Work Text:
Bring him peace
Bring him joy
He is young
He is only a boy
Bring Him Home, Les Mis
--
The body at his knees is sickeningly bloody. Shiro can feel the heat off it, the arena permeated by the scent of it, metallic in the back of his throat, pumping desperately through his veins. He doesn't like killing people, but what else is he to do? They throw him in a ring with a galra he knows will otherwise hurt and enslave other innocent people. Killing him is the best option. They toss him at Robeasts and wild animals - things that have no care for mercy or kindness. Even other prisoners, he never, ever wants to kill them, but what if they give him no option? What if he lets them kill him and they go on and are killed by something Shiro could otherwise defeat? They fear his name, they revere it too.
A body at his knees covered in blood. It's human, but so slashed up, so bloody, that Shiro honestly cannot tell what other defining characteristics it might have. Did Shiro do all this to that body? Like he's struck it with a knife a thousand times over, as if maybe the first hundred strokes had no effect, as though he had to keep doing it, and doing it, until that body fell here before him, soon to be dragged off by soldiers and dumped who knows where.
A body.
"Shiro?"
The galra coming to collect him, to collect it.
"You have to move. Shiro."
His knees glued to the arena floor by the blood, the flesh, the guts embedded into the ground itself. The galra let the corpses build up one after the other, sneer at the incoherent horror it provokes in their prisoners.
"Shiro, please. We have to get him to the infirmary."
The harsh floodlights that allow the crowd to see the fight vanish. The room - and it is a room, not an arena - is dark, only very dimly lit by an open door.
"Shiro, he's going to die."
A body, slashed to pieces. Weird angles, not the kind Shiro would've chosen. Almost as if they'd been self-inflicted. Almost as if...
"Shiro!"
A light flickers on. Lance Hernandez lays, almost dead, at his knees. There are two knives slipping from his limp, bloody hands, and a bucket of rubbing alcohol, half-empty, beside him.
Above him, sat on the bed behind the body, is a suicide note.
--
I'm sorry, are the first words on it.
Shiro can't read the rest.
--
Despite the blood, despite the weight of Lance's prosthetics, Shiro lifts him carefully and jogs with him in his arms all the way to the infirmary, Coran right at his side and preparing an operating table as Shiro peels Lance's wrecked shirt and sweatpants off him. How could this happen? How could this have happened? They were watching him, weren't they? Weren't they keeping an eye on him, distracting him, withholding from dangerous and terrifying missions? Did none of it help?
"There we go," says Coran, guiding Lance from Shiro's arms and resting his body on the table. He opens a cupboard, takes out a plastic apron and gloves, and starts opening various drawers, taking out a cloth and beginning to wipe the blood from Lance's numerous injuries just as the others crash in.
"Let us help!" cries Hunk, already grabbing gloves from the cupboard and taking another cloth and wetting it too. "Pidge only did basic, but I did advanced first aid and medical studies as a module at the garrison! I can help! Please, please, let me-"
"Help me clean him up," says Coran. "We cannot fix what we cannot see. Allura? Check his pulse for me."
Shiro can only watch with red on his palms, his knees, across his chest. How did it come to this? Pidge taking gloves, Allura, too, the four of them going through drawers and taking out equipment, Allura turning on machines that clearly haven't been used in ten thousand years because everyone else could use a healing pod and Pidge fetching items as Coran and Hunk request them, cleaning an arm and inspecting the wound, blood already clotted because of course it is, Allura says, slow but steady because Lance is, as far as they can see, despite his attempt, or, attempts?
Despite all that, Lance is unkillable.
Lance cannot be hurt. Even when he tries. No matter how hard he tries.
"Shiro, can you help?" asks Coran, and Shiro, despite having also taken advanced first aid, despite having extra training for Kerberos, finds himself shaking his head. "There was a note - will you go read it? It might inform us of..."
So he goes.
--
I wish I could change how everything happened. I tried to get blown up with the facility. I tried to protect everyone. I didn't want it to be like this. But there's no other option. I'm a monster. I can't live like this anymore. I can hear the druids in my head, I can see them everywhere, they're coming for me. If they come after me they're going to hurt you too. If they take me they'll make me do horrible things. This is the best option.
--
He finds Allura on the training deck. He doesn't mean to - he just stumbles upon her, as so often he does lately, and decides to stay. She's not even training, just sitting against the wall with her knees to her chest, hair piled on her head and swamped in a navy blue dressing gown.
"Allura," he says in greeting, going to sit cross-legged by her, and she nods but doesn't look at him, doesn't speak. "Nightmares again?"
Her breath leaves her in one long sigh. "I dreamt," she says quietly, "that we won against the galra. We were on a planet surrounded by them, it was our last stand, I-I don't know why... I was fighting Haggar and you were fighting Zarkon and Keith was fighting Lotor...and we won...but I looked around and saw all these galra who'd been fighting for Zarkon immediately surrender to us, and then I saw...all the galra Lance had already killed. Who would've otherwise joined us. A-and there were so many... There was so much blood, a-and Lance was...covered in it, and he... And for a moment it felt like- like the war wasn't quite won. Not if he was still out there, l-like that, fighting and killing and..." She sighs, drags her hands down her face. "It's too full of meaning. When I was younger I dreamt of picking juniberries with my father or flying around space with my friends... Can't I dream of such things again? Lance kills so much when I'm awake, now it haunts me everywhere I go..."
