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Months pass before he feels that burn in his eyes again.
It isn’t that stinging type of burn, pinpricks that threaten angry or frustrated tears, or the burn of hot and dusty desert air he’d once grown so accustomed to. No, this burn runs a bit deeper—past his eyes and to the adrenaline throbbing just behind his temples. It seeps lower, sharp and white-hot, cradled against his jaw as he grinds aching teeth together, fingers a vice around the hilt of his sword, knuckles white and his own pulse hammering in his ears.
It certainly isn’t familiar, but he wouldn’t say it hurts, either. He nearly doesn’t notice it building, too distracted by the whirlwind of motion around him, the rush of battle in his veins, the claws of survive, survive, survive that wrap tight around his lungs.
There’s no time left to think, to consider. There’s only time to react, time to fight back, so he does. He fights back. Tooth-and-nail, all sharp instincts and finely-tuned reflexes. Bodies drop, metal and flesh alike, and then there’s something—sharp, hard, cold—cracking against his skull (when had he lost his helmet?) and his eyes swim with it, swarmed with dancing black stars and Keith thinks—this is it, I’m down for the count—Coran will have to shovel me off the floor and pour me in a cryopod—
—and his vision tunnels and his hands are tingling and numb and all he can see are the soldiers advancing on the team with weapons drawn and then—
—everything is in technicolor.
The burn is worse than ever but his vision is clear and bright—too bright, almost, abnormally vivid and every edge too-sharp—and he just barely has enough time to drop low and out of the range of a sword aimed for his throat.
The hairs on his arms, on the back of his neck, stand on end and he rolls away, right as another weapon — a staff sparking with electricity — swings down at his head.
He gasps for breath as he pushes himself up on his elbow, and it’s almost like the air shifts around him, like he can feel the pressure change with every movement. Adrenaline, and he can taste it in the air, a blood-thundering metallic kind of rush, and he swings his legs out, anchoring himself to the floor with his arm, and sideswipes the soldier’s legs from under him. Knees bend sideways with a sickening crack.
He pushes himself to his feet, summoning his bayard and settling into a defensive stance, a sword gripped in each fist. There’s only one soldier left on him, and then there’s a blur of motion, and then he’s down too.
Without a beat, Keith lunges toward the other side of the hangar, vision sharp and tunneled, breathing through his teeth. There’s a flash of green, a scared gasp for air, and then there’s a sword plunging deep through the back of the sentry that just moments ago held a blaster to Pidge’s temple. Keith whirls around, even as the sentry crumples listlessly to the floor, searching, itching, humming with electricity through his very veins. He sees his fallen helmet, scoops it up as he moves.
There.
There’s soldier across the deck, Lance’s throat under his boot, and the Red Paladin’s face is going blue. But then the towering Galra is falling, too, toppling, the butt of Keith’s bayard shattering the visor of his helmet and knocking him out cold. From the floor, Lance chokes on the air that floods back into his lungs, wheezing and pink-skinned.
A blast catches Keith in the shoulder and he spins around towards its source, the pain blossoming and burning and things get even brighter, even sharper, and there’s a noise, low and angry, rumbling from his chest as lips draw back from his teeth —
“I just need, like, thirty more ticks, you guys,” Hunk’s voice rushes out through the comms, cutting into his battle haze, and Keith gets out something like an affirmation. Thirty ticks, he can do.
Something presses against his helmet. A blaster aims at his head—a sentry, he notes, not anything living—and Keith rolls away. He pushes himself upright at the robot’s flank before reaching out and gripping, twisting, pulling, metal head crushing beneath the hilts of his swords, ripping with every ounce of strength that he has, and then the sentry’s head comes off with an eardrum-shattering screech.
Three soldiers that had ganged up on Shiro and Allura shift their attention to Keith at the sound, something odd twisting in their expressions as he tosses the sentry head to the floor. Some combination of alarm and unease and—disgust?—webbed in their cold, yellow eyes.
“Halfbred mutt,” one of them sneers.
Keith doesn’t linger on it.
Soon enough, they fall, too.
“Got it!” Hunk cries, and emerges from an open panel in the wall brandishing what, to Keith, merely looks like a bright purple motherboard. Just an unsuspecting heart of some alien computer—while really, it could be the key to this whole fucking war.
“Paladins,” Keith orders, bringing the Blade in his fist down again and taking out another sentry. “Fall back. Get to your lions!”
A wave of affirmations resounds as Keith fights his way back towards the door, taking up the front of the charge and barreling through the remaining soldiers that stand in their path. Low in his chest, something deep rolls through each breath, and he feels it in his throat, in his temples, in the sharp point of bared teeth. All battle motion and adrenaline, pounding through his veins.
By the time they make it out of the base, there are no soldiers — or sentries — left standing.
He breathes and breathes and breathes through the flare of light and the pounding heart and the red-hot fire filling his throat and —
And a voice says his name.
It’s distant, and it’s careful.
A hand comes down to his shoulder and he whirls, panicked, searching for the next attacker, air wracking through his chest in sharp pulls. “Keith,” Shiro says again, more urgently, and through the technicolor haze, through the too-sharp lines and the battle-hungry blood and the rattling behind his lungs and the ache in his teeth, he’s vaguely aware of Shiro’s eyes locking onto him, scanning across his face. “Hey. Hey, are you okay?”
