Chapter Text
The universe does this thing, Shiro noticed. Whenever there’s a person, whether they’re the leader of an empire or a fruit merchant, they’ll have lives that intertwine with other, equally significant-to-this-metaphor lives. They’ll bond and interact and have entire storylines that go on. And something will happen that’s groundbreaking. Earth-shattering. Life changing. Those lives will be forever changed by those actions and interactions. By those storylines that mean everything to each other.
And what’ll the universe do? It’ll keep going on like nothing happened because fuck you, this is the entire universe we’re talking about here, what do a few measly life changing events matter in the grand scheme of things? There are billions of people with problems all happening at the same time, so why the hell should you think you’re so special?
He also noticed that people do this other thing. They’ll admit to knowing that the universe doesn’t give a damn about their problems, and then they’ll carry on like they’re the 1% of lives that actually do matter to the vast expanse of nothingness. Shiro used to laugh about that; he thought that people who did that were all hypocrites that maybe needed to get over themselves.
As it turns out, he simply hadn’t had such a life changing event.
You’d think it’d have something to do with being abducted by aliens, right? I mean, that seems like it’d be the most obvious thing for Shiro to put at the top of his ‘reasons why the universe hates me personally’ list.
But… Nah.
Turns out, the thing that shook him the most; the thing that made his up down and left right; the thing that he never really thought he could get over didn’t even have anything to do with him personally. He thinks about the morning after constantly, probably a lot more than he really should.
“Shiro!” There was a banging on his door, a constant knock that woke him up from what felt like the best night of sleep he’s had since he left Earth. Grumbling, he squeezed his eyes shut tighter and reaching his arm out, looking for a form that he was avidly disappointed to find was no longer sharing his bed. After another moment of searching, he groggily sat up, looking around his small room for Keith.
He’d wandered into Shiro’s room late last night, grumbling something about how he couldn’t sleep. Shiro’d taken three whole ticks to just shrug and scoot further over in his bed, making room for the much smaller paladin. Keith let one of those soft smiles that he seemed to reserve exclusively for private moments shine through, though for some reason it didn’t quite reach his eyes, before sliding into the too-small bed and curling up against Shiro and reading the book he’d had propped open over the older man’s shoulder, which Shiro was 90% sure he’d actually borrowed from Keith.
They did that a lot, sharing beds. Back in their Garrison days it was because that little shed of theirs only had one bed, which meant that either they shared or one slept on the couch, and neither really wanted that. The habit carried over to nights in the Castle, mostly because their rooms shared a wall and Keith could always hear when Shiro would wake up screaming and immediately rush in and stay the rest of the night by his side, reassuring the older man that everything was okay.
Usually Shiro was awake before Keith, so finding the bed empty was a startling surprise. Shiro figured that he must’ve slipped back into his room earlier.
Accepting that as his answer, Shiro let out a tired sigh before kicking his legs off the bed and getting up to go open the door. Outside stood Lance, his body covered in a fuzzy blue bathrobe that he must’ve made in the Castle’s weird artificial item generator that Shiro didn’t really trust.
“G’morning, Lance,” Shiro nodded, half-heartedly realizing that he’d fallen asleep shirtless and therefore did not have one for this early-morning interaction. Whatever. Did he really have it in him to care? “S’there somethin’ I can help you with?” Keith’s told him a million times that he slurs his words when he wakes up, and he kind of hates the fact that he does it. He’s supposed to be their leader, right? How’s he supposed to get respect if he couldn’t even say full words?
“It’s Allura.” That’s when Shiro noticed Lance’s face. Worry was evident on his face, which made Shiro worry because that’s not something Lance did. He was never one to jump to negative conclusions, in fact it was usually him who brought the team out of that sort of head space. Shiro appreciated it immensely, as it seemed to be something that only Lance could do. Seeing Lance worried meant that something unarguably bad was happening.
“What about Allura?” Shiro straightened, his post-sleep tiredness falling away just like that.
