Less than an hour later, Officers Shirogane and Kogane arrived back at the precinct, the only two who'd been sent back early after Detectives Allura and Kolivan had conducted an initial assessment of the scene and determined that it wasn't necessary for them to stick around. At least not Shiro, anyway.

"Don't worry, Shiro. We've got everything under control," Allura had assured him. "If this has anything to do with the Paladins, you'll be the first to know. I promise."

"But I saw them, Allura. I literally chased two of them down this exact alley."

"Can you happen to recall what they might've looked like?"

"Well, no, but—" Allura's forced sympathetic smile made his insides itch. She never used to look at him like that before. "Look, Allura, I just want to go inside and take a quick look around. Can you at least just let me do that?"

She couldn't, of course. Captain's orders. Keith, siding with Allura, had dragged him to their cruiser and drove them back downtown, without a care for even the smallest amount of information regarding tonight's seemingly run-of-the-mill bank robbery. The detectives had chalked it up to being a failed heist, having only managed to steal so much of value before the police arrived and the culprits fled. Shiro, however, knew better than that.

"I thought we agreed that you wouldn't run off like that anymore," Keith continued, carrying over their conversation from the ride back once he saw that the room was clear. From the moment Shiro had slid into the passenger seat, Keith was only able to bite his tongue for two and a half stoplights before it all came tumbling out. "Did you forget what happened the last time you went after someone alone? And now look! Your arm's busted!"

Shiro winced as he fell back into his chair across from his partner, whose desk was situated right in front of his own. He rolled his shoulders and fumbled with the straps that helped secure his arm in place, hooking a finger under them to relieve the pressure from digging into his chest. "What happened to 'maybe it just needs a charge'?"

"This isn't funny, Shiro."

"They were right there. I almost had them."

"You shot at them! From the car!"

Shiro slung his prosthetic arm across his desk and rummaged around his drawer for a charger, pointedly ignoring Keith's intense stare as he inspected the visible damage. Beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting he could make out every little scratch, scrape, and dent in the dark carbon alloy, a good deal of them being new and nearly all of them having been earned from chasing after the smallest of the Paladins; Pidge, he'd heard the taller one call them once.

If his hand worked, he'd have been clenching it right now. "I couldn't let them get away again, Keith. Not this time."

"So what, you were planning on bringing them to the captain dead? You seriously think that'd get you back on the Galra case any faster?" Keith asked. Shiro didn't answer. "Listen, Shiro. I know better than anyone how much taking down Zarkon means to you, but you can't just keep acting like this. Ever since you came back…" He sighed, noticing Shiro's obvious disinterest in the conversation. "You know what, never mind. Just forget it."

They fell into their usual silence that had become commonplace over the last two months, with Keith's nose buried in paperwork and Shiro quietly lamenting over the loss of how things had been, once upon a time, when Keith was a bright-eyed recruit who'd looked up to him as if he were the police chief himself, rather than the broken, washed-up has been that he was now.

From down the hall, Captain Holt emerged from his office, a hefty bundle of files tucked under his arm. Shiro stood up the second he saw him come around the corner, while Keith only glanced up in acknowledgement. "Evening, boys!"

"Good evening, sir." Shiro straightened his back. Captain Holt, never having been one for formalities, made a face and waved his hand, putting Shiro at ease.

"You're still here?" Keith asked. "I thought you left earlier."

"I did, but it seems there were a few loose ends I forgot to tie up, so here I am." He chuckled. "Ah, I heard there was a pretty serious call tonight. How did it go?"

"Bad," Keith answered bluntly. "Shiro really banged himself up this time."

"Really?" Holt's attention automatically drifted to Shiro's right arm. "Don't tell me you were chasing after those bad guys again."

"I was only doing my job, sir," Shiro insisted.

"Yes, well, your job also entails not taking too many chances and returning home safely, so please try to keep that in mind, would you?" Holt smiled. He dropped the stack of manila folders onto their desks, distributing them in a way so that Shiro's pile was easily and noticeably double than that of Keith's, who groaned as if he'd just had the entirety of the records department dumped right into his lap. "Oh, don't give me that," Holt told him.

With some emergency last minute phone calls needing to be made, Captain Holt excused himself back to his office, leaving the two of them with instructions to "take it easy." He lingered when he clapped Shiro on the shoulder and gave him a gentle shake. Keith only received a nod.

Shiro tore the charger from his arm and followed after him.

"Excuse me, Captain—"

"Oh—goodness, Shiro." Holt pressed a hand to his chest, the other gripped tight around the doorknob to his office. He exhaled. "What is it? Is everything alright?"

"Sorry, sir, I didn't mean to scare you. I was just hoping that I could talk to you for a minute about tonight's call."

"At the bank?"

"Yes, sir."

Holt hummed. "Well, I don't see why not. Here, come on in."

