A/N: This story is going to have three chapters, each containing a headcannon I have about Keith. None of them have been mentioned in my other stories (except for the theme of the second chapter, which was seen in Hysterical) because it would have required an explanation each time.

I'm not sure what to call this. The characters are kind of OOC (especially Shiro, but I had fun writing him), but only because the events aren't canon. It's not intended to be an AU, but there are obviously ways that the headcannons wouldn't work canonly. I kept it as canon-compliant as possible.

Synopsis: An accident in training and a mission gone wrong forces the team to acknowledge that something is wrong with Keith.

Warnings: Blood.

No one really wondered about the handkerchief that suddenly was poking out of Shiro's pocket at any given time. When Lance asked about it, Shiro just gave a vague answer of having it there in case he needed it. The team had given a mental shrug and let it be.

Although they had slightly panicked when Pidge spotted the kerchief dotted with blood one day. Shiro had insisted it was nothing, then patiently put up with multiple scans in the infirmary. Shiro was cleared of illness and injury, and the incident was forgotten.

For a while, it never occurred to the three youngest paladins that the handkerchief was for someone other than Shiro. But then the first clue showed up a month after finding Blue.

The team was engaged in duo trills against the training gladiator. Keith and Lance were teamed up and doing surprisingly well, until Lance moved into close range. Keith had to dodge past the blue paladin, accidentally stepping in the way of the gladiator's staff.

The crack of the staff meeting Keith's face made the team wince and caused Shiro to end the training sequence.

"What are you doing?" Allura demanded, worse than a drill sergeant. "You can't expect the Galra to stop their attack just because one of you is hit!"

"Allura, we're still learning," Shiro insisted, watching Keith wobble to his knees. "If we push too hard, it will only make things worse. We can't fight the Galra we are hurt from just training."

Allura huffed. "Five doboshes."

Hunk and Pidge groaned, then quickly turned them into coughs when Allura looked at them. Shiro turned his attention to Keith, who was hunched over on his knees. Lance, who had been watching Allura, realized that his training partner still hadn't stood.

"What's wrong, Mullet?" Lance asked with a teasing grin. "Pidge can hit harder than that robot."

Pidge squawked a protest and charged Lance. The lanky boy, used to dealing with younger kids, caught her by the shoulders and held her back.

"Lance!" Pidge growled.

Shiro chuckled at Pidge's struggles to free herself. Allura watched them with an exasperated frown, but Shiro was happy to leave them at it.

Keith abruptly gave a strangled grunt and scrambled to his feet. Head ducked, Keith ran right into Shiro, who caught and steadied him. Keith mumbled something through the hand pressed to his face, then darted from the room before the other paladins realized what had happened.

"Uh, what was that all about?" Hunk asked.

Lance smirked. "When you gotta go, you gotta go."

While Lance was distracted, Pidge jerked herself free and backward. Lance, unprepared for her sudden disappearance, stumbled forward with a yelp. He quickly straightened, tugging at his armor like Coran did to his vest, and turned toward Shiro.

In a flash, Lance's carefree grin vanished and he gave another yelp.

"Shiro, you're bleeding!"

Pidge and Hunk spun to face Shiro, who winced and glanced down at the spot of blood on the shoulder of his armor. Lance fast-walked over and wiped the blood away to find the source.

"How can Shiro be hurt?" Hunk asked, glassy-eyed at the sight of the blood. "He hasn't even trained yet."

Shiro pushed away Lance's searching hands. "I'm not hurt."

"No, you normally have blood on your armor," Lance said, surprisingly serious. "Where's your 'kerchief?"

Lance glanced at where it normally poked out of his armor, but it was gone. Curious, he circled Shiro like the handkerchief could have moved elsewhere on its own. As he completed the circle, his eyes fell on a small puddle of blood on the floor. It was where Keith had landed after getting hit.

"It's Keith's!" Lance exclaimed. "Why didn't he say he was hurt? We gotta find him and make sure that he isn't-"

Shiro silenced Lance by covering his mouth with his flesh hand. "Keith is taking care of it."

"You knew that Keith was hurt and didn't say anything?" Allura asked, tone accusatory. "Whatever happened about getting hurt in training wouldn't help us?"

"Coran is helping him," Shiro said.

"Coran is right-" Allura turned and found Coran to be gone. "He is?"

Shiro nodded. "Keith is in good hands. Let's finish training ourselves."

"This is supposed to be a team bonding exercise," Allura murmured to herself, but eventually allowed the team to continue.