"Ah," says Shiro, and stares into the darkness ahead. Lance is a killer, now, there's no doubt about it. There was no doubt about it before, when he was running on galra quintessence only and drifting into the void for hours at a time, storming into a foul mood if he didn't get to fight for a day or two. But now...quintessence balanced, rosary round his neck and a trident on his back, it's worse. Impossible to be so inhumanly strong, so fast. It scares Shiro to admit it scares him. Lance scares him. Jesus christ, Lance, scrawny seventeen year old who flirted with anything that moved and tried to lighten up the mood maybe a little too much sometimes. God, where did he go? Shiro misses him and his bright, shining youth. The monster in his place is only a year older but he's stretched out two, three extra inches and packed with muscle, and there is no light in his eyes. He doesn't even speak. Shiro can't trust him because he cannot recognise him.
"How do we fix this?" Allura whispers, and Shiro realises he let the silence go on too long. "I can't do it myself. None of us can. Is this what Lotor wanted? Is this splitting us up, making us easier to conquer? Lance drove Keith to the Blades. Hunk and Pidge are genuinely afraid of him. Coran can't break through to him. I... I'm afraid, too, Shiro. Aren't you? He could kill us all in seconds. I've never- I've never encountered something so deadly." Shiro nods absentmindedly, but then Allura draws in a horrified gasp and says, "I-I mean someone. I've never...someone..."
"It's okay, Allura," Shiro says, and reaches for her hand. Cool, slim, elegant - and yet trembling, fingers gripping tight around Shiro's. "It's a scary situation. I'm scared, too. For us, for the future, what this all means for Lance at the end of the day...but we're doing the best we can. Hunk and Pidge are working every day to find a way to change out his prosthetics, Coran's nearly finished his blueprint for them, and Keith is safe with the Blade. I've talked to them, and I talk to him, and it's dangerous but it's safe, and it's good for Keith. As for Lance..." Shiro sighs. As for Lance...what? He's a killing machine and that's all there is to it? Maybe that frightens Shiro the most. In five months the druids turned a smart, funny kid into a machinegun. Shiro can't even look at him. "We can still fix him. We... There has to be a way."
"I pray you're right," she murmurs back. "How terrifying..."
She doesn't elaborate; Shiro doesn't extrapolate. How terrifying encompasses pretty much every aspect of their whole situation right now. Shiro wishes he could say something more, but there is nothing more to say. He and Allura have sat in various rooms in this castle going over pretty much everything that has happened since Lance walked out that healing pod a whole new person. Before, their plan had been clear: fix the quintessence, fix the legs. Return him his ability to feel. But has that already happened or hasn't it? Lance is a ghost, Lance is a mime, Lance is a great warrior painted in portrait - he will not speak.
And Shiro isn't sure he wants him to. What might spill out, if they dare nudge that gate open even an inch? What does Lance even remember now? What if he can intricately detail all his torture but has no recollection of having a family whatsoever? Shiro doesn't think he could handle that. The shield he hides behind to keep himself together for the others has been so bashed in with Lance's previous words, with the weight of all he's forgotten and all that's he become, that Shiro doesn't think it can handle anything else. That if Lance lashes out in anger, the shield with crumble into pieces, and Shiro will be forced to bear the full force of Lance and his hatred.
It is silent for a long time. Pidge and Hunk don't suffer nightmares as often as he and Allura, and Lance is also usually awake at this time, either here on the training deck or working himself to death - for any human - in the gym. Coran is a variable, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, more often than not trotting around the ship checking on everyone and making sure everything's still running.
And that does sound like him, footsteps up along the corridor before the doors slide open and Coran steps in, panting slightly, hands on his knees before he straightens up and says, "To the kitchen, both of you. I heard quite a commotion - I'm worried."
A commotion? Shiro thinks, but he can't even process the thought before he's jumped onto his feet and sprinting after Coran, Allura right on his heels. A commotion - unspecified, which means Coran ran straight to them instead of checking it out himself. Either it sounded serious enough that he chose to bring it to their attention immediately, or what he heard scared him to the point he couldn't face it alone.
They're running too fast to speak, anyway. The commotion, as they approach, becomes clear. Heavy breathing and the sound of a knife, low grunts, cries of pain - it can only be Lance. No one else would be up at this time, doing... Doing what?
He speeds up enough to overtake Coran, barrelling down the corridor and flying into the kitchen, stopping short when he surveys the room and doesn't immediately see Lance in it.
But he's definitely in here. The sounds coming from him are inhuman, unreal in a way Shiro can't articulate, so he runs to the end of the room, where an island cabinet obscures Lance, and finds him slumped on the ground against it, drawers open all around him, and he's- and he's-
The scent of blood, thick and heavy in the air, should've warned him. He can see in Coran and Allura's eyes, just inside the entrance, that they already know. But Shiro had been so focused, in such a rush, he'd missed it... Blood, alcohol, the sound of metal hitting bone. Shiro tries to speak, but words can't form themselves from his mouth. What? How? When? Why... Why...
"Lance-" he says, horror reducing his words to croak, "Lance, what- what- how can I..."
But Lance says nothing, stares at nothing. Shiro has to get on his knees, reach for his knife to get his attention - but the second Lance looks at him Shiro stops. His eyes... It's like looking at a mirror.
He can't think about it. He asks, "What is this, Lance?" like a responsible adult, but he isn't sure he even wants to know. Can he bear the weight of such a confession?
But Lance says, "It hurts," and Shiro can hear it, can hear how painful it is just to get the words out.
And it's the only thing Shiro's heard him say in weeks.
"I know, Lance," he says, but he doesn't. Never was he driven to such lengths. Blades and alcohol and hunched in a kitchen, cold and alone...
"It really hurts," Lance insists, the words just crawling out of him, reluctant and rough and irrevocable. It really hurts, and his arms, covered in wounds, drowning in alcohol, the scent strong enough to nearly make Shiro pass out. Lance's hand trembles from how tightly it holds the knife.