There was always something warm and inviting about Captain Holt's office. Whether it was comfortably dim lightening or the sort of organized clutter that really gave it that lived in, homey feeling, Shiro couldn't quite tell. He had little interest in admiring the certificates and photos from department gatherings that covered the walls tonight, though.

"I wanted to ask for your permission to go back to the crime scene," he said without missing a beat as soon as he heard the door click shut behind him.

Captain Holt lifted a brow. "Why on Earth would you want to do that?"

"To look for evidence, sir."

"I thought Allura and Kolivan were handling that?"

"They are, but—"

"Then there's no reason for you to waste your time with such nonsense."

"Sir, I really think I should go back. I'm confident that this was the Paladins work, and—"

"The Paladins?" Holt interrupted. "Is that what Allura said?"

"She didn't—" Shiro took a deep breath and swallowed his frustration. "Look, Captain Holt, as much as I trust Allura and her work, I know it was the Paladins who robbed that bank. For the past two months I've been doing nothing but keeping tabs on them, and honestly, I've been saying for almost a week now that they were going to try and pull something at 54th National. I wasn't sure when, but I knew it'd be soon. See, I've noticed there's a pattern—"

"Shiro..."

"—they only ever target Galra members, and I know that one of them—"

"Shiro."

"—I already have an idea on where they might strike next, but if I can just go back and look around for any clues—"

"Shiro, that's enough."

Captain Holt's office suddenly felt about as welcoming as the dusty, cold cell that he'd spent seven months being locked up and tortured in in the basement of Zarkon's warehouse. "I know that you're passionate about your job," Holt continued, stern but understanding. "Hell, you're one of the best officers we've got. But don't you think you're taking all of this just a little bit too… seriously?"

Shiro grit his teeth. "With all due respect, sir," he began, biting a bit harder into the honorific than he'd meant to, "you were the one who assigned this case to me. My instructions were to catch and arrest them. I'm only trying to do my job."

"Well if they're only targeting Galra members, then they can't be that bad," Holt considered, the corners of his mouth fighting to betray the seriousness of the conversation. Shiro could feel his blood pressure skyrocketing by the second. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding." Holt chuckled. "But really, Shiro, there's no need for you to be rushing into things so quickly. Just relax! I mean, you've only been back for, what, two months now?"

Two months without any real purpose or objective, just a dead-end case to keep him running around in circles so that he wouldn't be a burden to the rest of the department—or himself. It was like being given a gun and a badge and then being told to go play alone in the sandbox. He had no real resources or leeway; he wasn't allowed to investigate leads, or conduct stakeouts; he couldn't even consult with the detectives. All he had to work with was what little information he could gather from the written reports that were marked specifically for him, and maybe—just maybe—if he got lucky while responding to a call, he'd have a chance to run into the Paladins himself. And tonight, he'd been closer than ever.

"Captain Holt, please." Shiro's voice was beginning to lose its composure. "I didn't come back to the department just to be kept on the bench like this. I know you're just doing what you think is best for me, but I'm ready to get back to work on the Galra case with the rest of the department, and if you could just give me a chance—"

"Keith's been telling me that you've been under a lot of stress lately," Captain Holt said suddenly, cutting Shiro's pleas short. "Is that true?"

Shiro hesitated. "I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about, sir."

"He says you've been on edge ever since I put you back on patrol. That you've been erratic and unpredictable—paranoid, even. That you've been relying on your gun too much," Holt explained gently, coming around to lean against the front of his desk. He gave Shiro a sympathetic smile, cut from the same cloth that Allura's had been. "Sometimes you'll even shoot at nothing, he says. Noises, shadows..."

Shiro kept his mouth shut. He could feel the anxious pinpricks of sweat on his neck soaking into the collar of his uniform. He didn't want to lose the only chance he had to be out in the field, away from the towers of paperwork and phone calls that plagued his desk. Captain Holt must've realized this because he shook his head and sighed.

"You've been though a lot, Shiro. More than anyone else in this department, and certainly more than me—I mean, they took your arm, for Christ's sake. But you can't continue to keep acting like this," he said. "I know it's been a couple of years now, and you tell me that you're fine, but your job performance… I can't keep you here if you can't get yourself under control. Not only are you a risk to yourself, but also to the entire department, and I can't let you bring everyone else down, too."

Shiro nodded. "I understand, sir."

"Good," Captain Holt said. "You're still seeing that doctor, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you're taking your meds?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's what I like to hear." He beamed and gave Shiro another clap on the shoulder. "I hope you know I don't mean to be harsh on you. You're like a second son to me. I just want you to be safe."

"I know." Shiro's gaze subconsciously snapped to the framed picture on the Captain's desk; an old family photo of himself, his wife, and their two children, Matt and Katie. "How's your family holding up?" he asked.

Captain Holt let out a wistful sigh. "I wouldn't exactly say that Colleen's doing well, but she's certainly handling it better than my daughter is," he said. "She's been working the case too, you know. Ever since the FBI came in and took over the investigation—"

"FBI? Nobody told me anything about that."

