Update 3/14/18: Completely rewrote Keith's first chapter from scratch on account of major rewrites to the plot.

Chapter 7: Reality

In retrospect, piloting his ship on a suicide run that had no guarantee of working was not one of Keith's best ideas. Sure, things had been too hectic at the time for him to think of any other ideas, but that didn't change the fact that he'd been so quick to sacrifice his own life for what might have been nothing. Could still have been for nothing. He still didn't know if it had worked or not. Had he broken through the shield? Was Voltron okay? What had happened to the other rebels? How did he survive? Or did he even survive at all?

That last thought chilled him, but it was quickly silenced when he realized that he could dimly feel himself being moved. It was hard to tell what was going on around him. His vision was hazy, his hearing muffled. I guess Matt managed to get me aboard a ship before I froze in the vacuum, Keith thought to himself, exhaling in relief. They'll be putting me in a cryo-pod soon. Since he couldn't make out what was happening around him, the only thing left for him to occupy his time was think. And unfortunately, that was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

Keith didn't regret taking a leave of absence from the team to train with the Blade of Marmora. It was the only way he could learn more about his Galran heritage. Maybe find out how far back in his family tree it was. From the whole mindscape in the Trials of Marmora, it seemed that his Galra DNA came from his mother's side of the family. Whether that mean his mom was Galra or one of his grandparents, or great-grandparents, or someone further up his family tree was still unclear. But training with Kolivan and the Blades was the only way he could find out. He just wished that he'd left the Castle of Lions under better circumstances.

Shiro had been different ever since they'd found him drifting in space in a lone Galra fighter. He wasn't as cheerful as he was before, and he had become more inflexible since he came back. Keith didn't know whether this was a result of the stress of being in an intergalactic war, the trauma of being experimented on by the Empire for the second time, or a combination of the two, but something had changed.

When Pidge wanted to leave the team to track down her dad and her brother, Shiro had said "people have to want to be a part of this team. It can't be forced." But ever since he'd come back, Shiro had done nothing but try to force Keith into a role he'd already made clear he didn't want. They'd talked about everything that had happened at the Blade of Marmora base before the team split up to prepare for their battle with Zarkon. Shiro had been watching his trial with Kolivan. Had seen his greatest fears against his will. He didn't blame Shiro for that. It's not like either of them had expected the simulation to get so personal. But after that conversation Shiro stopped bringing up the possibility of him disappearing again or Keith leading Voltron.

But then when he came back he just kept pushing the issue. Keith would be lying to himself if the constant pressure from Shiro wasn't part of why he decided to leave the team. He didn't want to lead Voltron. He'd only done it while Shiro was gone out of necessity, and he wanted nothing more than to go back to piloting Red like he used to. But it wasn't fair to Lance or Allura for him to shuffle everyone back around when they were just getting the hang of their new positions.

Keith couldn't tell where he was. Everything around him was blurry and out of focus, all sound muffled as if someone had put a bag over his head. He could feel the hard metal surface on his back carrying him slowly forward? Was he on some sort of space gurney? He couldn't really be sure. It was getting harder to think as time went on. He could feel himself slipping away, even as he fought the urge to close his eyes and rest. It helped that the straps keeping him secured to whatever this was dug into his skin. It gave him something to focus on. There was something wrong with this scenario, but his mind was too clouded to put his finger on what it was.

Shapes began to move around him, accompanied by muffled noises he was too groggy to identity and bright flashes that made his head hurt. Maybe… this really is… the end… Keith thought to himself. At least… hopefully… the team… survived… I can… accept this… if they… made it out… Giving into the urge to rest, his eyelids drooped closed. The last thing he saw was a patch of white that looked familiar somehow. As his mind started to drift off, he felt the straps around his arms and legs begin undone, the muffled sound of voices talking over his probably-soon-to-be-dead body. Someone put something soft in his mouth. It felt like leather. Next there was a sharp pain in his chest, like someone was giving him an injection right into his heart.

That was when pain exploded through his body. His eyes snapped back open and he bolted upright. Keith screamed, but with the glove in his mouth it only came out as a gurgle. His veins felt like they were full of fire instead of blood, his heart pounding like a piston. The Paladin looked down, expecting to see his heart jumping out of his chest like a cartoon character. He could practically feel every muscle, every cell in his body pulsing with kinetic energy. A pair of firm hands gripped his shoulder as he dry-heaved over the side of the gurney. He clawed at his chest, panting and spitting bile. He let out a string of curses he'd picked up from other Blades that would have broken even Kolivan's seemingly limitless patience.