"It hurts," Shiro breathes, eyes taking in Lance's form, his shaking shoulders, the tears and sweat dripping from his chin. Lance takes a bottle like it weighs the world and upends it on the knife embedded in one of the wounds. And it hurts him.
He's trying to hurt himself.
And suddenly Shiro realises he was wrong. About everything.
--
Hunk...my buddy, my main man. I love you. You didn't deserve it. You didn't deserve any of it. But I woke up and I saw what I'd done and I couldn't speak. Did you notice? I couldn't say anything... There weren't words big enough to express how sorry I was. How remorseful I was. How guilty. There still aren't.
--
The castle is too quiet with Keith gone.
It was quiet before, but him vanishing makes it worse. With Keith there was always some background noise - Shiro worrying about him, his and Lance's quiet, intimate conversations, the way Pidge would poke fun at him when he went off to train. The weight of Keith leaving combined with Lance turning into...some kind of monster is almost too much for Shiro to bear. Pidge is silent in her lab, speaking only with Hunk and Coran about things Shiro is no longer privy to. Hunk is either by Allura's side, hand on her back, comforting in a way Shiro no longer thinks he is capable of, or in the kitchen, cooking for them all without question, things like Keith's favourite pancakes the morning he leaves, or bizarre kinds of jelly that Allura seems to adore. Allura is constantly in the control room, conversing with the Blade of Marmora, with nearby rebel forces, even with the inhabitants of the quintessence planet, discussing Lance's reaction to everything. Coran exists everywhere at once: at Hunk's side in the kitchen, filling in the gaps of things Allura herself can't quite express, listening to Pidge's ideas, even sitting by Shiro in silence when he needs it.
And Lance...
Shows up to his meals. Late, to breakfast, until Allura starts bringing him along. Then she starts bringing him along for every meal, says he forgets if he's left alone, says she doesn't like leaving him alone. Refuses to elaborate. He shows up to training, does extra on his own, still. Sits with them during the mindmeld practises, but barely, and unwillingly. His entire body is a volcano ready to blow. His fingers tap the floor as though lava gathers under his very fingernails, his head twitches from side to side as if the heat itches unrelentingly under the skin of his neck. His mind is a fucking mess.
Shiro wishes he were more upset about it.
But everyone's mind is a mess. He can feel all of them, during the mindmeld. Even before, when forming Voltron with Keith, secrets hissed at Shiro but there wasn't the time to grasp at them. And look what they've all come to.
Look at them.
Weren't they paladins of Voltron, defenders of the universe?
Wasn't Shiro supposed to be a hero?
Wasn't Lance?
But Keith isn't even a paladin anymore, and Shiro doesn't feel like a hero at all. Lance is a hero, sort of. Does heroic things without being heroic himself. Kills galra. Breaks Keith's heart. Shuns his own friends.
He doesn't know what to make of it. He calls Keith every night; he attempts small talk with Coran at breakfast every morning. Waits patiently with Pidge, perhaps a week after Keith leaves, for the other members of the ship to arrive.
"Did they say anything to you?" he finally asks Pidge, who's staring at the space equivalent to coffee with exhausted eyes but not actually drinking it. "About...maybe being busy?"
"...Busy?" Pidge repeats, and pokes at coffee mug, scowls when she gets burnt. "No. No, they- where are they? It's been ages."
"Exactly-" Shiro says, but it's at that exact moment that the door opens, and Coran appears, sombre indeed.
"Good morning," he greets them, somewhat distractedly. "Sorry I was late, there was, er, there was...trouble, last night."
Pidge perks up next to Shiro, and Shiro frowns, trouble already taking vague shape as something tall, something barely human. "Trouble?" he repeats, and Coran takes a step inside, doesn't meet his gaze.
"Er...yes, Shiro. Last night, well...Allura had conceived of a plan to... Allura thinks Lance is having difficulties he refuses to give voice to; she thinks he has nightmares. Terrible nightmares. She conceived a plan to leave both their doors open, so she would hear and go to him and awaken him... Relieve him of fear, somewhat..."
"Allura has too much faith," Shiro mutters, and ignores the way Coran's gaze lingers on him. "We can see it in the mindmeld; there's nothing of the old Lance left."
"...Be that as it may. The plan proceeded accordingly, but Hunk... Well...why don't you just come in, you two?" Turning back to them, Coran approaches slowly, takes a seat. "Well, you can imagine. Lance didn't take kindly to it."
"Didn't take kindly..." Pidge repeats, but Allura has crept in, her arm tight around Hunk, who looks exhausted, sad, and...
And...
"No," Shiro says, on his feet immediately. "Absolutely not. Hunk- are you- how did this- how could this- Allura, where the hell is he?"
"In his room, I expect!" she snaps at him. "Wherever else is he at this time? Heavens, Shiro, perhaps I have too much faith but at least I keep an eye on him! Make sure he isn't freely wandering the castle while the rest of you are busy! The reason he was taken at all was because we weren't keeping an eye on him enough before! At least I try and take responsibility!"
"Allura-"
"That's not the point! He hurt Hunk. And...we have to help you, don't we?" Allura says, and her voice quiets in an instant, soft, soothing, incredibly loving. Her eyes meet Hunk's single one, the other - whatever has happened to it - hidden by a soft brown eye patch. Hunk nods, stays quiet. "His depth perception is off. Shiro, I...thought you might help us train. Losing an arm isn't the same, but- and of course, you got a replacement and Hunk...well, refused one, but..."
