1
Keith had been five and he knew death better than most five-year-olds but he was still just a kid.
He was just a kid all alone in a place with other kids waiting for foster homes to open up for them. The days went slow for all the kids and on this day, Keith was in the woods with a bunch of the older kids that had complained when they were told to bring some of the younger ones if they wanted to go to the woods.
Keith understood them. He understood why they didn't want to have a kid like Keith with them when they were practically adults in Keith's eyes but he still wanted to go so he didn't say anything in their defense.
"Don't talk to any strangers, okay?" One of the girls from the home ordered. Her freckles were partially prominent on this time of the year and she had barely healed from the sunburn she suffered the last time she forgot her sunscreen.
"Okay," a girl who looked vaguely Asian answered. Her eyes were sharp but her hair was brown instead of black and Keith really didn't know enough about races to put her into a box.
"I won't let her," a slightly bigger boy exclaimed proudly. He looked similar to the maybe part Asian girl but not enough for Keith to assume any family relations.
"Good, Mike," the freckled girl praised the boy that was apparently named Mike. Keith really needed to learn the other kids' names if he was going to stay in the group home for longer than the few weeks he had been there already.
"Tha-thanks, Rachel," Mike stuttered and looked down at his hands as his face reddened until it looked as bright red as the freckled girl's hair.
The big kids left after that and Keith was alone with no adults and chaos as soon as they were left alone.
Mike climbed a tree and was trying to inspire the Asian looking girl to follow him, three boys and a girl were fighting with sticks and two girls were sitting quietly and looking at the pond in hopes of seeing any of the 'pretty fishes'. It didn't sound that chaotic but there were at least five high-pitched voices screaming constantly and as loud as they could and Keith's head felt like it would explode.
If would have been less unbearable if Keith could talk to the other kids but he was five and was already behind on social skills at that age. He didn't know the way back and was a little afraid to be yelled at even if he succeeded in returning to the group home so he just wandered to the edge of the forest and kept a constant distance from the others. He could still hear them and most of the time see them too but it was far enough away that the noise didn't make him twitch.
He soon grew bored and a little hungry when he saw a bush.
He had had blueberries at the foster home he came from before he ended up here. They had tasted great and he had missed them. There were no blueberries for Keith to eat now. He was also so small compared to the most of the other kids from the home so he was sure that even if there were blueberries one of the days, then the big kids could take several handfuls of blueberries without any of the other kids ever having a single taste.
But here was a whole bush full of them and most of them looked exactly like the ones in plastic containers had looked in the grocery stores Keith had been to and Keith decided he would remember the way here when they went home so he could eat all the blueberries he wanted to. He wouldn't even have to share them with anyone else and he could get some time away from the constant chaos that followed every kid his age.
He plucked one and was just about to put it into his mouth when it was rudely, and so fast that he didn't understand what had happened at first, slapped out of his hand.
He looked at his hand confused and then up at the freckled girl, Rachel, and wondered briefly if she had gotten another sunburn because they face was red and pain would explain why her eyes sent knife in Keith's unburned direction.
"What the fuck are you thinking?" she asked with a loud, furious voice.
"Um," he let out unintelligently.
"Why would you eat from some strange bush?" she continued with even more fury.
"I-um-I just-I wanted blueberries," he confessed and hoped she wouldn't take all his blueberries and that she wasn't mad that he hadn't told the others about it. His eyes widened. What if it was her blueberry bush? Would she even believe him if he told her that he hadn't known?
"That's not blueberries!" Her face reddened even more and she looked intimidating as she looked down at Keith from her tall 12-year-old height with slightly spread legs.
"But they are!" Keith insisted and looked at the berries again. Yes, they were indeed blue and purple and some where smaller and green just like on pictures of blueberry bushes that had been on the cover of some magazine that Keith had seen in the dentist's office he went to once.
"No they're not," she scolded. She took one, opened it up with her long fingernail, and showed the inside to Keith. Oh, that wasn't a blueberry, it was blood red on the inside and colored Rachel's nails almost as red. It looked like blood and Keith wondered if it got its juice from real dead people.
"Why didn't you ask anyone before deciding to eat them?"
"I just…" Keith tried to think of a reason but couldn't think of one that wouldn't portray him as selfish. Even if that was exactly what he was.
"You could have died. You could have died and no one would have found out before it was too late," she told him in an even and monotone voice that clashed horribly with the obvious anger on her face.
"Don't you ever think?" she ended her speech.
No, Keith didn't think. He just acted and he knew that at five but he thought that he would get better with time. All the adults and bigger kids were better so he had to get better too someday.
Keith thought wrong.
