Disclaimer: I only own my writing and head-canons.
Keith is no stranger to the notion of sacrifice. The flames that took his father, the unknown reasons that were important enough to estrange him from his mother, and the Kerberos Mission that demanded Shiro were his earliest examples. The funny thing is, he used to resent them all for it, for letting him believe in this crazy thing called hope, again and again, only for it to be inevitably snatched out from under his feet.
That is, until he met Allura, The Lost Princess of Altea - a girl no more than nineteen who, since the moment she awoke from her cyrosleep, he's seen countlessly put herself in harm's way for the sake of the universe without a second thought - a girl who, in spite of the tragedies that would break and instil hatred in the heart of any man, chose to entrust the fate of the universe into the hands of strangers, and, even more amazingly, open her very heart to him. Keith doesn't know why destiny seems set on bringing these types of people into his life, but what he does know for certain is that he cannot stand to see another person he cares about sacrifice themselves, especially not her.
And so, now, here he is, following in their footsteps to embark on a search without leads - without certainty. Without the paladins, and without her. The modicum of reassurance he possesses is that he's doing this for her, even if she'll always hate him for it - and he truly thinks she might.
"My absence has allowed Shiro to restore his connection with the Black Lion. He can finally be the leader I was unable to be. I'm not meant to pilot the Black Lion."
"Is that why you keep pulling away from us?" Allura asked in surprise.
"Yeah, I suppose that's part of it," he answered, valiantly pushing through the guilt he felt at her reaction, and swallowed his heart in preparation for the question he knew was coming.
"Part of it? What's the other part?"
He knew that she'd seen through it - the shock and sadness in her eyes conveyed everything. Even if it was the truth, and he really couldn't waste this opportunity to stop Lotor, she finally knew the reason behind it. It didn't surprise him one bit - by that point, he was sure that he'd already given himself away thousands of times.
That was the problem.
"Keith!" she cried out, just as he was about to step through the threshold of Kolivan's ship. He halted, and warily turned to face her - warily, because he didn't think he could handle saying goodbye to her alone. His resolution was already one twist away from snapping.
She bolted up the boarding platform until she was standing level with him, breathing heavily from exertion, her usually neat bun a messy heap. There was a look on her face that he couldn't place, probably because he was too afraid of what it meant, and so he decided to keep his mouth shut and wait, but before he could even get over how stunned he was by the very fact that she was before him again, she had already thrown her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder.
"Please come back to me," she whispered into his ear, the warmth of her breath sending a pleasant shiver down his spine.
And with that, she pulled away, leaving him breathless as he watched her run down the platform and disappear into the corridor, not once looking back.
He still doesn't know what he should have done in that moment - whether it was better to leave things unclear between them by not saying anything, and not go after her and kiss the worry off her face and tell her over and over just how much he loves her, and that he will do everything in his power to make sure she's safe. The success of his mission is not guaranteed, nor is his survival, and even if it was, what then? Could a princess really be with a pauper? An Altean Princess and a half-Galran nobody… could he really allow himself to dream? There are too many 'what ifs', and he's not sure if he can handle anymore of them.
It's with these feelings that his mission commences and these feelings that he is haunted for the rest of it.
He never anticipated just how painful leaving would prove to be. He'd assumed that saying goodbye would be the hardest part, but instead, he finds that his steps seem to grow heavier with every passing hour he spends away from the Castle of Lions. Even the trickery of new surroundings does little to deceive his heart, which is somewhere thousands of miles away.
The first two weeks of his new reality are spent scanning the systems for anomalies, infiltrating outposts, and tracking cargo ships. Keith jumps at every chance for deployment if it means he can escape the monotony. His years in the desert almost seem more vibrant than his time spent in the barren solemnity of these ships. Unlike the paladins, there is nothing new to learn about the Blade as time presses on. Efficiency, stealth, and stoicism are the creed by which they have survived these ten thousand years - one into which he must now assimilate. He expected as much when he joined them, but even his foreknowledge does little to allay the gnaw of this newfound loneliness. If anything, it only makes him more aware of the growing hole in his heart.
Even silence does not bring the same comfort as before, at least, not the kind that manifests here. Here, there are no scurrying midnight rendezvous to the kitchen, scuffing slippers headed to the washroom, lofty commando boots thudding towards the control room, nor the soft pitter-patters of mice. From the low drone of the engine as they weave undetected through quadrants, to the short echoes of steady footsteps with nothing erratic about them, it's worse than being alone. Sometimes, when he's not particularly occupied, he tries to summon the memory of each unique pattern, especially hers - poised, determined, and strong.
He wishes he could call them, if only for a moment, just to hear their voices, but every form of contact has been severed to complete this mission; they cannot afford to take the risk of being intercepted, and so, he occasionally lets himself imagine what he might say if he could reach them, and sometimes even dares to wonder if she thinks of him.
