Today is our first strictly emotional whump day...only a couple of brief, non-graphic mentions of an already existing injury. Also, today's fic is really freakin' sad. Like, I almost made myself cry. So, sorry ahead of time.

Day 8 - Abandoned/Isolation

Warnings: fantastic racism, not really suicide ideation but kinda?, abandonment, solitary confinement, disassociation, imprisonment, foster home mention, self-loathing, restraints, unflattering depiction of everyone except Keith and sorta Shiro, ambiguous ending

"I'm...part Galra."

"I...I'm sorry, what?"

Keith ducked his head and cut his eyes to the side to avoid looking at Allura. "The knife I got from my mom. It's...something that every Blade carries. And the only way to activate one is to...have Galra blood."

"And you activated yours?"

His eyes darted up to Coran's unreadable expression and back down again. "Yes."

"Wait, but that makes no sense," Lance exclaimed, and Keith could imagine his hands flailing as he spoke. "He's human. He's obviously human."

Hunk hummed in agreement. "Yeah, if he was part Galra you'd think there'd be some sign of it. Something...purple, or something, I dunno."

"Or a little more height," Lance snorted.

Shiro's hand dropped onto his uninjured shoulder, and he jumped. "Well, we don't know for sure how much of him is actually Galra. Obviously he ended up with mostly human genes, at least when it comes to appearance."

"Ah, but other than appearance...that actually explains so much about Mullet. Hot-headed, reckless, socially inept -"

Normally Keith would have snapped back by then, but he just drew his shoulders farther up toward his ears, arms crossed tightly across his chest as if he could keep himself from falling apart. It was Shiro who broke in for him.

"Lance, that's enou-"

"When were you planning on telling us?"

The question took him so much by surprise that he jerked his head up, regretting it as soon as he saw Allura's stony glare. "W-what?"

Sparks seemed to shoot from her impossibly blue eyes. "When were you planning on telling us your heritage, before this accidental reveal today? Sometime after you betrayed us, I suppose?"

Keith couldn't seem to catch his breath. "No, n-...I didn't know, I swear. This is...this is as much of a surprise to me as it is to all of you." He knew the news wouldn't be taken well, especially by Allura, though Coran, Shiro, and Pidge were next on the list. But he never expected to be accused of hiding it from them, of planning to betray Voltron. "I'm not...I would never…"

"Never what, turn on Voltron? If you're really Galra, which I assume you wouldn't lie about that, then it's in your very nature."

Shiro gave his shoulder a squeeze and spoke up. "Princess, as the person here who has known Keith the longest, I can assure you that what he says is true. He didn't know until today."

"And how would you know that?" she shot back. "How do you know that he hasn't just been hiding it from you, like he has from all of us?"

"Because I know him." Shiro waved a hand to include the others in the room. "We all know him! Right? We've been working alongside him all these months...he's helped save so many people, including each of us! Regardless of whether he knew or not - which I still believe he didn't - he's a good person. Being part Galra doesn't define him." It was an echo of the words he had told Keith on the way back to the Castle. Keith still wasn't sure that he believed them anymore than the rest of the room's occupants.

Hunk was the first to reply, hesitantly. "I...I don't know, man. I mean, I kinda really...don't know him all that well? I'd like to say I do, but…"

"But Mullet never really lets anybody get to know him." Lance sounded much less hesitant, and more and more like he was siding with Allura. "He's always so standoffish. I thought it was just because he was a jerk, but maybe it was because he was keeping a secret. Or because he was plotting to kill us all."

Shiro gaped at him, flabbergasted. "Lance! You don't really think that, do you?"

But he did. They all did, to some extent or another, Keith could see it. They all thought he was some kind of monster, and...maybe he was.

Lance continued to defend his opinion, while Hunk waved his hands in front of his face and refused to give more of one. It was obvious from Shiro's tone that he was growing not only frustrated, but desperate. Finally, he turned to the youngest member of the team, the only one who had yet to speak.

"Pidge?"

A moment passed before she lifted her head, and Keith's heart skipped a beat when those tear-filled but furious eyes met his. She opened her mouth and sucked in an audible breath before throwing her words like daggers. "Do you know where my family is?"

His stomach plummeted to the floor. "No, Pidge, I...of course I don't, I -" He couldn't say anymore. It didn't matter what he said, anyway, no one was going to listen to him. Pidge turned her eyes back to the floor, fists clenched by her sides, as the rest of the room devolved into chaos.

