Keith paced back and forth in front of the large castle monitors. It was odd. Since the day they had stepped into the castle of lions, the monitors had been constantly decorated with the little splashes of red that indicated a nearby distress signal. Day and night, there were at least two or three red pulses, until three days ago, when Voltron had rescued a planet of tentacled monkey looking aliens from the very last Galran outpost.
Keith had celebrated along with the rest of the team, knowing it was only a matter of time before another red dot called out to the Castle of Lions.
It hadn't. Three days and not one planet needed assistance. Logically, Keith knew that the war was over. The constant battle was done. But seeing the pure blue monitor sent a chill up Keith's spine.
Just for a moment, Keith saw the piercing, half animal, half machine gaze of Sendak reflecting in the monitors. He swore, whirling around.
Nothing. Just like the monitors.
He went to run a diagnostic test like Coran had shown him one sleepless night. Just as he leaned down to pop open the hatch below the console, the monitor flashed, and a picture of Princess Allura flashed across the screen.
Keith hit the answer* button. Princess Allura's voice echoed through the wide space.
"Keith?"
She didn't seem alarmed. Keith sighed in relief.
"Hi."
The wavelengths across the screen bobbed up and down as Allura spoke.
"Is everything in the castle well?" she asked.
"Yup," Keith ran his eyes over the blue screens. "It's quiet."
Allura, bless her soul, got to the point quickly.
"Your mother wants to see you," she stated.
Keith froze. See, normally, he would be doing anything he could to avoid thinking about Sendak's invasion. But now, just outside of Earth's atmosphere, Keith's brain had latched onto his paranoia to avoid thinking about Earth.
Keith was a punk. He knew it, everybody else knew it. Foster parents knew it, the system knew it, teachers knew it. His flight instructors knew it. The only people who didn't seem to get the memo were the Shiroganes.
Keith's mind flicked back to the day he had first met Takashi Shirogane.
Eight years old, brand new city. His new family didn't give a quiznack, which is how he ended up running full sprint through San Francisco from their enraged son. Some jerk who Keith honestly couldn't remember anything about other than his ridiculously huge ears, which, apparently, were a bad idea to mention. He'd already gotten clocked once, and Keith couldn't breathe through his bleeding nose.
He had heard Dumbo coming up behind him, so he chanced a glance back.
BOOM. He fell, along with the person he had crashed into and their groceries. He wiped the blood off his nose with the back of his hand, nervously glancing at the person he had knocked over.
Fifteen-year-old Shiro had taken one look at him and decided to fight somebody. Fortunately, not Keith.
After Keith's tormentor ran away crying, Shiro had taken Keith back to his house. Atsuko, Shiro's mother, and Akihide, Shiro's grandfather, had barely laid eyes on the grocery-laden kid with blood dripping out of his nose before they too, decided that they were going to protect Keith.
Keith had struggled, day after day, to be worthy of the love that Atsuko showed him, to follow every lesson that Akihide had drilled into the two boys. And for a while, he did okay. He stopped fighting, stopped talking back to teachers. He made it into the Garrison, which, God knows, was only thanks to Shiro's relentlessness.
And then Shiro disappeared and everything fell apart. At home, Keith did his best to help out Atsuko, especially as Akihide got sick.
Keith wasn't home when Akihide died. He was in the back of a cop car, for punching out the teeth of a guy who thought that it would be funny to make a joke about "pilot error."
Failure after failure. Keith had closed himself off. When he went back to the Garrison for spring semester, it was fine, for a while. As long as Keith kept training, kept flying, kept working, he had it all under control. Until he didn't.
Keith remembered making that call to Atsuko after he got kicked out. Remembered his guilt and shame. Remembered the concern in her voice. Remembered feeling so unworthy of it. Hanging up, and deciding to go home, to that lonely shack.
Keith didn't regret the decision to cut himself off from his foster mom. He genuinely believed she was better off without him. But the longer he spent in space, the more he wished he'd said goodbye.
"Keith?" Allura's voice shattered through his thoughts. "Keith, are you all right?"
He shook his head. "Yeah. Uh, someone has to watch the castle."
He hated how weak that excuse sounded, even to his own ears.
"I'm going to call Coran, he can handle the castle on his own," Allura said. Keith couldn't think of another excuse to avoid the mess he had created for himself.
"Oh, okay."
Forty minutes later, Keith knocked on the door of the only place that felt like home. When Atsuko opened the door, she just looked at him. Keith felt like that eight-year-old kid again as her eyes filled up with tears. She smiled, and he knew, right then, that all was forgiven.
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