After his first week away, he dreams, and, for the first time in a long while, it is not of his father, nor that ever-vague shape that he believes is his mother, but of shades - cerulean, periwinkle, and silver. They surround him in ribbons of light, twisting and furling in a never-ending dance, and emanating a warmth that fills him from the inside out, until they are woven together into the silhouette of a woman. Then, he startles awake with the blare of the morning alarm, the words 'please come back to me' sinking back into the fringes of his consciousness as he braces again for the emptiness of his choice.
The Blade are amused by him. Distraction is growing more apparent in every brash misstep, every action of defiance, and behind the tone of every suggestion he voices when he thinks they might have found a lead. The hard stare Kolivan deals him is both sympathetic and stern, but even transparency isn't enough to shirk her from his mind - not when she's become a part of his very pulse.
When he finally meets his mother a week later, he is angered, not by the undeniable fact that she is, indeed, Galran, nor even the fact that she left, but because he now understands why she had to.
"The mission is all that matters. Emotions are a luxury that we cannot afford."
Even now, he still wants to blame her, to make her feel all the pain he's carried since losing his father, but the more time they spend together, the more he's horrified to see traces of her in him. Of all the things he could list about her, all the reasons he always imagined he would find, he never thought that the way she loves would be the thing he'd hate the most.
In his heart, he makes a vow - that history will not repeat itself, that he'll not lose Allura the way Krolia lost his father. That, this time, the choice would turn out to be the right one.
"The Blade can go on without you - they have for thousands of years. Voltron cannot. We cannot."
They soon set out for the infinite reaches of the Quantum Abyss in search of a strange quintessence supply, only they do not expect to be forced to stay, without a ship, and without coordinations, their only hope being to ride the inhabitable back of an enormous space-whale.
Strange things happen out here, where the rules of time collapse. His memories play out like lucid dreams, in which he is audience to all the times he walked away from what he now knows with resounding clarity was his only real family, the only real home and purpose he ever had. But worse still are the flashes that bring memories of a future not yet lived, some of them experienced through mere sensations of smell, touch, and sound: a waft of achingly familiar perfume, a swell of heat in his middle, or the sound of his name caressed so tenderly by a voice so missed, while others are as real as anything else.
One haunts him in particular. In it, Allura is standing before him. Everything is white. Regret glosses her gaze. Unspoken words prick his throat, but do not break free. He chooses to thank her instead, but knows it will never be enough. Then, she hugs him, and, suddenly, he knows it's goodbye. He shakes himself free of that dream before he can watch its end, screaming and clawing at the ground until he relaxes into his mother's embrace.
"Are all glimpses of the future set in stone?" He asks her a few days later.
"Not all of them. While we have choice, destiny can always be tampered with, but you cannot completely alter its trajectory."
From then on, his desire to find Lotor only intensifies, as does his frustration with their slow progress through the Abyss. The only anchor keeping him from losing his mind is his promise to Allura, and so, he is grateful, then, when a small space-wolf stumbles into their path. It doesn't alleviate his yearning, but it's just enough to temporarily redirect his focus.
Finally, after two long years, their searching is finally put to an end when they find a hidden colony of Alteans on a strange planet, languishing at the mercy of the Galran prince. A single rebel gives them all the information they need to bring an end to the Galran heir, and they make haste for the Castle of Lions, the pace of their journey fuelled by Keith's determination. Lotor - he finally has him, after all these years. They can't let him slip away, not now that they're so close. Needless to say, he's furious when they arrive and he hears that the very man he's sought to undo, and the very woman that he's sworn to protect, are working together in the Quintessence Field, and in the same pod, no less.
He's ready to go after them himself before he is pulled to his senses by the others - too soon and Lotor could hurt her - he could hurt her. And so, he must wait for them to return, though it nearly unhinges him to let pass another minute in which she is with the enemy. It's difficult to swallow the terror the grips him at the thought. Everything about this is wrong. It's a bitter irony - that by leaving to protect everything he's ever wanted, he only seems to have pushed it further out of his reach.
"You keep saying you're sorry, but your actions say otherwise. Do you realise that your absence put the entire team in jeopardy?"
She returns with Lotor, countenance bright - in fact, she is even confused to see him there, seething with rage. He spares only a moment for her sake before exposing the man beside her. The delicate crack of her smile shatters as the truth dawns on her in the form of another Altean, and it's then that Keith realises that there are more ways of protecting people than one.
The ensuing battle leaves Lotor perpetually adrift in the Quintessence Field, the Castle destroyed, Shiro scraping another death, and Allura, the face of resilience, wounded by a broken heart.
