The reason Mustang doesn't bring up Shiro as someone she can talk to, despite the fact that he's often been her sounding board while they were on Luna, is because he's still a newcomer to the Red Rising world and she looks up to Kavax as a father figure, so it would make more sense for her to talk to him about something like this. She'll talk to Shiro about Darrow's real backstory later, though.

1/4/18: Completely re-written to account for my retroactive decision not to kill off Tactus, and to push back Darrow revealing his secret to Roque and Quinn.

Chapter 21: Gathering Storm:

Pax medbay

Leaving Europa

February 1st, 2841

An hour after they left Europa, Shiro cast a glance outside the viewport, where Darrow's ships crossed through space. The newest additions to their fledgling armada were painted white and emblazoned with the angry-faced purple griffin of House Arcos. The black, blue, and silver warships captured from Kellan au Bellona were still unpainted as Oranges and Reds crawled over the exteriors, mending the leechCraft-made hull breaches in preparation for the siege of Mars. It would be three days before they reached the rendezvous point at Hildas Station. By then, the rest of the Augustan ships would beat them there. Darrow had gone up to the command deck with Ragnar and the Telemanuses, leaving Shiro in the middle of an awkward standoff between Tactus and the friends he'd betrayed.

The atmosphere in the medbay was tense as they left Europa. Shiro wasn't exactly surprised, given how bitter people were over Tactus' betrayal. Even if Darrow was giving the man a second chance, it would take a while before any of them forgave him. It had taken Darrow threatening to have anyone who tried to kill Tactus thrown out the airlock to stop Victra from gutting the man with her razor right there on the flight deck. Sevro was similarly furious with the decision, only kept in check by his loyalty to the Reaper. The Howlers were divided, but they took their cues from Sevro. Roque said nothing, but the look in his eyes spoke of a betrayal far deeper than a broken friendship. They must have dated once, Shiro realized, unsure of why the thought bothered him more than it probably should have. The Black Paladin stood by Tactus' bedside, putting himself between the younger man and the rest of the group.

Tactus's cheeks were flushed with shame as Yellow physicians slowly removed the burned skin and reapplied new growth structures. The burns on his face were being saved for last, as removing those would require he be sedated. His broken nose had been reset, and the scion of House Rath kept silent as his fellow Golds stood by his bedside arguing over Darrow's decision. Shiro knew that the criticisms the others levied against Tactus were perfectly valid. The man had cost them their only bargaining chip and almost got them all killed in the process. And that was ignoring all his other transgressions. Making bets on how quickly Darrow would be killed once his contract expired. The murder of his Primus at the Insitute and the attempted rape of one of his classmates. But Shiro knew that Tactus genuinely wanted to be a better person. Victra and the Howlers started taking bets on how long Tactus' loyalty would last when Shiro's patience finally ran out.

"Enough!" Shiro snapped, cutting through the awkward silence. "Look, I get it. Tactus fucked up. He stabbed us in the back and left us to die. You can talk all you want about how his betrayal was inevitable and you all expected it to happen eventually, but it's pretty obvious to me that his treachery hurt you on a personal level. Maybe that's just because I only knew him for a few days, so I don't have the history with him that you guys did. But it's clear that everyone's still feeling raw from his betrayal, and Darrow's decision to let him back into the fold is just rubbing salt in the wound. We're all here because of loyalty to the Reaper. It was his decision to give Tactus another chance. You all know Darrow has a history of unconventional tactics, so if you can't respect his choices, then why are you here?"

He stormed out of the room without another word, looking back long enough to catch a glimpse of Tactus staring slack-jawed at him with a look of gratitude on his face. Shiro spoke to the guards posted at the door before he left the medbay. Despite their justified anger, the Black Paladin knew none of the others would hurt Tactus. They all respected Darrow too much to go against his wishes. That didn't mean they wouldn't be tempted to bend the rules a bit to get some payback. Which was exactly why Darrow had assigned Tactus a squad of bodyguards as a precaution to discourage people from tormenting him in the medbay. They could keep watch over the wounded Gold for a few hours. Shiro was hungry, exhausted, and badly in need of a shower.

His first stop was his quarters for a shower. While thankfully smaller than his suite in the Citadel on Luna, his officer's cabin aboard the Pax still had all the luxury of a five-star hotel. As he stood in the shower letting the water wash over his body, his thoughts turned towards whether Tactus really could prove Darrow right and change for the better. On one hand, the man was an arrogant, drug-addicted asshole with a history of violence, and whose last name carried a reputation of serial sexual assault. On the other, he'd gone out of his way to be welcoming to Shiro and had spent three days helping the Black Paladin get used to the power structure of the household in between events at the Summit. And given how he'd dropped his guard on both Luna and Europa, Tactus clearly had some very deep seeded insecurities that the Sovereign and his brothers had preyed upon to sway him to their side.

He's a complicated person, that's for sure, Shiro thought to himself as he turned off the water and started to dry off. He's kind of got that Zuko-like inner conflict. Who he wants to be is constantly at war with who his family wants him to be, and given how rarely he lets his walls you can never tell how much is nature and how much is nurture. Tabling his thoughts on Tactus for another time, the time traveler changed into his pajamas and crawled into bed. They'd arrived on Europa just before midnight, so he hadn't gotten any sleep in the last twenty-four hours. With all the work that would need to be done over the next three weeks before they invaded Mars, he was going to need to get all the sleep he could get while he still could.

