Void

by MakorraGal312

The battle is over. The journey home begins. Things should be calm now, right? But Keith and Lance still have some things to talk about...and some new revelations to confront. (Starts post-S6 and takes place mainly during S8)

20. Chapter 19

Hi again!

Another day, another long chapter!

Once again, I'm so so sorry that this chapter took so long. But between personal issues, existential dread over the next four years, and writing difficulties, working on the chapter put my stress levels at an all-time high. But as always, you guys are amazing and so patient, so thank you for that!

I hope you guys enjoy and please be sure to look out for yourself, your mental health, and your loved ones. 3

Now, onto the chapter! XOXO

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"Okay, everything's been cleared. You're good to go."

"Thanks."

At the sound of the doors finally closing, Keith allowed himself to let out a heavy sigh, leaning back into his firm hospital pillows as he loosely crossed his arms. He let his eyes trail along the bed as they finally landed on his Garrison uniform, laid flat and somewhat neatly at the foot of his hospital bed.

A part of the black paladin knew that this wasn't practical and that he should definitely be opting to wear something more comfortable. Especially considering the fact that he was still very much on the recovering end of a coma.

But he couldn't allow himself to waste any more time.

He had only been out of his coma for a couple of days and if it were up to him, he would've gotten himself out of the bed, put on his uniform, and get back to the mission at hand. But all it took was the feeling of exhaustion and a faint throb in the head for those plans to be completely derailed.

And he had a feeling that if he hadn't been stopped by his body, he was most definitely gonna be stopped by the staff.

Maybe even sedated if he was persistent enough.

So, rather reluctantly, he let himself stay in bed and let the healing take its course.

In all honesty, most of Keith's time in recovery had been a blur to him. When he wasn't being questioned, examined, or assisted by a bunch of nurses, all the black paladin could do was lay back in bed restlessly, either occupying himself with the occasional people watching or shutting his eyes in an attempt to tune out the world.

He didn't like it. But what else could he possibly do?

He couldn't use his phone.

He couldn't train.

If he wanted to get up and stretch his legs, he needed to wait for a nurse to come and assist him as he walked around the medical wing.

He was basically a sitting duck. And he hated it.

But not as much as he hated the reason why he was even laying in this bed in the first place.

After he had woken up, he had asked Lance how he ended up in the medical bay. But all he got was Lance's eyes beginning to swell with new tears and the feeling of his hands beginning to tremble in his, so he immediately decided not to push further.

Regardless of how much the red paladin's reaction shook him.

It wasn't until Shiro came into the room that he was given the full picture of what had happened:

He had suffered a seizure.

For ten minutes.

And was placed in a medically-induced coma for almost a week.

All because she wanted to take control of him and have him do her bidding. To turn him into a monster capable of killing someone he cared for deeply.

According to Shiro, the doctors had run some tests on him after his initial seizure, but couldn't come up with a solid answer for how it happened. It wasn't until Lance had sat down with him and told him everything that happened that they were finally able to piece together some semblance of a conclusion.

They think that the reason his Galra genes came out the way they did was because somehow, Honerva had found a way to take hold of his quintessence and possibly change the properties within it, weakening the human part of Keith in order to let the Galran part become more dominant in order to enable more control from him. And the longer she had tampered with Keith's quintessence, the more corrupted it became. And considering that no abnormalities were found in the initial tests, it was safe to assume that any trace of corruption vanished when Honerva did.

As for the seizure, it was a culmination of his quintessence being poisoned from the corruption, which ended up affecting his body. And all of the added stress that his body and brain endured while fighting and trying to break free from Honerva's control only exacerbated it.

So, to say that Keith was anything less than pissed was a definite understatement, all things considering. And it was definitely something he would always intend to avoid thinking about as he recovered. Even though all of the swelling and pressure on his brain had gone down, it was determined that they should wait for his scans to run completely clear before he could be discharged and back on duty.

However, that wasn't to say his hospital stay was all bad.

Once news of him waking up spread around the ship, it didn't take long before he started getting visitors.

Aside from Lance, Shiro was the first one who walked through the doors of his room. All it took was a tired smile from the black paladin for the older man to begin his charged walk towards him before the half Galran was pulled into a hug. And even with the dull ache in his bones, that didn't stop Keith from wrapping his own arms around his brother, relief radiating from them both as the sound of Lance's sniffling was heard between them.

Eventually, the rest of the team would make their appearance, as well. And pretty soon, Keith's room would be filled with surprised gasps and cries of happiness as Pidge, Hunk, and Coran ran towards him and squeezed him tightly in pure elation.

And pretty soon, the sounds of Keith's strangled pleas for air would fill the room, as well.

It wasn't until the young black paladin shifted his eyes away from the group that he spotted Allura. She was standing close to the door away from the rest of them, her arms loosely crossed across her stomach as she looked at her teammate with glistening eyes and a tearful smile as she nodded her head in acknowledgement.

Keith could only shoot a small, tight smile at the Altean as he nodded back at her. The last time he had spoken to Allura, things were…tense, to say the least.

He was angry. She was struggling to acknowledge the hurt that she was causing.

He was pissed at her. And he was even more pissed for the things that happened after the fact. But he would be lying if he said that it didn't give him a sense of relief to see that she was okay.

It was good to see her. It was good to see all of them.

But the visits didn't stop there.

Romelle practically ran through the doors as she launched herself into Keith, immediately crying into his chest. The black paladin could only hold her against him as she wept, a twinge of guilt sparking in his chest as he recognized that him almost dying probably reminded the young Altean of when she lost her brother.

Krolia and Kolivan stopped by, too. The Galran matriarch firmly hitting the black paladin on the head, much to his shock and Kolivan's amusement. But before Keith could protest, Krolia merely grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into her chest. At that, Keith didn't bother trying to speak and just let himself sink into his mother's embrace.

Kosmo appeared out of thin air right above his bed, immediately shifting his form into something smaller as he landed on top of his owner. And once Keith got over his initial almost heart attack, he was more than happy to hug his beloved space wolf and shower him with head scratches.

Hell, even Allura's space mice found their way to him, scurrying across the floor and climbing up the bed and into his lap as they nuzzled against his stomach.

Admittedly, Keith really wasn't expecting to experience this kind of affection. At least at this level. But it definitely touched him knowing that everyone important to him truly cared about him the way he cared about them.

That thought alone was enough to put a smile on his face.

Letting out a lighthearted puff of air, the black paladin finally rose from his bed, raising his arms above his head as he stretched. Once he was satisfied with the stretch he felt within his muscles, he allowed himself to drop his arms as he began making his way towards the foot of the bed where his clothes lay.

He reached out his hand towards his black undershirt, grabbing the article of clothing by its neckline. As he lifted it up and held it against him, he found himself stopping as his eyes caught a glimpse of himself in the large mirror across from him. It was the first time he actually caught a look of himself since he had been admitted and quite honestly?

He had expected worse.

At first glance, there was nothing out of the ordinary. He wasn't filled to the brim with cuts and bruises and his skin remained in its natural shade. Overall, he looked the same. But the longer he looked at himself, the quicker certain things began to pop up.

The first thing that Keith took notice of was the faint dark circles underneath his eyes, an indicator of just how tired he was in spite of the fact he had spent the last few days in bed.

And if it had something to do with all the times he stayed awake because he, in his own words, "filled his sleeping quota via coma," then that was his business.

His jet black hair, which was always as flat as it was long, was slightly disheveled. There were some stray hairs attempting to pop up from their place and he had spent so much time laid up against his pillow that the ends of his hair was bunched up atop his shoulders, making his mullet look shorter than it actually was.

But it was nothing a quick glide of the hand couldn't fix.

All things considered, he honestly didn't look that much different from before. If anything, someone who didn't know what had happened would think he had just woken up from a long nap. Which, technically, he kinda did. But the way he went into it was definitely not his choice. Nor was it his choice to be relegated to slumbering in the dull Garrison patient attire.

So just as quickly as he had picked up his shirt, he placed it back down on the bed as he went to grab his uniform pants and place it closer to him. As he went to take off his sweatpants, he softly winced at the tense feeling he felt in his muscles as he bent over. The black paladin had to stop himself from groaning, annoyance filling up at the feeling.

He knew he wasn't in his coma long enough for his muscles to atrophy, but it sure as hell felt like it. And the extended bed rest he was put on definitely didn't help. But he was sure a quick training session would release the tension, so he didn't dwell on it for too long. So he brushed the soreness aside and kept on moving until his sweats were off and he could kick them away. Keith grabbed his uniform pants and repeated the process in reverse, the soreness in his back making itself known as he bent over trying to put them on until he was back up right and buttoning them up.

Thank fuck that's done, he thought in relief.

With a deep breath, he placed his undershirt back in front of him on the bed as he began to take off his patient shirt. Just as he was pulling the garment over his head, he could hear the sound of the doors opening and closing, along with the subsequent footsteps that came afterwards.

"I hope you're not planning on trying to make an escape."

Keith was unfazed as he completely rid himself of the offending shirt, not even making an attempt to see who was behind him as he continued to move.

"I'm not." he responded nonchalantly. "I just got discharged."

The black paladin could hear the light chuckle coming from behind him.

"Yeah, I know." the familiar voice quipped. The black paladin kept moving around as he heard the footsteps walking towards him and then around him, stopping short as they stopped beside him. There was silence between them for a few more seconds before one of them spoke.

"Keith." the voice started, disbelief in his tone.

"What?" Keith replied, picking up his undershirt.

"Keith."

"What?"

"Please don't tell me you're putting your uniform back on."

"I am." the black paladin answered, turning his head to the source of the voice. "What's the issue?"

Shiro looked back at the younger man, the disbelief in his face matching the disbelief that was in his tone.

"The issue," the older man started, "is that you're making your Garrison uniform your medical discharge outfit."

Keith's pupils quickly darted to the clothing on his bed before he placed them back on the Atlas captain.

"Uh, yeah?" the half Galran responded with a slow shrug, brows knitted in confusion. "Not really catching what the problem is."

Shiro couldn't stop himself from raising his eyebrows at the young paladin in skepticism.

"Oh, there's a problem." he signaled, right before he went to snatch the undershirt from off the bed before Keith could reach for it. The black paladin quickly turned to the older man with an annoyed look on his face as he continued.

"Your body is still recovering from being in a coma and you're about to put this on." Shiro finished, placing emphasis on the offending garment as he bounced it in his grip.

Keith turned his body to face Shiro completely.

"I still don't see what the issue is." the black paladin repeated, prompting Shiro to send him a deadpan expression.

"Keith, I know you know just how freaking tight this thing is. It's literally form-fitting." the former paladin started. "Your body is sore from all the stress it went through and your muscles are still tense from not being used. Putting this on is just gonna be a form of torture."

"I can handle it." Keith argued, crossing his arms.

"Oh really?" Shiro inquired, raising an eyebrow as he did so.

"Yeah." the black paladin shot back. "So I'd appreciate it if I could have my-"

As Keith extended his hand to grab his undershirt from Shiro's grasp, the older man quickly moved his hand away from the black paladin as he extended his arm to the side, the garment still very much within his clutches. Keith was frozen in shock for a second before he turned his head to glare at his older brother, who had a small smile of faux innocence on his face. The young leader glared at the older man for a few seconds more before leaning forward to reach for the garment once again, only for Shiro to shoot his arm up towards the ceiling right before Keith could touch it.

As a result, the half Galran almost face planted onto the bed, having to use his hand to press it against the mattress in order to keep himself upright. That action alone was enough for him to start feeling a little winded (not that he would tell Shiro that).

"Are you sure you wanna wear this?" Keith heard Shiro question from behind him. When he turned around, he saw Shiro looking back at him with a look of worry on his features. He also took notice of how his undershirt was at Shiro's hip where he had his hand placed.

Keith felt his nostrils flare before he let out a deep sigh.

"Look, Shiro." the young paladin began. "I know what you're trying to do."

"You do?" Shiro probed.

"Yeah. I get that you're worried about me and that you don't want me to put myself back in a hospital bed. Even though your current theatrics kinda have me halfway there." the black paladin unknowingly quipped.

"But I'm seriously okay. So I'm pretty sure I can handle wearing a-"

As Keith attempted to reach for his undershirt once again, he immediately winced as he felt some tightness within his muscles from when he extended his arm, causing him to slowly retract it. And if the wince on his face didn't tip Shiro to how he actually felt, then the sharp hiss that Keith didn't realize slipped out his mouth definitely did.

Shiro looked at his younger brother sympathetically as he took a few steps towards him, placing his prosthetic hand on Keith's right shoulder as he lightly pressed down on it and prompted Keith to actually sit down on the bed. Once Keith was settled, Shiro removed his hand from his shoulder, sitting beside the younger man as he placed Keith's undershirt between them.

"Just because you can handle it doesn't mean that your body can." Shiro advised, softly placing his hand on Keith's impacted arm.

"Keith, I know how strong you are and how important it is for you to get back with the team. But for you to do that, you have to actually give your body time to catch up with you."

The paladin didn't say anything, only looking down at his lap as he continued to listen silently. Shiro could only look down at Keith sadly, hating to see him like this. He could tell that being limited by his own body bothered Keith immensely, especially when he fought so hard to come back to everyone. But Keith wasn't going to be good to himself or anyone else if he decided to push himself too hard when he was still healing.

"Look, all I'm saying is to just give yourself one day. One day to just let your body breathe and readjust. Then, you can get back to the job at hand." the older man advised.

Keith was silent for a moment, his eyes focused on his arm before trailing down to his hand, still wrapped in its bandage. Finally, he let his eyes slip shut as he released a heavy sigh from his lips, lowering his head.

He knew there was no winning this battle. Especially if his own body was proving Shiro's point.

Before he could dwell on it, he felt Shiro's hand on his shoulder.

"Hey." he spoke softly, no doubt sensing his demeanor shift. "I just want you to be okay. When I found out that you had collapsed…And when I got told you were in a coma, I…"

As Shiro's voice trailed off, Keith couldn't find it in him to stay irritated.

"I know." he interjected, not allowing his older brother to say anything further. ""I know that I need to take care of myself. And I'm sorry that I scared you."

"Keith, you have nothing to apologize for." Shiro replied firmly, squeezing the younger man's shoulder as gently as he could. "You had no control over what happened to you or what Honerva planned to do."

The black paladin shifted his eyes to his brother, guilt filling him as he took notice of the glistening sadness within the older man's eyes. Silence fell between the two brothers for a few seconds before Shiro turned back to him, a relieved smile starting to form on his face.

"I'm just so glad that you're still here." he professed.

"Me too." Keith agreed with a small smile, letting Shiro completely wrap his arm around him as he pulled the younger man into his frame in a soft side hug. As comfortable as he felt being embraced with Shiro's comfort, a small part of the black paladin couldn't help but to feel guilty for putting him under such stress.

Of course, he didn't ask to get mind controlled and he damn sure didn't ask to be in a multi-day long coma. But he could only imagine the stress and pain that he put Shiro through.

What he put everyone through.

But that's over and done with.

He was alive, and so were his friends. And that was the only thing that mattered. So as he let out a quiet exhale through his nose as he let himself lean further underneath Shiro's arm, he decided to focus on that for now. But before he could get too comfortable, the Atlas commander began to retract his arm as he started to shift.

"Which is why," he started again, bending over towards the floor as Keith heard the sounds of rustled plastic. After a couple of confusing seconds, Shiro was sitting right back up.

"I got you something comfortable." Shiro finished with a grin. Soon enough, Keith ended up with a hefty plastic bag being plopped right onto his lap. With furrowed eyebrows, the black paladin shot a quick look at Shiro before untying the knot on the bag, pulling the strands apart and coaxing the bag open to view the contents inside of it.

One good look at what was inside had Keith groaning as he dropped his head, unaware of the amused expression taking hold of Shiro's face.

"What?" the former leader asked in amusement. "You didn't honestly expect me to come in here empty-handed, did you?"

"You cannot be serious." Keith replied, shaking his head. The smile on Shiro's face didn't falter for a second.

"I am, Keith." he affirmed almost gleefully. "I definitely am."

Keith took everything back.

He should've snatched that undershirt right out of Shiro's hand and pushed him out of the room.

The black paladin gave himself a second to swallow his urge to slap Shiro with the bag before turning his attention back to the actual contents of it. The bag consisted of a red T-shirt, a black hoodie, and some black sweatpants. And judging by the flat, rough surface he felt at the bottom of the bag, he guessed that he was given some sneakers or at the very least some slippers.

The usual recovery attire.

How the hell Keith didn't catch sight of the bag when Shiro first walked into the room was beyond him. But for the sake of his dignity, he'll just blame it on post-coma brain fog. But back to the current matter at hand, Keith forced himself to take a breath before slowly turning his head to look menacingly at Shiro.

"You know what?" the black paladin asked strainingly, the smile of faux innocence on Shiro's face driving the young man up the wall.

"Considering the fact that I literally got discharged, like, ten minutes ago and I would really love to get the hell out of here and not get thrown in the brig for murder, I'm just gonna get to changing."

Shiro's smile only seemed to grow bigger as he lifted his hand back up to ruffle Keith's already messed up hair.

"I knew you would make the right decision." he said in a smug but affectionate tone.

Keith was not amused. Not in the slightest.

"Just shut up and turn around." he commanded, finally getting up from the bed as he took the clothing out of the bag and began placing it on the bed for him to change into.

"Yes, sir." Shiro replied sarcastically, getting up from the bed himself as he walked over to the very edge of the bed and sat on it, facing the wall. He knew that his teasing would probably get himself throttled the moment he and Keith stepped out of the medical bay, but just a few days ago, a part of him thought that he would never get to experience these kinds of moments with his brother ever again.

So what was a little bit of brotherly banter?

"Well, since you're already here," Keith said suddenly, beginning to unfasten his uniform pants. "Can you at least fill me in on what's been going on in the outside world since I've been out?"

Shiro scrunched his nose at the question slightly.

"You mean in terms of Honerva or just in general?" he queried cautiously, not really wanting to chance Keith getting upset if he mentioned the witch in any capacity should he not want to think about her.

"Either, I guess." the black paladin answered honestly. "Though, the less I think about Honerva almost killing me, the better."

Even with the way the younger man spoke evenly, Shiro could still detect the underlying anger within his tone at the mention of Honerva. And even with his back turned towards him, the older man can practically feel the scowl Keith had on his face at the mere mention of her name.

And after everything he went through, who the hell could blame him?

"Fair enough." Shiro said, appeasing the young paladin. "Well, for the most part, everything's been relatively normal. There hasn't been any attacks or random explosions, so that's a plus."

Keith let out a hum of acknowledgement as he rid himself of the uniform pants he had tried so hard to put on, slowly sliding on his new sweatpants.

"Anything on your end?" he questioned, folding his uniform pants.

"Eh, just the usual." Shiro shrugged. "Commanding the Atlas. Checking around the ship. Talking to fellow officers. Just the usual commander duties, I guess."

Keith eyed his brother for a moment before focusing back on getting dressed, picking up his T-shirt from the bed.

"Hope that doesn't mean you were pushing yourself too hard." Keith said in a warning tone, beginning to slide the article of clothing over his head.

The former paladin immediately raised his eyebrows in surprise, blindsided by the words that he just heard from the black paladin. It took everything in him not to whip his head around to look at Keith in shock as to not get a hard headshot via hospital pillow. Shiro couldn't help but to let out a lighthearted scoff.

"You?" the older man gaped in disbelief. "Lecturing me? About pushing too hard?"

The half Galran released a light chuckle at Shiro's shock.

"Hey. Considering I just spent the last few days in a hospital bed, I think I'm allowed to be concerned." Keith remarked, adjusting the shirt onto his body. Shiro let out an amused hum in response.

"Okay, I guess that's fair." he acquiesced. "But I didn't."

Shiro paused his words for a second.

"At least, I tried not to." he admitted, causing Keith to shift his eyes towards him. "Because I knew it wouldn't have done either of us any good."

The black paladin looked at Shiro for a couple of seconds longer before he darted his eyes back to his part of the bed, beginning to pick up his hoodie. He made work of awkwardly bouncing the garment in his hands as if he were trying to take out the wrinkles, anything to get his mind off the guilt that was delivering prick after prick inside of his chest.

He knew that what happened wasn't his fault. And he was positive that Shiro would just tell him the exact same thing.

But getting a semblance of confirmation that him fighting for his life could've led to the man that he considered a brother neglecting himself didn't make him feel that much better.

Especially given other things.

"I know what you're thinking, Keith. Please stop it." Shiro's voice suddenly interjected.

See what he meant?

"But really, Keith. I was fine. When I wasn't working, I was checking up on you, Lance, and th-"

Without meaning to, Shiro had turned his head back to the black paladin, only to stop mid-sentence when he caught sight of what happened. And even though Keith currently had his back turned towards him, the former paladin could still see everything just as clearly.

The very second Lance''s name slipped off his tongue, Keith immediately flinched, his movements now tensed and frozen as he had been in the process of putting on his jacket. The young man remained motionless for a few seconds longer before finally resuming his movements, almost as if his body had been switched to autopilot.

That alone was enough for Shiro to start worrying, but he held off on it.

"Keith?" he asked aloud, doing his best not to sound nervous. The half Galran didn't respond, instead focusing on slipping his arms through the sleeves of his hoodie as he finally managed to put it on. And just when Shiro was about to call out his name once again…

"How is he?"

The Atlas captain jumped, obviously not expecting Keith's sudden response. But he immediately shook off the surprise.

"What?" he inquired.

"Lance." Keith elaborated before turning to face Shiro, his arms crossing as his eyes stayed unblinking and his eyebrows were knitted in concern. "How is he?"

Shiro blinked at the young paladin, not expecting him to ask about Lance or to look so afraid while doing so.

"For the most part, he seems okay." he answered honestly. He had only been able to catch up with Lance a few times after Keith regained consciousness, but their interactions were never that long anymore. But from the few interactions they did have, it had seemed as if the red paladin was starting to get a bit better.

Once Keith had woken up, it had become easier for him to smile and laugh at the older man's vain attempts at jokes and he didn't have that aura of fear that surrounded him whenever he was sitting on that hospital chair.

"I'm not saying he's at a hundred percent or anything. But compared to how he was when you were still unconscious, it's an improvement."

Shiro watched as Keith let his words sink in before the younger man nodded, turning away from him with a look of confliction covering his features.

"Why do you ask?" he probed carefully, already sensing that the topic of Lance would come to be a sensitive one.

The black paladin looked down at the ground as he adjusted the hoodie on his shoulders, visibly uncomfortable.

"I-It's nothing." he replied quickly, turning around and heading towards the bed as he began to scrummage inside the plastic bag. Shiro's eyebrows furrowed, clocking the deflection coming from the younger man. And as much as he wanted to leave things alone, Shiro knew that was something that he couldn't do.

"No. Not 'nothing.'" he refuted, standing from the bed as he turned to face the black paladin completely. "What is it?"

Keith kept his eyes trained downwards away from Shiro as he pulled what appeared to be a scrunchie from the bottom of the bag. And his eyes stayed that way as he reached up to put his hands in his hair and start to pull it back.

"Keith, come on." the former paladin slightly pushed, taking a few steps to now place himself on the corner of the bed. Even though he was still nowhere close to Keith, he was still able to catch the way his hands shook as he tried to keep his hair together, a few strands slipping out from between his fingers as he tried to catch them again.

"It's me. And you know that nothing you say is going to leave this room." the older man proclaimed, hoping his reassurance would give the young leader some ease.

"And if it has something to do with Lance, that's all the more reason why you should talk to me. Is he okay? Did something happen between you two?"

By the time Shiro had finally gotten his questions out, Keith had managed to secure his hair into his desired ponytail, slowly dropping his arms before he finally spoke.

"No." the half Galran responded, shaking his head before finally looking back at his older brother through his obsidian fringe.
"Nothing happened. He's…"

Keith paused, his mouth closing tightly as his violet pupils lowered themselves once again from Shiro's gaze and prompting the older man to shoot a look of concern his way. The silence lasted a few extra seconds before Keith's eyes moved to the side.

"...fine."

The former paladin could only blink.

So…nothing happened between Keith and Lance.

And Lance is fine.

So why does it sound like he was missing something?

"Okay?" Shiro replied after a minute, still feeling out of the loop. Keith must've sensed his confusion because he immediately filled in the blanks that were in his head.

"That's the problem." he confirmed, worry laced within his voice. A look of surprise briefly washed over Shiro's face before he scooted himself back more onto the bed, his searching eyes never coming off of the black paladin.

"What do you mean?" the older man asked. "Elaborate."

Keith looked at Shiro for a second before his eyes slipped shut and he bowed his head, releasing a heavy sigh. He then reopened his eyes and crossed his arms as he looked down at the floor, looking more bothered than he already felt.

"It's just…" Keith tried to start, only to groan in frustration. "It's complicated."

"Hey, hey. It's fine." Shiro soothed, moving his hands up and down in front of him in a placating motion. "Just start from the beginning. When did you notice something was up?"

The black paladin sighed in frustration as he went to rub the back of his neck.

"When I first woke up." he answered, the former paladin's eyebrows raising in slight surprise.

"I ,uh, noticed the bruises on his face. The ones that I caused. And I tried to apologize but he stopped me. Told me that it was the mind control and that it wasn't my fault." Keith recounted.

"Which is true." Shiro interjected, agreeing with Lance's obvious sentiment. And if Keith didn't believe him, he was doing a good job at not showing it.

Keith couldn't stop himself from biting his tongue.

"Look. Honerva played you, alright She played all of us. She saw you as a pawn and used you like one. And she was going to do whatever she could to take our focus off of her. Even if that meant us killing each other."

Nevertheless, he didn't acknowledge the captain's interjection as he continued.

"He basically started saying everything that you had said. That Honerva played us and used me as a pawn and how if there was anyone to blame for what we went through, it definitely wasn't me."

"You beat her. You stopped her. You saved me and yourself. If there's anyone to blame for this, it isn't you."

Keith unconsciously clasped his injured hand shut, remembering the feel of Lance's hand within his.

"Well, everything sounds okay so far." Shiro commented. "What did he say after that?"

The black paladin uncrossed his arms as he stuffed his hand inside the pocket of his hoodie.

"Just that he didn't blame me. And that if anything, he should be praising me for how hard I fought to get control of myself again." Keith stated. "I had told him that if he was gonna be praising me, then he should be praising himself, too. But he just…"

Shiro raised an eyebrow, nervous at Keith's sudden pause.

"He just…?"

"He just completely shut it down." Keith completed, his tone starting to turn remorseful. "Using the exact words that I said to him. Like how he was useless and could barely hold his own against me."

"...if you tried to take on anyone else, you'd be nothing short of useless."

"Look at you! Hunched over and gasping for air like a fish out of water."

"You're pathetic!"

The black paladin could feel his insides violently twist themselves as he remembered his cruel words, looking away in shame. After he woke up, his mind had begun filling in the blanks of everything he had said to Lance while he was being mind-controlled.

Every cruel word.

Every harsh statement.

Every stab to the heart.

And every insult he remembered made the young paladin hate himself more and more with each passing memory. And even if Lance and Shiro made it clear non-stop that he wasn't in control of the words that came out, it did nothing to ease the guilt of having said them in the first place.

Words that had no place coming out of his mouth.

And words that definitely had no place being associated with Lance of all people.

The black paladin was so lost in self-deprecating thought that he missed the expression that Shiro was giving him. His face was full of sadness and his eyes were filled with sympathy, almost as if the former paladin could see what Keith was feeling.

"Keith-" Shiro had called out softly. But he didn't get the chance to say anything else.

"I know!" Keith exclaimed, cutting Shiro off in pure agitation. "I know that I was mind-controlled and I know that I would never say that stuff and I know that Lance knows that I didn't mean any of it and I know I need to stop thinking like this! I KNOW!"

The black paladin could feel throbbing in his hand and a painfully tight sensation on his head, not realizing he had taken his hand out of his pocket and used it to grip his hair during his tirade. And it wasn't until Keith felt his own rapid heartbeat that he actually registered what he did, releasing his grip and dropping his hand as he took a couple of deep breaths.

All the while, Shiro was looking back at him with overall the same expression, the sole exception being his eyelids being a bit larger than before.

More than likely due to the surprise outburst of it all.

Keith briefly pinched the bridge of his nose as he closed his eyes, letting out a final deep breath before dropping his hand and reopening his eyes, looking at Shiro once again.

"Sorry." he muttered, his face showing signs of guilt.

Shiro merely shook his head softly.

"It's fine." he replied consolingly. "You're fine."

The young leader let out a short sigh as he tried to get his words together.

"I know…" he tried to begin again. "I know that everything I said back there was out of my control. But I also know that mind-controlled or not, I still said them. And I said them to him."

Keith took another pause, forcing himself to swallow as he could feel it becoming harder to talk.

"But that's not even the worst part." he choked out, prompting Shiro to lean forward from where he sat, anxious as to where Keith was going with this.

"The worst part was that…He-He just-"

As much as he tried to, Keith could barely find the words to explain away his strife, looking off to the mirror beside him and slamming his arms to his sides in frustration, soreness be damned. The black paladin shook his head briefly as the red paladin's face flashed in front of him.

"I know you didn't mean all that stuff. I'm good."

"He just brushed it off." he finally expressed, disbelief from day's past laced in his voice. "He just acted like everything was normal and kept saying how it wasn't a big deal."

Shiro's eyebrows lowered slightly.

"Are you sure that's what he was doing?" he questioned. "Is there a chance that maybe he was just acknowledging the situation?"

"No! He wasn't!" Keith maintained, becoming more upset as his voice sounded more and more agitated. "Yeah, he said he knew that I'd never say the things that I did. But that's not the point!"

The black paladin's words halted from that point, his face showing the distress he was feeling as his eyes clenched shut. Shiro could only look on worriedly as he gave Keith a chance to collect his thoughts, his anxiety for Lance growing with the passing silence.

"The whole time, Lance kept trying to tell me that he knew I didn't mean it and that he was fine and I told him point blank that he didn't have to try to make me feel better and I even went as far as to say that I'd understand if he wanted some space from me after everything."

The black paladin paused once again, not realizing he had clenched his injured hand into a fist until he felt the pain piercing from it and he released.

"Shiro, the second I said the word 'space,' everything just went left. He actually admitted that the things that I said hurt him, which I already knew. But do you know what else he said?" Keith asked incredulously, not even giving Shiro a chance to inquire or deny before he answered for him.

"He looks me dead in my eye, with a smile, and actually said:"

"I'm handling it. Hell, most of the stinging is gone by now!"

And at that, Shiro's eyes widened.

When he had spoken to Lance when Keith was still unconscious, he recalled the way the red paladin broke down in front of him and admitted to him the gravity of Keith's corrupted words.

"I know that he wouldn't hurt me. And I-I know that he didn't mean to.."

"But he still did."

At the start, Lance tried to brush things aside to him, too. But that facade had only lasted for so long. And Shiro had honestly thought that after going through such a mentally and emotionally draining session of disclosing everything that had happened to him and Keith, he would just try to heal and find a way to move on from there.

So to hear that Lance had not only attempted to brush things off again, but he actually tried to disregard the hurt that Keith's words left on him was absolutely alarming, to say the least.

"He…actually said that?" Shiro questioned hesitantly, his stomach dropping when Keith immediately nodded.

"Yes." Keith replied, his voice still distressed. The former paladin looked at the young leader in shock for a couple more seconds before he brushed his human hand through his hair, still trying to process the new bit of worrisome information.

"Okay." he spoke, making himself overcome the shock. "Did you say anything to him about it?"

The black paladin diverted his eyes, almost in shame.

"I wanted to." he admitted, looking back up at his older brother. "But before I could, he tried to leave by saying that you were outside of the room and that he should let you know that I was awake. But I grabbed him before he could step out."

Shiro crossed his arms, listening intently as Keith continued.

"I asked him if he was really okay."

"And what did he say?" the commander probed. The black paladin shifted his eyes to the area of the bed where his uniform laid.

"That everything was okay. Because we were alive."

The frown on Keith's face deepened slightly as he paused his words.

"Because I was awake."

Keith brought his hand up to the side of his neck, rubbing it gently as he could still feel the sensation of Lance's tear falling onto it as he cried into his neck, his arms wrapped around them just the same.

"I'm just really glad you're here."

Shiro could only stare at the young paladin sadly.

"And you don't believe him?"

Keith pressed his hand against the side of his neck at the older man's question, biting the inside of his cheek as he averted his gaze to the floor for what was probably the millionth time. Just the mere act of not believing Lance's words made all of the guilt and sadness from the last couple of days pool within the pit of his stomach.

And he hated it.

But not as much as Shiro hated seeing him like this.

The former paladin couldn't stand how forlorn his brother looked as he stood in front of him. How defeated he looked when he recounted his private moments with Lance.

He couldn't stand seeing two young men who cared about each other continue to struggle after fighting like hell to protect the other.

It just wasn't fair.

The silence between the two men permeated as Keith turned himself around, facing away from the former paladin and walking towards the wall.

"Keith, it's okay." Shiro began to reassure, but was only met with the black paladin's shaking head.

"No, it isn't!" Keith exclaimed. "I shouldn't be thinking like this!"

"Why not?" Shiro questioned back. The black paladin immediately turned back around to face him.

"Because it's the truth!" he rebuffed. "Because Lance was right! We survived the Astral Plane! I survived my coma! We should be able to put everything behind us and focus on what comes next! I should be able to believe Lance when he says that he's fine!"

Keith was silent for a moment, his mouth forming into a thin line as he clenched his fist.

"But he's not fine! He's not okay!" he gritted out. "And it's all because of me."

Shiro's eyes widened in disbelief as he let out a quick shake of his head, a sense of urgency taking over as he immediately rose from the half Galran's hospital bed.

"Keith-"

"No, you don't get it!" the paladin interrupted, his loud interjection forcing Shiro to pause and listen to the young paladin's next words.

"Do you know the way he looks at me whenever I see him?" Keith asked, the strength in his voice slowly beginning to dissipate.

The older man could feel his heart begin to break at the sound.

"His eyes can look bright, but there's no light behind them. He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. He laughs, but it doesn't come from his chest." Keith illustrated, his voice becoming more and more hoarse.

"He comes to see me and he tries to talk to me. Like he's trying to make everything okay for us again. And as much as I want that, I-I know that that can't happen until we talk about it. But he's acting like nothing happened. Like I didn't just put him through hell. He just…He just won't talk about it. And then, when I do try to talk about it, it's like he shuts down on me."

Keith's body took control as his clenched fist began to shake, more of his emotions threatening to spill over the longer he spoke.

"His eyes get darker. His smile becomes tighter while his voice gets higher." the black paladin recounted, lifting his injured hand to gaze down at his covered palm.

"And every time he holds my hand, the moment I try to talk about it, I feel it start to shake. And then just like that, he's gone. Like…Like he just can't get away from me fast enough."

Soon enough, the image of Keith's bandage began to get blurry, the image of it corrupted by pools of water that the black paladin forced himself to blink away.

Shiro saw it. And it just broke his heart even more.

"Keith, hey." the former paladin tried to call to him gently, hoping to get close enough to provide him comfort. But just as he attempted to step towards the young leader, Keith turned away from him with a humorless scoff.

"But then again, whose fault is that?" he asked somewhat sarcastically. "I mean, I practically beat the shit out of him. I literally could've killed him! And when I wasn't damn near killing him, I was insulting him! I did all of that to him and he tries to brush it aside as if it was nothing!"

Keith could feel his eyes begin to sting and his sight became more and more blurred. He refused to acknowledge any of it, merely choosing to try and blink them away.

"But it wasn't nothing! I told him he was nothing! I made him feel worthless! I-I…I made him cry!" he lamented, his voice beginning to grow in volume.

"I made him cry and he acts like it isn't a big deal? Why the hell would he do that? Why would he-?"

The black paladin didn't give himself a chance to finish his question, clenching his eyes and mouth tightly shut as he halted his words abruptly. Forcing himself to breathe, he raised his hands to his face and covered it as he released a heavy and shaky breath in an attempt to calm himself down.

A task that felt virtually impossible.

All he could think about was the last few times Lance had come by to see him. He could recall the way his footsteps became the tiniest bit faster whenever he walked through the doors in order to reach him. And it wasn't until the red paladin sat down beside him that Keith could see everything.

The exhaustion behind his eyes.

The sadness behind his smile.

The caution whenever his hands touched his.

Hidden secrets of his face that were invisible until the black paladin wanted Lance to open them, disturbing the peace of it all. It was only then that those hidden emotions would make themselves known for seconds at a time before his right hand would try to hide it away, only choosing to make a vague excuse to leave the room when it became too much.

And then, the only thing he could see was the red paladin's tear-streaked face.

At this point, a couple of stray tears had managed to prick their way to the corners of Keith's eyes, prompting the black paladin to press his face deeper into his hands as to press them away. With a final quick shake of the head, the black paladin took his face out of his hands briefly before clasping his hands together, pressing his forehead against the concealed knuckles of his injured hand.

With a somber silence surrounding them both, Shiro gazed at the young paladin sadly as he was finally able to step towards him, making sure his footsteps were loud and slow so as to not surprise him. All it took was a few steps before he was in front of the young paladin, placing his prosthetic hand on his shoulder and holding it firmly within his palm.

The older man didn't make any attempt to talk, wanting to give the young man in front of him a chance to say something when he felt ready to do so.

"I want to believe him, Shiro." Keith finally rejoined, his voice still a bit hoarse but not as watery as it had become before. "I really, really do. More than anything."

After a moment, Keith finally lifted his face and opened his eyes once again, his gaze downcast.

"But I can't sit back and act like everything is fine with us when I know that it's not." the young paladin confessed sadly.

A look of understanding appeared on Shiro's face as he took in Keith's red-rimmed eyes, feeling the change in the paladin's posture from where he was holding him.

"Come on." Shiro instructed, moving his hand to the back of Keith's shoulder as he led him back to the bed. The black paladin made no attempt to go against the older man as he followed him wordlessly. After Shiro made it a point to move his uniform further up on the bed for him to sit, the black paladin silently plopped down onto the mattress as Shiro sat back in his original spot.