At once, he wishes to go to her - to apologise for everything he did and didn't do, but every time he thinks he has the words, one glance at her crushes his resolve. He's not worthy to piece back together something that he is at fault for breaking. Lotor may have rendered the tear, but it was he that set it in motion. Those azure eyes that once glimmered with trust, hope, and - dare he venture - love are now guarded, hard, and averted, and no amount of relief at Lotor's demise can wash away the guilt.
Several weeks of travelling pass before he can bear it no more. When they next pitch camp, he finds her in the cockpit of her Lion, hunched over the control panel, quietly weeping for all that has transpired.
"I'm sorry…," she begins, sensing him behind her, "I should have believed… I shouldn't have doubted that you'd come back, but…," she sniffed. "I was foolish. I-I let myself think that-"
"No." He interrupts, stepping towards her, and wraps his arms around her. She stiffens at first, then sags into him as the tremors overtake her. "I'm sorry," he whispers into the shell of her ear, running his course fingers through the silky curls cloistered behind its delicate tip, and holds her tighter. "I love you," he breathes, "I love you, and I'm sorry."
He feels her smile as she whimpers against him, her hands bunching the fabric of his shirt at his chest. Then, the princess, his princess, lifts her puffy, tear-streaked face to meet his half-lidded gaze, "None of that matters now. You're here, now. You came back to us," she whispers back, raising a warm hand to his cheek,"- to me."
In the next moment, he seals the gap between them, and sighs as the thorn of duty is plucked from desire. Before long, they're a tangle of hands and hair, mingled breaths, and timbral cries, pulling each other under and above the surface as a night is stolen between them.
They do not rejoin until they make it back to earth three weeks later, but their secret is replayed in furtive glances and soft words exchanged over the intercom or in passing. If anyone notices, then they do not comment, too engrossed in their own affairs and duties about the Garrison. Eventually, they forgo their discipline completely, and begin staying together every night, sometimes just talking about their families and catching up on lost time, and others, entangled in each other, uttering promises of devotion as their souls intertwine.
Sendak attacks a week after their arrival, and, by some stroke of luck, earth is saved, and the paladins of Voltron are granted a new lease on life, for who knows how long. Due to the influx of patients, Keith is forced to recover from his concussion in a separate ward, but makes sure to get Kosmo to deliver Allura a letter each day, some of them continuations of conversations they'd shared nights before, and others simple inquiries about her condition. Thankfully, Allura doesn't seem to mind his chicken scratch, and responds almost as soon as she receives them, which never fails to bring a dopey grin, as Shiro calls it, to his face.
Three months pass before the paladins are up again, with the threat of Honerva still remaining, and, soon, the future is suddenly before Keith once again.
The dream is the same, and it is different. She stands before him, but this time, there is no regret in her eyes, only love - it tells him not to fear, and makes him want to cry. "Allura," he husks through the dryness that clamps his throat, "Allura," her name is all that his quivering lips are able to form. I was supposed to save you.
"It's alright, Keith," she says, unwaveringly, through the flow of tears that spill down her cheeks. She throws herself into his arms and buries her head in the crook of his neck, pressing wet lips into the hollow there. Then, she leans upwards and takes his face in her hands. "You've already saved me," she reassures with a tearful smile, and this time, it is she who closes the gap between them.
In this moment, Keith lets all else fade from his awareness and focuses everything within him towards all that she is. Every moment he's missed with her - all those days lost to a cause too great for any one person to make a difference like the one she is now making - is everything he gives in these last moments with her.
And then, she's pulling away - his heart is walking away from him into that ever-fading light. He wants to chase after her, but he is rooted to the spot, a gentle pressure holding him back, as if she's somehow keeping him there. "Live for me," he hears her voice puncture his thoughts.
"Not without you," he wants to say, he wants to beg, and wills his soul to follow, but then, the realm before them fades away, and, in the next moment, they're all in their lions again - all except one. The realisation cuts, razor-sharp, like ice. He lets out a scream in hopes that it will tear his soul from his body, because that's all he wants right now, but even when he's spent himself, he's still here, and the pain is still too much. His vision blurs, and he collapses in his chair. A week later, he awakes, empty and numb, in the medical bay of the Garrison, more Galran than he's ever felt in his life.
On and on, the spool of time continues to unravel as the universe slowly mends itself. There is peace, it seems, in the galaxy, and everything is almost as it should be, but isn't, without her. Lance and Pidge marry, Shiro takes lead of the Garrison, Hunk builds a culinary empire, and Coran and Romelle help to rebuild New Altea, while Keith, bound by her request, continues her work for her, bringing restoration to the galaxy as a leader of the Galran Empire, alongside Krolia and Kolivan. It's all that keeps him from joining her, wherever she is in this cruel, beautiful universe. He resigns himself to dreaming of her instead, and in them, she's every bit as beautiful as the day he lost her, and every time he's fooled into thinking that his reality is the real nightmare, and is always drenched in tears when he wakes.
