Someone said they liked the other one! And thus, I post this one. For Keith Week too. Originally posted on Archive of Our Own.
Disclaimer: All belongs to dreamworks.
Warnings: phobia to blood (and the color red). Self harm. Just fuck ton of angstiness. Also heavy and very free with headcanons because we don't have that much information about Keith.
English is not my first language.
Rhubarb pie
Red is a beautiful color.
It is the color of his mother's lips, when she was still alive. It is the color of strawberries, that taste delicious with cream. It is the color of the blood, liquid essential to life.
It is energetic, it is passionate. It is active, it is confident. Keith is all that and couldn't be more proud to wear the color in him.
Red could mean many things, but Keith, young and eager, only recalls the good ones.
And the furious, the violent, the brutal, were left unattended.
It is only when his teammates are hurt when an action he makes in an energetic moment of audacity turns out to be wrong, that he starts reconsidering what red means to his life.
Red is coming out of him. Red is coming out of his partners. Red, his favorite color, is everywhere, and for a moment, he wishes to see not more red in his life. The coppery flavor tastes bitter in his tongue, and blood dripping from everywhere makes him look rather terrible.
He smears the blood that falls in his arms from his face with uncertainty, thinking in how he has never been more unhappy to see so much red.
Lance and Hunk are screaming, though he can't hear them, and the ache of the pain is slowly fading, he can't really feel anything more than a sudden disdain for red.
He thinks in his mother's rhubarb pie. He thinks in his motherly kisses painted in his cheek. He thinks in the red of the fires he lit up to keep himself warm. He thinks in the blood of his enemies dripping from his triumphant body.
He thinks how blood and red never bothered him before, and he thinks in how he never thought red wasn't supposed to come out of you in this way.
There is no much he can think about except that, until he thinks no more, and the next thing he knows is that he is in a healing pod and everyone is looking at him concerned.
Red is a despicable color.
Keith's disdain for the color grows bigger every day.
It is not anymore the color of life. Nor the color of passion. It is not the blurry image of his long dead mother, it is not the color of a warmth fire.
All he can see is destruction. All he can see when he closes his eyes is red coming from everywhere, is red bathing his teammates, it is red bathing him.
If he focuses long enough, he can feel the coppery taste in his mouth again. He was never affected by blood, he has bleed many times in his life, and it is not the first time he has seen his teammates hurt.
But this time was his fault, by his obstinate being, and for some reason that doesn't let him sleep.
He doesn't wear red anymore. Every time he gets in Red he barely makes it, his breath chokes, his eyes get teary.
The day they can't form Voltron anymore, everyone wants to talk with him, but he doesn't want to talk. At all.
All he wants is to stop seeing red everywhere, to stop being reminded of his mistake.
All he wants is for red to mean again all the things it did before.
Pidge is the one who finds him.
A week without forming voltron and it's getting heavy on all of them. They want to give Keith time, but that doesn't seem to work and everyone is starting to get nervous.
Shiro says "Let's wait", Allura says "We can't wait", Shiro answer s"He's just a young man". And he is, and Allura knows it. But he's also a paladin of Voltron, and they need to work in whatever issues they have, quickly.
Keith hasn't stopped training. He thinks, maybe, that training will make him improve, that training will make him stop feeling so miserable. It doesn't work, it's not working, but he tries, he tries anyway.
And when the droid hurts him in a moment of distraction, he stops the sequence and lies on the floor.
I'm not scared, he says.
And he touches the blood and smears it again, and starts shaking.
I'm not scared, he repeats.
But tears fall from his eyes and he hates it, he hates it, he hates.
I'm scared, he confesses.
And he keeps smearing the blood everywhere. And his hands keeps shaking. And he keeps crying.
Pidge isn't supposed to be there, she just happened to come by and decided to take a look at Keith, and when she finds him crying, moving back and forward, face smeared in blood, with nails digging in his arms, she doesn't know how else react than run to him to hug him, and tell him everything is okay.
He cries harder, still rocking back and forward in her arms. And Pidge tells him everything is okay again, but she doesn't know if it will, and it comes weak, it comes off empty, and Keith can sense it.
