The Castle of Lions emerged from the wormhole in high orbit over a gleaming pearl of a world. Almost three quarters of the planet were encased in massive polar caps, with only patches of green and blue to be seen in the narrow equatorial region between. The peaks of numerous mountain ranges seemed to sparkle in the light of the system's star, the lower slopes and flatter plains dusted faintly with darker shadows that might have been thin forests seen from on high.
"Oh wow." Lance breathed, all but plastered against the forward viewscreens as he tried to take in the gorgeous sight below them. He'd seen a lot of unusual planets over the last year and a bit, but Sh'raa H'ressnol was unexpectedly pretty. Around him, his teammates and the others were echoing his sentiment, equally fascinated by the display. Even Keith's eyes were sparkling at the view, a soft smile on his face, and Lance hastily turned away as he tried to conceal his blush. In doing so, he caught sight of what looked like a thin ribbon trailing upward from the surface, so thin as to be barely visible against the backdrop of the stars, with what looked like a small golden teardrop depending from the end. "Whoa, what is that?" He asked, pointing.
"One of the space elevators." Kurogane's voice beside him nearly made him jump, and the other chuckled. "There are three, equally spaced around the equator. Look, you can just see one of the others over there." Following the older man's finger, Lance squinted and looked closely. Sure enough, another was about a third of the way around, all but invisible against a background of grassy mountainside in front of them. They were nearly end-on to that one, and the golden bulb at the end seemed to grow as he watched and the ship began to close the distance to it.
As they drew closer and the scale of the object became apparent, Lance's eyes widened in shock. The golden teardrop was a massive space station, tethered to the end of a cable several stories thick. Half a dozen pack ships were docked with it, their colouring disguising their presence until they came close, and there were room for at least a dozen more to slide into position like the petals of a great black flower. Some of them seemed to be under construction, and after a moment's inspection he thought he recognized the Lightning Strike and the Falling Tree among them, finally getting their temporary patch jobs properly repaired.
Then they were sliding past the station and its cable, heading south toward the mountains and ice fields. Malrento, Allura, and Coran were deep in discussion as the Icebringer gave them directions to some point on the globe currently projected in front of them, while behind them a young Altean woman from the Long Wind wore an expression of intense concentration as she rested her hands firmly on the control pillars. One thing that had come up in planning at the Blade base was that Allura's raw talent and power was being wasted at the controls of a support ship, so Malrento and Shiiar'keh had handpicked a roster of skilled Alteans to learn to fly the Castle of Lions from her. The first attempts had been shaky at best (Lance was pretty sure he'd actually managed to get whiplash on a ship with artificial gravity and inertial dampeners), but the current trainee, Laita, had improved rapidly and was being permitted, under close supervision, to bring the ship in to their destination on the Icebringer homeworld.
Thin clouds whipped past as the ship began to descend, then high mountains surrounded them. Below, the ground resolved into a flat, icy plain, a large space adjacent to one of the steep ridges thankfully clear of the trees he was just starting to distinguish. Otherwise it was pure unspoiled nature as far as the eye could see.
"...No cities or towns?" Pidge sounded puzzled, her head turning this way and that. "What are we doing out here?"
Kurogane laughed, shoving his hands in his pockets and scanning the mountains surrounding them with a fond look in his eyes. "Wait and see." He said with a grin that Lance was pretty sure would have been equally at home on Alejandro's face.
The ship rocked only slightly, setting down a little more roughly than usual. "Not bad at all for your first landing, Laita!" Coran said warmly, and the young woman flushed with praise as she stepped down from the control columns. "We'll make an expert pilot of you yet! Now then, out we go, all of you!"
"Might want to grab a coat." Kurogane called over his shoulder as he disappeared out the door at a jog, Alejandro hot on his heels.
"Might want to grab a coat, he says." Lance huffed through chattering teeth a short time later, hugging himself tightly against the cold. "Why is it so cold?!"
"We are halfway to the pole here." Hunk offered weakly. His friend looked almost as frozen as he did, despite the winter gear Coran had produced from storage for all of them. It reminded Lance of when he and Keith had gotten stuck in that snow room with the alien bull-thing on the Long Wind, right down to the short, fat trees with their sharp lines of near-black needles, except even colder than that place had been. Well, maybe they just hadn't been able to turn that room cold enough to be the actual arctic.
