not seem offended by Keith’s mood, taking the emotional overflow in stride like always. He steps closer, shakes his head. “Keith. Of course I’m angry. I’m furious. How could I not be, after all of that?”

Keith lets his eyes drift, scanning across Shiro’s expression, the set of his shoulders. As poised as ever, not even a bead of sweat on his skin, just creases of worry and a pinched brow and a perfectly-pressed uniform. He remembers the ice in his eyes, though, the way it rolled off of him in waves.

But even in that protective rage, Shiro still isn’t getting it. This isn’t about Frost. About any one person, any one life. 

Keith sighs, shakes his head. “I don’t want you to be angry at Frost. Well—” he feels that spark in his chest twist and curl and coil. He backtracks. “No, yeah, actually. Go ahead and be mad at him. But that’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean, then?”

Putting his feelings to words has never come naturally to Keith, but there is one pillar inside of him that is easy to lean on: the need to move, and do, and be. The need to help. And that makes it simple, more simple than the tangle of everything trying so hard to choke him, lodged in his throat. 

“I don’t get to look away from this, Shiro,” he says, and finds his eyes steadily. “It doesn’t matter if it was never my choice—their pain is real. Which means I don’t get to ignore this. I have to—I have to do something. Whatever I can.”

Pidge steps forward, a shadow across her expression. As if she already knows where this will lead—perceptive as always, noticing too much, too smart for her own good. Her eyes lock on his, dark where amber should spark like the sun. “You want to leave,” she concludes, voice quiet. “Don’t you?”

Get off our planet. 

You don’t deserve to call this your home. 

He wets his lips. “I don’t want to,” Keith denies in a rasp. No matter how many mind-numbing meetings he gets dragged to, no matter how much paperwork he has to file, no matter how much the Garrison’s administrative monotony feels like a slow-acting virus, eating him alive, he does not want to leave them. Not again. “But maybe it’s for the best.”

“Keith,” Shiro begins, but Keith shakes his head, cutting him off. 

“I don’t care if they hate me,” Keith reiterates, drawn but serious. It’s only half-true—true enough for this, to make his point. “That’s not what this is about. I can handle that. But people—they need to grieve. They can’t do that if I’m here, tearing that wound open over and over again. That’s what I can’t handle, Shiro. I couldn’t live with myself, hurting people like that.”

Expression softening, Shiro’s eyes find his again. He shakes his head, yielding and somber. “There has to be another way,” he says quietly. 

“There’s a reason none of the Blades have stayed on Earth very long,” Keith reminds him, matching his tone. “On any planet, very long. We aren’t wanted, Shiro. We’re reminders. And I can’t blame anyone for that. Can you?”

“You can’t let one person’s misdirected anger push you into a decision like this.” 

“There’s always going to be another Frost,” Keith points out, because there is. “On every planet that was enslaved, in every galaxy that was taken. There’s always going to be another Frost.” 

“It’s not your job to erase yourself while people learn how to cope.”

But Shiro’s wrong. It is his job—all of their jobs, all the Galra that are left—because it’s the only thing that they can do. It’s the only power he has to yield, the power to step away. To make himself a shadow again, draped in black, a mask with a mission to complete. Do what he must, aid who he can, and get out of the way.

“The things the Empire’s done,” Keith begins, holding Shiro’s gaze firmly, “we all have to carry that. All Galra, for the rest of our lives. My mom, Kolivan—the Blades that are out there, now, doing the work—they understood the cost of this war the day it started.”

“Keith, this is your home.”

“It is,” Keith agrees, and eyes him expectantly. “Are you angry, yet?”

He doesn’t seem angry, just incredibly sad. Which tells Keith that, at the very least, he is starting to understand.

“I am,” Shiro says, so quiet. 

Keith nods. He lets out a breath. For the first time since reading that presentation title, a small tension in his stomach unclenches. “Good.”

“Where will you go?” And there’s Hunk, voice cracking from disuse, from emotion, as he steps closer. He wrings at his wrists, eyes already pink-rimmed and dark. “Will we—will we be able to see you?”

“I don’t know,” Keith admits. He hasn’t thought that far ahead. He doesn’t know what path the Blades are on, doesn’t know how long it will be before he sets foot again on his beloved desert. His voice is hoarse. “I’ll have to—I’ll have to speak with Kolivan. Figure out a plan.”

