[SPOILERS FOR S5] Also known as Mood Whiplash: The Chapter.
The song that I was listening to was Jonathan Young’s cover of Shut Up and Dance, but it’s not specifically a Shelslince song, because first of all Elslince isn’t initiating, and second of all I use it for a whole bunch of my couples (MurShara, Quinnkuliina, HaruSAM, for instance).
The idea of Shiro being an angry boi when he was a kid is based on this tumblr post which makes him look kind of like… Akira? (I haven’t seen Akira lol)
Part 8: I’m Not Myself
“Yooo, Elslince.” Lance hung by one hand in the doorway of the Garden. “You got a minute?”
“Yes, come in. What is it?”
Lance waited until the door closed behind him, and even then looked around suspiciously before he began to speak. “It’s about Shiro. He’s been… weird, lately, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, I agree,” she said. “He claims it’s stress, but I’m not sure. He’s never cracked under stress before. Although he was complaining specifically about political stress, which is new for us…”
“Yeah. So we’re on the same page, then. Good. About the agreement, I mean. But, like… what do we do about it?”
She made a helpless gesture. “What can we do? He’s not himself, but besides sharing more of his responsibilities, forcing him to rest more, which he won’t like, I can’t see any good options.”
“Well… Today, something weird happened.” He told Elslince of what had happened in the astral-plane-thingy, of how Shiro had called his name, desperately, urgently, and then had no memory of it afterwards. “It’s really bugging me that I didn’t know what he said, but the fact that he didn’t remember… would you have any ideas?”
She frowned, her hand drifting to her work laptop, but she didn’t activate it. She knew Shiro’s files inside and out, he knew. “The Astral Plane is not my specialty, if that’s what it’s even called. Perhaps… PTSD from the fight with Zarkon prevents him from recalling it? He’s fought there before, hasn’t he?”
“You would know better than me, he’s the one who told you about it. You think he might have been brainwashed when they captured him this time? Maybe that’s why he’s not… quite himself? Maybe he was trying to warn us in there! Maybe that’s the only place he can be himself right now!” His theories were getting wilder and wilder, he knew, but the wilder the better, in his opinion – truth was stranger than fiction, after all.
She shuddered and shook her head violently, hair spazzing out. “I hope not! That would be awful!” She took a deep breath. “No, from what I’ve seen, it’s really him. I think it’s more likely a combination of stress and PTSD. No creature was designed to face this much relentless pressure.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. But what do we do if he starts yelling out of nowhere again? I was talking to Allura, and made sure she understands Shiro’s on our side, he’s not our enemy.”
“I talked to him as well… I told him you all don’t deserve that treatment.” Her hair drooped, and he wondered if Shiro had responded poorly. “I should have told him to come talk to me if he started feeling upset, but instead of supporting him, I walked away, because he made me angry, too.”
“Whoa…” Elslince didn’t get angry. Then again, Shiro didn’t get angry, either. Well, except sometimes. He was only human, after all. But not at the team, his closest friends, not until now. “Uh, well, there’s always next time?”
“Yes,” she said, with a wan smile. “I’ll do that next time I see him. Maybe I’ll go see him now, if he’s not busy. No time like the present.”
“I’m sure he wants to make things up with you too,” Lance told her, with a wink. “He’s sure lucky you decided to slum around with us.”
She reached up and patted him on the head, which he found weird. Would Allura want to pat him on the head? “You’re adorable. Thanks for coming to talk. And if anything else comes up that seems relevant, you know where to find me.”
“Sure do.”
He was about to leave when he felt a slight tug at his sleeve and looked down to see green hair coiling around it. “Lance…”
“Yeah?” Elslince was looking away, anxiously, shyly, so he spoke gently.
Starry blue eyes flicked up to meet his. “When you’re out there, in your Lions… please take care of him, if you can. I can’t be out there, and I wish I could, but… you can.”
“Yeah. I will.” He gave her a reassuring smile.
When the team got back from rescuing Pidge’s father, she went immediately to meet them. They’d sustained several injuries, but none more than Prince Lotor, so she went to treat him first. The others were mostly just a little bruised. The Prince, however, had been – allegedly – thrown through multiple mountains. How he was still alive, let alone fighting, she didn’t know. And without a helmet, too!
He did have a mild concussion – a mild concussion – but despite the dilated pupils and his mentioning he had a slight ringing in his ears, it didn’t seem he’d suffered any major brain trauma. Which would be to Lance’s disappointment, though she wasn’t going to mention it to him. As for the rest of him, no broken bones, a great deal of bruising but no internal injuries. Her hands shook as she touched him – he’d just killed, killed his own father, in melee combat. How he could have the strength to do that…
“You’re afraid again,” he said. “You think me a murderer?”