Shiro shot a glance at Keith as the paladin's eyes were still drawn down, an expression of sadness still very much on his face. The former paladin's own eyes became saddened the longer he looked at him, thinking back to his conversation with Lance. Even now, he couldn't get over just how traumatized and upset the red paladin had become due to the events of the Astral Plane.

It was something that bothered him the entire time that they spoke.

But the thing that bothered Shiro the most about everything wasn't the amount of pain and grief it had given Lance.

No.

It was the doubt it caused in Lance about Keith. It was the fact that Honerva's takeover of Keith left Lance so hurt and confused that he honestly began to believe that the black paladin hated him as much as Honerva made him say he did.

"If I'm being completely honest, the only other person who I believed actually cared was him."

"But now, I don't know."

Fast forward to now, Keith was right next to him and was proving the exact opposite. He had spent the last few minutes watching his brother render himself to tears over Lance. Here he was, lamenting over Lance's possibly fragile mental state all the while he was actively disregarding his own.

Shiro doesn't think he's ever seen two people be hurt so deeply and yet still care about each other just as much. And he would definitely consider it touching if the circumstances surrounding it weren't so cruel.

All this pain, grief, and doubt because of one wicked person.

"Well," Shiro started aloud. "I can see now why Lance's behavior would bother you so much."

The silence between the two men remained for a few seconds before the black paladin finally found it within him to respond.

"I broke him, Shiro."

The older man immediately whipped his head to the young paladin, eyes widened in surprise at the black paladin's statement.

"No, you didn't." Shiro immediately consoled, placing his hand back on Keith's shoulder.

"Yes, I did." Keith replied, a quiet anger finding a place within his eyes among the sadness. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees as he clasped his injured hand within the other.

"The only reason Lance is like this at all is because of me. Because I was the one who hurt him and insulted him."

Keith forced himself to blink as the familiar stinging in his eyes made a reappearance.

"It's like, I'm trying so hard to reach out and let him know that he doesn't need to put up an act with me. That in spite of everything that happened, he could still talk to me and we could keep moving forward. But it's like I'm never able to get through to him because he runs." he illuminated, grazing one of his fingernails across the surface of his bandage repeatedly.

"It's almost like…he wants to stand by me, but he can't stand to be around me." Keith whispered sadly.

Shiro's eyebrows furrowed even more, his brother's statement doing nothing but increasing the sadness he already felt for him. He watched as Keith's eyes slipped shut as he buried his face in his hand.

"I'm sorry." Keith spoke, his voice muffled. "I know that sounded pretty fucking stupid."

Shiro immediately laid his hand on Keith's back, rubbing it up and down as he did so.

"No." the former paladin disagreed, giving a quick shake of his head. "It didn't."

He heard Keith release another sigh from behind his hands as the black paladin removed his hands from his face once again, dropping them in between his legs before he reopened his eyes. The young man remained silent for a few seconds before he finally spoke again.

"I may not have been in control of my actions or the things that I said, but it doesn't change the fact that Lance is literally walking on eggshells around me. And it's been bugging the hell out of me."

"I can imagine." Shiro remarked, taking in the bothered expression that currently plagued Keith's face.

"Hey." he called, prompting Keith to turn his head to face him. "It may not feel like it right now, but everything's going to work out between you guys."

The black paladin lowered his eyebrows.

"Will it?" he asked gravely, his voice a mixture of skepticism and exhaustion.

"Yes." Shiro maintained. "You and Lance are coming off of two completely different ends of the same traumatic experience. When Lance fought off against you in the Astral Plane, he wasn't fighting Honerva, at least not physically. He was fighting you. He had to fend for himself against your blows and protect himself from your attacks. Physical, emotional, and verbal."

It wasn't long before Keith bit down on his tongue, turning away from Shiro once again to peer at the floor as a wave of guilt crash landed within his stomach. As he continued to look down, he felt Shiro place his metal hand on his knee, the cold sensation from the metal seeping through the fabric of his sweatpants as he felt goosebumps begin to form.

"But Lance knew, Keith." the older man stated. "He knew that that wasn't you and that you were being made to do and say all of those things. Now, as for what's making Lance do the things that he's doing right now, I honestly can't say nor do I know why he's doing it. But it sounds to me like he's trying to suppress everything he's feeling by focusing on other things. Things that he thinks are more important."

Those last two words were enough for Keith to turn back to Shiro, his eyes startled at the implication.

"But why?" Keith asked desperately. "What the hell would he consider more important than what he went through?"

You, Shiro thought to himself. But he wasn't going to give his brother another thing to be guilty about.

"People process trauma in different ways. And it's not always the healthiest. Especially if it's a trauma that they themselves aren't ready to deal with." he advised. "We just have to trust that he'll come to either of us when he's ready."

Keith exhaled harshly through his nose, raising one of his hands to rub at his eyes.

"I know." he concurred reluctantly. As much as he knew that Shiro was right, the idea of letting Lance continue to actively disregard his own trauma just didn't sit right with him. Especially when he was the cause of him even doing it in the first place.

"I just…"

"I know, I know." the older man consoled as he scooted closer to Keith and rubbed his hand up and down his arm, already knowing what the younger man was trying to say.

"I know that you want to be there for him and that you want to help. But right now, all we can do is be patient and give him the space he needs to work through things. He'll let us know when he's ready to talk."

The half Galran removed his hand from his face as he turned to peer at Shiro.

"How?" Keith questioned.

Shiro gave him a soft smile.

"You'll know." he replied.

The black paladin looked at Shiro for a moment before he shifted his gaze to the side. A part of him wanted to question what exactly Shiro meant, but he knew that it was probably something he couldn't question him on or at the very least wouldn't get a straight answer.

So he simply turned his head back to face the front of the room as he gave a simple nod.

Shiro looked at Keith for a second before he pulled the younger man into his side, rubbing his arm soothingly as he shifted so that Keith's head was up against his shoulder.

"Everything's gonna be fine." Shiro said reassuringly.

Keith didn't attempt to respond as he remained still in Shiro's embrace, his violet pupils trained on the floor. He knew that Shiro probably had the right idea, but that didn't stop the sense of anxiety he felt of doing just that. Letting Lance stew in whatever negative thoughts he was having was the last thing he wanted to do, especially when he remembered everything he did and said to the red paladin.

But he also didn't want to push Lance too hard to talk and have him shut down on him. And considering the fact that he could've lost him just a few days ago, the mere idea of not being able to see his right hand was going to drive him insane.

"I CAN'T LOSE YOU!"

"AND I WON'T LOSE YOU!"

Keith closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose as he slumped into Shiro, allowing himself to put the full weight of his head on the older man's shoulder.

He was exhausted. And he'd give anything for things to be different.

For him to not be hurt.

For Lance to not be hurting.

For him to have never hurt Lance the way he did.

For him and Lance to just…be.

That was all enough for the black paladin to release another sigh, prompting Shiro to look down at him in mild concern.

"Hey." the older man called softly, tapping Keith's arm to garner his attention. "How about we stop by the cafeteria and get something in you? The food quality here must've been terrible."

Keith couldn't help but to let out a semblance of a playful "hmph," his mouth already watering at the prospect of some actual edible food.

"Yeah, no shit." he let himself quip, feeling the vibrations of Shiro's chuckles soon afterwards.

"Alright. Then when you're all set, let's get you out of here. I can only imagine how exhausted you are of this place."

The black paladin paused, his mind taking him back to when he first woke up. The only thing that kept flashing through his mind was Lance, his watery eyes and smile looking back at him as he tried to deny every bit of pain he felt.

"I'm okay. Everything's okay."

Keith felt his chest tighten slightly.

"You have no idea."

---

"People process trauma in different ways."

"We just have to trust that he'll come to either of us when he's ready."

Shiro's words of advice was all the black paladin could hear as he walked down the hallway, trying to let his mind wander away from the current feelings that plagued him.

The Atlas captain had done his best to keep him distracted, whether it was catching him up to speed on the search for Honerva or filling him in on whatever catastrophe was nearly avoided when he was bedridden. He even got a chuckle out of Keith when he recounted Slav coming to him with his reality nonsense, the older man's constant eye twitching lessening his stress just a little.

But he knew that those little moments of calm could only last for so long.

Eventually, after scarfing down a more than edible meal in the cafeteria, he and Shiro went their separate ways, the latter having to meet up with Sam and Coran, but not before being reminded to rest for the day before getting back into his activities.

Something that the black paladin, albeit reluctantly, promised to uphold.

But even with the slight fatigue in his body and ache in his bones, the half Galran wasn't ready to retire to his room for the day. And even if he wanted to, there were too many things going around in his head for him to even think of relaxing. So after letting out a light huff and no specific location in mind, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and started to walk.

For the most part, his walk was uneventful; All he found himself doing was going through various areas of the ship and watching what unfolded in every corner and room of every hall.

Sometimes it was weaponry being constructed.

Sometimes it was inventory being taken.

Other times it was people training and others practicing their aim with their firearms.

And more often than not, it was just people trying to fit in bits of normality in between the harsh reality of preparing for the next battle.

Regular conversation.

Bits of laughter.

Heading in groups to get food.

Even hiding in corners to have an intimate moment. The only thing Keith would look away from every time.

However, that wasn't to say that Keith's walk wasn't filled with interaction. It was only a couple of minutes into his walk when he was walking past one of the labs and someone walked past him, but not before shooting him a smile and saying "Welcome back, soldier." And from that moment on, like clockwork, every few minutes, someone else would either approach him directly or say something to him as they walked past them.

There would even be times where he would receive a clap on the back or a quick squeeze of the shoulder or even a high-five.

Pretty soon, Keith's once quiet walk around the ship became not so quiet at all.

"Hey, Keith's awake!"

"Good to see you're okay."

"How are you feeling?"

"We thought we lost you for a minute."

"Welcome back!"

"How's your head?"

"Don't push yourself too hard!"

"Hope you're feeling better!"

And as much as the black paladin appreciated all of the well wishes and greetings from everyone he passed by, he would be lying if he said that he didn't feel a bit off put and almost weirded out by all of it. Especially since a majority of the people on the ship that talked to him were people he never saw in his life.

Or at the very least, he saw them in passing and forgot about their faces just as quickly.

Honestly, it felt as though someone had stuck an LED sign on his back saying "Just came out of a week long coma! Say hi!"

But then again, he was the leader of Voltron and the paladin of the Black Lion. And his seizure happened on Atlas grounds, so it wasn't really a stretch for word to have gotten around about his condition. And if the team had been sitting vigil waiting for word on him the whole time in the moments after the fact, then word definitely got around..

Especially…

"I don't need any space! Listen, I really am fine!"

The black paladin couldn't stop himself from wincing as the sense of unease filled in the pit of his stomach. Neither Lance or Shiro had given any specific details about what happened after he collapsed, but he could only imagine the fear that he put Lance through.

Even if at the same time, he didn't want to.

Eventually, Keith found himself where he was now, walking through one of the hallways of the dorms, the only sound filling the area being that of his own slow footsteps. He knew that Shiro was right and that he should be letting things happen naturally, but that didn't stop his mind from going to a hundred different places concerning the red paladin.

Was he doing okay?

How long does he think he can keep this up?

Is he putting up a front with everyone else or just him?

It was taking literally everything in the black paladin to not go down into a spiral, especially for the sake of his still healing head.

But how could he afford to think about anything else when the man he was in love with was practically about to send himself into a mental breakdown? A breakdown that no doubt would be caused by him.

Keith stopped in his tracks, placing his hands on top of his head, closing his eyes, and tilting his head back slightly as he released a tired groan in the middle of the hallway, his voice bouncing back to him off of the walls of the narrow hallway.

Relax, Keith, he instructed himself. Just relax.

The half Galran then released a soft sigh as he dropped his hands and brought his head back to its original position, opening his eyes again as he continued his walk out of the hallway. After a couple of minutes, he found himself about to exit the hallway as he began to approach the Atlas' lounge area.

Thankfully, the area was mostly empty with just the occasional person passing through to get to their destination and a couple of others in a further part of the room in lounge chairs away from the larger orange sofas that were in the center of the room. As his eyes continued to scan the room as he walked, the young man immediately found himself frozen on the floor as his eyes caught sight of someone.

Right in front of his eyes, sitting on the furthest side of the couch closest to him, was Lance. He was leaned up against the arm of the couch, his head off to the side as it laid on top of his hand. For the most part, his body seemed relaxed as he was scrolling through something on his phone, his thumb lazily gliding on the screen.

But it wasn't until Keith took a couple of steps closer and actually looked at the younger man's face for a little bit that he started to get worried.

His eyelids were slightly lidded and the eyes themselves appeared to be glazed, as if whatever was on the phone screen wasn't actually being looked at with the red paladin's blue spheres. And if Keith moved his own pupils down a centimeter or two, it was hard to miss the faint dark circles that were his eyes.

Aside from that, his hair was slightly disheveled and the man was just overall exuding exhaustion.

This was the first time Keith was seeing Lance like this since he woke up and the sight alone was enough for his chest to hurt. And whether or not Lance's demeanor was from the stress of everything or him giving himself a chance to take off the mask that he put on in front of the young leader was something Keith had to force himself not to look too deeply into.

Nevertheless, the black paladin didn't think twice as his body snapped out of its stupor and began to walk towards the red paladin. As he slowly approached his teammate, he couldn't help the way his heart began to jack hammer in his chest the closer he got to him.

"Lance?" he called out, saying his name gently enough so he wouldn't scare him but firmly enough so that he would be heard.

Instantly, the aforementioned paladin jumped slightly as he dropped his phone in his lap, looking around the room to find the culprit who said his name. It only took a couple of seconds for his blue orbs to land on Keith, his eyes widening in surprise at the older man's sudden appearance.

And with the younger paladin now facing him, Keith didn't miss the faint trace of his bruise.

"Keith?" Lance asked, clearly bewildered. "What are you doing here? And what happened to your patient clothes?"

Keith paused for a moment before letting out an unexpected chuckle at the last question, the sheer randomness of it brushing all of his anxieties to the side and making him want to kiss the confused expression off of the younger paladin's face.

"Well," he started with a smirk. "Hospital get-ups aren't exactly my style."

Keith's demeanor must've begun to rub off on Lance as the younger man's body visibly relaxed, his facial expressions exuding "calm" rather than "startled" as small traces of a smile began to etch themselves on to his face.

"I see." Lance replied, a slight tease to his tone as he finally lifted his head from off his hand and leaned upright. "Do I have to tell Shiro that you escaped from the medical bay and are on the run?"

The recovering paladin raised a lone eyebrow briefly at the red paladin's question as he let out another chuckle.

"You could." Keith answered sarcastically. "But he wouldn't take me back."

This time, it was Lance's turn to raise one of his eyebrows, crossing his arms as he looked up at the black paladin in genuine confusion.

"Uh, and why not?" he inquired.

Keith shifted his weight onto one foot as he leaned slightly to the side, his eyes never coming off of Lance as his smile slightly grew. But before he had the chance to say anything, the red paladin stopped him with a more confused expression.

"Wait." he interjected as he stretched out the word. He looked at Keith silently for a couple of seconds before his confused expression turned into that of a deadpanned one.

"Shiro broke you out, didn't he?"

The black paladin had to hold back a bark of laughter at Lance's hypothesis, the task proving useless the more he looked at the younger man's expression.

"No." Keith chuckled. "You can't exactly break out of something that you were released from."

He watched as the red paladin's eyebrows crumpled, confusion taking hold of his features as he tried to decode his statement. But it only took a few seconds of thinking before his eyes widened once again as his blue orbs pierced Keith's purple ones.

"Wait a minute." Lance started. "W-Were you-?"

Keith didn't even bother letting Lance get his question out as he immediately nodded his head with a corresponding soft smile.

"Yeah. I was discharged just about an hour ago."

Lance's eyes grew even wider at the news, his mouth dropping in utter shock. So much so that he spent the next few seconds trying to formulate any words to respond with. Eventually, he found them.

"W-Wait, seriously?!" the younger paladin inquired, hoping to God that this wasn't some cruel prank. Keith could only smile fondly as he nodded his head.

"Yeah."

And just like that, a growing smile appeared on the red paladin's face.

"Oh my god!" Lance marveled, getting up from his seat and taking a couple of steps towards the black paladin before he wrapped his arms around him tightly, plopping his chin on his shoulder.

"That's amazing!"

The black paladin let out a small laugh as he wrapped his own arms around Lance's frame, firm enough so that the younger man was against him but just loose enough that he wasn't squeezing him against him. Ever since he woke up from his coma, the red paladin had made it a point to show a bit more physical affection, most of which included hugs like this one. And Keith would be remiss if he said he didn't enjoy the feeling of having Lance be so close to him like this.

Especially if he considered that this is pretty much the closest the two could be towards each other without certain lines being crossed.

But as he ran his hand up and down Lance's spine, Keith could feel his smile slowly begin to drop from his face, his previous anxieties beginning to creep back up to the surface.

He knew that Lance was genuinely happy to see him, that much was obvious. But it left him wondering:

Did he just provide Lance with another distraction?

Did he just give him another thing to focus on to take his mind off of the pain?

Keith hated that this was immediately where his mind jumped to. And he hated even more that he couldn't even say anything to Lance about it. Not that he would accuse him straight up like the way he was thinking, but still.

Be patient.

Just be patient.

The black paladin was immediately pulled from his thoughts as he felt Lance place his hands on his waist, his touch sending a quick jolt through Keith's spine. But once he realized Lance was about to pull away, he immediately plastered his previous smile back on his face as he held onto Lance's arms.

"So," the red paladin started, his eyes glossing up and down Keith's face. "You're really okay now, right? No risk of a setback or anything?"

"No. Just a clean bill of health." the black paladin answered with a quick shake of the head. "Though, Shiro wants me to take it easy for the day before I get back into anything."

Keith couldn't stop his heart from jumping as he listened to Lance's chuckle.

"Of course, he does." he quipped. "I'm honestly surprised you let him."

Keith shrugged.

"Well, he already had a bag of clothes ready for me when he came in and saw me about to put my uniform back on. Realistically, did I really have that much of a choice after that?"

"Hey, you know how Shiro is." Lance defended, his teasing smile turning into a soft one. "He's just looking out for you, like always. Cut him some slack! He was really worried about you."

Those few words were enough for the smile to slip from Keith's face once again, his face becoming serious.

"Yeah, I know. I worried everyone." he concurred quietly. He then took his right hand and placed it firmly on Lance's shoulder.

Keith's face never changed as Lance looked back at him with slightly startled eyes.

"Especially you." he stated, grazing his thumb up and down the side of Lance's neck, a move that was way too intimate for the very public setting that the two found themselves in. But Keith remained unfazed as he felt the heat that began to come off of the aforementioned paladin's skin the longer his finger touched him.

"I'm really sorry I put you through that."

It took Lance a few seconds to process what was said as all he could do was blink his eyes rapidly. But once he did, his eyebrows creased in worry as he began to shake his head.

"What? Keith, no!" Lance blurted. He then immediately raised his own hand and placed it on top of Keith's, holding it carefully so as to not put too much pressure on his injury.

"I told you before. None of this is your fault!" he maintained. "You didn't ask to get hurt! You didn't ask for any of this!"

Keith didn't respond, opting to simply look down at the red paladin as every second passed between them.

Without taking his eyes off of him, he retracted his thumb from the side of Lance's neck and proceeded to press it across Lance's knuckles, feeling more of him. He could feel his right hand's breath hitch as his shoulders rose slightly.

"Neither did you." Keith professed, his voice low for only them to hear.

The red paladin looked at Keith in slight exasperation as he tilted his head slightly to the side. With surprising ease, he slid his index finger from underneath Keith's thumb and proceeded to wrap it around the pad of it, linking the two of them.

"Keith, come on." he sighed. "I told you I'm fine."

"Are you?"

Keith could immediately feel himself turn pale from the words he had just let slip out, the younger paladin's startled and nearly uncomfortable expression making him feel worse.

And the way Lance's body stiffened and nearly reared back didn't make him feel any better, either.

Shit.

Of course, in a moment where he and Lance were just letting things be, his thoughts and worries from before had to make their way to the front. All Lance did was try to reassure him that he was okay.

But that was what he had always done since he woke up, giving out every piece of reassurance while accepting none in return.

And it was all so that he could brush aside the pain.

Keith couldn't stop himself from gripping the sleeve of Lance's uniform, doing his best to ground himself.

Come on, man. Cool it.

He was supposed to be patient.

He was supposed to be giving Lance the chance to come to him, not the opportunity to push him away. If Lance was going to be next to him, it was important to the black paladin that he at least felt safe with him.

Especially after the Astral Plane where he made Lance be at his least safest with him.

As the grip he had on Lance's sleeve softened, Keith's pupils narrowed in on Lance's eyes, taking in the faint darkness that shadowed his lower eyelids. The black paladin became concerned immediately when he considered that the last time Lance came to visit him, there weren't any signs of dark circles.

At least from what he could see.

So what changed?

"Your eyes."

Lance knitted his eyebrows together, the black paladin's sudden statement throwing him off.

"What?" he asked with evident confusion, alongside an underlying anxiety for the older paladin's response.

With great reluctance, Keith gently pulled his hand off of Lance's shoulder and out of his hold, bringing it towards himself as he pointed to underneath his right eye.

"Your undereyes are getting dark." he informed Lance in a soft matter-of-fact tone. "Are you sure you're okay?"

His answer must've given Lance some semblance of internal ease as he felt the younger man's body relax underneath his hold, his expression looking less anxious as he allowed himself to stand near him again.

"Oh, that." Lance hesitated, his eyes shifting downwards away from Keith's gaze.

"Yeah. I, uh…" he started, turning away from the black paladin as he began to walk back to his side of the couch where he originally sat, plopping down onto the cushions as he immediately clasped his hands and landed them between his open legs.

"I've just been having some sleep struggles lately."

It didn't take long for Keith to follow behind the red paladin, his purple orbs of concern never coming off of him as he walked to Lance's end of the couch and gently sat next to him, making sure to leave a good inch of space between them as if to give his right hand some space to breathe.

He had to suppress every urge not to tap his knee against Lance's.

"Is it anything that I should be worried about?" Keith questioned, doing his best to keep his voice as neutral and unbothered as humanly possible.

"Nah." Lance replied with a shake of his head. "Just been in and out of sleep is all. I just need to come up with a better sleep schedule."

Even with the smile that appeared on his face, the black paladin could feel the exhaustion behind it. He couldn't help but to grip the fabric of his sweatpants at the sight of it.

"Well, hopefully you find it soon. We don't know the next time we're gonna get called to action." he stated, prompting the red paladin to lift his eyebrows.

"Oh, you don't have to tell me twice. Trust me." Lance shot back, his tone as dry as it was sarcastic. "I'm not gonna be good to anyone on the battlefield."

Keith wasn't able to contain the slight grimace that took hold of his face at Lance's statement, a new air of silence falling between the two young men. Much to his dismay, he was completely stuck on Lance's last few words.

"I'm not gonna be good to anyone on the battlefield."

Even though there was a small chance that he was reading into things, Keith was completely and utterly bothered by those ten simple words.

Lance just told him that he was having issues sleeping., so him having to pilot Red while sleep deprived was the definition of an unideal scenario.

Obviously.

So if that's the case, it would have made more sense for him to say he wouldn't be good on the battlefield right now.

This moment.

In his current condition.

But he didn't.

Instead, he just said it as if he was never good to anyone on the battlefield. As if he already didn't contribute anything to him or to the team. And not a single thing about that sat right with the black paladin.

If anything, this just gave Keith one more thing to worry about in terms of Lance's evident denial and self-deprecation. And Lance was absolutely none the wiser as his gaze settled on the gap between his feet, not realizing the struggle his leader was facing over him.

Keith's eyes could only glisten the longer he stared at the red paladin.

Could he feel his sharp eyes on him?

Or was he just that exhausted and conflicted that the feel of Keith's eyes hadn't registered?

And once again, Keith couldn't reach out to him the way he wanted to. Not without potentially losing him for God knows how long.

So all he could do was blink his eyelids and breathe.

"Then, why don't you do that?"

It only took a second for Lance's eyes to finally rise from the floor before he turned his head to the black paladin, his face and brows scrunched in confusion.

"What?" the red paladin inquired.

"Make that sleep schedule." Keith answered, his voice matter-of-fact. "Go to sleep. Get some rest."

Just as quickly as his eyes rose, Lance's eyes lowered to his lap, unsure.

"I…" he started to say, but was cut off.

"Back on the castleship, you would put on some music as you went to sleep. Right?" asked Keith.

Lance's eyes widened in surprise as he turned to face the black paladin once again. When the team was still on the castleship, Lance always made it a point of declaring the importance of maintaining his strict facial and bedtime routine, especially on long mission days where everyone was exhausted to the bone and he complained to anyone who would listen.

But whenever he did, he was always met with the redundant collective groans and eye rolls. Especially from Keith.

So for him to actually remember that he does, in fact, listen to music while he slept was surprising, to say the least.

But that alone didn't stop the rush of warmth that flew through his chest.

He…actually remembered, Lance thought, bewildered.

The young sharpshooter was still so taken aback by this new information that he forgot that his teammate was still sitting in front of him, waiting for a response.

"Right?" Keith asked again, this time a bit louder. Lance jumped slightly as he quickly nodded in response.

"Then what's stopping you? I know things have been so fucking stressful lately and rather you like to admit it or not, I'm partially responsible for it. And I know that we still have to be on our guard. But after everything that you've gone through, you have got to slow down."

The black paladin allowed himself to lean towards his teammate, his gaze becoming more and more intense the longer he looked at him.

"Sometimes, after going through something crazy or intense, the best thing you can do is just take a minute and let your mind go blank. Take that time and let yourself breathe so that when you get back to it, it's easier to handle." Keith portrayed, his voice gentle and firm.

He could feel his heart hammering in his chest as Lance remained silent, more than likely still absorbing Keith's words. He watched as a look of confliction flashed on the red paladin's face the longer he thought. Finally, Lance released a light chuckle before turning to face the black paladin once again.

"I'm guessing you're talking from experience, huh?" he finally responded, a small smile appearing on his face.

Keith couldn't help but to give a smile of his own.

"Yeah." he replied. "I am."

Lance looked at Keith for a second more before facing forward, giving himself a moment before letting out a deep sigh.

"Alright." he finally said, beginning to rise out of his seat, prompting Keith to look up at him as he stood. "I guess I'll take your advice."

Keith did his best to keep his face neutral to conceal his surprise.

"Will you?" he asked, beginning to stand, as well. Lance gave him a shrug.

"Yeah. I mean, it's worth a shot."

The black paladin nodded his head in acknowledgement. A part of him couldn't help but to be the slightest bit wary of Lance's lack of refusal to rest, but he could just be that exhausted that he knew better than to fight it.

Conflicting thoughts that wandered within Keith's mind, but he would force himself to keep down. For Lance's sake and his own.

"Okay." Keith responded.

"Okay." Lance said back.

The two paladins looked at each other in silence for a couple of seconds before Lance broke the contact first, turning away from the older paladin.

"Well, I guess I'll head out then." he declared. "See you when I see you?"

The young leader nodded at him.

"You definitely will." Keith proclaimed, making Lance let out a soft "hmph" in response.

"Okay."

With a final look, Lance turned away from Keith as he picked up his phone from the couch and placed it in his pants pocket as he began to walk away. However, he wouldn't find himself going very far as he heard his name being called.

"And Lance?"

The red paladin paused his footsteps as he turned to look back at Keith, who hadn't left his spot as he looked at him nervously.

"Just… if there's anything that you need to talk about, and I do mean anything, just come find me."

One of Keith's hands immediately slipped into a fist.

"Or Shiro." he added at the last second.

The younger marksmen merely blinked before another smile appeared on his face, nodding in acknowledgement at Keith's proposal before turning back around to walk out of the room.

As the black paladin's eyes remained on Lance's retreating form, he could feel the way his stomach shifted uncomfortably as he looked on. And as irrational as it was, he had started to feel irritated at his mouth and mind for having to add Shiro's name to his proposal.

It wasn't like he didn't want Lance to turn to Shiro. That was the furthest thing from the truth.

It just felt as though adding Shiro's name into the mix was the only thing keeping Lance from having that anxious and distressed look on his face at the idea of going to Keith for solace. And the sting of that truth was sharper than any pain Honerva had unleashed within the confines of his skull.

Keith was aware of the underlying selfishness that appeared within that truth, but that's what it was.

The truth.

The truth of this whole matter was that he wanted Lance to come to him. He wanted him to be able to talk with him, be with him, and to actively want to be around him without any feelings of distress, sadness, and anxiety.

He wanted him to be as open and transparent with him about how he felt as he was before they ever went inside Honerva's mind.

Before Lance felt like the only person he could be honest with was his own brother.

It was selfish. And he knew that.

And even with that selfishness, he knew better than to act upon it.

He knew better than to enact it.

He knew that he had no right to it.

Every second of agony Lance tried to suppress. Every emotion he tried to deny, every bit of stress that he felt was because of the words that were forced out of his own lips.

Because of the beatings that were enforced by his own hands without his free will.

And he was actively struggling because of it. So the only thing he could do now was to wait in the wings, be patient, and maintain his trust in Lance. To maintain the idea that he would come to him when he was ready before it was too late.

Before they ran out of time.

And with the sound of the red paladin's footsteps disappearing, Keith made himself take a deep breath as he stood within the quiet corridor. In spite of everything that was said between them, a small part of him told him to be hopeful.

After all, he had convinced Lance to go ahead and rest. He managed to get the man he loved to rest after God knows how many days and nights of exhaustion, so that had to count for something, right?

Lance didn't try to push back and tell him that he was fine, so that had to be considered some semblance of progress.

At least, that was what Keith told himself.

Either way, it was never Keith's choice to make. It was Lance's. Just like how every other choice he's going to make after this moment pertaining to the two of them and Lance himself was going to be his choice.

He just had to trust him.

---

He just had to trust him.

He just had to trust that things would start to get better from here.

But they didn't.

Because there was Lance, right in front of him, and he didn't look the slightest bit better from when he last saw him.

After their conversation in the common area, Keith hadn't seen Lance at all within the last two days since their talk. A part of him desperately wanted to go to his room to see if he was resting, but he didn't want to risk crossing a boundary so he kept his distance.

Not that he wanted to.

So in the meantime, he just simply went back to his room for the day to rest his tired bones. As much as he wanted to move around and not become stuck in his bed, he knew that Shiro wasn't going to have any of that and he wouldn't put it past the older man to roll him into a blanket burrito and clip him to the middle of his bed so that he wouldn't escape.

And something told him he was gonna have an innocent smile on his face as he did so.

So he just decided to take his advice. At least that way, he didn't have to deal with more random people coming up to him and talking to him, which only weirded him out and annoyed him the more it happened. From that point on, his day consisted of laying in bed and talking to Kosmo until he passed out.

After his "mandatory" day of rest, he was back in his uniform and back on his feet, ready to get back to ending the war. Granted, most of the stuff he did was relatively light, he didn't mind it all that much. To him, he was still contributing help to turn the war's tide.

He wasn't a near vegetable stuck in a hospital bed anymore.

When he wasn't training to get his strength back up, he could be found discussing ideas and going over intel with Shiro. And sometimes, he'd be discussing coalition efforts with his mom and Kolivan. Eventually, he would end up catching up with the rest of the team as he went around the ship.

He ran into Hunk and Pidge as the yellow paladin continued to recreate Altean delicacies for the colony Alteans and was immediately swept up into a tight and watery group hug that, while appreciated, was not gonna do any favors for the black paladin's spine.

Coran saw him on the Atlas deck after coming from the bathroom, immediately greeting the young man with a bright smile, an Altean expression that Keith couldn't really understand, and an affectionate but hard slap on the back.

Again, not very good for his spine.

He then ended up passing by Allura in the hallway as she went to talk to Pidge. The interaction was pretty uneventful, as all it consisted of was an exchange of greetings, a couple of words about Keith's recovery, where each of them were off to, and an exchange of goodbyes.

But Lance? Nowhere to be seen.

Despite his concerns, Keith did his best not to let it bother him too badly. For all he knew, the red paladin could've been actually catching up on some much-needed rest. And considering Lance didn't put up that much of a fight at his suggestion, he thought that he actually followed through with it.

He had even gone as far as to ask Shiro if he had seen Lance throughout the day. According to him, he had actually messaged the red paladin about where he was and Lance had told him he was in his room. The former paladin had even gone to visit the younger man and sure enough, he was in some lounge clothes, laying in bed and tucked under the covers.

Thank God, Keith thought in relief. He's actually getting some rest. He's gonna get better.

Or so he thought.

Because fast forward to now, when Keith looked up from his tray and his gaze caught sight of the red paladin, his stomach dropped like a boulder.

Because the Lance from two days ago was not the Lance he was looking at right now.

His posture was slouched.

His movements were sluggish.

His feet occasionally dragging with every other step.

And his face…

Thankfully, the dark circles that had begun plaguing his eyes seemed to have lessened. But for everything else, Keith couldn't help but to worry.

Lance's face, which always radiated cheer and humor, was now serious and emotionless. His once vibrant eyes still dull and distant, as if he were looking through everything and everyone his gaze touched.

There was even a moment where the black paladin almost launched out of his seat when he saw Lance almost trip over himself and drop his tray of food, only being able to catch himself a few seconds before the tray completely fell out of his grasp. And as he finally sat down, he could see the fear that took hold of him within his eyes before they just as quickly reverted back to their distant state.

He looked tired.

Hell, not even tired.

He looked…almost numb.

The black paladin could only look on helplessly from his seat as he continued to stare at the red paladin, watching him poke and prod at his food. He could feel his heart twisting in his chest the longer he looked at the younger paladin's despondent expression, but he just couldn't find it in him to tear his eyes away.

He hated this.

He hated that Lance looked like this.

And he hated that there was only so much he could do.

All because the best thing he could do was wait.

Wait for Lance to come to him. For Lance to feel like he can bear his soul about everything that happened between them.

For Lance to be ready.

And Keith would be more than willing to wait forever.

But now, playing the waiting game wasn't in the cards for him anymore, not when it seemed to be making things so much worse and so much more fragile.

How much longer was he supposed to watch and wait on the sidelines?

Until Lance became less and less of himself?

Until he suppressed everything so much that he couldn't feel or react anymore and wouldn't until he broke?

Until the emotional distance between them became so big that the slightest bit of friction could cause the end of everything?

Keith's fingers clenched around his fork at the idea.

Shiro meant well and he didn't want to lose Lance by coming on too strong, but he just couldn't afford to wait this out anymore. Every day that passes when they're on this ship is another day where Lance feels more isolated; becomes more and more avoidant. And they have no clue of the things that could happen to either or both of them the next time they're sent beyond the Atlas walls.

Either way, the risk remained the same:

Losing Lance.

Just then, he watched as the red paladin got up from his seat and dumped the untouched contents of his tray into the trash before exiting the very doors he walked through. And as the doors closed behind him and the bustle of cadets and personnel continued to move around him, a determined look emerged on Keith's face.

I can't let that happen.

---

Keith's adamance remained strong as he leaned back against the wall outside of the meeting room, arms crossed and foot propped flat against the wall as he waited for the sound of more approaching footsteps.

A couple of hours after he finished lunch (or at least tried to), he had gotten a message from Shiro alerting him of a team meeting to discuss their next steps in the fight against Honerva, as well as to disclose the information they had gathered when they infiltrated her mind.

The meeting wouldn't be for another forty minutes, yet Keith was already the first one in front of the doors.

And now he stands, head bowed and eyes shut as the silence of the currently empty corridor allowed the black paladin some much needed refuge for his thoughts.

Especially the ones pertaining to a certain paladin.

After watching Lance in the cafeteria, the half Galran knew for certain that he couldn't let Lance's suffering continue anymore, nor could he allow either of them to continue walking on eggshells around the topics that plagued them both.

His resolve was clear:

They needed to talk.

He just needed to find a way to get him alone without making him feel ambushed. But he just couldn't figure out how to go about it. Keith groaned inwardly as he tilted his head back, the back of it connecting to the wall with a soft thud.

"Keith?"

The aforementioned paladin opened his eyes and turned his head to locate the voice's source, his eyes immediately being met with light purple and long blonde hair steadily approaching him.

"You shouldn't be bonking your head after a brain injury! We don't need you going back into another coma!"

The black paladin's moment of shock immediately dissipated as he let out a chuckle.

"I'm fine, Romelle." he reassured her. "It didn't even hit the wall that hard."

"That doesn't mean you can never be too careful."

The young leader gave a sarcastic hum and smirk before turning his head back to the front as he looked at the ground. It felt good to laugh for a second, even if it was due to the fact that he was being scolded.

"I'll remember that." he quipped.

He could hear Romelle's footsteps getting closer and closer, not bothering to turn his head back to see how close she had gotten to him. And that choice prevented him from seeing the concern that grew on the Altean's face when she looked at him.

"And speaking of 'careful', are you okay?" she inquired, her footsteps finally stopping as she was now close enough to the black paladin.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good." Keith replied, albeit a bit too quickly. "Better actually. Haven't had any side effects or any headaches, so I guess I'm back to normal."

The young woman blinked at the young paladin before giving him a tight smile.

"That's good to hear." Romelle replied. "But, that wasn't exactly what I was referring to."

Keith's eyes shot up from the ground before he turned back to face the Altean, a look of confusion and mild surprise appearing on his face. The young woman crossed her arms and shifted her weight so that her arm was pressed against the wall before she parted her lips to speak again.

"When I first saw you, it looked as though something was troubling you. And honestly, you look…nervous. And that isn't like you at all."

The black paladin immediately bit his tongue, not expecting the young Altean to be so perceptive. He began to feel a sense of exposure that made him feel uneasy.

"So, how are you feeling? Really?" she questioned.

Keith looked at the young Altean thoughtfully before shutting his eyes and letting out a long winded sigh. At this rate, trying to evade questioning or hide anything from her would be a losing battle, so why bother putting up a fight? Seeing no way out of it, he turned his head back to the front as he peered at the ground once again.

"Well," he started. "I guess you can say I've been thinking a lot about certain things. And I've been feeling pretty apprehensive about it."