Shiro’s eyes are steely, mouth set in an unhappy purse. He doesn’t like this, not one bit. Keith can’t say he disagrees. “Will you do something for me,” he asks, “before you decide on this?”

“I don’t know how much of a decision I get to have, here, Shiro,” he murmurs back. He doesn’t see another way to help fix this. And he can’t—he can’t—face another attack on his father, his parents. He can withstand a lot, but he can’t withstand that. 

Shiro’s eyebrows pitch down in the middle, frowning and serious. “Talk to Krolia,” he requests, and of course, the prospect of it clenches in his chest. “Please, Keith. Take a breath, and take the night. Don’t rush into this. Talk to your mother.”

And Shiro knows what he’s doing, because Krolia would never want this for him. She would never want him to feel so burdened by their choices, by their roles in this messy story, and Shiro knows it as well as anyone. She would look at him in that firm way she does that has him feeling like he’s five years old with so much to learn and she would say, “This is the birth of a new era. You cannot run from this. Your people need you.” 

And she will be talking about the humans of Earth and she will be talking about the Galra left unmoored in the Empire’s wake and she will hold fast on both, will not waver. Krolia is Galra to the bone and nothing if not steadfast in her beliefs; she has never once seen Keith as two halves of anything, as something divided, and never will. She would never want Keith to lose this place that means so much, this family he built when the one he was born into was nowhere to be found. She would never want him to feel like he owes a blood debt on her behalf, something that can only be paid in his own vanishing.  

Krolia, the Blades, the other Galra—he knows that they left Earth for a reason. There is too much tension, too much pain. Too much work to do. 

But there’s work to be done here, too, and Keith isn’t the same as the other Galra. He represents something else, something murkier. He is ten million shades of grey in a world where people are desperate for the simplicity of black and white, of good versus evil. He doesn’t know the right answer, or if there even is one at all, but he knows that his mother is grateful that he survived. She is proud of him for fighting as long as he has, for not giving in. She would never want Keith to second-guess his right to be safe, and whole, and alive. 

As alien as he’s felt, locked outside and set apart, he is still human. So maybe it is his job to stay, to stick this out on Earth, because none of the other Galra can.

He feels it like a tidal wave, curling up and sinking down low in his gut, crashing all over. It's overwhelming, like getting whiplash. Swallowing thickly, he nods his head. He wishes she were here. She always helps Keith clear his mind, quiet that static that rises and builds and drowns out reason, rationality—even if she is sometimes still a source of noise up there herself. There is a young, wounded, animal part of him that just wants her to be near, even when it hurts. Even when it’s confusing. 

“Okay,” he agrees. “You’re right. I’ll—I’ll talk to her.”

Shiro steps closer, puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “There has to be another way,” he repeats, more certainly this time, and Keith knows he’s probably right. Shiro usually is. “Anyone would be shaken by what happened in here today, Keith.”

Keith presses his lips tight, averts his tired eyes. They burned and burned and burned, consumed all that fire, and now his lids feel heavy with it, thick and slow. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. I’m sorry I didn’t put a stop to it sooner.” Shiro shakes his head, the corner of his mouth twisting low, expression pinching to a grimace. “I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing, to be honest. But I should’ve kicked him out the moment he started talking about Krolia like that. I knew it spelled trouble.”

Letting out a quiet breath, Keith shakes his head. “It’s fine, Shiro. I just—” He breaks off, takes another breath. He doesn’t know that to do, what to think. He doesn’t know what the right answer is. “I think I need some air,” he mumbles, instead of finishing the thought. 

At the edge of his vision, he can see Lance’s head dip slightly, tipping forward and eyes searching. “You want some time alone?”

And the thought of it almost hurts, somewhere in his chest. His heart, something deeper. His voice is a croak when he finds it. “No,” he admits, brimming with honesty as he looks up again, though he can’t quite meet those blue eyes. 

And for a long moment, Lance just watches him. Then he’s lifting his chin, a tiny nod in the unmistakable direction of the Lion’s hangars. Despite the shadow in his eyes, the sympathy and the understanding, the corner of his mouth twitches, just a little, into a smile. “Wanna go fly it off? Stretch Black’s wings?”

