.
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Existence came to be within one of many valleys of the Underworld.
Thousands of them, winged or prowling as beasts in the crimson poppies, the grotto of darkness and silence — and he did not want or wish for it, to bleed, to love, to endure, but this was given to him regardless.
It's why he needs to be immersed in the bright, fluorescent lighting.
He needs the overhead lamps to make his eyes squint with exhaustion and sensitivity. He needs the multitudes of human voices barking out instructions, calling out his own human name, and the clatter of steel-silvered hospital trays freshly coated in a stranger's fluids. The beeping of machines. Pained groans from the victims of another gunshot wound fracturing their ribs and liver.
"Good job, Keith," one of the surgeons mutters, clapping his shoulder with a bloody, newly dripping glove and then wincing under his pale green face-mask, unhelpfully wiping and smearing more of it across the back of Keith's pristine, powder blue scrubs. "You really helped out tonight—oof!—s'rry about that, buddy—"
A round of laughter and clapping echoes, drifting off, as he wanders down onto another floor of the building.
This hospital ward holds most of the immediate care patients and then others requiring extra attention with their slower, more difficult healing, and then, the ones with long, scheduled hours of observation.
Keith senses the thinning of life from a coma patient on the far left, young and composed.
She's perhaps only twenty or so years in her prime. Perhaps. But she's fading quicker than when he secretly visited her near the dawn. The slits of moonlight pales over her tanned and gaunt-like features. For a moment, he assumes Selene seeks her out, for a claiming or for reassurance, and cuts off the link with a mental apology, pressing his fingertips against the woman's skull.
Those dreams have melded away… from pastel, softened colors… and noises like tiny, racing footsteps and Christmas bells… into a foggy, dulled grayness… …
Keith furrows his brows, concentrating and exhaling loudly, his eyelids quivering.
It's unfortunate.
They had been such glorious dreams while vividly replaying in her traumatized, swollen brain, of her wife and their daughter playing in the snow, cushioned by their puffy and salmon-pink jackets as they roll around, hugging… of candlelight and reflections of blue, summer pools and gentle kisses…
He urges her consciousness into a deeper, more pleasant lull, readying to extract himself from her vitals as the bleeping on her monitor spikes to a heightened rhythm before flat-lining once more.
The rest is out of his actual hands.
Before he can step out of the room, Keith hesitates, staring wide-eyed at someone else tutting.
A tall, dark-skinned man folds his arms, cocking his head. He's wearing a fuzzy, dark green sweater and at least ten different necklaces shining like bronzelight. Rings shaped like bands and crosses and swords.
His soft, coiled dreads are swept up from the back of his neck and pinned in a casual array, and a noticably ivory color unlike his skin tone. A tattoo of a miniature star on the right cheek. Glazed, icy blue eye-shadow smudged haphazardly around the man's eerily golden eyes.
Despite the mortal appearance, Keith immediately senses a familiar, preternatural aura emitting.
"Keith?" A boisterous, grinning laugh. The man looks far too entertained by Keith's very state of being, backing away to allow Keith to rush past him. "Is that what you are referring to yourself as now?"
"You can't be here," Keith says, glaring over his shoulder and pulling off his scrubs roughly as the ties break apart. He disposes of them into the nearest receptacle for soiled, unwanted clothing inside the staff's changing room, rucking up his black undershirt and yanking it over his head, tossing it into his opened locker.
And as expected, the man follows him in without minding the rules. No outside guests were permitted.
"And who, pray tell, is able to stop me…?" he declares, not inviting a question and glances longingly over Keith's muscular, heavily scarred back. Keith prays to whoever that he does not point out his missing wings. "Oh my, you look horrible. No better than Diogenes himself after he held his breath."
"And you look… well," Keith pauses, gesturing more awkwardly than he intends. "Not… like yourself."