Keith clenches down on an unsteady something, deep in his chest, blinking hard at his brother. His breath, coming through in ragged pulls, is loud in his ears. “Shit,” he exhales, and blinks hard again. And again. Trying to clear his vision and failing. It’s not his own heartbeat he’s hearing, he’s suddenly aware — not alone, anyways. It’s theirs, too. His team’s. Blood rushing and crashing through his eardrums, huffs of battle-fresh breath and dilated pupils, all six of them in surround sound, overwhelming everything and —
— fuck.
He knows what’s happening.
It’s happened before — the heat of battle and Shiro’s not Shiro’s cold eyes and the reek of his own burning flesh and anger, hurt, fear for his team, pain pain pain —
And it won’t stop. Colors too bright and sunlight too harsh. He blinks and blinks and can’t focus on Shiro’s face. “Shit,” he repeats. His heart is beating too loud, too hard, too fast. It’s like he’s swallowed a star, bursting through the base of his throat. There’s way too much input. His teeth are too sharp in his mouth. “Sorry. I, I don’t — ”
Something crashes into the ground not ten feet from them, an impacted ship with another wave of soldiers, already crawling free and leveling their blasters before Keith can finish his thought. A low sound of warning grinds free from below his throat, from behind bared teeth —
— It’s a growl, distinctly inhuman, rolling through his breath. There is no denying it. He faces this ship — this threat, this thing that can hurt his team —
—and he pushes it down, all those instincts, all that fire. “Everyone,” he manages, voice wrecked and ragged, “get to your Lions. We gotta get out of here.”
The other paladins spring back into action, sparing only quick — concerned — glances his way before retreating towards the far side of the base, where the Lions could quickly reach them for a fly-by extraction. Shiro hesitates a moment longer, hand still resting on Keith’s shoulder, watching him worriedly.
A small explosion erupts from the fallen spacecraft, rubble and debris flying from the source. Keith grabs Shiro’s wrist and pulls him forward, ears ringing. “I’m fine,” he lies, clenched out between his teeth and more growl than anything. “We have to move.”
Shiro spares a glance back towards the encroaching soldiers before shifting into gear. They run after the team, and Keith’s heartbeat is pounding through his temples, the pressure through the air almost tangible.
He’s barreled over with the gut-instinct that he could navigate, like this, with his eyes closed. Could just feel the changes in the air, the energy buzzing through the world around him, and find his way easily. All instinct, red-hot and thrilling.
The next thing he knows, the Black Lion is scooping him and Shiro up, and everyone is safe.
“I really don’t understand,” Keith mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose as he screws his eyes shut. “This has never been an issue before, and now it won’t stop happening.”
He can practically hear the tension around him, the bated breath. The too-forced lightness in Lance’s voice when he suggests, “Spontaneous alien second-puberty?” in a weak attempt at familiar, teasing banter.
Keith drops his hand, opening his eyes to glare across the bench at Lance. It’s a sharper glare than normal, irises thin and slitted, sclera yellowed and glinting against the med bay’s fluorescent lights. “Not funny.”
“Kind of funny,” Lance counters, clearly intended to lighten the mood more than anything.
He knows Lance knows it’s not funny — he can feel it even now, the worry from his team, like a second barrage of thoughts running parallel to his own. The paladin bond is odd like that, as if at times they are leaking into one another, spilling thoughts and worries and fears beyond any physical barriers that distinguish one person from another, one mind from the next.
And it’s not funny at all, those pained noises that ripped from his throat, the growls of desperation and the panic that shot through his chest when he realized what was happening — he hears it, now, through their ears, sees it through their eyes. His team is worried, and when he couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t find his way back through the haze of fear and adrenaline and danger—
It isn’t funny at all, watching it unfold, helpless in the moment. But if the teasing banter helps settle that panic in Keith’s breath, that flare of volatile emotion he’s positively flooding into the paladin bond —
— well then, banter it fucking is.
Lance looks to Pidge, then Hunk, gathered around the exam bench Keith currently occupied. “Right, guys?” he eggs, unconvincing and fishing for some backup. “C’mon, alien puberty. You think that’s funny don’t you?”
“Funny, sure,” Pidge murmurs, then frowns, concerned and puzzled in equal parts. There are small lines between her brows. “Likely? Dunno. Coran, did the scans show anything weird going on?”
“Slightly higher temperature than normal, but nothing considerably notable,” Coran laments, before picking up a flashlight and turning to Keith. “Still waiting on the results from the blood tests, though.”
Clicking the flashlight on, he shines it into Keith’s eyes one at a time, and Keith physically fights the urge to flinch away from it, shoulders tensing and mouth twisting. And what a sight it must be: pupils and irises narrowing further under the bright light, nearly disappearing entirely as they’re swallowed by Galra gold, only widening again once the flashlight is removed, still slitted and almost… reptilian? Cat-like?
Coran sighs, tucking the flashlight away. “Pupillary response consistent with what’s expected of young Galran males,” he affirms, defeated, and curls his mustache around a finger. Keith covers his eyes with his hands, a pained, displeased keening sound pulling from high in his throat. “And that indicates it’s nothing wrong with that noodle of yours, at least. You seem to be in perfect health, my boy. We seem to have a bit of a—what was it, Number Three?” Coran turns to Lance. “An—an onion?”
“A pickle,” Lance corrects.
“Ah,” Coran brightens, “Yes. We seem to have a bit of a pickle on our hands.”
“Great,” Keith croaks hollowly, scrubbing at his face for a tick before dropping his arms. “Just—fantastic.”