Though they don't see each other much, busied with their respective duties, he's grateful to still have the support of the other paladins, who always remind him to cherish the blessing of each new day she gave them. More than a hundred years later, when everyone except Coran, Krolia, and Kolivan are all but gone, and the Ten-Thousand-Year-War has already begun to fade from people's minds, he's carries their legacies with him wherever he goes, forever indebted to them for still believing in him, when he never thought he could make it this far. It's a long life to live without them, and especially without Allura, but he's once again become something of a believer in this thing called hope, and so living through another eight-hundred years doesn't seem as bad as before, if it means that he can look after their families for them. He'll have lots to tell them when he sees them again one day.
One night, on the eve of her passing, he tries to sleep in the small cabin of his ship on Feyiv, but is roused by a dull ache his heart. He knows not why, but feels drawn to the cockpit, and soon finds his hands fumbling for the controls of their own accord and manoeuvring his craft into space, clad in his Blade suit and accompanied by Kosmo. The sensation is a little like mentally converging with the Black Lion, but deeper, and far more visceral, like his heart is literally being steered by an unseen force beyond this plane of existence. Like the energy that pulled him towards the Blue Lion, he finds himself being pulled further still, until the feeling abruptly ceases, and he finally releases the controls, letting the craft hover somewhere in what he thinks is Oriande's belt.
Before him, there is a spectacular nebula, shaped like the sleeping visage of a woman, and something inside him stirs at the sight of it - familiarity, he thinks, and yet, he cannot recall ever seeing such a brilliant celestial body in all the times he's crossed this system. He flies towards it until he is lost in its vapours, and suddenly, all around him, there are screens of disjointed memories playing out before him - flashes of slender, dark hands, the sharp arc of a jaw, the delicate point of a nose, all accompanied by the sound of mellifluous laughter. He briefly thinks he's stumbled into another opening of the Quantum Abyss, when his ship begins to thrash so violently that he loses his grip on its controls, rendering him helpless but to brace as it spirals into the void. A thunderous, blinding flash soon engulfs him, and he curses as he steels for the heat of impact.
The light does not burn him as he expects, though it is both warm and calming on his senses, and when he blinks away the shock, he's no longer in the seat of his craft, but in a lush green valley speckled with violet flowers. He recognises them at once to be juniberries, and almost thinks he's in the midst of yet another cruel dream, but something about this one feels all too real: the air carried by the roving wind from the surrounding snow-capped mountains is crisper and purer than any he's breathed before, the tuneful chirps of the songbirds decidedly unfamiliar, and the scenery too vivid to be anything his own mind could conjure up. He has no idea where he is, or how he came to be here without his ship, but he already knows that he never wants to leave.
Suddenly, a deep bark rings through the air. Keith immediately looks in the direction of it, worried about what might have happened to Kosmo, only to see the bright form of the space-wolf bounding in the long grass a few metres in front of him, trying to catch a butterfly in his mouth. A laugh escapes Keith as he watches him, too amused to notice the rustle of grass behind him.
"Took you long enough."
A shudder lances up his spine. Stiffly, he turns to face the owner of the unmistakable voice, and grows cold when his eyes fall upon them.
She looks the same as the day he first laid eyes on her, dressed in her formal robes, with her long curly tresses draped behind her. Her azure eyes twinkle with mirth as he regards her, as if delighting in the fact that she has once again succeeded in stealing the air from his lungs.
"Allura," he finally breathes again. Tears sting his eyes. "H-how? Am… Am I?"
She shakes her head, her curls bouncing as she did so.
"But... you're...," he doesn't finish, refusing to say it.
"I never was," she says simply. "At least, not in the way that you imagined."
"Then… what… where?" he stammers, not daring to take his eyes off her for a second in fear that she'll disappear again.
"Someplace better," she says earnestly, then pauses, wringing her hands. "But you don't have to stay," she begins again, demurely, "I… I would understand if… if you'd rather-"
He wastes no time in communicating his answer by closing the distance between them, crashing his lips against hers and threading his fingers through her hair. She grips his shoulders for support, unprepared for the intensity of his fervour, but thankfully not seeming to mind, as he is unable to contain his sheer joy - that this time, she's here and real and it's not a dream, and that this time, he doesn't have to wake up.
They stay like that for a long while, soaked in their tears and in each other, and even laughing, in spite of everything.
"Come home with me?" Allura pants when they finally break apart, gazing up at him, eyes still glazed from the passion of their reunion.
Keith beholds her for a moment, contentedly lost in the sky of her eyes, then smirks. "I once made a promise to come back to you," he replies softly, touching his forehead to hers. "I'll never break it again."
At that, she smiles.
- Fin.
EN: Keith's Galran heritage would surely give him a lifespan well over that of the average human. I'd also like to think he'd look the same after one-hundred years, seeing as his mother hasn't aged at all since he was born.