Chapter Text
It doesn’t hit. The reality of the situation, that is. He’s not sure what he expects, honestly. A cartoon mallet to come out of the sky and conk him over the head? Doesn’t happen. Lotor talks and Shiro responds and Voltron is safe and the team works to dismantle Naxzela so it will never blow and the reality doesn’t hit.
It doesn’t hit during debrief. It doesn’t hit when Keith talks about trying to use his cruiser itself to break the particle barrier of the Witch’s ship and Hunk grabs him into a hug so tight it feels like his ribs are breaking. It doesn’t hit when Kolivan takes him back to the Blade base for medical assessment and every Blade he knows crowds around him, asking what happened and watching his unmasked face closely like they’ll see something important. It doesn’t hit when he goes to sleep, his dreams weird and muted and buzzing like they don’t quite know what to do yet.
A week later, during a diplomatic dinner where the Blades, Team Voltron, and Lotor are meeting to discuss next steps… that’s when it hits.
Keith is sitting between Kolivan and Shiro, keeping a close eye on the Prince, who seems to be enjoying Hunk’s cuisine. Lotor pretending he’s not completely confused by what color armor goes with which Lion is funny. The table talk keeps coming back to Zarkon. Back and forth people go, finding more and more creative ways to cuss him out. Contingencies, strongholds, tactical bases to take… one moment Keith’s thinking strategy and stroganoff, and the next… god, he almost died. Out there. He almost died for a team distanced from him, that HE pushed away. Sure, he was willing to give his life for Voltron (always was), but he wasn’t thinking about Voltron in those last seconds. He was thinking about their faces, the smiles and head tilts and smirks and hugs and—
And now he’s thinking about the day he left. About how everyone stood there, cold, staring him down because he’d FAILED them and there was nothing he could say except ‘I’m leaving’ and the hug they gave him reeked more of relief than anything else.
He can’t think. He can’t see. He stands up from the table and he knows his face is completely blank but that he still needs to leave because if he stays, he is going to break down right here, right now. He needs out. His hands are shaking and his lungs are tightening and he needs out.
No one stops him. Someone might call his name, but it’s not until he’s already out the door. He sucks in a shallow breath and tries not to think about it. Tries not to think about how it feels just like walking out of the control room, his back to them and the smile slipping from his face. He takes measured steps. He focuses on counting them. Thirty… forty… forty-three… and then he can no longer feel his feet, or his hands, and he knows he probably stumbled and fell like a little child but suddenly he’s kneeling on the floor, his face pressed against the cool surface, so smooth and cool compared to the hot, slicing tears streaming down from his eyes.
He tries not to make a sound.
He knows he’s too far out of control for that now.
How far away is he from the dining hall? He doesn’t know. Something like a sob rips up through his chest and he can’t breathe. Can they hear that? The thought that someone will come after him and see this hurts.
…Do they care, though? Somehow the thought of them hearing… and no one coming… that hurts worse.
He presses his hands into the ground until he can almost feel them, cries until all the memories melt together and the feeling of flying toward the particle barrier is the same feeling as walking away from the team and he can’t strike Shiro’s angry face from on top of it all, Shiro telling him to suck it up and fly Black because he couldn’t anymore and “THE TEAM NEEDED YOU, WHERE WERE YOU? WHERE WERE YOU?”
“I tried,” he says to the floor. “I-I tried, I tried… please…”
What is he pleading for? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that suddenly there are footsteps behind him, and he can’t be seen like this even though part of him is stupidly thankful that someone is coming for him.
God, he’s so stupid.
He starts to push himself off the floor, using the iron, unbendable will that always gets him in trouble. His head is swimming, he can’t see through the tears, but still he forces his feet under him. The floor suddenly seems so far away. He can’t feel anything from the knees down. He takes a step and his entire leg almost goes out from under him, almost dumps him back onto the floor, and he figures that of all the times to have a panic attack and be so vulnerable that literally anyone can sneak up and stab him in the back of course it should be now, with Lotor half a hallway away.
The footsteps swing around his side, to his front. Everything is a blur. There’s pressure on his shoulders, the sides of his neck, like he’s being held steady. He thinks it’s Matt in front of him, but everything is so disorienting and his head spins and it takes a moment to realize when maybe-Matt pushes him to sit against the wall with his head between his knees.
He gasps, and shakes, and the tears keep coming because he nearly died, and to his Team it’s like he’s already dead and it’s his own damn fault.
It feels like an ice age later when he finally gulps down a breath and it actually feels like it enters his lungs. Thank god, he thinks, and tries to do it again. Then again. The dizziness is starting to let up. His heart, pounding in his chest, aches like a familiar melody. He’s experienced this before—why it hit so goddamn hard is anybody’s guess, because this happens all the time. The deflection, the rejection, the sacrifices. He’s used to it. Why is it hurting so bad?
“Hey,” Matt says, putting a tentative hand on his back. “Hey. You back with us?”
Us? Keith raises his head like it’s on a puppet string, wobbly, and blinks until he can make out two more figures standing behind Matt. Green armor, and an orange mustache. He’s pretty sure. Must be Pidge and Coran. No one else. It’s neither here nor there. He takes another deep breath before he manages to nod.
