Heya! I've seen a few versions of this around but most of them seemed to focus on Keith so I felt the need to write my own version with more of a focus on Lance. Thanks for reading!
Lance held up his pinkie finger and stared at it, his eyes shifting focus between his finger and the blurred shape of Keith behind it. The odd one out, the one leftover. Their world had been thrown back into chaos with the arrival of Lotor, but Keith was back. And while this created the allusion of a team reunited, Lance felt his world being thrown back into chaos, his head whirling around this single digit held in front of him. He didn't understand; it should have been him.
Lance eyed the stiff posture of Matt as he glanced at Keith with a mixture of anger and sadness. Memories of Matt storming furiously out of his ship and shouting at Keith flashed through Lance's head, but his heart just remembered the ache as the story of Keith's attempt to sacrifice himself clawed his heart towards the ground in a torturously slow manner. Keith had been thrown into such a horrid situation because Lance was too scared to leave, to take the initiative and remove himself when he found himself the leftover paladin. Instead Lance had done the stupid thing and shared his fears with Keith, and the idiot had of course taken this burden on as his own. Part of Lance knew Keith was stupid enough to leave for Shiro's sake, but a deeper part of him feared that it was him that brought the fact that there was an odd one out to Keith's attention. His mind told him it was stupid to worry, but his gut reeled with misgivings.
They had been given three days to deliberate over Lotor's proposal, and the paladins were currently taking advantage of a small moment of peace between negotiations. Keith was ignoring the Blade of Marmora members in favour of sitting silently in the lounge with the other paladins, and despite attempts to include him in conversations no one quite knew what to do. Lance was seated sullenly on the other side of the room to Keith, deliberating. He knew something was wrong with Keith and a quick scan of the room told him that the others sensed it to. Lanced looked to Shiro but he was still discussing tactics with Coran, never really stopping working, as per usual. Perhaps he too was trying to figure out how to deal with the boy who was somehow even darker than normal. He looked to Hunk next, as Lance was prone to do in emotional situations. Hunk caught his eyes and nodded at Keith; you should talk to him. Lance screwed up his nose and looked away for a moment to steel himself. This is your fault, this is your fault, this is your fault. Deep down he knew that was not what Hunk meant but, in that instant, that was all he could hear.
The sound of the doors opening drew him out of his head to catch Keith's back disappearing through the door. Hunk gave him a meaningful eye. Lance leapt up and guiltily crept his way over to Hunk to bend over and whisper in his ear.
"Are you sure I should be the one to do this?" he hissed softly.
Hunk gazed at him perceptively. "Lance, I don't know what's going on, but there's something between you two that tells me that you need to talk to him as much as he needs to talk to you." Lance tried not to growl, instead exhaling heavily through his nose as he pursed his lips. "Besides, you're the only one who can get through to him when he's like this."
Lance shut his eyes and then gave Hunk a reluctant smile, trying to gain back his courage. "I better get to pick dinner tonight," he grumbled at Hunk before swivelling on his feet and striding out the door after Keith. His feet took him where he needed to go while his mind whirled.
The Red Lion sat nobly in the large hangar, but for once his eyes did not follow Lance, but instead seemed be transfixed ahead of him. Lance followed the lion's gaze to see Keith seated on the sill of a large window in the hangar. He stared out at the stars as the castle moved languidly through space.
"Keith!" Lance's voice was dark and angry. Keith's shoulders dropped before he turned to look at him. Lance's stride slowed as he walked towards him, noticing how Keith's eyes swam. His voice softened. "What the bloody hell were you thinking?"
"It was the only way," Keith's voice was barricaded with anger, but Lance could hear something else that reeled beneath. It was a hollow echo of the excuses he shouted when they had first confronted him, when Lance had just stood there and glared partly in anger and partly in disbelief.
Lance shook his head in disbelief. "You don't make those sorts of decisions by yourself." He sat down on the other end of the windowsill. "We all know how extreme your decisions are Keith. You need someone to mellow you out."
Keith eyes sparked with alarm and darted to meet Lance's; Lance's voice had begun to waver and the sides of Lance's lips turned down as he saw Keith had caught it. "Lance?" he questioned, his voice soft but with an edge of warning in it.
"I put the idea in your head that there wasn't room for six paladins," Lance admitted, swallowing past the knot in his throat. "I should have been the one in that situation. I was the one left over." He held up his pinkie to demonstrate.
Keith growled. "I left because I was of more use in the Blade of Marmora." He clenched his fingers around the fabric of his pants.
