This was originally written for Voltron Angst Week Day 2 - Home/Family. As I wrote it (and it took longer to flesh out) it also became sort of for Day 4 - Alone.
Today is Day 5 of Angst Week, but this one refused to come easily.
Kuro's jaw tightened, keeping the instinctive howl of pain locked behind his teeth. The bright green weapon was already pulling away, finishing its arc, and there were no more energy pulses ripping through him. He heaved a deep breath, body trembling, trying to push the lingering sensation down, tune it out.
Pidge glared at him through her visor, uncompromising, and reached down with the hand not holding her bayard. "Shiro? Shiro." She gripped the shoulder of Shiro's armour.
Shiro was still unconscious, or precious near it, sprawled on the floor. He would have been bleeding out if Kuro hadn't gotten so quickly to the sentry above who had been taking shots with his laser cannon. He wouldn't be taking shots at anyone for some time, if he ever did again; Kuro had left him lying broken and unconscious or dead beneath his equally broken cannon.
While Pidge was strong enough to budge him when she shook him lightly, Shiro didn't offer any response, and Kuro could hear another squad coming towards the hangar. The Paladins couldn't face another wave of attackers, not like this.
Shiro was down - completely out of the fight - and Hunk was doing his best to keep fighting while unable to properly walk - one leg possibly broken and dripping blood over his armour - and they were still not doing so well only against what was left of the first defensive force. Another full squad joining the fray would see them overrun.
Kuro stepped forwards again - Pidge certainly couldn't move Shiro herself and he wasn't getting up, probably couldn't-
"Stay away from them!" Keith appeared in almost a blur before Kuro, his blade lashing out in a quick, broad sweep, forcing Kuro to move fast or bleed.
His dark eyes held a measure more of softness than Pidge's, shading them with something that was almost tender, but Kuro knew he wouldn't hesitate if Kuro came closer - approached his family. Keith's eyes might be gentle, but his teeth were bared in a fierce threat as vicious as any Kuro could produce, and his hand was sure on his bayard even as he readied the blade for another stroke.
No hesitation.
The tenderness might be solely due to seeing his lover's face waiting across his blade, Kuro thought, heart aching as he took another step back before Keith could jab him. To Keith, Kuro would always be the monster with his lover's face, as he was the monster who had stolen from him - face, voice, body - to Shiro. The tainted mockery of himself.
Kuro swallowed hard, fingers flexing restlessly.
He looked back over his shoulder - the new squad was almost at the doors. He thought fast. "Get out or you won't be able to!" he snapped, backing further away. He nodded towards Shiro on the ground. "You're falling, and you'll die here if-"
Kuro hissed as a laser bolt streaked past, gouging into his right arm just above the scar joining flesh to metal. Lance was pinned down staying near Hunk, and he had a good spot up high, but he was still a threat across the whole of the hangar.
Just not enough of a threat for what was coming.
"Get out!" Kuro snarled again, and turned on his heel, heading for the controls. Lance took another few shots shot but he had to focus on those closing in on Keith and Pidge and Shiro, and Kuro was moving too fast; the blasts hit the deck at his heels.
Kuro hit the command to close the bay doors to the rest of the ship, then turned and looked at . . . at his family, only they never would be and they hadn't- They were Shiro's, not his. Kuro took a precious few seconds to look at each in turn. Then he shouted another warning, hoping to spur them into flight, and threw himself through the closing doors just before they met and locked into place.
Kuro landed in a crouch and rose with his clawed, glowing hand foremost, taking the lieutenant already beginning to shout abuse and questions at him in the throat. Kuro gave a vicious grin and turned on the rest of the approaching squad as the lieutenant collapsed at Kuro's feet, gurgling on his own blood.
They began to back away, nervous, and Kuro had to dodge a few laser blasts - but only a few, before he was on them, and they had to shoot into their own numbers to try and hit him. There was little hesitation from them for that, but Kuro only took a few moments more to either disable the guns, or the soldiers holding them.
He had to pull back - not his style, not when the aggressive domination of his battlefield came instinctively - soon after, his left hand slamming into the head of a drone trying to get the bay doors open, feeling metal crumple under his fist. Kuro hoped Shiro and his family were already getting out, but he refused to risk them by being sloppy and letting anyone past him before he had to.
And Kuro wouldn't have to. Not this squad, anyway. Kuro was built to be the perfect Champion, and he had no one else to look out for - the doors were not much of a weak spot. And the army? They might fight him, but they didn't even want to seriously try to take him down, they didn't want to damage him - the prospect of Haggar's wrath if they did was more frightening, the unknown quantity of the witch's power, than what pain or death they faced from Kuro.
