After 54 days,something had to break. Yes, Shiro was back. And yes, Black finally opened up after 54 days of nothingness. But Black had opened not to Shiro but to Allura, who had looked at the both of them with a strange expression on her face that he could no longer read. He knew it, had even expected it, because things surely must go on after Shiro had opened his eyes for the first time in a long time and seen light. Something inside him had broken, and he wasn't even aware of it until the Princess stepped up next to Black like she had always belonged.

He had thought his yearning for the stars had been culled by the Galra and the dark and the choking sensation of drowning in lukewarm water. Apparently, he was wrong as he watched the five Lions zoom from the Castle without him.

That first night without the others, he had poked at his food and dreamt of groping hands that held him down. He had awoken with a choke, still sure he should be back in the depths of his dreams; instead, he had felt more than seen Black's presence return within the Castle and went back to sleep faster than he thought possible.

As the Lions came and went in a flurry of activity that Shiro had once relished, he came to realize that he could no longer remember most of his life before the Fall. Before the stars were wrenched out of his grasp again. He wondered if he should say something but when he looked at Allura's face and her grim solemn smile, he found no words came to mind to describe the emptiness inside him.

He found her one day in the dining area. She was sporting a fresh bandage on her wrist as well as a small bandage on her neck. She looked like beauty and sadness wrapped in black and white as she rested against the back of her chair, the armor fitting her in a way the armor had never fit on him. Something ugly reared in the pits of his stomach and he sat down at the far end of the table, noticeably distant from where Allura was.

If she thought anything of it, she didn't say as she continued her rest in silence. She looked serene and content for the first time in a long time and Shiro should be happy, should be delighted, should know better than anyone what it's like to pretend to be something you're not but something had changed with him since 54 days of not seeing stars.

"You should be more careful," he stated more to the table than to her, and he felt more than saw her shift to attention at the sound of his voice. Allura said nothing and Shiro didn't dare look her in the eyes as he continued speaking to the table as if his life depended on it.

Maybe it did.

"You could've been killed. What would we have done then? You're one of two people who can pilot the Castle and if you had-"

"Is that all you think of me as?" Her voice was gentle, soft, and so very sad. "Just the pilot of this ship?"

"No. Of course not."

She hummed and repeated, "Of course not", almost mockingly, but she would never mock him, never him, especially not now.

"You're just too important!" Shiro didn't even realize he was yelling until he wasn't because gods, why couldn't Allura see that she could be happier without having to watch over him and shoulder the universe's burden on her shoulders. "You shouldn't be taking unnecessary risks!"

If Allura noticed his shoulders shaking, if she noticed his voice cracking, if she noticed the table cloth swirls etching themselves into his hand, she didn't mention it. "I must if I am leader," she said in that same sad tone that made Shiro want to shake her inside out until she came to see what he had seen in his dreams.

"No you can't! You can't even protect yourself! How can you protect the others? How can you protect me?!"

And maybe that was the crux of it all as to why he'd been both avoiding her and dreaming of her in the darkness of space. As to why he loved and hated Black. As to why he wanted someone to rip his heart out of his chest but also no because he still wanted to reach the stars that had hurt him so so much.

There was a beat, two, where it looked like Allura was going to move, to shout, to do something besides sit there with a straight straight back; she looked like a slight wind could have cut her down. Then the moment was gone and the only things left were Allura, Shiro, and the distance between them.

"You need help. I can help you. I can do it. I can-" He choked, his tongue stumbling over itself in his haste to say all the words he'd ever wanted to say since he watched the Lions fly away from him after 54 days of falling. "I'm not useless. I can still help."

An unreadable expression crawled its way onto Allura's face and stayed there. "You're not useless, Shiro. Nobody ever thinks that of you." She moved for the first time since he entered and Shiro jerked back because he was and why couldn't she see that that was the reason Black no longer opened to him.

Every step Allura took forward, he took the same back; he didn't realize he was trapped until his back hit the wall hard, causing him to gasp. Allura's face didn't change. It was still as unreadable as before but something in her painfully familiar purple eyes had shifted.

She looked like her heart was breaking.

"I can still help," he whispered into the silence of the room and it was like he had just woken up for the first time in the healing pod and fallen into the waiting arms of Allura. Everything was out of focus but slowly sliding back into constellations he once knew. "You need me."

"Yes," Allura breathed. "We do. But you're also needed here, Shiro. And how can we take this away from you too?"

Something inside him popped and fizzled, burning him from the inside out. "What-" He swallowed hard and hated the way his voice sounded raw, as if disused. "What do you mean?"

"When you were… gone…," Allura's shoulders hunched up and Shiro impulsively crossed his hands, ignoring the tremors riding up his left arm, "we were… lost. Mourning. Especially when we couldn't find you."

54 days. They couldn't find him for 54 days because he had been dead, dying, ashes blown to the wind, only sustained by hope, hope, hope that felt like dirt in his mouth.