2
"Think of all the people who'll miss you," the stand-in for the usual counselor said to the group of teenagers and Keith. "Think of all the people who wants to help you and will wish they were the dead ones instead of you."
Keith couldn't think of anyone that would miss him if he died. He wasn't currently in a foster family so there wasn't a family that had to find a new paycheck and no foster family to miss him if any of them had cared about him as an individual.
"Tell us about a person that you mean a lot to," the woman requested.
In theory, it seemed well enough to make depressed teenagers cry to think of someone that loved them but Keith just found the whole thing depressing until the first girl cried, then it was just uncomfortable as everyone just sat and pretended that she wasn't crying. Keith didn't know if it was normal behavior but he wished just as much that he could make her stop as he wished that he was deaf and maybe blind so he couldn't see her shaking shoulders or blotchy face.
"My mom always says me and my sister are the most important things to her," a brown-haired girl said with tears in her eyes but it was just tears and nothing close to ugly sobs. The tears made her eyes shine a brighter green than they had been before and Keith suddenly understood in a purely aesthetic way why about half the world's population was attracted to women.
"My friend, Mary," Another girl with brown hair but far less attractive told them when it was her turn.
"I think both my parents care about me about the same," a black-haired boy with light brown roots and black make-up, clothes and chipped nail polish said nervously as he sent anxious looks in the counselor's direction.
"That's fine," she smiled warmly full of patience.
"My dog," a light blonde haired girl told the group. Keith wouldn't have believed it if it had been any other of the people in the group saying that, but this girl had a girlish charm and soft, round face that made Keith feel like she was too young to lie despite her being at least a few years older than him.
"Who do you mean a lot to?" the counselor asked when Keith had been silent for a longer time than any of the other kids had been.
"No one," Keith confessed with a scratchy voice from the abuse he had suspected his throat to before ending up here. His voice made his confession sound even closer to the depressing shit the only other boy in the room would have put in one of his emo poems about life's unfairness but Keith didn't have anything else to say.
"I'm sure there's someone," she insisted. Keith could see her point of view but he hadn't grown up with a white fence and parents with 2,5 children like she probably had and he didn't believe that every 11-year old had anyone to truly care about them. Their usual counselor tried to tell him that it would get better soon, maybe even before his 12th birthday but that was a little under a month away and Keith was already too old for such naïve thinking.
"No, there isn't," Keith repeated. It was neither said politely not impolitely. It was just a cold, hard fact.
"I know there's someone," she insisted.
Just a few years ago, her insisting like that would have made Keith cry no matter what, now it just angered him.
"No, there really isn't," he spat out. "There isn't and you have no fucking right to sit there and act like you know my whole life!"
"Now, now," she started. Her friendliness cracked slightly. "I'm very happy that you're sharing your emotions with the group but there's no need to be rude or for crude language."
"I'm not being rude!" Keith shouted very impolitely and he knew it but he was young and tired with a black noose painted around his neck and didn't care much about being unnecessarily polite to anyone at that moment. "You don't know anything and this is a stupid exercise that will do nothing to make anyone not want to kill themselves."
"Sit down this instant" Keith had not even registered that he had stood up and switched leg awkwardly in front of his chair. "Right now…" the counselor searched for his name for a good few seconds.
"Keith," Keith interjected.
The counselor sat with furrowed eyebrows for a moment. Keith didn't know nearly enough about human reactions to know how people where feeling or thinking just half of the time but he knew that the two small wrinkles between her stylishly plucked eyebrows meant that she was searching for his name and trying to remember what was in his papers and if there was something she could use. A parent, a pet Keith cried about when they brought him away or if he had made a soppy suicide note to anyone. He hadn't. He hadn't even sent a text to anyone. That was the good thing about being alone, there was no one to say goodbye to.
She too came up with no one because her next question would have been both incredibly stupid and insensitive if she knew of Keith's situation. "What about your mother?"
"No," Keith denied.
"Okay," she sighed. Keith couldn't see if she believed him or just thought he was being difficult now but at least she tried with asking, "Your father?"
"No."
"Friends?"
"Sorry," he said and actually meant it at least a little bit. He was almost tempted to just relent and say he knew a stray cat or something to make her stop searching.
"You need to say someone," she informed him.
"I can't," he answered.
"Then at the very least you need to sit down until we're done with today's group time.
And Keith sat down because that was at least a fair demand of him.
3
"You need to stop being so impulsive," Shiro ordered. "A good leader needs to keep a cold head and even just a good fighter need to do that too."
"I know," Keith mumbled.
"Then start acting like it instead of trying to get yourself killed," Shiro spat out.