By the time he woke up, it was around dinnertime going by the ship's clocks, and Shiro's stomach was roaring like the miniature Lion in the ArchGovernor's office aboard the Augustan flagship, Invictus. Groaning, Shiro changed into his clothes and set off for the lowColor galley, wanting to avoid talking to any of the Golds before he'd had a chance to get some food. Since their mutual secret-sharing conversation almost a fortnight ago, Darrow and Sevro had spent the trip to Europa pumping him dry for information about life on Earth before the hierarchy. They discussed everything, covering topics ranging from his favorite science fiction movies and his time as a Paladin of Voltron to classic literature and Sevro's inexplicable fondness for the music of Taylor swift.

He was surprised when he walked into the lowColor galley to see that there was a Gold already there. He'd eaten there by himself often enough that the lowColors were used to his presence by now, even if they still found his decision to dine among those ostensibly lesser than himself odd. So, when he entered the room and found a single golden head sitting in the corner with their back to the door, separated from the ship's crewmembers by a wide ring of empty tables, he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in both suspicion and curiosity. Too tall to be Sevro, he thought to himself as he went up to the kitchen to ask the cook for a larger portion. And too short to be Darrow. Other than those two, I can't think of any reason the others would ever come down here.

Deciding that there was only one way to find out who it was, he placed his order and headed over to the table and slid into the empty seat. He bit his lip to keep himself from gaping in surprise to see Tactus, both that he'd been discharged from the med bay less than a day after being admitted, and the fact that he'd come down here, of all places. The young man had a bottle of alcohol on one side – the cheap kind only Reds could afford, rather than the usual fine wine preferred by Golds – and a jar of burn relief medicine on the other. Tactus dipped his hand into the jar and winced as he applied the lotion to his face. The ship's doctors had evidently replaced the burnt skin on his face at some point after Shiro left, leaving patches of discoloration on his dark skin as the new skin grafts healed.

"You're up and about sooner than I expected you to be," Shiro admitted, deciding that would be the least intrusive way to start the conversation. "I thought the Yellows would've let your new skin heal a bit before they let you leave the medbay." Tactus jerked up as he spoke, so absorbed in his task that he hadn't even noticed the time traveler sit down. When he realized who had spoken, the man visibly relaxed.

"They cleared me enough to leave," Tactus replied. "I didn't really feel like staying where everyone knew where I was, so I went to the one place nobody would ever expect to find me. What brings you down here? I doubt you came looking for me."

"Just woke up," Shiro answered. "I was going to see how you were doing after I fed myself, but it looks like you already beat me to the punch on that one."

"Why though?" Tactus wondered. The Black Paladin shrugged.

"With how upset everyone was about you leaving I doubted they'd have done anything for you," he said. Seeing that Tactus still looked confused, he continued. "Darrow thinks that despite everything, you deserve a second chance. You were the one who introduced me to everyone and helped ingratiate me to the rest of the group. With you being on thin ice with everyone right now, I thought I'd return the favor." Of course, Shiro would still have done it anyway. It was just the right thing to do. But considering how basic concepts like forgiveness and redemption seemed completely foreign to Tactus, it was probably better to couch it in terms that the Gold would understand. For a few minutes, the two of them sat there silently as Shiro finished his food. Shiro wanted to talk to Tactus about what had happened, but he was waiting for the other man to start the conversation first.

"I didn't do it for the glory," Tactus finally admitted. Shiro didn't interrupt to ask what "it" referred to. They both knew there was only one thing the younger man could be talking about. "It wasn't as though I'd have gotten any glory from it. Just scorn for being a rat faced bastard. Only reason I'm still alive is because mother vouched for me to the Sovereign. I just wanted to get away from everyone. They'd tie me down and tame the feral beast my parents taught me to be. I'd be stripped of the cruelty I've built up to survive. They were draining all my power, and the worst part was that I liked it." For once, Shiro was reasonably certain that Tactus wasn't drunk yet. In fact, he thought as he looked at the beer bottle to find that it remained unopened, I'd say the last twenty-four hours are probably the first time outside the escape from Luna where I've ever seen him sober. I guess the really did just want someone to listen to him without judging him.

"Tactus," he began. "Your friends care about you. Otherwise your leaving wouldn't have hurt so much. They try to get you to abandon all that cruelty you've ingrained into yourself because they know that's not who you really are on the inside. Despite the cruelty, Darrow and Roque saw how much more you could be without it. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that family is more than the people you're related to by blood. Your family is the people who support you, not the ones who try to tear you down. Not everyone is like your mother or your brothers, Tactus. And just because those assholes are biologically related to you doesn't make them family."

"That's probably one of the kindest things anyone but Darrow has ever said to me," Tactus replied. He turned his head to hide his face, but Shiro caught the brief glimmer of moisture in the other man's eyes. "But that's what scares me. I was never built for kindness, so even if I cast aside my armor, I'm gorydamn terrified that I've had it so long I can't remember who I am without it." Shiro pushed aside his plate and set his hand on Tactus' shoulder. The man turned his head back at the gesture, revealing the tears welling up in his eyes.

"Well," Shiro commented. "One of the things I learned when I was growing up was that life is a journey to find out who we are outside of our parents' shadows. It's perfectly natural to feel like you don't know who you are without this one thing in your life. I've seen people go through that inner conflict multiple times over the course of their lives. That's why we surround ourselves with people who will support us while we figure it out." For a while, they just sat there in silence. Neither of them sure what to say or do after that. Before either of them could break the tension, Shiro's datapad vibrated on his left arm with an incoming message. Shiro glanced down and pulled up his inbox to find a message from Darrow.

"Mustang's back," he said as he brought his head back up to look at Tactus. "Darrow wants us to join them in the hangar."

Credit to Bad Seed by YouLookGoodInLeather on AO3, an excellent character study of Tactus that really helped me get inside his head to plan out his dialogue in this chapter (I borrowed two or three really good lines).

Terminology:

DataSlip: SD cards for datapads.