She paused and sat back, regarding him. “…No, Your Highness. I… respect your strength. I know it requires great strength to kill. More than people think it does. I hate killing, I don’t think I could do it. And to kill with a sword, not a gun…” And to kill someone he had a personal connection to, no matter how hostile…
He shrugged. “I am a warrior. It is my job to kill, to protect my people. Now that my father is dead, perhaps the universe can begin to heal. Yes, it was… difficult, but that goal kept me focused.” And his father would have killed him if he hadn’t, and she could respect that, too.
“You are a warrior… yet I…” It wasn’t pity she felt, but- “I wish you were not forced to live as you have, to learn such terrible things to survive.” She glanced up at his face, saw a look of confused surprise there. “You’ve had a very difficult life, haven’t you?”
He coughed and glanced away – was he… embarrassed? “Perhaps, yet it has had its moments as well. Meeting all of you, for instance.”
Now it was her turn to be embarrassed, and she turned back to her task of checking him over. “How are you not paste?” she asked, partly joking. “One of those blows should have killed you, yet here you are.”
“I suppose my armour is just that good,” he answered in kind.
“We might need to get some for Shiro,” she said, mumbling a little, but smiling. “He’s the only one who gives me nearly as much work as you do.” Honestly, whenever the Prince arrived on the Castle, he’d just been fighting for his life with something. This was the third time, and the worst of the three. Yet she saw nothing preventing him from going about his life as normal. He was very lucky – skill couldn’t account for this alone.
He gave her a surprised look, and then it melted into a charming smile. “I can imagine. He is a warrior, too. Perhaps I can set something up for him.” The smile faded into something serious, but soft. “You love him, don’t you.”
She shut every emotion down, shut her mouth firmly. That was none of his business.
On the other hand… perhaps he would be able to help with Shiro’s PTSD. Except she didn’t trust him with Shiro still.
“What is it?” he asked. Trees, he was perceptive.
“Maybe I’ll tell you later,” she said, rising, her work concluded. “But yes, I worry for him. If you know anything that might help him to be… whole…”
He frowned suddenly. “What do you know?”
“What do you know?” she demanded in turn. “Do you know anything?”
He shook his head slowly. “No more than you, I think. I do wonder – his prosthetic arm…”
“It was made by the Galra,” she said. “I know little more than that.”
“If the witch has her claws in him…” he said, almost as if speaking to himself.
Did the witch have her claws in him? Would that explain his inner turmoil, his mood swings? “Whether she does or not, leave him alone, Your Highness.”
The look he gave her was calculating. “Or else? You’ll hurt me? Don’t you have an oath to uphold? Would you break it for him?”
Would she give up her oath to protect Shiro? Her oath was practically her life – if she broke it, she didn’t deserve to be trusted as a doctor again. Would she dare harm another person, maybe kill someone, to save Shiro? It was not a question of how. She could utterly destroy a person with her medical knowledge. But could she? And live the rest of her life with the knowledge? And as a pariah?
“In short, yes.”
Unexpectedly, he smiled. “You, too, have strength, Elslince of Teler.” She stared at him. How was that a good thing? “You are a good friend to have.”
“We are not friends yet,” she said firmly. “But,” she went on more gently, “I think can allow you to be an ally.”
He accepted that with another charming smile, and she felt herself begin to trust him a little more. Against her better judgement.
He saw Elslince in a hall when he returned from Lotor’s Kral Zera, and she looked unhappy, frowning a little, her hair coiling in that particular way. She didn’t acknowledge him as she approached, and it felt like the bottom dropped out of his stomach when she passed him and he realized that she wasn’t going to at all. “You’re upset again.”
She spun, hair coiling tighter. “Yes.”
“But it was the right thing to do,” he pleaded with her.
She took a deep breath, folding her arms. “It was. I fully acknowledge that. And I’m still angry. You said you would try harder with the team and you didn’t. And for me. You didn’t tell me anything. You didn’t even leave a message to explain.”
He bowed his head. “I-I’m sorry.” No excuses this time, even though he had plenty. Like she said, she deserved better.
Her voice was gentle and sad. “You never used to have to be sorry. I want to help you, Shiro, I love you, but you’re the one shutting me out.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. What else was there to say? He didn’t know what was going to happen in the future. He couldn’t make any promises.
He heard her walking away and felt his heart constrict.