Lance made an aggravated noise, slipping on the ice and clutching at Hunk for support. He was even more annoyed by the fact that his future self and his partner, walking up at the head of the group with Malrento, seemed to move over the ice as easily as if it was just dirt. And they didn't seem to be cold at all, despite not having vacuum-rated paladin armor on under their coats. "Where are we even going? Kurogane said himself there's no cities around here! All I see is rocks, and trees, and snow, and moun-" He cut off abruptly, stumbling to a halt as they came around an outcropping and found themselves face to face with a gaping cave mouth. "...You have got to be kidding me."
"Hurry up, slowpokes!" Alejandro called back to them, half-hidden in the shadows of the entrance. With a start, Lance realized that they were being left behind by the rest of the group and scowled, slipping and sliding as he dragged Hunk forward to catch up.
The chill seemed to lessen once they were in the shelter of the opening. Several steps in was a massive metal panel stretched across the entire cave, with creases in the metal suggesting that doors of various sizes could be opened to accommodate things being moved in or out. Malrento had already opened the smallest panel, about the size of the doors on the Long Wind, and gesturing them to go through. On the other side, they found a large open space with bare stone walls and floors and a row of odd-looking vehicles like little airplanes off to one side, with a second panel on the far end like a giant airlock. And that's basically what it was, Lance realized once he stepped away from the cold air following them through the door. A temperature control airlock. The air in here was already noticeably warmer compared to what they'd experienced outside, even with only one thick layer of metal to protect them.
"Can't believe spacefaring aliens are living in caves..." Pidge muttered beside him as they headed across the airlock to the inner door. "What kind of advanced civilization..."
Walking beside them, Matt simply laughed. "The H'ress don't believe in being wasteful of resources. Comes from their evolutionary background in a very delicately-balanced ecosystem. So why would they waste precious stone and metal on Human-style buildings when the planet has a perfectly-serviceable cave network they can use instead?" As they stepped through the second door way he gestured beyond it, and Lance found himself stopping short in surprise for the second time in a few minutes, his jaw dropping and his eyes going wide.
They were in a vast room, but it no longer felt anything like a cave. Tapestries covered the walls, woven with intricate images depicting scenes that had to be from H'ress history, and maybe other worlds besides. Parts of the room were sectioned off with metal panels, while smaller cave openings led off in a dozen different directions. People, aliens of all species, were coming and going every which way or simply relaxing in the open central space that seemed to function as some sort of huge common room. The whole atmosphere was oddly similar to the marketplaces back in Varadero Beach, with chatter and laughter filling the room over the sound of enough people to populate a small town going about their lives.
"Please, make yourselves comfortable." Malrento gestured to the lounge area, scattered with tables and chairs designed for various different body types, as well as soft couches and piles of cushions and things that might have been bean-bag chairs. It was like a larger version of the lounge on the Long Wind. "It will take some vargas for Shiiar'keh and the others from the Long Wind who are returning to this pack to arrive."
Lance nodded, and fell in behind Allura as she led the way over to the seating area. Many heads turned toward them, some of the local residents offering them cheerful greetings. It was even more relaxed and informal than the Long Wind had been. But then, that was a frontlines battleship part of the time. This...wasn't.
As they made themselves comfortable across various pieces of furniture, he let his attention wander to Matt, who had draped himself across one of the beanbag things with several cushions supporting his left knee and was explaining to Pidge, Ryou, Hunk, and Colleen about Icebringer culture and how a lot of it stemmed from their origins-something about minimizing wastefulness and maximizing cooperation because their original planet had a very delicate ecological balance as well as a highly inhospitable environment and wastefulness could have simply caused a runaway crash of the entire biosphere. Biology was not his strong suit and he felt his eyes glazing over trying to follow the discussion as Matt started talking about evolutionary selection pressures and psychosocial effects.
Turning away, he glanced over at Alejandro and Kurogane instead. The pair seemed right at home, having made a sort of nest-like arrangement out of cushions and a low, flat seat where they were now curled up together and talking in low voices. It was strange how natural they looked, surrounded by aliens of all shapes and sizes. But then, that was what they were used to, wasn't it? Lance wasn't even completely sure they spoke English half the time on the Castle-he was pretty sure he'd caught the undertones of H'ress'wr growls or the lilting sounds of Altean under the translated words on more than one occasion. They'd lived among the Icebringers for years. A month on the Castleship and a week and a bit on Earth wasn't going to come close to breaking those old habits. Looking around, Lance found himself shivering despite the surprising warmth in the room. It was scary just imagining enduring everything they'd been through.