Shiro was usually not like this. He was calm through almost everything, at least on the outside, but Keith had almost died again because he was hotheaded. Keith hated that. He hated being so consumed by his emotions. He hated that he didn't think and he could never stop himself and then he ended up having messed everything up once again. He was 17 now, and he had been told time and time again that he should think before he ended up killing himself but it hadn't helped so far.
"You're not even trying," Shiro continued and Keith really wanted to cry because he thought that at least Shiro would have seen that he was trying. Why didn't he see that he was trying so hard.
"I'm sorry," Keith whispered.
"Just," Shiro closed his eyes and rubbed his nosebridge, "at least try from now on."
I already am, Keith thought.
"I will try," Keith answered and didn't even have any hope left of Shiro noticing the truth of his words. Keith just didn't want to disappoint Shiro.
"Good," Shiro said more as a statement than an answer.
4
It was both easier and harder to be in the Blade than with Voltron and the reason for both things were the same.
Voltron cared about him because their feelings forced them to and the Blades cared about him as much as was convenient.
The Blade's level of caring was what Keith had been used to his whole life and what he had been showed most of it and that fact alone gave familiarity and familiarity gave comfort. However, it also gave comfort to have someone care for other reasons than him being a monthly paycheck, or another person they're forced to look after, teach in a classroom, or use as a weapon, but it was also frightening and stressed him out to have that effect on anyone. Because Keith was quick to care but didn't know when or how to show it and he made so many mistakes that he had feared that Voltron would stop caring all the time.
He hadn't been thrown out of Voltron yet but he was sure it was happening soon. He could feel it and he could see it with how annoyed they were when he didn't come back from a mission on time or when he fell asleep the moment he came back from Blade missions during any Team Voltron's down time.
That was what went through Keith's head when Kolivan was informed of Keith almost paying his own life again because he didn't want to leave anyone behind on enemy territory.
"We can't lose two soldiers," Kolivan echoed what Keith had already been told by half the resistance.
"I know," Keith said as he did as a respond half of the time he had this conversation. "But he would have died or been tortured otherwise."
"And you would have been the same had you not barely escaped again."
"Yes, again," Keith said in another moment of defiance. "I have already saved more than one soldier, so if I die, then you have only lost one in cost for a number of others."
"Every mission we risk to lose everyone involved and if you're captured, then you can find your way back if you aren't already dead. We need everyone capable of returning to return and we can't have any carry around dead soldiers when running from enemy forces."
"I couldn't have known that Hyzax was dead," Keith defended himself when he got the hint of what Kolivan was throwing in his face. He may barely be an adult at 18, but he wasn't stupid.
"Yes, exactly," Kolivan reprimanded. "You risked another soldier to save a dead one because you didn't know. You can't just act rashly because of your hunches. It's the group before the individual, the mission or death. Don't ever forget that again."
Keith didn't say anything. Kolivan wanted him to promise to never act like that again but they both knew it would be a lie.
Keith could never leave anyone behind to an uncertain destiny and he wasn't sure he would even leave another soldier if he knew they were dead. Not after being with Voltron for so long and seeing Hyzax's funeral with everyone that cared about him saying goodbye and knowing that he had honored the deceased Blade made the risk of Keith's death worth it.
5
"You could have died, Keith! Are you such a big idiot that you don't get that?" Pidge asked as bluntly as ever.
Keith could take anger but then tears made her eyes glassy and then started falling down her cheeks.
"You could have died. You could have died and no one would have found out before it was too late," she sobbed. Keith got a weird feeling of hearing this before but he couldn't remember when.
Maybe it was just because different people have told him the same message so many times throughout the years, but it felt like more.
Pidge took a firm hold of the fabric of Keith's shirt right in front of his chest.
"You're so selfish," Pidge cried as she pressed her face into his shirt. "Leaving the team and then flying into a barrier and leaving us to know that you would have been alive if it wasn't for us. Knowing that you-that you sacrificed yourself so we could live."
"I'm sorry," he answered. He didn't try to defend himself. He didn't know how or if he would be in the wrong if he tried. He felt like he would be but he didn't think he would have had the capability to say anything against Pidge even if he hadn't felt like that.
"You're ready to die but we're not ready for you to." Pidge looked up at Keith with big, tearful eyes. "I can't live knowing that you had killed yourself."
Keith laid his right hand on her head. It was awkward and he was really bad at comforting but she became slightly less tense at the touch so Keith took that as a success.
"I didn't do it to hurt any of you," Keith told her truthfully and rubbed his left thumb over his left index finger in a steady pace. It was calming and the only comfort Keith would allow himself.