"We were hurt. We tried, Shiro, we tried so hard." Tears. He heard tears in her choking voice but he couldn't look at her, not now, not when everything was hurting. "We tried to look for you but when we couldn't, we had to move on. We had to go on. You of all people should understand why. You of all people should know why Black opened up to me. Of my position. Of my power. Of my-"

"You don't need me anymore. You're the Head now. So-"

"Listen to me, Shiro! Listen! We tried-"

"Well, you didn't try hard enough did you!" he shouted and suddenly, he was aware of how close Allura's face was, how her knuckles had turned white, how the tears trekked down her beautiful sad face. "You all stopped looking for me! You guys don't need me. You guys are perfectly fine without me. If you say you need me, then why am I here and not with Black?!"

Allura opened her mouth and closed it, shock and heartbreak all rolled into one.

"You say you need me. I tell you I can help. And yet, I'm not out there," he pointed to the ceiling but they both know he meant the expanse of wilderness outside this small small Castle, "So what use am I to you?!"

When Allura said nothing, her knuckles still white, her face still mournful, he roared, "Answer me!"

"And say what?!," she shouted back, shoving him against the wall again with a hard hard palm that burned and cooled him all at once. "What do you want me to say, Shiro?!"

"That you guys never stopped looking! That you guys never gave up! That you need me!"

"You think we don't know that?," Allura countered, hand still on his chest, pinning him down. "You think we gave up because we didn't need you? How can you even know how we felt? How I felt? How Black-"

Shiro shoved her back and she stumbled, face still angry, still twisting with fury. "Black doesn't want me!"

"You're wrong!," Allura yelled back with just as much force, standing her ground, nostrils flaring at his statement. "You're wron-"

"Stop saying that!"

"But you're wrong!"

"Then why am I here?!," Shiro cried, and it was like he was moving in a dizzying circle, never forward, never backward, stuck in limbo.

It wasn't until this moment that he realized his own face was streaked wet.

"Because you need rest!" Allura pushed him and he stumbled again, his back hitting the wall with such force that it knocked the breath out of him.

The action didn't quell his anger, however, as he shouted back, "No, I don't!"

"Yes you do!" Her armor, his armor, the one that used to rest upon his shoulders with a heavy heavy weight, flashed under the pristine white lights from above. "You think I don't know what you're thinking? I know you!"

His instinct was to refute it but he couldn't even get the words out before Allura was already cutting him off, voice suddenly soft. "I… I know you. I thought you knew me too."

And if he was the old Shiro, the Shiro before the Fall, the Shiro before 54 days in darkness and space trying to reach for something that wasn't there, Shiro would have understood. He would have stopped and checked himself. But he didn't because the team had abandoned him just like Black abandoned him, and it hurt; it hurt so badly, that he snarled, ugly tears rolling down his face, "I wished you never revived me."

Allura's face twisted as she took a step back; she looked gutted as if his words had actually cut her.

Maybe they had as she trembled with fury and sadness. Her voice cracked as she whispered, "How could you even say that to me?"

And if he hadn't just been pulled from the deep and the dark, from 54 days of nothingness, he would have apologized. He would have bowed down before this woman who could single handedly break him down with a single touch, a single word, a single look. Seeing the pain on her face should have shaken him a way that only she could cause because she was his light in the darkness, but right now, this very moment, Shiro could see nothing but holes in the fabric of time and space.

He had dared to say what had been left unspoken ever since he had been ripped from comfort and dropped into chaos, and once the words had been laid bare, he could no longer take them back.

He wasn't sure if he even wanted to take them back as Allura sucked in a sharp sharp breath and held it for a beat, two, that felt like eternity. Her hands which were fists before hung limply at her sides as she took one step back, then another, and another, until she hit a chair's back. There were no more words now, no more things that needed to be aired, nothing that needed to be spoken, as Shiro didn't dare to look at Allura's shattered expression.

Something rumbled in the distance, far far away. It sounded eerily close to the coming of a storm.

A/N:

- I wanted Shiro to break down because there's no real way he could have recovered fast enough as demonstrated in the show. He literally died. And came back to life. Even someone who is incredibly good at compartmentalizing would eventually break when they finally realize that something is amiss in their life. In this canon AU, Shiro came back but he had essentially taken on what Allura's role used to be which was coordinating from the Castle and providing backup the Voltron. Allura became the Black Paladin after Shiro came back because Black needed to see her Paladin safe before realizing that while he had been perfect to be the Head, he was no longer the same. As much as it hurt Shiro that Black couldn't open up to him, Black felt the same way and Allura felt it within the confines of the Lion. What Shiro couldn't realize was that he had become changed not because he initially did change but because he believed that something had changed so he changed and adapted to that change. Did that last sentence make sense? I sure hope it did but if not, you're welcome to PM or drop a review as to what you think of the story and how you interpreted it.

- This was initially inspired by Lover's Quarrel by seleenermparis which I wanted to remix into my own style aka I just wanted to basically rewrite what she had written but in my own way. But then the story kinda ran away from me and became a different beast at the end. I attempted to reign it back by including the original dialogue to stir me back in the right direction but I'm not sure if I did a good job since in the end, I barely used the original dialogue so this ended up not even being a remix.

- I really did enjoy writing this story although it took much longer than I thought it would to commit all my ideas onto paper. I hope you enjoy reading!

- Reviews are much appreciated! Thank you for reading!