Matt breathes out in relief. “Good. Do you want some water?” He grabs the pouch that Coran hands over, threads the straw into the little hole for him in an act of infinite kindness, and when Keith finally takes it his hands are only shaking a little. His head hurts. He drinks a little because the water is nice and cool. He wants to go to his room. He doesn’t have a room here anymore.
A moment later he realizes that Matt is talking again, asking a question. He looks back at his sister, who gives a half-hearted shrug that leaves just a pinch of guilt in the set of her shoulders. Keith tries to focus. “Say again?” he manages.
“I asked how often this happens,” Matt says, softly. Keith shakes his head. On the one hand, this is the first panic attack he’s had since that battle. On the other… this is his life. This happens all the time.
He doesn’t want to talk about it.
Everyone takes a step back as he roughly pushes himself back to his feet. The feeling is starting to come back to all his extremities, and he thinks he can make it to a bathroom on his own to wash his face off. He mumbles something about letting them get back to the meeting and tries to walk away.
He finds Matt in his way. Matt, who is looking between him and the others like he doesn’t understand.
“Wait, Keith… are you okay? Don’t you want to talk about it?” he asks. He puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder and Keith stiffens.
“No, I really don’t,” Keith says, and breaks eye contact. Things are fractured here. The team said they were always there for him, but even before that he suspected they really didn’t want to be. Shiro’s face comes up again—it’s always that fight, where Shiro cut him down, that keeps coming back. He… he can’t talk to them. Even if he wanted to, and he’s not even sure he does. He complicates things. Shiro doesn’t need that. Shiro has enough problems.
Coran bows his head, and Pidge fidgets, and Keith pulls away from all of them.
As he walks away, he hears Matt’s whispering voice following him. “…what happened between you guys?” he demands, and Pidge responds with, “It wasn’t us, it was him. He pulled away.”
He stops listening, and he walks, and he walks, and when he finally stops he feels more lost than he has since Shiro came into his life. He misses his mom, he realizes. It’s heart-stopping when he puts it all together. He wanted a family so bad, he wanted Team Voltron to be it, but he wouldn’t let himself have it because she left and god it hurts—
For the second time, he finds himself crying and this time it isn’t panic, it’s just plain old gut-wrenching pain. He feels displaced, like he’s back in the system and yet another family is giving him up because he’s too much to handle. Of course, that’s when the anger comes, because he’s over this, damnit. He’s over it he’s over it he’s over it. He’s so mad at himself that he almost wants to punch a wall. Get it together, you fucking wreck. He should be in the dining hall with them helping with Lotor and what’s he doing? Sitting in an abandoned room crying? Pathetic. He spent YEARS growing out of this, training himself not to cry about his mommy, and one near-death experience is making him revert.
It seems like today, randomly picked out by some higher power, is the day he finally hit his limit. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with this. With his own mental bullshit. He doesn’t have it in him to punish himself into functioning correctly right now. So he curls up in a tight little ball, hugging himself, promising that later he’ll make himself pay for this moment of weakness, because that's the only way he can let himself cry like this.
He’s sniffling into his arms when the footsteps come again. Not Matt, this time, and only one pair. Light but surefooted, striding right toward him. They pause in the doorway and there’s a little knock on the wall before Coran calls out to him, “Keith, you in here?”
“What is it?” he manages to ask around the hiccups. Hopefully, they don’t need him. He’ll pull himself together if he has to, but right now… right now he’s given in. He’s not ready to be strong yet. He hates himself for the weakness.
“I’ve brought you some of the dessert from our dinner. It didn’t seem like you were quite ready to come back yet.”
An understatement. He turns his face away. Unperturbed, Coran sidles in and squats beside him, placing the plate on the floor. He doesn’t speak at first. Not until Keith slowly picks up the plate and starts poking at the mousse-jello-thingy on it.
“I’ve seen my share of civil disputes in my time,” he starts.
Keith scoffs. “Great opener, Coran. Remind me that I’ve literally torn the castle and the team into pieces.”
Seemingly taken aback, Coran clears his throat and brushes some non-existent dirt off his uniform. “I was heading toward something, ah, else. Bear with me, my boy.”
Keith grunts noncommittally, angrily scrubbing his face clean. If they’re going to have a conversation about what he’s done wrong, then he’s done crying. He’ll humor Coran for as long as it takes for the man to get his point across, and then he’s gone. He’ll go sit in the Blade’s transport pod until Kolivan is ready to head back. God, he’s so tired. He just wants to sleep. How did he make it this far without completely fucking collapsing, he wants to know?
“There was one time,” Coran says softly, starting again, slower and more careful now. “That a settlement was flooding. Voltron was summoned, but there wasn’t much a giant robot could do besides freeze the source of the flood waters. He was just too big to maneuver. So we went in on foot.”
A pause. Keith says nothing. He continues to pick at the food by his side. Nonplussed, Coran continues like he's actually holding a proper conversation.
