Hello friends, I come to you rather exhausted this evening as I didn't end up sleeping well last night, but that's neither here nor there. Here is the next chapter, in which he comes, the character you have all been waiting for- Coran, Coran, the gorgeous man! As always, thanks for reading!

cosmic dust

chapter nine

castle of lions

"Good to see you back in one piece, Keith."

Barely sparing a glance in Matt's direction, Keith merely flopped into the co-pilot's seat. "You change the transponder code?"

"Done and done!" Matt told him. "The Galra shouldn't be able to track us again."

"Good." Folding his arms in front of his chest, Keith narrowed his eyes, watching as they drew closer to the strange wormhole. He had returned the red lion to the hangar, reducing the number of ships that they would need to take through it. He didn't like the idea of them getting separated.

With the green lion out in front, their ship followed behind in tight formation. For a moment, he feared that the wormhole would collapse the instant the green lion passed through- but it remained open just long enough for their ship to slip in after it.

He trusted Pidge, but he still wasn't thrilled about this idea. There was a saying back on Earth, to not look a gift horse in the mouth, but he wouldn't have survived this long were it not for the fact that he was a paranoid little shit, so he didn't plan on changing his tune anytime soon.

The trip through the wormhole was short, a mercy, since he found that he'd been holding his breath throughout it. Once they came out the other end, Keith exhaled, gaze fixing on the planet that lay before them.

No Galra ships.

Leaning back in the co-pilot's seat, Keith planted his feet on the console, studying the planet with masked interest. Sparing a glance over towards Matt, he tilted his head. "Coordinates?"

"Checking them now." Matt told him, sparing him a glance, gaze briefly drifting towards his feet. "Should you really be...?"

"My ship." Keith told him.

Matt paused, giving him a shrug of his shoulders. "Fair enough. According to the ship's data, it looks like we're in the Javeeno system."

The com link crackled, and reaching out a hand, Keith brought up the communication screen, Pidge and Allura's images leaping out at them. Exchanging a brief glance with his partner, Keith forced himself to give her a small smile.

"Looks like the green lion wants to land on this planet." She told them. "It keeps saying something about home."

Home. He didn't doubt what the green lion was telling her, but the fact that his own lion didn't seem to know anything... it bothered him more than he was ready to let on.

Dropping his feet from the console, he pushed aside such thoughts, bringing up a holoscreen. "Scanning the planet."

"According to this, it's called Arus." He told them, yellow eyes darting back up towards them. "Doesn't seem like there's any Galra presence here."

"Good." Allura said, her tone curt. "Let us hope it stays that way."

Letting out a faint snort, Keith folded his arms in front of him, arching a brow. "Too late."

For the span of a moment, Allura looked as if she did not know what he meant- before her eyes locked with his, her brow furrowing. He couldn't tell if she had managed to forget that she was traveling with a Galra, or if she had just put it from her mind.

Out of sight, out of mind. He wished he had that luxury.

"Yes, well," she began, clearing her throat, "-hostile Galra presence."

He'd almost be touched, were it not for the sharp edge to her voice. But it was fair- he didn't exactly expect the princess to trust him. It would be stranger if she did.

"Seems like my lion," and in spite of his own doubts, he couldn't help but smile at the confidence with which Pidge spoke those words, "-knows where to go."

She deserved this, he thought.

Flos was right- he didn't.

"Roger that." Keith told her, once more burying his own feelings. "We'll follow your lead."

"So, any chance you want to take over?" Matt ventured, glancing over towards him. "I mean, this is your ship and all."

"Hey, I just got out of a life or death situation." Keith pointed out. "Besides, you seem to be handling it just fine."

"Uh, just for the record, we were all just in that situation." Matt said.

"I know." Keith told him, propping his legs back up on the console.

"Don't bother, Matt." Pidge chimed in. "And c'mon man, don't put your boots up on the console. Those things take forever to clean!"

"My ship." Keith repeated.

"Okay, but you're the one who'll have to clean it." She told him.

Narrowing his eyes, Keith leveled his gaze with hers- before letting out a faint grunt. She had him there- he hated cleaning, and she damn well knew it too. Dropping his feet down from the console, he spread out his hands, giving her a silent expression of there, you happy?

And she was. That smug little smirk of hers, she was damn well pleased with herself.

Closing his eyes, he drowned out the idle chatter of the Holt siblings.

His life seemed to be all about hairpin turns. Just when he thought he'd gotten a handle on things, that everything had settled down, something would happen, and everything would change again, never giving him enough time to find his footing.

And now, here he was, on the cusp of making another radical change.

Him? A paladin of Voltron?