Shiro puts his flesh hand on Keith’s shoulder, and Keith forces his gaze downward, hunching over on himself under the touch. “Hey,” Shiro soothes, making small circles on the back of his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. Everything’s fine.” A pause, then, a slight hesitation. “Any pain?”
Keith feels small under the inquiry, still not meeting anyone’s gaze. He shrugs, and even the motion is subdued. “Headache,” he admits, a murmur. “The lights hurt my eyes. The actual —” he breaks off, gesturing vaguely at his own face. Grimacing at the sight of his own hand, claw-tipped and sharp. “—whatever, is... it’s fine. Doesn’t hurt.”
From the corner of his vision, he sees Shiro’s mouth twist further in worry. “Atlas,” he murmurs, “lights to thirty percent.”
The ship responds to him immediately, the bulbs overhead dimming dramatically and washing the bay in blessed, cool shadow. Keith lets his eyes close with it, the relief of darkness pulling another involuntary noise free from his throat that he’d be embarrassed about if his head wasn’t still pounding.
“You think,” Pidge says at his shoulder, eyes scanning over the holoscreens with Keith’s vitals displayed in front of her. “You think it could be some kind of... cellular reprogramming? From the quantum abyss?”
“Cellular reprogramming?” he parrots back, alarmed, moment of peace gone in a flash and eyes flying back open.
Pidge chews on the inside of her lip before shrugging, seeming unsure. “I mean... maybe? UV exposure leads to DNA damage all the time—and who knows what kind of funky radiation you were exposed to on that space whale. All this Galra stuff didn’t really start popping up until after that, right?”
And it’s true — he’s always been his mother’s son, he’s always been what he is, all dual-wielded nature and a spitfire temper, but it wasn’t until recently that it began to pull forward, began to leak through his already fragile sense of humanity in moments of fear and thundering blood and instinct — but Keith still frowns, fingers curling into the edge of the exam table. Something has shifted, for sure, some reoccurring existential event that appeared suddenly and then all-at-once, genetic scales tipping into balance and setting his senses on fire, but — “Krolia’s scans said the atmosphere was safe.”
“To Galra, maybe,” Pidge returns, and raises an eyebrow. “You’re half human. You could’ve been affected in ways she wasn’t.”
Keith leans closer, eyebrows drawn in concern as he, too, scans over the holoscreens. Even with the main lights lowered, he has to squint as he looks over the displays. “Radiation poisoning?” he worries. “Like some... freaky space cancer?”
Lance’s eyes widen in alarm, and Pidge holds a hand up in the universal ‘hold your horses’ signal. “Similar logic, maybe, but—” She gestures to the screen. “Nothing on the initial scans indicate anything’s actually wrong with you. No tumors, no abnormal cell proliferation. Bloodwork’s in, and your white blood cell count is — surprisingly average, by human standards. And you said it’s only ever happened when you’re, like, worked up about something. So. Probably not space cancer. Space cancer wouldn’t be context-dependent.”
That doesn’t seem to offer anyone any comfort. “Explain, please,” Lance chokes at his side, strangled.
Pidge sighs, eyebrows drawing close behind her oversized glasses. “I’m not a biologist,” she preambles, “but to my understanding it’s— it has to do with cell cycle protein regulation. Or, misregulation, I guess. Due to radiation damage.” She shakes her head. “There are genes that code for certain proteins that start cell division and certain ones that stop it—”
“—oncogenes and tumor suppressors,” Keith murmurs, listening intently.
A beat passes, and Pidge blinks at him.
Keith scowls, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. “What?” he snaps, teeth sharp as knives against the holoscreen’s display lights. “I know things, too, you know. I read.”
“About cancer genetics?” Pidge shoots back, wide-eyed, before lifting her hands. “You know what—I’m not going to ask questions. Yes: oncogenes and tumor suppressors.”
Keith might have been satisfied, but it was hard to find under the anxiety clenched tightly in his chest, squeezing at his ribcage. “Thank you.”
“A-ny-way,” she presses forward, flicking through a few different screens on the display, “tumor suppressor genes get expressed when DNA is damaged—and existing tumor suppressors that had previously been inhibited get activated because, y’know, your cells don’t wanna divide and duplicate damaged DNA. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Lance parrots back, seeming lost.
But when Pidge is on a roll, she doesn’t stop for anybody. “So I’m thinking that maybe— maybe your cells aren’t regulating those cell cycle mechanisms like they have been until now? Like, maybe your body’s promoting division of cells favoring Galran gene expression. Which is messing with certain protein or circulating hormone levels that have been suppressing this—“ she flaps a hand generically at Keith’s face, eyes still locked on the screen, “—kind of phenotypic response.”
“Because of...” Keith frowns, “DNA damage?”
“Yeah?” Pidge responds, again like a question. “From the radiation. Could be, or… or maybe the dominant, human side of the gene pool was more susceptible to damage? So your cells started expressing things or modulating inhibitory mechanisms differently as a workaround, and it messed with how your body’s been — uh, processing? handling? — the circulating Galra genetic stuff that was already there. Could explain the growth spurt, too?” She shrugs. “Radiation is unpredictable. And it’s messy enough to sort through in normal people, let alone you.”