"But it did. We care about you so it hurt us." There were still tears pouring down her cheeks but a fierce anger in her eyes as she shook Keith with the grip on his shirt alone.
"I'm sorry, Pidge," Keith said again. "I don't know what else to tell you."
"Tell me that you won't do it again!" she demanded but the anger started to ebb away. Shit. "Promise me that this is-that this is the last time that you will do this."
"I can't do that," Keith whispered. He wished he could promise her that but he would never let any of his friends die if he knew that there was even a small chance of him saving them. It didn't take the guilt of hurting Pidge and the rest of them away but Keith knew that he would forget all past feelings and promises if the situation repeated itself.
He was just like that – impulsive and emotional. He cared too much and voiced too little.
+1
Keith was on a mission as a part of the Blade of Mamora but it felt like a mission as part of Voltron.
Voltron did fine without him and they hadn't scolded him for being impulsive in a long time now, every Blade on the other hand, had no illusions about Keith's recklessness, but he could take the Blades scolding him.
Some of them not scolding him instead of the Blade was also that there were limited times both Keith and Team Voltron could communicate together both because of missions that took their focus and the general safety of both parties so when they did talk, the reckless action and near death experiences were long passed. Keith also hoped that they like him preferred to not talk about anything negative when they finally did talk and he didn't know when he could talk to them again. If there even was a next time, as he often feared there wasn't every time they hung up.
It was because of this that Keith was ecstatic about being on the current mission. Keith was with only the Paladins alone as he knew the layout of this ship far better than the paladins did and stealth would be compromised with more people on board. Not even all the paladins were on board. Only Keith, Lance and Pidge with the rest waiting for the trio to voice any need for backup so Allura could open a wormhole and the Blue, Yellow and Red Lion could swarm in and help.
They seemed so far away but as they had often been reminded of, if they can see the Galra ship on the scanner, then the Galra ship could see them on their scanner.
Shiro had wanted to come along too but Lance had reminded him that they wanted to limit the number of Paladins on the ship since it was a stealth mission for information and they needed both Pidge for her knowledge of obtaining the information from the Galra ship and Lance for his long-range weapon.
Keith had only heard the tail end of that argument through his com connection to the castle and the argument only got resolved because Allura agreed with Lance's reasoning. She said that it would limit the risks.
It worked fine at first.
Nothing totally unrealistic as they had to hide more times than Keith would have liked and almost got discovered at least once but nothing bad happened.
Then Pidge had gotten all the desired information about the Galra bases and hopefully a glimpse of her father too and it was time to head back.
They had been discovered and Keith had seen red when the sentry almost landed a fatal swing on Pidge. Successful stealth missions was known for being quiet and Keith should have known with his pathetic record of undiscovered stealth missions that he shouldn't have agreed to be on this one just because he missed his friends.
He saved Pidge from one robot with an angry yell that echoed louder in the halls than it had been out of his mouth and then there was been countless robots to worry about because of Keith.
Allura asked if they should come but Keith didn't register the answer that she got before he had to defend himself against another robot's swing while avoiding being shot by the ones further away.
Lance pulled back from Pidge and Keith so he could fire away without having to worry too much about his own safety and Pidge and Keith pulled forward into the crowd of sentries.
It had all happened so fast after that, one moment he was fighting his way through several sentries and the next he fell to the side when a big impact pushed him off the ground.
He looked up and saw a sword descend towards his face. He would die. His Blade mask did little more than disguise him as one of them and that sword would slash right through the mask and into Keith's face.
Then it was shot away by blue lightning and Keith could take another breath as he tried to fight through the pain and get up. Keith needed to get up and fight be needed to be useful. He was nothing if he couldn't be useful when everything around them was his fault.
He was sloppy and collapsed again before the fight was over. Pidge moved closer to him and the blue lighting fell more rapidly around him than it did before but he couldn't make sense of much else.
Light rose and fell as the blue light moved and as sentries was cut, shot or electrocuted and the noises was all around him.
He wanted the noise to stop. It made it hard to breathe and Keith needed to do something. He didn't know what. Come closer to the sound and understand the words or farther away where it couldn't hurt his head.
Maybe he blacked out for a second or maybe it just happened that quickly, but it felt like that one moment there was noise all around him and the next it was silent except two pair of footsteps hurrying towards him.
"Keith!" Pidge cried when she let herself fall to her knees by Keith's shoulder.
"Pidge," he answered in a whisper and tried to look down at the mess of his uniform and how more and more of the black material started to reflect the purple light around him and tried to look into the holes in his uniform.
"Don't look at that," Lance ordered before he too fell to his knees but on Keith's other side.