But that was why they were here. So that he wouldn't, so none of them would. Somehow, they had to track down whatever secrets King Alfor and Fiorin had left behind here, ten thousand years ago, and figure out how to use them to take down the Empire. And they needed to do it fast, before they managed to fix the Weblum's Breath and use it to destroy some unsuspecting world or worse, go after Earth again, because Lance had a feeling they would not get that lucky twice. His hand ached with the memories and he winced, pulling off his glove and massaging the scar gently.
"Your hand bothering you?"
Jumping, Lance looked over and was surprised to find Keith sitting beside him, knees tucked to his chest in what looked like an oversized armchair with a hole for tails in the back. "Uh, not really." He faltered, unsure of how to act. The two of them hadn't really talked since that awkward conversation in the back of the speeder days earlier. "Just thinking. This place is huge. How are we supposed to find whatever Alfor left behind?"
Keith grimaced and nodded in agreement, turning to look around the vast cavern. There had to be several dozen aliens in here at any given time, just in this one 'room', and who knew how vast the cave complex was? And how many caves like this were there on the planet? Enough to justify three separate space elevators just to service the space fleet. "I don't know. It's...a lot to search through."
"That's an understatement if I ever heard one." Lance grumbled. He pulled his legs up onto the couch-ish thing he was sitting on and stripped off his outer coat, playing with the fabric of his other glove. The silence between them was awkward and uncomfortable, but he wasn't sure how to break it. Keith had made it pretty plain that he needed time to think about everything that had happened, about Lance's fuck-up and his confession and his own feelings, and Lance sure as hell wasn't going to deny him that. But this distance between them hurt more than he liked to admit, like being back to when they first got into space except worse because this time he had no one to blame but himself. And Alejandro had told him to make sure Keith knew Lance still wanted to be around him, regardless of what he chose. So...here went nothing. "I...uh...I don't..." He faltered, swallowed, then forced himself to try again. "Look, uh, I know you're still thinking about things. I get that. Take all the time you need. But...can we...can we still at least be friends? For now? I know I fucked up and what I did was shitty even as a friend, but uh, I...I miss you." The words tumbled out almost before he could stop them and his cheeks flamed red in an instant. He bit down on his tongue to stop himself from apologizing again and potentially making things worse. Why was he so bad at talking to the guy he liked the most?
Keith was staring at him in wide-eyed surprise now. "You...miss me?" He asked, and Lance was pretty sure he heard a note of confusion in his voice. 'He won't assume you still want to be around him', Alejandro had said. Lance nodded mutely, his face still burning with the force of his blush. Keith fell silent for a moment, before: "...why?"
Lance frowned, his head jerking around to glare at the other teen. "What do you mean, why? I care about you. You're my teammate, and my friend, even without everything else. I miss your snarky comments and your teasing me about being useless in melee. I miss your dumb mullet and your stupid pretty smile and how distracting you are with that sword of yours. I miss the way you always say what you mean, and the way you mess up the Voltron chant and the way you don't always really get the rest of us but you care about us anyway. I miss...I miss you. There's no 'why' about missing someone you care about, Keith!"
A thick silence fell in the wake of his tirade. Too late, Lance realized that his voice had risen steadily in volume over the course of his impromptu speech, attracting every set of eyes in the vicinity to the pair of them. His face flushed, red creeping down his neck and right to the tips of his ears, and a sick feeling settled into his gut at the panicked expression on Keith's face. He knew the other boy hated being the center of attention like this, and now everyone was staring at them. Keith's head swivelled this way and that, taking in the sheer number of people whose attention was on them, before he threw himself to his feet and bolted toward the main door at the front of the cave.
Lance groaned and sank down into the cushions, hiding his face in his hands. Now he'd really done it. So much for winning Keith's friendship back.
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Keith shivered violently, tucking himself further into the small crevice in the rock outcropping in a weak attempt to stay out of the bitingly cold wind. The only good thing about the freezing temperatures was that they'd snapped him out of his panic pretty quickly. But now he was stuck out here, the wind cutting right through his suit and chilling him to the bone, because even the thought of going back in there to all those eyes and everyone looking at him was enough to make him want to throw up.
His teeth were chattering so hard he didn't hear the crunch of boots on ice until they were almost on top of him, and as he looked up his vision was abruptly blocked by something soft and warm being thrown over top of him. With a yelp he scrambled to get free and found himself with a thick blanket covered some kind of soft blue-white fur piled on top of him. And in front of him, Kurogane was settling himself down in front of him, a similar blanket wrapped around his own shoulders and looking quite comfortable in the cold despite the thick fog each of his breaths made in the air.