"Does any of this have to do something with Pointy Chin?" Romelle asked, shifting her body so her back was planted against the wall, matching Keith. The half Galran nodded at her question.

"It has everything to do with Lance." he confessed, prompting Romelle's eyebrows to furrow in confusion.

"What happened? I thought things were okay with you two, even after everything that happened." the Altean probed, her question making Keith bite the inside of his cheek for a moment.

"I wish it was that simple." he stated simply.

It wasn't hard for Romelle to detect the sadness within the black paladin's tone.

"Keith, what's going on?" she inquired carefully. The Altean's question was enough for one of the young paladin's hands to begin gripping the sleeve of his uniform. He wanted to tell her what was going on, but he also didn't want to say anything that Lance wouldn't want him to say to anyone that wasn't him or Shiro.

So he knew to tread the topic lightly.

"I…I'm worried about Lance." he started. "Ever since I woke up, he's been acting differently, mainly towards me. I can't really get into details, but I think what happened in the Astral Plane is affecting him worse than we realize."

Romelle's eyes shifted to the side as she became lost in thought.

"Now that you mention it, he has seemed more down than usual the last few times I saw him. But I just assumed he was still upset about the Lotor kiss." the Altean woman disclosed.

Keith immediately shook his head in response.

"Not even close."

Silence filled the air between the two before Romelle's face contorted in confusion.

"Wait, what exactly happened in the Astral Plane?" she inquired.

Now it was Keith's turn to look confused, turning his head towards the young woman.

"Allura didn't fill you in?" he asked, failing to keep the bite and faint snark out of his voice when mentioning the princess.

"No." Romelle responded, her head shaking. "She hasn't really said anything."

The black paladin was surprised by the revelation, but he didn't have time to actually think about it. All he could do was take a deep breath before turning to face the meeting room doors.

"When Honerva took control of me, she essentially made me into her soldier. And she used me to go after Lance." he began to recount, his fingers tugging on the sleeve of his uniform.

"I ended up doing and saying horrible things to him, some worse than others. I was literally forced to fight and almost killed my best friend. And all because I was under someone else's control."

Keith wasn't aware of the facial expression he was making throughout his recountment, his eyes holding the anger and sadness of the memories while the rest of his face looked nothing short of haunted.

It was almost unnerving how well the face matched the story.

Romelle was taken aback, tearful eyes bulged in shock as her heart broke all over again at the half Galran's retelling.

"Quiznak." she gasped out, reaching out and placing her hand atop of Keith's. "Keith, I am so sorry."

The black paladin didn't react to her touch, his grip still firm on his uniform as his pupils remained trained on the metal doors in front of them.

"Don't be. You weren't the one doing the mind control."

He paused, the image of Lance's fearful eyes flashing in front of his own.

"But it doesn't matter." he declared. "What's done is done. Honerva did what she did and she hurt us both. But ever since then, Lance has been…Well, let's just say he's been handling everything a bit too well."

"What do you mean?" the Altean inquired, eyebrow raising.

"Okay, I'm not gonna speak for every living person in existence, but I think anyone who went through what he went through would be struggling a lot with what happened."

Romelle scoffed.

"I know I would." she remarked, making Keith shift his eyes towards her.

"Exactly. And I know that people handle trauma differently. Hell, I'm one of them. But it's the way that Lance has been handling everything that's bothering me."

Romelle's frown deepened, already dreading the words that were about to be spoken.

"When Lance and I were talking about what happened once I woke up, he actually tried to downplay the way he held his own against me and ended up bashing himself instead. And when he did, he used the words that I said to him. That Honerva made me say to him" Keith explained.

Romelle couldn't miss the pain that stained the black paladin's voice as he recounted to her.

"It's like he internalized everything I said to him and he actually believes it."

The young Altean woman removed her hand from Keith's as she went to cross her arms, a troubled expression taking over her face.

"I don't like the sound of this." she tensed.

"It gets worse." Keith added ruefully. "When I tried to get him to open up about the things I said, he tried to downplay that, too. He looked me dead in the eye and tried to tell me he was fine and that my words only 'stung.' And now, every time I try to bring up the topic of what happened, he decides to change the topic."

"So, what? Is he trying to act like it never happened?" Romelle questioned. Keith's frown shifted to the side briefly.

"He wouldn't go that far." he claimed. "If anything, he's trying to act like everything is okay even though we both know it isn't. And if he actually acknowledges what happened, the reality he's trying to create is gonna shatter."

Romelle didn't say anything as she looked at the older man sadly. Whenever she looked at Keith, he always seemed so strong and confident, almost like he wasn't afraid of anything. But right here, in this moment, was the first time she ever saw him like this.

Distressed.

Concerned.

Scared.

And it made her hatred for Honerva grow by the tick.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked carefully, hoping not to upset him further. Keith's eyes drifted to the floor.

"What I should've done days ago." he answered, his gaze rising from the floor as he turned his head to look at Romelle fully. "I have to talk to Lance, before we get called out back to the frontlines. This can't wait anymore."

"Obviously. But if Lance was trying so hard not to talk about it, won't he try to fight you on it?" Romelle inquired.

"Probably, which is why I know I have to be careful with this. All I need is to say the wrong thing the wrong way and then…"

Keith paused, the what-if of his next words dying within his throat as the stress of it all grew. Because a reality where Lance didn't want to be around him and continued to suffer in silence was a reality he didn't want to be in.

Let alone create from his own mistakes.

The black paladin forced himself to remove the look of distress off his face as he whipped his head back to the front, not wanting Romelle to see the fuller extent of his anxiety.

"I can't let that happen." he proclaimed firmly, his voice shaking slightly on the last word.

"It won't." Romelle tried to console, placing her hand on Keith's shoulder. "You'll tell Lance how you feel and he'll do the same. You may not know how to do it, but you will. And you two will be all the more stronger because of it."

The black paladin remained silent for a moment.

"You sound sure." he commented somewhat lightly, making the Altean woman chuckle.

"Well, one of us has to." she replied with a light laugh, her small smile slowly fading. "Also, neither of you know what's gonna happen the next time you and the others go outside these walls. You think that you'll have the chance to say the things you didn't when it's all over. And you might, but the person you want to tell it to might not make it back with you. And then you'll spend every waking second wishing you had."

Romelle paused her words as she clutched the fabric on Keith's shoulder.

"That's a kind of pain you can never get over, no matter how much time passes." she finished quietly.

The young leader immediately turned his head back to the young Altean, catching the sadness in her voice. His stomach knotted and his face shocked as his eyes focused on Romelle, her head slightly lowered and her eyes growing glassy.

Of course she would be so adamant about this; She was speaking from experience.

The experience of saying goodbye to her friends and family.

The experience of saying goodbye to her brother.

The experience of wishing she could've said more and done more but hoping and wishing on everything she would get to see them again and say what she couldn't. And in the end, not getting any of it and losing all of them.

And if the grip on his jacket said anything to him, it was that he couldn't allow himself to do the same. And he wouldn't.

For both of their sakes.

"Romelle." he called out gently, concern laced in his tone as his eyebrows creased. The Altean woman let out a sniff and wiped her eyes as she went to look back at Keith, a determined yet desperate look in her eyes.

"All I'm trying to say is this: don't assume that things are going to be the same as you left it." Romelle advised, her grip shaking with every word.

"Don't keep things in thinking you'll be able to say them again later. Especially with what you do. You and Lance have to talk before the next call. Because the outcome is just as unpredictable as us."

Romelle's firm gaze never came off of Keith, despite the moisture that remained in her eyes. She knew that he probably got the message from her face alone, but she really needed him to understand.

So she held on a little longer.

"Promise me, Keith." she said urgently, a leftover tear making its way down her cheek. "Promise me you won't hold back."

"I won't." Keith promised, his own look of determination stretching across his face. The young paladin lifted his arm and wrapped it around Romelle's back, pulling the girl into his side as she laid her head against his shoulder. As he looked down at her, he could feel the breath she proceeded to let out as she tried to calm herself down.

"I'm not gonna hold anything back anymore. Lance and I are going to talk things out." he declared. "I promise."

He could feel Romelle nodding against him, seemingly satisfied and believing his answer. Eventually, she pulled away, wiping at her eyes once more as Keith still had her at arm's length.

"Sorry about that." she apologized sheepishly, not meeting Keith's eyes. "I wasn't trying to make it about me."

Despite not having her gaze, the black paladin still went ahead and shook his head.

"You didn't." Keith reassured, a small smile gracing his face as Romelle finally looked back up at him. "And you're right. I can't afford to let things get more tense between us. I need to get him to talk to me."

"Do you know how?" Romelle asked expectantly. Her question was all it took for Keith's smile to come off of his face. All he could do was let out a sigh as he plopped himself back up against the wall, head raised to the ceiling.

"No, I don't." he admitted. "But I wish I did. Guess that's what happens when you don't think things through."

The young Altean shifted off her side to lean back against the wall herself, her arms crossed behind her back as she looked up at the older man before quickly darting her eyes away.

"Well, when have you ever thought things through?" she asked innocently.

Keith's eyes immediately startled for a brief moment before his eyelids narrowed, slowly turning his head as he peered down at the younger woman, who had made it a point to keep her eyes away from him. The black paladin only got to stare at her for a few seconds before she carefully gilded her eyes back toward his own, immediately raising her hands in surrender with a slight laugh.

"I'm kidding! I'm kidding!" she teased, though her laugh held a bit of apprehension within it.

"You better be." Keith threatened as he poked the Altean girl in the temple, though there was no real malice within his voice.

"But honestly, I really think things are going to work out." Romelle stated, her words filling with optimism. "You just have to go for it."

"Go for what?"

Keith and Romelle both whipped their heads to the side, their eyes widening slightly as they were immediately met with Lance, walking towards them with an exhausted face and curious eyes.

"Lance, hey." Keith greeted quickly, trying not to make it obvious that he was the topic of his and Romelle's conversation. Now, he had to come up with a convenient lie.

This could only go so well.

"Well-"

"I was just giving Keith some tips on how he could teach Kosmo some tricks!" Romelle interjected, her outburst prompting the black and red paladins to fix their gazes towards her. (though Keith moved his gaze more so out of shock than anything)

What the fuck are you doing? Keith asked the Altean with his confused eyes, but Romelle remained unphased.

"Since Kosmo isn't like your usual Earth animals, I was suggesting to Keith that he should just go and demonstrate them to Kosmo so that he could try to do them himself. Like the rolling over stuff! And jumping through those giant circles you can hold!" she explained, looking back at Keith with a playful smile.

Hoops, the young man answered to himself.

Whatever confused incredulity Keith felt was immediately sapped out of him as he took a good look at Romelle's eyes.

Roll with it.

At that moment, the black paladin made a mental note to himself to ask Hunk to whip up an assortment of Altean desserts for her.

"Really?" he heard Lance ask, hearing the hints of interest and potential teasing within it. Doing his best to suppress his smile, he turned back to the red paladin with what he hoped was a look of annoyance and fake distress.

"Unfortunately, yes." Keith replied, doing his best to sound like he was over the conversation. "And I was telling her that there was no way in hell that I was going to do that."

He smiled inwardly at the chuckle Lance let out.

Romelle removed herself from the wall as she nearly stood in front of Keith, placing a hand on her hip to shoot him her own look of faux annoyance.

"Well then, how do you expect him to learn anything if you don't teach him?" she inquired.

"I would be teaching him! Just not like that." Keith shot back.

"Isn't that how everyone teaches their pet how to do stuff on Earth?"

"Not everyone."

"Then how would you teach Kosmo to do a trick?"

Keith paused, leaving Romelle and Lance stewing in anticipation.

"By explaining it?"

The silence in the hallway was so deafening you could hear a drop of water splatter. The half Galran looked between his two friends, not liking the shared looks of shock and sheer confusion etched across their faces as he waited for one of them to break the now embarrassing silence.

"What?!"

"Keith, what the actual hell?"

"Okay, what's the issue?" Keith demanded, taking actual offense to his friends' exclamations.

"You honestly mean to tell us that you would actually sit in front of Kosmo and tell him step by step how to do a trick?" the red paladin questioned, his incredulous tone barking a sheer difference from his appearance.

Even in spite of the current ambush, Keith could be glad that he still maintained some semblance of energy.

"You cannot be serious."

"Keith, please tell us that you're not serious." Romelle requested, bordering on begging. He honestly didn't expect what was supposed to be a fake conversation to turn out like this, but here they were.

And here Keith was, standing here and asking himself:

Am I being serious?

"Uh…"

"Quiznak, he's being serious." Romelle griped, not even giving the man a chance to speak. And it definitely didn't help that right after her outburst, Lance let out an audible groan as he buried his face in his hand.

"You didn't even give me a chance to talk!" Keith complained, facing the young Altean. All the while, Lance silently made his way over to Romelle's side of the hallway, shaking his head back and forth as he did so.

"You paused! That's all the talking you needed to do!" Romelle shot back, pointing a finger at the black paladin.

At this point, Keith just let his shoulders deflate as he shot her an actual tired, deadpan expression.

How the hell did we even get here?

He tilted his head to the side past Romelle to peer at Lance, who was now propped up against the wall behind her. He was gripping the bridge of his nose with his fingers with his eyebrows drawn together and Keith couldn't tell if it was because of exhaustion or this nonsensical conversation.

Only one way to find out.

"Lance?" he called out, hoping to garner a reaction.

The red paladin didn't give a verbal response, opting to raise his hands in surrender, his eyes shut and brows raised as his expression simply screamed:

Leave me out of this.

Despite the relief, Keith let out a heavy groan.

Before he could say anything else, however, he could hear a plethora of footsteps coming from behind him.

"And here I thought we'd be the first ones here." he heard Hunk complain. He and the others all turned to see him, Coran, and the rest of the team coming towards them from the other side of the hallway. The black paladin couldn't help but to sneak a quick glance at Allura before a sense of unease washed over, worried about how Lance would react.

Luckily, Romelle moved from her spot and walked past Keith, allowing him to take a few steps closer towards his right hand, standing next to him to make sure he felt his presence and so as to not make his concern obvious to everyone. While he stood there, he focused his eyes on the red paladin, taking note of his crossed arms and the new annoyed and almost cold look that took hold on his face.

"Well, maybe you should've been somewhere closer to the situation room." Romelle teased, making the yellow paladin pout.

"Hey! It's not my fault I was trying to perfect a new Altean recipe!" he griped.

"Where's everyone else?" Keith inquired, turning back to face the team.

"They'll be here." Shiro replied. "Kolivan and Krolia are already on their way over. Sam and Slav are finishing up a diagnostic and the others are on the other side of the ship, so it'll take them a minute. But we should be able to have the meeting in a few minutes."

Keith gave the older man a nod.

"Okay, good."

"We didn't keep you here waiting for too long, right Number Four?" Coran asked, making the black paladin shake his head in response with an additional shrug.

"It's fine. Plus, I've been here with Romelle and Lance, so…"

Almost instantly, Allura, Pidge, and Hunk's eyes all widened in surprise.

"Lance?" Pidge repeated.

With furrowed brows, Keith moved himself from his spot on the wall and slowly made his way over to stand next to Lance from the front, revealing him to everyone as he kept his eyes on the bottom of the wall across from him.

"Ah, it's been awhile, Number Three! I've hardly seen you these quintants." Coran greeted. "How have you been?"

Keith watched as the young marksman shrugged, his expression lightening up slightly at the Altean man.

"Fine, I guess." he answered, clearly doing his best to sound nonchalant as he avoided looking up at Coran, especially considering that Allura was only a couple of feet next to him. "Just tired, I guess."

In between their exchange, Keith shot a look of concern to Shiro, who gave him a subtle nod back before looking back at his young friend.

"Well, just hang on for a bit." Shiro spoke, making Lance turn to him. "Once the meeting is over and done with, you can catch up on some more rest before we start going ahead. Just as long as Iverson doesn't hold us up."

Keith caught the way Lance's mouth turned upwards slightly, releasing a quiet chuckle as he continued to look at the former black paladin. The half Galran was relieved at his brother's presence, knowing he was the only other person who could keep Lance from getting upset these days.

But it didn't take long for that relief to dissipate.

"You look better, by the way." Pidge spoke out suddenly, the remnants of a smile that was on Lance's face evaporating so quickly Keith didn't have time to register it.

"I can see that all the bruises and stuff are finally clearing up, almost like you're good as new." she pointed out, though Keith couldn't help but to pick up on the nervous tone she carried as she spoke.

"Yeah," Hunk added, his tone also having the same nervous edge as Pidge's. "You look really good, man."

As the black paladin shifted his gaze back onto his right hand, words couldn't even begin to describe the chill that went up his spine when he noticed the marksman's expression towards his best friend. The glare coming off of Lance was cold and detached, the hurt and anger evident within his dull pupils as his eyelids were narrowed. And his crossed arms never came apart as he remained against the wall.

All of it had Keith feeling a little unsettled, along with everyone else.

"I'm gonna sit in the room." Lance spoke suddenly, pushing himself off of the wall as he walked past Keith and the other silent paladins as he walked through the doors of the situation room, the metallic panels closing behind him harshly.

That whole scene left the young man concerned and more confused than ever.

What the hell did Hunk and Pidge do for him to be so pissed off?

He didn't get a chance to ponder on it further as a sigh rang out throughout the now semi-crowded hall.

"Actually, I should head inside, too." said Romelle, rubbing her neck for a moment. "All this standing is making my ankles itch."

As she started her walk into the room, her eyes landed on Keith's as her pupils quickly darted from the doors back to the black paladin. But he understood it perfectly.

He sent the Altean woman a subtle nod before she finally made her way inside. And the very second that the doors shut behind her, Keith turned to face the two youngest paladins.

"That wasn't from exhaustion, was it?" he asked them, his face now hardened as he sought for an answer. The green and yellow paladins didn't say anything, only looking away from their leader in what appeared to him as guilt.

Keith's eyelids narrowed.

"Okay." he muttered, the lack of response beginning to annoy him. He then took his eyes off of the pair and looked towards the rest of the group.

"I don't know what the hell's going on right now, but I know that Lance isn't the type to stonewall someone when he's exhausted. So if someone could fill me in on whatever the hell that was, I would gladly appreciate it." Keith sassed, looking at his other teammates to see if they had something to say.

Allura looked guilt-ridden, Coran was silent but obviously unaware, and Shiro looked neutral, as if he was waiting for Pidge and Hunk to explain themselves before he did. Once he noticed that, he turned his attention back to the aforementioned pair, giving them another chance to respond to him.

And thankfully, Hunk was willing to respond.

"Lance…hasn't exactly been talking to us lately." he stated, rubbing the back of his head uncomfortably as kept his eyes on the ground, not wanting to bear the brunt of Keith's hot gaze.

"Yeah, obviously." Keith jibed, crossing his arms as the statement only annoyed him further. "Why? What did you do?"

Pidge let out a tiny huff of air as she looked at the black paladin.

"Honestly, 'what didn't we do?' is the question." the green paladin stated. Keith's eyes immediately darted to the girl at her statement.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he inquired, his eyebrows lowered in confusion and growing frustration.

"It means that Lance was depending on us and we let him down!" Hunk interjected, making the half Galran shoot his eyes back to him. "He needed us to be his friends and to be there for him. We didn't support him and we did practically everything wrong. And he called us on it."

Keith simply stood as he glared at the yellow paladin, not giving him any semblance of a verbal response. He took a moment to shift his eyes back to Shiro, who was still standing off to the side and looking at Hunk as he tried to gauge his reaction. The older man must've felt Keith's eyes on him as he moved his gaze off of Hunk and towards the young leader.

Evidently, he knew what was going on and Keith could practically feel the residual disappointment coming off of him.

And if Shiro was disappointed in someone (which was rare in and of itself), then that had to mean that the situation was much worse than it appears.

"Did you know?"

Hunk tilted his head at the question.

"What?" he asked.

"Did you know that you were hurting Lance? Or did it go above your head?" Keith clarified, his voice becoming slightly lower.

As his question hung in the air, Hunk didn't say anything, going between looking at the ground guiltily and looking at Pidge, who was wearing the same expression. The black paladin had hoped it was because he was trying to think of words to say. But the longer the silence progressed and the green and yellow paladin looked at each other, realization dawned on Keith's face.

"Oh my God." Keith muttered, grabbing a chunk of his hair as he walked back to the wall away from the pair.

"We know! We know it's bad!" Pidge cried to him, making the older man whip his head back to her.

"Bad?!" he repeated incredulously. "How can you-?!"

Keith made himself pause, looking past the green paladin and looking to the situation room where Lance and Romelle were. As pissed as he was, he didn't need Lance hearing this conversation and getting more upset.

"How can you unknowingly hurt Lance and actively engage in it at the same time?" he managed to ask, his voice now slightly lower. "Are you serious right now?"

"Keith-" Hunk tried to say, but the black paladin wasn't having any of it, placing his hands on his hips.

"How long has this been going on for?"

Hunk and Pidge shared a confused look with each other.

"Since Lance stopped talking to us?" Pidge questioned.

"Since you two stopped acting like his friends." Keith corrected, his tone sharp as he looked between the two. "How long?"

The young paladins both looked at the floor in guilt before Hunk looked back up at his angry teammate.

"Since after you left." he admitted.

Keith's eyes immediately bulged, complete shock and horror filling up inside of his body. When he left the team, he had hoped things would get easier for Lance in terms of the team. But if anything, he probably just made things harder.

And the regret and guilt. he already felt for walking away just increased by a hundred. As did the anger.

The tension and nervousness grew within the hallway as Keith spun on his heel and went back to facing the wall, letting out a huge and heavy breath as he intertwined his fingers and placed his connected hands atop his head, holding them there as he stood silently.

"You alright, Keith?" Coran asked apprehensively.

"No," the aforementioned paladin answered, not bothering to turn to the Altean man. "I'm not."

After a few more seconds of silence, Keith dropped his hands from atop his head and turned on his heel back towards the team, his eyes dead set on the green and yellow paladin. He stared at them for a couple of seconds before lowering his head and pinching the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath before looking back up at them.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Keith probed, his eyes becoming daggers as he stared the two young paladins down. Hunk's glassy eyes were trained on his shoes and Pidge was turned away from the black paladin, rubbing her arm uncomfortably.

"Keith…" she attempted to say, but didn't get very far.

"You are his best friends. You were supposed to support him and be there for him. And you failed him instead." the black paladin scolded, his anger and disgust at the situation increasing with every word.

"I just…Why? Why couldn't you be there for him? What was so hard about being there for him and making him feel like he wasn't alone?"

He could see Hunk and Pidge flinch with every verbal stone that he threw at them, but he was just so vexed at them both that any guilt was nonexistent. Especially when this was him at his most generous in terms of anger.

"I may not have been around, but you two were! And what I do know is that he needed you two to be his friends and you turned your backs on him!" Keith snapped loudly before taking a beat of silence, dropping his arms which he didn't know he had extended.

"And now I don't know how I can fix this."

At that, Shiro raised an eyebrow at the young leader as everyone else sent confused gazes..

"What do you mean?" Coran questioned, prompting Keith to face him.

"I have spent the better part of the day thinking about how I was going to approach Lance and talk to him about what happened. How I could try to get him to talk to me without scaring him off so that we can talk through what I did and what we've been through so that things don't get worse." the black paladin started to explain, the entire team listening attentively.

"I had to spend these last few days seeing him walk around this ship on autopilot, acting like what happened in the Astral Plane wasn't that big a deal and that he could just get over it. And even before all of this, he was still reeling from everything that happened with Allura."

He could see the princess looking away in shame from the corner of his eye, but he persisted.

"This whole time, I thought the most I would have to talk through with him was about what I did and said on the Astral Plane and maybe everything with Allura. But now that I know that you two fucked up with Lance, too, that's another layer of pain that I have to deal with."

"Keith." he heard Shiro call out to him. Bracing himself, the black paladin shifted himself to face the commander.

"Shiro, I'm sorry." the black paladin apologized. "I know you said that we should be giving Lance space and let him be the one to reach out when he was finally ready to talk. But I-I just can't afford to wait anymore. We can't afford to wait anymore. Because we could literally be called out back to space tomorrow and if things go wrong, I might not get the chance to tell him and he might not get the chance to know."

Shiro remained silent as he looked at Keith, his face unchanging. Finally, he allowed himself to nod his head at the black paladin.

"Okay." he said finally. "But do you know how you're gonna go about it?"

Keith's eyes lowered at the older man's question.

"Honestly, I'm not sure." he admitted. "I know what I have to say to him, but I don't know how I'm supposed to say it. Lance is already struggling and I don't want to say something that's going to make him shut down on me. And even then, there's a chance that I'll say something he doesn't wanna hear and he shuts down even more."

The half Galran could feel his heart start to hammer at the negative possibilities, his anxiety slowly spiking. But he wasn't about to make the team aware of just how scared he was.

"Either way, I'm taking a long shot here and I can't afford to miss. He needs to know that everything's gonna be okay. That he doesn't need to keep on suppressing what he feels for everyone else. He needs-"

"What he needs is someone he trusts."

Keith and everyone else turned their heads to Allura, the young woman looking at her teammate with a face of seriousness and remnants of guilt. The black paladin couldn't stop the look of mild surprise that was on his face at her sudden interjection, but it quickly evaporated as his stoic expression returned. But just as he was about to respond to her, the princess raised her hand to him, making his words pause on his tongue.

"Look, I am well aware that I am the last person who should be saying this considering all that I've done to Lance, but it's true." Allura remarked. Keith turned to the Altean fully as he crossed his arms once more, a small part of him skeptical but willing to hear the princess out.

"You and Lance may have had your issues in the past, but there's no denying that you two have definitely grown to rely on each other. Not just as teammates, but as friends. You proved it as much that day you scolded me in the hallway. And the connection that you two have built is deeper than any bond had between teammates."

The black paladin subtly pressed his fingers into the sleeve of his uniform at the implication. Whether or not Allura was aware of said implication was unknown, but she definitely didn't shy away from the magnitude of his and Lance's connection.

"Out of everyone on the team, Lance looks to you the most." the princess illuminated. "You two have your moments, of course, but your bond always turns out stronger and secure than before."

Keith gazed at Allura thoughtfully before turning away from her and taking a few steps away from her and the team.

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean I'm any better." he stated. "I've said and done things that hurt Lance, too. And the things that came out of my mouth in the Astral Plane were the worst things I ever said. It's a miracle he hasn't cut me out yet."

"And that's where you're wrong." Allura spoke, taking a couple of steps towards her leader. "Because after we hurt Lance, he stopped coming to us."

The Altean woman halted her steps, her vibrant blue eyes piercing Keith's back.

"Lance always went back to you."

At that, Keith's eyes grew in shock, his body suddenly stiffening.

"Allura's right." he heard Shiro add on. "Think of all the times you and him have gotten into it and disagreed. Even after I disappeared. But that never stopped either of you from worrying about the other and making sure that you were alright. And even with the situation you're in right now, even at his most vulnerable and hurt, Lance still came to you."

The black paladin didn't say anything as he thought back to his time recovering. This whole time, he had been focused on all the times that Lance had walked away. But that only happened when he tried to bring up the Astral Plane. But before them, whenever there was a knock on his room door, it was almost always him.

Then he thought back to their conversation in the lobby. Lance had every opportunity to make up an excuse and run or to just simply get up and walk away as if he never saw him. But that never happened.

The moment Keith had made his presence known to him, he stayed. And even allowed him to touch him with the same hands that hurt him.

Oh.

"Keith." Allura called gently, carefully placing her hand on the young man's arm to garner his attention. Once he began turning his body towards her, she dropped her hand.

"What you and Lance share is special. And it's strong. And it is a bond that neither of you can afford to lose. Especially in a war where most of us have lost so much."

Keith couldn't help but to sneak a glance at Shiro, the older man nodding his head at him as they shared the same thought.

Adam.

"Just go to him. Tell him what you feel and I have no doubt that he'll listen. The way you always listened to him. You have to do it now. Because waiting just makes it worse" the Altean woman advised, an aura of regret dripping from her words.

The black paladin turned his head to look at the doors of the situation room, where the red paladin currently resided. Keith's hand curled into a fist unconsciously. He knew that Allura was right and was practically saying everything he already knew.

But that didn't make this any less overwhelming.

"Please," Allura pleaded softly, making the half Galran turn back to her and meet her desperate, pleading eyes.

"Don't make the mistakes we did."

Keith looked at Allura a few seconds longer before lifting his gaze to look at the rest of the team, who were all wearing expressions that ranged from serious to desperate to hopeful. He then once again placed his gaze back on the metal doors in front of him where Lance and Romelle were.

He had to do this.

Just as he turned back to the princess, the sound of numerous footsteps filled the hallway as everyone else arrived in front of the situation room.

"Sorry for the delay." Iverson apologized before taking in the scene in front of him. "Everything okay here?"

"We're fine." Shiro quickly replied. "Just waiting for you all."

Iverson nodded in acknowledgement.

"Well, now that we're here, let's get started."

In an instant, everyone began to trail into the situation room. As everyone started to pile in, Keith was able to obtain a glimpse of Lance, the back of his head entering his line of vision and a newfound sense of determination filling his chest.

I have to do this.

Once again turning back to Allura, they shared a silent look of agreement before he took his leave, joining the cluster of people as he entered the meeting room, ready to get this meeting over and done with to get to the real task at hand.

As the rest of the team looked on, a confused expression took hold of Coran.

"Wait a tic? I thought Lance looked to me the most?" the Altean man questioned.

Pretty soon, the hallway became filled with collective groans.

---

"We now know why Honerva retrieved Lotor's mech. Since it's made out of the same comet ore as Voltron, it has the ability to pierce realities." Keith explained to the room, everyone listening attentively.

"Honerva is gonna use Lotor's mech to find her version of a perfect reality."

The room was rendered into a shocked silence before Romelle spoke up.

"Perfect reality?" she questioned. "Does that even exist?"

"She's searching for it right now." Lance answered, his face melancholic as he looked down, Romelle's eyes shifting towards him. "And if it exists, she'll find it."

Keith did his best to keep his face stoic and his emotions calm, not wanting to reveal his sadness and concern at Lance's tone to everyone in the room.

"The problem is the trans-reality ore has been traveling between realities for millions of years. And it's a naturally occurring phenomenon." Pidge began to illuminate, the faces of everyone in the room becoming more distressed and worried.

"What Honerva is doing is forcing that process to happen, which could have catastrophic side effects on this and any reality she travels through."

"So, what's the plan?" Hunk inquired anxiously. "Maybe we can, we can make a giant tractor beam?"

He then turned his head to Sam from across the table.

"Sam, you could do that, right? Make a giant tractor beam?" he asked him. "We could pull her to us and then blow her up with a star bomb!"

The yellow paladin then whipped his head to Pidge, a desperate, hopeful smile on his face.

"Pidge? A star bomb?"

"There is no plan, Hunk." Lance interjected, a semblance of annoyance in his voice as he reclined in his seat, arms crossed. "We know what Honerva wants to do, but we can't get to her. And even if we could, she has the ability to wormhole away."

The red paladin lowered his gaze to the table.

"And because of her putting Keith into a coma, we couldn't even chase her, and we couldn't form Voltron." he emphasized.

The black paladin shot Lance a sympathetic look, sharing his anger and strife.

"Well, we're doing something now." Keith said consolingly to him, turning his attention back to the rest of the room. "We'll prepare for battle. We need to be ready to face Honerva."

"And we will be." Allura added, looking at the two paladins. "Right now, we have to find ways to gain the upper hand."

"We've been tracking a Galra fleet within our vicinity. Our intel shows they have a Zaiforge cannon." Krolia reported, garnering the princess' attention before turning to her son.

"Maybe Kolivan and I can take a small team and commandeer the ship."

Keith turned back to Allura, awaiting her response. All it took was an affirmative nod from her before he turned back to his mother.

"Why don't you take Commander Lahn and try to recruit them to our side?" he suggested. "We don't want to fight more battles than we have to."

"In the meantime, Slav and I have been working on prototype upgrades for the Atlas' weapon system." Sam disclosed.

At least Keith knew now why they were running late.

"Of course, we'll have to somehow find extra power for them."

Slav crossed all of his arms as he began shaking his head at the man.

"Always making the most amazing things in the universe, but never having enough power to run them." he griped.

Pidge couldn't stop herself from raising her eyebrows in intrigue.

"New weapons?" she asked amusedly. "I'll give you guys a hand with that."

"And I may know where we can get the extra power." Coran announced to the Holts. "There's a small Balmera in this territory."

"All right! A little trip to a Balmera. We'll take the Yellow Lion." Hunk stated, a wide smile forming on his face.

"And Romelle."

The black paladin's eyebrows drew together in confusion.

"Romelle?" Keith asked aloud. "How is she involved in this?"

The Altean woman looked down at her lap sheepishly as Coran went on to answer.

"I've been training her on Altean customs. She'll be quite helpful in communicating with the Balmera."

Keith internally released an intrigued "hmm" as he thought over Coran's suggestion. If Romelle's training had paid off, not only does it maintain communications with the Balmera, but it takes a weight off Allura's shoulders since she and Coran were initially the only ones capable of assisting them.

"What do you think, Romelle?" he inquired, facing the Altean. "You think you're up for it?"

Romelle couldn't stop the determined smile that grew on her face.

"If it helps take down Honerva, I'm all in." she proclaimed. The half Galran smiled back at her.

"Good." he replied before turning back to the front of the room. "Everyone, let's stay focused on what we can accomplish. The harder we work, the better our chances. And the closer we get to ending this war."

---

After a couple more minutes of suggestions and discussion, the meeting finally reached its end.

As everyone made their way towards the exit, Keith couldn't take his eyes off of Lance, silently observing as the red paladin remained in his seat, arms crossed and eyes sadly downcast onto his lap. His face hurt him, but it also strengthened the black paladin's resolve to make sure he never had that face again.

The young leader took his eyes off of his teammate as he caught Romelle in the hallway, back against the wall as she chatted with Veronica. He waited a few moments for the older Mcclain sibling to leave before he stepped out of the room, sneaking another glance at Lance before turning back to Romelle, the latter sensing his presence as she looked up to meet him.

"Are you alright?" she asked the older man, keeping her voice hushed so that no one else could hear her.

"Yeah." he replied quickly, his own voice following suit. "I just needed to talk to you real quick about something."

The young woman nodded in acknowledgement as she waited for Keith to speak again.

"When you went into the room with Lance, did anything happen?"

Romelle pursed her lips briefly as she went to cross her arms.

"Well, I might have talked to him about the benefits of traditional Altean skincare to take his mind off the conversation for a dobash or two." she divulged. Keith raised a lone eyebrow at the girl, both in confusion for actually thinking about talking to him about that and in shock for actually talking to him about it.

"And…how did that go?" he inquired, mentally cringing as he waited for the worst case scenario.

"Well, he didn't brush it away, so that was good." Romelle informed the young paladin. "In fact, he actually mentioned his own routine and asked about Altean substitutes."

Keith shut his eyes as he breathed a sigh of relief, glad to know that Lance hadn't completely shut down after seeing everyone.

"So, everything was fine while you were in there?"

"For the most part, I guess." Romelle replied. A beat of silence lingered between them as Keith became tipped off to a potential catch in the conversation, thanks in part to the Altean woman's not-so-affirming confirmation.

"But?" Keith searched.

"But he still needs help." the Altean woman admitted, reaching out to touch Keith's arm. "Keith, he might need you now more than ever."

The black paladin's face turned firm at Romelle's conclusion.

"I know." he concurred, nodding at her. "That's why I'm going back inside."

Romelle gave Keith a smile, glad to know that this saga would hopefully be over and done with by the time she left these halls. And proud that the man she saw as her older brother was assuring that would happen.

"Anything I can do to help?" she offered. Keith gave her a soft smile.

"I think you've done more than enough, Romelle." he replied, his voice grateful. "As long as no one lingers near the door, we should be alright."

The young Altean nodded, moving her hand from Keith's arm to his shoulder.

"Everything's gonna work out." she said with a reassuring smile. And with that, she turned on her heel and headed out the hall, leaving the black paladin against the wall in front of the situation room once again.

He knew he had to do this.

He knew he couldn't hold off anymore.

He knew he had to say this.

Right now.

Taking a deep breath and looking to see that no one saw him, he walked into the situation room once again, the doors opening and closing behind him as if to reaffirm that the half Galran couldn't escape the room until everything was said and done.

And sure enough, Lance was still where he sat, his position not changing an inch since the black paladin stepped out.

Talk. Keith encouraged himself. Talk and just let things play out.

With that in mind, he carefully approached the red paladin, standing in front of him near the seat next to him.

"Hey." Keith called gently, prompting Lance to raise his head up at him. "You okay?"

The red paladin's blue eyes stared back at Keith, giving the black paladin a closer look at his sad and bothered expression. The young marksmen, however, didn't respond as he looked down to the side, not a single word uttered. Keith shot a worried and sad look Lance's way, not knowing if the silence was due to the meeting bringing up prior anxieties or everything else.

Either way, he knew better than to try to force it out of him.

"Everything's gonna work out." the older paladin tried to console.

"I hope so." Lance finally responded, his voice nervous but firm.

"We need to stop Honerva…this force of evil that's been around for 10,000 years." he proclaimed to Keith.

The red paladin's eyebrows narrowed sharply, his face fully displaying how bothered he was and his anger towards the witch.

"She has a plan that could destroy every reality, and all we've come up with is additional manpower and a prototype weapon." he finished, eyebrows raised briefly as if to emphasize his annoyance at the situation before they lowered to their original position.

Keith understood him completely.

"I know it's not ideal…" he started, walking around the chair and taking a seat, his eyes facing the wall in front of them as he clasped his hands.

"But when is the last time anything has been ideal?"

He heard Lance sigh from beside him.

"It's definitely been a minute, I know that much." the red paladin stated simply. "If they were, we wouldn't have to deal with half the stuff we've been dealing with up until now."

Keith released a puff of air through his nose at the sentiment.

"Fighting giant mechs." he commented.

"Battling alien empires." Lance added.

"Unraveling enemy secrets."

"Performing for the galaxy."