"You're of no use to us dead, Keith!" Lance's voice became shrill as his volume rose in frustration. Keith's hair fell to cover his eyes as he dropped his head to his chest, but Lance was too swept up in his anger to notice. "They're training you to be another pawn to be sacrificed for the cause! 'Knowledge or death', tch, that's how you lose sight of what really matters!" Keith swung his legs around so they hung over the edge of the window sill and he didn't have to face Lance, but Lance caught the glint of tears. He winced and let out a curse in Spanish. "See," he begun to mutter to himself, "this is why Hunk should have done this, he wouldn't have made you cry-," he was interrupted by the whumpf of Keith head hitting his chest as he wrapped his arms around him. "Hey…" Lance started.
"I was so freaking scared, Lance." Tears seized control of Keith's voice and the brokenness of it made Lance's eyes well up. He closed his eyes and sighed, combing his fingers through Keith's hair.
"I'm so sorry," his voice wobbled with the pain he was trying to lift from the boy in his arms.
"It gets in your head," Keith admitted, "no one's more important than the cause, you just become another number. And I thought I was fine with that, if it was to help people."
Lance forced himself to smile, leaning back so he could meet Keith's eyes. Keith let go of Lance and quickly wiped away tears. "You've spent most of your time out here trying to save as many people's lives as possible. You should know as well as anyone how valuable every single life is. No one is not important, Keith." Keith looked very close to tears again. But then he caught the sad look in Lance's eyes and his face snapped into a tenebrous anger.
"Don't you dare make this your own problem, Lance," he said darkly. "I told you to leave the maths to Pidge because we can all count. We all knew we were going to have to decide who remained a paladin of Voltron, I didn't need you to point that out to me. You were just the only one that assumed that the one to leave would be you."
"But you were the only one to go out of your way to make sure it was you," Lance argued softly.
"I had somewhere else to go."
"But you hate it."
"Maybe, but I also learnt a lot, and helped a lot of people," Keith explained, his eyes still red from the tears he cried moments before. Lance felt stupid; he made Keith cry and now he was comforting him.
They spent quite a while sitting in silent thought by the window. Despite the fact that they were on the edge of a threshold, they each felt a peace in that silence, an unspoken truce.
"Please come back," Lance begged, his voice laced with guilt.
Keith sighed and leant back again, his face growing calmer. "But you don't need me anymore."
"Of course we do!' Lance cried, and he began to grin. "We spent an entire month calling Allura 'Keith', that's how much we missed you." Keith burst out laughing, leftover tears causing his voice to crack a little as he did.
"What? How in the hell did you get Allura to let you do that? How are you not all dead?"
Lance chuckled. "It's a long story. You should ask Coran, I'm sure he'd love to tell you all about it!" Lance's expression indicated this was anything but the case. Keith let out a content sigh and stared up at Red.
"He was worried about you too," Lance stated.
Keith smiled. "Thanks, Red."
"Let me know when you want him back." Keith's eyes flashed a warning as he turned to look at him. "Don't get me wrong, I love Red, but Blue will always be my baby. She's the only one that appreciates my flirting." Keith chuckled and looked up at the way Red gazed fondly down on the both of them. Keith suspected Red appreciated Lance's flirting more than he let up. "So, are you going to come back?"
Keith pressed his lips together as he thought about it. "Yes." Lance's eyes began to sparkle. "But not just yet." Lance's face fell a little in disappointment, but then he broke into his trademark grin again.
"Pinkie promise?" Keith stared at his raised pinkie, then let himself smile a little at Lance's childishness. The two linked their little finger and shook hands.
"Pinkie promise."
They both chuckled at the cheesiness of the motion before Lance turned to stare out the window. "I hope we get to go home soon." Keith smiled a little as he watched Lance's wistful face. They didn't often get time to share details about their personal lives; they were always too caught up in the chaos of Voltron and all the drama that came with it. But Keith could remember perfectly the time they got stuck on a planet with giant plains of purple grass and a radiant sunset-coloured sky, and as the five paladins lay there waiting for Allura and Coran to arrive with the castle Lance regaled them for a small eternity with stories about all his siblings and the trouble they got into in his hometown. It was something Keith struggled to understand; people that you are so close to that you love to hate them. Keith either hated someone or hated someone slightly less. But sitting where he was, with the boy that was now smiling as he watched the stars lazily drift past, with all that had passed between them settling down to rest, Keith thought he may just be beginning to understand.
Keith quickly looked away as Lance turned to him. He let out a large sigh as he stood himself up and stretched out his legs before offering a hand to Keith. "Come on, we better get back, Hunk will be starting to worry. He promised me I could pick dinner tonight and he'll be getting nervous if he doesn't know what to cook by now."
Keith smiled at the normality of it all and grabbed Lance's hand, allowing himself to be pulled up. With Keith's hand in his own, Lance began to drag him back to the lounge. Keith braced himself for all the attention that was about to be turned on him, remembering the all the tenseness in the room directed at him earlier, but the determined stride of Lance's walk calmed his pounding heart, and his happy-go-lucky grin assured him that not that much had changed. They may not know how yet, but there was still a place for Keith here. Lance's smile promised that much.