A/N: Switched up the points of view so I could experiment with angst. Leave a review, show it to your friends, if you want. I'm so happy you guys are actually reading this. It means a lot. I'll finish up the next chapter quick as I can.

A hidden liar

The Altean charcoal-eye

Is not to be loved

Keith hated walking with Lance. He didn't know what a conversation pause was, he talked nonstop at a near-shout, but Keith just couldn't bring himself to sit alone when Lance was calling for him at the cave's entrance. He'd go out with the intention to tell Lance off and somehow be persuaded to walk miles.

It was hard to admit, but Keith did miss talking to people. He couldn't remember how long he'd been locking himself in the cave with its entrance too small for him to escape when the moon came out and the witch's curse showed itself.

He closed his eyes for a moment and allowed the memories to wash over him like a polluted tide as he watched the day fade into afternoon. He closed his eyes and breathed in.

The transformation he had to endure every night was not only painful but also a little humiliating. First, he had to strip before the moon rose so they didn't burst at the seams, so he had to spend a few unhappy moments before mind-splitting agony overtook him and he screamed and screamed as he swelled to almost half the cavern size and had to wait until the sun rose again before he could be human.

Those night hours were torturous. He was filled with rage and wanted to rip and bite and tear but no matter how hard he pushed his snout through the hole, he couldn't fit his body and his wings through the entrance, which was why he'd chosen the cave. His alchemists had tried everything, then he hurt them too and that was when he knew this couldn't go on.

He couldn't remember what he'd done to anger her. It may have been a squadron of his that wandered into her territory, it could have been his denouncing of her when she attacked a child, it could have been a lot, it could have been all of it, but it didn't matter. He wasn't the best prince. He had a short temper and, as the witch described, a lot of fire. So now he had to live with the cruelty of her joke, and blew fire whenever he opened his jaws.

The Altean charcoal-eye was supposed to only grow to about five metres in length and two metres tall. Keith, when he transformed, was six metres tall and fifteen metres long when he had his tail unfurled, roughly. He'd never been too bothered with measurements, but the cave was about that size and he fit pretty snug in there. It was uncomfortable, but it was the only way the villages around him weren't epitaphs.

Before the witch had stormed into his castle and incapacitated all his guard and laughed while she inflicted the curse, he'd lived a charmed life. His every whim was granted, which was mostly sparring with his guard and training with their captain, a war hero he'd promised the kingdom to should he ever be killed in battle, and still thought about quite often.

Keith remembered being unwary but also confused when the witch started chanting. By the time he'd realized what was going on and grabbed his sword, he was already on the ground, at her feet, screaming for the pain to stop and yelling for help to anyone, screaming unforgivable things at the witch. She only laughed and disappeared.

The rest of the night was one the kingdom refused to acknowledge. With nothing to stop him, Keith had soared through the skylights in his great hall and torched houses until the sun poked its head above the horizon like a sleepy child and tinted the clouds pink.

Then Keith, who was still in the air, fell onto a hut and brought the roof in, naked, covered in scrapes, and delirious. The general-captain had hushed it up and brought in alchemists from all over the continent for a cure. Three more days they'd kept Keith in a cage in the dungeons during the night so while he thrashed and howled and blew fire and woke up half the kingdom and gave the other half lasting nightmares, he did not kill anyone.

The alchemists had made no progress the night Keith escaped. One of the guards, in their haste to leave the dungeons before sunset, left the keys in a spot that no human would have been able to reach. But, after sprouting scales and claws and swelling in size, Keith watched himself in mute horror, trapped somewhere inside his head, as a forked tongue slid out from his jaws and hooked the keys on the end of it.

It was the next morning that Keith realized he had injured the alchemists. None of them were killed, thank God, but after he had injured everyone, including the general-captain, he gathered his things and slipped away when no one was looking at him. Once upon a time he was alright with being looked at- he was royalty, after all. But after the disaster, all he got where distrustful glances, angry eyes or, in the alchemists' case, probing ogling. The last one wasn't so bad, he was desperate to get rid of the curse. He just had to find a way to do just that, until he gave up and decided it would be best for everyone if he just stayed by himself.

Then Lance showed up, and it was only downhill from there.

Keith had always liked storms. It was the day, so he was going to go out and let himself drown in the shattering drum-roll of thunder and let himself be blinded by the white-hot arcs of lightning striking the hills like arrows from the celestial bow of some angered god.

But, as he was buttoning his cloak and looking for his boots, some idiot wandered into a dark cave and flipped his very livable existence upside down, smacked it a few times, minced it, popped it in a savory stew and dumped the remains in a river.

Keith had been pondering this for days, but he still couldn't find Lance's motivation. There was no logical reason as to why he kept stopping by. If he was that lonely, he could get a dog or something. It'd be easier on both of them, especially since Keith knew and Lance probably suspected there was no healthy way for their acquaintanceship to go on without one of them coming clean. Keith was well aware of his own secrets, but he believed Lance was hiding something too. Maybe it wasn't obvious, it was hiding in plain sight, like a knife tucked in the casual folds of a cloak or a fake jewel among a necklace.

There was one thing that was unmistakable, though. Keith's presence may not have affected Lance's life too much, a fact that wounded Keith's pride a bit, but now that Keith had allowed himself to be drawn back in by the ever-tempting fruit of peoples' company, there wasn't going to be much turning back from there. What was he going to make Lance do, forget him? Unlikely. Even more unlikely could he convince Lance to just leave him alone.

He wasn't ready for change. The last year of solitude had been fine. He was fine. The last thing he needed was a brown boy with blue eyes and a probably fake happy-go-lucky attitude to come waltzing in. The first encounter had shaken him enough, then Lance had to go and come after him every time he passed the cave.

Keith opened his eyes and found they were aching from being angled towards the sun, even with them shut. The memories that had been enveloping him, smothering his thoughts, receded like the tide. The sun was sinking towards the horizon, and Keith looked at it wistfully for probably the hundredth time, regretting how he'd never be able to watch the stars emerge again, to see the dark blue curtain fall over the sun's final act. He stood up, stretched, and turned his back to the light. Time to head inside.