Keith’s breath cuts out from him in a rush, a wet-sounding almost-laugh. Surprised and not. His team—his friends—know him well. “More than anything,” he admits. 

The curl of Lance’s mouth lifts higher and he nods again towards the Lions. Makes his way towards the door, nudging Shiro in the arm as he passes and then curling his hand into Keith’s elbow, tugging him along. “Well, then, c’mon, mullet brain. Can’t keep your local Keith cooped up for too long, y’know. He’ll start overthinking. Shame-spiraling. Bad for the local economy.”

Keith sighs, but lets himself be manhandled away. “I didn’t start this,” he murmurs. 

“No,” Lance agrees. “You didn’t.”

“We don’t have clearance to take the Lions out,” Keith points out feebly, because the last thing he needs is to give people more of a reason to think he’s some kind of no-good, lawless wildcard. It’s one thing to be seen as a stupid kid with a rebellious streak—it’s another thing to be seen as a Galra who does not play by the rules. Who may go rogue at any moment. Who already has blood on his hands. 

But Hunk merely snorts, and Keith finds comfort in that, at the very least. If Hunk is not worried, it usually means something. “What are they gonna do,” he drawls, “shoot us out of the sky? Take away the magical sentient war machines that we’re soul-bound to?”

Hunk has a point, he has to admit. Lance, at his side, claps Keith on the back of the shoulder. “I’d like to see them keep Red away, actually. I think that would be hilarious. Don’t you think that would be hilarious? Besides,” Lance continues. “I happen to know a guy. He’s kind of a big deal, you know? Spiritually tied to this monster WMD, kinda runs the whole shebang, has some fancy stripes on his uniform. He might be able to pull some strings.”

And—okay, sure. That’s a good point, too.  Keith rolls his eyes. “Alright, alright. I get it.”

“Good. Then come on—brooding time is over. It’s flying time.”

He could protest further—brooding feels too shallow a word for what this is, not serious enough to represent that tangle of confusion harbored there in his chest like a knot—but he doesn’t. Instead he glances back towards Shiro, who hasn’t moved. “You coming?”

There’s an edge of ice back in Shiro’s eyes, though, black and rock-solid, as his mouth twists again into something tight. “I’ll catch up with you guys. Got something to do, first.”

“Ooohohoh,” Pidge titters in apparent glee, “Shiro’s gonna take out the trash. Do we need to prep bail money?”

Hunk rolls his eyes. “He’s not gonna do anything that stupid. It’s Shiro.”

Knowing exactly the kind of stupid Shiro can be, Keith looks again towards him. He lifts an eyebrow. 

To Keith's delight, Shiro does not look even a little bit abashed. “Oh, Shiro is definitely going to do something stupid,” he confirms, and Pidge lets out a snicker of laughter. The corner of Shiro’s lips twitch, pull up into the ghost of a small—yet genuine—smile. “But you guys have fun. And Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“I mean it. Call Krolia. Talk to your mom.”

Keith presses his lips together, tired and worn thin, but feels something give way in his chest nonetheless. They know how to soften him, how to round out all those razor-sharp thoughts he’s wont to have.  “I will,” he assures. 

“You don’t have to make up for who you are.”

And Keith doesn’t know about that, really, so he murmurs a vague, “Maybe,” before pushing along. “What are you going to do to Frost?”

“I’m going to offer my condolences,” Shiro says, diplomatically enough. “I am going to figure out exactly what he meant about his movement growing. And I’m going to make it crystal clear that if he says another word about you or your parents, he is going to have someone a lot worse than me to deal with.”

Keith blinks. “Someone worse than you?”

“Pretty sure a certain Altean queen we know doesn’t take well to people persecuting her family.” 

Threatening to sic Allura on him—he’s pulling out the big guns. He can't bite down on a small smile. “Thanks, Shiro.”

Lips twitching in return, Shiro kicks at him lightly. “Go on, then,” he says. “Get up there. Say hi to Black for me.”

Tipping his head into a nod, Keith takes a breath, lets it out nice and slow. He feels her even now, a constant presence in his chest, the back of his mind. Waiting just as impatiently as he has to get back to the skies. “Yes, sir.”

