[MAJOR SPOILERS FOR S6] [LIKE ALL OF IT NOT KIDDING] And I’M DONE until S7 comes out!! I hope it comes out soon, and I hope I don’t have to rewrite anything! XD And with the end of this chapter maybe an explanation for why Keith just dumped Shiro on the ground at the end of Episode 7 so he could stand up to be part of the Season Finale Group Pose™. Btw do you guys think Shiro’s eyes are actually brown now, or are they the same colour as before just they look brown compared to his new hair colour? EDIT: S7 confirmed they are still grey.
My tacky Shiro boob mousepad came in the mail today, I’m so happy. (It feels great!)
Btw I low-key ship Sheith (at least one-sided, from Keith’s side) (but I also ship Lallura) (but I also also ship Klance) (too many viable ships in this fandom)
Chapter 9: Ad Astra Obumbratio
“Hey, Elslince.” His voice resonated in her radio, and she smiled to hear it.
“Yes, Shiro?”
“Coran’s going to run a game, sounds like Dungeons and Dragons, and I’m playing – do you want to come join us? Hunk and Pidge are here too.”
“What’s Dungeons and Dragons? What’s a dragon, actually? Doesn’t sound like a game at all.”
“It’s – nevermind, it’ll take too long to explain. It’s actually called Monsters and Mana. You’ll see when you get here.”
“I have a bit more work to do, but I’ll come watch while I do it.” She was still behind on filing her last combat zone records, and she wanted to get them done today, before they had a chance to go back into combat. And there had been Shiro’s strange PTSD attack during Sendak’s assault on the shield facility, even though there wasn’t anything there that ought to have triggered it… She was still trying to figure out what had gone on there, delicately, without triggering him again – hopefully without him even realizing she was trying to investigate. She didn’t think being present while he played a game would reveal anything, quite the opposite in fact, but… he sounded cheerful, and it had been too long since she’d had an extended period of time to be with him.
She came and sat in the corner, and listened, and giggled to herself at what she heard, and finished her filing, and watched them roll strange dice and yell strange words. She winced as Shiro’s character perished in a Natural 1, snorted when he said “shit” in response and then covered his mouth, though Pidge didn’t react to his language, laughed as Lance distracted the Coranic Dragon, cheered as they defeated the boss and celebrated an imaginary adventure well completed.
“Another game?” Coran asked, after Pidge, Hunk, and Allura had gone and only Lance and Shiro were left.
“Sure, yeah, whatever,” Lance said flatly, all his joy gone with Allura.
“Elslince?” Coran looked over at her, inviting her in.
“All right,” she said, her hair curling with curiosity. “It doesn’t seem too hard, not with such a good guide – I mean, Loremaster.” She smiled at Coran, who seemed both proud and embarrassed by the praise as he handed her one of the character pads.
“Why, thank you, Elslince. It’s not the easiest part, but I always had rather an inclination for it.”
“I think I’ll roll another Paladin,” Shiro mused, interrupting the moment and making Coran pratfall. “What will you be, El?”
“Hmmm.” She scanned the list of classes on the pad. “I think I’ll roll cleric. What do you think, Shiro?”
“That sounds fine,” Shiro said. “We’ll need one since Hunk – er, Block left.”
“You two are the most boring,” Lance moaned.
“I’m scared to play something else!” she protested. “At least I know what I’m doing as a healer!”
“Yeah, same here,” Shiro said. “I guess if we’re doing kind of a stand-alone, I’ll need a different backstory?”
“No, you can still play Shiro – that is, the same character, just this will happen in between the adventures with the others who left,” Coran assured him. “Lance, if you like playing Ninja-Assassin, you can keep playing as Pike, too.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” But Lance was starting to perk up again. He was in pain, she could tell, but he could be distracted at least a little. “But next time, El, you’re rolling, like, Mage or something. At least something that makes explosions.”
“All right, all right.” She held up her hands disarmingly. “Maybe Lia – er, my character – will branch out next time. Ooh, I think I’ll be a Lapine girl, what do you think, Shiro?”
He smiled and said “Sounds good.”