It was so... it almost made him want to laugh, long and bitter. Because that couldn't be right.

He loved the red lion. It was so... he didn't know how to describe it, not really. There was a warmth to it, a comfort, the kind that he hadn't felt in a long time, not since his dad had passed away, not since he'd been taken.

It was a dangerous feeling. It was so easy... too easy to feel like it would be a constant in his life, but he knew- he knew that for him, there was no such thing. Everyone left- and when they didn't, he did.

Even if not by choice.

"We have discovered something that may be of interest to you, lord."

Biting down on his lip, he fought away the unbidden memory, a chill seeping into his bones. He didn't want to think about that, didn't want to recall the day he had been taken.

The day his illusion of being human had shattered.

He wondered if his father would even recognize him now, were he still alive.

Would Shiro?

Shiro.

God, Shiro.

All this time, he thought he was safe, back on Earth. To find out that he wasn't... it had been such a shock, that it was a wonder he hadn't shut down right there.

If it had been an accident, an illness of some kind... maybe he could have handled that. It would still hurt- god, how would it not? He'd allowed him to become important to him, against his better judgement. But no, he'd been taken.

Taken by the same ones who had taken him.

By his own kind, his own people.

Feeling his claws press into his skin, the thick leather of his jacket preventing them from digging into his flesh, Keith couldn't help but grimace. He kept them trimmed as much as possible, but there were limits. Pidge's mom had caught him once, desperately trying to file them down into rounded tips again, just wanting to take back at least one small part of his lost humanity.

It had been stupid, he knew. They were claws, not nails, and claws had nerve endings- not to mention blood vessels.

He was probably just lucky that she caught him after the first two, because otherwise he probably would have bled to death on her bathroom floor. Hell of a way to repay her generosity, letting him be a house guest and all.

She had never mentioned a word of it to Pidge, for which he was grateful. He didn't... he hated showing his weak side to people.

He left, that time, before he could allow himself to get attached. Bringing Pidge with him had not been part of the plan. But the determination that she held to find her family... how could he refuse her, when he wanted to do the same?

"Keith?" Matt's voice caught his ears, one of them twitching faintly at the sound of it. "You asleep?"

God, he wished.

Cracking one eye open, Keith peered over at him. "No."

"Oh." Matt seemed to blink, a slight frown on his face. "Well, uh, pretty sure we're here."

Now opening both eyes, Keith pushed himself upright, following Matt's line of vision. The castle was... pretty hard to miss, if he had to be honest, sticking out like a sore thumb in the otherwise natural landscape, gleaming white under the light of the moon.

The Castle of Lions.

There was joy in Allura's voice when she spoke of it, but looking at it now, for himself... it just made him feel like an intruder, like he shouldn't be here.

He shouldn't, he knew. He was Galra, and his people had been the ones to wipe Altea from existence. Just because he was part human, it didn't absolve him of what his mother's people had done, didn't free him from their sins.

It just meant that he had been blessedly ignorant of them for awhile.

Maybe that was why his father never told him. What kind of parent would want tell their child that half of them belonged to a bloodthirsty race of alien monsters?

Grunting as Matt landed the ship with far less finesse than he would have liked, Keith got to his feet, wondering if he should even go in. Sure, there was the whole paladin business, but this was still an Altean castle- what if there were others like the princess, frozen in a deep sleep?

The princess tolerated him, sure- but only because she had to. As soon as another paladin for the red lion presented themselves, he knew that he would be tossed out onto the curb without so much as a second thought.

There was a low rumble in the back of his mind at that, the red lion seeming to object. Part of him wanted to believe her- but the part of him that knew better buried that feeling, that hope, deep down.

Nothing stayed.

This would never change.

The feeling of being an intruder didn't fade once he entered the Castle of Lions.

If anything, it increased.

He had gotten so used to living in a world of black, of purple, of red, that the stark white and gleaming blue of the castle-ship felt foreign to him- alien, even. It made him feel more out of place than he ever had, even during that brief time he had returned to Earth.

The lights were too bright for his eyes, a faint shudder of revulsion as his third eyelid slid into place, protecting his light sensitive eyes. It had been ages, but he never got used to that feeling. Galra ships had naturally low lighting, and the red lion accommodated him, so it wasn't something that he had cause to experience often, a small mercy, as it were.

Returning to Earth had been hell, in that regard. Everything had been too bright.

He followed behind the other three, trailing them by several steps. Watching as Allura navigated the Castle's halls with a practiced ease, he could only wonder where she was leading them to.

The answer came in the form of a round room, which at first glance, seemed to hold nothing more than a control console in the center of it. He hesitated, hovering just outside of it, even as Pidge and Matt made their way inside, hot on the princess' heels.