Shiro sits as Allura and Hunk sit, nodding, words lost. Pidge is white as a sheet beside him, staring with wide eyes. Her hands shake so much that she spills her coffee when she goes to pick it up. Unthinkingly, Shiro grabs his napkin and starts cleaning the mess, gaze still stuck on the way Hunk can't look at anyone.
"Of course, Princess," he says, a little belatedly. "I... What...exactly...happened?"
"It's my fault," Allura says first. "I shouldn't have allowed Hunk to come along. But- Lance has been having nightmares. This isn't me...having too much faith in him, or whatever you think it is - he has nightmares. Bad enough that he can't tell reality from his dreams. He thought Hunk was a monster. It was self-defence more than anything... I don't think he had any idea what he was actually doing. He...and he took Hunk's eye out. We didn't know- we were all in such a state of shock-"
"I heard the kerfuffle and went to check on them," Coran says fluidly, and Allura takes a deep breath. "I took Hunk to the infirmary, and by the time Allura appeared with his eye it was... It couldn't be healed. I put him in a healing pod...we discussed building a synthetic eye, something more technologically advanced, but Hunk refused..."
"I just don't want a fake eye," Hunk mutters. "I can still see well enough with one, can't I?"
"Of course," Shiro says immediately, his voice a ghost of what it was a second before. "Of course, you don't need a fake one. We'll just make adjustments. Let's- after breakfast, why don't we head to the training room and talk about it? Coran, will you..."
"Of course, of course, I've learnt much of this sort of thing back when I was war surgeon, it won't phase you at all..."
Hunk breathes a sigh of relief, but his face is still soft, open, a bare, pulsing heart. His one eye shines too bright. He says, after a halting breath, "It was really scary."
"Hunk-" Pidge says, teary-eyed, but Hunk shakes his head.
"That was my best friend," he says, looking down at his hands, and Pidge's face crumples, Shiro blinks, repeatedly, taking a deep breath of his own. "What happened to him...?"
Isn't that the question.
Shiro doesn't know how to answer it.
--
Pidge, I know you wanted to figure out how the quintessence affected me. The truth is, it made me myself again, without the history and the memories and with everything I'd done in the arena haunting me. And it made me stronger. I hated it. I didn't want to tell you because I knew you'd try to help me, and I didn't deserve your help. I'm sorry. Don't blame yourself.
--
The truth is, Shiro thinks it's perhaps Pidge he truly relates to the most, after all that happens. Allura, Hunk, Coran, still hanging on for some piece of the Old Lance to surface - Shiro can't live like that. But what Keith has done - the sadness, the anger, the urge to escape from it all - for Shiro to do that would be to openly abdicate from his position of responsibility as black paladin. As their leader.
Pidge just hides. Hides, and pops up for meals, does as she's asked during their training, barely touches Lance, refuses to look at him. Shiro wants to hide, too. Something about the way Lance look at him now - empty, with apathy, without any will of his own - it's too...
Something about Lance now - empty and apathetic and directionless. How Lance feels too much like a gun they toss aside for cleaning every time a battle is over. How he speaks - not at all, anymore. The tangle his mind is during mindmelds and forming Voltron, how it's so matted and dense and dark, how Shiro can't touch it, can't pry it the way Allura does.
Something about Lance. A mirror Shiro cannot bear to look in.
Like Pidge, Shiro hides sometimes. Sparingly. Quietly. In the mornings, when Shiro wakes up early from a night terror, and Allura is too busy cooing after Lance for either of them to be a problem, and Shiro can just wander the halls and remember what it was like when they started. How it was Lance who activated Blue and flew them all into space, how he'd caught sight of Keith running for the military tent, how it was Shiro falling that led to any of this.
A mirror. Shiro might well have hand-sculpted Lance himself.
"Hey," Pidge says the first time Shiro chooses to hide in the lab after the Hunk incident. She doesn't look up from her laptop, or the other two Altean holocomputer flanking it. In her hands seem to be bits and pieces of white plastic, small enough that Shiro would fumble them if it was him. "How's everything?"
"Hey, Pidge," Shiro murmurs, and wanders further inside, hopping up on a counter behind Pidge and inspecting the holopads next to him. The first one to flicker on is a report on Lance's prosthetic; the next seems to be a photocopy of some of Hunk's drawings from his notebook. The third is two photos of Lance's prosthetics.
Even in hiding, Shiro can't quite escape Lance.
"Just the usual," Shiro says after a moment, when Pidge twists round to raise a brow at him. "Just...Coran and Allura are with Hunk now. They're considering fitting his helmet with some kind of eyepiece or lense that might mitigate the distortions to his views, well... I know nothing about that kind of thing, so I left. And Lance is...the gym, or...something like that."
Pidge hums under her breath, tapping at her laptop before focusing again on the plastic. "Look, Shiro," she says after a moment of quiet, not meeting his eye, "it's good you're here, actually. Because I'm- I mean, the reason I'm in here so much, it's not... I'm not trying to run away from everything, okay? I know that's what you all think, but that- that's not it. It's not that I'm scared of Lance, I just... It's just the change in him. Is scary. That the galra are capable of making that change, of, of- obliterating the original Lance to pieces, I just don't recognise him anymore-!"
"Pidge," Shiro says again, on his feet the second her breath starts shaking, how her shoulders get so tight, and he lays a hand on her hand, ruffles her hair the way Shiro always does with Keith. "Pidge, you're allowed to be scared of him. Hell, I think- I-I am scared of him."
