When I wake up I'm afraid, somebody else might take my place.
Shiro dreams of darkness.
Suffocating, enveloping, all surrounding—no matter where he looks he is alone, floating in the void.
Despite this, he doesn't feel afraid. He doesn't feel worried either, though part of him knows he should be. He's gone, everyone's gone and he doesn't know how to find them, how to make sure they're taken care of, how to fix this mess he's gotten himself into. He should be panicking, he should be terrified, he should be punching his way out of this blackness.
He's not.
Selfishly, he feels calm. The tension in his body is gone, his limbs are slack. He can't move. He can't even find the energy to hate himself, for failing them. There's nothing he can do, there's nothing he can do there's nothing he can do there's nothing
all of them are gone and sucked away into the vacuum of space the cold void of unfeeling monsters and bloody battles and Samuel is already gone and Matt is going to be next and he's going to die in this bloody arena and it's your fault it's all your fault it's all
gone.
He wants to scream, wants to tear out his hair and sever the false parts of him and open his eyes and wake up but he can't because Shiro knows there's nothing there but that terrible blackness.
He knows there's nothing left of him anymore.
It doesn't feel like his body is there, with his mind. Does he still have it? Or did it disappear with the rest of him?
How long has he been here?
Bones shatter under his not-fist. He is alone.
Lance smiles at him, tired but happy, and Shiro thinks this is what it's like to have a family.
Zarkon crushes his throat. He is alone.
Pidge stares out into space, counting the stars and the ticks since he left and Shiro thinks I have to get back to them.
This how Sendak must feel. Floating alone in his fragile pod, dead or dreaming, unaware of how close he is to fading out of existence. Shiro did that to him. It's Shiro's fault. Now Shiro shares his fate.
There are a million miles between him and any sort of comfort he could take.
He can see it now; they don't need him anymore.
Keith will grow stronger, he knows. The little bits of himself he saw in the boy are fading as he gets closer to becoming a man. Lance too, is getting stronger.
They are all getting stronger without him.
To Shiro, that's fine. To Takashi, that's fine. Maybe, he thinks, drifting in the void, he'll find Samuel. Maybe he'll find Matt.
Maybe he'll find himself. He can hear them calling…
"Shirogane! Wake up Shirogane!" Someone is shaking him. "Come on Takashi, we're almost there."
Shiro can't remember the last time someone used his first name. His eyes snap open.
The void is gone, and in its stead is the interior of a ship. Someone leans over him, blocking out the harsh overhead light.
It's a face he knows, a face he thinks he knows, aching on the edge of familiar and pleasing and for the life of him he can't recall the person's name. It hits him when they speak, pulling him upright.
"Feeling alright?" Keith asks, shining a penlight in Shiro's eyes. "Exiting cryosleep is always rough, but you were taking a lot longer to come around. The others are all up already."
"I was... I was dreaming."
"What about?" he asks with a practiced air, as though it was standard procedure or something as he presses two fingers to Shiro's pulse. Shiro didn't even know they had cryosleep technology available to them, let alone what Keith should be asking him after he woke up, but he answers just the same.
"I'm not sure."
"Well, your vitals are normal." Keith pinches his cheek with a smile. "Why don't you get up? We're getting close." There's something different about Keith, the way he carries himself. His clothes are different too, Shiro doesn't remember ever seeing that red jumpsuit in his life.
"What happened?" he asks, pulling himself out of the pod. Keith reaches out and smooths Shiro's hair. Bedhead, he guesses.
"Oh, no, everything's fine. We dropped out of lightspeed, as planned, I just thought," he pauses, trying to choose his words carefully. "We've been away for so long, I just wanted to see it together. With you." His smile is soft, and knowing Keith, rare, so Shiro appreciates that he gets to see it.
"Shall we then?" he holds out his hand, which Shiro thinks is a little strange, but he takes it anyways and they enter the cockpit.
"Oi, Chief, we're six minutes out," Lance calls from his seat in the navigator's chair. He doesn't meet Shiro's eyes, which is strange. The nickname too, is something new, and he wants to ask about it but Keith cuts him off.