Keith's eyes slowly shifted to Lance, looking utterly confused at the statement. But once he saw Lance was, in fact, serious, he made a mental note of how personal that scenario was compared to the last few they spoke of (and also to ask him what the hell he was talking about when this was all over).

"Uncovering your alien heritage." Keith started again.

The red paladin didn't miss a beat.

"Working with tyrannical space princes."

"Fighting evil clones."

"Cross galaxy road trips."

"Space sickness."

There was a beat of silence, the black paladin catching Lance's pause.

"Alien game shows."

Keith scratched at the fabric of one of his gloves with a finger, treading carefully.

"Crazy experimental monsters."

"Volcanic planets."

"Demonic carnival rides."

He heard Lance let out a light chuckle, a smile creeping on his face before it slipped off of it just as fast.

"Entering someone else's mind."

Another beat of silence followed.

"Fighting corrupted paladins." Lance said tensely.

"Getting shocked with lightning."

Keith heard the red paladin draw in a breath, trying his damndest not to sneak a glance at him.

"Ending up on the Astral Plane." he hesitated quietly. The black paladin quietly drew in a breath of his own, eyes focused on the table.

This was it.

"Getting mind controlled." Keith spoke, a small sigh following suit. He remained quiet as he waited for Lance to say his part, if he had one. But he didn't.

He didn't say anything.

So Keith kept going on.

"Being forced to fight against your will. Fighting someone you didn't want to fight. Saying things you didn't want to say." The half Galran paused, taking a breath as the act of recounting his latest brush with death began to overwhelm him.

"Almost dying."

Finally, Keith allowed himself to shift his glance to Lance, immediately being met with the sight of his trembling hands and anxious eyes, as if he was reliving the whole ordeal all over again.

"I think that's one of the worst parts for me." Keith confessed. "Not the fact that I almost died, but that you did. Because of me."

Lance drew his mouth into a line before turning his head to the side, shielding his face from his friend. As much as Keith felt bad, he knew that he couldn't stop.

"The fact that I was going to make sure you died hearing a bunch of bullshit lies. That I was literally squeezing the life out of you with a smile on my face." the black paladin lamented, his eyes lowering in guilt briefly before rising back up to look at the back of Lance's head.

"That-"

"Keith, just stop." Lance interrupted, shooting up out of his seat as he reached out and grabbed the top of the seat in front of him. Keith could tell by the way his hand was gripping the chair and how much harder it shook that Lance was nearing the edge.

"I know what you're trying to do."

"You do?" Keith questioned, his voice calm and collected, something that seemed to bother the young marksman more.

"Yes." Lance answered, growing irritated. "You want me to talk about what happened. But I don't need to. I told you that I was fine, so I don't know what you want from me."

The black paladin squeezed his clasped hands together tightly. He was so close to getting Lance to open up and he couldn't let him deflect again now.

"Lance," Keith started again, getting up from his own seat but choosing not to approach his right hand. "I want you to open up to me. I want you to tell me everything that you're feeling. Even if it's not just about the Astral Plane, just talk to me."

He heard the red paladin release a harsh sigh as he raised his head to the ceiling.

"Keith-"

"Look, I know you're trying to act like everything's okay and that it didn't hurt you. But I know that it did because it hurt me, too. And if it hurt me to say it, I can only imagine how much it hurt you to hear it."

The black paladin could only stare at the back of Lance's head desperately as he spoke his words, hoping to anyone that would listen that the red paladin wouldn't shut him out; that he would actually give him something to work with so that they can both clear the air. He could feel his heart hammering against the bones in his chest as he waited.

Soon enough, he watched as the red paladin shook his head, as if he was trying to shake off any emotions that threatened to expose themselves to him or to shake off the thought of actually letting him in.

"I-I'm fine, Keith." Lance responded, doing his best to have his voice match his words. But Keith could still catch the shakiness in his voice and hear the lump that was more than likely within the younger man's throat.

"No, Lance." the young leader shot back quickly. "You're not. And if I didn't think that this was going to affect you the way that it has, I would've let things be and give you time to process."

Keith scratched at the palm of his glove with his thumb, doing his best to calm himself.

"But it has. And I can see that you're going through it. I can see how you're trying to push everything to the back of your mind so that you can act like it doesn't bother you. And that if you put your focus on other things, the memories will just go away."

The black paladin paused, closing his eyes and giving himself a moment to let the wave of emotion he began to feel pass before he kept going.

"But it doesn't, Lance." he imparted. "It never stops. It never goes away no matter how many times you want it to. Trust me, it hurts actually feeling it. But it's fucking torture when you try suppressing it."

The half Galran remained silent, waiting with baited breath for Lance to give another verbal response. Anything that would let him know that he wasn't saying the wrong thing.

But Lance didn't say a word, merely continuing to stand in his spot as he continued to face the wall in front of him, his body practically motionless, the only giveaway that he was breathing was the slow rise and fall of his shoulders.

As the black paladin gazed on sadly, he lowered his head as he forced himself to take a breath, the newfound growing tension within the situation room beginning to overwhelm him. And even then, it didn't change the cold shoulder his right hand man continued to give him.

"Lance." Keith whispered.

"What do you expect me to say, Keith?"

The black paladin jumped slightly, his head raising quickly as he didn't expect the sudden verbal response. Nor did he expect the vulnerable near-brokenness of Lance's voice as he said it.

"What?" Keith asked again.

Finally, Lance removed his hand from the chair and turned his body to face his teammate, his now red-rimmed eyes of frustration staring the older man down.

"I said, 'what do you expect me to say?' That having you talk down to me was the worst feeling in the world? That every insult you gave me reminded me of every single hurtful thing that someone has ever said to me? That being forced to fight for my life against you was one of the worst things that ever happened to me ever since becoming a paladin? Is that what you expect me to say?!"

Keith's eyes were startled, not expecting Lance's outburst. However, that didn't deter him as he just as quickly shook off the shock and responded.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, his voice starting to fill with a mix of desperation and frustration. "Because it's actually how you feel! That isn't something you should keep to yourself!"

"Why not?" Lance asked, his voice exasperated. "It's not like it's gonna change what happened! Besides, you were recovering from a seizure and a medically induced coma! You didn't need to hear about my fucked up emotions during all of that!"

Keith's face hardened.

"And what if I did?"

The red paladin held his tongue, exhaling sharply as he placed his hands on his hips and looked off to the side, forcefully ripping his gaze away from the black paladin's piercing eyes.

Keith immediately softened his face, his need to have Lance say what he had to say overwhelming.

"Lance, come on." he pushed. "This is me we're talking about-"

"I know that it's you!" Lance yelled, looking back at him angrily. "That's why I don't want to say it!"

The black paladin was taken aback, his face expressing the shock and confusion he felt at his teammate's outburst.

"You don't think I already know that you didn't mean to say any of that stuff? That you were saying things that Honerva must've known would hurt me so that you can get close enough to kill me? Or that you would never hurt me the way that she made you hurt me?"

Keith couldn't help but to tighten the hold his teeth had on his tongue, not wanting to say anything else in the off chance Lance had more to say to him and upset him more.

As he looked on, Lance's furious eyes began to soften, now replaced with a sad remembrance.

"Keith, I know that Honerva made you say all of those things. And that hurting me intentionally is the last thing that you'd ever do." the red paladin started, his voice now lowered to a regular volume as his pupils deepened with sadness.

"But you did. You still said those things. And the thing about it is…you weren't even really saying anything new, at least not at the beginning." Lance sighed.

The half Galran's eyebrows became drawn together, finding the implication as confusing as he found it alarming.

"Wh-What do you mean?" the older man questioned as he began to feel anxious. His right hand must've sensed his fear if the pitying look he shot him was any indication of the fact. The younger man sighed as he placed a hand on his hip, shaking his head at the ground before looking back up to meet his leader's eyes.

"Keith, how much of what you said in the Astral Plane do you remember?" Lance inquired.

As if on instinct, the black paladin's entire body stiffened, the weight of guilt returning full force from the red paladin's question. But despite the shame he felt, he didn't take his eyes off of his friend.

"Too much." he answered honestly.

Lance's lone hand tightened at the fabric at his hip, not expecting such a response from his older teammate. He never knew that the black paladin was capable of feeling that much guilt, so much guilt that his voice was practically drenched in it.

Just another reason why he never wanted to say anything in the first place.

The red paladin gave himself a chance to collect himself for a moment before continuing his inquiry.

"Okay." Lance nodded, being sure to acknowledge Keith's answer. "Well, what makes you think that any of what you said back there wasn't something I had already heard before?"

Keith tilted his head a good centimeter, his confused expression returning, only this time the emotion was mixed with disbelief and a newfound sense of protection.

"Already heard?" he asked aloud, the question marinating for a few seconds more before it began to click. "Wait, are you saying someone said those things to you before?"

The red paladin didn't attempt to answer him, simply looking back at him with his saddened eyes.

"Who-?" Keith began to ask, but Lance stopped him.

"Does it really matter?" the red paladin shot back with a weak shrug. "It's nothing I haven't heard, like, a million times since we first went into space. And it's not like you said anything that I haven't already thought."

Keith's eyes became startled, his stomach twisting itself anxiously as his body started to get rippled with waves of guilt.

"You were right!" Lance declared, making the aforementioned paladin jump slightly once again at the sudden volume change. "All of you were right! I'm a goofball! I don't bring anything to the team and everyone on this team could do a better job at doing my job!"

The young marksman felt his throat tighten as it slowly began to get harder to talk, but he didn't make any attempt to stop.

"I'm a liability, Keith. I always have been. I'm just p-"

"NO." Keith exclaimed, stopping Lance from completing that dreaded word. "You're not. You never were, never have been, and never will."

Lance continued to gaze at Keith sadly before slowly turning himself around, walking to the end of the table and stopping as he dropped his head once again. The ache in the black paladin's chest continued to grow as his melancholic eyes met the back of Lance's head, envisioning the new heartbreaking expression that took hold of his face as he faced away from him.

Keith could only look down, flickers of defeat mixing with his sadness.

There were so many things swarming around within the half Galran's head, things that he wanted to say to Lance, to make him believe that he wasn't all of the negative and horrible things that he believed himself to be.

The things that he was made to believe by the people he thought he could trust.

He wanted to tell him the things that would make Lance believe he was the furthest thing from those things.

He wanted to say the things that would make Lance feel valued and appreciated and respected.

And loved.

But how could he?

Even if they're now the closest they've ever been towards each other ever since he woke up, how could he make him believe it? How could he make Lance believe him?

"Do you remember that planet we were on a while ago?"

The sound of the red paladin's voice broke Keith out of his mental bubble, prompting the older paladin to look back at him in alert, seeing he was still in the same position as before. The black paladin started to believe that he had just been hearing things until the Cuban paladin's voice pierced the air once again.

"You know, the one with the purple sky and the dark ground? The one that we ended up on after the castleship blew apart?"

It took Keith a second before he remembered what he was talking about, the first thing popping up in his mind was him holding the body of his brother's clone in his arms, the weight of his newfound knowledge weighing within him as he informed the team of the truth.

"Yeah." the young man answered.

A couple of seconds of silence passed before Lance finally started moving again, this time turning to walk along the side of the table's end, his conflicted eyes focused on the floor that laid beneath his boots.

"Well, after we were able to bring back Shiro and he got settled into the clone body, we were all resting up so we could get ready to head back to Earth. I don't really remember what everyone else was doing, but I was sitting on the edge of that cliff, watching its sunset."

Keith remembered the image all too well; The sight of his red paladin sitting along the cliff's edge, his silhouette consumed by the light of the planet's orange sun. The hunch of the younger man's shoulders giving away the weight of his stresses and exhaustion, of his potential agonies.

The black paladin bit his tongue for a moment before letting it go.

"I remember."

"And I know that once you came over, we had made some small talk," Lance pointed out, currently walking back and forth along the same end of the table as his eyes remained lowered from Keith.

"But there were some things that I should've told you back then. But I didn't."

Keith's face slightly scrunched in confusion, his expression completely unnoticed as the younger paladin wrung his hands together with an anxious intensity.

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I couldn't."

Keith absorbed the red paladin's response, eyeing him down as he continued to pace in front of him. The older paladin took a breath.

"Couldn't or wouldn't?"

Like he expected, the young marksman halted his pacing, his body stiffening as it froze in place. Lance then whipped his head to stare at Keith, his look of shock clear as day. All it took was one look of the red paladin's offended eyes for Keith to know that he had struck a nerve.

It wasn't his intention, but he wanted both of them to be honest.

Lance stared back at him a few seconds longer before the look of offense in his eyes faded, his blue pupils drifting downcast as any anger that was once within him for those few seconds completely dissipated, like there was no point in trying to fight.

"I couldn't." he finally replied softly, sadness and regret filling his tone before shrugging. "But it's not like it matters, anyway."

"Lance." Keith called to him, softly scolding him.

"No, Keith." the red paladin interrupted. "There was something I needed to say to you back then, but I couldn't because we needed to head back to Earth. But I thought that once we were back home, I could tell you."

Keith could hear Lance start to become distressed again as he continued.

"But then, we had to deal with the ambush and Zendak and Sanda's betrayal. And then we almost died and we had to recover and then we learned that there were more Alteans and it just- it just wouldn't stop! So many things happened back to back to back that even if I wanted to talk to you, I couldn't. And then everything got so busy that I couldn't even make time to say it."

The red paladin's sight began to grow misty, but he was too far gone in his regret to care about wiping them away.

"And then things just got crazier from there and it just got…buried. And with everything that's been happening between me and the team, I just thought…"

Lance paused his words, his face shifting through a million different emotions as his eyes watered more before it finally settled on defeat, lifting his arms up before just as quickly dropping them back to his sides.

"I don't know what the hell I thought." he resumed sadly. "But so much has happened and…it's too late."

The somber defeat within his voice was enough for Keith to take a large step towards him.

"No, it isn't." he argued.

"Yes, it is!" Lance shot back, turning around so that his back was facing his leader. "You- you just don't understand!"

"Then make me! Tell me so that I do understand!" the black paladin insisted.

The red paladin remained silent as he lowered his head, slowly shaking it from side to side. He could feel his mouth starting to tremble as the stinging in his eyes became stronger, his emotions overwhelming.

There was so much he knew he had to say, but too much time had passed.

Would it even matter?

It wouldn't change anything that happened up to this point, so would it really change anything now?

He wanted nothing more than to just throw it all away and start from scratch, forgetting about everything he went through and start fresh.

But it wouldn't be fair. And he owed Keith way too much.

His position. His life. His remaining sanity.

Everything.

The red paladin took a shaky breath as he thought of his words.

"I don't…"he started, his voice filled with emotion. "I don't even know what to say to you."

Keith looked at his right hand man sadly in silence for a moment before finally opening his mouth.

"Everything."

That lone word was enough for Lance to clench his eyes shut, trying to stop the potential onslaught of tears that were attempting to come out. He was well aware that what he said next would hurt Keith to no end, only serving to add on to the guilt he was already feeling for the events of the Astral Plane and thensome.

But knowing his black paladin, he was already aware of this. And yet, he still wanted to hear them from his lips.

A fact that added to Lance's lack of understanding of what he did in this lifetime to deserve someone like Keith Kogane.

But regardless, he forced himself to turn back around and be face-to-face with his leader again.

As red-rimmed blue connected with despondent purple, the red paladin could feel some of his fingers slightly tremble with every passing second, the weight of what he was about to say seeping in. But he knew that the only way for this weight to subside and for this pain to finally disappear was if he just spoke the truth.

No matter how much the tiny voices in his head told him it would be pointless.

Looking towards the ground once again, the young Cuban man did his best to take another deep breath and exhaled as he tried to gain some semblance of his bearings, knowing he had to be aware and lucid enough to start this uncomfortable conversation.

And after a few moments of preparing himself, his eyes rose to meet with the black paladin once more, the younger man once again placing a hand on his hip as he took a quick breath.

"Things weren't the same after you left." Lance started, the first few words causing Keith to begin to listen attentively so that he wouldn't miss a word.

"Between focusing on the war and trying to gain support for the coalition, things started to get a bit hectic on the ship. It was like every minute, there was always something that had to be done or some mission that needed to be handled. Basically, we just became busy. I really wanted to believe it was that simple; why everyone had started acting differently towards me. …"

The red paladin paused, his eyes drifting off to the side.

"I really wish things were that simple."

Keith's brows became furrowed at Lance's words, confusion making its presence known to the room.

Even with his eyes off of him, Lance picked up on Keith's confused silence so he continued.

"Whether it was Shiro getting used to being the leader again, Pidge and Hunk working on a new device, or Coran creating a show to get more support for the coalition, basically everyone had something to do." he elaborated.

"As for me, I would try and help out someone every now and then, but I could only do so much. Eventually, it got to a point where I couldn't really do much so I just decided to stay out of the way. I mean, I'd wait to see if someone needed my help with something or needed my input, but no one ever did. I wanted to believe it was because everyone had it handled so there was no need to bother me."

Lance could feel the slight scowl growing on his face, the phantom feeling of loneliness filling his stomach.

"Turns out I was just an afterthought." he muttered.

The black paladin couldn't stop his eyebrows from knitting together, his teeth now clamping on the inside of his cheek. He remained firm in his silence as Lance let out a deep sigh.

"Things got even worse once Lotor showed up." he began to recount, dropping his hand from his hip as he began to pace in front of Keith again.

"Hunk and Pidge started spending their time making new devices, Shiro started acting more 'not himself,' and I don't have to tell you everything between Lotor and Allura. Then, I went from being an afterthought to being a straight up thorn in everyone's ass!"

The Cuban paladin started to become so wrapped in the painful memories that he missed the way Keith crossed his arms, his purple eyes filled to the brim with concern.

"Whenever Lotor was around, Alllura practically forgot that I was even there, and it didn't feel right going to Coran about it. Shiro, or 'fake Shiro', kept on making crazy decision after crazy decision and just started becoming more and more strict. Hell, he even yelled in my face and told me to stay out of a discussion when all I was trying to do was keep the peace between everyone!"

Keith's eyes grew slightly at this, the thought of Shiro raising his voice in someone's face being such a foreign concept to him that Lance's confession made the hairs on his neck stand-up.

Granted, it was the clone during that time, but still.

"And Hunk and Pidge…" the red paladin started again, pausing as he tried to let the wave of hurt and anger pass before he continued.

"They'd let me peek into some of their projects, but it's not like they went 'Hey Lance! We came up with a new experiment! Wanna come check it out?' I had to literally invite myself because I just so happened to be in the room when they were working. And even on the rare occasion they'd loop me in, it was different."

Lance ceased his pacing, his eyes downcast as his body faced the wall as the image of his two teammates flashed in his mind, with the image of him standing miles behind them.

"It wasn't like those days in the Garrison, when it was the three of us. It wasn't 'Lance, Hunk, and Pidge' anymore." he stated. "It was now 'Hunk and Pidge, plus Lance' or 'Hunk, Pidge, and sometimes Lance.' Or, and this is my favorite, 'Team Punk!' And with no Lance in sight.

"Yeah! Team Punk does it again!"

Lance unconsciously tightened his lips, the sound of their group name creating a strong sting in his chest.

Funny how things that seemed mundane at first end up hurting you like a wrecking ball when you actually stop and think about it.

The red paladin went to rub the back of his neck uncomfortably as he finally turned his body away from the wall, beginning to slowly walk back to the side of the table where Keith continued to stand.

It was then that Lance let out a small humorless laugh.

"I literally became the outsider to my own friend group." he said aghast, although it was clear to the black paladin that nothing about that fact shocked him (and it hurt like hell).

"It would be like the two of them had their own freaking language and I couldn't even understand it. Honestly, I thought that feeling alienated from them felt awful, but it wasn't."

Lance stopped for a moment, slowly shaking his head to himself as a small, somber smile grew on his face.

"No," he started to say. "It was actually whenever they felt like I was getting in the way of whatever they were doing at the moment. That was when Pidge would get annoyed and be all 'Lance, could you stop?' or 'You're in the way, Lance!' Or even better, when she'd go "Oh my God! Can you just shut up and go somewhere?'

Keith's left eye twitched at his teammate's impersonation of the green paladin, though it had nothing to do with the way Lance's voice purposely shrilled up.

"Hell, the last time she went off on me, she even asked fake Shiro to take me away from them! And mind you, this was LITERALLY days after he screamed in my face!" the red paladin ranted, his voice back to its normal pitch. The scornful expression that currently took hold of his face began to drop as it once again took a backseat to the sadness that continued to plague the young marksman, a deep sigh releasing from his mouth.

"It didn't matter what I did or what I said, I was always a nuisance to someone." said Lance despondently. "And when I wasn't being a nuisance, I was being a loner. A nobody. Not like anybody noticed or cared, though. I would just be somewhere by myself, waiting for someone to reach out and ask me for help with something. Or to ask how I was doing. Just anything! Anything that would let me know that I wasn't being a waste of space or a waste of somebody's time!"

It was then that Lance finally looked at Keith, meeting his worried gaze.

"And do you want to know what the craziest thing was?" he asked aloud, already going on to answer himself in spite of the older paladin's lack of response.

"That whole entire time that I was alone, I would always keep thinking: 'Man, I wish Keith was still here' or 'When is Keith gonna come back?' or even 'Keith, where the hell are you?!'"

The aforementioned paladin's eyes could only register shock at Lance's confession, goosebumps beginning to show themselves under his uniform as if a gust of cool air blew around him within the room.

He…thought about me?

"That's how bad things had gotten." the red paladin continued. "And look, I know we still had our back and forths, but things had gotten better. I mean, we could actually talk to each other without throwing jabs. And we could actually talk to each other about the serious stuff, you know?"

It took everything in Lance not to avert his eyes once again as they started to refill, but he needed his black paladin to understand him.

He needed Keith to see him.

More than ever before.

"But then you left, and everything just went downhill. The missions were becoming harder and more mentally exhausting and it was just a lot. And I…I couldn't turn to anybody because they would either be too stressed out to talk or they just wouldn't hear me out. Or if they did, they thought I was being overdramatic. I couldn't say anything. And I couldn't say what I needed to say because…"

The red paladin's lips tightened as he felt his eyes begin to fill to the brim, the ache in his chest growing as he stared back at his leader as a stray tear managed to escape from his eye and down his cheek.

"Because the one person I knew I could talk to was already gone."

The half Galran's look of concern dropped as his eyes shifted slightly in surprise at the admission, his heart aching all over again in guilt. Even if he wanted to believe that Lance was somehow referring to someone completely different, he knew damn well who he was talking about.

Lance sniffled as he went to wipe away the tear.

"I know things weren't exactly perfect between us, Keith," he began to state, releasing another sniffle. "But after the talk we had in your room, it really did feel like you were the only person I would be able to go to. You didn't turn me away or brush me off saying I was crazy or look at me like I was annoying you like everyone else did. You…you…"

The red paladin could only focus on Keith's now sullen gaze as his lips tightened together briefly.

"You…actually listened to me. And I needed that. And with everything else that ended up happening on that ship, I needed that more than ever. I needed you more than ever."

The black paladin froze, quietly grabbing a sharp intake of breath as Lance continued to stare at him intensely. The red paladin took in his own sharp breath as he went to speak once more.

"And I know that you left to go with the Blades to help with the coalition, but you were gone for so long to the point where I didn't even know when you'd be back or if you were ever going to come back! And it drove me insane! I-"

Lance suddenly halted his words as he felt himself get overwhelmed again, diverting his gaze from his teammate once again as he looked to the ground and clenched his hand into a tight fist as he struggled to make the words come out.

It wasn't long before his mind went back to his last interactions with Keith on the castleship.

His overwhelming confusion and sadness the day Keith announced his departure for the Blades and how he had to force himself to smile and quip so that he wouldn't crack in front of Keith and the team.

The feeling of utter shock and surprise when the team got Keith's transmission and that he was returning to the ship. The way that his heart was beating like a woodpecker pecking wood when he laid eyes on the black paladin for the first time in what felt like months. How his wide blue eyes took in his friend's newfound height and broader body, leaving the red paladin as intrigued as he was relieved to finally be in the same space as Keith again (regardless of how short-lived the reunion was).

The way his heart hammered and his stomach twisted when the two of them were sitting on that cliff looking at the planet's sunrise. The look of concern and patient curiosity that took hold on Keith's face as he looked at him, the expression that made the red paladin want to spill out everything he had been holding within his head and soul.

Even now, as Lance raised his head once again to meet Keith's gaze, that same concern and patience remained in his eyes. The Cuban paladin could feel his eyes start to fill once again as he let his arm go limp, releasing his hand from the fist he had forced it in as he continued to gaze at the older paladin somberly.

"I missed you, Keith."

Shock immediately became written on the young leader's face, eyes unblinking as the weight of Lance's statement sat in his chest. This whole time, he thought that missing Lance was a one-sided endeavor.

But it wasn't.

And it made the guilt hit him that much harder.

"That's what I wanted to say to you that day." Lance spoke, snapping the black paladin out of his shock.

"I missed you. I missed you the entire time. I've wanted to say that for the longest, but everything kept on happening and I thought…I just thought that it didn't matter to tell you anymore. But it's true. And I thought it would be the same for you somehow."

The look of shock fell from Keith's face at the admission, his eyes slowly filling with yearning as Lance's words repeated themselves within his ears.

"I thought it would be the same for you somehow."

And it was. More than anything.

There wasn't a second in the Mamora base or on that space whale where he didn't miss his right hand. And that was something that the half Galran was more than happy to confirm to him.

But he wouldn't get the chance.

Because right as he was about to take his first step towards him, Lance turned away.

"But I guess it wasn't." he said somberly. "Because the second you came back to us, you brushed me off. Just like everyone else did. And I get it was because of everything with Lotor and the Altean colony, but still. It still hurt"

The red paladin was quiet for a moment before a humorless chuckle left his lips.

"And here I go again: making things about myself." he said dryly with a small, lifeless smile. It wasn't until he did another turn to face completely away from the black paladin that he allowed his smile to drop.

"And they wonder why I don't say anything anymore." Lance muttered himself, keeping his voice low so that Keith wouldn't hear him.

But that was an attempt that ended up proving futile as the black paladin had heard every single word, his gaze once again sullen as he was met with the back of Lance's uniform.

How do we know you're the real Keith and not his bigger, cooler, grizzled older brother?

I don't have time for this, Lance!

The increased guilt was palpable as the black paladin found himself shifting his gaze off of Lance's back, looking at the ground in shame.

He never wanted to hit himself over the head so many times as he did from the moment he said that. Granted, he had just learned some disturbing first-hand information from Romelle about the quintessence harvesting that Lotor had done to the other Altean colony and wanted to warn the others should they come across the Galran prince.

But he hated the fact that he allowed his urgency to make him brush Lance off the way that he did. And with everything that ended up happening after the fact, he never got the chance to properly apologize.

And now, there was another layer of hurt that laid between them that needed to be rectified. And Keith was left feeling more and more like a hypocrite with each passing second.

But he intended to fix that.

"You're not making things about yourself at all." Keith said firmly, catching the slight lift of Lance's head as he remained facing away from him.

With a quick shut of his eyes, the black paladin took a deep breath as he reopened them, placing his violet pupils back on the hunched red paladin that stood before him.

"Lance, I'm sorry." said Keith, his voice apologetic. "I never meant to brush you off the way I did when I came back. Especially not like that. With everything that I had found out from Romelle about Lotor and the Altean colony, I just wanted to hurry and get back to the ship so that I could warn you guys before I was too late."

A wave of regret washed over his being as he was brought back to the moment when he landed back on the castleship, mentally recoiling as he remembered how he completely walked past and ignored Lance to face the rest of the team.

Even though every single ounce of quintessence within him wanted to wrap his arms around him and feel the younger man against him.

"But even then, I could've gone about it so much differently. And I definitely would've made time to hear whatever you wanted to say. No matter how crazy or insane."

It was faint, but Keith caught a bit of tension being released from Lance's shoulders.

Keeping his eyes on the red paladin, the half Galran allowed himself to take a small step towards him. It did nothing to close the massive distance between them, but one step towards the Cuban man was better than no step at all.

"Regardless, I'm sorry for doing that, Lance. And I'm sorry that you had to go through so much of that shit alone." he apologized once more. "When I left the team, I was honestly hoping things would be easier for you. I didn't think that it would end up getting worse."

Lance's eyes moved upwards as he stared at the wall.

"Keith, we were in the middle of a war. Hell, we still are." the red paladin commented, completely deadpan. "Things were never gonna get easier."

"That's not what I'm talking about." Keith responded. "I'm talking about you and the team. I thought that things with the team would get easier to manage. No one would have to wait up on me, Shiro would be back at the helm, and no one would have to give up a lion."

The marksman slowly closed his eyes, a part of him feeling sorry for the older paladin if he honestly thought his departure meant greener pastures (or in this case, smoother wormholes) for the team moving forward.

"Maybe." Lance spoke up. "But that didn't mean that things became easier on the team."

The black paladin frowned at the sentiment, but he remained silent as he waited for his teammate to explain himself.

"Yeah, fake Shiro was leading the team. But like I said, he just kept making all of these insane calls whenever we were in Voltron. Hell, it wasn't even that! He would literally shut us down whenever we felt like we had to do something." Lance illuminated.

"Remember when all of that dangerous stuff was happening on Naxzela? The team needed to get out of there and I told him that we needed to. But instead of listening to me, he just completely brushed me off and said that we needed to stay."

Keith's eyebrows raised in alarm.

The fact that the clone had actively put the team in danger like that was enough to make his stomach briefly twist itself. And the fact that he wasn't even close enough to help them made it that much worse. But another sigh from Lance reminded him that the clone didn't get away with it.

And that the red paladin was very much still here.

"Looking back, I know it was because that wasn't the real Shiro and that our Shiro would've heard me out, but we didn't know at the time. But that was enough for me to know that him being the leader, at least when you weren't there, it didn't feel right."

The red paladin paused before letting out a scowl.

"No, scratch that. It wasn't right." Lance corrected.

And even though he was facing away from him, Keith couldn't stop himself from nodding in agreement.

"And look," the red paladin started again. "You may have been a complete trainwreck when you first started out as the leader. But at the very least, you would listen to mine and the others' input during our missions the more you got settled into the role."

Lance couldn't stop himself from ticking the muscle within his jaw.

"He, on the other hand, didn't. That should've been my first clue that something was wrong." he began to gripe.

"Hey, don't go there. Okay?" Keith requested, taking another half step towards his friend.

"What happened happened. The clone did what they did, but he's gone now. We can't change anything, so it makes no sense to dwell on it."

Lance's jaw firmed for a moment, but he ultimately released it as he exhaled heavily.

Keith had a point.

The red paladin had already accepted that he couldn't change everything that happened with fake Shiro, no matter how much it bothered him.

So moving past it was the only thing he could do now. Though, that didn't mean he couldn't think back on it.

"Well, anyway, between his weird calls on the field and his light switch attitude in general, the team dynamic became less than easy. At that point, there was no use to me being a right hand because the only hand he would listen to was his own. Getting him to do anything else was like pulling Kaltenecker through a wormhole." Lance remarked.

"So, yeah. Anything but easy."

Keith couldn't help but wince, imagining the image of Lance trying to pull his beloved cow through a wormhole without their tail popping off of them.

But he got the sentiment, regardless.

And it made him feel that much worse.

"Sorry." he apologized again, making his teammate groan as he placed his hand over his eyes.

"Dude, stop saying you're sorry." Lance groaned, dragging his hand down his face. "You didn't know that was gonna happen."

"But that didn't mean I couldn't check in to make sure things were good. To make sure that you were okay." Keith argued.

The red paladin released a harsh sigh as he let his hand plop down against his side.

"Dude, you were going all over the place with the Blade doing God knows what and traveling God knows where to help the coalition. You were busy. I get it."

It took everything in the black paladin to not groan in exasperation.

"Lance-" Keith tried to say, only for the aforementioned teammate to speak up once again.

"Keith, would you stop?" the red paladin demanded.

"I know that I just said that I was upset about you leaving, but it's not like you weren't leaving for a good reason. You thought that the Blade could use help in gathering intel and stopping more Galra fleets, so you thought that that was where you needed to be."

Lance felt a phantom pang of hurt hit him in the center of his chest as he shut his eyes, trying to rid the image of Keith walking out of the castleship doors from his mind.

"You left for them."

"I left for you."

Within seconds, Lance's eyes shot wide open, his entire body now filled to the brim with shock. The young man was left paralyzed in his spot as he had those for words replay themselves in his head to determine if he actually heard them correctly. Once it became clear that he did, he hesitantly twisted his head and body to turn back to the black paladin, immediately being met with the older man's calm face and longing eyes.

Honestly, Lance didn't know what surprised him more: the words themselves or the calm and firm tone Keith had used when he said them.

Regardless, one look at the half Galran's face was enough to let Lance know that he was serious.

At this point, either Keith had gotten really good at reading his mind or he was wearing the most confused and surprised face in all of human existence because before the red paladin could even ask for Keith to repeat himself, he did it anyway.

"When I left the team, part of it was to go join and help the Blade. But the core of it was because of you. I left the team for you, Lance." he clarified.

All the red paladin could do in the moment was blink rapidly as his face of confusion twisting in different directions, as if the constant movement of his face would provide some levity for the bomb that was just dropped on him.

"I-You…Ho-?" Lance stumbled, his words failing him tremendously as confusion deprived him of the ability to talk sense. He shut his eyes once more and gave himself a few more seconds of thinking and processing before reopening them to stare at his teammate once again.

"Why?" he finally gasped out.

Keith closed his eyes for a second to take a breath before looking back at his right hand, his look of disbelief staring back at him.

"You had told me that with Shiro back, one of us would have to give up their lions. And I didn't want you to be the one to do it." Keith explained.

Lance didn't think that it was possible, but it felt as though his eyes were about to fall out of their sockets with how bulged out they had become in those few seconds. He immediately brought his fingers against his temple as he tried to let his friend's words sink in, looking away from him briefly.

"Wait, wait. Hold on." he spouted out quickly, sparing another look at Keith. "Are you talking about that talk we had in your room? You left because of that?"

Keith calmly shook his head.

"It wasn't just because of our talk," he replied. "But it did make me feel like it was necessary."

"Necessary?!" Lance repeated incredulously, his body rearing forward with bewildered eyes. "Wh-?"

He wanted the question to come out, but all he could do was turn his face away from the black paladin as he slapped his hands together and plopped his face between the seam of them, eyes closed once again to process what he had just heard.

Keith was left to look on silently as Lance continued to process everything, the only constant sound between the two of them being the urgent and rhythmic tapping of Lance's foot against the floor.

But in spite of the look of calm that the older paladin had schooled on his face, he was nothing short of terrified.

And after what felt like a lifetime, Lance turned back to him.

"How could you honestly think that you leaving was necessary?" he inquired stoically.

"Like you said, there were six of us and only five lions." Keith began. "Shiro was back, but I was the one still piloting Black. You were already pretty good at working with Red and Allura was still getting used to being in Blue. So when it came time to see who needed to go, the answer was obvious."

Lance's eyes followed him as the half Galran turned to lean against the table.

"Lance, I never wanted to be the leader, but I was. But when Shiro came back, it was gonna be impossible for us to both lead the team. It couldn't be Allura because she had just bonded with Blue and she'd be unlocking things that would be benefiting the team. And Red had already chosen you to be their paladin, so it definitely couldn't be you."

The red paladin looked off to the side as he let out a heavy sigh, crossing his arms as he turned back to the older paladin before him.

"So, you've had the idea of leaving the team thought through for a while?" Lance questioned. "And I was just the nail in the coffin?"

Keith glanced at Lance for a moment before nodding.

"Yeah."

The Cuban paladin's eyebrows raised as his mouth dropped, taking a step backwards from his teammate as he let out a scoff of disbelief before immediately covering his mouth.

That alone was enough for Keith to turn back to him, furrowed brows and frown on full display as he looked at him.

"What?" he questioned.

Lance just as quickly shook his head at him as he dropped his hand from his mouth.

"Nothing." he replied.

But Keith didn't buy it, his face becoming more serious.

"No, not nothing." he refuted. "What is it?"

Lance let out a groan as he dropped his head to the floor, placing his hands on his hips as he tried to work through his next few words. After a moment, he retook his step towards Keith before raising his head back up, a conflicted look painted on his face as he met his gaze once again, the silence remaining.

They didn't know how much time had passed between them as they held each other's gazes, but it had been long enough as right when Keith was about to break the silence, Lance did it first.

"Why me?"

Now it was Keith's turn to rear back in shock, both from the suddenness of the question and the question itself. Lance didn't give him a chance to be shocked for long, however, as he continued.

"I mean, you already gave yourself enough reasons as to why you should leave. Any of those would've been enough. But…you're saying that you left for me. Mainly for me."

Keith's eyebrow twitched.

"Is it really that hard to believe?" he questioned.

"I just…I just don't get it." Lance replied, disbelief still clear as day.

"Lance, when you came to me, you were already ready to take a step back from being the red paladin because you thought I needed my best soldiers on the front lines. But you are one of those best soldiers. I needed you out there then, just like how I need you out there now."

By the end of Keith's proclamation, Lance was staring at him more confused and distressed than ever. Almost as if he couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his mouth.

"Keith, I-" he attempted to say, his words ending as quickly as they started from how overwhelmed he felt. Soon enough, the red paladin was shaking his head feverishly, not even trying to meet his teammate's eyes.

"No, you don't mean that."

At this point, Keith's jaw tightened, his face beginning to scrunch in frustration.

"Lance, I'm serious!" the black paladin insisted, taking another step forward towards his right hand. "I gave up the Black Lion because I didn't want you to lose Red. I left so that you wouldn't have to. Why is that so hard for you to believe?"

"Because it doesn't make sense!" Lance shouted. "You had Black! You were getting better as a leader! But then Shiro came back, so it would've made sense if you decided to leave for him! But you left for me!"

The red paladin whipped his head back towards Keith, his own look of frustration beginning to match with his.

"You gave up your place for me! And you shouldn't have!"

Keith's brows knitted as his mouth fell open in disbelief.

"A-Are you serious?" he inquired incredulously.