Pidge snorts, then sniffs. She rubs at her eyes, head ducked so he can't see. "Like I don't know that," she says, and Shiro smiles grimly. "It's- it's not about that. I'm trying to help him, that's why I'm here. A-and I know you think he doesn't deserve it, but- but those legs are evil, can't you feel it? The way it hurts to go near them, how they shock you, how they shock him... We h-have to get rid of them. So I- and I thought- we got rid of the tracking device in your arm, but- can't we... Don't you want a different prosthetic? If we make some for Lance - do you, uh... Would you like one? A proper Altean one, that doesn't have any magic in it, or at least, not evil magic, or..."
"Oh," Shiro says, then nothing else comes out. "Oh, I..."
This prosthetic - it isn't part of him. He looks at it and then he's own a table of his own, and the druids are there, sticking their tools into it. It reminds him that he is just a tool, just a weapon the druids would throw into the ring to see if it was strong enough.
But a new one - that would take so much time. Can Shiro afford to do that?
"How," he says, unable to refuse, "would you- how would you do it?"
"We would- well, just make one, I guess. If you want to give input... If you want a hidden dagger, or- a compartment to store stuff it, like, we could probably do it. We'd try and make it look different from your current one. Our current plans for Lance's legs would be something all white, a strong plastic coating, blue lighting or stripes or something... But fully functioning, of course. Whatever you need."
A new arm.
Something bright and blue and alien in a different way. An Altean prosthetic...
"And... And you think it would rid Lance of some evil?"
Pidge looks at him oddly, raising a careful brow. "Well, yes."
"I think," Shiro says, looking at his own prosthetic, "I think I could use that."
"Okay," Pidge says quietly, and opens a new document on her laptop. "Tell me what you want."
"Just make it normal," he says, "just give me a normal arm."
She makes a bullet point, and types in normal arm.
"Tell me more," she says, so Shiro looks at his current prosthetic, and starts explaining the exact opposite.
--
Allura, thank you. You tried to do so much for me, you tried so hard to help me, to make me feel happy. I appreciate that more than I can put into words. Sometimes I thought maybe I could tell you everything, but I didn't want to taint you the way I've done with everything else. Better for you to not know. You did more for me than I think I even comprehend... You didn't have to. I'm sorry you felt you had to do it at all.
--
Shiro only sees it once, but after the fact he can't stop wondering how often something like that had happened.
He's on his way back from the gym, plans to wash up and maybe call Keith, see how he's doing with the Blades. This is, for the most part, normal; Coran's in the control room with Pidge, sifting through information in their journey to track down someone who might fix Lance better than anyone else has done so far; Hunk is in the infirmary, toying around with some blueprints the planet they helped yesterday were kind enough to gift them; Lance is probably on the training deck; Allura, presumably, catching some much needed rest.
He hears it before he sees it. Whispering, frantic, something hitting the ground, a palm, a fist? Allura, her tone desperate and heartbroken, saying, "Please, just calm down... It isn't real... Just look at me, look at me, look at me..."
They don't see him when he turns the corner. Lance is collapsed on the floor against the wall, chest heaving, his whole body shaking. His hair looks messy, as though someone has clawed through it a dozen times; there is a fist-sized dent on the ground next to him. Allura is on her knees in front of him, his hands held tight in hers. The desperation in her eyes as she gazes at him is painfully uncomfortable to look at.
"Lance," Allura murmurs. "Are you listening, Lance?"
Lance's chin seems dug in his chest, but he raises it to look Allura in the eye, to nod. It's the most human interaction Shiro has seen from him in... Well, since Keith left. Since the entire quintessence ceremony.
"There's nothing to be afraid of here," Allura assures him, peering into his eyes, thumbs stroking over the backs of his hands. What terrified Lance to this point, cowered on the floor, clinging to a princess for safety? It's possible that- well, they don't know what the quintessence ritual did. If it changed Lance, or...
Except Keith said Lance was convincing. Lance lied about everything with Keith, and he had to be convincing, or else Keith wouldn't have fallen like that. Shiro's his big brother, he knows these things. Maybe they shouldn't be so surprised. Throw a boy in a ring and who can be shocked when he comes out smiling, when he's capable of wrapping an entire audience round his finger? Shiro knows this also; the arena wasn't just about fighting. It was a performance.
Perhaps this too is a performance.
Allura keeps going, though, oblivious: "It's just you and me," she says, and Shiro takes a step closer. "What was that? Is everything alright? Shall we...talk about it?" Lance doesn't talk; regardless of the time Allura gives him to answer, he stays silent. Won't even look her in the eyes again. "Lance, is there anything you can do to... Are you... How do I know if you're alright?" Again, Lance's hand goes immediately to pull at his hair, and with a gentle-looking touch Allura takes it back into her own hand, entwining their fingers and pulling their hands towards her lap. The bags under her eyes look especially heavy; the lines across her forehead creasing further as Lance hangs his head, chest heaving, shoulders shaking.
He won't look her in the eye. As Shiro slowly approaches, he sees Lance's eyes instead going wild, flickering across his and Allura's hands, over her face, getting stuck on the wall behind her. Sees how Allura in turn reacts, letting out a breath that almost folds her over. It's too much pressure on her, she shouldn't be dealing with him like this, when he's- when he's-
Pressing a hand to Lance's face, Allura says, "Lance, there's no one else here. It's just us, okay? There's nothing- watching, or-" Perhaps Shiro steps too loudly; she looks one way and then the next and sees Shiro, five yards from them, staring. "Oh," she says, and Lance pulls his hands away from her but she keeps them locked in place together for a moment before letting go and standing up, shielding Lance from view as best as possible. "Shiro."
Her voice has never been colder.
"Allura," he replies, and her nose twitches but she doesn't respond. "Is there a problem?"
"What does it matter?" she asks, and she sits up further, hides Lance from view. "I'm handling it. Do you mind?"