Keith flinches at the words. It’s been a while since that line of thought has stung, since someone’s reminded him so casually that he is other — which is always so much worse. When it comes without thinking, when it is a natural reaction or an unfiltered thought that so quickly can make Keith’s stomach turn over and his eyes sting in blistering shame —
It’s been a while since that’s happened. Even now, visibly more hybrid than ever, he hasn’t felt particularly abnormal, or unnatural, for this. His friends had not missed a beat, concern overwhelming anything else, a type of acceptance of who and what he is so complete that it is a default — as if Keith’s normal is as normal as anyone else’s. Like he is no different from them. He knows it’s not that simple, but it has always sent a burn to his eyes, a swell of sweet warmth to his chest, when he thinks about it too long. That they choose to take care of him in this way.
And Keith is not ashamed of being Galra, of being mixed, but there’s a dissonance between how he feels about himself and how he sometimes feels in the context of his peers that has always been quick to grate on the edges of his mind. He accepts himself, and he knows his friends do too, but there are still days that end with him feeling hollow and wrong and different, because he is, and that’s all there is to it. There is no changing that. It is a fundamental truth of him. He is the only one of his kind. He is both human and Galra, which also means that in many ways he is neither.
If he stews in it for too long, thinks about it too hard, that black pit inside of him he’s tried so hard to leave in his past — in a quiet, dusty shack that makes his chest crack with loneliness — opens right back up. Swallows him whole.
“I mean, talk about being a biological outlier, am I right?” Pidge continues, blind to his inner turmoil, eyes back at the holoscreens. “Not a lot of research on your particular brand of cross-species anomaly. Or, well — any research, actually. You’re literally the only one in existence. This could actually be — this could be a great advancement in the genetics fields. Pretty exciting, isn’t it?”
He’d braced himself for it, way back the first time this happened —
— when that burn across his cheek was still blistered and weeping and Shiro’s entire existence was hanging in the balance of everything. When there was too much happening all at once and then altogether not enough —
— when the adrenaline had filled him and his heart had broken over and over again as he fought a demon witch wearing his brother’s face, and then suddenly everything stopped. The motion, the blood rush.
When minutes inside the Black Lion’s cockpit turned into hours, days, months, and he’d had far too much quiet time to think, to reflect, to fear what this could mean — that change that had taken him so quickly in the heat of battle.
He braced himself for that shaky, young thing in his chest to resurface the next time it happened, if they ever saw him like this. If the team ever saw him be what he is and move through the world more halfbreed than ever, for it to be impossible to ignore. He braced himself for the day he could not appear fully human anymore and the people he loved would be starkly reminded that on a fundamental level he is something else, and no amount of movie nights or team bonding exercises could ever fix that. No amount of assurances or pats on the back or terrible hair jokes could change the fact that he is not like them in these very substantial ways, and never will be.
He braced for it, that skin-crawling storm back through his chest, his lungs, like it could lasso all the oxygen in his body and hold it hostage, blood going thin in his ears. He braced for it —
— but he still wasn’t prepared for how awful it feels, to hear those words fall from Pidge’s lips. To hear her treat this like a science project, instead of the intimate thing it is: his humanity being peeled from his bones.
And the kicker is that she isn’t wrong. She’s stating a fact, something they all know. It should not make him want to cry, and yet it does.
“I don’t get it,” Hunk cuts in, head cocked at an angle in thought while Keith fights to keep the coils hurt deep in his chest at bay, blinking away the sudden heat in his still-aching eyes. The pressure under his temples grows ever stronger and he worries, absently, if his eyes are as bright as they feel. He worries how he’ll ever be able to hide this. “Why would it only break through when he’s — uh, how’d you put it? Worked up? Angry or scared, or whatever?”
Coran twirls his mustache around his finger. Keith feels that hand around his windpipe, the urge to hide his face from view and lock himself away in his room flaring brighter than it has in a long time. “Could be hormonal,” Coran thinks aloud. “That’s all I can think of that would be so context-driven. A physiological stress response, probably something that’s always been there — but now the rest of the system is primed to respond to it more intimately? More cells that are responsive to fluctuations in Galra stress signals? Tuned into the right frequency, perhaps?”
“Plus,” Pidge tacks on, “it makes sense, from a survival standpoint. Cortisol spikes under stress are well-documented in humans, that kind of physiological manifestation of mental state. And Galra are hardier than us, that’s never been in question. Makes sense to lean on that more, in times of duress. I mean… you saw him, out there. The way he fought.”
The words hold an implication that he really, truly cannot handle right now. The way he fought, as if he’d gone feral, turned into some kind of animal.
His mind flashes back to the bared teeth, the burn of a growl rolling through his throat. The whirl of motion and blind instinct, and he feels like an animal.
And then, a wash of guilt. He’d never call his mother that, see her in that way. If feels like an insult to think it of himself now. These are the parts of him that are her, after all.
It’s all so confusing.
He wishes Krolia were here.
There’s a beat of silence, after that, the three exchanging thoughtful looks. Then their eyes fall back on him.
Everyone’s eyes are back on him. It takes him a tick to realize they’re waiting for him to react, to respond. He feels like an ant under a magnifying glass in the sun, slowly getting baked alive.
“It’s a nice twist.” His voice drips with stunned, far-away sarcasm, but the words feel empty. A last resort, because it’s always been easier to lean into that snark than it is to bare himself so freely. “Never had the human half be the issue, before.”
Pidge turns back to the screens, the light glinting off her glasses. “Or maybe not even actual DNA damage, maybe just—denatured proteins? Dysfunction due to aggregation? Epigenetic modulation? Quintessence poisoning? Flat out space magic? I dunno. There’s lots of hypothetical possibilities. It’s not like we can just pop by the Quantum Abyss real quick to take some samples.”