“Hey, El,” Lance hailed her, not even out of armour yet. “Can I, uh, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
Lance did that looking-around-suspiciously thing, then turned to her with a serious face, walking with her towards the lounge. “Shiro said something odd again today, thought I should tell you. He was asking me about what he said in the void, but I didn’t hear, and he doesn’t remember, like I said before, so I asked him why he was asking, and he kind of frowned at the floor and said he felt confused… and “like I’m not myself”.”
She shivered. “That’s definitely worrying.”
“I told him it was probably just lack of oxygen, but that was just so he wouldn’t worry more about it. I don’t know, was dismissing it the wrong thing to do? I think there’s definitely something up, and the fact that I don’t know what it is is driving me crazy.”
“Mm.” Her too, but she was thinking, her hair waving absentmindedly in loose swirls. “I’ve been trying to find a pattern in the… events but it’s so unclear and I keep second-guessing everything. Do you think maybe he couldn’t fully appear in the Astral Plane because he’s ‘not feeling himself’? Even if most of the time he seems completely himself, completely normal, mental issues can strongly affect the subconscious.”
“Sure, sounds logical to me.” Lance laced his fingers behind his head, blew out a sigh beside her. “You ever think Lotor was right about him?”
“I don’t know. It’s a frightening thought.”
“No kidding. And what would we do about it, anyway?”
“Perhaps there’s some disconnect between his conscious mind and his unconscious mind, something done to him during his capture, and his unconscious mind was the only part able to appear in the Astral Plane, and the conscious part therefore couldn’t remember.”
Lance nodded confidently. “I’ll buy it. Look, if he says anything else, I’ll let you know. I just thought I’d tell you this bit since he just told me while we were all busy passing out from oxygen deprivation.”
“Thanks, Lance. I appreciate it.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he told her confidently.
He tried to spend more time with her, at least a bit, in between missions, but though she treated him pleasantly enough, she was still subtly pulling away from him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, eventually. “I’ve been good, I promise.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, evasively, and immediately he got suspicious. What could be wrong that she wouldn’t want to tell him?
“Come on, what is it?”
She looked troubled. “Shiro…”
“Tell me!” Fear and suspicion were welling up in him. What was she up to? He backed her against the wall and slammed his prosthetic hand into it beside her. She flinched, but he was so upset, he barely noticed. “What’s going on!?”
“Shiro, you’re scaring me,” she said quietly, in an artificially calm voice, and he inhaled sharply. She was afraid – of him – whom she should never be afraid of – and she was still so in control of herself. He was afraid of nebulous misgivings and he had lost all control.
As he stared, frozen and in shock, she went on, still in that quiet voice. “I’m worried about you, Shiro. That’s why I don’t want to talk about it, because I know it will worry you back, and you can’t do anything about it. If I’m worrying about you, and you’re worrying about me worrying about you, we’ll be caught in an infinite feedback loop of worry, and no one needs that. You need to focus on the war, not me. I would still like attention, as your girlfriend, but not at the cost of the universe.” She reached up to touch the arm leaning against the wall beside her. “I know you want to take everything on yourself, but you can’t. Let me carry this myself. It’s how I can support you. If there’s something you can help with, I promise we’ll talk about it.”
He crumbled at her feet. “Oh god… That’s… I’m sorry.” He balled up his fists and pushed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “I just keep messing up. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I think it’s PTSD,” she said, and he felt green hair descending over him in enveloping tendrils. “It’s all right. We’ll get through it. Just trust me. Trust us, like you always have.”
Even though he’d let them down so many times in the last months, strained the trust between all of them and him. His last barriers collapsed and as slender green arms slipped around him, he felt tears leak from his eyes, felt his shoulders begin to shake. “Oh god. Oh god, El. I’m… scared.”
“I know.” Her soothing words flowed into his ears like water, quieting his soul. “I know. I love you, Shiro. Just breathe. Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in…”
He leaned into her, hiding in her hair, just for a short while. He could be a leader later. Right now… she was giving him his life back once again.
Things seemed better after that. He knew where she stood with him, and she could rest assured that he would trust her from now on. She smiled more when she spoke to him, and his own worries about himself, their mission with Voltron, seemed to be easier to deal with now.
It shouldn’t even have to be a conflict inside him, between control – over himself, his situation, whatever – and respect for the people around him. It never used to be. “Patience yields focus,” he said to himself frequently, still, but with a different intention now – to try to relax into the circumstances around him, to be the leader the team needed him to be. To be the man he used to be. To be the man Elslince knew he was.