They met the Altean pod in the main vehicle hangar, and as Keith jumped out of the cockpit, what Lance had been talking about on the bridge became evident. Keith had left a boy, and returned a man. Not just from the strange confidence and maturity of his spirit that she saw on his face, but physically, while still tall and lean and wiry, he’d broadened in the shoulders, in the muscle she saw under the armour. How was it possible? They’d only last seen him a few months ago. She would have assumed it to be a strange human growth spurt, but for the reactions of the others.
While they headed back to the bridge en masse, impatiently holding in their questions, Elslince turned and noticed the teal-coloured ‘wolf’, as Hunk called it, was following her. No, it couldn’t be following her, it followed Keith, didn’t it? But it was padding along quite closely behind her, and it was definitely looking at her. Was it just because she’d turned around? She looked forward again, then glanced again. It hadn’t looked away. She looked forward again, more than a little unsettled.
When they arrived on the bridge, she was distracted from Shiro and Keith’s mother – Keith’s mother? – introducing themselves to each other, by the fact the wolf was sniffing her hair. She jumped and pulled her hair away, and it sneezed. It was a very large wolf!
“Hey!” Keith ordered. “Down, boy!” The wolf huffed, but backed off. “Sorry,” Keith said to her, with a faint smile. “I guess he likes you.”
She smiled nervously back at the wolf, as it stared at her with unblinking yellow eyes. “He’s lovely, I’m just slightly intimidated, is all.”
“Don’t worry,” Keith assured her. “He might look fierce, but he’s very loyal to those he calls friends.”
“Sounds like his master,” she said, making Keith turn a shade pinker.
“Wait a minute!” Lance exclaimed shrilly. “This is nuts! You come back with your mom, a wolf, and an Altean!?”
“Think of what we experienced in the quintessence field,” Lotor implored Allura, reaching for her hand, acting every part of her charming lover. But now they all knew it was acting, or at least it mostly was.
Allura’s eyes blazed with betrayed rage, and she seized the hand that touched hers, hurling him over her head and straight onto his beautiful face. Elslince wanted to cheer in the dead silence that followed, not for the violence, but for Allura’s strength of spirit.
And then hell broke loose, alarms blaring, intruders in the hangar – and Shiro cried out as in desperate pain and fell to his knees, clutching his head. She and Hunk knelt beside him as he groaned and grunted in pain, struggling against something she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see his face, but his fingers were digging into his scalp, as if he wanted to press them right into his brain. Thank goodness Lance was taking charge, all she could focus on was Shiro, the tension in his shoulders, his neck, his jaw, his fingers. She had no idea what was going on with him medically, and all she could do was call his name with a hand resting on his back, trying to hold onto her own terror and alarm. His heart was racing, his blood pressure surely elevated.
And then his head snapped up with an angry growl, sending Hunk flying backwards into Coran with a single punch. She gasped and screamed and flinched away as Lance stepped over her protectively. “Shiro, what are you- ungh!” Shiro sent him flying as well.
But in that moment, she’d seen a light in his eyes that was not his own. Something was controlling him. In that one horrible moment, everything became clear: the witch did have her claws in him.
Shiro materialized his bayard, flinging it at Allura, who dodged over to Romelle. But Shiro was already lunging after her, fist poised to strike. Not with its deadly glowing power, but none of them wanted to get hit by it all the same.
Allura was down. Romelle, who was clearly not a fighter to begin with, was down. Elslince stood alone before the door. She could not fight Shiro and hope to win, even if she were not emotionally compromised by their relationship. She couldn’t run from Shiro, even if she got the door open in time. He was faster, and stronger, and while his mind was controlled, he would hurt her without mercy.
But Shiro wouldn’t want her to roll over and let anyone, especially him, hurt her. And she herself wasn’t keen on getting hurt. So she dropped into a combat stance, fists before her. Somehow, she kept her voice steady, even as she begged with all her heart. “Shiro… I love you. Don’t do this.” His hostile, furious expression didn’t change, and he came for her.
It was a very short fight. She didn’t even remember the end of it.