He lets her hug him, until he doesn't, and trying to recover a bit of his dignity, he left her there to run toward his room.
Keith knows Pidge didn't tell anyone.
She sends him a concerned look, and she tries to calm him down sometimes. He is not sure why she acts like this, though he thinks it is because she doesn't like everyone knowing her personal life too, even if when you're in space there is no such thing as a personal life.
He knows hating red now is something important that his crew needs to know.
Lance would probably laugh.
"You're the red paladin and now you can't stand your own color? Man, I knew you were uncool but this is something else."
Or maybe he wouldn't. Lance could be sensible when he wanted. Did he want Lance to be sensible with him? Did he actually preferred his pity and his shy looks instead?
He was going to get that from Hunk and Shiro.
And Allura and Coran would act concerned, of course, but they will hurry him up to improve, because they need to save the universe, because there is people waiting for them.
And Keith dreads all of it. His destiny. His fears.
Himself.
They can form Voltron again.
Keith isn't sure if Pidge knowing became a good thing, all he knows is that he can focus long enough to form Voltron again.
They still don't know. Lance and Hunk keep asking things, and getting mad when Pidge tells them it's not their business.
Shiro has never stopped asking him, and at the same time, Keith is sure he already knows, he just wants him to tell him by himself.
It's embarrassing.
The fact he's afraid to going into his own lion because the only thing he can see is blood, blood everywhere, blood that has been shed because of him and it destroys him from the inside.
He'll work on it. They can form Voltron, and for the moment, that's all that matter.
His hand is shaking when he does it. He has heard you have to deal with your fears by standing in front of them, and that's what he plans to do.
He takes his knife out, breathes, hold, releases the air, and does a small cut in his hand. He observes the blood falling from his hand with interest and expectation.
It is awful.
He's crying again, but they are small tears, and he tries not to think in it. He tries to think in other things.
He tries to thinks in his father healing an injury he once had, how the bandage became red because it was deep and he was bleeding a lot. How he laughed about that, probably because he was high on endorphins and his father tried to go along when he was actually scared for his son.
All he can think is in the pain of the cut, and how horrible, horrible, red is.
It is not that bad after a couple of week.
He has a system now. Pidge told him to. He breathes in. He thinks in his mother, and how she loved red things, how she thought it was the color of luck and passion. He breathes out. He does that several times. He goes into his lion.
Red is been more happy since he started to take care of himself, and he likes to think Red hasn't spit out him yet because she can see he's struggling really hard to keep himself together.
It is okay.
The rest of them don't know yet, even if Allura and Coran keep insisting. Pidge still goes to him from time to time, but she's never been the type to comfort people, and he's never been the type to like being comforted. But she's there, and he can accept it, and he's thankful for that.
He hopes Pidge knows, he is not sure if he'll ever be brave enough to tell her.
He doesn't tries to cut himself anymore. It scares him, and he sees himself taking extra cares to not be hurt. It is okay if he has issues with red, it is okay to have issues with blood, it is okay to have issues with himself.
It is what he says to himself, it is what he wants to believe.
Red can be beautiful.
They won a battle; it is thanks to Keith, and for that feels proud.
There is blood everywhere, and he's about to cry but he much rather prefers to celebrate with his team instead of showing it. He feels ditzy at Lance's bloody forehead, and Pidge and her broken nose don't look good neither, but he's not paying attention to that. Shiro's smile is bright and Hunk's happy tears are beautiful and his only thought before fainting was that maybe red wasn't so bad as long as it covered living bodies.
Red can be ruthless.
And Keith think so in the best and in the worse way.
He stills feel a annoying tingling at the color, but he starts wearing his jacket again, because they bought it for him just before their dead. He still despises blood but he stopped playing with it when it falls from him, he stopped paying attention to it more than needed.
And when Hunk finds ingredients in a small planet that look like rhubarb, Keith asks him shyly if he could find the ingredients to make something like a pie.
Hunk says yes, Pidge and Lance smile, Shiro looks at him concerned, and Keith feels small tears in his eyes that he refuses to drop.
He eats the pie delighted.