“See, I usually see her in the mornings, right? ‘Cause she and I always end up having morning tea together because I need caffeine -but coffee is horrible for you. Not that you or Keith or Pidge seem to understand that.- and I guess she just had tea because she’s a princess? I don’t know. The point is that she always gets tea from the kitchen at the same time as me. And, like, at first I was just like ‘oh, whatever. Maybe she just slept in.’ But I mean when was the last time that you saw Allura sleep in? So I thought I might as well check on her just incase she’s like sick or something and-”
“Is there a point to this, Lance?”
“Yes!” He said, eyes blowing wide for a minute before settling again, “I mean, yeah. I went to check on her and she wasn’t there so I went to Coran to see if he knew where she was and he checked the Castle database to see what he could find and she’s gone!”
“What do you mean ‘she’s gone’?” Shiro asked, getting more and more uncomfortable by the tick.
“I mean last night there was some activity from the hanger and apparently some of the pods are missing.”
“What?” Shiro ground out.
“... There’s more,” Lance confessed and Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose, just above his scar, and shut his eyes because how could there possibly be something that could make it worse? “Keith’s gone, too.”
Turns out, that was something that could make it worse.
“Get Hunk, Pidge, and Coran. I’ll meet you on the Command Deck.” Lance nodded, and turned away, though not before Shiro could call out a quick, “And Lance!” The blue paladin turned, “Good catch.” Lance gave a lopsided smile at that, and then went along his way once again.
Shiro backed into his room, watching the door shut and taking a moment to breath before turning to dig around his drawers for a shirt. As this continued, Shiro couldn’t help his eyes from flicking to the bed, mind wandering to last night. How Keith had slid into his room and the smile that hadn’t reached his eyes. He thought of how he’d woken up by himself and had assumed everything was fine when, if he was being realistic with himself, Keith had never been up before him so why should he start now? That’s not even bringing up the endless discussions they’d had yesterday about how Zarkon always seemed to find them. That, and just the overall off- ness of Keith from the day before.
Shiro felt like an idiot. An idiot who apparently wasn’t even able to read his own best friend, because how could you miss so many obvious warning signs that something was wrong? Maybe he had noticed and just repressed the issue in hopes that if he ignored it long enough it’d go away. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He got dressed.
Keith hadn’t stumbled into Shiro’s room until late, and Lance woke Shiro up early. Which meant that Keith probably hadn’t gotten that far. On top of that, there was no way the pods were faster than the Castle. The only problem was that Shiro wasn’t sure they could be tracked, which meant that they’d have to talk Allura and Keith into coming back on their own. He wasn’t worried, though. Keith wouldn’t just up and permanently leave. And if Allura was with him she’d surely have a level head that could ground him, because lord knows Keith needed someone to do that for him. Shiro wasn’t worried.
It didn’t take long for the team to converge on the Deck, Coran already hard at work trying to get a hold of Allura and Keith. Looking around, Shiro took note of the varying degrees of worry on everyone’s face. Coran was top of the list, though. Absolutely frantic and constantly muttering about the princess.
“I can’t believe they left,” Hunk said from Shiro’s left, and he looked over his shoulder to see the yellow paladin staring pointedly at the ground, as if inspecting it for the answers that he didn’t have. “I mean, in the middle of the night and everything. That never goes over well in movies.”
“Why did they leave in the middle of the night?” Lance wondered out loud, still in his silly blue robe. “I mean,” he looked around worriedly at the rest of the team, “you don’t think they’re… y’know...K-I-S-S-I-N-G, right?”
Shiro maybe had to bite back an eye roll.
“Contacting one of the pods now!” Coran said with a sigh of relief.
One of the pods?
“Hello?” Coran asked, “Hello, do either of you read me?”
“Coran?” The feminine voice of princess Allura came through the speakers and Shiro couldn’t help his foot tapping on the ground.
