Title: It wasn't you

Rating: T

Chapter 13

Keith entered the bunk behind Shiro. Shiro turned and nodded to the door and Keith swung it shut. Lance was sitting on the bed with his arms wrapped around himself.

"Sorry." He could barely hear him across the room.

"Again, what for? It's not a big deal to walk to a bunk." Keith shrugged nervously because obviously something was a big deal.

"I just didn't want them to see." Lance muttered.

"See what?" Keith asked gently.

"His scars." Shiro offered. Lance's head jerked up in shock, staring at Shiro. Shiro sat down next to him and put his hand on his knee. "Kuron gave me a gift." Shiro gave Lance a sad smile. "Before he left he gave me his memories. So I remember why you both decided to come clean with everyone else."

"Huh." Lance muttered. "Well, I guess that makes this easier, sort of."

"Why did you decide to tell them?" Keith was still out of the loop.

Lance took a deep breath and then shook his head. He didn't know what to say.

"Can I tell him?" Shiro asked Lance and he nodded. "Kuron really didn't know about most of what happened when the parasite took control. They are just blackouts in his memories. The few he knew about are when he came to and figured out what was happening. As you saw, Lance protected Kuron from the truth more than once." Shiro gave Lance's knee a squeeze.

"I shouldn't have lied." Lance whispered. "I thought he was, I just…" Lance shook his head.

"You just did the best you could with the information you had. Lance, no one should be put in a situation like that. It's not fair for anyone to second guess the decision you made in that circumstance, not even you." Keith spoke slowly, echoing words someone else had spoken to him years ago. Based on the smile on Shiro's face he recognized them.

"So the morning of the day you came back, Kuron was going to train. Allura and Lotor were scheduled to leave later and he was feeling especially off that day. It's probably why he didn't notice Lance was there until he walked in on him changing."

"I had been working out. I couldn't sleep." Lance offered. "I was pretty upset with the whole Lotor and Allura going off in an experimental ship thing. I didn't hear him coming either."

"Anyway so I…we…he…" Shiro paused for a moment and then started again. "He saw scars that he didn't know about and at least a couple that were pretty obviously his doing."

"He was really upset when he realized." Lance didn't look up. "He said it was all going too far and if he was doing things like that he should be locked up. That he wasn't going to let me keep getting hurt. He said we'd call Keith back and Voltron would be fine." Lance sniffled a little.

"You scared him. He would never have hurt you." Shiro moved his hand to brush back Lance's bangs. "He was so sorry."

"I know. He was ready to lock himself up and throw away the key." Lance looked up finally. He looked from Shiro to Keith and took a deep breath before slipping on his shirt.

Keith had to take a quick deep breath to keep from vomiting. There was a hand shaped scar on Lance's ribs on the left side. Obvious, yeah, that was obvious.

Shiro moved to check on Lance's ribs. There was some impressive bruising on his chest already. He was running his hand over the ribs checking to see that nothing seemed to have shifted or worsened.

Keith was trying not to stare, but it was hard. There was a second hand print on Lance's back just under his right shoulder blade. There were other scars too. He recognized the ones from the crystal explosion in their very early days, but a lot of the others were new.

"Why did he burn you?" Keith asked.

"This one was for questioning letting Lotor out of his cage." Lance pointed to the one on the front. "I'm not sure what the other one was for. He was really ranting that day." Lance ran a hand through his hair.

It was that movement that highlighted another set of scars on his arms. Long thin narrow scars on his upper arms and some on his forearms. Keith reached out a tentative hand and brushed over the ones on his forearm.

"Lance?" Keith tried to get him to look at him, but he seemed to find the floor very interesting again. Keith looked over to Shiro and he nodded. He knew.

"Ribs are good. Let's go ahead and wrap them, I know you should be taking it easy and not worrying about wrapping them, but I'm not sure we can guarantee that in space. Might as well do what we can, huh?" Shiro offered him a half smile.

"Yeah." Lance agreed.

Keith took a roll of ace bandages from Shiro, "Ready?" Lance nodded and he reached around him. "Not too tight?"

"It's okay." Lance muttered his breath tickling Keith's neck.

"Okay." Keith finished wrapping and leaned back to check. It seemed secure.

"Keith." Lance grabbed his arm. Keith looked over at him. "I'm okay, you don't need to worry about me. These are old." Lance gestured to the scars on his arms.

Keith frowned at him, "Lance, I know we have creams that heal stuff up pretty quick. I don't know how old those are."

"I haven't cut my arms since the day Kuron saw me. I swear." Lance looked up fear plain to see.

"And if I was to ask to see your leg?" Keith shook his head. "Lance, you can't keep lying. I know, it's hard. It's hard when you're already used to covering it up." Keith swallowed hard. He was not good at this kind of thing.

Lance lifted wary eyes to look at him. His hands hand moved unconsciously covering his thigh. "Who said I was lying?"

Keith just stared at him until he looked away.

"Lance, we want to help." Shiro spoke calmly.