Another beat passes, and Keith’s jaw tightens. There’s a coil of dread growing tighter and hotter and heavier in his gut, and he feels like he could throw up. His hands are shaking. “So how do we fix it?”
Pidge shifts on her feet, dragging her gaze away from the screens to regard him uncertainly. He fights the urge to squirm under her gaze, hide everything about him that is anomalous. “Fix it?”
Keith’s gums burn. He can’t tell if it’s because of the tightened muscles and grinding teeth or the fact that there’s still pressure throbbing along his jaw, a white-hot and thrumming ache as dagger-sharp teeth — fangs — refuse to round out, refuse to dull back to something less frightful, less positively devastating. “How do we make it stop?”
Pidge’s expression twists. “Well, I’m not sure there’s really anything to stop—”
“Pidge,” Keith bites, all sharpened edges, and there’s the temper, his go-to, his fall-back, flaring hot and bright at the center of his chest as Pidge throws her hands up.
“Look,” she defends, “I don’t know, okay? But there might not be anything to fix. You said it’s gone away on its own before, right?“
“Yeah, but it’s not —“ He’s desperate. It grates through his voice, leaving it hoarse. “It’s never lasted this long, or been this bad.”
“It’s not bad though. You get that, right? It’s actually — it’s actually really cool, Keith. We know Alteans are capable of shapeshifting — but Galra aren’t, and neither are humans. This is biologically unprecedented.”
And Pidge doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand any of this.
“It’s not like it’s something that’s going to harm you,” she continues, and Keith’s vision is going sideways, a little blurred and yet somehow so fucking bright around every edge, some mix of panic and unfamiliar, unnatural acuity, way too much input, everything turned up to eleven, “it’s — it’s a defense response. A survival mechanism, meant to keep you alive longer. You’re totally healthy, according to all our scans. We don’t — we don’t know what this is, Keith, but we do know that you’re okay.”
“But you said —”
“—I postulated. I said that I think it’s just things that were already there acting differently. I think it’s just—“
“—protein dysfunction,” Keith finishes for her, jaw still clenched. He blinks and blinks and blinks and thinks, really, that he might be dying. There’s no way this tightness in his chest isn’t actually a heart attack in the making, right? “So how do we… re-regulate the proteins? Get them working normal again?”
Pidge pushes her glasses up to rest on her head, rubbing her temples. “You’re not listening to me. We don’t even know if that’s what’s going on, and it could be weeks — months — before we could develop something to test for anything like that, let alone treat it. Maybe something’s changed, but Keith — I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”
“Clearly there is something wrong with me, Pidge, look at me. I’m not supposed to—” Keith’s voice hitches off. A handful of ticks pass in silence, and his nails — claws — bite into his palms when he pulls them into quivering fists. “—be like this,” he finishes, and the words are a plea, a big, embarrassing crack down the middle.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, here.” Pidge drops her arms. “Maybe you aren’t, maybe you are. Honestly, I think things make more sense now than they ever have before. I mean, do you really think it’s normal for an entire half of your genetic makeup to be completely phenotypically irrelevant?” It looks like she wants to shake his shoulders, the kind of insistent, mad-scientist energy laced through the words. “Keith, do you think it’s normal that you passed so well even you didn’t know what you are?”
And what am I, he wants to snap at her, wants to snarl, growing more unsettled in his own skin by the moment. Halfbred mutt.
But Pidge strides on, answering herself. “Because it’s not. This makes sense Keith, where it never has before. If anything, the fact that you’d seemed human for so long is the only thing wrong with this picture.”
Keith, for all the practice he’s had throughout his life schooling his expression, keeping himself and his hurts close to his chest —
— Keith feels like he has just been slapped.
Seemed human.
If the expressions on his fellow paladins’ faces are anything to go by, he is not hiding this hurt as well as he tries.
“Pidge,” Lance bites, voice firm, the first to recover from the abrasive words.
Pidge, as if realizing belatedly what had just spilt from her own mouth, the torrent of thoughts she’d just unleashed, sighs, closing her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she gets out, words slower, measured. “That was — I didn’t mean it like that. Shit, Keith, I hope you know that’s not what I meant.”
Blinking quickly, Keith drops his head into a nod, averting his gaze. Shutting down, his systems scream, retreat, retreat, retreat. “Yeah,” he murmurs, chest full of something hot and quivering and itching to hide. “Sure.”
“I just meant that, you know, biologically, you don’t — uh, it doesn’t… make sense? And it kind of never has? And it’s not like we have any reference points for you, you’re the only — um. But according to, like, genetics — I just mean — Galran genetics seem to be strong in general and — we’ve never seen another uh, hybrid, you know, that doesn’t phenotypically present as — ”
“Really,” he cuts her off, and sniffs, and goes to pick at his nails before wincing again at the sight of claws and dropping his arms, listless. All that fear, all that anxiety, has been scooped right out of him. He feels hollow. “I get it. You’re right, anyways.”
“Keith—”
“Just drop it, okay? It’s fine.”
Pidge, to her credit, looks just about heartbroken. “Keith—“
“You said I’m fine, right?” Keith’s eyes are back on Coran and they’re pleading, bright, panicked, even though his tone is thin. “So can I go, please?”