If he turned around here and just left, he wondered how long it would take them to notice. Maybe that would be easier- he could sense the changing tide of his life, and all he wanted to do was run away from it, to make his own choice in the matter, to wrest back some form of control.

He wouldn't take the red lion. It would be easier to part with it before it parted with him.

Yet he stayed.

Still, he didn't enter the room, lingering by the door as he listened with half an ear as Allura explained just what the room was. The cryochamber, she'd called it.

With a name like that, it wasn't hard to guess the room's purpose. He couldn't begrudge her wish that there might be other, living Alteans, knowing all too well what it felt like to be alone. For her sake, he found himself hoping that there were as well.

So he watched- watched as the pods came up out of the floor one by one, watched as Allura's face fell as each one came up empty. By the time the last one began to rise out of the floor, he could sense that she had almost given up, resigning herself to being the last living Altean.

Almost given up, but not quite.

The universe rewarded that fierce spark of hope.

The vivid smile of pure joy that lit up her face was a sight to behold. In a fashion, the Altean princess had always been a bit like him- guarded, hiding her feelings behind an iron wall. But they were not the same, he knew, and he never expected them to be.

He was still human enough not to begrudge the happiness of others.

She could nearly weep.

If she had been alone, she surely would have.

Not tears of sorrow, no- these would have been tears of joy. For this whole time, she had feared, dreaded, that she was the last Altean left alive, that there were no others of her kind left out there, that everyone she knew had long since been lost to the stars.

But no.

She was not alone.

Perhaps she would not weep in front of the others, but she would, however, toss aside enough of her decorum to allow herself one tight, bone crushing embrace. It was part of out of necessity- she needed to check and see if he was really real, and not simply a figment of her desperate imagination.

Coran.

Bless the stars, it was Coran.

He was still in a daze, at first. But it wasn't long before she felt his hands around her shoulders, returning the tight embrace with almost a sense of wonder.

"Princess?"

"Yes, Coran." Her voice was muffled, her head buried in his chest as it was. "It is so good to see you."

Holding him close for a moment longer, she forced herself to draw away. She was reluctant to let go of him, as if he would disappear the moment she did so.

Silly, she knew.

He searched her eyes, and she must have shown more pain in them than she thought, for he gently cupped her face, a deep frown set on his features. "How long has it been?"

Drawing in a breath, she straightened her back, bracing herself to give him the same words that had caused her so much pain. "Ten thousand years." She told him. "And Zarkon still reigns."

He took in her words with a grave seriousness, before pulling her back into a tight embrace. "Your father wished that when you woke, it would be in a bright future."

There was an unspoken apology to his words. He need not give it- the only one to blame was Zarkon.

She pulled herself away again, taking a good step back. There was pain, yes, but that was not all there was. "All hope is not yet lost. There is still Voltron."

The words seemed to light a spark in the man's eyes. "Then King Alfor's plan worked?"

"So it would seem." Allura told him, a faint smile on her lips. "Come, there are people I would like you to meet."

Turning on her heel, she realized with a pause that only the two full blooded Earthlings were within the cryochamber. Searching for the halfbreed, her eyes finally fell on Keith, lingering by the door, who seemed to meet her gaze after a moment.

Oh, she realized with a pause, he was uncomfortable here.

Good, he should be, some more venomous part of her thought. But she rejected that line of thinking, tossing it aside as soon as it entered her mind.

It was a disquieting notion, that it was his obvious self hatred, more than anything else, that was slowly winning her over. But if there were any better indicator of how much he reviled the Galra than how much he hated the part of himself that was Galra, she knew not.

Shaking off her thoughts, she stepped forward, first stopping in front of Matt.

"This is Matthew Holt, of Earth." She chose to introduce him first, for ease. "He is a member of a rebel alliance that is currently fighting against the Galra Empire."

Matt was quick to flash a grin, lifting a hand. "You can call me Matt. And it's kind of less of an alliance, at this stage. We're pretty fractured."

"Well met then, young Matt!" And she couldn't help but smile at his tone, boisterous in spite of the crushing news that he had just received not even minutes ago. "They call me Coran, on account of the fact that that's my name!"

His gaze dropped to Pidge, and he gave her the same smile. "Ah, and who might this young lady be?"

"This is-" Allura began, only to find herself cut off.

"Katie Holt, also of Earth. Matt's my older brother." She introduced herself, and Allura had to blink. Katie? Wasn't her name Pidge? "You can call me Pidge."

Oh, a nickname. Now she understood.