He knew what to do – running, jumping, slashing, punching – everything he could do, to defeat his enemy. He felt strangely detached, as if someone else were pointing him in a direction and telling him to go. He didn’t question it. It wasn’t even a question of it being easier not to – he simply didn’t think of it. He seemed to know the person he was fighting, but the words that came from his mouth were not ones that he consciously formed in his brain before saying them.
His enemy was fallen to the lowest platform of the facility, too tired to reach his Galran blade. He landed before him heavily, raised his arm’s energy sword to strike with a snarl.
The man blocked his attack at the last moment, reaching his blade and rolling onto his back. Rather than go for something clever to get around the block, he opted to simply press harder, using his superior weight and strength to overpower the smaller man. He’d kill him eventually.
“Shiro, please,” the man sobbed as he strained against him. “You’re my brother.”
“I love you.”
For a brief instant, the words penetrated the fog around his brain. He- he also loved-
But the moment was gone, and he felt his mouth saying more words. “Just let go, Keith. You don’t have to fight anymore. By now, the team’s already gone. I saw to it myself.”
The blade was burning the man’s face, and he howled and twisted suddenly, knocking him back. There was a sudden searing pain in his right arm and when he looked, nearly all the mechanical part was gone. And abruptly, the presence lifted from his head. He hadn’t even known everything was clouded until it was clear again.. He fell to his knees, gritting his teeth against the intense pain as the- as Keith rose to his feet, a heartbroken look in his face.
Shiro – his name was Shiro – called out to him, brokenly. “Keith…?”
Keith… his little brother, by adoption if not by genetics but it didn’t matter, he loved him as fiercely as any blood brother could – and he’d just been doing his damnedest to kill him. Pride and love, that Keith had survived, that Keith had won and saved him too, were drowned in the tsunami of guilt crashing over him.
He’d hurt Keith, mind, body, and soul. He’d hurt them all – every single person in the universe he’d ever cared about. Even knowing his mind had been controlled – it was no excuse, he’d been too weak to prevent it, he should have been stronger, he should have- He’d knocked out Hunk, and Coran, and Lance, and Allura, and Romelle, and – and Elslince… And before he left, he’d released some kind of virus onto the castle, designed to kill it and everyone aboard. Oh god, Elslince… Warm, beautiful, caring Elslince, who’d followed him into space because she loved him, she might be dead by now, a cold, asphyxiated corpse or blasted into atoms. They all might. And the universe would fall to evil without Voltron and its Paladins, and yet that thought seemed distant and unimportant compared to the fact that they were dead because of him.
And the last realization struck him – all the clones above, in their tanks – his vague, drug-fogged memories of escaping from the Galra – from a tank – the code word he’d overheard while escaping, Kurōn, Japanese for ‘clone’ – he was a clone too. He wasn’t the real Shiro. Couldn’t have been. Impossible. Shiro would never have given up, never hurt his friends. He didn’t deserve the Black Paladin armour he wore. He wasn’t Shiro. Never was the man Elslince thought he was. She’d loved him as truly as she loved the real Shiro, and he’d betrayed her by his existence. Only an imposter, only nothing. Less than nothing.
But even nothing could have feelings. He’d loved them all, even on borrowed memories, loved Elslince, and failed them all to their deaths.
Maybe only Keith was left by now. And Keith would die here, in this facility collapsing into a molten planet or wherever the hell they were. He couldn’t save his little brother anymore. And his brother couldn’t save him.
He could feel his consciousness fading as the platform slipped sideways under him, dimly heard Keith call “Shiro!”. His connection to his puppetmaster had been the only thing keeping him alive, once they took over. That was all right. He deserved to die…
If only he could see them – see her one more time… and tell her he was… sorry…
Elslince was waiting anxiously in the shot-up hangar for the Black Lion transit pod to arrive, and breathed a sigh of relief when it did. Coran was there to help open it, and there he was – Shiro.
But seeing him only made her more afraid for him. He lay deathly still, his face pale and bruised, his mechanical arm sliced away cleanly. She checked his pulse. Barely there. “We have to get him to a cryopod right away,” she said to Coran. “He’s on the verge of death.”
And when she checked the pod’s readings, she gasped. His mind was dark, all upper brain functions unresponsive and blank. He was a vegetative shell. What had happened out there?