"Well, it was a few months before you came back. It's more of a joint investigation, really," he said. "I guess after the lab went up in flames and all the evidence went missing, the feds figured that maybe we might've bit off more than we could chew." He looked at his watch. "Ah, I'm sorry, but I should really get to those calls before it gets any later."

"Right. Sorry for keeping you," Shiro apologized. He wanted to say something about Matt—that he was fine and that they'd find him soon—but he didn't want to get the captain's hopes up. If anyone else in that department had any idea of what he'd gone through while under Zarkon's hold, it was the man who'd been there with him, even if only for a fraction of the time.

"Oh, and Shiro?"

"Yes, sir?"

"One more screw up, and I'm going to have to confiscate your gun."

"Understood, sir," Shiro said, and then quickly excused himself from his boss's office.

Back out in the main area, the room was filling up fast, with the rest of the department returning back from the crime scene. Keith, who'd been busy working on some of the files, pushed them aside when Shiro sat back down across from him. "What was all that about?" he asked.

"Nothing, just had to talk to the captain for a second."

"You were in there for twenty minutes."

"I said it was nothing, Keith," Shiro snapped.

Keith huffed and ducked back down into his work. "…Sorry," he mumbled after a while, eyes never leaving his desk. Shiro scrubbed at his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. Keith was only being a good partner—he had no right to be short with him for keeping the captain informed. Still, Shiro silently prayed that Keith would somehow miraculously forget about what had happened tonight.

Shiro nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand on his back.

"Jesus, Allura."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Allura apologized, eyes wide with concern as she tore her hand away. Shiro instinctively moved further out of her reach. "Please, forgive me. Sometimes I forget..." She cleared her throat. "Anyway, I just wanted to give you this. I know how upset you were earlier, and well, I figured it probably wouldn't hurt for you to go through it. Perhaps it'd even put your mind at ease, at least a little. Besides, I do suppose I owe you one for agreeing to help out with the ball."

Shiro chose not to acknowledge the agreement he'd made to assist Allura with the department's annual charity event as he accepted the thick manila folder. Feeling something small and hard, he peeked inside to find an evidence bag containing a tiny, thumb-sized microchip. He lifted a brow at Allura. "Another one?"

"It seems you might've been right about the Paladins, after all," Allura admitted sheepishly. Then she handed him another bag, this one containing two small discs, each in their own envelope. "The recordings, too, if you're interested. They've unfortunately been wiped clean, though."

Shiro didn't need them, but he took them nonetheless; the microchip—the same as two others that they'd found in the alarm systems at the broken-in homes of undeniable Galra associates—was more than enough solid evidence to prove that it was, in fact, the Paladins who'd he'd chased after tonight.

"Thanks, Allura," he said, looking the chip over as if it contained the answers to the universe itself; it was the written report that he couldn't wait to sink his teeth into, though.

Allura smiled at him and left to join her own partner over in the detective's unit next door, and as soon as she was out of sight, Shiro tossed the evidence bags aside and went straight for the folder, bypassing a good chunk of the mandatory routine paperwork until he found exactly what he was looking for: a copy of the bank's safe deposit logs.

His initial excitement quickly waned as he shuffled through the hundreds upon hundreds of untouched boxes, and nearly dropped off altogether once he'd finally found the one that had been tampered with, belonging to someone by the name of Morvok, an eccentric architect and close enough associate of Zarkon for Shiro to have come across their name a time or two before while snooping through the records department unauthorized.

CONTENTS #1984
(8) Silver bullion bars
(2) Government bonds
(1) SD card

Shiro frowned as he read through the notes, irritated with the lack of details surrounding the contents of the SD card. There was no way of knowing exactly what the Paladins were up to with such vague information, and everything else that'd been stolen was even less helpful in trying to determine their motive.

Hopes dashed, Shiro began to close the folder, until he noticed Morvok's name again, printed alongside another safe deposit box, this one for some reason untouched.

CONTENTS #1985
(2) Document folders
(1) SD card

Shiro froze.

The Paladins must've made a mistake.

"Shiro? Where are you going?" Keith asked, watching as he struggled to wrestle his broken prosthesis into the sleeve of his windbreaker. Shiro mumbled something quick and fast under his breath that Keith couldn't quite catch as he gathered up his belongings. "What?"

"I said I'm gonna head out—home. Get some sleep."

Keith nodded, blatantly unaware of the renewed source of restless energy coursing through Shiro's bones. "Probably a good idea. You've been here all day, anyway," he agreed, then yawned. "Alright, go get some rest, man. And hey, call me if you need anything, okay?"

Thankful for the oblivious nature of his partner, Shiro said his goodbyes and assured him that he'd see him tomorrow before making a beeline for the door with the keys to their cruiser clenched tightly in his fist.