He lets Lance tug him away, after that. He tries to believe what they’ve told him, that he’s not responsible for this, that he has just as much of a right to survive as anyone else. He tries to hear Shiro, you don’t have to make up for who you are. You were a child. Of course you were innocent.

Maybe one day he’ll even believe it. For now, he is going to fly with his friends and feel that speed, that glow, that freedom. He’s going to call his mom and tell her about his day. He is going to ask her for advice, just like billions of sons before him have. 

“Anywhere in mind you wanna go?” Pidge asks as they make their way towards the Lions’ hangars. “The universe is—literally—your oyster. We could stay local, visit Pluto or something, or go off to New Daibazaal—or, ooh, that one planet in Krolox-13, with the rivers of lava? That was awesome.”

But there’s only one place, really, that’s calling to him. “I kind of want to go say hi to my dad,” he admits softly, a warmth pooling in his chest. “Do you—do you guys want to meet him?”

They could cross galaxies in minutes, further, further, the edge of the universe. Ride the cosmos. Keith could go so far away that no one on Earth could find him again, but he’d rather this. 

It’s a short trip. No time at all, really. He apologizes quietly to Black, itching to stretch her wings. He promises to take her out for a longer flight soon, Garrison protocols be damned. It’ll do them both some good. 

The Lions stand like an honor guard behind the gates, guarding the one who once guarded them. They’re a vow in their own right, tall and proud as their paladins weave through the quiet gravestones, find the one that holds Keith’s heart. Texas heat dances through the sky, sunset turning the world a familiar red. 

Keith crouches down, brushes some dirt from the headstone, touches the lettering reverently. In a twist of fate he could hardly believe, the grave is still intact, as whole as it was the day they installed it. Untouched by the war, as if the universe knew it was something sacred, something off-limits. 

He brought his mother here, not long after returning to Earth, but has only been a couple of times since. His father would never want him to linger too long, stuck in time. He’d only ever want Keith to keep going. Why else would he stay silent? The highest respect Keith can pay to his dad's memory is to keep going—keep living. 

“Hey, Pop,” he murmurs, running his fingers along his name. “I miss you. Hard day. I’ll tell you about it, but first…” He straightens and steps to the side, opening the space for the others to join. He waves them forward and can’t help but smile, just a little. “These are my friends. I think you’ll like them.” Keith certainly does. 

“I feel like I should’ve worn a tie, or something,” Hunk squirms, shifting his weight in his beat-up sneakers. They’d changed out of their Garrison uniforms, were wrapped comfortably in civvies, and Keith hasn’t breathed this easy all day long. “I need to make a good impression, y’know?”

“I don’t think he cares what you’re wearing,” Keith assures, eyes flicking back to the headstone, to the settled soil below. “He’s probably just happy someone’s here with me.”

Pidge makes a soft, wounded kind of noise at that. “Keith—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waves her off. “I know. Come on, come say hi.”

And so they do. 

They settle around the carved stone, laying down an old blanket Hunk found in the back of Yellow. It’s one from the Castle of Lions, one that they’d stowed away before setting off the teleduv that last time, before the last bit of Altea was rendered to nothing more than a crystal the size of an acorn. They launch into tall tales of galaxies far, far away, and Keith sits and listens and feels something quiet settle into his bones as he runs his fingers along the familiar fabric. If he concentrates, he can almost smell the ozone still clinging to it. 

“—and then—sir, your son is insane, I’m sorry to report—he just catapults himself out of this giant warship like it’s nothing, and decides, hey, maybe I should just punch this alien dictator in the face—you know, like an idiot—uh, respectfully, Mr. K—it's really a term of endearment—”

Lance’s hands are moving all over the place, animated in a way that used to exhaust him but doesn’t, anymore. It's a reminder that after everything they’ve been through, they are still full of life. He will never take that for granted.

Keith closes his eyes, tips his head back, feels the sinking sun cradle his face between its hands. Setting him aglow, planes of golden light sheltering him in the world he loves. 

A hot, desert breeze whistles through the cemetery, weaves between the gravestones, and it sounds like a familiar laugh. Like home.  

Notes:

this started as a much shorter concept and was going to be the final chapter for source of error, but then suddenly it was 15k words and here we are oops. apparently i have a lot of thoughts. this man will never let me know peace.

anyways i hope you enjoyed <3