I own absolutely nothing from Voltron Legendary Defender. I don't own the characters, I totally wish I did but that belongs to Dreamworks and the geniuses behind the show. I only am taking credit for putting a spin on it.

Keith sat alone in a corner as he heard the orderly enter the room that housed 40 children through the ages of 5-17. The large building the orphanage occupied had once been a mental institution for the criminally insane and had several large rooms that had been used as common areas that were now transformed into large rooms that weren't fit to accommodate as many kids as the Galra Orphanage would gain. Each room would maybe house 25-30 people and that was even uncomfortably. With 40 children in one room that barely bathed, it got hot, and it smelled rancid enough for the children to get sick. The place was a living nightmare, and it was no place for children, or humans.

Keith had been alone ever since he could remember. The orderlies and nurses would tell him that his parents and his home had burned down in a horrible fire that had been caused by a lightning strike in the middle of the night. The firemen had found him cradled in his father's arms outside the house, but his father had been hit over the head with falling wood and died shortly after he exited the house. His mother had been found upstairs, or what was left of the upstairs level. The house had been almost completely consumed by flames before the firemen could put it out, and Keith had even seen pictures of where his house once stood. It was gruesome.

After Keith came to the orphanage, he quickly closed himself off from the rest of the children. They tried to talk to him, but they soon gave up and left the sad boy alone to his own misery. And in a place like the Galra Orphanage, there was plenty of misery to go around. There were bars on the windows, piles of filth, vomit, and blood wherever they stepped, and a smell that would never go away. On top of that, the people in charge of the orphanage; Zarkon, Haggar, Iverson, and Sendak were the cruelest people Keith had even encountered even though he was only 5 years old. They barely fed the children, barked orders at them, and expected the children to always be happy, nice, and adoptable even in the horrible conditions they lived in. They would physically attack kids if they didn't do what they wanted, and didn't even give a crap if the orphanage succeeded or failed because they all wanted to leave anyway.

Keith's torture never let up, it always seemed like the wardens were always glaring at him, the kids teased him for being alone all the time, and it always seemed like a dark cloud hung over him. The only time that his pain seemed to ease was when the annual visit from the Altea Elementary came around and he could at least watch all of the kids having fun. He never joined in on the games, even if the kids from Altea kept begging and pleading for him to come along and play. He didn't find fun in the games that the kids would play, but he liked seeing the smiles and hearing the laughter that came along with the games.

"HEY! I'm talking to you you filthy little maggot!" Iverson yelled in his face to knock Keith out of his pleasant little memory of the last school visit.

"I-I'm s-sorry sir." Keith murmurs quietly.

"You better be! Now hurry up! The school is coming and we have to have all the kids outside! No matter how much of an embarrassment you are." The one eyed man stalks out of the room and Keith stands up from the corner on shaky legs and follows to the courtyard.

It seemed like any other visit. The bus loads of children from Altea filled into the yard and the bright and happy school children would bleed into the orphanage courtyard and brighten all of the orphans that they talked to. Once the buses were unloaded and the kids started to mingle, Keith broke away from the large group and wandered to a far corner of the yard so he could still see the kids, he just didn't participate. He gained a small smile on his usually frowning face and heard the joyous laughs, screams, and voices filter over to his lonely corner. He was so busy watching that he didn't even notice the child coming closer to him. "Hello?" The boy asks.

Keith jumps and tries to scramble away from the voice, but since he was in a corner, he didn't get far. "Whoa whoa!" The kid jumps back in shock. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you!"

Keith looks at the boy quickly, he was about as tall as him with short brown hair, very tan skin, dark blue eyes, and blue and white shirt, and long jean shorts that stopped at his knees that were scraped and bruised. He wore black and white sneakers, and his gaping mouth showed a few teeth missing. He looked like a pleasant enough boy, Keith just didn't understand why he wanted to talk to him. "Who are you?" Keith asks, his voice more aggressive than he meant as he sat in the fetal position.

It seemed that the aggression didn't bother the boy in front of him in the slightest. In fact, he seemed happy as he gave Keith a bright smile. "I'm Lance McClain!"

"Why are you over here?" Keith brought his head up a little so Lance could actually make out the thin face with bright violet eyes and shaggy black hair.

Lance's bright smile never deterred. "I wanted to talk to you! You looked lonely, and nobody should ever be lonely!"

Keith rolls his eyes and sets his chin on his knees. "I'm always lonely, there's nothing new about it."

Lance cocks his head as his smile drops to a frown. "Why?"

"I don't like people." Keith answers. "They're mean to me."

Lance brightens again, "then I won't be! I'm nice! I promise! I'll make you not be lonely again so you can like people! They're not all bad!"

So without giving Keith any time to reject the young boy's idea, Lance plops down in the dirt and talks to Keith for the rest of the day. Slowly, Keith crept out of his fetal position and by the end of the day he sat cross legged across from Lance and they were talking animatedly about what they liked. They were interrupted by Lance's teacher coming over and taking Lance away from him, though that didn't stop Keith from getting up and following. "You'll be back for the next visit, right?" Keith asks hopefully as he's forced to stop at the gate by a glaring Iverson.

"Yes I will! Same spot!" Lance calls, "bye Keith!"

"Bye Lance!"

Lance almost didn't hear the young boy's call before the bus door shut, but luckily, he did. And he ran to an open window and waved to Keith until he was out of sight.

And that day started the next several years of Lance and Keith meeting in that same corner every year to talk, until Lance's family is moved away when they're both 15 and they're forced to say goodbye. The day that Lance tells him, is full of long goodbyes, ugly tears, and both boys being sad that they lost their best friend.