After a moment's hesitation, Keith followed his example and wrapped the blanket around himself. It seemed to trap his body heat almost instantly, the chill disappearing everywhere except where he was still exposed to the wind, and he ran a hand over the soft material in amazement. "What is this stuff?"
"Ssh'ohl fur." The word rolled easily off Kurogane's tongue as he reached over and bunched the material up a bit more to cover Keith's ears from the cold air before sitting back on his heels. "Warm enough? You forgot your coat and helmet."
Keith flushed and nodded, looking away at the uncomfortable reminder of the scene that had happened inside. Lance's yelling and the attention it had attracted was bad enough, but storming out the way he had only made things worse. Experience had shown him that, over and over and over again. He swallowed around a thick lump in his throat. Why couldn't he do anything right?"
"Hey." Kurogane's soft voice broke into his train of thought as a hand came to rest overtop of his own where his fingertips were digging into his arm. "It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Made a scene." Keith choked out. Remembered voices, saying those same words, churned at the back of his head. Anger, disappointment, disgust. Telling him needed to learn to think before he acted, to not embarrass them, to grow up and sit down and behave. Even now, he was letting his emotions get away from him. People didn't like it when he did that. He let out a frustrated hiss between his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw hard.
Kurogane didn't say anything, giving him a moment to get himself back under control. When Keith opened his eyes again, his older self's expression was unreadable, his gaze directed downward to where his hand still rested on Keith's. When he glanced up and saw Keith looking at him, he gave him a small smile. "Yeah. You did. And that's okay."
What.
Keith gaped at him, unable to process the words. He'd heard them, alright, knew exactly what Kurogane had said, but that didn't mean it made sense. Making a scene was bad. It pissed people off, made them stare. It never ended well. Kurogane was supposed to be him. He should know that better than anyone. After all, they were the same person. Weren't they?
"Yes and no." Kurogane said softly. Keith hadn't even realized he'd said that out loud. "I am you, yeah. Or I used to be. But I'm you with six more years of learning about myself. Of coming to terms with...everything, from the shit that happened when we were growing up, to how I am. I still don't understand people well. I rely on Alejandro for that. I still fuck up social situations that I don't understand. I'm still me. I've just come to terms with it a bit better."
The wind howled around them and Keith tugged the fur blanket tighter around himself. "How? Being me has never caused anything but problems." It was what got him passed from one foster home to the next, an endless parade of names and face he didn't even have a chance to learn before they were gone from his life again. It was what got him labelled 'problem child', 'aggressive', 'discipline issues', 'antisocial'. It was what made other kids eye him from a wary distance if he was lucky, and harass and mock him or worse if he wasn't. And the foster guardians...none of them wanted him to be him. They were always quite clear about that.
Kurogane sighed, shifting over to sit beside him, giving him the little bit of space he preferred unless he was the one initiating the contact. "We are the way we are, Keith. There are some things we can't change no matter how much we want to, even if it would make our lives easier. But," his lips quirked a bit as he gazed into the distance, "a very wise person once told me that he liked me just the way I am."
Something in his words seemed to echo what Lance had said earlier, the way he'd rattled off so many of the things Keith hated about himself and said he missed them and sounded impossibly sincere while doing so. "Alejandro?" He asked, glancing up at his counterpart.
The other hummed and nodded. "I don't get it either, for what it's worth." He chuckled. "But he's never judged me, never looked down on me. He's the first to reassure me that it's okay when I screw up, to explain things I don't understand. Lance already does that for you, too, you know."
Keith ducked his head. 'I say Vol, you say...?' echoed in the back of his mind. Even back then, when their relationship could have been called rocky at best and outright volatile at worst, Lance hadn't judged him. Instead he'd promised 'we'll work on it'. He couldn't think of a single time, unless he'd mistakenly thought Keith was joking, that Lance had been judgemental or cruel or deliberately unkind. "Yeah. He does."
Biting his lip, he looked out over the snow. The Castle of Lions was a distant spire parked well away from the threat of avalanches or rock slides. Lowering his head, he traced a gloved fingertip in the thin layer of snow that covered the ice. "You two are really happy together, huh?" He asked, unable to quite suppress the note of hope from his voice. He liked Lance. Loved him. If another version of him could conquer their fear and let down their walls, then maybe...
"We are." The answer came easily, like it was the most natural thing in the world to say. "I love him. I would do anything for him, without hesitation or regret. And he loves me. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would never leave me."
The utter confidence in that statement struck Keith like an electric shock. It cut right to the heart of his deepest fears.
"Do you think...you think he really does love me, then?" His voice betrayed the ache of hope and wariness.