It says more about how Keith’s feeling than anything else. Because if Keith were pissed, if he were angry in that fiery, all-encompassing way that he feels everything, he’d storm out before anyone could blink. He only asks like that, asks for permission, when he’s feeling small. Cornered. He knows it just as well as anyone.
Coran merely offers a sad, knowing smile, and pats him consolingly on the knee. “Healthy as can be, dear boy. Go get some rest.”
Keith nods his thanks, slips down off the exam bench, and leaves without another word.
She finds Keith on the observation deck.
He’s sitting on the floor with his knees bent loosely in front of him, leaning back against the couch rather than sitting on it. The reflection of the universe, just beyond that wall-to-wall window — the only thing standing between their fragile, flesh-and-bone bodies and the infinite vacuum of space itself — casts his profile in a soft, pale light.
His eyes, Pidge notes as she approaches, are back to normal. Wide irises, no gold to speak of. Dark around the edges, pink and tired.
She approaches quietly, not wanting to startle him. She doesn’t know where to start, and for a moment, panic claws its way around her throat.
He won’t want to talk to her, not after all that. She was just going to make everything worse by trying to force it.
She bites down on her lip, curses at herself silently, and turns to leave.
“Pidge.”
It’s said tiredly, knowingly. She flinches, turns back towards Keith. He hasn’t taken his gaze off the expanse of space ahead of them, hasn’t reacted much at all, physically.
She gets closer, closing the distance between them with soft steps. “How’d you know it was me?”
To her surprise, a corner of his mouth twitches. He shrugs, like that explains much of anything at all, but Pidge doesn’t question it.
She stands at his side and it’s — weird, hovering over him, seeing him from this angle. She’s always been the shortest on the team — the youngest, the smallest — and she’s not sure she’s ever seen Keith from above, like this. Even before he’d come back from the Quantum Abyss, two years of growth and height and maturity filling him out practically overnight from their perspective, Keith had always had a bit of height on her.
She shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, not sure what move to make. He looks small, like this, something he certainly isn’t anymore, all time-flux Galra growth spurts considered, and the air hangs around them with a weird sense of vulnerability that suddenly makes Pidge feel nauseous.
This is Keith. Her team leader, her friend. One of her best friends. Whatever weird imbalance this is — Pidge, looming, holding somehow so much power over him in this moment — almost makes her want to cry. She doesn’t deserve that power, the capacity to hurt him like that.
But then Keith is extracting an arm from where it had been curled around his knees and he’s patting the space beside him. Taking pity on her with a tired smile. “Come on, come sit. I’m not gonna bite.”
With a grateful, exhausted exhale, Pidge sinks down to the floor beside him. Her eyes trail on his hand and, as he goes to rest it back around his knees, she plucks it gently from the air. Battle-calloused fingers still in surprise, before relaxing slightly. Pidge holds his one hand with both of hers, brushing along his nails with her thumb — human and round.
“The claws are gone,” she observes. “Does that mean you’re feeling better?”
She half-expects Keith to pull away, to close off, but instead he just hums, lets her play with his fingers. “My mom thinks it’s an adrenaline thing,” he murmurs, not quite answering the question but a response nonetheless. “Fight-or-flight, I guess?”
And then it’s Pidge’s turn to hum, nodding as she touches the short, war-damaged keratin. There have been so many times, long before any outwardly Galran traits had really began to manifest in Keith, where he’d been taken over by a fight-or-flight response. All instinct, but remaining painfully, distinctly human. This is something more, something that’s shifted.
“Makes sense,” she says anyways.
“No it doesn’t.”
And there’s an odd kilter to Keith’s voice when he says it. Pidge has to drag her gaze up to his face again, just to make sure she’s interpreting it right. He’s biting back a small, mystified smile — like even he knows it’s something else, is amused by Krolia’s cut-and-dry take on the matter — and Pidge scrunches her nose a bit, biting a smile back of her own.
“No it doesn’t,” she agrees, taking the gamble and flooding with relief when Keith snorts out a soft laugh at her side, shaking his head.
And just like that, the tension is gone.
She drops Keith’s grip to her lap and she turns to face him more squarely, his one larger hand still held between her own. “Hey,” she says.
“Hi,” Keith responds.
“You know that I love you, right?”
Pidge is not typically one to be so vocal about her affections. She loves her team and shows it in her own way — quality time and physical closeness, sibling-like banter and a fierce protectiveness she’s only ever associated with Matt, with family, prior to Voltron.
But that’s what they are. Family. She went to space with one brother, and came back with five. She loves them. She’d do anything for them.
Like Keith, she’s never been all that good with words. So maybe she doesn’t say it as often as she should. But in this case, it grips her with a sudden need: say it out loud. Make sure he knows. Make sure he hears you.
And if this were before, if this were the Keith that first landed with them at the bottom of that cave in the desert, or the Keith that had first returned from the Blade of Marmora with a gushing open wound and an aching new existential crisis weighing down on his shoulders — well, that Keith would’ve gotten uncomfortable, nervous. That Keith, awkward and unpracticed in navigating other people, would’ve scoffed in disbelief or squirmed in discomfort or changed the subject entirely.
This Keith, though — the same shy, softhearted guy he’s always been just a little less alone, a little less emotionally-armored — this Keith just lifts his eyebrows, fails at stifling a smaller, genuine smile, and hums his assent. “Mm.”