He does. He wants her to stop doing this to herself, breaking her own heart, her own bones, over a boy that breaks things for fun. He wants her to get some rest.
But she won't listen to him; he knows that much. They've fought about this before. They don't stop fighting, these days.
"Not at all," he says at length, and turns sharply, so he doesn't see how Allura must immediately turn to Lance, baby him, coo at him. That man is a monster on the field, they've all seen it. It isn't right of Allura to play to him, his manipulations. It isn't fair that her heart is so open as to fall for it, as to believe that Lance really is capable of such depth.
Shiro understands. He wants to believe that, too.
Mostly he just wishes none of this had ever happened.
--
Coran, sometimes it felt like you were the only person who understood why I got homesick, even now when I can't remember it much. You made it feel like maybe we could all be a family out here, while our real families were missing or gone. I know you did a lot of work to keep everyone sane while I was going insane. I wish I could apologise enough. I hope Hunk cooks you a huge feast to thank you.
--
Despite all that Lance had done, despite all he continues to do...Shiro can't leave him alone in the infirmary.
Not after everything that happened. How Lance was silent, how he wouldn't say a thing. How quickly it became obvious that he'd turn his comm off on purpose, the way they could see the facility crumbling, the water collapsing too. The way silence fell for only a second before Allura was screaming Lance's name, Hunk's desperate vocals harmonising an octave below. Pidge, whispering, no no no as if a nightmare was unfolding in broad daylight, as if with words alone she could hold up the facility crumbling into the sea. Even Coran, wide-eyed on the console, staring at the planet from the castleship, unable to speak a word.
Shiro hadn't been able to speak, either. Shiro felt nothing. Shiro felt apathy.
Lance lies, now, back on an operating table, a pillow under his head, blanket over his body. The cryosuit hides how bandages litter his body, though the injuries, at this point, are no doubt finally healed. Blood has stopped seeping through the bandages on Lance's face, but Shiro didn't want to touch them. Allura said that with how long Lance was underwater, how salt and God-knows-what from the labs had seeped into the wound, it probably wouldn't heal like the rest of them. Like it might leave a scar.
Like it might leave another scar.
Shiro doesn't want to care; he wants to wipe his hands clean of Lance and all the pain he has inflicted on the others. On Keith, on Hunk, on Shiro himself. How he shuns help, support, anything practical that might set him onto better behaviours. He tears them apart every time they form Voltron; the only thing he knows to do is kill.
Lying here, cheek pressed into the pillow, eyes shut, he looks...less like the myth now built around him. Not the child Shiro remembers, but childish, still, frowns forever embedded between his brows, pulling on the corner of his lips, but...a venemous snake, perhaps, slumbering in the grass. Not a threat at the moment. Something to coo at, even.
"Ah, see?" Coran says, and Shiro nods on reflex. They had met during their own midnight wanders, and when Coran explained he was looking for Allura, Shiro had mindlessly gone along. Hadn't wanted to admit that he was hoping he might find Lance, too. "I told you, wherever Lance is, she'll be! I gave them a sleeping drought, her request, of course...she must've fallen asleep before she made it back to her room."
"Right," says Shiro, following Coran around Lance's bed before pausing between Lance and Allura. She really does look older than she used to. Even in sleep, she frowns. It isn't normal. It isn't fair. "She worries too much about him... She's so drained, all the time."
"She's made it her personal mission to look after him," Coran agrees, glancing at Lance as he moves round the cabinets. "I worry that she's pinned her hopes too high on him... Whatever...humanity she thinks he's capable of, I... I don't know if it's there."
Humanity. Shiro almost laughs. Instead, he mutters, "I don't think it is," and sighs. "I wish- I wish it was, but he played Keith so well, how do we know this isn't another manipulation? He's so quiet...we have no idea what he's thinking."
Coran nods, closes his eyes briefly in agreement as he heads towards a cabinet by the wall and with draws a blanket from it. "The silence is just awful," he says after a moment. "It makes it so easy to forget that he's a real person, like us... If he said something, at least we'd know he feels something, or has an opinion, or anything..." The way Coran lifts the blanket to rest it fully on Allura obscures his face somewhat as he speaks, but as he tucks it in around her, Shiro spots the lines in the corners of Coran's eyes, the frown imprinted between his brows, if only for a moment. As he straightens up, so to do his brows, releasing tension, and yet the unlined skin of Coran's forehead seems now so artificial. "There you are, princess," Coran murmurs, and that softness, at least, is real.
"Sometimes it feels like he's just a robot," Shiro mumbles. "And I hate it. It reminds me of- of some of the opponents I'd have to fight in the arena. I just-" Robots, sometimes. Actual robots that he fought tooth and claw and barefisted. Lance doesn't look like them, but that doesn't matter. It's the air of relentlessness, of apathy, of invincibility. "It's so hard," Shiro says finally, "watching him... I thought I could help him, but- it's not the same. We're not the same."
"Shiro-"
"I wanted him to die," Shiro says suddenly, and it's violent, it's sickening, it's the same way Lance used to speak, when he deigned to treat them with such a thing. "I shouldn't- I don't- but for a second it seemed like he was about to die, and- and I thought...would that be so bad? Keith could come back...Allura could relax... Everything could get back to normal again, but..."
"But it wouldn't be normal," Coran finishes, voice even, eyes unwaveringly on him. The weight of his gaze is so heavy, like he can see how it all unfolds in Shiro's mind once again, the same way it had fleshed out so instantly when they realised Lance had triggered the kill switch. Lance, gone; Keith, back. Shiro leading the paladins with his right hand once again, Allura able to recover in peace, Hunk healing his eye without the thing that caused it lurking always round the corner. Shiro, for once, able to keep his nightmares at bay. Coran looks at him and perhaps he sees these thoughts blossoming; without condemnation and without cruelty, he says, "You know that."