"Good! Can you get a line to command? I want to make sure they didn't forget about us." Hunk laughs at that, elbowing Pidge, butLance's expression is still humorless.
"I've been hailing them for a while, but haven't heard anything back. I'll keep trying though."
"That's odd, they should be expecting us. Maybe our communications are down?"
Lance shakes his head. "I don't think so. I know we're sending out pings, because I get interference from the solar wind when they bounce back, but when I open a channel for command, I'm not getting an automated response, or a maintenance message, or anything."
"Maybe they switched frequencies and forgot to tell us? Try some other channels." Keith continues to talk shop with Lance and Shiro quickly tunes them out. The tech speak goes over his head; he was trained as a pilot, not a navigator, but he's impressed that Lance has such an impressive grasp of communication technologies.
"Hey, Quiet." Hunk calls, looking at Shiro. Confused, he points to himself, and Hunk rolls his eyes. "Yes, you. You left the cryopod on, it's really wasting coolant we need for re-entry."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll um..." Hunk looks at him expectantly.
"That's my fault Seidou!" Keith's voice is suddenly in his ear and Shiro jumps at the proximity. "I woke him up, I forgot to turn it off. Quiet, you can help me." Keith pulls him by the hand back into the room he woke up in. There's something off, but Shiro can't quite tell what. He feels strange.
"I always forget to turn these things off," Keith almost says to himself, kneeling down beside Shiro's cryopod. His hand is shaking as he punches a complicated code into the control panel.
"Are you alright?" He lets out a breath, almost a laugh, and meets Shiro's gaze. The energy and control that possessed him earlier fades as he slumps against the side of the chamber.
"Yes. No. I don't know Quiet, I'm a little scared." His voice is small, but Shiro is distracted by the nickname. Hunk had said it to him earlier too.
"Why do you keep calling me that?"
"Right, sorry. I keep forgetting, Takashi. Force of habit, you know how hard it is for me to switch off."
That wasn't the answer Shiro was expecting, and somehow it made him feel worse.
"I..." Keith twists his hands. He pats the ground next to him and Shiro sits. "I wanted to talk to you about this before we got back. If you're..." he sighs. Starts again.
"If you're worried about people finding out, when we get back, I understand and I'm... I'm okay with whatever makes you comfortable, whether that's keeping it secret or— or breaking it off." His voice breaks, and he inhales sharply. There are tears welling in the corners of his eyes and Shiro fights the urge to brush them away. Nothing he's saying makes any sense. "I just don't want you to worry, about what your parents will say, or anything. You worry too much as it is."
"What are you talking about?" Keith's mouth hangs open for a second, shocked.
"I'm— I'm talking about us?" His eyes flick rapidly over Shiro's face. "Takashi you're acting strangely, are you feeling okay?"
"I don't know," Shiro admits. "Everything feels a little off, but we're all okay, right? We're done, we're... going home?" Keith turns away from him, pressing his hand to his eyes.
"Yeah, we're going home," he sniffs. "I'll just... I won't say anything until you decide. But I'm going to need an answer eventually." He's angry, Shiro can tell. He knows him well enough to see that, but he doesn't know why. His brain still feels half frozen from the cryosleep, like he's missing half of what everyone is saying, and his limbs feel sluggish, strange, as though he's grown an inch overnight and hasn't acclimated yet.
"Wh—"
They both start when yells sound from the cockpit.
"Chief, you'd better get in here!" Keith immediately jumps up and dashes out of the room. Shiro follows.
He wishes he hadn't.
The city is destroyed. That's why they couldn't get a response from command, the city is destroyed.
They're all paralyzed in fear, shock, Shiro doesn't know because he can't feel anything because the city isn't a city anymore, it's rubble.
World War III happened while they were away, Hunk says, and Shiro can't accept that, they couldn't have been gone for that long, with Voltron, for the world to deteriorate so quickly.
The rest of the planet could be in worse shape, he doesn't even know if his parents are okay, or if the Garrison is still after him for experiments and interrogation, and he'll never find out because it's gone, it's all gone it's—
"Takashi." A low voice whispering his name brings him back to the present, and it's Keith wrapping his arms around him in a crushing embrace and Shiro tries not to completely break down, Keith is silently crying into his shoulder and he knows because he can feel the dampness on his skin.