At least she could be glad that his arm was gone, that he was not showing any sign of being controlled, that he would never be controlled again, if her hypothesis was correct. If he ever came back, he would be his own loving, dorky self again. But… looking at the console… that didn’t seem likely. She’d seen soldiers, Resistance members, in this state. Many of them never woke up, she knew, and those that did were not themselves.
He’d left her twice already. The third time would probably be forever.
She wouldn’t mourn him yet. Not until the battle was done. And she couldn’t watch over him, not while the castle was still in need of careful attention. He would be safe in the cryopod until she could return. If nothing else, his body wouldn’t die.
She pressed a gentle kiss to the front of his pod, where he hung looking dead already. “Hang on,” she whispered, and then ran to help Coran.
To evacuate… to leave the ship that had been her home for nearly two years… Her garden that her friends had gathered for her, grown with her… it was heartbreaking. She helped Krolia load Shiro’s cryopod onto the Black Lion, then dashed to her room to collect what she could bring in ten minutes or less.
Her medical kit, her clothes, Shiro’s hair, her card collection, her main laptop, the photo album she’d been making, she swept it all into the duffel-bag she’d brought with her when she arrived. What else? “Bring your blankets and pillows,” she said into the radio, adding to the radio chatter of things not to forget. They couldn’t know when they’d next find proper beds, did they? Even if the temperature inside the Lions was steady, it would be nice to be comfortable, too. And they had new people with them, too. They’d have to share.
She couldn’t bring her garden. But she could take pictures. With shaking hands, she aimed her camera phone around the room. All that green, those living colours… it was about to die a fiery death. But better her garden than the universe. And she wouldn’t abandon all of it. She grabbed a mid-sized planter and scooped several plants from the soil – Keith’s cactus, Hunk’s chives, Lance’s rose, Pidge’s ivy, Allura’s lily, Coran’s spiderleaf, and of course, Shiro’s pink trumpet flower. It would be difficult to care for them while they traveled, and she couldn’t give them good light, and they would use precious water. But she wanted to bring a little bit of each of them with her, to start her next garden with, if she could. She patted them down securely and hoisted the planter into her arms.
She swung by the medical bay on her way back to the Black Lion’s hangar, picked up a few things she’d left in there, then dashed the rest of the way with her duffel bouncing on her back, cushioned by the pillows crammed inside, arms wrapped protectively around the heavy planter. She was pushing it close, she knew, but so were the others, from the sounds she was hearing over the radio.
She curled in the back of the Black Lion’s cockpit next to the cryopod. It felt like a coffin beside her. No, she told herself. Or if it were, then a glass coffin, like the one in the story Hunk had told her of the sleeping princess. The man inside wasn’t dead yet. Krolia sat across from her, staring forward through the viewscreens, not intruding on her space or her thoughts. The wolf sat across from her too, looking at her curiously, then at Krolia, then back at her. Krolia kept a hand on his back.
Keith hopped past everything stuffed in the back with that strange feline-like grace that he’d always had, but had even more now, settling into the pilot’s seat and immediately blasting off at full speed. The Castle of Lions receded behind them, she knew, and it would be for the last time.
Suddenly, she felt tears come to her eyes. She hated the finality of death. It was something impossible to deal with; first it wasn’t there, and then it was, and afterwards everything was different. It was foolish now, she felt. She still had Teler, and the humans still had Earth. Giving up the Castle meant saving Teler. She loved the Castle, but not even so much to cry for it, or so she had thought. The one she really felt for was Coran, who loved the Castle like it was his child, who had no Altea behind it, who rarely talked deeply about such feelings but who felt deeply all the same. So she let herself cry silently for him as she felt the colossal explosion from the teladuv rock the Black Lion.
Beside her, Shiro’s heart beat faintly on.
A few hours later, they landed on a planet – any planet, the first planet with breathable atmosphere – and got out to regroup face to face. Keith, without any words, brought Shiro’s cryopod. In the centre of the ring of Lions, he opened it, and with Allura’s help, lifted the body out and placed it on the ground between them, and remained kneeling beside it. Elslince knelt on Shiro’s other side with Allura, reaching out to touch his chest that hardly rose and fell under the armour. There was not much for her to monitor. She just watched to touch him, to reassure herself that he was still there.