As if the word normal even means anything to him anymore. Still, he says, "I know, I know. It was just a passing- I know it's wrong to think like that. I don't want that to happen. It would just make everything worse..."
"So long as he's alive, we have a chance to save him," Coran says, and even that feels like a lie. Sure, his body will be alright, despite the few more scars adding to the dozen already branding him. Sure, his mind will survive, state that it is, because Lance doesn't care about anything. But...the rest of him? What little else remains. What exactly can be salvaged from that wreckage? The mangled remains of his soul? Shiro just doesn't think it's possible. Lance, whatever he is now, will be alright, sure. That's not a good thing.
It hasn't been a good thing since he returned to them. Lance being alright only means that he is cold and apathetic and completely uncaring. It doesn't mean anything real.
Anything Shiro can make sense of.
Shiro doesn't say that aloud. Coran doesn't just speak of hope; he dreams of it, Shiro can see the shine in his eye when he says it. So many things have been ruined lately. Shiro will not add to that, not anymore.
So they leave, each pausing at the door for a time to gaze back at Lance and Allura, and do not speak of Shiro's proclamation again.
--
Shiro, you were right to be angry at me, maybe even hate me, for everything I did. Sometimes I wished you were angrier. I know things changed after you found me in the kitchen. I wish they hadn't. You being angry at me made it feel like at least someone was punishing me for all the terrible shit I'd done. I wish you stayed angry. I'm sorry anything changed at all.
--
There are thirty-three stab wounds, Coran is able to tell him, once he and Hunk and Pidge and Allura washed Lance's body down, as Hunk applied creams and Pidge unwrapped bandages, and Allura went wound by wound and tried to clean each cut out as much as she could. Thiry-three stab wounds, all self-inflicted, all filled to the brim with burning rubbing alcohol, impossible to be cured immediately.
Coran says they'll all scar.
Shiro stares even as the others, one by one, disappear. Lance's arms are slathered in white bandages. His hands, too. Shiro hadn't seen before, close-up, the way his hands have been riddled with burn scars and lacerations since they rescued him. His torso, encased now in a cryosuit, is swaddled, too. The area above his heart is padded with bandages. Even his neck.
Lance, scarred. Why is it even more horrifying when the scars are by Lance's own hand? As if it wasn't bad enough before. Burns and marks and tears in his skin, healed wrong. Even more horrifying, because like this, Lance isn't meant to hurt. He shouldn't be capable of it. But he found a way - he looked for a way, he wanted this.
All this time Shiro spent thinking they were so far apart - so different, so drastically altered by the galra in such unbelievable ways - thinking they were miles and miles apart and that no matter how hard Shiro swam, he would never cross that distance. All that time, the exact same. All Lance wanted was to hurt. He speaks of punishment in his suicide note like it is delicious, untouched food, and Lance is starving, Lance is a desert of ashes.
If Shiro had reached out a hand - if Shiro had said something, asked something - would things be different? Would Lance have opened up to Shiro? Because Shiro knows, because Shiro remembers feeling like an open infected wound under the druids' touch? If Shiro had said that - how sometimes in a fight he loses focus, how spotlights point at him and his opponent - would Lance's mouth had dropped open, would his eyes have widened, would he have spoken? That night in the kitchen...it was the first time Shiro had heard Lance speak in weeks. His voice - low and raw and thin - repeating the words hurts, punish, don't deserve, love, die had felt too much like Shiro's own inner conscience.
If Shiro...had done anything - had he been a better leader. If Shiro was a worthy black paladin, this wouldn't have happened, why didn't he say something?
Thirty-three new scars. Self-inflicted. So obviously self-inflicted, Shiro can't bear the thought of Lance in a t-shirt, of Lance walking among humans and all of them able to see his arms, his neck, his chest, and just know. See the horror, and know that Lance tried to rid himself of it. That Lance thought he was the horror, and tried to rid them all of him.
What can Shiro do now? Lance has already tried to kill himself. Lance has already hurt himself so much. What can they possibly do? Allura and Coran talk about seeking out some professional who could talk to them, but it sounds so clinical, so normal and pedestrian Shiro can't imagine it. Isn't there a magic cure? Can't there be? What if they can't get his legs off him? What if they can't heal the incision in his brain? What if they do both, and nothing changes?
What if Lance keeps trying? What do they do with him now? Shiro wants to talk to him but he's so afraid of what he'll say. Of Lance not speaking back, of Lance ignoring him, of Lance no longer thinking Shiro is worthy of his respect.
He'd be right.
He would be so right, but Shiro can't imagine abandoning him now. God, all this time, tossing in bed at night, left freezing from his nightmares, so he'd stuck to the only thing that provided warmth - Keith, and their familial bond, and all the time they had spent together trying to survive. Shiro has wronged Keith before and he's not always been a spectacular brother, so after realising everything - after seeing that look in Keith's eye even before seeing tears when he found him in that corridor, Shiro had just known. And he was guilty for it. So he was determined to protect him, to regain the trust he had no doubt lost in Keith, and turned all his energy away from Lance.
Look where it has gotten him.
Keith is his brother, but Lance is his mirror. When Keith gets nightmares, he throws up all the fear they inflicted on him, punches out the misery they beset on him. Shiro isn't capable of that. He freezes up. He gets lost in memories. Allura would always come along to breakfast with Lance five, ten minutes late, would always give Shiro the same look when he asked what took them so long: nightmares, Shiro, he has nightmares. Keith can fight a thousand horrifying, powerful enemies, and never quite feel the fear Shiro has; of spotlights, of singular opponents, of losing the fight and getting chained up again and slashed up as punishment. That weight has never been heavy on his shoulders.