"Yes!" Lance exclaimed, turning his body back towards his friend. In spite of his overwhelming frustration, he forced himself to take a deep breath and relax himself before talking to the black paladin.

"Look, I know you were doing it out of consideration and in some way I appreciate it, really I do!" he spoke, doing his best to remain calm, letting out a nervous and awkward chuckle before continuing.

"But Keith, I am not someone worth leaving over."

"Why not?" asked the black paladin urgently.

The lack of hesitation in his question was enough for Lance to stiffen, the heat from Keith's piercing gaze making him feel as if he were about to be set on fire. But soon enough, the simmering heat that came from his frustration slowly started to work its way back up.

"Because I'm not." he finally replied.

Keith's stare never wavered.

"Tell me why."

Lance began clenching his fist, the heat creeping into his chest and starting to build.

"Keith-" he tried to say, but the black paladin was faster.

"No, Lance. I need you to tell me why you think you're not worth leaving over." Keith declared. "Tell me why I should've sat back and watched you give up your place. Tell me why I should've stood back and done nothing."

The red paladin's eyes narrowed before he let out a frustrated sigh.

"This is pointless." said Lance, beginning to turn away from the black paladin again.

"No, it isn't." Keith argued. "Tell me why."

The red paladin tightened his fist even more, choosing to focus on the pain digging into his palm than whatever comeback he should be making to Keith.

But that was easier said than done.

"Come on, Lance." he heard Keith try to pry behind him. "You have to talk to me."

Lance could feel his bottom lip start to tremble, choosing to bite down on it.

"Lance."

"You shouldn't have done it." the red paladin finally spoke, his voice now lower in volume.

Keith tilted his head at Lance's voice, barely hearing him just enough to catch his words.

"Leaving the team. You shouldn't have done it." Lance elaborated. "Regardless of the lion switch, you should've just stayed."

The half Galran quietly took a breath and exhaled through his nose.

"I know." he replied. "But I thought I was doing the best thing for you. It wasn't fair that you had to lose another lion. I wanted you to keep Red and to stay active with the team. I just wanted things to work out for you and everyone."

"It didn't matter."

Keith's eyes startled, staring at Lance's back in shock.

"What?" he inquired slowly.

"It didn't matter." Lance repeated, his voice beginning to grow in volume. "You left so that I could still be with the team. But in hindsight, you were better off staying on the ship because at least the team would have someone valuable to fall back on."

The black paladin glanced at Lance for a second before his eyes hardened, not liking the insinuation that came out of his mouth.

"Lance, come on." Keith tried to refute calmly.

"What? If they had it their way, you'd be back in Red and helping them with everything. At least with you, they know it'd be stupid to leave you on the sidelines."

Keith could feel his jaw ticking. He knew that that was more than likely just Lance's self depreciation talking, but he wanted to stop hearing it altogether.

"Lance, stop." he warned.

"Why, Keith?" the red paladin shot back. "I'm just stating the facts! Apparently, the longer I stayed, the more of a nuisance I became to everyone! If anyone should've left the team, it's me!"

Incredulous anger filled Keith's veins as his purple eyes began to blaze.

"No, Lance! You needed to stay in Red! You needed to be the right hand for Black! And no one else could do that but you!" Keith insisted.

"No one would've wanted you to leave, the same way that you didn't want me to leave! Shiro had gotten Black's control again and I was already gone too much! You guys didn't need me at that point! But the team needed you!"

Lance released a loud scoff.

"The hell they do! You being back in Red would've been the best thing for everyone! It doesn't matter how much you wanted to keep me here or how much you think I was needed! It didn't fucking mean anything!"

"Why?!"

"BECAUSE IT WAS POINTLESS!" Lance roared.

The black paladin reared back slightly at the sheer volume of Lance's yell, his ferocious, watery eyes shocking him as much as they hurt him.

"You leaving for me was pointless!" Lance continued. "Because now, the team was stuck with me! They had to deal with me and all of my jokes and all of my drama and they didn't want to deal with any of it! The only time I ever existed to them was when we were on missions!"

The red paladin could feel tears of anger brimming at the corners of his eyes, ready to spill over at any time. But that was the last thing that was going through his mind right now.

"I was practically invisible! I was such a non-factor to them that they would just up and leave me without asking if I wanted to go with them! And the only time when I actually was visible was when they were screaming at me and telling me how annoying I was being! And I couldn't even vent to you because you were gone!" Lance scorned.

"And I'm sorry!" Keith exclaimed back to him, eyes and voice filled with regret. "I didn't know! If I had known, then I would've-"

"I know! I know that, okay?" Lance interrupted, doing his best not to choke on his words. "But it doesn't change the facts! This team fucking hates me!"

The black paladin's eyes bulged once again, his jaw going slack for a couple of seconds before he snapped himself out of his stupor.

"Wh-? No, they don't!" Keith shot back. "Lance, they care about you! They love you!"

Lance didn't hesitate to give the black paladin an eye roll, but Keith wasn't fazed in the slightest.

"Look, have they fucked up since I've been gone? Definitely. There is no way in hell I'm gonna negate that. But the team does not hate you, Lance. I know that I made it sound like they did back in the Astral Plane, but that couldn't be further from the truth!"

The red paladin's face scrunched up briefly before he brought his hands into prayer position once again to breathe into the seam of them once again before dropping them.

"I want to believe you, Keith. I really do." Lance started, hints of desperation seeping from his voice. "But every single thing that the team has done since you've left has proven otherwise. They could give less of a shit whether or not I was in pain or damn near dying. They. Don't. Care."

Keith's face hardened slightly.

"Lance-"

"No, Keith! They don't!" the aforementioned paladin stopped angrily, halting his leader's words.

"They don't care about what happens to me! They never did! And whenever something did happen to me that they were aware of, guess what? They didn't do anything!"Lance fumed.

"Not when I was pining for Allura! Not when Shiro screamed at me! Not when I died! NOTHING, KEITH!"

Even amongst the furious avalanche of words, Keith's ears were sharp enough to pick up that one thing Lance had said, prompting him to rear back and stare at the red paladin in disbelief and confusion as the former continued to ramble.

"I don't even know why I'm still talking about this!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a second!" Keith began to blurt, trying to signal for the Cuban marksman to stop his rant. He didn't know if it was because he wasn't loud enough or if he was being ignored, but Lance's ramblings didn't stop.

"It doesn't matter what happens once we leave, they're never gonna give a shit! So what's the point?!"

"Lance, hold on-"

"And if they expect me to just go ahead and get over it, then-"

"LANCE!"

Finally, the red paladin finally ceased his ramblings from Keith's shout, looking at the black paladin with residual anger and annoyance from his heightened emotions and no doubt from being interrupted.

"WHAT?!" he snapped.

"What did you just say?" Keith inquired, his tense face and hardened eyes looking at the red paladin. Lance's eyebrows drew together, clearly puzzled.

"What do you mean?"

"You said something about you dying when you talked about the team not doing anything." Keith clarified. "What do you mean by that?"

Lance was quiet for a moment before his eyes closed, his mouth hardening as he released a sharp exhale from the inside of his throat before looking back at the black paladin.

"If you're referring to when I said that the team couldn't care about me 'damn near dying,' then I meant exactly what I-"

"Not that." Keith dismissed, the muscles in his jaw beginning to feather as one of his hands clenched into a fist in dreaded anticipation.

"After that."

Lance's eyes never left Keith's as he played back the last few seconds of his rant.

"Not when I was pining for Allura! Not when Shiro screamed at me! Not when I died!

"Not when I died!"

"...when I died!"

"…I died!"

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

That wasn't supposed to come out.

Lance did his best to suppress the surprise of his own words on his face, but he knew that Keith could see right through him.

So, he had to tell him.

He had to tell him the one thing he never wished to tell him.

"Lance, what did you say?" Keith asked again, his voice laced with an emotion that the red paladin couldn't quite decipher. Lance's eyes went shut as he gave himself a moment to prepare himself, reopening them a second later to Keith's awaiting stare.

He didn't even know what words to start with; What words he could use to soften the blow that he was about to give. It wouldn't matter how nice he tried to polish it or how elongated and complex he could make it.

The simple fact would remain unchanged.

He died. And Keith had to know.

After a minute of heavy silence, all Lance could do was give a shake of his head and half of a shrug as Keith's stare remained on him.

"It's exactly what you heard." the Cuban paladin finally said, defeated. "I…died."

Keith's eyebrows immediately crumpled as his face once again scrunched in further confusion.

"What does that mean?" he inquired. "What do you mean 'you died?'"

"Exactly that." Lance replied, his voice sharper than he intended for it to be. "I died."

Keith looked at his teammate hard before his face began to harden, nostrils flaring and eyes sharper than his dagger. But even with the hardened stare he was given, Lance could make out the desperation hidden underneath it.

And it made everything hurt all the more.

"Lance, don't do that." the black paladin spoke warningly. "If this is your way of trying to prove a point that I care about you and the team doesn't, there are other ways to go about it."

Lance had to fight back the urge to scream as he took a step towards the black paladin.

"There's no point to prove, Keith!" he exclaimed distressingly, the momentary rush of adrenaline fading as he leaned back in his spot as he just gazed at his leader sadly.

"It's true. I died."

Maybe it was because he had said those two words three times in a row.

Maybe it was because the black paladin had already believed him from when he said it the first time.

But the hardened exterior that Keith tried to maintain to Lance's admission began to crumble right in front of Lance's eyes. The once fiery and composed stare now diminishing as his purple orbs began to fill with panic, desperation, and a whole lot of denial while the rest of the older man's face was shrouded in fear.

And the stiffness that was holding Keith's body and himself together dissipated, his body now compounded with bouncing shoulders that came from heavy breaths of disbelief and the balance he hoped to hold all but evaporating as he took a stilted step backwards away from his right hand.

And the only thing that Lance could do was watch him in sadness and regret, hating every single second of pain that he was causing him.

"No." Keith blurted softly, his head starting to shake as his fearful eyes never left the younger paladin in front of him. In spite of his fear, the black paladin gave one last attempt of sitting in denial as his brows lowered and he forced himself to straighten.

"No, no!" he repeated, his voice now stronger but still holding those hints of shock. "That's not true! It-There's no way that that happened!"

Lance's gaze remained sullen as he nodded his head at the black paladin.

"It did." he said somberly.

The black paladin broke free from Lance's gaze as he turned his head to the wall with quick, anxious breaths, as if he was hoping someone was there to tell him that this was some sort of elaborate prank or that the red paladin was just exaggerating. He then turned back to face Lance, his whole expression dripping with distress.

As if he was hoping that Lance would tell him that it was a joke.

That he was kidding.

That it didn't happen.

That he didn't die.

But he did.

And Lance had to stand there and confirm it to him every single time he tried to deny it. Keith shook his head at him once again, his jaw tight.

"Lance, come on." said Keith, doing his best to sound firm but ultimately sounding like he was seconds away from begging. Guilt pooled within Lance's core as he gazed at his leader sullenly.

"It was while you were away." he began to recount. "There was this giant barrier called the Omega Shield. And we were on a mission to try and fix it, but then Sendak came and he attacked it."

Lance could feel his hands begin to tremble at his sides, a small wave of nausea rushing over him. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck and his arms begin to stand up, as if he was standing in the middle of an electric current.

He did his best to ignore the unwanted sensations as he continued.

"Then, out of nowhere, there was this random surge of electricity that just came out of nowhere. And when I saw it, it was heading straight towards Allura. So I…"

"ALLURA!"

Ice began to fill the red paladin's veins at the sound of his own voice, his skin beginning to pickle.

"I-I just didn't think." Lance stammered, his voice slowly starting to sound strained the more he spoke about it. "I just went ahead and knocked her out of the way and…"

Before long, Lance could feel his throat begin to tighten, the memories of that moment starting to take their toll on him. He ended up shutting his eyes tightly as he tried to push through the intensity of it all, trying to ignore the phantom taste of mercury in his mouth.

"All I can remember is seeing that light coming towards me and that…that searing pain when it was happening. I-I thought I was being burnt alive, like every single inch of me was burning. And then, e-everything just went dark."

Lance allowed his eyes to open as they remained fixated on the floor.

"Next thing I know, I wake up and Allura's right next to me and I have to get back to work." he finished, his strained voice ending in a quiver before he let in and out a quick breath.

Lance turned his head to the side as he rubbed the back of his neck, hoping to take his mind off of the memory he'd spent so much time hoping to forget.

"And look, I know that all of this sounds crazy and you might think that I'm still bullshitting, but I'm not." he stated. "Believe me, I'd much rather down a hundred tons of nunvill than to be hit by lightning."

The red paladin did his best to appear nonchalant about all this, but he couldn't help but to feel continuously on edge the longer Keith remained silent. And everything in him was afraid to see whatever incredulous or disgusted look was currently plaguing the black paladin's face at this new information.

"But, this really isn't something that we have to dwell on, is it?" Lance asked, doing his best to keep his voice light. Maybe if he brushed it off and sounded put together, Keith wouldn't dwell on it for long and they could both keep it moving.

"I mean…I'm alive, aren't I?" Like, I'm here!" he tried to say cheerfully, moving his head back towards Keith. "I'm standing and talking and-"

As he faced the front once more, Lance's heart immediately shattered as he lost the will to produce anymore words.

The only thing he could see was the absolutely haunted look that took over Keith's face, his eyes glassy, widened, and unblinking and his face now pale, mouth slightly agape. And ironically, he was staring at him as if the younger paladin was a ghost. And if the circumstances of it all weren't so damn messed up, Lance probably would've found it in him to have a laugh.

But now, all he could do was stand there in guilt and heartbreak.

To think that he thought having Keith look at him in disgust and continued disbelief about his death would be hard to see.

This was so much worse.

As he watched Keith try to form the words to speak, the red paladin wanted nothing more than to get that look off of his face.

"You died?

But he knew he couldn't.

Instead, he let his eyes drop down to the floor, the heartbreak in Keith's voice making him wish that he was anywhere else on the ship so that he wouldn't have to hear it again.

"Yeah." Lance confirmed sadly. "I died, Keith."

The space between the two young men was silent, with Keith not saying anything and Lance being afraid to say anything else as his eyes remained fixated away from his best friend. Unbeknownst to him, Keith remained frozen in his spot as he continued to stare at the red paladin with a pained expression.

As seconds continued to tick between the two, Keith couldn't stop himself from staring at Lance's face, taking in his regret and sadness. The longer he stared at him, the more it felt like he was getting stabbed in the chest over and over again.

He already was living with the guilt of leaving Lance behind and everything he did and said to him when he was mind controlled.

But now knowing that Lance actually died while he was away and unaware?

The black paladin wanted nothing more than to grab his blade and stab himself in the center of his chest over and over again. Even though, no amount of stabbing would ever make up for the fact that he wasn't there when Lance more than likely needed him the most.

Lance…died.

He died.

Lance fucking died.

Eventually, the room's silence would soon be filled with Keith's incredulous scoff as he turned around to lean against the table, his gloved hands gripping the edge of it tightly as his disturbed eyes were on the ground. While he did that, Lance snuck a glance at him from underneath his eyelids.

"So all this time, you've had to deal with the fact that you died all by yourself." said Keith, his voice low and despondent, as if he was still trying to make sense of it all. Lance nodded sadly, even though he knew there was a chance that Keith didn't catch the movement.

That didn't mean that he couldn't sense it, though.

"You actually died. You died…on a mission." the black paladin continued, the volume in his voice getting stronger and louder as the disturbed look of heartbreak that was once on his face was now starting to get replaced with genuine anger.

"You died during a mission and no one said anything?!" Keith finally snapped, prompting Lance to snap his head back up at him with surprised eyes and raised brows. He already knew that the black paladin was going to be upset about him dying.

He just never expected this level of anger.

And for him, of all people.

"Keith-" he said nervously.

"No, Lance!" the black paladin interrupted. "This isn't okay! You and the others were on the same fucking mission! How the fuck could they not do anything?!"

The red paladin had to stop himself from sighing as he gave a half shrug.

"It's like you just said." the red paladin began to answer. "It was a mission. The shield still needed to be repaired."

"It doesn't matter! They still could've checked in over the coms! They could've come inside Red after the shield was fixed!"

Keith took a breath as he allowed himself to lean back, his eyes still maintaining their scorn as he appeared to restrain himself as one of his eyebrows raised themselves skeptically.

"Did they?"

Lance's throat bobbed, a sharp chill running down his spine at Keith's low, questioning tone.

He knew what it was that Keith wanted.

He wanted to see if he was wrong.

If the team actually gave a shit.

If the team actually did check on Lance after everything was over.

If the team actually, for once, did something right by him.

But at the same time, the red paladin knew that Keith already knew the answer. And the second that he shifted his eyes from Keith's, it confirmed everything he needed to know.

And he was livid.

Now, all he heard was the sound of Keith letting out a scornful grunt as the half Galran began to walk away from the table, his hands gripping the top of his head as he walked to the wall. The young marksman peered back up at the furious paladin with guilt-ridden eyes.

The last thing he ever wanted was making Keith more upset than he already was. And yet there he was, gripping his hair and starting to pace their side of the room.

Eventually, the older man found his way back to his spot at the table, his head now lowered as his vexed eyes were now clamped shut. Even though the red paladin knew they were only going to remain closed for so long.

"Keith, this really isn't that big of a deal." Lance remarked.

Before long, the grip on Keith's hair became tighter as he heard the black paladin let out a semblance of a growl. The Cuban marksman watched as Keith forcefully slid his hands out of his hair as he went to cross one arm across his chest while his other hand went to tightly grip the bridge of his nose.

"Lance." the black paladin forced out through gritted teeth.

"Look, it was a high stakes mission, okay? I doubt that they would've been able to get to me if they wanted to with everything going on." the red paladin hoped to explain away.

"Besides, they must've seen Allura come to Red. And once we saw each other back on the castleship after the mission, they probably assumed that everything was fine."

Almost immediately, Keith's head snapped up and turned to the red paladin, his eyes blazing incredulously with shock and pisstivity.

"THAT'S EVEN WORSE!" the black paladin shouted, his volume and increased anger making Lance inwardly wince.

"Just because you looked fine on the ship didn't mean that you were fine! Did they just not care or were they really just that stupid?!"

Lance bit his bottom lip, choosing his next words carefully.

"Well, for them to care, they would have had to know what happened." he replied. Keith's eyes narrowed as his head tilted and he shifted his weight to one of his feet.

"Lance, you're not honestly going to tell me that the team was that fucking oblivious to you being shocked by lightning." he deadpanned.

"Well, Pidge and Hunk looked pretty shocked when I ripped into them about it when you were admitted." the red paladin replied.

Lance was aware of just how much of an excuse that sounded, but he wasn't wrong.

He remembered the look of shock that plagued Hunk and Pidge's faces when he brought up how he died. And it was the furthest thing from just casual shock.

It was the kind of shock you have as if the world just stopped spinning.

That was the shock that was in their eyes that day, and he was so consumed in anger that he hardly registered them until later. And the shared look of shame that they had when he confronted them again in Keith's hospital room simply confirmed it.

That didn't make the facts of it all any less insulting to him, though.

Just like how his statement didn't make Keith any less pissed at the situation.

"I'm sure they did." he disparaged sarcastically, crossing his arms. "Finding out that your teammate died and you honestly cared less can do that to you."

Lance put his hands up in surrender.

"Hey, I'm not defending them."

"Good."

"But I am stating the facts. I think this is a situation of them being more oblivious than anything." Lance maintained.

Keith didn't say anything as he poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue, his eyes looking past his right hand in thought.

"Or they could just be obliviously stupid." he deadpanned once again, although Lance could tell by the seriousness on his face that he truly meant what he said. He should've known that he was going to end up holding a grudge against the team.

However, the red paladin would be lying if he didn't feel the slightest bit flattered that the black paladin was truly this upset on his behalf.

Lance didn't respond to Keith's rebuttal, merely shrugging at the sentiment.

"So, what?" the black paladin asked with his own shrug. "The whole team just…didn't know what happened to you?"

"No." Lance answered. "Don't forget, Allura was the one who brought me back. So of course, she knows what happened and to what extent."

The half Galran didn't hesitate to let out a puff of air through his nose.

"So, you're telling me that aside from her, everyone else didn't know what happened to you?"

Lance remained silent as his eyes lowered, making Keith groan as he buried his face within his hands in irritation.

"Why the hell didn't she say anything?!" Keith asked angrily.

"I don't know, okay?!" Lance shouted back, his patience beginning to wane thin. "I don't know why she didn't say anything!"

The red paladin gave himself a moment to collect himself, making himself take a step back as he took a breath.

He understood Keith's anger. He really did.

He just hated how he had to explain away the team's actions as if he knew what was going on in their heads. Aside from the fact that he was hardly worth acknowledging or caring for.

It didn't matter how many times the team tried to explain it away, everything they had done up until now had been unjustifiable. And yet, here he was: inadvertently justifying their thoughts and actions just so that Keith could try and understand the things that continue to not make sense to him, at all.

It was enough to make him want to bash his head against the wall.

Just then, Lance shrugged at his leader as he looked back at him.

"Who knows? Maybe…maybe she thought that since I didn't tell anyone that she shouldn't either." he replied before letting out a tired sigh..

"I just…I just don't know."

Keith watched the young Cuban man drape his arms over the top of the chair next to him, lowering his forehead into his hand as his head shook softly. He couldn't help but to shoot Lance a pitiful look, regretting how overwhelmed he made him.

The half Galran took a quick breath of his own as he crossed his arms again, lifting his body off of the table to turn fully to his teammate.

"Neither do I." said Keith, his voice now a bit calmer. "But either way, she should've said something to the team. You shouldn't be the only one carrying something that heavy."

At that, Lance gave a mirthless laugh with no smile.

"It probably wouldn't have mattered anyway." he remarked, lifting his head from out his hand. "They probably would've just told me to brush it off and get over it."

Silence fell once again as Keith quietly took note of Lance scratching at the sleeve of his uniform. Before he could say anything, Lance opened his mouth and beat him to it.

"Makes me wonder if they'd ever do the same thing for me." he said grimly.

That sentiment alone was enough for Keith's stomach to violently twist.

"What do you mean?"

Lance shrugged absentmindedly.

"I mean, I literally took an electrical hit for a teammate. And except for her, no one checked in." he stated. "Who's to say that if I were the one about to take a hit, they would just stand back and wait until I've taken it head on to even do anything?"

Keith could only sullen his gaze at Lance's words, the look of defeat etched on his friend's features making him ache. Before long, his exposed hand once again clenched into a fist above his folded arms.

"If they did, then we'd have a serious problem." the black paladin proclaimed firmly.

Lance didn't make an attempt to look at him.

"Us or them?" he asked dully, the tiniest hint of intrigue managing to pierce its way into his question unbeknownst to the red paladin.

That was enough for a ghost of a smirk to appear on Keith's face for just a couple of seconds.

"Definitely not us." he replied. "But in all seriousness, even with how badly they fucked up, I think that they'd try to get to you."

An air of silence fell between the young paladins once again, the tension of the black paladin's answer and his right hand's possible response lingering within the air. Keith's eyes never came off of Lance as the latter's eyes remained lowered, peering down at the little space that had been created from his folded arms.

Just the absolute stillness of it all had Keith biting the inside of his cheek.

Seeing Lance's faith in their friends become so shaken and fragile hurt the young leader to no end. And all it did was stoke the anger he had already felt towards them for what they did and didn't do. But it also made him want to do everything he could to restore that same faith within the man he cared for.

But who was he to tell him that?

Who was he to try and convince him of their loyalty and love when he wasn't even around to witness the lack of it?

Who was he to tell Lance that he had friends who cared about him when those same friends were the same ones who hurt him?

Including himself?

A part of him felt like a hypocrite for even trying to go there in the first place. But he would much rather try to help Lance and be a hypocrite rather than let him drown and be another traitor.

But at the end of the day, whether or not forgiveness and redemption was even possible in his team's futures relied solely on Lance. And he had to sit with that.

Just as he pulled himself out of his thoughts, Lance's voice called out to him.

"Keith?"

The half Galran's eyes grew ever so slightly in surprise at the sudden call of his name, but he just as quickly composed himself.

'Hm?"

He watched Lance's hand scratch at his sleeve as he continued to look down at the top of the chair, his expression still holding bits of sadness.

"Has there ever been times where you wondered if the things you've done were worth it?" he inquired, the question enough to make Keith's brows furrow as his head tilted in confusion and disbelief made its way onto his face.

The shocked silence prompted Lance to continue.

"The things you've said. The battles you've fought. The things you went through. The things that you put yourself through and the peace and sanity that you sacrifice." he lamented.

"You do the things you do and go through the things that you go through. And it sucks and it hurts like hell but you tell yourself to keep going because it'll all be worth it in the end. But then the longer things happen and the more that people hurt you, you start to second guess yourself. And you can't stop yourself from wondering if anything good is ever gonna come out of it."

Keith's breath hitched at the sight of Lance's eyes growing glassy.

"You've felt like that, haven't you?"

The shock and disbelief seeped out of Keith's face the longer he looked at his best friend, his melancholic and defeated expression making it hard for the black paladin to talk, his own somber expression the only means of articulating his current thoughts.

He didn't know what he was supposed to say. But the underlying desperation in Lance's voice let the black paladin know that he couldn't afford to avoid the question.

He just hoped he didn't end up making things worse.

The black paladin took another good look at the red paladin in front of him before shutting his eyes to take a quick breath, quickly reopening them.

"I have. And there's been so many times where I have." Keith finally answered, honesty evident in his tone. "But if I just go on believing that the things I went through aren't going to amount to anything, then there's no reason for me to keep trying to survive."

Lance's eyes remained trained on the seat as he gripped his sleeve.

"So, I kinda have to believe that it'll be worth it. That it is worth it."

The red paladin gave an empty smirk as his shoulders shook with a huff of air from his nose.

"Wish I could have that same optimism."Lance quipped lifelessly.

"This isn't me being optimistic." Keith shot back. "I'm just being honest."

The tension within the situation room grew thick as Lance's smile disappeared from his face, his serious face still peering down straight into the space of his arms.

No one said anything for a few seconds until Lance finally spoke back up.

"I wish it was that easy."

The young marksman never removed his eyes from where they were staring as he uncrossed his arms from atop the chair and instead placed his palms against it, putting distance between him and the piece of furniture.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to keep doing what I do like everything's okay? How much I have to act like I'm fine when I'm not? How many times I've had to tell myself that everything's going to work out when it won't?"

Lance's hands squeezed the back of the seat as he went on.

"I never asked to be a part of this shit. I never asked for any of it! I never wanted any of the battles and the chaos and the trauma! But at the end of the day, this whole universe and the people in it were on the line, so I had to suck it up and keep it pushing. I had to remind myself that every small victory we had was a step closer to peace. I thought…I thought I was making a difference."

A wave of concern came over Keith as he took notice Lance's hands starting to shake, his grip still tense atop the seat. However, he was snapped out of his concerned stupor by the sound of a lifeless chuckle, prompting the black paladin to glance at Lance once again.

"What a lie that turned out to be." Lance said disparagingly. "What difference is a few shots going to make to an entire war? Here I was thinking I was making an impact as a paladin, but I haven't so much as made a dent! I was so non-existent that my own team didn't give a damn that I got hit by electricity and basically died right in front of their eyes."

A mixture of sadness and anger swirled in the pit of Keith's stomach as the gaze he had on his red paladin became stricken, his words hurting the black paladin to the core.

"Lance." he called gently, doing his best to keep his tone of disagreement at bay.

"No, Keith. It's true." the red paladin responded. "I'm nothing to them."

"No, you're not!"

Keith didn't hesitate to inch closer to his right hand.

"You are not nothing, Lance!" the older paladin proclaimed firmly.

"I know that this team has more than dropped the ball when it comes to checking on you. But I know for a fact that every single person that's outside of that door cares about you and wants you to be okay! And if they had the chance to go back in time and fix things, they would."

He paused, his emotions starting to settle as his heightened emotions began to lower.

"Including me."

"But that's just it."

After what felt like a lifetime, Lance lifted his head and faced Keith, the look of sadness from before having already creeped back into his eyes as he looked at him.

"I can believe that you would." the red paladin stated. "I can believe that Shiro would. But everyone else, I just don't. And if they did, it wouldn't be because they're actually sorry. They'd just want to make themselves feel better."

Keith was only to look back at Lance sadly as the latter turned his head back to peer down at the seat.

"You know what's crazy, though?" the red paladin inquired suddenly.

Keith never gave a verbal response, but Lance continued anyway.

"After Allura brought me back and we went back to the ship, there was a small part of me that wondered if I had done the right thing. If it was actually a good call to push her out the way. For all I know, she could've seen it at the last second and moved out of the way or Blue could've found a way to deflect it."

The red paladin was quiet as the grip he had on the chair lessened.

"But," Lance started again. "When I really think about it, the rest of me just goes: 'Well, better me than them.' Because honestly? It doesn't matter who it is on the team or even if it's someone outside of the team. They're already doing more than I ever could. At least if it's me, it wouldn't be that much of a loss. And they'd still be a good team. Maybe even a better one. So if me going out means someone better gets to keep going, then so be it."

The young man continued to peer at the chair sadly, oblivious to the somber and pinched expression that currently took hold of Keith's face.

Just when he thought Lance couldn't break his heart any further than he already has, he always found himself with his heart splintering and coming undone with every new soul-crushing thought or feeling the red paladin chose to express to him.

"You really believe that, don't you?" Keith asked, a hint of dread in his voice despite knowing the answer.

Lance gave a quick upwards flick of his eyebrows.

"What's there not to believe?" he answered. "I was down for the count for God knows how long and they were still able to get the job done. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not a factor to the group."

The black paladin couldn't help himself as his nostrils began to flare.

He honestly didn't know what was worse:

The fact that Lance considers himself to be this expendable and not even worthy of being grieved over or the fact that whenever he said something along those lines, it would be said as if it were indeed some sort of well-known fact that was based in reality.

Regardless, it bothered Keith all the same.

It bothered him to hear any of that at all.

And yet…

…he knew exactly where he was coming from.

The corresponding silence must've been longer than Keith realized because by the time he realized it, Lance had already shifted his gaze back to the former, his expression now filled with numbness and slight indifference.

"Am I wrong about this one, too?" he questioned, his voice making it sound like he was dishing out one of his usual quips in spite of the slight sharpness within his tone.

Keith's expression grew firm, his prior one now hidden away.

"Lance, you are just as important to this team as anyone else. Hell, maybe even more!" he maintained. The only response he got was a scoff from the red paladin as he looked away from him, an empty smile of disbelief now on his face.

The black paladin let out a breath, already having anticipated that reaction.

"Lance, look." Keith began again, his voice gentler than before but still maintaining its firmness.

"We fucked up in more ways than one when it comes to you. There's no way in hell that I'm debating that. I'm just trying to tell you that every single thing that you've told me that you feel is because we didn't take the time to tell you that you're wrong. That you are valuable, that you are important, and that losing you would be a loss. Not just to the team, but to us."

Keith's eyes slowly began to show hints of melancholy once again as Lance's faux smile slipped away.

"We didn't give you the support you needed and that's on us. But, it hurts to know that you actually felt that way about yourself way before I got mind-controlled." the older paladin defined.

He watched as Lance moved his head back to the center as his eyes now trained on his feet, one of his hands coming up to rub at his arm as his face shifted into a sadder expression with a hint of what Keith hoped to God wasn't guilt.

Out of everyone who was involved in this emotionally taxing trainwreck, Lance was the last person who should be feeling any kind of guilt.

The black paladin couldn't help but to look down at the space between him and his right hand. The gap between them was definitely smaller than before, but it would still be impossible for Keith to reach out and touch him if he wanted to.

Lifting his eyes back up to face his teammate, Keith cautiously took half of a step towards him, his stomach twisting and the back of his neck burning as he prepared himself for what was to come.

"Were you serious before?" the young leader began to inquire. "About being fine with sacrificing yourself as long as the team kept going?"

Lance didn't say anything, merely lowering his head further.

Keith's eyes turned solemn.

"You were, weren't you?"

"You think I'm insane, don't you?" the red paladin asked suddenly, his voice coming out as numb as he looked.

"No!" Keith disagreed.

The half Galran had to remind himself to calm down as the slight look of panic that currently took hold on his face began to fade away into something calmer.

"I'd never say that." he continued. "You're not insane, Lance. Especially since…I know what you mean."

Lance's hand immediately stopped rubbing his arm as his face shifted in confusion, his blue pupils moving back and forth as if trying to process the words he just heard. His eyes eventually moved to the side as he turned his head to look at his leader, his confusion still very much apparent on his features.

Keith, however, wasn't the least bit phased.

"That's why I was asking, because I know what that feeling is like. And I can understand why you would feel like that, to an extent. Even though I wish you never felt like that in the first place but…I get it."

The red paladin could feel his eyes start to widen slightly, a sense of surprise and disbelief filling them

He knew what he meant?

He knows what it's like?

Is…is he serious?

He appreciated how much Keith went out of his way to listen to everything he's been saying and how he did his best to understand and empathize with everything he's gone through.

But there was just no way in hell that he could ever understand that.

Not unless…

A slight chill tried to make its way through Lance before the red paladin squeezed his free hand shut in order to squash it.

The marksman stared at Keith a couple of seconds longer before his look of surprise quickly morphed into a look of what was either indifference or skepticism, his eyes narrowing slightly and his face once again serious.

"Sure you do."

Keith couldn't help but to recoil at the tone, immediately bothered.

"What does that mean?"

Lance turned his attention back towards the chair.

"Keith, you don't have to say what you think will make me feel better." he chided.

"Why would I go ahead and say something like that just to say it?" the black paladin questioned grippingly, quickly walking to where Lance currently stood before stopping a couple of feet in front of him.

"Lance, I mean this!"

"No, Keith! You don't! You can't." the red paladin shot back.

"Why not?"

"Because it's…" Lance's face shifted into something adjacent to pain before he went to shake his head. "It's too much to understand!"

"Not to me!" Keith insisted. "Look, I get it! When there's that moment where you're fine with giving everything up if it means that the people you want to keep going get to keep going, even if it's at the cost of yourself! How in spite of the fear and stress and everything else, you're fine with taking that bullet because you feel that in the grand scheme of things, everything and everyone you care about is going to be okay!"

At this point, Lance had his head lowered with his hands gripping his hair as his elbows rested on top of the chair.

"Lance, I've been there! You're not alone in this!"

"Yes, Keith! I am!" the Cuban marksman grunted, his teeth now gritted. "You don't get it!"

The black paladin was trying everything in his power to stay composed, knowing that becoming irate was just going to make things more strenuous for the both of them. Especially since Lance was so adamant on his stance.

But it hurt having the man he cared for more than his own life constantly say to his face that he couldn't understand him.

And it hurt even more given the fact he most definitely did.

"What don't I get?! Tell me!" hs exclaimed, practically begging.

Lance's face continued to scrunch up as he grew more and more overwhelmed, his grip tightening as his eyes squeezed shut.

"You-I…"

The red paladin struggled in silence for a couple of seconds as his closed eyelids twitched, his hands now ripped out of his hair.

"This is different!"

"How?" Keith immediately inquired.

"Because it…" Lance paused again before finally whipping his head to glare at his teammate. "Because it just is, okay!?"

"How? Explain it to me."

The red paladin shifted his body to face Keith.

"Jesus, Keith! Can't you just drop this!?"

The latter stood his ground, doing his best to remain unfazed in spite of his current urge to break.

"No!" the black paladin shouted. "Not until you hear me! I don't want there to be any more misunderstandings between us!"

Lance could only shake his head at him, his lips thinned and his eyes glossy once again as he stared at his leader with frustration and almost contempt.

A part of him knew he was probably going off the deep end with this.

That there was probably something Keith experienced that he had no clue about.

But he was sick and tired of everyone talking down to him like he didn't understand the same things they did. And there was no way in hell he was gonna allow himself to hear it again.

Especially from him.

"I'm not misunderstanding anything." Lance bespoke, clearly aggravated as he inched towards Keith, pointing an accusatory finger in his direction.

"You're the one who doesn't understand! You don't know the first thing about what this feeling is like!" I don't want you to know what this feeling is like!

Finally, something snapped.

"I don't know what that's like?" he repeated, his voice low and offended as he took another step, barely noticing the way the red paladin had nearly taken a step back at his tone.

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT'S LIKE?!" Keith repeated once again, his voice incredulous as his voice boomed. "You're not the only one who chose to make a sacrifice, Lance!"

Lance's face grew furious.

"I'm not saying that you didn't! But you never had to deal with the fallback of it the way I did!"

"You don't know that!" Keith shouted, beginning to grow exasperated. "I get that it's hard to believe, but I know what I'm talking about!"

"How? How do you know?"

Keirh didn't give an immediate answer.

"Because I went through it. All those emotions you feel, I've felt them."

The black paladin was then met with an aggravated groan from the red paladin, his head bowed and eyes clenched shut as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"That doesn't mean it's the same."

The young leader tightened his fist.

"But it doesn't mean that it's different, either."

Lance's teeth clenched together before his head rose, sharp eyes peering into his teammate's once again in anger.

"Will you just stop already!?"

"Not until you get it!"

"No, you're the one who doesn't get it! You keep saying that what you went through is the same thing I went through but it isn't! It never will be!"

Keith's hand immediately unclenched itself, the younger paladin's proclamation surprising him into regaining some semblance of his composure.

"I never said-"

"You didn't get hit with a surge of energy! You didn't give up your life to save someone else! You didn't have to keep going like everything was fine afterwards!"

The fury that enveloped Lance's eyes slowly became mixed with sadness as his body drifted away from Keith, shoulders slumped as his pupils never came off of the half-Galran.

"You may think that what you feel is similar to mine, but it probably isn't. It's probably the same guilt and pity that everyone's been dishing out to me for weeks now. I'd be confused, too."

As he finished, his eyes went downcast in defeat, leaving Keith to continue to stare him down with an expression of firmness and frustration still planted upon his face.

This definitely wasn't how he wanted this conversation to go, not by a long shot.

The last thing either of them needed was a heated back and forth, especially over something like this. But Keith never expected Lance to be so adamant about him not understanding the depth of what he went through, in spite of the singular event that made the older paladin understand that same depth more than he would like to.