“This body is barely living,” Keith said to them all, looking down at Shiro’s face, “but Shiro’s spirit is alive. It’s inside the Black Lion. I’ve heard him talking to me.”
She felt like her own heart stopped. What did that mean? How did he get there? Did Keith mean that Shiro might be…
“He… he tried to tell me, but I-I didn’t realize,” Lance said, falling to his knees between Allura and Elslince. “I’m so sorry, Shiro. I… I-I didn’t know. I-I could’ve…” Tears squeezed from his eyes and his shoulders hunched up for a sob.
Allura placed a gentle hand on his shoulder then, stilling the sobs, and stood. As they watched, she walked over to the Black Lion, where its head still lay on the ground from their disembarking, and placed both her hands on its chin.
And her hands began to glow. The Black Lion’s eyes flashed in response, and all across its incredibly massive body, lines of lavender quintessence began to gleam, flowing towards her slowly but with purpose.
And now Allura was glowing with quintessence, and when she opened her eyes, they were shining blue and otherworldly. She walked carefully towards them, and knelt at Shiro’s head, placing her hands on his temples. And Shiro began to glow. Lavender and violet sparkles drifted from his body and floated away as if on an unfelt breeze.
When the glow faded from both Allura and Shiro, his hair was entirely white.
His eyes snapped open, and when a residual quintessence glow faded from them, there they were, those beautiful grey eyes, warm in the sunset. He shot up to sitting, inhaling sharply – oxygen deprived, she guessed, from breathing so shallowly for so long – and then coughing, choking on his own breath. Tears started into her eyes and she began to reach for him, to steady him, but he groaned and slumped away, against Keith’s shoulder.
The lions flung back their heads and roared triumphantly, deafeningly, shaking the air around them. Shiro was back, the true Shiro, that was all it could mean. She- she was broken, tears were streaming down her face, she could do nothing but feel while Keith held her love.
Shiro blinked his eyes open wearily and focused vaguely on Keith. “You found me,” he whispered.
“We’re glad you’re back, Shiro,” Keith said.
“Rest,” Allura said gently.
Shiro’s gaze drifted over to Allura and past her to Elslince. “El… Elslince.”
“Shiro,” she whispered. She couldn’t get enough air, gasping desperately to fill her lungs past the tears, but he’d stolen it all with that loving look. She scooted unsteadily a little closer, taking him from Keith, supporting his head with a hand and his broad shoulders with the other arm. He was limp and heavy, but she could carry him. She kissed his forehead, and was about to lean his head against her shoulder when he reached up with his left arm – his only arm – and pulled her face in gently for a proper kiss.
She shuddered like a leaf in the wind at his touch, trying to maintain her self-control, not to overwhelm him with her feelings right now. She wanted – she wanted so much, and yet everything she had was already too much. His lips were soft and uncertain against hers, and she sank a little deeper into the kiss. His body was weary and worn, his spirit – how did one diagnose the psychiatry of a spirit trapped in a sentient robot lion? Yet she wanted to let go of everything and lean on him, to pour out her feelings to him, to shelter in his embrace once again. He wasn’t fragile, her rock, their rock, not now that she knew he was fully himself. He could take it. But later. When he was fully rested and recovered. She would protect him with all her strength until then.
All in all, he and Keith had some explaining to do.
They parted, and he smiled weakly into her eyes. His hand was wound in her hair, and her hair was twined about his arm up to the elbow, making it difficult for him to let go. She hadn’t even noticed Keith had stepped away to discuss the team’s next move. “Takashi,” she whispered, feeling the precious intimacy of his rarely-used given name.
He chuckled once, then closed his eyes and let her lean his white head on her shoulder. “I’m back, El. Not leaving anymore. That I know of.”
“I love you,” she said. She couldn’t ask for a promise. Three times he’d returned to her when she never expected to see him again. Four would be pushing it. “Rest. I’ll protect you.”
He smiled, and rested.