It's more of a purr than a humming noise coming from his surprise companion on this realm. "The mortal visage is… comely. Dare I say, I rather enjoy caving into such a fanciful impulse." The man approaches Keith, a little more boldly. Keith holds himself completely still, gnawing on his bottom lip as bigger, longer fingers trail from Keith's thigh to his leg. "You are by far more comely than I could ever be, Morpheus…"
The heat of desire and old, forgotten affections snuffs out. Keith's teeth bare. "Don't," he hisses, reddening visibly, grabbing his dusty, leather jacket and exiting the changing room. Keith whirls around, leveling his fiery and outright glower. "Go back to the island or to Hades… I don't care which one, Phobetor."
His once lover backs off, and then follows once more, choosing to dismiss Keith's show of hostility. "Should I fashion myself an alias as well?" he murmurs, peering at a sign that says Lower Level of the hospital.
Keith notices him blocking the way for a nurse exiting the elevators with a wheelchair. He grunts in aggravation, grabbing onto Lotor's sleeve and heaving him aside, pretending to ignore her giving them the stink-eye, passing. "What do you think you are doing? Are you trying to get me in trouble with my—?"
"—Lotor," his companion blurts out, grinning again. "Quite handsome-sounding, wouldn't you say so?"
Nothing more is spoken as Keith drags him into the darkness and rain puddles, where the neon lights paint themselves over their bodies as they walk on and the pipes rattle when the temperatures lower to freezing.
Lotor sniffs, primly smoothing out the wrinkles on his front.
"May I ask… as to why the child of a god would choose to spend his time here of all places? Surely you could thought of something more luxurious… or famed… or even with sunlight. You are looking dreadfully pale."
Magenta and electric blue spill out from the other buildings on the street, glowing along with a passionflower violet that tinges Lotor's hair. "It helps Thanatos and it helps Father that I'm here, guiding mortal souls on the brink of sleep and death," Keith explains, feeling himself gravitate closer to Lotor, keeping his head down. "We don't need another war between them. And not bleeding out where everybody else can see it."
He stumbles to a halt, feeling Lotor's arm wrapping to him, bringing him in. Keith finally looks up, awestruck.
"You're not my brother. You're not my family, dearest heart. I don't need a lecture," Lotor reminds him, sternly but in a way benevolently. He presses an open, dark-skinned hand against Keith's tee, his fingers illuminating a reddish glow where Keith's heart should be. If only it truly could beat. "I need you…"
Keith does the same, on instinct, witnessing as Lotor's own chest radiantly lights up to a bluish-purple.
They were never so dissimilar.
One who made dreams, and the other who created nightmares. Lotor often spend his time with the Epioles and butting heads with Nyx, his mother, as foolish as it was. She had a crown of plated, metallic spears as a crown, and what humans would call ball-bearings collected into stringed segments as her veil. She wept mercury and starlight, and never was seen without her thickened armor given to her from Ares.
Lotor had been her firstborn son, and often would appear to both gods and mortals as a great, fantastical being, whispering and offering his words carefully, but never false or as a sweetling. Keith met him at the gate of buckhorn, intrigued by his shapeshifting and by his brilliant, ambitious disposition.
It must have been eons ago.
They made love despite Hypnos's and Nyx's disapproval, and Keith bore him a son. Phantasus had been as unruly as Lotor himself, but shared a fervor for solitude and for purpose that Keith did. Fantasies could often be lonely things. He supposes Lotor hasn't heard from him either.
Keith may have lived on, to bleed, to love and to endure it without anyone. He can't.
Not now. Not without Lotor, his flesh darkened and glimmering like a nova, crowding Keith onto hotel-sheets and kissing him devoutly, his palm warmed by the slickness of his and Keith's come. Lotor touches over him, fingering over Keith's ruddy lips, moaning when Keith nips and grinning devilishly-wide at the same time.
Not ever.
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Voltron isn't mine. OOOOOOH. I REALLY HAD A GOOD TIME WITH THIS not gonna lie I wasn't like raised or taught certain mythology so this was purely for fun and not 100% accuracy,,, please don't throw rotten veggies at me,,, okie dokie well this was for the Keitor Secret Santa 2018 and the person I was assigned is chew-ie on Tumblr and they wanted some mythology AU so here we go woohooo if yall got this far please leave me a nice word or two! It really helps!