The black paladin knew that this was something that could be chalked up to the latter's recent traumas from both his death and how the team reacted to it (or in this scenario, didn't react to it). But as it stood, it was leading to more misunderstandings and arguments than it should've been resolutions and comfort.

And Keith couldn't afford to let this fester any longer. He couldn't afford for the two of them to go around in circles.

He needed to get this out. Even if it meant getting screamed at some more by the man he was in love with.

"I'm not confused." Keith finally blurted, prompting Lance to immediately close his eyes in preparation of what was to come. "And I know what I'm saying."

The red paladin shook his head.

"Keith, don't." he quietly begged.

"Lance."

"Just don't!"

The young marksman opened his eyes, desperation filling his blue orbs as he looked at his leader once more.

"I'm not doing this again! Can we please just drop this?"

"No, we can't."

It was Lance's turn to clench his own fists as his mouth trembled, his emotions mixing together all at once as he tried to put an end to this back and forth.

"Why? Why can't you-?"

"I have to say this." the black paladin explained. "If I don't, this is only gonna get worse. I need you to say this."

The red paladin looked throughout the room in exasperation, his frustration growing and beginning to overwhelm him.

"Lance, I-"

"Keith, stop!" the red paladin ordered, his voice on the cusp of quivering. "I can't- You can't-!"

The black paladin could feel himself grow slightly impatient.

He was so close.

He was so close to saying the words that he didn't feel himself inch closer towards his partner.

"I can't stop this."

"Yes, you can! Just…stop."

The red paladin began taking small steps towards the other paladin, the desperation between both paladins completely different but just as strong.

"Lance."

"Keith, it's not the same."

"Lance."

"Come on, just drop this already!"

"Lance, just listen to me!"

"I DIED, KEITH!"

"AND I TRIED TO!"

Everything was silent after that.

The air within the room shifted into that of grim surprise as each paladin froze where they stood, the gravity of the black paladin's confession stunning them both as the need to yell and beg no longer consumed them.

It was honestly a surprise that no one had come into the room from how loud they were arguing.

Now, all either paladin could do was stare at the other with halted breaths, Lance in horrific shock and Keith with firm yet regretful finality. Before long, the red paladin moved a couple of shaky steps back away from his leader, his eyes blinking wildly.

"What?" Lance whispered, finally ending the stunned silence.

The quiver in the sharpshooter's voice made Keith's mouth stiffen into a thin line, his violet eyes that were once vivid with frustration now becoming sunken. Just as quickly, he ripped his eyes away from the younger man as he placed his attention on the wall in front of him, wishing that the gray from the walls would distract him from the guilt that was beginning to take over.

And now, after all he's done to ensure Lance didn't turn away, there was a part of Keith that wished the marksman would do just that.

To just turn around.

To look anywhere but him.

Anything so that he wouldn't see the face of pain that he caused.

But Lance never did, his disbelieving eyes of blue still wide in fear and surprise as his chest slowly began to heave with every new and rapid heartbeat.

"Keith, what are you talking about?" he inquired once again, his voice shaking.

The half Galran bit his tongue as his eyes went shut, a closed mouth sigh following alongside it.

"I'm sorry." he said ruefully as he reopened his eyes to gaze at the floor. "I didn't mean to say it like that."

Lance's head immediately tilted to the side, brows furrowing.

"B-But you did mean what you said? That you almost-?"

He couldn't finish the question, not wanting to even mutter the very word.

Keith made no effort to confirm nor deny, opting to keep his eyes on the ground.

"Keith!" the black paladin heard Lance call out pleadingly.

With a quick bite of his tongue, he briefly closed his eyes to let out a light sigh.

"It was at Naxzela," Keith started, his voice grim and low as his eyelids reopened. "When we were working to get the fields around the cannon down."

He could feel his heart begin to quicken as memories of that day began to flash in his head. All he could see were the constant rays of purple light surrounding him whenever he tried to maneuver around them and the dark shade of red that engulfed him within the tiny cockpit of his cruiser.

Before he knew it, his muscles started to clench as he began feeling the phantom sensation of tremors controlling them, as if he was still feeling the ferocious shaking of his cruiser when his wing was hit.

"Me and Matt…we just kept shooting and shooting at it. But nothing would bring it down. You and the team were trying to fly out of the blast zone and we were running out of time. Matt didn't think we'd be able to get through the shields before the cannon went off."

"We'll never penetrate those shields!"

"All I remember thinking was: 'there had to be another way.' So…I did what I felt had to be done."

"Maybe not with our weapons."

The black paladin clenched his hand.

"Everything happened so fast. One second, I was looking at the shield. And the next, I'm going full throttle and flying towards it, ready for impact. All I could do was close my eyes, brace for impact, and hope it worked. But then, Lotor had come out of nowhere and…we both know what happened after that."

By the time he had finished, the hand that Keith had clenched shut was shaking, the phantom adrenaline of his near fatal charge coursing through him.

That was a sensation that he would never be able to forget, just like everything else.

That rush of panicked adrenaline.

The fear in his bones as he inched closer to the field.

The way his mind screamed at him to pull away while his body made him keep going.

The sense of finality that washed over him as he was yards away from his demise. And the few seconds of acceptance as he shut his eyes, hoping that the explosion that would follow would be painless.

But then Lotor appeared…

And all Keith could feel was the violent throbbing in his chest from how fast his heart was beating and the just-as-harsh shaking in his hands and bones as he tried to process what happened.

What had almost happened.

All the while, Lance continued to stand in shock at his teammate, horrified and utterly gobsmacked with a dropped jaw.

"Oh my god." he gasped out, his eyes startled as his pupils continuously scanned the black paladin up and down; Almost as if he was disbelieving the older man's sheer existence and that the man before him was some sort of ghost.

Granted, his appearance alone proved otherwise and he was the furthest thing from dead.

But he could've been.

And that was the lone thought that kept stabbing Lance in the head.

"Y-You…You really almost-" the marksman tried to say, only for the words to escape him the more the admission sat with him. And the more it did, the more confused and unsettled Lance looked and subsequently became.

"How could…Why would you-?"

"Because there was no other option." the half Galran finally spoke, interrupting his right hand's question as he finally turned to face him again.

"The cannon was about to go off. Naxzela was gonna explode. Me, Matt and his team only had seconds to destroy the shield and get to the laser or we were all gonna blow. And I saw you and the team trying to fly out to escape the blast, but you weren't gonna be able to make it in time. I thought-"

Keith cut himself off, averting his eyes once again to the ground.

"I thought that I could stop it."

Lance's eyebrows knitted as he stared at Keith in further disbelief.

"By killing yourself?" he inquired incredulously, his voice sharp. Immediately, he was met with his leader biting the inside of his cheek, an indicator to the red paladin that he wasn't far off with his assumption.

The black paladin must've sensed that same assumption as he proceeded to look up at him.

"I wasn't looking to kill myself, Lance." Keith stated.

Lance immediately shot him a narrowed glare.

"Yet you actively flew a cruiser, with you inside it, towards a shield that more than likely would've blown up on impact if the planet didn't blow up first." he argued, already not liking the way his teammate was trying to downplay the topic.

"You had to have known that doing that was practically suicide, right?"

Lance stared at Keith for a couple of seconds in impatient silence before he responded.

"I did."

"So you admit it?" Lance questioned, raising his eyebrows at his leader. "You were going to kill yourself?"

The half Galran went to pinch the bridge of his nose, his eyelids closing.

"That isn't what happened."

"No? Because it sounds to me like you were more than ready to ram yourself into a shield covering a planet that was set to detonate and you didn't give a damn about what happened after that!"

In an instant, Keith's eyes shot open as he lifted his face from where it was held by his hand to stare at his red paladin once again as his body felt a quick surge of frustration rush through it.

"That's not true." he said firmly.

Lance glanced at the black paladin skeptically as he went to cross his arms.

"Then what is?" he inquired. "Because you clearly didn't give a damn about yourself."

"But I did give a damn about you."

That response alone was enough to startle the red paladin, the urgency and sheer quickness of it rendering him speechless as the skeptical and upset expression he once had turned into that of genuine surprise.

The silence from his answer prompted Keith to continue.

"I gave a damn about you and the rest of the team! If Naxzela had blown up like it was supposed to, you would've been caught in the blast and maybe even have gotten killed! Did you honestly expect me to just stand back and watch that happen?"

"Of course not!" Lance shot back, appalled. "But I don't expect you to die for us, either! Regardless of what was going on with you and the Blade, you were still a paladin! That didn't change when you left!"

At least not to me, he thought to himself.

"And what about us? What do you think would've happened to the team if you had actually ended up dying?"

"You were in Red and Shiro was back in Black. It wouldn't have mattered."

As soon as the words left Keith's lips, it was as if all of the air in the room had gotten sucked out.

In those few seconds, every sound or movement that happened behind Lance became non-existent, with the only noise he could hear being the words that Keith had just spilled out.

And every time they repeated, his heartbeat would beat harder.

"You were in Red and Shiro was back in Black. It wouldn't have mattered."

His breath would go faster.

"It wouldn't have mattered."

And his blood would grow hotter.

"It wouldn't have mattered."

Until finally…

"...wouldn't have mattered."

…he snapped.

Without any warning, Lance marched over to where Keith stood and reached out his arm, his hand violently twisting the fabric of the black paladin's jacket before he harshly pulled the older man towards him, not caring at all about the mild look of surprise Keith might have had on his face from the pull or the many breaths he was now feeling on his face.

"Are you serious!?" Lance roared, his eyes now blazing in anger as he stared at his black paladin.

"You weren't a paladin back then so that means your life was worth sacrificing? Are you fucking kidding me!?"

The red paladin was scorching to the core.

At this point, he didn't care how many people could hear his yells from outside of the room. He truly thought that he had been at his angriest with Allura or Pidge and Hunk.

But this anger was something completely different.

And he was gonna make sure the man he was holding by the neck understood that completely.

"Just because you became a part of the Blade doesn't mean that you stopped being a part of Voltron!" he exclaimed. "You could've come back and we would've let you! Shit, we did exactly that when you came back to warn us about Lotor!"

Keith could feel the way Lance's grip tightened with every yell he released at him, the sides of his collar shaking against the sides of his neck. He could feel his right hand's breath harshly hitting his face with every word that he yelled.

And he knew he deserved every second of it.

Lance could hear the blood roaring in his eyes and feel the tensing of his muscles as he continued to hold Keith in place, his fury making him refuse to let go or relent.

Even if there was the tiniest part of him that wanted to let him go, he was slapped with the reminder that that same man nearly took himself from him.

And he would become scorned all over again.

"I get wanting to protect us. And I understand that the stakes were high that mission." Lance started, the volume lessened but still maintaining remnants of his rage. "But why the hell would you go to such extremes?"

The young marksman twitched his jaw briefly.

"Out of all the things you could've done, you thought that crashing yourself into a shield was the best thing for us? You expect me to believe that it wouldn't have mattered to me if you went out in a fiery explosion trying to save my life like yours wasn't important?"

Just saying the words alone sent a harsh chill through Lance's body. All he could see was the image of Keith crashing into the shield and him burning in his cockpit until there was nothing left of him.

All the while, he was in his own cockpit safe and none the wiser.

It made him sick.

"How the hell could you do that?" Lance questioned, his voice quieter but still simmering with confused and incredulous rage. "How the hell can you look at me and say that it wouldn't have mattered? I-"

Lance's lips thinned, his mouth tightening up as he ripped his eyes away from his older teammate to look at the wall next to them.

There were so many things he wanted to say to Keith.

How angry he was.

How confused he was.

How upset he was.

How relieved he was.

But every single feeling and thought he felt towards the black paladin was revolving around so hard in his mind that it made his head hurt, not knowing which thing to say first because they all carried the same hurt and confusion of not knowing.

Not knowing why this man thought taking himself out was the best option.

Not knowing why it was so easy for him to say that his life didn't matter.

Not knowing how he could be so content with it.

Just…

"Why?"

Lance's eyes clenched shut, his jaw ticking briefly before he whipped his head back to face the black paladin once again, his blue eyes flashing with heat towards the former's purple.

"Why!?" he yelled once again. "Why would you do something like that? Why would you think that killing yourself is a good idea? Why the fuck would you actively give up your life like it's fucking expendable? Why would you-?"

Just then, he heard something.

Something that made him stop and halted every single thought and idea in his head:

The sound of his own voice.

Well, better me than them.

And then, something clicked.

After a long pause of silence, Lance made himself stop and actually take a look at the face he had pulled in front of his. And it only took a couple of seconds of him staring at it for him to be immediately shaken to the core.

This whole time…

This whole entire time that Lance had been yelling at and questioning him relentlessly, he thought that Keith had simply been staring back at him with this calm expression on his face.

But it wasn't that.

Instead, his eyebrows had been drawn down, his gaze quiet and sunken as the two pearls of violet that stared back at him, filled with acceptance and…pain.

But not the pain that had shown in Lance's eyes before, loud and blazing with ferocious heat with every passing second that the red paladin unloaded on his teammate.

No, it was a different kind of pain.

A quiet pain.

The kind of quiet pain where you walk around with a calm front even though your soul is screaming in agony.

The kind of quiet pain where you hide away and let yourself scream and cry, only to wipe away your tears and walk back out with a smile so that no one can see that there's something wrong. Even though every part of you wants to tell someone about it so that you're not the only one carrying the weight.

The kind of quiet pain that shrouds you when you see someone you care about hurting, yet you stand there and say nothing because you were the one who put that hurt there in the first place, even if you didn't mean to.

The kind of quiet pain where you choose to suffer in silence because you feel everything else that happens around you is more important than the pain that consumes you.

The kind of pain where you feel that the best thing for everyone around you is to not say anything at all.

The very same pain Lance had felt all this time.

Now, the black paladin's persistence made sense.

It hadn't been for the sake of extending his empathy or trying to relate to select details of his plight for the sake of understanding. It had been because Keith did understand; Everything.

Lance continued to stare down the paladin in front of him, wide eyes bewildered and unblinking, just as they had begun to sting and his hand began to tremble more ferociously as it continued to cling onto Keith's uniform.

Before long, his breath began to quicken and the faint sound of his heartbeat began to drum away within his ears. His head bowed slightly, his dark blue pearls beginning to dart side to side, almost like he was trying to make sense of it all.

So many conflicting emotions continued to make themselves known in the young sharpshooter's mind.

Guilt.

Horror.

Anger.

Shock.

Grief.

But there was one piercing thought that dominated all of the rest…

"Better me than them."

Hypocrite.

He was a hypocrite.

Keith's eyes grew concerned as he watched Lance lift up his free hand to hold his forehead, his panicked pupils shaking.

"Lance?" he had called out to his right hand, but the latter didn't hear a thing, lost in the aftermath of his revelation of hypocrisy.

Because how could he not?

How could he not when Keith had stood before him and revealed the soul-shattering details of his near death experience and him choosing to be a sacrificial lamb to save him? All the while, he had disregarded all of that.

But he did.

Yet he berated him for it.

Granted, he didn't know that the black paladin truly did know what he was talking about until much later in their squabble. But frankly, it didn't really matter anymore.

It didn't change anything.

And it didn't change his hypocrisy.

Because who the hell was he?

Who the hell was he to assume that that man didn't understand? That he couldn't understand?

Who the hell was he to be upset at him for making a sacrifice when he himself had made one with no regard for his life, irregardless of the second chance he was given?

And who the hell was he to be surprised when not that long ago, that same man held his own blade to his throat because he would've rather killed himself than take his life in cold blood with no control of his actions?

The red paladin's heart continued its rapid pace as he breathed slowly, taking stuttering breath after stuttering breath.

"Lance?"

"Of course."

Keith lowered his eyebrows in confusion at the former's words, worry still brimming in his chest as his red paladin continued to struggle before him, his eyes concealed from him as his eyelids closed.

"Of course you'd do that." Lance repeated in a low voice, watching himself fly in Red at top speed towards Allura and pushing her out of the way before the electric hit.

"Allura!"

"You were just doing what I did."

The marksman's free hand clenched tightly into a fist as he felt his skin start to sting, the blood within him beginning to burn as his body recalled the pain of being electrocuted.

The sheer phantom pain of it all made its way to his heart as it began to ache.

If that was the pain he went through from getting hit with lightning, he couldn't help but to envision the pain that Keith would've experienced if he had actually succeeded with crashing, the image of his leader and best friend being consumed in flames without a chance of reaction before being blown away by the planet's inevitable explosion.

Lance had to stop himself from thinking about it further before he made himself sick.

"Dumbass." he gritted out, voice now quaking. "You shouldn't have done that."

He took a pause, his mouth quivering.

"I know why you did it, but you still shouldn't have."

At this point, the red paladin's attempts at breathing steadily started to fail, the young man starting to gasp for air as his chest began to heave deeply. He reopened his eyes as he took his hand off of his face, his expression more painstricken than before.

"This…This is wrong." Lance paled.

He stared down at his hands, the two appendages slowly becoming unrecognizable as his vision began to blur and go out of focus. Lance's head slowly started to shake back and forth as he continued to look down at them.

"T-This is insane." he continued, shaking his head more vigorously. "This shouldn't have happened! You never should've-! I never should've-!"

He heaved out a couple more breaths, sounding so breathless that Keith couldn't stop himself from leaning forward towards him. The red paladin's shoulders continued to heave and his body continued to tremble as his eyes began to shine with potential tears.

"I can't…" he tried to start, but was too overwhelmed to finish. "I…I can't-"

He wasn't able to complete his thought before he collapsed, his whole body starting its descent to the floor. But before his knees could connect with the floor, Keith rushed forward and reached out for the younger paladin, grabbing him tightly by the arms as he pulled the red paladin back up with him.

The black paladin looked down at Lance with startled eyes as the latter's head remained lowered, the only thing moving were his hands as he raised them to place them on Keith's shoulders. Even within his grasp, he could feel how hard Lance was shaking.

"Lance-"

"It shouldn't have been you."

Keith immediately fell silent as his brows knitted together, looking down at Lance's head.

All the while, the red paladin's eyes remained unblinking as he continued to look down towards the floor, his vision blurring further.

"I-It shouldn't have been you." Lance repeated. "It should've never, ever been you!"

Keith could feel the marksman's hands grip his uniform, but that was secondary to the downward spiral he was watching his fellow paladin go through right within his hands.

"You weren't supposed to do it! You were never supposed to do it!" Lance trembled. "You're not supposed to die! You can't die! You just…you just can't."

Before long, tears finally spilled from his eyes as they splattered onto the floor, the pain in his chest growing stronger and stronger as he shook his head once again.

"You're never supposed to know what that's like! Not you, not ever you! It was supposed to be me! Only me!" Lance began to cry, tears streaming across the bridge of his nose the more they came out.

"Just me."

If Keith's heart hadn't broken before, then it definitely did now.

His face grew more grief-stricken as he pressed his palms further into Lance's arms, mainly to show the paladin that he wasn't going anywhere but also to urge himself not to let go of him.

The heartbreak that the older paladin felt only increased as he Lance took a shuddering breath that made the hairs on Keith's neck stand up.

"I'm the one who's expendable. I'm the one who gives nothing. You…you're so much more than that. I-I was the one who was supposed to…"

The grip on Keith's uniform grew tighter as he clenched his eyes shut, causing more tears to spill out as he shrunk himself further down into Keith's arms, his head now pressing against the older paladin's chest.

"I deserve this." he whined quietly, his head rubbing against Keith's chest as he shook his head against it.

"I deserve this. I-"

Lance's breath hitched before he let out a cry, making his body shake hard.

"IT SHOULD BE ME!" he wailed, not caring who heard him as he began to release sob after sob.

"It should be me! It should be me! I-It should-"

Keith couldn't take it anymore.

He removed the grip he had on Lance's right arm as he brought up his hand and placed it on his shoulder, inches away from the side of his neck. As he brought himself closer to the younger paladin, he used the hand on his shoulder to pull him into him, the latter's face landing within the crook of his neck as his tears immediately began to fall on him.

Once he felt that Lance was settled against him, Keith took his hand off of his shoulder as he went to wrap it behind the red paladin's back, pulling him further into him the best that he could.

He didn't feel Lance make any effort to push him away, nor did he reciprocate his embrace.

But Keith was content with that, his sole focus being on keeping Lance from falling apart further. Even if the younger paladin did want to push him away, Keith doesn't think it would've been possible if it meant that Lance would still be crying.

The black paladin's hold on Lance grew firmer and tighter as the latter let out another string of sobs against his shoulder, his tears beginning to slowly soak the fabric of Keith's uniform as his body heaved against his leader's.

As another cry was released, Keith finally removed his other hand from Lance's other arm as he stretched his other arm across Lance's upper back, wrapping it against him as his hand landed on the other side of his arm.

The young leader peered at Lance from over his shoulder, his own eyes beginning to sting as he continued to feel the latter come undone within his grasp.

Watching Lance spiral right in front of his eyes was painful enough, but it paled in comparison to the words he spouted before he went to reach for him.

"It was supposed to be me!"

"I'm the one who's expendable! I'm the one who gives nothing!"

"I deserve this."

Keith couldn't stop his mouth from twitching before he buried his own face within the crook of Lance's neck, shutting his eyes and further tightening his hold on him as the concept of Lance thinking he didn't deserve to be here caused endless chills to seep their way within his bones.

How could you think that?

Keith gripped the fabric at Lance's arm,.

How could you ever think something like that?

"Don't say that." he croaked slightly, the emotions of the last couple of minutes showing in his voice. Nevertheless, he did his best to talk naturally so as to not upset either of them further.

"Please don't ever say that."

Lance's sobs remained as the only sound that rang throughout the situation room, neither paladin saying anything else as they continued to hold on to the other with neither ready to release yet. This went on for a couple minutes longer until Lance shifted.

Soon enough, his hand lifted from its original spot at his side to grip at Keith's side.

"You can't do that." the young paladin whispered.

His sudden response prompted Keith to raise his head slightly off of Lance's shoulder, glancing at him through nearly glistening eyes.

"You trying to sacrifice yourself, you can't do that anymore. I get why you thought you had to, but I…I don't want you harming yourself just to protect me. Or anyone."

The black paladin felt Lance's hand begin to shake at his side, a sniffle rippling at his neck.

"You're important, Keith. Too important. And I already had to watch you try to kill yourself to save me. I just…Please don't do that again, okay? I-It was too much almost losing you the first time and I-I can't go through that again. I…I just can't…"

Keith's face fell once again at Lance's pleas, wave after wave of guilt crashing within him at the mention of his suicide attempt in the Astral Plane.

What happened that day might've been the second time he tried to sacrifice himself, but it was the first time Lance had seen him go to such extremes.

And here he was now, falling apart at the seams because he wasn't privy to the extremes he went to the first time.

The black paladin released his grip on Lance's arm as he slid his hand up the younger man's back until it landed on that sweet spot between his neck and shoulder, rubbing at it.

"Okay. I hear you." Keith affirmed softly, pressing himself into the red paladin a little more as he unconsciously began to softly sway them back and forth.

Lance had told him one castleship ago how wherever he got upset or was too much in his head, his mother or one of his sisters rocking him back and forth as they held him was all it took for him to calm down.

So this was nothing more than second nature to him.

"I won't do that again." he promised, his voice still maintaining its softness. "The last thing I ever wanted was to scare you like this, especially a second time. I won't put you through that again."

Lance finally lifted his face from the crook of Keith's neck, taking in a few shaky breaths as he opted to lean against the older paladin's neck instead.

"And I mean that." Keith reaffirmed. "You didn't deserve that. Or any of this."

The red paladin's eyelids scrunched tightly as his hands trailed away from Keith's sides, going up to tightly grip the part of the latter's uniform that covered the back of his shoulders. He let out a shaky breath as a new tear made its way down his cheeks.

"You didn't deserve that. Or any of this."

The words themselves sounded so good, especially coming from the half Galran's lips. But Lance couldn't bring himself to accept them, the idea of those words making him feel queasy and undeserving.

And he wishes they didn't.

So instead of embracing them, all he could do was shake his head against Keith's neck as new streams of tears made their way down the paladin's face.

"I wish-" he started, sniffling a little. "I wish I could believe that."

The young leader's eyebrows crumpled as he glanced at Lance once more, lightly scratching the back of his neck juncture in what he hoped was silent comfort.

"Why can't you?"

Lance released a heavy breath, slowly reopening his bloodshot eyes as he undid his grip on Keith and began to slowly move away from him, his eyes back on the ground as he felt himself once again underneath the black paladin's concerned watch. He could feel the moment his hands released their hold on his arms, wishing for that comforting warmth to return.

"Keith, I know that you see a lot in me. You've made that clear more than once." the red paladin began to explain. "But I don't."

"Why not?" Keith questioned.

Lance looked back up at him, his eyes somber.

"Isn't it obvious?"

Keith didn't respond, his eyebrows furrowing further on his concerned face within his confused silence. Lance's pupils drifted to the side as he turned and walked away from the black paladin, his back now facing him as he stood away from him.

"Keith, you and everyone else…You all give so much to this team. You all have something that makes this team great. Fighting. Engineering. Alchemy wielding. And whatever else."

Lance sniffed once more as he brought up a hand to wipe at his eyes with his palm.

"You guys all have a thing. Something that makes you guys unique and useful. And me?"

The boy paused, swallowing whatever pain and hurt was attempting to make their way out of his throat and into his voice.

"I don't have any of that." Lance stated, his voice breaking slightly. "Nothing I have or do helps the team with anything. I can't fight like you, I'm not good with technology or engineering like Hunk or Pidge, I have no understanding of alchemy like Allura or capability to lead like Shiro. I just-"

The marksman's lips pressed together as he tried to overcome the growing ache inside his chest at his own admissions, his head lifting up towards the ceiling as his eyes followed and more tears made their way down.

"I have nothing." he exhaled sadly. "The only thing I can do is annoy everyone with my constant jokes and flirting. And since that's all I can do, whenever I am serious about something, I'm not taken seriously."

Keith's brows knitted.

"So, what?" he asked warily. "You think because you don't contribute anything that you don't deserve to be on the team?

Lance bit the inside of his cheek for a few seconds before releasing it.

"I'm saying that if I'm not able to bring anything to the table, then it makes no sense for me to be around. Not when there's a million other people who are twice as good that could fill my shoes."

Keith couldn't stop the goosebumps that began to grow on his skin, feeling unsettled.

"When you say that, do you mean you don't deserve to be around? Or that you don't deserve to be alive?"

The black paladin waited with a rapidly anxious heartbeat as Lance remained silent, the seconds that passed feeling like lifetimes as he waited for a response. Anything from the red paladin's lips that would tell him that he meant anything other than the second option.

"Of course, I don't not want to be alive." Lance finally replied, sounding defeated and tired. "But if there was a choice between losing me and losing someone who actually brings something to the table, I'd choose me in a heartbeat."

Keith's face began to blanch, his eyes widening a little at Lance's words.

This is worse than I thought.

"Lance, I-"

The black paladin halted his sentence, waiting for more words to come out. But nothing would come.

What was he supposed to say?

What could he possibly say to someone who believes that dying is the only contribution they can give when they've already given so much?

God, even saying that aloud in his mind made the black paladin feel like the biggest hypocrite. And it didn't help that he made Lance spend the last few minutes sobbing his eyes out because he thought flying into a shield would be the best thing for him.

Keith's eyes left Lance briefly to drift to the side, contemplating the next appropriate choice of words. And once he did, his gaze returned to the red paladin once again.

"Do you remember what I said earlier when we were talking about our conversations back on the castleship before I left?" he inquired finally. "And how I said that I considered you one of my best soldiers?"

The young leader watched Lance lower his head, though he made no attempt to look back at him.

"I do." he spoke in a monotone voice.

"Well, I meant it." Keith continued, taking a step in the direction of his right hand paladin. "I do need my best soldiers with me if we want to win this war. And Lance, you're one of them."

The red paladin twisted his head to the side as Keith heard him release a heavy sigh, signaling his frustration.

"Keith-" he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Lance, I'm serious!" the half Galran insisted, taking a couple of steps more in urgency. "You are just as important as any other person on this team."

It was then that Lance completely turned his head to the side, his hand now off the bridge of his nose.

"Didn't you listen to anything I just said?" he asked in annoyance, shifting his body ninety degrees to face the wall as he turned his head towards the black paladin.

"I'm a seventh wheel, Keith. I don't give anything to this team!" Lance insisted, eyes hardened.

"I wasn't good enough for the Garrison and I'm not good enough for Voltron. Hell, even Iverson could see that! After all, the only reason I was able to become a pilot at all was because his best pilot flunked out."

The black paladin's eyebrows rose slightly at that last bit.

"He said that?" he questioned, only receiving a shrug from Lance in response.

But he'd seen enough of Lance's body language to know that was his way of confirming that Iverson did in fact say that.

And aside from the mild feeling of vindication he felt from punching the older man's eye into oblivion, he was pissed as all hell knowing that the red paladin's first source of negative reinforcement had probably started long before they had discovered Blue.

And the idea of Iverson literally using him to degrade his friend didn't really help matters, either.

And to think that he actually saluted that man when they arrived back on Garrison grounds.

"Look, forget about Iverson." Keith spoke. "He was being a dick. And that wasn't fair for him to use me to tear you down."

Lance shrugged his shoulders, his face scrunched up slightly.

"He wasn't exactly wrong, though." the red paladin countered. "After you left, he needed someone to fill in the spot for fighter class."

"And he wouldn't have picked you if your scores were bad."

The young sharpshooter shot his eyes in Keith's direction, giving him a slight glare.

"Keith, I was a cargo pilot." he deadpanned. "Kind of a hard thing to mess up."

"Exactly! You could've slacked off if you wanted to, but you didn't. You put in the work and kept your scores up. That's what got you chosen to move up."

Lance glare softened slightly before he looked away. He thought back to his younger days in the Garrison, taking all those classes and simulations for flying cargo. When he wasn't having his constant antagonistic back and forths with a certain mullet-headed classmate, the classes themselves had bored him to no end and it took everything in him not to just go "fuck it" and move out of formation to zoom around in the simulated skies.

But he knew better.

Doing that was going to get him a detention in the class, a lecture from the higher ups, and a phone call to his family back in Cuba. And the last thing he wanted was to let them down or have them be disappointed in him.

As much as it killed him in his soul, he stuck to the course directed to him. He stayed in formation, maintained good grades, and kept his scores up. And every time he felt his fingers twitch on the lever, he had to grip it tight instead.

It's fine, he'd say to himself. This is just one class closer to the sky.

So when he finally got the chance to learn how to be a fighter pilot, he was ecstatic. Though from that point forward, the exciting classes and newfound attention he had expected to get from acing the simulations didn't exactly turn out the way that he thought they would. And instead of that fantasy, what he got was a failed simulation test, public humiliation, and a reminder that he was second best.

Hell, that he wasn't the best at all.

He was just a cargo pilot who got really fucking lucky.

"Maybe." Lance spoke up, his eyebrows lowering. "But apparently, my best wasn't good enough for Iverson's standards. I literally failed my fighter class simulation with a capital 'F.'"

Keith's face softened.

"That was just one simulation, Lance. That doesn't determine your skill as a pilot or your worth as a person." he stated firmly. "And so what about the class? Look at everything you've been able to do outside of that."

Lance's right eye twitched slightly as Keith went on.

"You awakened Blue, became the paladin of not one but two lions, and managed to save just as many lives in Red as you did in Blue. Iverson can't say anything about that."

"Except for the fact that I was a shitty pilot."

This time, it was Keith's turn to give a deadpan expression.

"Lance, if you really were that much of a shitty pilot, then you would've killed all of us the second you took off in Blue."

The red paladin gave his leader a sharp side eye.

"Weren't you the one who said you were terrified with me behind the wheel when I was flying?" he questioned, a slight edge to his tone.

Keith matched his energy, raising a lone eyebrow at him.

"Wouldn't you have felt the same way if it was me?"

Lance eyed him a second longer before retreating his gaze, not having a comeback for the older paladin.

"But seriously, Lance. You have to give yourself some credit." Keith insisted. "Sure, you had to get used to Blue when you first had her and you definitely needed some time to adjust to riding Red during the lion switch, but both times you got the hang of it. And you've been smooth sailing ever since."

Keith swallowed briefly, suddenly feeling a bit nervous of being so vulnerable.

"Lance, you're one of the best pilots I've had the pleasure of flying with. And you're someone who I would gladly have to fight on the frontlines with me."

The young marksman remained quiet as he rubbed his hand against his arm, trying to let Keith's words sink into his head. He couldn't stop himself from biting the inside of his cheek as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

Hearing himself being praised like this still made him feel uncomfortable, but he knew that Keith wasn't going to stop anytime soon until he saw what he was telling him. So, he just decided to let it happen.

Even if he didn't necessarily agree with him.

Lance closed his eyes for a second as he released a deep sigh, his eyelids reopening as he turned his head to his friend once again.

"Okay," he started. "Let's just say we have the 'me being a good pilot' thing covered. What about everything else?"

Keith's brows crumpled.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Lance's eyes lowered once again before turning around, taking another few steps further from the black paladin as he went to stare at the wall. Keith could feel his toes twitch in his boots, growing tired of the distance continuously being put between him and the red paladin.

"You want to point out how good of a pilot I am, but that's something everyone on the team can do." Lance stated, the melancholy in his voice returning.

"Outside of that, there's nothing I can do that can help the team in a crisis. Something useful I can do that no one else on this team can do. A role to play."

"A thing?" Keith added, picking up the latter's drift.

The red paladin swallowed an oncoming lump in his throat.

"Yeah."

Lance sniffled once again, much to his chagrin.

"Everyone is capable of something that can help turn the tide in this freaking war. Engineering, alchemy, fighting, decision making. Me? I'm just the goofball that gets in the way."

A lone tear slid down Lance's cheek as he went on.

"All I want is to be like you guys. To actually be able to do something that helps not only the team, but the universe in the long run. Yes, I can pilot and I can use a rifle, but…it's not enough. Everything that needs to be done behind the scenes when we're not in Voltron, I can't do. Either because I can't understand it or I'm not needed. And even when I ask to get involved, I only end up getting in the way. I'm just…useless."

Keith's heart clenched.

If you asked him, 'useless' was the last word he'd used to describe Lance McClain.

He was anything but that.

He thought back to every single thing Lance had done since he donned his blue armor, every single thing he'd watch him do on every mission they've ever been on. And in every single memory he came across, his sentiment remained the same.

Lance McClain was not useless.

And yet, that was how the very man he longs for thought of himself. So much so that he'd rather be like him and the other paladins in order to obtain some semblance of usefulness that could help the team, all at the expense of himself.

And it was a thought process that Keith couldn't disagree more with.

"Lance-"

"Let me guess: you're gonna go ahead and tell me I'm not useless."

Keith crossed his arms.

"Because you're not."

Lance glanced up at the ceiling in annoyance as he scoffed, a humorless smirk appearing on his face before it vanished just as quickly as it came.

"That's easy for you to say." he quipped somewhat harshly. "You're the one who can lead and sword fight."

"One of those things you can also do." Keith returned.

Lance poked the inside of his left cheek with his tongue.

"Just nowhere as good as you."

The black paladin let out a long puff of air through his nose, his teammate's adamance bothering him more and more with every second that passed.

"Lance."

"Go ahead, Keith. Tell me how wrong I am."

"No, because it wouldn't be fair to answer." Keith responded, growing agitated at the red paladin's insistence at being seen as inferior and wrong.

"You're the team sharpshooter, remember? You're not used to fighting close range like that, especially with a weapon. No one was gonna expect you to be a master at it."

The red paladin felt his eye twitch,

He couldn't understand how Keith could remain so adamant in saying that he wasn't useless and a paladin worth keeping. Even though he knew without a doubt that the older paladin meant what he was saying, every part of him couldn't accept it.

Any part of it.

"Right." Lance responded sharply. "Because they were expecting the useless goofball who always gets in the way."

The Cuban paladin tightened his jaw briefly and opened his mouth before Keith had the chance to.

"Cause that's what I am, Keith. Not the guy who fixes things. Not the guy who can fight like a pro. Not even the guy who can do magic and alchemy. I'm just a guy from Cuba who got lucky."

The young paladin could feel his throat tighten, his eyes doing their usual stinging as he talked down to himself.

"That's n-"

"Keith, give it up." Lance turned to demand, having already predicted the words that were gonna come out of the half Galran's mouth.

"It doesn't matter how wrong you think I am or how ridiculous I sound because it's the truth. I'm supposed to be the red paladin and a member of Voltron! And I literally have nothing to show for it! What kind of paladin does that make me?"

He then twisted his body forward to take a step in the black paladin's direction.

"For so long, ever since I joined the Galaxy Garrison, all I ever wanted was to be the best pilot I knew I could be, and I did everything I could to make sure that I got there. And when we became paladins, I knew I had to work twice as hard."

As he continued to speak, the blazing look that took hold in the red paladin's eyes began to lessen, slowly becoming somber.

"But it wasn't enough." he said, shaking his head sadly. "None of it was enough. Because at every turn, I'm always looked down at or left on the sidelines. Meanwhile, you and everyone else managed to accomplish all these feats and techniques to benefit the team and the coalition. All I managed to accomplish was dying. And all because I lack a thing that can make me bring something to the table. Something that…"

Lance clenched his fist shut, his vision blurring once more.

"Something that makes me special."

And wanted.

A part of Lance wanted to add in those words, but he already sounded so pathetic that even uttering those words aloud would prove his original point. And the thought of the man across from him seeing him and thinking of him as someone so pathetically desperate for recognition made him want to scratch at his skin.

Instead, he did the usual shift of his gaze as he wrapped his arms around his frame and turned away from his older teammate, once again facing the wall.

Lance went on to bite down on his tongue, hoping that the action would help him to suppress any cries or sobs that wanted to come up and would distract him from the pain he would feel in his chest every time he took a breath.

All the while, Keith stared at the red paladin's backside, his purple eyes displaying his pain and sadness towards his friend.

He had seen firsthand just how talented and remarkable his sharpshooter was, as both a pilot and a paladin. They were some of his many qualities that made the black paladin cement just how much he wanted and needed that man like the Earth required the Sun.