Keith looked up at Lance and tried to focus his eyes but they kept going cross-eyed.
"We need to move you, okay Keith?" Pidge asked but didn't wait for an answer. "We need to get you to the castle."
"Okay," Keith whispered as if it was a secret. As if wasn't because he simply couldn't talk louder than what he was.
Keith waited for pain when he was lifted but there was barely a twinge before it went away in an absent feeling of floating through the air in someone's arms.
"I'm sorry," Lance's voice said right over Keith's head when Keith was secure in the arms.
"I's oka'," Keith slurred quietly.
"It doesn't hurt?" Pidge whispered back full of too much horror for Keith to comprehend properly.
"Nn-nn," Keith answered with noise coming from his throat alone.
"We're there soon, buddy," Lance said before both he and Pidge sprinted as fast as they could through the halls and could only hope to not be discovered and stopped despite the short distance to the lions.
"Blue can fly herself back to the castle. I'm going with you in Green," Lance informed Pidge in a hurry as they rushed past another door.
Pidge didn't answer but she didn't need to as they reached the hiding place for their lions and she did nothing except rush towards her lion.
"I'm sorry," Keith coughed when Lance entered the Green Lion with Keith still in his arms.
"What for?" Lance asked in a voice too friendly to not be hiding anything as he ordered Keith not to look down at himself when he sat down against the wall behind Green's cockpit.
"I didn't think," Keith confessed. "I just acted."
"We'll talk about that later, okay?" Lance answered but Keith knew there wouldn't be any later.
Even in his half delirious state and Lance literally holding his chin when he tried to look down at himself, he knew that he was bleeding out and that they couldn't board the castle in time for them to reach the medical wing too. At least not before Keith's time was up.
"I tried," Keith said because his wall of boundaries were thinner as he edged his way towards death. Keith took a deep breath when he fought through the pressing tears because he had less restrictions but he still didn't want to cry especially if it was in front of some of his old teammates. In front of his friends who would have to live with his last moments.
"I know," Lance promised and carefully moved Keith's bangs out of his face. It all seemed so far away but still intimate.
All Keith could think about was the echo of his and Shiro's conversation about trying when he had been 17. It had been about 2 years ago but Keith suddenly remembered it in great detail and rubbed his thumb over his index finger until he couldn't feel his fingers anymore and let his hand fall down to the floor.
"What are you doing, Pidge!?" Lance scolded and it took looking at Lance trying to sit still to notice that the lion was in fact not lying in a straight line.
"They're firing against us!" she shouted with stress so clear that Keith's heart pumped a little faster.
Lance's hold on Keith's bangs moved towards his cheek as he slapped him lightly. Or maybe it was hard and Keith just couldn't feel it properly.
"Hey, don't close your eyes. Keep them open until we reach the castle," Lance ordered.
Was his eyes closed? Keith's eyes moved around under his eyelids as he tried to find any light.
"We will be there soon. Right, Pidge? Tell us that we will be there soon," Lance pleaded and Keith was almost glad that he couldn't find the strength to open his eyes and see the expression on Lance's face.
"Lance," Pidge let out in a pitiful sound. It was full of sorrow but more importantly, it was full of a thousand apologies.
Lance sniffed once and moved his hand into Keith's sweaty hair while the other one kept him steady through Pidge's flying.
"It will be okay, Samurai," Lance whispered into Keith's ear.
"Sorry," Keith whispered back so softly that Lance wouldn't have heard it if his face hadn't been right in front of Keith's.
"Don't be," Lance ordered in the lightest voice anyone had ordered Keith to do anything. "It will be okay so don't be sorry."
"'kay," Keith answered more as a breath than a word.
"You can relax now. I'll take care of everything."
The words was wrong coming from Lance's mouth. Lance shouldn't have to take care of anything but his voice was so soothing despite the stress he put on certain words that Keith relaxed the last bit of muscle he had that wasn't completely limp already.
"You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now," Lance promised and Keith barely registered the choked sound Pidge made. Lance's heartbeat was too strong and too calming for Keith to notice much else.
It got harder to breath but Keith felt completely safe and sound as Lance started to hum a song from a life long ago. Lance didn't sing any of the words but Keith remembered the lyrics about someone having to leave and closing one's eyes from the fire outside because everything was alright. Everything would be alright.
Keith felt his breath become swallow and irregular. It should have concerned him but for once, Keith could relax after a botched mission and for once, he wasn't blamed for acting before he thought it through.
He just relaxed to the tune of Lance's voice and heartbeat and flew away in the knowledge that he would never have to worry about disappointing anyone ever again.