It's so heavy on Shiro's. So heavy on Lance's. Shiro could hear it, with every word he half-spat, half-sobbed out in the kitchen, what these long months have done to him. It isn't just galra Lance is afraid of; it's all of them. All of them.
How could they so badly get it wrong?
After everything?
After everything...?
He can't leave the infirmary. His shirt is still stained with Lance's blood. He doesn't sleep, just crawls up onto the table next to Lance's and sits, keeping watch as the hours pass. Lance twitches in his dreams in ways that provoke too strong a muscle memory in Shiro's own limbs; a shoulder twitch, raising a shield, a head twitch, dodging an attack, an arm twitch, readying his weapon. Shiro wishes he would stop. Shiro wishes he had the power to lay a hand on Lance's shoulder and say there's no need to be scared, I'm here, I'm keeping guard, I can carry this pain for you.
But there is no way to divorce the pain from the carrier of it. They are both Atlas. They both shoulder their own worlds of misery alone.
--
Keith... Tell Keith I loved him. The whole time. Tell him when I got my quintessence back I realised I couldn't keep hurting him. Tell him I'm so fucking sorry for everything I ever did to him. He didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve everything I said to him. None of it was fake. It was too real, I couldn't handle it. I couldn't keep hurting him, I couldn't. I had to make him leave. But I love him. Tell him I still love him.
--
"Keith, I... Sorry it's a...weird time. It's. Been a weird day. A long...weird..." Tiring, exhausting, impossible day. It doesn't even feel real. None of it.
"What is it?" Keith demands instantly, frowning at the screen. "Did something happen? Did he- do something? Shiro. Shiro?"
Did something happen... Isn't something always happening, some new disaster unraveling before their feet? And never are they prepared for it. Not once. "No, it's not... No, Keith, you won't... You won't want to hear it..."
Keith scoffs, eyes narrowing as he leans further in. "Then why bring it up? Just tell me. If he did something-" His eyes burn. His fist clenches. Shiro's own heart breaks a little further. "Shiro, if he hurt someone-"
"He did hurt someone," he interrupts, because that, at least, is the truth. "But it's not- god. Keith, he... You have no idea...what it's been like. Since you left." How the days have passed. How every quiet moment was invaded by a weighty, visible paranoia. The carefulness, the fear, the silences at dinner... Keith has no idea how different their world is without him.
Keith only squints. "What do you... What happened? Did something- has he done something-"
"No, Keith, no. Just- you don't have to respond immediately. Or at all. But you have to know- what's happened. I have to let you know."
He has to say it. Somehow, he has to tell his little brother that the boy he loves thinks he's a monster, too.
All this time, Shiro had really thought that. He can't let Keith do that too.
"So tell me, Shiro, just tell me-"
"Keith, he..."
He has to shut his eyes before he says it. He knows Keith can see him crying.
"Keith," he says, his voice too quiet, too unsteady, too much undone for Keith to possible ignore, "He tried to... He tried to…”
”Tried to what-“
”He tried to kill himself."
Realisation hits like a bomb across Keith's features. His eyes blow wide, his mouth drops open, his fingers dig a little deeper into his fists. He frowns like he's trying to figure out a maths equation, how the hell Keith plus leaving equaled to Lance's eventual self-destruction. "...He tried to... He- he what?"
Shiro can't look at him then. Is this his greatest guilt, the heaviest load on his back? Will he carry this forever in his body, the experience branded into his brain? "I didn't realise... I didn't look, I didn't see what was happening, but he- but we went to his room a-and- and the blood, everywhere-" He can still see it. The body, indecipherable from any other body in the arena. Something dead and bloody, that would be left to rot forever, trampled underfoot of a thousand other fighters, a thousand other deaths.
But it was Lance.
"Sh-Shiro, he- Shiro, how could any of this have happened?"
He brought the notebook back to his room. Lance's writing reminds Shiro of Keith's when he was five. It's a sadder comparison that Shiro would like to make. "He left a note, a... Keith, he left a suicide note. He wanted to- He wanted to tell you-"
Keith's features turn to stone. "I don't want to hear it- Shiro, if you fucking say anything- if you- and he- what did he-"
"He said he loved you," and Keith's eyes shut, his fists brace. Ignoring Keith's shaking head, Shiro continued, "He says he still loves you."
"No," Keith spits back, "he doesn't. He- suicide? But he... Shiro, this can't be-"
Real? But it is. This is real. This is a mess of their own making. "He says sorry. He thinks he's a monster." Tears spill, unbidden, from Shiro's eyes. "We all made him think that-"
Keith hangs up after that.
--
Please don't blame yourselves. After the druids took me, there was no hope for me. I wish I could've told you that. There was no point...in wishing for rescue. It was selfish. It ruined everything. I can't apologise enough. I'm only sorry it didn't end sooner. I wish they'd killed me instead. That way you'd all be spared from this. If I can spare you this way, so be it. This is the only thing I've wanted in a very long time.
--
Shiro refuses to leave the infirmary in the aftermath of the attempt. It has an ensuite bathroom, the others bring him meals and clothes. He works out on the ground. He waits, and cries, and loses himself in questions that hound him even in his sleep. How didn't he stop all this? How didn't he see it? It was right before his eyes, his very own mirror, and Shiro turned his back on him.
So Shiro stays, to make sure he's there when Lance finally awakens.
And he is.