But despite his beliefs, the same man who Keith considered as strong and passionate thought of himself as someone so pathetic and lacking worth.

All because he was incapable of doing the same things that he did.

And frankly, Keith was growing sick of it.

"Lance," the black paladin began to question hesitantly. "You think that you aren't special?"

The aforementioned paladin wiped at his eye with his palm before going back to wrap his arm around himself.

"It doesn't really matter anymore." Lance replied. "I've already accepted it a long time ago. I don't have a thing, so I have to make the most of what I can do. And even then, I have to make sure it isn't bothering everyone else."

Keith slightly narrowed his eyes, one of his hands clenching at his side.

"That's what you have to do when you're the seventh wheel, I guess." Lance quipped, though the humor behind his words were nowhere to be seen.

The black paladin shut his eyes as he took a deep breath through his nose, exhaling silently as his eyelids reopened, his pupils taking in the sight of the red paladin before him. He could feel his chest physically ache as he gazed at him, his words repeating in his head.

"I don't have a thing, so I have to make the most of what I can do."

"That's what you have to do when you're the seventh wheel, I guess."

"You're not a seventh wheel, Lance." Keith restated, his voice calm, but maintaining a firm and determined edge. "There's no Voltron without you."

He watched as Lance's head shifted slightly to the side as he shrugged.

"Even if that were true, I don't have anything to back it up." the red paladin numbly insisted.

Keith stepped forward, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants.

"Of course, you do."

Lance may have been facing away from him, but he had no doubt that the black paladin could sense the eye roll he just gave at that as he turned his head back to the front.

In spite of how emotionally exhausted he felt at their current back and forth, he couldn't help the slight bit of intrigue he felt at that moment.

Because…what?

What could he possibly have that Keith would constitute as a thing?

What could he have that would put him on par with everyone else?

Because him, Lance Mcclain? Actually having a thing that made him valuable?

The young marksman had to keep himself from scoffing out loud.

Good luck with that.

The red paladin very much doubted that there would be a valid "thing" to be found among the pile of shrapnel that was his capabilities. But at this point, he might as well let the black paladin get his thoughts out.

Even if it turned out to be something that made him feel worse than he already felt.

"Really?" he asked sarcastically. "And what would that be? Probably something that you and everyone else can already do, right?"

Keith shook his head, even though the latter's blue orbs wouldn't be able to see it.

"No." he answered simply.

Lance's nose flared, his face giving a slight scowl.

"Right, cause it's something you guys can do but better."

"Actually, it's something only you can do."

The young paladin couldn't help but to scrunch up his face in sheer confusion.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that it's something exclusive to you. As in, you're the only one who can do this and actually succeed in doing it." Keith implied.

The red paladin looked down in thought as he thought over the black paladin's words, not being able to deny the small bit of intrigue that took hold of him as he tried to search his mental rolodex for a clue as to what he was trying to say.

After a couple more seconds of thinking, he gave up, returning his gaze to the wall.

"I can't think of anything." Lance declared, feeling over it.

Despite the heaviness that remained, Keith wasn't able to maintain the small smile that grew on his face as he smiled to himself. He had no clue what even possessed him to smile at a time like this, but there was something about the beat of silence and the deadpan note that the marksman's voice took that reminded him of those times before now.

Those times where Lance would do the same thing, but would just be animatedly frustrated instead of realistically broken. All the while, the former was looking at him from a distance with a deadpan expression, but with the incredible urge to laugh.

The black paladin chuckled to himself quietly as he looked at the younger paladin once more

"You want me to just tell you?" he offered.

Lance was quiet for a second before he leaned back and released a weighted sigh, setting himself back straight as his eyelids reopened to continue looking forward.

"Fine." he relented. "What do I do?"

The small smile that had settled onto Keith's face slowly fell away as things became serious once again.

"You keep everyone grounded." the black paladin finally revealed. "You remind everyone of the bigger picture."

Immediately after he said it, the young leader watched as Lance's form stiffened, the muscles in the younger man's shoulder tightening as if his words rendered him to stone.

It was an inherent understatement to say that he had Lance McClain frozen right where he stood.

As he pondered his next few words, he walked a couple of steps more towards where the red paladin stood, all the while looking down at his boots as he walked.

"Lance, there have been so many times where things had gotten serious on the castleship before and after a mission. And there were just as many times where we ended up disagreeing and needed to cool down before we said something we regretted."

Keith stopped walking, his eyes hardening as his gaze remained trained on the floor underneath his heels.

"And because of that, it was always so easy to forget that at the end of the day, even though we wore the armor, we weren't soldiers. Back on Earth, we weren't trained or even born to become soldiers. We became soldiers because we had to be, because if we didn't, the universe that we're all a part of was going to be destroyed."

Keith rubbed the palm of his glove with his thumb.

"And because of that, we always had to focus on the mission at hand. And we couldn't afford to make any mistakes or people would get hurt. And the Galra would keep getting the upper hand. And even if we couldn't admit it out loud, the possibility of that whenever we had a briefing was terrifying. And it was heavy."

As he stood quietly, his gaze finally came off of the ground as he went back to looking at the still stiffened younger paladin in front of him.

"But all it took was one joke from you and things would be light again." he revealed.

Lance didn't make any attempt to move as he remained frozen where he stood, no doubt having slipped into further shock at his leader's revelation. But that didn't deter the black paladin, seeing as Lance's lack of argument meant that he would probably be able to explain his peace with no further pushback.

As the red paladin's silence remained, the half Galran pulled his hands out of the pockets of his pants as he dropped them at his sides.

"Lance, there have been so many times where there was a briefing and either things would become too serious or we were the ones who would become too serious. And somehow, without fail, you would do or say something completely random to break through the atmosphere." Keith explained.

"It didn't matter if it was one of your attempts at flirting or your random ass outbursts, that was literally all it took for everyone to put their focus on something that wasn't on the mission. Even if it was just for a few seconds, we could let our guard down for a little bit before we went back to the mission at hand."

The black paladin took a few more steps towards Lance, finding himself a little over halfway closer to him.

"I know that you said that you probably annoyed everyone with all of your jokes and because of that, it made you be seen as the goofball." Keith started again, staring at his friend with such longing as he took another step.

"But I don't think you understand just how crucial it was for you to say them."

The older man swallowed briefly, preparing himself to say the words he should've said from the beginning.

"With everything that was going on around us, there were so many times that I forgot that at the end of the day, I wasn't just a paladin of Voltron." he rejoined, placing his hand against his chest.

"At the end of the day, I was just a kid from Earth who spent his days living in the middle of the desert. The same way you and the others were just students at the Garrison who wanted to sneak out of the dorms one night. And we all ended up in the middle of an intergalactic war. So now, our days consisted of training, mission briefings, and fighting evil space dictators so that they didn't conquer the universe. We literally spent years of our lives fighting an empire and risking our lives to stop it!"

Keith was breathing slightly hard by the time he finished, the reality of the last few years creeping on him suddenly. It was funny how a few seconds can make you realize just how much of your life you spent almost losing it while fighting to preserve it and the lives of the people around you.

"And it wouldn't be until you did something crazy or said something so ridiculous and I reacted to it that I had to remember the big picture. That, yeah, we needed to put a stop to this war. But that doesn't mean that I have to lose all that I am and make the mission everything. That I should be able to breathe and still have those moments where I can just…"

Keith paused, his tongue poking his cheek as he stood in silent contemplation.

"...I can just be." he rejoined, his words releasing within a light exhale. "That I can allow myself to laugh and make jokes and to not take things so seriously when serious enough things were happening already."

The red paladin continued to maintain his silence, but the sight of his exposed hand slightly trembling atop his crossed arm had already caught Keith's attention, prompting him to take another step closer.

"And look, I know I hadn't always been receptive to your jokes and antics in the past, especially when we first started out as teammates. But even back then, they were enough to get my mind off of whatever issue was bothering me for those few seconds or however long it took until I had to focus on the mission again."

The black paladin let out a light scoff, his heart beating lightyears within his chest.

"And if anyone on this team needed that kind of distraction, it was a hothead like me. And you and I both know how serious I get when it comes to the mission, especially when I was still in Red." he remarked lightly, hoping his attempt at self-deprecation reached Lance's ears before he became serious again.

"But, that was just because compared to everyone else, I didn't really have anything waiting for me back on Earth except for my shed in the desert. But you were the one who, whether you realized it or not, reminded me that at the end of the day, when we won this war, I still had a life back on Earth that I couldn't afford to give up on. Even if it isn't the most ideal one, I could always go ahead and make it ideal for myself. But that could only happen if I made it through this war."

It was then that Keith found it in him to reach out and place his hand on Lance's shoulder.

"Lance, you found a way to remind us that even though we were away from our lives on Earth, we still had to find a way to maintain our lives in space. To make sure that we didn't lose ourselves to the war and the constant battles we had to fly into. That we still needed to make time to actually be teenagers and not kid soldiers and to actually have fun. And that we don't have to sacrifice everything within us for the sake of everything else. That we can still hold on to the things that made us us in the first place and that we didn't have to lose any of it just because we're fighting for our lives."

At the end of his speech, the black paladin gave his right hand a firm but gentle squeeze on his shoulder.

"That is your thing, Lance."

Keith's hand remained on the younger man's shoulder as he awaited a response, a look of nervous anticipation growing within his purple spheres as his heart continued beating wildly inside him. He had honestly hoped that he would feel a bit relaxed after letting everything out, but the continued lack of response from his right hand man merely prolonged his currently suppressed anxiety.

But finally, after numerous minutes of being non-responsive, Lance's body shifted underneath the older paladin's palm as he turned to face him, revealing glassy blue pupils that held a confused and hesitant awe within them.

As if he had heard the words that were spoken to him, but wasn't willing to let himself listen to them on the off chance it was just another cruel joke made at his expense.

"D-Do you mean that?" Lance questioned in an almost whimper, a lone tear treading down one of his cheeks.

Keith gazed at him sympathetically as he replaced his hand on his other shoulder, maintaining his previous firm and soft grip.

"Yes." he answered without hesitation. "And even if you didn't have a thing, that doesn't make you any less important than the rest of us. And you definitely don't need to have the same thing everyone else does to be important either."

The half Galran leaned down slightly as he moved his face a couple of inches towards Lance's.

"Lance, you are one of the most important people on this team. You're smart, perceptive, talented, compassionate, and selfless. You may not think so, but this team would've fallen apart a long time ago if you weren't here. Voltron needs you. I…"

Keith paused his words as he squeezed on Lance's shoulder once again, prompting the aforementioned paladin to look down at his hand briefly before looking back up at his leader with tearful, awestruck eyes.

"I need you, Lance."

The marksman's breath hitched, his eyes enlarging in surprise as more stray tears found their way out of his eyes and down his face.

He had a thing?

All this time, he had a thing?

Keith apparently thought so.

A quick succession of shaking shoulders and corresponding sniffles ran through the young paladin, the weight of the black paladin's confession overwhelming him as he turned away from him. Even with his eyes closed and currently being wiped at by his hands, he can still feel the heat of Keith's stare on him and the weight of his palm upon his shoulder.

He didn't know if it was intentional or not, but he could swear that he felt the touch of Keith's thumb as it softly glided up and down his pulse point.

And the more tears that came down, the longer he heard Keith's words repeat themselves in his mind.

"You keep everyone grounded."

"You remind everyone of the bigger picture."

"Lance, you found a way to remind us that even though we were away from our lives on Earth, we still had to find a way to maintain our lives in space. To make sure that we didn't lose ourselves to the war and the constant battles we had to fly into."

"That is your thing, Lance."

For days.

Months.

Years.

The young paladin had spent so much time under the guise of him not having a thing, the countless universal days and nights of trying to find and search for one, only to come up with nothing profound enough to fill the walls of his castleship room. And maybe even the room itself.

So much energy he had given into making himself useful in order to make up for this singular shortcoming, only to still come up short.

And yet…

There was Keith. Standing before him, a hand on his shoulder with a well-crafted explanation and discovery of his thing upon his tongue.

The young Cuban man examined and dissected every single part of himself to pinpoint something within him that proved beneficial to the very team he wanted to prove valuable to, yet he couldn't come back with anything. All the while, the black paladin merely stood back and observed him, like an explorer hiding away to catalog an elusive animal, and was able to locate something Lance hadn't been able to discover himself despite it being right under his nose.

His jokes.

His need for humor.

His constant attempts to lighten the mood.

This whole damn time…it was that?

Lance couldn't stop himself from sniveling, a slight newfound ache tapping inside his chest as his free hand gripped his sleeve.

This should be it, right?

He had his answer.

He had a thing now, right? He could finally be on par with everyone else. He knew now that he had something to give Voltron.

His humor helped Voltron.

That should be the missing piece that solved everything. Hasta la later, existential crisis and daily self-loathing.

And yet…

"I really keep you grounded?"

Keith's eyes widened slightly, not expecting Lance's sudden question. As the younger man gazed up at him with sad and conflicted eyes, the half Galran shook of his surprise as his thumb rubbed at Lance's pulse point once again.

"Yes." he replied.

Lance blinked at him before shutting his eyes briefly to sniffle.

"You…really need me?"

Keith's eyebrows crumpled, the meek sadness and doubt that laced his teammate's voice paining him more than ever. He honestly didn't know how much more of Lance's depressive-induced doubt he could stomach without making them both crumble. Or how much longer he could handle Lance doubting whatever words of positivity were given towards his person.

But regardless, Keith intended to make sure his right hand believed them.

The black paladin's eyes grew firm as his gaze remained locked on his tear-filled paladin, his hand sliding off of Lance's shoulder to hold onto his upper arm..

"Yes. Of course, I do."

"Even-"

The red paladin didn't finish his thought, his mouth left ajar before suddenly shutting it, his eyes darting away from Keith's as he lowered his head, subsequently hiding his eyes away from the older man.

"Even if what?" the aforementioned paladin inquired softly, his head moving forward slightly in an attempt to catch Lance's eyes, but to no avail.

Instead, all Keith caught was the sight of Lance's gritted teeth before he felt the red paladin's shoulders shaking again as he began to weep, furiously wiping at his eyes.

Keith's face became pinched with worry.

"Hey." he called out softly, lowering himself to Lance's line of sight as he rubbed his thumb up and down his arm. "Talk to me. Even if what?"

He caught Lance's clenched lips trembling as he let out a few more sniffles, his eyes still concealed behind his arm. It took more than a few seconds for him to pull himself together enough to peek from behind his arm, his watery spheres of blue once again connecting with Keith's eye.

The red paladin's arm dropped at his side as his eyes began to slightly dull.

"Even if…I'm a goofball?"

And that's when it clicked.

The black paladin froze as his eyes grew slightly once again, his teammate's question rendering him stunned.

But it made things that much clearer.

Lance was a goofball, without question.

He was silly.

He joked. He messed around. He always found a way to shift the mood by doing something ridiculous and eccentric.

In his own Lance-way, of course.

And in response, he was antagonized for it. And by his own team, no less.

His mind immediately went back to that dreaded game show they had found themselves in, when the team was constantly getting on Lance's ass for not getting the questions right or just saying something that didn't contribute to answering the question.

Including him.

Keith had to fight the urge to slap himself in the forehead.

How the hell was Lance supposed to believe that his humor and joking nature was the thing that kept the team together when it was one of the things that left him isolated?

How was he supposed to believe that his moments of randomness reminded the team to not always focus on the battle when in the same breath, they would always tell him to shut up and stay out of the way?

Now, Keith would be the first to admit that even he himself was annoyed with Lance's antics at one point in time. But even with every eye roll and sigh he let out at his jokes, he wasn't going to deny that the red paladin's antics was one of the only reasons he didn't lose his mind during that long stretch of time on the castleship.

Now granted, the jokes themselves made Keith feel like he was about to lose his mind, but he'd much rather lose his mind over how a gun sounded rather than losing it from the loss of his sense of time in the deep depths of the universe.

Hell, when he was on the space whale with Krolia, Lance's laughter was the thing he missed the most.

His jokes.

His moments of freaking out.

His sinister smirks.

His smile.

Words couldn't begin to describe how much he longed to hear them. Among all the flashes of the future and the past, all Keith wanted was a flash of the times where Lance pranked him or tried to egg him on back during their rivalry days.

Just to hold him together during that time in the abyss.

So once he was back on the castleship and he heard Lance quip at him for the first time in two years (because admittedly, he had been kind of a dick to him when he came back), it was the best thing he ever heard.

Hey, everybody! Keith's back!

Literally like returning home.

And yet, Lance felt like the one thing that provided Keith with salvation was something that could drive him away from him just as quickly.

And the black paladin absolutely hated how he helped put that there.

Keith overcame his shock as his expression grew firm and his eyes shifted into that of sincerity and determination. The hold he already had on his arm tightened slightly as he reached out to hold onto Lance's other arm, being sure to hold him in place as he hoped to maintain his attention.

"Seriously, Lance?"

His voice was low enough that only the two men could hear it but loud enough that it would penetrate the younger man's mind and hopefully make a home there. a small smile beginning to grace the older man's face as he stared at his teammate.

"So what if you're a goofball?" he inquired gingerly, raising a lone eyebrow.

In spite of the countless tears that tried and continued to glide down his face, Lance couldn't help the anxious feeling that fluttered in his ribs and the heat that laid on the back of his neck as he remained underneath his leader's unexpectedly fond gaze, the older man looking at him as if the question he asked was so unremarkable and unfounded.

As if him being a goofball wasn't one of the reasons he found himself more alone than ever.

As if he was just supposed to brush aside the countless dead ends his jokes and quips led him to.

The marksman's internal spiral must have been showing on his face as Keith further cemented his hold on his right hand man as he brought him a good centimeter closer towards him.

"So what if you're a goofball?" he inquired gingerly, raising a lone eyebrow as his fond smile slightly grew. "It's one of the best things about you."

Those eight words were enough to shake Lance to the core, time stopping around him as the words repeated themselves in front of his widened eyes.

Sensing his disbelief, Keith simply continued on.

"Trust me, Lance. If it wasn't for your countless jokes and your constant need to rib me and brighten the mood, I would've lost my shit a long time ago. So please, stop selling yourself so short."

The red paladin's expression became pained as his eyes grew glassy once again, a new bunch of tears beginning to fill up within them at his leader's words as his chest began to heave with every breath he forced himself to take.

Keith gazed at Lance longingly as he began to bring up his right hand from Lance's arm.

"And look, I know that right now, you probably see that as a weakness or something to be ashamed of."

Lance's breath hitched as he felt the palm of Keith's hand back on him, the front of his thumb pressed up against the side of his neck.

"But it's actually your greatest strength. And it's one of the things that makes you a great paladin. You may not see it right now, but I promise you that it's the truth."

Another tear found its way out of Lance's eye and down his cheek as his semi enlarged eyes continued to stare at his friend. But despite his eyes remaining trained on the older paladin before him, his mind was completely elsewhere.

Behind his blank and stunned stare, his mind was backpedaling to his time back on the castleship, retracing any moment and recollection he had of any joke and quip he ever told and delivered that dared to reappear in his memory.

"I say 'Vol,' you say 'tron.' Vol-?"

"Uh, Voltron?"

"The hunter becomes the hunted, hmm? Awesome, that's like the tagline to, like, six of my favorite movies."

"Keith tried to beat him up even though he's the size of a peanut."

"He was their bravest warrior!"

"Wow, this is so cool! It's like we're space cops on space patrol."

"BEEEERR-!"

"Nope, not doing that."

"So what's the plan? We go in there and just 'Pow, pow, pow' and free the prisoners?

"What was that noise?"

"Laser guns."

"Well, we were shrunk by a magic skunk but we ended up using that sparkly dust that makes electricity bigger or whatever, use it to unshrink ourselves. So, ready to charge up the lions?

"It's good to be back."

The red paladin found himself blinking as his mind finished running through the latest memory, the slightly stunned expression on his face still remaining.

Looking back at all that was said and done, it all felt so strange to him.

Whenever Lance thought back to all those times he joked, quipped, or said anything around the team that didn't fit their task, the only things he could remember were the negatives that came with them.

The dismissals.

The back turns.

The groans of annoyance.

The looks of exhaustion.

The commands of silence.

The pointed fingers telling him to go elsewhere.

He had grown accustomed to internally steeling his stomach to brace for the inevitable rejection and judgment that always followed suit with any word that slipped past his words and were apparently forced into the team's ears and mere atmosphere.

Even Keith didn't hesitate to give him his usual cold and questioning side-eye whenever he teased him.

But now…

"Okay, I'm really starting to question how your brain works, sometimes."

"You didn't question it before you left."

"Shut your quiznak and let's get back to it."

"Lance, we've pretty much been paladins for years now. You'd think you know how to say that word correctly by now."

Now, that same man was telling him that the same humor that made him roll his eyes so hard that they felt like weights was to be seen as a positive.

A positive that kept the black paladin from stepping off of the ledge.

And a positive that apparently provided the same kind of safety net for the rest of the team, though he hadn't been able to truly savor the fruits of his labor due to how he had been treated.

All this time, the answer to his multi-year long plight had been right under his nose, and the red paladin had been none the wiser.

He knows that he should be relieved, elated even.

But he just couldn't stop the bittersweet feeling that bubbled away within the center of his chest, knowing that this whole internal dilemma he had been going through could've been resolved a long time ago if he hadn't been so damn blind.

Soon enough, Lance found himself releasing a low, watery chuckle as he lowered his head into his hand, covering his tearful eyes as more tears began to form within the corners.

Keith was quick to furrow his eyebrows in alarm.

A bittersweet smile began planting itself onto the red paladin's face as he released another humorless chuckle.

"God," he blurted out suddenly. "I'm so-"

"Lance."

Keith hadn't intended for his tone to come off so harsh, but he already knew the verbal path Lance was heading down and that sooner or later, a certain "P" word was going to make a reappearance.

And he'd be damned if he let that word slip past his lips again.

"If you call yourself 'pathetic' again, I swear to God-" he started to warn.

Lance was quick to raise his head back up and meet his leader's gaze again.

"Well, aren't I?" he questioned, daggers aimed at his teammate via his eyes as he dropped his hand. "Here I am complaining about not having a thing when apparently, I've had one the whole time."

He let out a scoff as he shrugged to himself.

"Guess I'm more of a dumbass than I thought."

"No, you're not." Keith chastised firmly, stepping forward to the younger paladin. "You were looking for something you thought you needed to have because the thing you knew you did have was the one you felt everyone looked down on you for."

He watched how Lance's eyes immediately lost their sharp edge as they moved downcast, no longer meeting his gaze.

The half Galran's eyebrows wrinkled at the sight as his own eyes saddened.

"That doesn't make you a dumbass, Lance. And it damn sure doesn't make you pathetic." he affirmed.

Keith gently squeezed at the marksman's arm.

"You were just looking for your potential in the wrong places."

Lance's eyes narrowed for just a second as he continued to look away from his friend.

"Maybe," he started, slowly turning his body as he walked away from the black paladin's touch, his hand reaching out to the seat he obtained during the meeting as he went to hold the top of it..

"But I could've spared myself a whole lot of grief and mental breakdowns if I had realized that from the beginning."

This time, it was Keith's turn to twist his body as he went to face Lance's direction. The younger man was unaware as his hand began to grip the top of the chair, his expression shifting into one of genuine frustration.

"If I had looked for my potential in the right place from the start, we wouldn't be here right now. But instead, I spent the last God knows how long depressed and feeling worthless about myself for not having a thing when spoiler alert: my thing was making people laugh and forgetting we were in an intergalactic war!"

The half Galran shot another pinched expression at his right hand man's outburst, ears ringing slightly at the anger within his voice and heart stinging in the same breath.

"Again. Not your fault." Keith cemented. "If you have everyone letting you know that a certain part of you annoys them, of course you're not going to consider it as something important."

The black paladin then walked up to the chair next to Lance as he found himself standing directly across from him, merely a seat apart.

"Sometimes, the things we look for are right in front of us when we're not looking for it. But the seconds we do, we end up not seeing it."

Keith leaned forward as he draped his arms across the top of his seat, laying his weight upon the chair as he tried to meet the red paladin's line of sight. The latter must've sensed this as he went to shift his eyes in the older paladin's direction and turned his head slightly to meet him.

"That isn't on you, Lance." he stated firmly.

The black paladin waited on baited breath to see how Lance would react, his younger teammate gazing at him, his eyes blank.. Watching him break down over not having something worth contributing to Voltron was bad enough, so he didn't want to see him spiral after finding out that he has one.

As his friend continued to peer into him, all Keith could do was hope that they didn't go backwards and that Lance didn't slip further back into his self-loathing denial.

Lance stared at the black paladin a few seconds longer before he shifted his attention to the chair he stood against.

"Maybe, " he muttered aloud, giving a half-hearted shrug. "But I still wish I could've realized this sooner."

Just then, the young marksman pulled out the chair before him and maneuvered himself within it, gently plopping onto the seat before leaning forward, arms crossed on the table. Once he was settled, the young man let out a heavy sigh.

"So much for potential." he jabbed at himself.

Keith said nothing as he stared at Lance's hunched figure, another wave of heartache making itself known within his chest as the red paladin's continued dismissal of himself continued to rear its ugly head.

The black paladin's brows creased, a mild look of concern and pity taking hold within his eyes.

Before long, the older man remained silent as he slowly but quietly walked towards the chair next to Lance, bringing himself around it to go ahead and sit on the chair, clasping his hands together in front of him as he looked ahead at the wall.

For a minute, the room was filled with silence, neither paladin making the attempt to say anything as they both resided to just staring at the wall. At the moment, Keith had nothing to bite his tongue down for as he would sneak a glance at his teammate, watching how he slid himself away from the table to lean against the chair and cross his arms in front of his chest.

He knew that he couldn't leave his right hand to stew in his thoughts, leaving him vulnerable to more self-deprecation and hatred.

He needed to say something and he needed to say it now.

The black paladin took his eyes off of his teammate as he turned his gaze back to his interlocked hands, a lone thumb rubbing against the top of one of his hands nervously from the lack of dialogue between the two of them.

"Remember when we first arrived at the Castle of Lions?" he asked finally, his thumb halting its movements as it remained stiff against his skin.

He heard Lance let out a light scoff as his face shifted somewhat, his eyes becoming a bit glazed in what could possibly be described as remembrance.

"How could I forget?" he heard the red paladin answer mentally.

In an instant, Keith's mind began to fill with memories of when the two of them and the rest of the group ended up in Blue and ended up somewhere on the other side of the cosmos in a castle.

The place that they would end up calling their home for years on end after being separated from their actual home.

It was then that Keith's own thumb began to move around anxiously around his other thumb as they rotated around the other, closing his eyes momentarily to prepare himself to ask his next question before finding the courage to reopen them.

He just hoped that he didn't end up pushing Lance further away once his question was out in the open.

"I know she's the last person you want to hear about, but do you remember when we first met Allura?"

Keith caught the way that Lance's hands immediately shifted into fists at the sound of her name. But other than that, his neutral expression hadn't changed and he didn't look like he was about to crawl out of his skin and scream.

So that was a good sign.

He just had to make sure it stayed that way.

"She told us we were the answer to saving the universe, but she didn't know that for sure." he recounted.

"You five paladins were brought here for a reason. The Voltron Lions are meant to be piloted by you and you alone. We must fight, and keep fighting until we defeat Zarkon. It is our destiny."

"But she believed, and she needed us to believe. And it worked."

Keith shifted his eyes to glance at the red paladin.

"That's exactly what's happening right now."

In an instant, Lance's eyelids grew slightly in surprise before he turned his head towards the black paladin, hoping his awaiting gaze would prompt him to explain himself.

And sure enough, he did.

"For the longest time, you didn't know whether or not you had 'a thing' that would make you as useful to the team as everyone else." the older paladin began to elaborate.

"Sure, there were things that you were skilled at and definitely skills that only you could do. But you weren't sure if they were enough to leave an impact."

The black paladin couldn't stop his pupils from softening the longer he gazed at his teammate, his surprised yet attentive expression giving him a plethora of emotions that he needed to keep down for the sake of finishing his thoughts and not losing track of them.

"But you did have one, one that you had been using and has been working the whole time whether you knew it or not. And you found it, Lance. You just needed it to be shown to your face." Keith finished.

Once the final word had left Keith's lips, Lance pulled his gaze away from him once again to stare downwards, his hands clenching together unconsciously as he thought over his teammate's words.

He had a thing.

He always had a thing.

He just had spent the longest time passing it by due to everyone looking down on him.

In spite of the obvious, the red paladin couldn't help but to still feel conflicted with himself. In the midst of it all, some of Allura's words to him came into his head.

"You have greatness within."

This wasn't the first time his potential was brought up to his face, and yet the conflicted feeling he felt only grew stronger. Was he truly as full of potential as he was made out to be or was he just kidding himself?

Did his constant teasing and need for joking and teasing alleviate some stress off of the team? Maybe.

Was he able to hold his own against someone in spite of being unfamiliar with a weapon that wasn't in his arsenal? Subjective.

Was he capable of firing a shot? Hell yeah, he was.

He had had several instances where he could be considered a true asset to Voltron and his friends and that he wasn't the seventh wheel that he always made himself to be these days. And yet, he was still shunned and left on the sidelines to crash and burn.

Sure, Allura was the one to tell him that he had greatness within. But she had also talked down to him for making a simple choice and saw him as nothing but a rebound.

And as for Keith, he might've had his moments of being a real ass. But he had saw something in him that he hadn't seen in himself and was making it known to him now. And now, he couldn't help but wonder just how long the older man had thought of him in such a way.

Ugh.

At this point, Lance was going around in circles and any more of this was gonna give him a migraine he wouldn't be able to come back from. So all he could do was put his head in his hands as he groaned inwardly.

"Cut it out."

The sudden interjection of Keith's voice startled the marksman as his eyes shot open, his head darting to the side to look at the black paladin.

"What?" he questioned hurriedly, his heart racing from the surprise of his teammate's voice.

"You're spiraling. Again." Keith stated.

Feeling like a deer in headlights, Lance couldn't help but to feel offended at the sudden (yet truthful) accusation.

"I- No, I wasn't!" he shot back.

Keith merely shifted his eyes into a mild glare and lowered his eyebrows, not even attempting to utter a single word to his teammate. Even with the mild intensity of the older paladin's stare, Lance felt as though he might have just been standing underneath a hot lamp.

So naturally, he turned away in embarrassment.

"Okay," the red paladin finally relented. "Maybe I was."

Lance wrung his hands together atop the table as he released a heavy sigh.

"I'm sorry." he apologized sincerely, his blue pupils remaining on the surface of the table.

"I know I shouldn't be, but it's been a minute since I've been told straight up to my face by someone other than Shiro that I'm not useless. As sad as that is."

Keith's eyes softened with sympathy.

"Hey, I get it." He spoke with comfort before a look of guilt became planted on his face. "I'm just sorry that I didn't say this to you sooner. If I did, then maybe you wouldn't have gone through so much."

Lance was silent before giving the black paladin a shrug.

"Well, you were somewhere lightyears away from us chilling on a space whale. So that was kinda hard to do." he stated, the underlying quip of it all being caught in Keith's ear.

And it was enough to make the black paladin snort with near laughter.

"Well then, I could've said something before I left."

Lance gave his friend a curious side eye.

"You mean when we were all kinda being assholes to you for being late to everything?"

The half Galran raised one of his eyebrows at his teammate.

"I mean, didn't I deserve it?" he inquired.

Lance twisted his head to meet the black paladin's face fully.

"Look, was you being late to missions getting annoying? Yeah. Was you not showing up when we were in trouble crazy? Definitely. But I admit that we probably went a little too hard on you when you got back on the ship. Especially when you had the look of utter sadness on your face." the red paladin admitted.

Keith's brows drew together.

"I did?"

"Like someone had just kicked the everloving shit out of your puppy."

The black paladin lifted one of his hands to rub the back of his neck sheepishly, looking away from his right hand man in slight embarrassment.

"Well, I can't really blame any of you for being upset." Keith replied.

Lance shot his leader a look of pity.

"Yeah, but I'm sure we could've gone about it in a way that wasn't so shitty to you." he remarked. After a minute, Keith stopped rubbing his neck as he finally laid his hand back down on the table, sighing.

"Yeah, well," the black paladin restarted, turning to look back at his teammate. "What's done is done, I guess."

The marksman looked away from his leader guiltily, rubbing his hand up and down his arm in a vain attempt to soothe himself from the memories of Keith walking out the doors of the castleship and not seeing him for what felt like forever.

Forever was already a long time, but he never truly grasped how long and tedious forever would feel like until he watched his leader and closest friend become closed off from him by those metallic doors..

And he had made that happen, at his own detriment.

"And for the record," Keith's voice interjected, breaking the red paladin out of his thoughts. " I don't think you were being shitty. You were having a valid reaction to a situation that I kinda made worse by not showing up."

If guilt was slapstick, this would be the moment where Lance would be squashed by a random piano.

Lance sighed inwardly as he plopped his head into the palm of his hand, eyes shutting briefly in exasperation.

"Why do you keep doing that?" the younger man griped.

Keith eyed his teammate quizzically.

"Doing what?"

"Being so understanding. Giving me so much grace when I don't deserve it." Lance replied, "You really don't have to do that, y'know."

Keith felt his eyebrows knit together as he found himself leaning towards his right hand.

"Lance, I'm being serious." he proclaimed firmly.

"I know that!" the younger paladin whined lightly, raising his head and looking at his black paladin. "But I don't want you to! You shouldn't have to, not with the way I treated you that day."

The black paladin's eyes softened, hearing the immense guilt that rushed and flowed from the younger man's lips.

"Lance-"

"Yes, I was mad at you. And frustrated and annoyed. But…you were trying. You were trying to be there for the team. You didn't go away to the Blade for no reason. And I knew that you were trying your best, but…stuff just happened and things got stressful and…"

The marksman peered down at the table with guilt.

"...things had to happen."

He tapped his finger on the table's surface for a couple of seconds, his beats uneven and pensive.

"And none of that would have happened had me and the others reacted differently. You may have been late, but you didn't do anything wrong. That was all us."

Keith found himself lowering his eyelids, eyeing the red paladin pitifully.

"Lance, you weren't wrong. None of you were." he remarked, his voice gentle yet solid enough for anyone to hear and sense his adamance on the topic at hand. He then gave his teammate a simple shrug.

"Honestly, nobody was right or wrong. It was just a bad and complicated situation all around. No one was gonna come out of it as the winner."

The red paladin's eyes remained on the table, his tapping finger now curled into his palm.

Looking back on it, Keith may have a point.

Everything that happened that day was stressful, which in and of itself was an understatement.

The team was getting their asses handed to him and they couldn't even form Voltron because Keith wasn't able to show up. And the only reason they were able to get out of it was because fake Shiro was able to connect with Black.

But that didn't stop them from being pissed at Keith for not being there when it counted.

And look what happened?

He and the others scolded him and Keith decides to leave the team and make fake Shiro the leader (granted Lance was the nail in the coffin, but this wasn't about him).

The team got their Black Lion back, but at the cost of their friend. And that wasn't counting everything else that followed suit after the fact.

So in the end, could that honestly be considered a win?

And even if Keith had chosen to stay, what would've changed?

Yeah, he would've still been on the team, but he would've had to deal with Lance and the team coming at him and making him feel like shit for things that were out of his control at the time.

Definitely not a win.

One of Lance's eyes winced briefly as his focus returned to the table.

"Yeah, well, I don't know." he started, turning his head to face Keith. "I still could've found a way to be less shitty to you."

He could only gaze at Keith apologetically and watched as the black paladin shot him a remnant of what appeared to be a sad smile. Lance took in the older man's smile for a few seconds longer before he found himself turning his head back to his prior position.

"Come to think of it, I've always been shitty to you." the red paladin proclaimed, leaning back in his seat as he went to cross his arms.

"God, you probably thought I was one annoying little shit to you, huh?"

The black paladin could only blink at his right hand, surprised at his current piece of self-deprecation.

"I wouldn't go that far." Keith replied. "And you definitely aren't a little shit. I reserve that title to James."

Lance's eyebrows raised in surprise, but not before he was reminded of the time where he, Keith, and the rest of their class was being scolded by Iverson after their training exercise.

The same one where one James Griffin thought it was a good idea to bring up Keith's parents so Keith decided to sock the ever-loving shit out of him and needed to be pulled off by three Garrison personnel before James became borderline unrecognizable.

Well damn.

The young paladin found himself huffing in slight amusement despite the still present frown on his face.

"I see." he commented before he found himself going serious again. "But I don't hear you denying that I was annoying."

Keith let out a little hum before replying.

"You can be," he remarked lightly. "But you found a way to make it endearing. Or as you would put it, 'a part of your charm.'"

The red paladin could feel a patch of heat growing on the back of his neck, doing his best to keep his face neutral.

Did…did he just call him charming?

He basically called him charming, right?

That wasn't flirting, he thought urgently. He wasn't flirting. Relax.

Either way, Keith's comment succeeded in Lance giving a quick ghost of a smile.

"Ha ha." he faux laughed. "But seriously, I'd be stupid not to admit how full of myself I was all those years ago. Back then, I was cocky enough to actually think I was the greatest pilot in the universe."

The black paladin gazed at his teammate knowingly.

"And I thought I could do everything myself." Keith added, raising his head slightly to see Lance a little better.

The red paladin thought over his words, thinking back to how they were back then.

He was the hotshot cadet who wanted to ride into the stars.

Keith was the quiet loner who kept to himself and marched to the beat of his own drum.

Fire and ice.

When they became part of Voltron, the dynamic pretty much was the same. Albeit a bit more intense than before now that they were older.

He was the hotshot pilot of the Blue Lion who wooed every alien that crossed his path with a good ol' razzle dazzle.

Keith was the serious pilot of the Red Lion who was quick to jump into danger headfirst without thinking and could be just as intense as the lion he rode in.

And whenever they were in the same room, it wasn't long before the two found themselves arguing with each other, throwing jabs, and getting into shouting matches. And it only ended up getting a bit worse when Shiro disappeared.

Oil and water.

But then, so much happened.

Shiro disappeared.