Shiro and Allura were shouting back and forth at each other, Hunk was trying to comfort Pidge, and Lance was shooting glares at him like he was the devil incarnate. Keith stood in the middle of it all with his hands fisted in his hair, wishing he could disappear. Wishing he could go back to that morning and never go to the base, wishing he could go back all the way to the beginning and never be born. It'd be better that way, right? A freak of nature like he was shouldn't exist. If he'd never been born, then Voltron would have found another red paladin, one who wasn't Galra, and they could carry on saving the universe without having to deal with this mess.

"Enough!" Allura's voice rang out over everyone else. "Perhaps we cannot prove his true motives, but one thing is certain, he cannot be trusted. Coran, Lance, escort him downstairs to a cell. We will decide what to do with him at a later date."

Keith went numb. Everything that happened from that moment on felt like he was watching a movie on a screen. Shiro fairly exploded, protesting Allura's decision, but the princess pinned him to the nearest console and sneered something about him daring to usurp her authority. Cold, unfeeling hands latched onto both his arms, tugging him harshly toward the door. He walked in a daze.

The next thing he knew, he was standing in the middle of a spherical, blue-tinted forcefield, with no knowledge of how he had gotten there. Down a long walkway, Coran and Lance were disappearing into an elevator. The doors slammed shut on their backs. He was completely alone.

Alone, like he had been after his dad died when he was six. Alone, like he had been in nearly every foster home that followed. Alone, like when Shiro went to Kerberos and subsequently vanished. He thought that by now he'd be used to being alone. But he wasn't. Not anymore. Not when he had spent the last few months surrounded by people, people whom he didn't always get along with, but whom he had finally let himself begin to call friends. Not when he had thought he was finally figuring out what it felt like to belong somewhere.

Sinking to the floor, he bit back a hysterical laugh. He should have known better. Nothing good ever lasted in his life. No one but Shiro ever really cared about him, so why had he let himself think that these people did? Maybe Lance was right. Maybe it was all because he had been Galra all along. He had always been the weird kid, the outsider, the foster that nobody wanted, the troublemaker, the rebel. Anytime something good came along, he somehow drove it away. Shiro had spent a lot of time trying to convince him that it wasn't true, that he wasn't responsible for other people's choices, but Keith had never quite believed him. If it wasn't true, then why did trouble and sorrow seem to follow him everywhere he went? Even as an adult, even in quiznaking space he couldn't keep from messing up the good in his life.

He didn't blame Allura for locking him up. Didn't blame Lance for his glares, didn't blame Pidge for her anger or Hunk and Coran for their silence. He wouldn't trust him, either, if he was in their place. The Galra had ruined each and every one of their lives. Even if he knew that he would never, ever hurt his team...maybe he could take on some of the blame of his race. If punishing him made them feel better, then he'd take it.

Time dragged by in that tiny cell. He knew, because the lights in the cavernous room around him brightened and dimmed with the Castle's cycles just like they did upstairs, and bowls of food goo emerged out of the ground twice per cycle. Maybe it was some kind of Altean science/magic, or maybe there was just a dispenser beneath the floor. He didn't know, or care. He was glad to get the food, but the fact that he didn't even get that tiny bit of interaction that someone bringing him a meal would give him hurt. It was like being in the desert shack all over again, but much worse. In the desert, he had the choice to go into town and see people if he wanted, and he had keeping himself alive and chasing after the Blue Lion to keep his mind occupied.

Here, he had nothing. His time was divided between eating, pacing the floor, doing pushups - one armed, since his shoulder still wasn't healed - and situps, and lying on the hard bed, though he slept very little.

He wasn't sure what hurt more - the initial rejection and mistrust, or the lack of care now. No one even bothered to come down and ask him questions, to try to find out the truth, much less actually check on him and make sure he was okay. He wondered if they even looked at the security feed ever to see if he was even still alive.

He knew what did hurt the most, though, more than both of those things combined. Shiro. Out of everyone, he thought that at least Shiro would come down at some point. The fact that he had so readily accepted Keith's Galra heritage had baffled him, but he had been the only one trying to defend him. So where was he now? Were they preventing him from visiting somehow? Or had he changed his mind after all, and sided with the others?

In the end, it took them four quintants that felt like an eternity to decide his fate. The elevator doors opened late in the day, the sudden noise after so much silence startling. Keith swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up quickly, trying not to be too disappointed when only Allura and Coran walked out. He supposed it was too much to ask that he could see all of his friends one more time.

Stopping in front of the cell, Allura folded her arms in front of her while Coran crossed his in the back. Both were stoic, betraying no emotion on their faces. Allura, of course, was the one to speak.

"We've come to escort you off the ship."

His stomach clenched, even though he hadn't expected anything different. "Okay."