"Keith," a voice said. "Are you okay?" The Paladin's eyes widened. Now that he was coherent again, he recognized that voice. He turned his head and saw his closest friend standing behind him with one hand resting on his shoulder. But Shiro looked differently than he had the last time they'd seen each other. His bangs were noticeably longer than he'd cut them after Keith had found him dying in a Galra fighter in the middle of deep space. In fact, they were about as the same length they had been when the team had fought Zarkon. And Shiro wasn't wearing his Paladin armor. Instead, he was dressed in a kind of armor that made him look like a high-tech version of a knight from the middle ages, his armor painted in the familiar colors of Voltron.

"What… was… that?" he gasped, his chest heaving as he sucked in air. The concerned look on Shiro's face melted into one of sympathy.

"Spies called it snakebite," the Black Paladin replied. "That was a half-dose, so it should last at least an hour."

"How… are… what…" Keith stammered, a thousand different questions burning in his mind. How long had he been out? Why wasn't Shiro in his Paladin armor? How did Keith survive the explosion? Why was there a large red wolf painted on the front of Shiro's armor? What was going on?

"Keith," Shiro began. "I promise, I'll explain later. But right now, we need to move. Can you walk?" Keith gingerly slid himself off the gurney, keeping his hand on it for balance as his feet hit the ground. His legs were sore, but they still held his weight.

"I think so," he answered. It hurt when he tried to bend his knees, so he limped around to the other side of the gurney he'd been strapped to. As he moved, he looked around the room. Four bodies littered the floor, sprays of blood and what he guessed were chunks of brain matter trailing out from where their heads were supposed to be. A gray-haired soldier around his height was handcuffing a tall man with golden hair too shiny and metallic looking to be considered blonde who looked to be unconscious. The soldier relieved the prisoner of his boots and pulled something off the man's arm, then gestured for Keith to put both on. The former Red Paladin was still thoroughly confused, but complied when Shiro nodded in confirmation. Another figure, a woman who looked around Keith's age, took off her helmet to reveal long pink hair as she turned to Shiro.

"Commander," she interjected. "Nexiti's secured the command center. Bloodydamn board just deployed a Lurcher squad." Keith blinked at the unfamiliar terms.

"Gorydamnit," Shiro cursed. He glanced back at Keith, and the Red Paladin could see just how worried his friend was. "Let's get moving then." The woman nodded, and went to help the other soldier remove their prisoner from the room. As he glanced around, Keith realized that the room they were in was a surgical theater. A chill ran down his spine as he realized that Shiro had just saved him from being dissected. As they headed for the door, Shiro took Keith's com and synced it to his own.

"Stay close to me," Shiro said firmly, his voice barely more than a whisper, but still the familiar commanding tone of the Black Paladin. "And whatever you do, keep your mask on until I tell you it's safe to take it off. We don't want to have anyone asking questions we can't answer." Keith was still confused by the entire situation, but he nodded, and activated the mask in his Marmora uniform. He wasn't sure he wanted people seeing his face right now either. As the doors to the operating room closed behind them, Keith was surprised to find half a battalion of soldiers waiting for them out in the hall. Most of them wore combat gear like the woman and the gray-haired man, but a few wore the same style of armor that Shiro had.

Everyone present appeared to be, if not human, then from species that shared a close enough resemblance to be indistinguishable at first glance. There were two things that stood out to Keith and made him unsure of which option was more likely. The first was the variety of hair colors. He saw pink, white, green, orange, red, and the occasional flash of purple. The second thing was the differences in height. The soldiers with green, purple, orange, and gray hair were all around his height or taller. The red and pink haired ones were even shorter. And then there were towering hulks the size of Galra soldiers and as muscular as Sendak. Where exactly are we, Shiro? He wondered silently as the older man grabbed the thin casing the gray-haired soldier had put on his arm. The clear surface lit up with the glow of a holographic screen, and Shiro tapped out a few commands, muttering something about "syncing the datapad with the boots." Once he appeared to be satisfied, Shiro let go of Keith's arm and turned to address the troops.