The clone came in.

Keith left.

Lotor.

Sendak dying.

The Altean colony.

Keith coming back.

The truth about the clone.

Shiro coming back.

The journey home.

Allura.

By the time they had been back on Earth, things had mellowed.

Lance wasn't the same hotshot cadet he found himself as. Now, he was a young man who had seen war and experienced death. Someone who experienced heartbreak after heartbreak. But he had also become someone who was capable of so much more than he realized, whether it be leading missions as second in command or holding his own in a fight with a weapon he had no prior experience with.

And he became someone who kept his team from falling apart despite falling apart himself.

Keith was no longer the loner cadet who showed off and kept to himself. Now, he was someone who had learned, seen, and experienced so much. He had recovered a mother who he thought had abandoned him. He had found a sister in someone of a different species who experienced the same kind of loss that he had. He lost and regained a brother in Shiro.

Instead of charging into danger head first, he'd think things through before making a move. Instead of thinking for the team, he thought with them. He still had his moments of doing things recklessly, but that was only because the part of him that wanted to help as best as he could was something that couldn't be simmered with time and experience.

He was older, calmer, and wiser.

And together, the two of them were a well-oiled machine. On the battlefield, they knew which moves to take and which steps to avoid, becoming a pair of wings that moved and glide effortlessly in the same direction. And off the battlefield, they were two young people who knew what the other was thinking, using the things they went through to counsel and comfort the other.

They had become each other's confidant. Their ally. Their friend. They both became each other's reason to fight.

Yin and yang.

Sun and moon.

Sour cream and onion.

They just…fit.

"We've come a long way since then."

At this, Lance finally allowed himself to smile, letting out a soft and genuine chuckle.

"Yeah, we have."

The red paladin could feel a pinch of discomfort in his chest as he said the words, the act of praising himself now such a rarity that the act of doing felt foreign upon his tongue.

"Although," Lance began to add. "Some of us still have some growing to do than others."

Keith shot his friend a look of sadness before reaching out to lay his hand on his arm.

"Hey, don't sell yourself short." he said comfortingly. "We're not perfect. And we're gonna take steps backwards, but that doesn't mean we haven't grown."

The black paladin leaned in slightly as Lance turned his head to look at him.

"That doesn't mean you haven't grown."

The younger paladin blinked at his leader.

"I was actually talking about you." he stated, prompting Keith to dish out a puzzled expression.

"Me?" he questioned. "Why me?"

"Weren't you the one who literally sliced a carnival ride because you couldn't sit through the ride?"

At that, the half Galran completely removed his hand from Lance's arm as he quickly recoiled in offense at his teammate's question.

"Um, the same ride where it kept stopping every three seconds with that god awful song playing in the background?" Keith inquired, his voice matching the severity of his offended face.

"The same ride where the power literally blew out and we were stuck for what could've been hours? Don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing!"

Lance quickly darted his eyes to the side and back to Keith.

"You literally could've just slid out from under the bar and walked out." the marksman remarked, doing his best to hold back his laughter as his face showcases a small smile of amusement.

"And risk getting stuck and trapped in that hellhole longer? Hell no." the black paladin bit out, his face turning into one of disgust as he recounted the treacherous experience.

It was then that Lance couldn't hold back and snorted in response.

Keith stared at the younger man as his eyelids lowered further, looking unamused.

"Glad you're finding so much joy in this." the man deadpanned. Lance let out a quick cough before re-crossing his arms and shooting a glance at Keith, a dim light flickering within his eyes as he looked at him.

"Only a little bit." Lance replied. The black paladin wanted to keep up his look of faux unamusement, but the small smile that took hold of his right hand's face was contagious, causing him to drop the act and smile back at him just as softly.

"Of course, you would." the black paladin returned, gazing at his friend affectionately.

Lance chuckled.

"I'm just messing with you, though." he stated, his voice holding an element of fondness that Keith genuinely couldn't tell if it was intentional or something that slipped through the cracks of his words.

"You've done a lot of growing, too. You still have your moments, sure, but you're getting better. Just try to ease up on giving all of us a collective heart attack from time to time."

The half Galran snorted, bowing his head to conceal his laughter before turning back to face his younger teammate.

"Noted." Keith nodded.

Lance's tongue went to poke the inside of his cheek before his smile lessened some.

"Good," he stated. "If I'm being honest, I don't think I could handle another one."

Finally, Lance's smile dropped completely as his pupils began to trail off back towards the table.

"Especially with who we're about to go up against."

The black paladin's own smile fell off at the implication, his clasped hands clenching together instinctively at the thought of her.

"I hear you." he responded, his head lowering to peer down at his hands. "That's why we're doing all that we can now. She's not going to have the upper hand for long."

"It's more than that."

Confused, the older paladin turned his head back to look at Lance, immediately spotting the look of fear, dread, and sadness that all made their presence known on his face. And out of the corner of his eye, he could see the way Lance's hand gripped at his uniform sleeve.

"Keith, she almost killed you. Twice. And she was able to do it without even being physically there." Lance started, his eyes tense and his face visibly bothered.

"Now, we're going to be facing her head on and I have no doubt she's going to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. No matter how dirty or cruel."

The red paladin's hand began to tremble on his arm, the image of Keith convulsing on the floor and his screams of panic flashing and replaying in his head.

"I…I just don't want to go through that again. And I definitely don't want to see you going through that again, either."

Keith eyed Lance sympathetically. He hated that Lance was carrying that fear of the Astral Plane, but a part of him felt comforted by how concerned the red paladin was about him.

"You won't have to." he reassured, his voice comforting but determined.

"When Honerva took control of me, it was obvious that she was just using me to buy herself more time. If I wasn't able to pilot Black, there was no way Voltron was going to be able to go after her. She just didn't take into account how stubborn the both of us could be when backed into a corner."

The half Galran caught the quick flick of Lance's mouth going upwards, the former inwardly sighing that he was able to get the younger paladin to smile through his concern.

"Right now, Honerva is focused on searching for an alternate reality and doesn't care how many universes or dimensions get destroyed as long as she gets what she wants. That's why we're going to do whatever we can and use whatever we got to put an end to this. We already know her plan, so now it's just a matter of putting a stop to it." Keith advised.

With his eyes still on the red paladin, he unclasped his hands and folded his arms on top of one another before leaning towards the young marksman.

"Besides…" Keith started, prompting Lance to slightly turn his head to look at him due to the prominent pause. Once he had garnered his teammate's attention, a small teasing smile crept its way onto the black paladin's face.

"...do you honestly think I'm gonna let that witch get the drop on me again after that fucking seizure?"

Lance blinked at the black paladin in surprise before finding himself succumbing to a fit of chuckles, turning his head away from his friend as he did so.

Quite frankly, the red paladin hadn't expected to laugh at the statement the way he was, nor did he even know the reason why. He didn't know if it had to do with the black paladin's sudden pivot from serious to joking or the mixture of dryness and tease within his voice as he asked the question.

Or maybe it was the fact that Lance knew that behind the humor, Keith was being dead serious.

Regardless, the red paladin found himself in a small fit of chuckles as he tried to keep them from turning into full fledged barks of laughter.

All the while, Keith was looking at him with such a fondness that matched the way a person would view what they considered a masterpiece.

"You might have a point there." he heard Lance chuckle, watching as he wiped tears from his eyes. "No way you're gonna let that go."

Keith's smile grew slightly bigger at that.

"Exactly." he replied. "And besides…"

At his pause, Keith placed his palms on the table as he pushed himself up out of his seat, completely shifting his body towards his right hand man and looking down at him with a smile that held reassurance and confidence.

"We haven't lost until we've lost hope." Keith proclaimed softly.

As Lance looked up at the black paladin, his own smile grew bigger with a reignited confidence and sense of hope. Soon enough, the red paladin stood up from his own seat and stood in front of his friend, meeting him face-to-face.

"I haven't given up." Lance proclaimed, his mind and whole being standing ten toes down with him. And this time, he actually believed what he was saying.

"Let's finish what we started."

Keith couldn't stop his smile from growing as he released a hum of satisfaction, reveling in the newfound confidence and energy that Lance was currently omitting.

The one thing that he had been yearning for Lance to gain again ever since everything stated. The thing that he wanted to see for himself once everything was said and done.

And with the way that the young marksman was looking back at him, back straight and smile strong with eyes regaining their signature gleam, the older paladin can easily say that the last half hour of conversation, arguing, and crying seemed to have been worth it, all things considered.

It wasn't a full resolution, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Pretty soon, Keith raised his right hand, turning it to its side before extending it towards his teammate, never taking his purple orbs off of him for even a tick. Already catching the drift, Lance extended his left hand and grabbed the black paladin's hand, the two of them clasping their fingers around the other's palm in a gentle but firm hold.

A silent promise to each other and themselves.

We got this.

As Keith's eyes continued to stare into Lance's, he could hear the voice in the deepest depths of himself hoping and wishing that this moment never came to an end.

Just then, the black paladin's eyes began to trail off, his smile slowly but surely beginning to fall.

Lance immediately knitted his eyebrows together, unease starting to fill him at Keith's sudden shift in demeanor. Then, without any warning, Keith lowered both of their hands a few inches, just enough to where they were in between where their belts fell.

At that, it wasn't long before Lance's heart began to quicken with concern.

The marksman fixed his mouth to say Keith's name, but the older man had already beat him to the punch.

"Hey, listen." he requested, his eyes currently zeroed in on their hands in what Lance could only assume was an attempt to not make eye contact with him again. But regardless, the black paladin had his full attention.

"I know that you're still hurting. And I know that it's probably going to take way more than one conversation for you to believe everything I've been telling you."

Keith paused as he went to gently squeeze Lance's hand, dragging his thumb back and forth on the back of the latter's hand in a singular swipe before raising his head to meet his friend's eyes once again.

"But I want you to know that I meant everything that I said before. You're important and you're valuable and you have and will always be an important member on this team, thing or not." he reiterated, hoping that the finality in his voice made his words stick. "And.."

The half Galran's voice trailed off, his gaze sharply dropping to the floor as his face scrunched up for a second, mentally preparing himself for what had to be said next. All the while, the red paladin grew confused and more curious, expectantly waiting for the statement to be finished.

Lance couldn't help but to move towards his teammate, lowering his posture so as to be able to meet Keith's eye level and leaning forward as he did so.

"And?" Lance inquired,

Thankfully for him, his need for closure was answered swiftly as Keith looked back at him, his face looking more settled and calm.

"And…Voltron isn't Voltron if you aren't here." he continued, his voice steady. "And I really want you here. By my side."

Lance's eyes grew slightly, his pupils twinking at the words. He could feel his mind running a million miles a minute, already interpreting those three words in a multitude of different ways. And every way he thought of them left him with a never-ending fast heartbeat and the warmth that always filled to the brim whenever he was around his leader.

But no matter the context or implication, the message was loud as day. And it was spoken from the older man's lips.

He wanted Lance around.

And he wasn't going to push him away.

And that was enough for the red paladin to chuckle softly, rubbing at his eye as he felt tears beginning to make their way to the brim of his eyes.

"You really mean that, huh?" Lance questioned, a lightness in his tone instead of the usual despondent and melancholic one that Keith refused to become accustomed to.

Keith smiled at the younger man fondly as he gave his hand another squeeze of reassurance.

"Every word."

Lance stared at Keith for a second before letting out a deep exhale, the tension in his shoulders and body dissipating with the breath he let out as he found himself letting go of Keith's hand.

Before the latter had a chance to react, Lance had taken a step forward into Keith's space, wrapping an arm around Keith's neck and the other around his torso as he pressed his body against his in an unexpected hug. In spite of the initial shock, the half Galran found his body reacting on its own as he found his own arms wrapping around the red paladin's shoulder and waist, respectively.

Keith let out a quiet sigh, relishing in the feeling of holding his partner so close like this again.

"Thank you." he felt the red paladin say against him. Keith could feel the heat from Lance's breath as it heated up the side of his neck when he spoke, the goosebumps on his skin starting to grow. He unconsciously began to scratch lightly at Lance's back.

"You don't need to thank me." Keith responded, his voice quiet enough for only the red paladin to hear. "This was something you should've heard a long time ago. I just…"

The half Galran halted his words, his redundant guilt rearing its ugly head once again. His silence continued to fill the room as his arm tightened around Lance's waist, pulling the younger man closer against him.

Keith allowed himself to steal a glance at the paladin in his arms before shifting his gaze to the floor past his shoulder.

"I just hope you can forgive me for only saying it now."

Lance blinked a couple of times before his eyes shifted to the side to glance at his older teammate, those same eyes continuing to glisten. Despite the exhaustion in his body and mild throb in his head from his continuous crying, it was impossible for him to miss the tone of regret within his leader's voice, nor the way his hold on him tightened ever so much.

Over these last few weeks, he had gotten apology after apology. And in every single one, he always came out of the conversation feeling a little bit worse than how he was before he had received the apology. He would always end up walking away with the same questions.

Why did it take so long?

Would I still have gotten it if things had been different?

Were they apologizing to him or for themselves?

Was it really that hard to say in the first place?

But now, hearing Keith apologize to him like this, it was the first time heard an apology without gaining a sour taste in his mouth.

As his bottom lip began to tremble, Lance squeezed his eyes shut as he rested his face against his leader's shoulder, nodding his head against him.

Feeling the red paladin's movement and his occasional stuttering breath against him, Keith let his eyes slip shut as he slid his hand to hold the juncture between Lance's neck and shoulder in an attempt to secure the younger man against him, his body unconsciously relaxing as he did so. As the black paladin continued to hold his right hand, he reopened his eyes as something came to his mind.

"And Lance?" Keith asked the red paladin. The latter didn't say anything, but Keith felt him raise his head slightly from his shoulder. The black paladin could feel the back of his neck start to flush.

"I wouldn't mind being stuck for an eternity with you."

At this, Lance gave his leader another sideways glance as his face scrunched in utter confusion, the randomness of Keith's confession catching him completely off guard. Thankfully for him, it only took a few seconds for his brain to fill in the necessary blanks as he was immediately brought back to that goddamn Garfle Warfle Snick.

As much as the young man wished he could remember literally anything else, the memory that unfolded before him answered the very question that Keith's words brought.

When he and the others had to choose which one of them they wanted to escape the game.

That moment after he had chosen Keith…when Keith had chosen him.

"Lance? Why Lance?"

Albeit a bit harshly.

"I just don't wanna be stuck here for eternity with Lance."

"Aww, thanks man…Wait, what?!"

And then, much to his own surprise, Lance found himself bursting into laughter as he completely raised his head from off of Keith's shoulder. He wasn't exactly expecting that to make him burst from the seams with laughters and barely contained giggles, but here he was.

As he felt the red paladin's body brush against him with every laugh, Keith didn't even attempt to conceal the few chuckles that came out of him.

Eventually, Lance placed his hands on Keith's shoulders as he pushed himself away from him, meeting his eyes.

"Damn." the former sighed out as his left hand went up to wipe away any spare laughter-induced tears and to prevent any from coming out at all.

"You've really been holding on to that one, huh?"

The black paladin's gaze briefly flickered to the ground, his hand going up in order to scratch the back of his neck as he chuckled awkwardly. But all it took was one look at Lance's still smiling face and the black paladin was the furthest thing from embarrassed.

"Maybe." Keith replied. "But only because the execution was terrible."

The red marksman sputtered in almost laughter.

"N-No shit!" Lance replied, falling into another fit of laughter as the hand that was previously wiping away tears was now doing its best to conceal his mouth. The half Galran leader rolled his eyes fondly at the younger man as his mouth shifted into that of a smirk. For the next few seconds, Lance would constantly try - and fail - to talk and get his laughter under control, only for his laughing fit to become more and more relentless.

And all Keith could do was look on amusement.

"Lance, it really wasn't that fu-"

"Yes! Yes, it really was!" Lance interjected before he began to wheeze, falling forward and plopping his forehead on Keith's shoulder as laughs continued to wrack through his strong yet fragile body.

The black paladin found himself rolling his eyes as he let out a sigh of faux annoyance.

"Okay, that's it." he ordered fondly, placing his hands atop of Lance's shoulders and gently pushing him off of his shoulder, setting him upright as the younger man continued on with his laughter. Pulling the cuff of his sleeve upwards to grab it, Keith brought up his hand and brought it to the red paladin's face.

"I don't know how you do it," he started, bringing his wrist to one of Lance's eyes as he wiped at it. "But you always find a way to laugh at the weirdest things."

The red paladin let out another chuckle, instinctively shutting his other eye as Keith reached over to wipe at it, as well.

"I don't know, either." Lance laughed slightly, doing his best to not move around a lot so that he wouldn't make Keith end up hurting him. Even with one blue eye open, Lance could make out the focused look in the black paladin's eyes as he wiped away his tears of laughter.

The same way that in spite of his excessive laughter, he could feel the patience in Keith's touch with every wipe of his eyelids, his movements slow and careful with no underlying rush to erase the dampness before his next laugh.

Gradually, the marksman's laughs began to die down, leaving him with a simple smile.

"But it's not my fault that I have a sense of humor." Lance found himself quipping. Keith moved his gaze from Lance's face to the man's pupil, his face deadpanned before returning to his task.

"Now you're being ridiculous." Keith replied, loosening the grip on his sleeve as he settled for using the fabric of his glove to wipe at Lance's cheeks.

The red paladin snorted, already picking up his teammate's underlying teasing.

"Probably." He agreed to an extent, his eyes still zeroed in on the black paladin's eyes as a sudden boldness began to grow in his chest.

"But I'm pretty sure that's something that you like about me."

Lance felt the way Keith's hand froze on his face, the fabric of his glove gently pressing against his cheek. He watched intently as the black paladin's eyes made the minute shift from his face to his eyes, violet staring back intensely against his cerulean.

After a couple of seconds, Keith's hand resumed its movement, beginning a slow and gentle glide down the red paladin's cheek. It was a small change, but it was enough for Lance to feel a newfound humidity within his body. With unwavering eyes, he watched as Keith's eyelids slightly lowered.

"Yeah." he finally spoke, his voice suddenly deeper as he smiled down at his friend. Lance felt his entire body start to stiffen as the half Galran retracted his hand from the bottom of his chin to place it back up under his eyelid to glide it back down until it reached the middle of the young man's cheek.

"I guess I do."

At that moment, Keith opened up his hand against Lance's cheek, freeing his palm to place it against the side of the red paladin's face and hold his cheek. Even with the fabric that covered most of his cheek, Lance could feel the heat from his leader's palm weaving into his skin and into his very being.

He was so caught up and overwhelmed by the sensation that he hadn't realized that he had completely stopped laughing altogether and was simply staring back at Keith, awestruck. Realizing the current situation he found himself in, the marksman found himself shifting underneath the older paladin's touch as he bashfully averted his gaze.

"You, uh…" Lance stammered, his heart hammering wildly as he made himself look back up at his teammate. Sure enough, his intense stare and easy smile had yet to leave his face.

"That's not a problem to you, is it?"

Deep down, Lance already had a clue what the answer would be. But after everything that happened.

After everything that was said.

After internalizing and taking in what everyone on the team has ever said or thought about him.

He just..he just couldn't take the chance.

He couldn't take the chance of this being the same. The chance of this going the same route like the others.

He didn't want that. Not from him.

He wanted this to be different. He needed this to be different.

And almost as if the universe heard him and finally decided to grant him this small mercy, Keith's smile grew and his intense eyes grew fonder as his thumb began to stroke the red paladin's cheek.

"Not at all."

Those three words were enough to make Lance's whole body relax, the younger paladin allowing himself to smile back at his leader softly.

As the seconds passed and the calming silence remained between them, it was as if Lance's body resorted to being on high alert, registering various touches and sensations that weren't at the forefront of his consciousness until now.

The goosebumps that started to rise on his skin.

The worn thickness in the palm of Keith's glove.

And the warm softness of Keith's thumb as it continued to slowly stroke his cheek back and forth before stopping for a few seconds afterwards.

Lance didn't know if it was from them standing underneath the lights of the situation room for so long or if the room's temperature chose to increase itself while the pair was standing like this, but there was no way for him to ignore the heated sensation that overtook him and his being as he remained where he was.

Just then, Keith's thumb made another slight movement against his cheek, making Lance's breath internally hitch. It never ceased to amaze the young marksman how one small and simple touch from that man could be so electric and so intoxicating. The only other time Lance felt that much heat and electricity was at the Omega Shield. And he ended up dying because of it.

This was so much different than that.

Because he would simply come out of it wanting more of his touch. So much more.

And he honestly believed that he'd die much quicker without his touch than he would with it.

Overcome with yearning, Lance hadn't even realized that he had taken a step closer towards the black paladin, only realizing it once he noticed Keith's face was a little closer to his than before. With their newfound closeness, the red paladin took a moment to quickly land his newly glazed eyes on Keith's lips before quickly darting them back up to meet his violet orbs once more.

The black paladin felt the back of his neck begin to burn, his heart rate speeding up alongside the rise and fall of his chest. There was no missing the movement in his right hand's eyes, no matter how fast he tried to make it. Meeting his teammate's challenge, he lowered his eyes as they landed on Lance's lips.

However, unlike the younger man, he purposely let his gaze linger on the younger man's mouth for a few seconds, soundlessly expressing his own want. And only a second later, he slowly brought his gaze back to Lance's, eyes half-lidded.

With his hand that was currently on Lance's waist, he gripped the fabric surrounding the area and bought himself a step closer to his teammate. It was only then that he released his grip to settle for cupping the side of the red paladin's waist, wishing he could feel the skin that laid underneath the uniform.

As the black paladin's breath continued to graze his face, Lance slid one of his hands up the right side of Keith's chest, only stopping once his hand reached the side of the older man's neck and stopped to lay his hand there.

Even with the layer of fabric that separated their skins, the heat that came off of the half Galran onto Lance's palm was undeniable.

God...

The sharpshooter gave another quick flick of the eyes to Keith's mouth before meeting his eyes again, the heat within his body becoming unbearable the longer he was in his hands and he was within his own. At this rate, he didn't care what happened next or who was the one to do it.

He just wanted more of Keith's touch.

And then, almost as if someone heard his prayer or read his mind, Keith brought his face closer to Lance's, placing his forehead against his and closing his eyes as he held it there. Before long, a heavy blush started to overtake Lance's face and the breaths that came out of his mouth were so heavy, he wouldn't have been surprised if each breath was followed by a visible puff of hot air spilling from his mouth.

Just then, Keith reopened his eyes, pools of violet staring down at him with intensity and want. With his thumb resuming its strokes, the older paladin tilted his face slightly, the right side of his nose knocking against Lance's right as a stuttering breath touched the red paladin's face.

In that one breath, nothing else from before mattered.

The pain, strife, and turmoil Lance had felt today and for so long before that became practically non-existent. The aches and throbs of hurt and betrayal that laid dormant within his chest and heart had evaporated.

Now, the only thing that Lance felt was the multiple surges of electricity underneath his skin with every touch and look that Keith gave him. And the only emotions that chose to overtake his heart was nothing but want, trust and desire.

It's so much, Lance thought to himself, his fingers grazing the juncture of Keith's neck as he felt his body become pressed closer to his. Before he even realized, his smile had completely left his face, his mouth open ever so slightly.

But it's not enough.

He wanted more.

He needed more.

And with the way Keith was holding him and looking down at him, he needed more, too.

With a tightening grip and a quick bob of his Adam's apple, the black paladin lowered his face as he began to lean in carefully, his mouth slowly starting to open up.

Lance's eyelids lowered further at the sight.

Finally.

He braced himself, ready to close the gap between the two of them. Right as a sudden blue light flashed within the room.

Followed by a really loud bark.

The two young paladins jumped, their arms and hands practically dropping off of one another as they whipped their heads to locate the source of the sound. As the pair lowered their eyes on the culprit, they were immediately met with the sight of Cosmo, who was looking back at the two of them curiously with a tilted head and corresponding sound of confusion.

In spite of the sudden intrusion, the young men allowed themselves to sigh in relief, glad to know it was just their friendly neighborhood space wolf and not some sudden threat that had made their way onto the Atlas.

Keith was the first one to overcome his shock, a relieved smile etched on his face as he continued to gaze down at the space wolf.

"You really need to stop doing that, Kosmo." he chastised fondly, though his voice was completely void of sterness and discipline. Just then, he released his hold on Lance as he turned to walk over to the curious animal.

It only took a few seconds for the red paladin to start feeling cold, the heat of Keith's touch evaporating the second he released him.

"What are you even doing here?" he heard Keith inquire, watching as he knelt down to be at Kosmo's level and pet him, making the space wolf close his eyes in content as he whined appreciatively.

Lance couldn't help but to smile at the interaction, even with the feeling of disappointment currently sitting in his chest.

"I'm guessing he missed you." he guessed, crossing his arms. "He was probably waiting for you to come out a little after the others and got pissed when you didn't."

A frown grew on Keith's face as his brows furrowed, turning to face his right hand.

"We couldn't have been in here that long, right?" the black paladin questioned. Lance's eyes faltered to the ground as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

"I mean, we have been talking in here for awhile now." he started, his face beginning to cringe.

"Well, not talking, but you know what I mean. And we did have a lot of things we needed to clear the air on, so…"

Keith blinked at the younger paladin before moving his eyes to peer at the ground, letting out a hum of acknowledgement. His mind went back to the numerous back and forths he and Lance had while they were in here, along with the painful declarations and rushes of emotion each of them felt from each revelation.

And if they were in here long enough for Kosmo to search for them, they definitely had been in there far longer than either of them anticipated.

Damn, Keith thought.

The black paladin turned back to his space wolf as he petted his head, making the animal close his eyes in content.

"I'm sorry, Kos." Keith apologized. "We didn't mean to keep you waiting."

As he continued to scratch at the wolf's fur, Lance quietly walked up beside him.

"Yeah, don't be mad at him, boy." the red paladin added, smiling with sincerity as he garnered both of their attentions. "He and I just had some things to work out."

Keith looked up from his companion to look back at Lance, meeting his eyes and nervous smile. As the older man smiled back at him, he could feel a small sense of guilt bearing its weight on the back of his neck.

He couldn't not think about the position that he and Lance were in earlier.

There was no doubt about it.

He and Lance were about to kiss. And he had to be the one to pull away.

The weight of guilt on his neck and shoulders only grew heavier as his eyes remained on Lance's face, taking in the younger man's expression. He was smiling, but Keith could easily see the small strain at the edge of his lips.

The telltale sign that he was smiling because he was forcing himself to, and not because he could.

Before long, Lance's smile started dropping little by little as he looked away from the half Galran, rubbing his arm apprehensively. The shift in expression made Keith's face shift in concern.

"We did work things out, right?" he questioned carefully, refusing to meet the older paladin's eyes. "Like, we didn't mess things up further?"

The black paladin's eyes grew slightly, his expression etched in surprise as Lance's questions triggered an epiphany.

He wasn't talking about their talks. At least, not just that.

"We're…okay?"

Keith immediately lifted himself up from the ground, turning away from Kosmo to face the younger man.

"Yeah." he replied in a comforting tone. "Of course we are."

Keith waited patiently as Lance stared at him wordlessly, his blue orbs looking within every crevice of the former's violet spheres for any semblance of deceit or doubt within them. After a few seconds, the red paladin's eyelids slipped shut briefly as he let out a light but weighted sigh.

"Okay."

The black paladin couldn't help but to gaze down at him guiltily.

He wasn't going to lie to himself…he wanted to kiss Lance.

He was going to kiss Lance.

Everything in him wanted to feel his lips against his, even if he wasn't able to go through with it like he wanted to.

But now, he had to watch Lance look at him, his eyes that were once filled with want and desire now filled with sadness and worry, as if he had destroyed everything they were in the process of trying to repair because of one moment of desire.

A moment of shared desire.

"Hey."

The sound of Keith's call prompted Lance to lift his gaze back up to his leader, the gentle comfort in his voice calling him like a siren calling to a castaway.

"It's been a really charged day for the both of us, mainly for you. And the day isn't even over yet." Keith stated. He reached out his arm and placed the palm of his hand on Lance's shoulder, squeezing it gently.

"I just think that before you do anything else, you should decompress a bit. Not just to relax, but to process everything we've talked about. Besides, I'm sure I probably gave you a few things to think about."

Lance couldn't stop the patch of heat growing on the back of his neck, his face beginning to grow hot as Keith stared back at him, his calm expression unwavering.

I-Is he referring to us when we were about to-?

Soon enough, the red paladin found himself darting his eyes away from his leader in embarrassment. As much as Keith's reaction left Lance wanting to hide underneath the table, the fact that he was so calm and remained so natural and comforting to him after the fact definitely spoke out to him.

It meant that things truly were okay. So…

…did that mean he didn't regret it?

That he didn't make a mistake?

Soon enough, he rubbed the back of his neck as he glanced back up at his leader, a sheepish smile growing on his face.

"I'd say more than a few." Lance joked.

He wasn't sure if Keith caught the drift, but the light laugh he let out was enough for him.

"I know. That's why I'm suggesting it."

The black paladin's arms lifted up as he proceeded to cross them, still maintaining his gaze on the younger paladin in front of him.

"What about you?" Lance asked.

Keith let out a hum of confusion as his brows knitted together.

"Got anything in your head you have to work through?"

The half Galran relaxed his brows, absorbing Lance's question.

"Honestly, we both gave each other a lot of things to think about in terms of everything." Keith stated, his right hand gripping at his sleeve as Lance continued to look back at him.

"And especially on where we go from here."

Keith's tongue poked at the inside of his cheek for a quick second, thinking over his words.

"And especially on where we go from here."

He may have said that as a suggestion towards the both of them, but he was mainly directing that at himself.

He and Lance were going to kiss.

He was about to kiss the guy he had been yearning for for literal years.

That was an absolute fact.

That being said, Keith couldn't shake off the feeling of guilt that he felt around it.

He wasn't oblivious. He had watched and felt Lance the whole time leading up to that moment and every single piece of movement that the red paladin gave him had the word "consent" written across it.

From the way he kept looking at his lips to the way his fingers grazed his skin and his hands went up his body, pulling him closer for intimacy's sake. It was all pull and no push.

Like he said, Keith wasn't oblivious.

But he also wasn't stupid.

The whole time that the two of them were in this room, Lance was stuck on an emotional rollercoaster where he was either lashing out from everything that he had been through or was reacting to pieces of information he hadn't been privy to until said information slipped past the half Galran's lips. Throughout their entire conversation, there was barely a moment where Lance wasn't either crying, screaming, a variation of the two, or a different negative emotion altogether.

Even now, Keith could see the growing aura of fatigue and exhaustion within the red paladin as the blue in his eyes slowly began to dull once again and his posture started to turn less rigid.

So, taking everything into account, the idea of kissing the red paladin after such an emotional episode like that…it just didn't feel right.

Maybe he was just grasping at straws or blowing things out of proportion, but the black paladin couldn't help but to feel like he would've been taking advantage of Lance after the latter went through such an emotional wringer.

He had already gotten on Allura for taking advantage of Lance's feelings. If he had gone through with the kiss, wouldn't that have made him no less different?

"You're right."

Lance's sudden reply penetrated the black paladin's mind, snapping him out of his thoughts. Meanwhile, Kosmo shot a quick glance at his beloved owner before disappearing, immediately popping up next to Lance's leg. Unphased, the younger paladin merely smiled as he reached down to scratch behind Kosmo's ears as the wolf wagged his tail happily.

"We do have things we need to think about. Maybe even talk about, still." the marksman stated, his focus remaining on Kosmo as he continued to pet him. Seconds later, his fond smile dropped from his face.

"But it has to wait."

Lance paused his scratches to stand straight, returning his attention back to the black paladin before him.

"We still need to prepare for when Honerva makes her move. And to make sure she doesn't get a chance to do anymore damage." he spoke firmly, his eyes slightly softening. "Everything else can wait."

Keith couldn't help the look of surprise that took over his face, not expecting the finality of his statement or the commanding presence he presented to him unbeknownst to the red paladin.

A second later, the half Galran gave a small chuckle.

"What?" Lance inquired. Even Kosmo turned his head back to his paladin in curiosity.

"Nothing." he replied with a smile, shaking his head softly. "Just..you sound pretty confident."

The red paladin raised an eyebrow at him.

"Do I?"

Keith stood wordlessly, merely nodding his head. Lance blinked at him before he let out his own soft laugh, crossing his arms as he shifted his weight onto one foot, leaning towards Kosmo.

"That's probably because you've rubbed off on me." Lance answered amusingly. The black paladin immediately snorted at him.

"Sure." Keith answered sarcastically, rolling his eyes fondly. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

As the sound of Lance's soft laughter filled the situation room, the young leader gazed at him quietly as he felt his chest become warm. And with the warming of his chest came a new resolve within him.

Like Lance said, Honerva was still a threat and they still had to do everything they could to prepare before the next time she emerged. Even if they weren't able to stop her completely, weakening her would only bring them that much closer to victory and finally putting this war to an end.

Kissing Lance could wait.

For now, seeing him smile and laugh was more than enough.

And if he could, he'd make sure the younger man was capable of doing so forever.

"Well," the black paladin started again, "what do you say we start heading out?"

Kosmo let out an immediate bark, prompting the two paladins to burst into laughter.

"Sounds good." Lance giggled, petting the top of Kosmo's head once again. Keith smiled at the sight before turning around, leading the way as he, Lance, and Kosmo made their way to the exit, the doors opening for them as they finally stepped out of the situation room and into the (thankfully) empty hallway as the doors closed behind them.

"So, what are you gonna do now?" the red paladin asked, prompting Keith to turn back to him.

"I'm probably going to check in with Shiro. Then I'll try to see my mom and Kolivan and see how things worked out with the fleet. You?"

Lance gave him a light shrug.

"I don't know." he answered honestly. "I guess I can head to one of the training rooms and sharpen up my shooting in case we have to leave the lions. I've been meaning to freshen up on it anyway."

The young Cuban man's eyes then drifted downwards as his face shifted into an uncomfortable expression.

"After that, I'm not really sure."

He lifted his hand and rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably.

"I mean, I still can't be around the team in a non-mission setting. And the stuff they're doing is out of my realm of expertise, so…I might end up in the way."

"Don't do that."

Lance's eyes immediately rose, surprised at the sudden sharpness in Keith's tone as he met his newly hardened gaze.

"Stop comparing yourself." the older paladin repeated as he walked towards him. "You're going to do what you know best, the way that only you can do it. You already have something you can bring to the table, so don't worry about what you can't do."

Once he was close enough, Keith reached out and placed his hand on Lance's arm, holding it in a gentle but solid grip.

"You have the piloting. You have the shot. Focus on that." he advised. The red paladin remained stunned as he stared at his friend, the voice of doubt that was in his head already dissipating. After a second, his stunned face grew determined as he gave a hearty nod.

"Okay." Lance affirmed. With a smile of pride, Keith released his grip as his teammate turned to face Kosmo.

"What do you say, Kosmo?" he asked the space wolf. "Wanna help me with some training?"

The large animal wagged his tail and let out a hearty bark.

"I'll take that as a yes." Lance chuckled before turning back to Keith. "I guess I'll get to it."

"Sounds good." Keith affirmed, putting a hand on his hip. "Just try not to shoot my dog, alright?"

It didn't take long for Lance's face to drop to an offended and deadpan expression.

"Uh, Keith, your dog can teleport. I'm sure he'll be just fine with me."

The black paladin gazed at his right hand man with faux skepticism.

"He better." he warned lightly, prompting the red paladin to let out a small laugh before prompting Kosmo to walk with him.

"Come on, boy." Lance instructed the large animal. "Let's go get some minutes in."

Kosmo released another loud bark of approval as he made his way over to the red paladin, the young man waiting until the wolf was by his legs before he started moving once again. He and Kosmo only managed to walk away by a few feet before the young man found himself stopping, turning his head to look back at his leader.

"Keith?"

The aforementioned paladin lifted his head up slightly in acknowledgement.

"Hmm?"

A soft, heartfelt smile grew on Lance's face as he looked back at him, his eyes s;ightly twinkling.

"Thank you." he said gratefully.

Keith was shocked for a moment, a rush of warmth encompassing his heart before he returned a smile of his own to the red paladin and nodded his way.

"Always." he responded fondly. Lance smiled at him for a second longer before he finally turned back around, walking down the hall with Kosmo as they headed towards the training room. Even as they walked away, Keith could still make out the younger paladin having a full-fledged conversation with his wolf, even though they both knew that the animal was incapable of speech.

Once the pair was finally out of his eyesight, the black paladin allowed himself to turn around as he began to walk in the opposite direction. He tilted his head back, his eyes closing as he took in and released a heavy breath, already feeling a huge load of tension seeping out of his body.

Less than an hour ago, he was worried; Worried that he would end up saying the wrong thing.

That he would end up making Lance push himself further away.

That he and Lance would go somewhere that they couldn't come back from. And say things that they would regret.

He was afraid that when Lance walked out of that room, he wouldn't look back at him as the doors shut behind him, shutting himself away for the foreseeable future. And with every shout that was let out and every revelation that was revealed to the other, he grew more and more petrified that that's where they would be heading.

And it would've been all because of him.

And it didn't.

Because Lance looked back at him. Smiled at him.

And they walked through the doors together.

They were okay.

And eventually, Lance would be, too.

As he continued to walk down the hallway, he brought his head back down as he pulled out his phone and entered his messages, typing out a quick message to Shiro.

On my way to deck. Wanna check in.

A few seconds later, Shiro responded to him with a thumbs up emoji.

But just as Keith was about to shove his phone back into his pants pocket, he stopped himself, taking his right hand off of his phone and staring down at the palm as he stopped in his tracks.

As he looked down at it, he could swear he could still feel the warmth of Lance's cheek from when it was pressed up against his palm. He could still feel the smoothness of the red paladin's skin from when he stroked it with his thumb.

Before long, Lance was flashing within his mind, his pupils flicking between the older man's lips and eyes as he gazed up at him, waiting to see what he would do next.

Keith's breath hitched. And with a quick blink of his eyes, Lance's face was gone and his palm was still empty. The half Galran proceeded to bite the inside of his cheek as he clasped his hand shut.

Fuck.