He bared his fangs and snarled as a spatter of blood caught him across the face, and the display bought him a little more clear space to work in again.
The world became a blur of strikes, blocks, lunges; the low sounds of pain that were all that wrung from a Galra soldier's throat when in battle mingled with growls and yips and the crunching of metal; blood flowing over Kuro's hands and spraying into his face.
Kuro howled, his first indication that more reinforcements had arrived the electric shocks digging into the bones where he had been jabbed in the back. He shrugged it away, his ribs aching from the bruising force of the prod, and launched in against the new assailants.
It only lasted moments - something caught Kuro's right wrist and while he tried to fight, his movements were kitten-weak and clumsy. Haggar's bright yellow eyes met Kuro's and she let out an angry yowl at him as she pushed magic through his arm and he fell to his knees. "Why would you turn on your own kind?" she demanded as Kuro nearly collapsed entirely to the floor, her grip on him keeping him sort of upright.
Kuro shook his head weakly, and Haggar bared her teeth, then reached out for him. Kuro tried to pull away, but could barely move, and she smacked him between his shoulder blades with a full-body pulse of agony before his body shut down.
Kuro woke to the same feeling, quickly overtaken by the same question, again and again, Haggar furious with his refusal to provide an explanation. What explanation, he thought with a wry twist.
The ones he'd attacked, killed? They weren't exactly his kind, either, not his people - there was no 'kind' like Kuro, he was . . . alone in his breed. Not even a true born-hybrid, but something given form from a human, strength from Galra and Galra tech, and whatever hybridised and stolen magic flowed through Haggar.
Parts of his mind and even some memories - heart, Kuro thought as he shifted, weak and pained - also from that beaten and half-broken human. That had not been Haggar's intention, Kuro knew, and he doubted she had any idea what had happened.
He had been an experiment, and perhaps an ill-thought one.
Haggar curled her fingers into his shirt with a rough gesture, dragging him up to all but snarl in his face, and then pushing him down. Kuro hadn't the strength to stop himself, and sprawled on his bunk with a harsh bounce.
Her final warning delivered, she left Kuro there, the door sliding shut with a loud, harsh creak. It was followed by the heavy thunk of the locking bars slamming into place, and the barely-audible hum of the electronic locks doing the same. It wasn't much of a punishment - Kuro was hardly allowed to roam freely much of the time anyway, not fully trusted and too valuable - or something - to allow something so risky.
Though he wanted to, Kuro didn't even try to move for a while, knowing Haggar's enforced control over his body would take a while to fade. Probably she would be back to try and wring out of him why he had attacked those squads - she didn't care, not for the lives lost or the terror of the Galra soldiers, but Kuro rarely exerted himself in more than a squabble and to have done it while they were fighting a battle. . .
Kuro didn't know if Haggar would realise what had motivated him and he hadn't cared when he made his choice.
His family was safe - for now, at least - had gotten free, every one of them, even the ones who had been injured. They would never accept him, and Kuro knew that, but he couldn't face seeing them taken down. Kuro could never allow that to happen if he had any chance of defending them. Kuro was born of Shiro's heart and memories and those things that made him different from Shiro still changed nothing about that.
Kuro dragged himself up a little, letting his weight fall on his right arm, since he couldn't move it reliably yet - it twitched, rippling lines of Haggar's magic sliding over it - and using his left to turn himself onto his side. Brow pressed to the metal wall, feeling the hum of the energy running through it, Kuro shuddered with the after-effects of facing off against his family.
Of seeing deep grey-blue eyes Shiro's memory showed him being full of love and warmth instead glaring at him, of suffering under Pidge's vicious attacks like a little wildcat as she defended Shiro, of having to dodge shots from Lance's rifle that could have killed him if only the sharpshooter had been less hurried, less anxious, less pinned down.
In comparison to those blows, Haggar's fury and torment could hardly touch him. How could they?
Kuro shored up the brokenness he felt inside, refusing to let it show, refusing to let anything show that could offer Haggar further insight or leverage on him. She would see, of course.
His family was safe, even if they would never allow him to call them that, would never open their arms to him the way they would for Shiro.
Shiro was safe, home with their - his - family around him, being healed and being held, the hands that had offered only violence to Kuro offering comfort to him.
Kuro was alone, and he would stay alone.