Kurogane glanced over at him, his purple gaze relaxed and open. There were no secrets here. Kurogane already knew him inside and out. "Did he say he did?"
"Yeah." Keith's cheeks burned again in spite of himself, recalling that awkward conversation in the cramped storage area of an Altean speeder. The conflicting hope and fear that had tumbled around inside his chest until it felt like he could hardly breathe. "On the way to Blue's cave. He said he was sorry for rejecting me before, and told me that he loved me back."
Kurogane blinked, shooting him a long stare. "Sorry for...I think you should start at the beginning, Keith."
Grimacing, Keith nodded. In bits and pieces, he told his older self everything that had happened-Trepan Kev, Pidge's desperate desires, the way they had stuck in his head for days afterwards. Little by little, working up the courage to take that terrifying plunge of vulnerability. Talking to Lance, giving voice to his feelings for the first time only to have them unexpectedly rejected.
("He said he was no good for me. All because of that stupid shit that Haggar did to Shiro!"
Kurogane groaned, dragging a hand down his face. "Unfortunately, six years hasn't been enough time for him to outgrow that special Lance brand of stupidity. You saw what he did after Lance told the rest of us about the aspect.")
It was surprisingly easy to admit to his doubts, how Lance's words had seemed like an excuse to cover up the more painful truth of the fact that he just didn't want Keith. The confession in the speeder had taken him completely by surprise, left him confused and conflicted and unsure.
Kurogane listened as he talked, taking everything in. It reminded Keith of himself, listening to one of the others ramble on about this or that, simply taking in their presence and trying to understand. When Keith finished, he sighed, tipping his head back against the rock. "Would you like my thoughts on this mess?"
"...Yeah. Please." He just didn't know what to do. Why did feelings have to be so complicated?
"If Lance said he loves you, then he does. He would never lie about something like that, it's just not who he is. And Alejandro liked me all the way back at the Garrison, so the same is true for Lance. You may have gotten things moving earlier than we did-he confessed to me first, and it wasn't for a couple more years-but the feelings are already there. For both of you."
Kurogane paused, rearranging the blankets around himself a bit before continuing. "Second thing. You can trust him. I think you already know that, but me saying it too might help. He's all about loyalty and trust, right to the core of him. Mind you, he's not perfect, any more than you or me-he'll make mistakes. So will you. But if you give him a chance to fix things, he will, to the best of his abilities, and you'll be able to move forward from it together. He will never hurt you on purpose, unless he genuinely believes that he's doing it to protect you from something worse."
Like how he'd rejected Keith's confession because he believed he'd be a constant reminder of everything Haggar had done to the first real family Keith had ever had. Yeah, that was Lance, alright.
Another silence fell. When Keith looked over, Kurogane's face was drawn in a frown of concentration. After a moment he spoke again, but he seemed distracted, as though thinking hard about something even as he talked. "I think, Keith...that if you love him, and he loves you, you should go for it. Maybe it won't work out in the end, because everything's happening differently. Maybe it will, and you'll be as happy with him as I am with Alejandro. But if you don't try, and something happens...you'll spend the rest of your life wishing you had."
There was a thickness to his voice that made Keith look away, feeling like an intruder on something he wasn't supposed to hear. His older self had lost so much. How many regrets did he carry? Things he wished he'd said or done while he had the chance, before the people he cared about were ripped away from him?
He gave a small nod, then, after a moment's indecision, leaned over to rest his head against Kurogane's shoulder. "Okay. Thanks." He fiddled with the soft material of the blanket for a moment. "When did you get so good at being a big brother?"
Kurogane chuckled, then unexpectedly threw an arm around Keith's shoulders and pulled him closer. "I learned from the best there is."
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Alejandro looked up as Keith and Kurogane returned, shaking the last of the snow off the fur wraps Kurogane had taken out. He resisted the urge to pester his partner about how the talk had gone, since the other seemed to be thinking hard about something, and instead looked back down at the fidget toy Lance had given him a few days earlier while keeping an eye on Keith out of the corner of his eye.
As he watched, Keith bit his lip, hesitating for several seconds, then abruptly squared his shoulders and marched over to sit beside Lance, who was hugging his knees to his chest morosely. Alejandro had to strain his ears to hear, but he was pretty sure he heard the awkward teen mutter "I missed you too." before Lance's face lit up in an incredulous, beaming grin.
Alejandro grinned to himself as well, grabbing Kurogane's hand and giving it a celebratory squeeze. There was hope for those two yet.