There's nothing left to come back to.
He closes his eyes.
They snap back open too soon.
"What are those ships?!" Hunk shouts, and the cockpit is bathed in an eerie yellow light.
"Kogane, get us out of here!" Lance shouts. Keith jumps into the pilot seat and wrenches the controls, trying to break away, but it's useless. They're dead in the air, being pulled towards the unknown.
Shiro vaguely recognizes the vessel reeling them in, even through the yellow haze of the tractor beam.
His heart stops beating, frozen in panic like the rest of him. Not again. He can't live through this again, they can't take him again he just escaped and they're taking him again he can't—
It's the Galra.
Time slows to a crawl as the cargo doors open like a gaping maw, ready to swallow them whole. He barely registers that Keith has taken his hand, that he's saying something, that Pidge is hysterically crying somewhere behind him and Hunk is shouting curses at the ship. His pulse roars in his ears, panicked and quick as though his heart is trying to beat out a lifetime's worth in just a few seconds because he knows that this is it for him.
Shiro knows what's waiting for them.
Shiro can't escape this again.
Shiro shuts down.
The void has come for him again. It dances at the edge of his vision, a tangible difference in space, like a river meeting the ocean. The water is different here.
It's so cold. He's shivering.
It's been one night, two, maybe five, since they've been taken. Again. They work in the mines; the guards whip them. They fight for scraps of food, drops of water, trying to look too weak to send to the arena.
Shiro has already been here too long. He remembers too well, how to blend in, how to stay alive.
The others are angry, defiant, but Shiro can't muster the mental strength to join them. He can barely talk, barely eat.
Barely feel.
He knows Keith is concerned, feels his worried glances, sees how he gives up half the food he takes to try to make Shiro eat. He wishes that he could reassure him, that it's okay, he's been through this before.
Shiro can endure.
The others cannot.
"... can't last much longer, look at him. If we're going to go, we're going now." Hunk's whisper cuts through the thick silence of their cell. They had been conspiring for the past few days, but Shiro had only really noticed just now. He hunches further over his knees.
"We've barely had this plan for two days and you want to go now? No way, they whip us for breathing, and if we break out we'll be killed instantly." Lance had bucked the most at their enslavement, receiving far too much attention from the armed guards that watched them work. His back was covered in cuts and bruises, and for the first time Shiro wished he wasn't so headstrong. That bull-headedness was going to kill him.
"Kurogane, we don't have a choice." Keith's voice drops even lower when he continues, but Shiro can still hear him. "Just look at him. I can't bear to watch him waste away in here."
Shiro glanced over his shoulder and the others hastily look away, and he realizes they were talking about him.
Keith comes over to crouch beside him.
"We've got a plan," Keith whispers. "We can steal a ship and get out of this place." Shiro considers his words. The last time he escaped, there was help from the inside. The five of them are alone, but he looks at Lance's hunched posture, feels the brand on his arm, and he knows they can't afford to wait.
"Let's go." His voice is rough, and he stands on shaky feet, but Keith's grip on his shoulder fills him with some kind of energy. Hope, maybe, he thinks.
They break out.
The ship hangar is across the compound from the prison, and they slowly crawl towards it, dodging searchlights and guard patrols.
The pace is torturously slow and every minute they spend pressed into the ground as the light passes over them Shiro is sure they will be discovered and sent to the arena blindfolded and defenseless to be killed as examples.
They aren't.
There are two guards posted outside the hangar, half-asleep, and it's almost comically easy to slip past them.
Inside, they aren't so lucky.
Shiro doesn't realize that they're surrounded until the doors start to close, trapping them inside before they can reach the ships. Keith pulls him through at the last second, and it feels like he's jumped into cold water. The haze slips from his mind.
Shiro feels awake, and he feels afraid.
The first wave of guards go down easy, but the second comes too fast and the third is right on their heels.
"We're running out of time!" he shouts, and Keith grabs his hand and runs. The others follow, he hopes.