“Oh, everyone was recruited to help—royalty, servants, adolescents, anyone who was able-bodied was asked to go in and help people who were trapped. Now, some of the people we were rescuing were very high ranked officials. And as the day wore on, more and more arguments broke out about who to save first and who to leave behind.”
“So what happened?” Keith asks dully, hoping to urge the story along. Unfortunately, it seems as if Coran is starting to get into his storytelling groove.
“Well, obviously things came to a right violent head. It was chaos! Buildings were collapsing, people were crying from the rooftops waiting for rescue, and Alfor…”
There he pauses for a long moment, taking a deep breath. Keith huddles further into himself.
“King Alfor was never one to stay back from the front lines. If his people were fighting, he was fighting alongside them. If there was nothing Voltron could do, then he would be out there, on foot, doing whatever he could. He had a sense of obligation like a Golgarian warlord. He would die with his people. But the other paladins! Oh, what a fuss they put up, demanding that he stay back.
“He tried to explain it to them, later that night. But they wouldn’t hear it! ‘You’re irreplaceable,’ they said. ‘You are Voltron’s creator, you can’t risk your life like that!’” Coran shakes his head. “They wouldn’t let up on him, yelling themselves hoarse till the early morning. Alfor was so upset. ‘People needed me, I did what I needed to do,’ he said to me. And of course I agreed with him, but…”
“But…?” Keith prods.
“But there were two realities, in that settlement, that day. The reality that Alfor needed to do what he was doing, and the reality that losing Alfor would have been a blow too hard to overcome. Tell me that doesn’t sound familiar.”
Keith shakes his head. “I thought it through. They didn’t need me. I would have died for them and they would have lived to fight another fight.”
“They don’t want that. My boy, that is exactly what they’ve never wanted. They don’t want you to make a decision all on your own and leave them to their fate.”
“Then I don’t get what I’m supposed to do,” he says, and damn it all, he can feel the tears creeping back. He’s done with this bullshit, why is he crying again?! “I tried to be the leader and I failed, and then I tried to leave so I could find Lotor with the Blades and I also failed, and then I was there and the only option I had to save them was to—to—"
Coran rubs his arm, brisk and cheerful even as he breaks down. “It’s not about trying or failing. It’s about talking to the people you love so that you aren’t seeing two different things when you’re looking at the same place.”
“Every time I try I just fuck it up more! I didn’t want to let them down,” he says, and it’s almost a wail, almost too loud. He gulps and tries to control himself but he can’t. He can’t do anything right today. Or any day. He just fucks up, and fucks up, and keeps fucking everything up. He whines into his hands, unable to even begin to stuff that back down where it ought to be. He ends up hunched over, half-against Coran’s waiting shoulder, bawling his eyes out.
“You didn’t,” Coran says, pulling him in all the way against his chest. “Keith. Keith. I promise, you didn’t let them down.”
“Maybe not that time, not entirely, but every other—”
“Shhh.”
“It would have been better if I died for them—”
“Shhhhhh…”
“Coran, I can’t—I can’t—"
Coran squeezes until his breath leaves in a wheeze.
He gives up. He can’t explain it to an eccentric old alien who thinks bartering with the Unilu is the funnest thing this side of Betelgeuse. He can’t explain how he’s broken and the closest he came to having and keeping a family was when he almost ended up in a body bag. That’s fucked up. That’s super fucked up, and even Coran, with his centuries of war stories as the king’s personal assistant and advisor, is too bright to be marred by his filth.
A teeny, perpetually peeved part of his brain lets him know that he’s being dramatic on top of crying again. Can’t break down right, even, the little voice says. He really isn’t having a good day. Coran hums a tuneless melody while he shudders and sobs in the semi-dark and he honestly wishes that he never came to space. He can’t quite make himself wish that he never saved Shiro—Shiro means too much to him—but if he had just sent the others out to the cavern on their own, his life would probably be so much better. Their lives would be better. If he had just—if he could have just—if—
—if he wasn’t who he was. That’s what it boils down to. If he was just… anyone else.
“Keith,” Coran says, softly. Keith thinks about the irony of Coran finally using his name instead of a moniker when he least wants to be himself. He presses his face into Coran’s collar.
“I can’t,” he says. “I tried and I can’t.”
Coran lets out a breath that is almost a sigh. “It’s okay. I swear it is. You can’t do it today—that’s fine. You can try again tomorrow. You just have to try again, that’s all it takes.”
Fine. He shudders one last time, sniffling. Fine, he’ll think about it. Who knows, maybe he’ll be less of a pile of garbage tomorrow. Coran is solid, strong, and sure of him. Made of everything that he isn’t right now. He feels like he’s stolen something, by having Coran here with him instead of with the princess. He’s stolen Coran’s stories and his kind words and his effortless endurance.
Though Coran is a person, with autonomy—he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to be, right?
Keith tries to hold onto that as Coran cradles him like he’s doing his best impersonation of a vice. Coran is here—and it’s because he wants to be—and no one has stolen anything or hurt anyone in this little bubble. The two of them can sit, and cling to each other, and he’s allowed to not be completely put together for one day. He's allowed to break.
He’s allowed to want his family.
And tomorrow, he's allowed to try and get them back.