And it’s enough for Pidge. She squeezes his hand. “So will you believe me when I say that I would never want to hurt you intentionally?” She shifts, feels the words start to spill in her nerves before giving him a chance to respond. “It doesn’t — it doesn’t excuse what I said, obviously. And it doesn’t make me right about it, either. And this is a really terrible attempt at an apology, but I just — I want to make sure you know. That it’s not — it came out in all the wrong ways, and I would never want to hurt you on purpose. I wasn’t really thinking before speaking, and I’m really sorry about it. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I know — I know there’s — there’s intention and then there’s impact, and they don’t always align and I need to, need to take responsibility for that impact, and —”
“Pidge.” Keith’s voice is round, full of warmth when he cuts her off. “Pidge, it’s fine. I know. I get it.”
“…Yeah?”
He offers her a sideways glance, a glint in his eye. “How many times have you seen me speak without thinking?” He huffs a breath, self-directed as he shakes his head. “Don’t have to tell me about things coming out the wrong way, Pidge. That’s practically my specialty.”
Pidge, trapping her voice somewhere in her throat with a wince, can’t respond. She feels like a child, waiting for her big brother to tell her that this mistake she’s made is fixable. That he won’t hate her forever for it. That she didn’t hurt him as much as she thinks she did.
Keith sighs, extending one leg ahead of him and then the other. He rolls his ankles a few times, and a succession of tiny little pops fills the air. “Look,” he says, and it’s half sigh, half peace offering. “I know I’m — abnormal, yeah? Like, biologically speaking.”
“That’s not true,” Pidge refutes quickly, adamantly, which earns her a deadpan look from Keith.
“Pretending I’m not feels more offensive than just saying it to my face, you know.”
She winces, drops her eyes. Her own voice drifts back to her, echoes of normal people and genetic anomaly and seemed human sour in her throat. “Right.”
Keith presses out another breath, uses his free hand to pick at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. “I’m just saying, I get it. I know it’s weird that I don’t — I don’t really look like what I am. I know it’s never made sense. But it’s not because I’ve done anything, it’s just. It’s just how I am.” Brow furrowed slightly, he shakes his head. “And now something scientifically fucky is going on and you got excited. It’s interesting to you, because we don’t know what it is. And I think — I think being curious is a good thing. You know. Generally.”
“Not at the expense of making my friend feel bad, though.” She doesn’t hesitate on the response for a second. “You’re not some case study, Keith. It’s not — I’m your friend first. It’s not okay to get caught up, like that.”
“You’re brilliant, Pidge.” The words, coming from Keith so openly, make something horrifyingly like tears spring to her eyes. “There’s not a lot of stuff out there that challenges what you know like that.”
And he’s right. It doesn’t make the lump forming in her throat any easier to swallow.
“I got caught up,” she repeats, quiet and ashamed. “It wasn’t okay.”
“You didn’t say anything that isn’t true.”
Once again, Keith is right. And once again, it does not help a damn thing.
Pidge knows what she said — factually speaking — has standing. Keith is an outlier, in all things biology. It is statistically unexpected that, until recently, there were so few physiological manifestations of an entire half of his genetic makeup. But there is a time and a place and a way to have these conversations without making Keith feel like absolute garbage, like he was somehow wrong for simply existing the way that he does, and she’d failed at that aspect with flying colors.
“I’m sorry I made you feel bad.” It’s all she can think to say. It doesn’t begin to be enough.
Keith — who has gotten worse over the years at maintaining that hard-edged mask, whose hurts bleed into his expressions more and more as the days tick by, who trusts them more and more with all those vulnerable pieces of himself the longer they prove to him that they’re here to stay —
Keith looks at her. His eyes are tired, rimmed in pink. He was crying, at some point, before she got here. She tries not to picture him sitting here alone — arms curled around his knees, looking out into space and muffling all that hurt under his breath — and fails spectacularly.
“I know,” he murmurs, and there’s no malice in his voice, no hard feelings.
“Do you still feel bad?”
It takes him a moment to respond. She wonders if he’s weighing his options, considering a lie to make her feel better. “Yeah,” he admits eventually, eyes returning to the stars, just on the other side of that glass. His voice stays quiet. “A little.”
Her vision blurs. She tries to blink it away, smother that burn, but it doesn’t budge. “Keith—”
“It’s okay, Pidge.” His hand, still captive in hers, gives her fingers a squeeze. “I’m a big boy, I’ll get over it. I always do.”
And it strikes her that this is not a new type of feeling bad, for Keith. This is not the type of thing he can put down, the type of thing he can choose to leave behind. This is something he will carry forever. Being something else. This is something that stays, something that aches some days more than others, that is heavier under certain pressures and becomes lighter with more hands on deck.
And there are no other hands like Keith’s, not in the particular way he is. Not theirs, at least. And that’s the core of all of it, really, those pink-rimmed eyes and knees drawn close — something that probably rears its head far more than he lets on, because that’s how Keith is. Their hands can’t help with this. There are some things they just won’t understand. He knows this, and grits his teeth. Tries not to let them see.
He must’ve felt so blindsided, today. He expects the universe to throw it in his face — halfbred mutt, that soldier today had sneered, full of disgust, and Keith hadn’t blinked — but he’s lowered his defenses around the team. They can’t bare this cross with him but he’s grown to trust they won’t hurt him with it either, won’t make him feel so alone, and she’d thrown him to the wolves.
She scoots closer, tucks herself in at his side so that they’re arm-to-arm, facing the stars. “I wish I could go back in time and break that guy’s knees,” she mumbles, because it’s true, and because everything is so heavy and serious and as much as Lance may focus his teasing, Keith is not the only member of this team that struggles with talking about things so personal, so private. “For calling you that.”