He still felt a niggling feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn’t deal with it if he didn’t know what it was. He’d mentioned it to Lance already, and Lance had surely told Elslince, and until it became a problem, he would work around it.
The dishwasher was broken at that moment, and neither Pidge nor Hunk was free enough to look at it. So tonight Elslince was on dishes duty, and she’d asked him if he’d like to join her. Thus, she washed and he dried. It was quiet, methodical, and disgustingly domestic, and he loved it. Part of his mind protested that this was a waste of his time, that he needed to work on strategy, not dry dishes. It was awfully persuasive, but Elslince had asked, and a little break once in a while was good, wasn’t it? It was what he told the rest of the team, and for once, maybe he’d take his own advice a little bit. He’d brought a laptop playing a deep-space captured recording of Earth pop radio Pidge had made a year ago. The audio quality wasn’t great, but it was music he vaguely knew, and it was better than nothing.
She yawned. “Mmh, I’m tired today.”
“Hi Tired, I’m Shiro,” he answered without missing a beat.
She blinked at him blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing way too hard at the mouldy old joke. “That’s hilarious!”
“It’s terrible,” he said, but he couldn’t help grinning at her response. “You hadn’t heard something like that before?”
“No, never.”
“It’s a common joke on Earth. I used to drive Keith crazy with that one. He would get so mad…”
She giggled. “I can imagine. He’s so serious. I wonder how he’s doing…”
“He’s tough. But yeah, I wonder too. Probably off being a space-ninja again.”
“A space-what?”
So he had to explain all about ninja, both the historical shinobi and the nerdy pop culture interpretation. “In conclusion, Keith is probably a space-ninja, the Blade of Marmora are all space-ninja, and don’t tell Lance, we don’t need a diplomatic incident.”
“Oh, I already figured out they were all space-ninja, it’s cool,” Lance said, leaning in the doorway. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be doing dishes? Aren’t you done yet?”
“No, do you need us?” Shiro asked, going into alert.
Lance waved his hands peacefully. “Nah, just wondering why you were still in here. How do you know so much about ninja?”
Shiro blushed a little. “I used to watch a lot of ninja/shinobi/samurai movies when I was a kid. Kinda funny, I used to be a lot like Keith when I was in my early teens.”
“No way, really?” Lance looked goggle-eyed at him, and Elslince was giggling again.
“Heh, yeah. Used to get in fights at school. Didn’t play hooky, my parents would not have stood for that… but I wasn’t the greatest kid either. Didn’t really calm down until I got into Galaxy Garrison and they beat some discipline into me. Not literally,” he added hastily, seeing Elslince starting to look worried.
“Is that why you’re so protective of him?” she asked.
“Mm.” He nodded.
Lance cleared his throat. “Fascinating as this is… dishes.”
“All right, all right.” Shiro laughed and picked up another plate to dry. The song on the radio changed and he began to bob his head to the vaguely familiar tune. “Hey, I think we used to listen to this one in high-school.” Something cheesy and cheerful about dancing the night away, like a thousand others, yet this one somehow stuck with him better than the others.
Lance snickered. “You’ve got shit taste in music, Dad.”
“I have great taste in music,” Shiro countered confidently. “Also I’m only eight years older than you.”
“Your hair’s already going grey.”
“That’s because you’re a little shit.”
Elslince couldn’t wash dishes, she was laughing so hard. He laughed with her and took her soapy hands for a dance. The song was about dancing, anyway. “C’mon.”
“Shiro, I don’t know how to dance!”
“Neither do I. It’s fine. Just… kinda… wiggle to the beat of the music.” Adam had tried to teach him once, to no avail.
“Oh my god, you’re both the worst,” Lance said. “I’m out!”
Elslince was still laughing and blushing bright yellow, but surely this was a form of heaven – she was there before him, green and warm and alive, her blue eyes sparkling like a whole sea of stars. Her hands were dainty in his big rough ones, and he raised one and tried clumsily to spin her. She followed in confusion, gasping a little in delight as he pulled her closer, into a better dancing position, one arm around her, the other holding her hand. And they just grooved to the beat together, it was an easy energetic beat, and her hair grooved too, which was fascinating. Her smile was blinding in her simple joy in their motion.
She came to rest in his arms as the song ended, their foreheads touching, her hair carefully brushing over his shoulders, starry eyes looking up into his own. His heart was beating a little faster than it should have been as her arms slid up around his neck and she stretched up for a kiss.
“But seriously, Lance is right, dishes,” he whispered when they parted.
She giggled and stepped away, back to the sink. He returned to drying. For the evening, all was well with the universe.