“Princess! Princess, where are you?” Coran said, pulling the microphone probably closer to his face than he needed to.
“I’m exactly where I need to be, Coran. Far away from the Castle.”
“Is Keith with you?” Pidge asked from the back.
“Why?” Hunk said at the same time.
“No, Pidge, he’s not in my pod. He took a separate one so we could both be sure of whom Zarkon was tracking.”
Pidge said something about isolating variables in the background.
“Coran,” Shiro said, “see if you can get online with Keith’s pod as well. Allura, splitting up the group does nothing for us. If anything it makes us more vulnerable. You and Keith need to turn your pods around this minute and come back.”
“Shiro, I can’t do that. Finding out if we’re being tracked by Zarkon is a far greater risk than possibly running into a space pirate or two. And if I do find trouble, I know enough about piloting to steer myself to safety. I’d rather take a risk and know than remain safer and possibly be a threat to Voltron.”
“I’m having trouble connecting to the second pod!”
“Then try again, Coran!” Shiro shouted in frustration, “Allura, what happens if Zarkon does find you? What happens if you are the one he’s tracking? We still need you to pilot the Castle. If you so badly want to help, the best thing you can do for the team is return. We’ll figure this out another day.”
“I’m sorry, Shiro. I cannot just-” There was a snap, crackle, and a pop and she fizzled out. The Castle jostled, and Shiro snapped his attention to the space around them where they appeared to have entered some sort of debris field. Fine. Yet another thing for them to deal with.
“Paladins,” Shiro called, “get into your lions and we’ll deal with Taujeer. Coran, try to re-establish that link.”
Okay, maybe Shiro was mildly worried.
In the end, Allura returned. After the citizens of Taujeer were safe again and the paladins all returned to see the pod back in the hanger and the princess back on the dock. There was, however, a silently prominent absence of the red paladin, to which Shiro bore in mind.
“I’m deeply sorry, to all of you,” Allura said once all of their team -minus one- had gathered, “I truly did think that I was doing the right thing when I left. I thought that it was the logical next step.”
“It’s not your fault, princess,” Lance reassured her, placing a hand on her shoulder which caused Coran to glare, “we’re just glad that you’re back safely.”
“Where’s Keith?” Was all Shiro added.
“I saw him, we both seemed to have the same idea at the same time. I’d suggested going together, though he convinced me that it made more sense to separate, as that way we could distinguish who was truly being tracked. It was actually quite the commendable argument.”
“Yes, but where is he now?” Shiro crossed his arms. “I mean, you two must’ve had some form of communication in case something happened, right?”
The princess looked down, “When Coran got through to me, saying Zarkon had found you even while both of us were gone, I tried using the comm system placed in all the pods, but his read that it was malfunctioning.” She looked up at Shiro now, “It could be… That is to say that… He might’ve disabled it himself.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He’s smarter than that.”
“Is he?” Lance pitched in.
“Shiro, when I saw him last night, he had many bags with him. Possibly all of his belongings. I… Well I don’t think he’d planned on coming back in the case that he was the one being tracked.”
“Well how would he know if he cut his comm system?” Hunk shrugged.
There was a moment of silence, and Shiro couldn’t take it any more. He gave an indignant huff and stormed out of the room to the tune of Pidge saying something about how she could probably create a location system using the pod’s comm links. Shiro didn’t pause to hear more. There was already too much white noise in his head as it was.
He went to Keith’s room first, turning over the sheets and opening every drawer as if by some miracle he would find something. Some proof that Keith didn’t really mean to leave forever. Just a bit. Just long enough to be sure. And then he’d be back, and Shiro would wag his finger but would ultimately pull him into a hug and tell him that he missed him, and the universe would be right again. Everything would be fine.
He didn’t find anything, though. All he found were empty drawers and a neatly made bed. Like the room had never been lived in in the first place.
Shiro screamed in frustration.
And maybe also punched the wall a bit.