Keith returned half a varga later, slightly paler than before. He didn't respond to Lance's teasing prodding, and didn't protest when Shiro abruptly requested to change exercises to a calmer one.

Shiro didn't ask the others to remain quiet about the incident, but they did anyway. Seeing Keith so pale and quiet had spooked them, and they didn't really want to ask.

A month later, though, they had no choice but to address the issue.

It was one of the team's first missions on a foreign planet. The plan had been to maintain stealth, but Hunk had blown their cover. In the following chase, Pidge had fallen behind and Lance got clotheslined by a tree branch, forcing the others to stop. They had been captured soon after and forced into a cell.

Keith had fought the whole way, of course, so the sentry shoved him into cell with obviously more force than needed. He skidded across the small room and smack into the wall.

The act angered Shiro, prompting him to kick the sentry clear out of the cell. A useless act since the door was slammed shut right behind the sentry anyway, but it felt good. Shiro scowled at the door and turned back to the team.

Pidge sat in one corner of the room, nursing the twisted ankle that had slowed her. Hunk wiped at the scratches on Lance's face and carefully removed the splinters. Keith knelt in the corner opposite of Pidge, still facing the wall with his face almost to the ground.

"Keith, are you okay?" Shiro asked, moving over to squat beside the boy.

Keith grunted and started to sit up, then gasped and curled back down. This caught the attention of the others, who quickly moved closer. Shiro, having seen what had caused that reaction, waved them off and reached into his armor. He pulled out the handkerchief and handed it to Keith, who snatched it and shoved it against his face.

"Easy," Shiro murmured. "Come on, buddy, sit up."

Keith grunted and shook his head.

"Keith," Shiro said firmly. "Keeping your head down will make it worse."

Lance, Hunk, and Pidge watched curiously as Keith moaned. He slowly sat up and Shiro helped him shift around to press his back to the wall, allowing the others to see what was wrong.

Keith's hands were pressed tightly against his nose. The kerchief clenched in them was darkening with blood.

"Nosebleed?" Hunk asked with a sympathetic wince. He'd gotten better with the sight of blood, and didn't flinch away at the sight of Keith's bloody face. "How hard did you hit that wall?"

"Didn'," Keith said nasally. "Cau' myde'f."

"So what's up with the nosebleed?" Lance asked. "Dry air?"

Keith glared at Lance, but his eyes were weirdly glassy. Lance noted the rather bloody handkerchief, and his eyes widened.

"Dude, it is not healthy to lose that much blood from a nosebleed," Lance said, suddenly worried. "You need a doctor! Or a pod, at least!"

Keith grimaced. "'O 'ood."

"No good?" Pidge translated.

"We've tried to use the pod to fix this," Shiro said with a sigh.

"This has happened before?" Hunk asked, then remembered the training room incident. "...this happens a lot, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Shiro said, making Keith grunt at him. "Keith, we can't keep this a secret from the team."

Keith lowered his hands. "I'm fine."

Lance was suddenly in front of him, one of his gloves under Keith's nose when it dripped again. Keith tried to push him away, but Lance stubbornly remained.

"Nosebleeds can be serious if not handled right. Pinch your nose and lean forward a bit," Lance said.

Keith glared, but did as Lance said.

"Good. Just try to breathe through your mouth. My brother Carlos gets nosebleeds all the time when he visits the Garrison," Lance said by way of explanation. "The dry desert air does it to him. Do you know what causes Keith's?"

"I can answer myself," Keith muttered when Lance looked at Shiro.

"He's had them for as long as I have known him. Doctors have looked at him, and said that his nasal passages were damaged when he was young."

Shiro didn't elaborate that it was smoke that had done the damage. Keith sometimes responded very negatively to the mention of fires -one when he was eight in particular- and Shiro could see the boy was barely holding himself together as it was.

Shiro slid back in front of Keith, easing Lance out of the way. He carefully noted Keith's shining eyes and held back a sigh. For whatever reason, Keith became emotional during his nosebleeds, and he was fighting a losing battle to keep it together in front of the team.

"It's okay, Keith," Shiro said soothingly.

"I'm sorry," Keith said in a cracked voice. "I should've been there."

"We've gone over this, bud." Shiro moved Keith's hand and winced when he saw it was still dripping. "It's better that you stayed."

"What are you talking about?" Pidge asked.

Shiro glanced at the youngest paladin and saw her fiddling with her gauntlet. "It's nothing."

"No!" Keith said forcefully. "No secreds bedween us, righd?"

Shiro blinked. "Right."

Keith opened his mouth, then his eyes turned down. "You dell dem."