"Alright," he said, voice and posture shifting witching to what Matt had once jokingly called Commander Mode. "Let's move out." And with that, the armored strike force moved down the corridor. Keith ran to keep pace with his friend. As they ran, his nose took in the antiseptic sterility of whatever this place was. It gave off an atmosphere of artificial death, as if nothing natural happened here. Keith wasn't sure he wanted to find out if that was an accurate assessment.

His mind whirled with possible explanations to his current circumstance. He quickly dismissed the idea of travelling to another reality. Even if the explosion had been powerful enough to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe, Voltron and Lotor's comet ships were the only vessels powerful enough to survive the journey. A lone Galra fighter would have been incinerated, so the fact that he was still alive ruled out that possibility. He could have been captured by the Galra and experimented on for months, long enough for Shiro's hair to grow back out, but that still didn't explain anything he was seeing now. His captors had appeared human, not Galra. And this facility lacked the pink and purple color scheme of the empire.

He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. Speculation could wait until they were somewhere Shiro wasn't expecting them to get shot at any moment. The group's movement slowed as three armored men with gold triangles on their shoulders sprinted out into the corridor. Keith unsheathed his knife, but before he could do anything, Shiro raised his arm and fired twice with what looked like Iron Man's repulsor blasts from the Marvel movies. A second later, two headless corpses toppled to the ground as blood sprayed out behind them. Keith barely had time to blink before Shiro charged forward, pulling out a whip in his hand.

By the time Keith blinked, the whip had become a blade, and Shiro decapitated the man so cleanly Keith didn't even notice until the man's head toppled to the floor. He looked up, shock from his body language despite the mask covering his face. What happened to you, Shiro? His silent gesture asked. Shiro looked like he was going to be sick, his face awash with regret. An instant later, he schooled his expression into a stoic mask. Keith felt an uncomfortable pit in his stomach at the realization of just how brutal his friend could be. He'd heard about Shiro's time in the gladiator arena. He knew in his head that he was sometimes forced to kill his opponents to survive. But seeing that ferocity in person was another thing entirely.

Keith knew that the things Shiro had done during his year in captivity terrified the older man, and Shiro had somehow been forced into an environment where he had to slip back into the kill-or-be-killed mindset of The Champion to survive. Keith could only imagine how much self-deprecation Shiro was subjecting himself to over it. But he knew that Shiro was ashamed that he had been there to witness it. So, Keith swallowed his discomfort and ran to catch up with Shiro as the soldiers behind him resumed their race through the corridors to this unknown building.

He put a hand on Shiro's shoulder, increasing his speed to keep pace. Shiro looked back and nodded in acknowledgement, appreciative of the gesture. A few minutes later, they stopped in front of an elevator. The pink-haired woman, Evey, went in first, cramming a third of the troops with them into the lift. As they waited, Keith noticed a light start flashing on Shiro's arm as aholographic screen popped up on the latter's gauntlets. Shiro cursed and nodded to Keith before a helmet slithered out of his armor.

"Commander," a man's voice echoed in Keith's ear. "You have an incoming transmission from Praetor Julii." Keith bit back the urge to ask what was going on. Shiro knew more than he did, and the whole point of syncing their coms was so Keith wouldn't be completely confused by the situation. Keith didn't know who Praetor Julii was, but Shiro clearly did.

"Put her through."

When I first started writing Hic Sunt Leones, I had a lot of vague ideas for how Shiro would be reunited with Team Voltron.

Back when the show only had two seasons, these ideas primarily involved them arriving on Mars in the middle of this planet wide rebellion and the forces loyal to the Sovereign attempting to trick them into helping destroy the resistance, only for the Paladins to turn around and support the rebellion when they realized Shiro was part of it. They would have deliberately gone to the future after Slav used some made up science stuff to determine what happened to Shiro.

Once Season 3 came out and the clone theory began to circulate, my ideas shifted towards everyone and Clone!Shiro ending up in the future after a visit to a planet full of aliens with precognition. They'd end up in the asteroid belt among The Jackal's fleet, and again the Gold loyalists would try to trick the Paladins into helping, and they'd join the Rising instead once they figured out about Real!Shiro.

And after Season 4, I thought it would be interesting if the combined energies of Haggar's warship shields and the lasers on Lotor's Sincline ship tore open a rift in time and space, throwing Keith into the Red Rising era. I really liked this idea, so I've been waiting to see if Season 5 revealed the Clone or Operation Kuron before I moved forward with this story, as well as more lore and characters from Iron Gold.

Now that both are out, I'm only going to re-write Darrow's third chapter and then the story will move forward.