He stormed into his room, wishing that he could slam the automatic doors and frustrated in himself for being this dramatic. He paced his room, looking for some sign. Anything, at this point.
The book they’d both been reading was on the desk in his room.
Which wasn’t where he’d put it when he was falling asleep last night.
He lunged for it so quickly he was scared he was going to break something.
He must be going crazy, right? Is it possible to go crazy in the span of a few hours? Either way, in retrospect he’d be laughing at himself for grasping at slightly misplaced books and punching walls because somebody leaves. Either way.... Either way he still does these things because Keith was gone and that was wrong and the universe just fucking hated him and - honestly? What had he possibly done to deserve this?
He flipped through the pages, desperately trying to find whatever it was that needed to be found. Then the note fell out. Shiro would’ve dropped the book -that was his first instinct- but something about the fact that that was all he had left of Keith kind of made him cherish it more. Instead of dropping, he set it back on the desk carefully, then dived down for the fallen note.
Shiro,
I’m sorry this was so sudden, I just had some things to work out and I knew you would try to stop me.
I left the red paladin armor and bayard in Red. Take good care of her for me.
There was a part that was too scratched out to do anything near comprehend.
I’m sorry.
-Keith
Shiro didn’t even notice for another week or so that Keith had taken one of Shiro’s gray hoodies, leaving his red jacket in it’s place.
In Coran’s words, “It all seemed to work itself out in the end.”
Lance moved to Red, -Shiro wasn’t 100% sure that’s what Keith intended with ‘take good care of her for me’ but he wasn’t there anymore so he couldn’t argue, could he?- and Allura had joined the team in Blue. It took months (quite a few of them) to adjust to life minus one but they did, and they kept fighting. The Blade of Marmora helped in their quest against Zarkon, and their giant teludav created by Slav had lead them to quite possibly the greatest victory possible.
Shiro still missed Keith, though.
In battle, when he couldn’t just rely on the fact that they were on the same wavelength, but actually had to fully explain everything he needed team to be doing. While training, wishing that he’d have someone who didn’t know all of his oldest tricks. And, more often than any other, in the down time. Whenever he felt like there was simply an element missing from the group dynamic.
The team had looked for Keith for quintent after quintent, using Pidge’s tracking device only to find an already abandoned pod on some bustling big-city planet, and then spending vargas after that asking anyone who would listen if they’d seen a short, mullet-headed, impatient paladin of Voltron. So far, no such luck.
Shiro was probably the last to accept what had happened. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever, really. His life felt a lot emptier without Keith, which was probably a dumb and really cliche thing to say, but Shiro had decided to live with it because what did he care if others thought he was cliche?
The red paladin armor was put back where they’d found it. Lance kept the blue armor, and Allura had a pink set. Something about fallen warriors that Shiro had never really listened to.
Keith’s jacket found it’s way into Shiro’s room. And by found he meant that he’d never actually told anybody else that it was there in the first place, and therefore had decided it was his. He didn’t even do anything with it, just sat and watched it when he felt waves of self-pity. Sometimes, just to remind himself that it’d all been real, he’d simply take it in hand and squeeze, trying desperately to remember the man who’d worn it.
As time slipped past Shiro found himself remembering less and less of what should be the most insignificant details. Keith’s laugh, how long his hair actually it, the proper shade of his eyes. Thing that Shiro’d never even thought about missing and yet found himself mourning constantly.
Sometimes he wondered if this had been how Keith had felt after Kerberos. Like there was the looming possibility of never seeing the other ever again but staying in denial because you will find them. You know you will. It’s just a matter of time.
(Shiro decided it wasn’t at all like Kerberos, because Keith had known back then. Shiro hadn’t had a choice and Keith had been proud of Shiro for being chosen. He’d told Shiro that everything would be okay. They’d had time before to prepare. Keith had been with him when he left. With this, Keith hadn’t even trusted Shiro in the first place.)
This whole thing was based on THIS drawing