"Because of Keith's… condition, his nose will bleed when it is extremely dry, he gets emotional, or at high altitudes," Shiro said.

"No wonder he's so emo!" Lance said with a chuckle. He abruptly grew serious as he absorbed the last part. "Wait. High altitudes?"

"Keith's reason for getting kicked out of the Garrison," Shiro gave Keith a briefly hard look, "Isn't entirely because of discipline issues. Keith would never be allowed to fly more than a thousand feet off the ground, because it could cause his nose to bleed."

Shiro's mind flashed back to when he and the then twelve-year-old Keith had been given the news. It was the first time Shiro had ever seen Keith cry, as he had held the young boy sobbing tears, snot, and blood into his uniform.

"If it wasn't for that," Shiro continued quietly, brushing aside Keith's hair from his face. "Keith would likely have been part of the Kerberos mission as my co-pilot."

Everyone knew he could have. He was fast, smart, and tough. Shiro always thought that Keith would someday surpass him; Keith could have flown the Kerberos mission alone, even at his age.

But the Garrison hadn't wanted the Kerberos mission to end with half the crew coming home.

Lance gaped. "At seventeen?"

"You've seen him fly," Shiro said simply.

Lance snorted and crossed his arms, no longer sympathetic. Pidge's eyes widened at the thought of Keith having been with Shiro when the Galra captured the crew. Hunk was watching the door.

"Uh, guys," Hunk said when a sentry opened the door. A living Galra stepped inside with two sentries.

Shiro and Lance quickly stood. They, Pidge, and Hunk, stood protectively in front of Keith, who lowered Lance's glove from his nose that had finally stopped dripping.

"Grab the one in red," the Galra said.

Lance and Hunk shared a look. Lance threw himself at one of the sentries, who, predictably, blocked him and tossed him to the side. Right behind him, though, was Hunk. The larger body crashed into the sentry and smashed it into the wall. The second sentry lifted its gun, but Pidge leaped at it and grappled with the weapon until Lance recovered enough to help her topple the sentry.

The Galra, who had made the mistake of putting five untied paladins in one cell and tried to remove the most vulnerable, had five ticks to realize that he hadn't thought it through before an angry punch from Shiro knocked him cold.

The team turned back to see a very pale Keith trying to force himself to his feet. Shiro walked quickly over and caught the teen when his legs gave out.

Shiro hefted Keith into a semi-standing position, and saw tears streaming from his eyes. He had finally lost the battle with his emotions.

"You're going to make your nose start up again," Shiro said.

"I-I'm sor-rry," Keith stammered out. "I c-can'd fly."

"Now that's a ridiculous thought," Lance said. "You've been flying for a while now with no problems."

"Yeah!" Pidge piped up. "I bet Red's been helping you… keep it in."

Hunk raised his hand. "Yeah, Yellow helps me keep it in all the time."

Keith grimaced. "Gross."

Hunk grinned. "We'll figure something out."

Keith beamed lucidly at the team. "You guys are gread."

"Um, yeah, sure," Lance said, uncomfortable with Keith's state of mind. "I'm gonna scout ahead for Galra, okay?"

Lance scampered out the room, with Hunk close behind. Pidge waited while Shiro decided the best way to get Keith back to the lions. In the end, he turned and had Keith climb onto his back, where he draped like an exhausted koala bear.

"Let's go," Shiro said softly.

Pidge nodded and the pair hurried from the room.

Keith was okay when they got back to Red. He didn't leave the lion for several vargas, but when he emerged, he was back to his normal self. He stubbornly refused to talk about what had happened, and the team let it drop.

Verbally, at least. From then on, the team did their best to keep Keith as close to Red as possible. If the team had to fight on the ground, it wasn't unusual for one of them to stick close to Keith in case he had to stop.

As the team bonded and grew closer, Keith's worries about holding the team back ceased. As they did, the nosebleeds lessened.

Between the paladins, Red, the healing pods, and, eventually, the Olkari, Keith's nosebleeds finally stopped.

A/N: Keith's condition was inspired by Albert's symptoms in the Little House on the Prairie special: Look Back to Yesterday. That special used to horrify me, because nosebleeds are just awful. Keith isn't sick like Albert was, but the nosebleeds could kill him if they hadn't been stopped. (Theoretically. For all my inflicting this pain on Keith, I'm too queasy to look into this.)

There was going to be another scene at the end about Keith actually getting healed, but the scene was bloody and was ending up very much like a chapter that will be in the upcoming Little Ones. Still, if enough people want it, I can finish it and add it in.

In case anyone is wondering, the title of this story was inspired by the song Moana sang to Te Ka.