"Well met, Pidge!" Coran beamed. "Are you with the rebellion too, then?"

"No, I'm a space pirate." She told him freely.

Coran squeaked. In spite of herself, Allura couldn't help but laugh. Yes, now that she thought about it, Coran did have a rather... interesting track record when it came to space pirates, didn't he?

(By interesting, she of course meant a history of getting ripped off by them. Bless his too honest heart.)

"Yes, Pidge here is a space pirate." Allura told him. "But she is also one of my saviors. As well, as I might add, the green paladin of Voltron."

She could not keep the tinge of sadness out of her words, not completely. There was a weight to them that she did not know if the others would understand- but she knew that Coran would.

For there to be a new green paladin, something had to have happened to the old one.

"The green paladin, eh?" Coran asked, burying any such feelings deep within him, one hand reaching out to stroke his mustache. "So this is the hope that you mentioned, eh, princess?"

"Yes." Allura told him. "We have only just managed to recover the green lion- it was how we found the Castle of Lions in the first place."

And she had a great many questions, namely, how it was that she had found herself so far away from it- but she would wait, sticking to introductions for the moment. Once she caught Coran up to speed, then she could ask him what he knew.

"Splendid!" Coran beamed. "That's one lion down, four to go!"

"Three, actually." Allura corrected him. "The red lion has also been recovered."

"Your father's-!" Coran exclaimed, before half regretting it, his words almost seeming to sting him more than they did her. "Have you found its paladin?"

A more loaded question than he could have realized.

"Yes." She told him- for whatever her reservations might be, she had seen Keith fly the red lion, and she had sensed for herself just how deep their bond was. "Or perhaps I should say that the red lion found its paladin, since that seems to be how it happened."

Turning on her heel, she let out a held breath as she realized that Keith was still there. For some reason, she'd almost half expected him to leave. Catching his eye, she watched as he let out a long sigh, finally deciding to join them.

Visibly forcing himself to hold Coran's gaze, he kept his tone curt. "Keith."

Coran, to his credit, barely so much as flinched. His gaze did, briefly, dart in her direction for the span of a moment, before fixing itself back on the half Galra before him.

"You must be quite something then, to have gained the red lion's trust!" Coran told him. "She's a temperamental one, that one."

It was, very clearly, not the reaction Keith had been expecting. It was hard to miss, the way the bulk of his tension all but washed out of his shoulders, leaving him still wary, but more relaxed.

"Keith's a space pirate too!" Pidge chirped, grinning from ear to ear.

Now that Coran did react to, letting out another squeak. "Princess! I go to sleep for ten thousand years, and wake to find you gallivanting about the universe with space pirates! What would your father say?"

"I am not sure I would call it gallivanting, exactly, but yes," Allura told him, unable to help but be just a bit amused, "-I suppose they are both space pirates. And you know as well as I that father would say nothing."

"Uh, what about me?" Matt chimed in. "I'm a space pirate too."

"Yeah, but you just joined our crew like, this morning." Pidge pointed out. "It's not official until your bounty lists you as part of our crew."

"Hold on, I'm going to check my bounty right now." Matt told her, reaching into his back pocket, before he froze, squinting. "I just remembered I don't have my transponder."

"Smooth, Matt." Pidge remarked. "You're really selling your first impression here."

"I see you through your darkest hours of adolescence, and this is how you repay me." Matt told her, mock offense to his voice. "But seriously, I should probably try and contact Te-Osh. She might want an update."

"Te-Osh?" Coran inquired.

"Another rebel." Allura told him. "She leads a force that fights against the Galra Empire on the borderlands, if my memory serves."

"And that it does." Matt told her. "Keith, you wanna give me a hand?"

"Sure." Giving him a curt nod, he briefly spared a glance back in Allura's direction. "Princess?"

Was he... asking for permission? Pursing her lips together, Allura studied him for a brief moment, trying to place why. Perhaps he felt as out of place on the castle-ship as he looked- which was to say, very.

"Yes, of course." Allura told him. "There is much to do. Coran, can you help me get the Castle back online? After ten thousand years, I am afraid it might be a bit out of sorts."

"Never fear, princess!" Coran all but chirped. "You know they didn't call me the Coranic for nothing! We'll have this ship back up and running in no time!"

A soft smile gracing her features, she couldn't help but feel as if the burden on her heart had lightened. If she had found the Castle of Lions empty, she knew that it would still be there, heavy as it had ever been. But knowing that she was not the last...

It was not gone, but it had become easier to bear.

She had, in truth, been hoping for her father- but Coran was wonderful too. He had always been like a second father to her, a constant presence in her life.