They don't have time to look back.
They stumble into the ship and he jumps into the pilot seats with Keith, and hears a shout from behind them.
"Get the doors closed, we're on, go!"
"Do you clowns even know how this thing works?" Lance groans, settling into a chair.
"I can fly anything, Kurogane," and there's humor in Keith's voice but his face is grim, trying to work out the launch sequence by strategically pressing buttons. "I scored higher than you in flight school." Shiro can tell he doesn't actually know what he's doing, and takes the lead. Something passes between them when their gazes meet, an understanding of sorts. Shiro doesn't know what it means. He punches the ignition.
The sudden acceleration presses all of them tightly into their seatbacks. Keith grabs the throttle, but Shiro can tell his trajectory is off.
"Keith, pull up! We're going to hit the—" One of the castle towers crumbles against the hull. The dying screams of slaves are so faint Shiro isn't sure if it's just his imagination.
"We've got a tail," Hunk warns. Shiro sees the blips of "friendly" ships on the radar. "Get to battle stations."
"We can't fight, are you crazy? We need to get out of here and we need to get out of here now." Lance demands.
"Up there," Keith points out of the viewscreen to a violent swirling mass of dust. Bright flashes of electricity randomly light up the clouds. "We can lose them in that lightning storm." Shiro meets his eyes.
"Be careful," he says, not really knowing why.
"You know I will be," Keith says with a smile. There's a second where he moves toward Shiro in slow motion, and Shiro thinks that he's going to whisper something to him.
Shiro misjudges the trajectory of Keith's lips.
Longing, fear, and something else that makes his heart beat almost painfully seem to flow from the contact of Keith's mouth on his. The kiss is over in a second, probably even less, but Shiro's mouth burns for decades afterwards, that tiny sliver of a moment stretching beyond his experience of time. Shiro doesn't know what makes his chest tighten and burn, but he's sure he shouldn't be feeling whatever it is.
Buffeted by winds and gravity, the stolen slave ship enters the vortex.
"The storm is messing with the systems, I can't get a good reading on anything." Lance still manages to sound haughty, even through his obvious terror. "Do we actually have a destination in mind? Or are we just going to fly around—!"
A blinding flash of light cuts him off and sparks explode out of the ship's control panels, before everything goes dark.
They're spiraling, spinning too fast. Flashes of light illuminate the cockpit and Keith's terrified expression beside him.
They're going to crash.
There's a planet in the distance, rapidly approaching, and Shiro isn't sure if they'll even survive entry through the atmosphere. The ship is dead, he pulls on the controls but it's useless, and Keith reaches out to take this hand.
The touch stirs something in him, and maybe it's because they are about to die, maybe it's the g-force making him lightheaded, but Shiro loses control of himself. A strangely familiar presence makes his muscles contract and his limbs move, and he can see his body, face screwed up in discomfort, he's being pulled back in but he can feel his mouth move on it's own, he can see his face turn towards Keith. Pinned to his seat, Keith desperately reaches out, placing the palm of his hand against Shiro's cheek, and Shiro's body meets his gaze and his lips are moving beyond his control, to say one thing before he blacks out and they die alone in space:
"I'm sorry, Akira."
A single tear rolls down Keith's cheek and sparkles in the yellow light that suddenly fills the cockpit.
The ship stabilizes in the tractor beam, and their descent through the atmosphere becomes controlled.
A wretched sigh of relief tears from Shiro's throat as he slams back into his body. Pidge begins to laugh hysterically with Hunk.
Keith doesn't look at him, tears streaming down his face.
"What is that? There, in the distance?" Pidge says. A structure rises out of the fog as they near the surface.
"It's a castle!"
They all saw it. A mysterious castle, a lion statue, and two humanoid figures deep in the mountains of the mysterious planet.
The tractor beam flickers and dies, and the stolen ship crashes into the surface.
I'm talking about quantum realities here. Cracks initiate space-time temporal fissures, which mathematically make higher probabilities for alternate realities... —Slav, Escape from Beta Traz
Big thank you to Pugglemuggle for letting me scream at her non-stop for three months.
I'm on tumblr.