"We have landed on a planet called Borulmyte. It is inhabited only by various primitive and non sentient species. The atmosphere is breathable and the climate livable for both humans and Galra." The last word was said with no small measure of disgust. "There are plenty of edible plants and animals, so you should be able to survive just fine."

Survive. That was the key word in all of this, wasn't it? He had half expected not to survive, to be thrown out of an airlock into the cold vacuum of space. But now...surviving is all that he would be doing. Alone, again. He shouldn't have expected anything different. Alone was apparently his destiny. Alone on a planet with no other sentient life, no one to interact with, no possible way of ever leaving.

Surviving. No more living, those days were over. He wasn't ever very good at that, anyway. Surviving was what he did best. How long, though, would he last? How long until he decided he was tired of surviving, when there wasn't even anything left to survive for? Out in the desert, he had had the Blue Lion calling him, and the stubborn notion that Shiro wasn't really dead. Now...he'd only have himself.

"This was certainly no easy decision, and much time, discussion, and thought has gone into choosing the proper planet. So I hope that you will cooperate and not cause a scene. Nothing you can say or do is going to change our minds now."

For a moment, he let himself imagine those discussions. It certainly wasn't the first time over the past few days he had done so. Did anyone advocate for him? Had Shiro been the one to insist that they make sure the planet was livable? Had they chosen a basically uninhabited place because they wanted to keep him safe from possible Galra rule, or because they wanted to keep locals safe from him? Had anyone voted for just throwing him out the airlock?

He nodded and stood. "Okay."

An opening was made in the force field so that Coran could enter and lock his wrists into energy cuffs. Then he was escorted up the walkway, into the elevator for a completely silent ride, and out into the familiar front hall. It almost seemed like just yesterday that he and the others had crept cautiously through those towering doors, having no clue the adventures that were waiting for them inside. Now he was being figuratively thrown out the same doors onto a planet that was just as unknown as Arus had been then.

The light was dim when they exited, whatever sun might exist there already having set. They were in an open, desert like area, but a forest of some sort was nearby. At least he had options. He knew how to make his way in an Earth desert, but for food and shelter the forest might be his best option.

"This is where we leave you."

Coran stepped forward and removed the cuffs, and Keith absentmindedly rubbed at his wrists.

"Don't suppose I get a communicator like our...your allies."

Allura just stared at him with the same, unchanging expression. He ran a hand through his hair.

"Right. Listen, um...could you...give everybody a message from me? I was...hoping to get to say goodbye, but…"

Sighing heavily, Allura looked as if she was barely refraining from rolling her eyes. "I suppose that depends on what this 'message' is."

"Um." He looked down at his feet, scuffing the toes of his boot into the sand. "Tell...tell Hunk that I'll...miss his cooking. Especially those brownies he made for me. And tell Lance that...I never hated him. He...annoyed me sometimes, but...he was a good friend, too."

He drew in a deep breath, trying to steady himself. "Tell Pidge…" He swallowed. "Tell Pidge that I hope she finds her family. I really, really do. And that she's doing great with her bayard. I...kept meaning to tell her that, but never did.

"And Shiro…" His jaw tightened. There were so, so many things to say to Shiro. Things that he should have said long ago, things that he had said before but could never say enough. Things that he'd never get a chance to say again. He dashed errant tears away with the back of his hand. "Just...tell him I love him."

He looked up finally, giving a wobbly half smile. Allura looked even sterner than before, though Coran's mouth had twisted a bit to the side in an expression that Keith couldn't read. "And thank you both, for letting me have the chance to fly Red. She's...amazing." One corner of his mouth lifted a little more. "Tell her I'll miss her."

A long, awkward moment passed before Allura cleared her throat. "Right, then. If that's all…"

Coran seemed to shake himself out of his thoughts and pulled Keith's knife out of his pocket. "We figured you might as well have this. It is yours, after all, and you'll need it, I'm sure."

Keith whispered his thanks as he gingerly took it from the man's hands.

"Alright. Well...farewell, Number Four." Coran gave a little salute, Allura a curt nod, and they turned their backs to walk back up into the Castle.

Once they were gone, Keith stayed rooted in place, unable to make himself move. It was only when the Castle rumbled to life that he took a few unsteady steps backwards. The place that he had come to call home over the past few months lifted from the ground before shooting off into the sky. Keith tipped back his head and watched until it was no more than a speck, blending in with the stars that had begun to come out, refusing to let the tears that burned at his eyelids fall.

There was a pretty good chance that none of his messages would ever get relayed. He hoped they would, but knew that he'd never find out one way or the other. He'd never see any of those he thought were his friends again.

He was alone.

All that was left to do now was survive.

A/N: So...did I make you cry?