"Thank you, Coran." Allura told him, before turning on her heel, facing what was, admittedly, a rather motley group all told. "Once the Castle is back up and running, I will attempt to locate the remaining two lions. From there, we can decide on our next course of action."

"Wait," tilting his head, Keith frowned, "-two? I thought there were three lions left."

"Two." She repeated. "For the black lion is here, in the Castle."

It was in no short order that everyone finished their business- for there turned out to be no small amount of it.

The first order of business was to bring the red and green lions into the Castle of Lions proper. With the two lions back in their hangars, somehow the Castle felt a little more complete.

There had been some debate over what to do with the stolen Galra transport ship. Eventually, it was decided that they would place it in the Castle's main hangar for the time being, on the off chance that it might prove useful in the future. It looked quite out of place next to the pods, dwarfing them to no small degree.

She sensed that Keith was a bit unwilling to let go of it. From her understanding, it had served as his home now for half a year, so she could understand the reluctance.

The second, of course, was to contact and brief Te-Osh. She had departed from the way station, and had been en route back to the borderlands when they had called. She seemed pleased to hear that the green lion was now in their hands, and though she seemed a bit reluctant to part with Matt, she agreed to release him from his duties with the rebellion.

He would be serving it still, just in a different way than before.

Living arrangements had to be made. It was best to get it out of the way now, as they had no idea what the future would hold.

Simply moving all of Pidge's things from her quarters on the transport ship to her new quarters on the Castle had taken a good hour. It was a wonder that she had any room to sleep, what with all of the various clutter that she had collected.

In contrast, Keith did not seem to own much.

"I travel light." He'd told her, revealing more about himself in that one statement than he had during the admittedly brief time in which she had known him.

There were still any number of ill gotten gains stored aboard the transport ship, but for the time being, they left them in place. In the event that they began to run low on funds, they could sell some of the stolen equipment. GAC was the currency used by most of the known universe now, it seemed, something which she and Coran found themselves in a shortage of.

Keith and Pidge, on the other hand, had quite a bit of it.

Leaving the economic matters to pirates was a... strange concept, to say the least, but the pair had more cause to be familiar with the ins and outs of the market than they would.

It was only once all of that was settled, that they finally found their way to the bridge.

"So how does this work, exactly?" Pidge asked, adjusting her glasses as she peered curiously around the bridge.

"Does it involve more hand holding?" Keith asked, his tone dry.

Casting a brief glance over in Keith's direction, the half Galra merely gave her a shrug of his shoulders, as if he had asked an honest question. "No, it does not."

"As for how it works..." Making her way to the center of the bridge, she took a careful step up onto the platform. "Allow me to show you."

Drawing in a long breath, she closed her eyes, focusing her energy. She could feel the faint tingle of it just underneath her skin, gathering there until she released it with a breath, a shining map of the universe responding to her beck and call.

Even Keith look sufficiently impressed.

"These are coordinates." Pidge observed, turning on her heel, casting a glance about the illusionary cosmos that floated around her head. "It looks like the red and green lions are in the same location as the black lion."

"Indeed." Allura told them, nodding her head. "When the war first begun, my father took the black lion, and locked it away in the Castle, so that Zarkon could not obtain it."

"So that's three lions." Matt said, peering at the glimmering map for himself. "What about the last two?"

"Only the yellow and blue lions remain." Allura told them. "The yellow lion," with a wave of her hand, she made the map spin, bringing up the yellow lion's location, "...is here, as you can see."

Squinting, Matt narrowed his eyes, leaning in as if to get a better look. "I think the Galra have a mining colony there."

That was... a disquieting notion. She knew that they had once had the red lion in their possession, but she did not like the chance that they might also have the yellow lion within their grasp as well.

"You don't think they're looking for the yellow lion, do you?" Pidge asked.

"I'm not sure?" Matt told her, glancing between his sister and Allura. "The whole planet is one big ore mine. They might not even know the yellow lion is there."

"That is... concerning." Allura admitted with a frown.

"I can contact Te-Osh again, and have her gather some more intelligence." Matt offered.

"If you could, that would be lovely, thank you." Allura told him. "I would rather avoid rushing in without knowing exactly what it is that we are dealing with."

At best, they had two functional lions, and a pair of support ships. While the castle-ship had considerable firepower, retrieving the yellow lion without its paladin would be the very definition of difficult. Best then to have the odds a little more evenly stacked in their favor.

"As for the blue lion," Allura spoke, pressing onward, shifting the map of the cosmos once again, "...it is located here."

"Wait, isn't that-"

Keith was the one who spoke first, but it was Pidge who finished.

"-Earth?"