"Help? Help what? I'm fine. You've wrapped my ribs and we are taking off today. I'm fine." Lance tried to stand up, but Keith had planted himself directly in front of him.

"No, you're not." Keith wasn't angry. It was just a fact. "Shiro, could I talk with Lance for a minute?"

Shiro patted Lance's shoulder and stepped out.

"Would you get out of the way? Why did you do that?" Lance was avoiding looking at Keith and trying to scoot past him.

Keith put a hand on each of Lance's knees, "Just wait. I want to say something. I'm…I'm not good at this stuff okay?"

The slight note of desperation was enough to get Lance's attention. He stopped trying to scoot away. Keith sighed and moved to set next to him.

"Look, I know we can't undo everything bad that happened and you can't keep pretending it didn't hurt you either." Keith was the one close examining the floor now. "I...I know what I'm talking about. It's like getting stabbed and it heals up, but only on the outside and on the inside it's still all cut up and infected and gross. And all the stuff spreads inside of you and messes everything else up. The only way to get better is to get it out. Sometimes it's like you have to get stabbed again and it gets all over the place, like messy and stuff, but it's still better than leaving in there cause it's just going to keep growing and killing you."

"Please, never tell that to Hunk. He will puke on your shoes." Lance glared at Keith. "I get you want to help, but I'm fine. I don't have whatever that was you said." Lance moved to pull his shirt back on.

"Quiznak! Lance listen to me. You do." Keith huffed and stood suddenly. "Fine." He started pulling off his shirt.

"What are you doing?" Lance had the most perplexed look on his face Keith had ever seen.

"Just shut up." Keith rolled his eyes. He held out his arm and placed it against Lance's. A crisscross of fine scars ran from his shoulder to his elbow on both arms. "Please Lance, I'm not telling you what to do. I'm telling you I know what you're doing."

"Why'd you do it?" Lance reached out and touched Keith's arm.

"It started when my Dad died. It got worse when I got put into this foster home. It…it wasn't good." Keith rolled his arm and pointed to a round scar near the bend of his elbow. "He burned me with his cigarettes sometimes."

"I'm sorry." Lance looked about ready to cry and Keith was pretty sure tears were already in his eyes.

"Yeah well, I just pretended I was fine. I didn't tell anyone. I kept hearing I was lucky I wasn't in a boys home, that I was a problem, that I wasn't adoption material." Keith kept driving forward determined to get his point across. "I was pretty angry all the time. When I was thirteen I stole a car."

"A car? How did you get into the Garrison with that kind of record?" Lance asked stunned.

"Didn't have a record. The guy I stole the car from didn't press charges. In fact, he's the one that signed me up at the Garrison the next day, told them I was some kind of prodigy pilot and they needed me." Keith smiled.

"Shiro?" Lance guessed.

"Yeah. He never gave up on me. It still was a year before I told him about the home I was in. It took him two days to get me out of there and moved into the Garrison. I felt pretty stupid for waiting so long to tell him." Keith admitted.

"I get that, but you were just a kid and it was a crap situation. Kids shouldn't have to be afraid of their home."

"And you shouldn't have had to be afraid of your home or leader." Keith added.

Lance shook his head avoiding turning the subject back to him, "And this?" Lance gestured at his arm.

"About six month after I was at the Garrison I slipped up and cut too deep, couldn't get the bleeding stopped. I panicked and called Shiro. He took me to the hospital and got stitches. He made me go to a counselor. It still took a long time before I didn't want to do it anymore. I was pretty good at hiding it." Keith gestured to his ribs that had some faint scars along them.

"Why'd you keep doing it? Even after you were safe." Lance looked over to his friend.

"I didn't know how to stop? All the messed up stuff was still inside of me. It didn't just magically get better because I didn't have to live with that asshole anymore. He wasn't hurting me more, but the damage done was still there. It's why I know you aren't okay and you aren't fine. I tried pretending that I was okay too, and ended up still hurting myself and getting in a fist fight and almost kicked out. Okay, now please tell me you get it cause I don't know what else to say and I don't talk about feelings and I don't know how to stop…"

Lance wrapped him up in a hug, tears definitely flowing at this point. "You can stop. I get it."

"Oh thank Quiznak." Keith leaned his head against Lance's shoulder. "You know having your life flashed in front of your mom on the back of a giant space whale by weird time forces in space is easier than talking about it."

Lance chuckled wetly, "I swear I understood that and I'm worried about both of our minds. I never could have imagined the insanity that our lives have become. Now all we need is Shiro to walk in and get the wrong idea."

Keith jumped back from Lance and pulled his shirt to his chest wide eyes turning to the door. Lance's laugh was a bit hysterical but totally contagious and Keith had no choice but to join him.

Author's note: From this point forward we're going to do some time skipping. More of an effort to shoehorn this concept into cannon with additions or follow-ups to episodes. All part of my brilliantly insane plan I assure you...really...okay maybe brilliant is a bit much...moderately clever?