A dark chuckle. “Would it help if I said that I’m used to it, by now?” But Keith’s tone is thin, like he’d reached for his typical dry sarcasm and came up short.
“That would make me feel worse, actually.”
“Okay. Then I won’t say it.”
Anger, sharp and splintered, pokes through her chest. “You shouldn’t have to be used to it,” she says, because she needs him to hear it. “It’s — cruel.”
Keith hums a little, gaze still trailed out the window. It’s not an agreement, or an assurance, and he seems so exposed. Like he’s been wrung out, fears and insecurities pulled to the surface in a moment of flaring instinct and Galra gold, leaving him raw. Nowhere to hide. Her own mind prickles with it even now, that exposed-nerve-ending feeling, whispers through that paladin bond Keith probably doesn’t even know he’s still — even now — projecting.
She’s never once thought of Keith as fragile. He’s not, he’s never been.
But right now — now, it makes her heart ache. That in this moment, she knows one wrong word could break him.
They sit in silence for a long moment, the night thick around them. “You know,” she breaches, awkward. “You know it really doesn’t matter why it’s happening, right? The, um — the changes, the Galra stuff, whatever does or doesn’t make sense biologically. None of that matters.”
She’s trying to right her wrongdoings, make it clear that despite how she’d fumbled earlier, he will always be more important than the science of him. But Keith’s lips only thin, tightening at the corners. Clearly she’s walking herself into a hole, and she backtracks.
“I mean — it matters to the extent that it matters to you,” she corrects herself. “You deserve to know what’s… what’s going on with your own body. I know that’s important. Jesus, Keith. I wish we had answers for you. But maybe… maybe why it’s happening isn’t as important as the fact that it is. Maybe the science doesn’t matter.”
A moment passes between them, the silence stretching out. And again she expects Keith to withdraw, expects him to turn inward in that way that he does when he’s feeling uncertain, and frightened.
But he knocks his shoulder into hers. “Wow,” he remarks at length, though his voice stays quiet. “Katie Holt saying science doesn’t matter. Never thought I’d see the day.”
Pidge rolls her eyes, knocks him back. “Shut up,” she grumbles, no heat in the words. “I just mean — you’re here either way, right? The science might be a big question mark, but you’re here and you’re real. There’s no right or wrong way to be, there’s just… you know. You. And that’s enough.”
When she glances to him again, his eyes are glassy, bright, though no tears fall.
“I’m really sorry, for what I said,” she murmurs, and shakes her head. “It won’t happen again.”
He sniffs quietly at her side, and then his heads lowers slowly, resting atop hers. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. Pidge understands, reads the gesture for the acceptance it is.
“And you can talk to us about it,” she adds, softer, and brings her gaze back towards the stars. “If you want. I know we can’t really — we can’t really understand what it must be like, but we can always listen. If it’ll help. We want to — we want to support you, though that stuff, if we can.”
Again, silence wraps them in a soft cocoon, and she’s not expecting him to break it. Not now, not about this. Keith — as much as he’s opened up over the years — still tries to protect those soft pieces of himself where he can.
And again, Keith surprises her, defies her expectations. “I don’t know why it’s freaking me out so much,” he admits, not lifting his head from where it rests on hers. “It was easier, back then. With you guys, and — and my mom. It didn’t matter as much.” Then his voice drops, growing quiet, like he’s speaking to himself. “Feels like it matters so much, here.”
And she knows what he means, when he says here. Because they’re still in space, still fighting this war, but things are different and it’s taken all of them a while to adjust. It’s not just the Garrison personnel flooding the rooms and halls and decks, or the Atlas crew expanding their flight team so jarringly, or the constant overhead by Earth’s governments — it’s everything else, too. It’s the distrustful eyes that follow the Blade members as they sit down in the commissary for a simple meal, and the way foreign dignitaries sometimes default to Lance, the second-in-command, rather than address the half-Galra leader of Voltron, and the way their old classmates’ eyes seem to scrutinize Keith every chance they get, as if searching for visible signs, I’ve always known he was a freak of nature, I’ve always known there was something wrong with him.
Her chest aches as she thinks about that, and she lets it. Doesn’t try to beat it back. Puts herself in Keith’s shoes, assailants on all sides. “It shouldn’t matter,” she reiterates. “I know it’s not that easy. But it shouldn’t matter. It’s no one’s business.”
“It’s everyone’s business,” Keith denies, and it’s automatic, something he’s clearly thought about before. “Voltron belongs to them. Which means our lives will never be our own. We’ll always have people to answer to, and to those people, it’s always going to matter.” He pauses at that, then, just a bit. A tight break in the heavy words. “I can’t blame them for it. It’s just how it is.”
“That’s bullshit, Keith.”
He lifts his head at the abrasive tone, eyebrows raising.
“It’s bullshit,” Pidge reiterates, insistent, holding his gaze. “Your life belongs to you. No one gets to take that from you. We have — responsibilities, yeah. And Voltron belongs to the universe, sure. But you’re more than just Voltron, and if the people you risk your neck every day to protect don’t respect that because of some kind of hang up they have about the Galra, o-or about — fucking blood purity — then that is not on you. That’s not your job to fix, and it sure as shit shouldn’t be something you’re forced to get used to.”
“But it is, Pidge.” The words are gentle, patient, like a parent breaking bad news to a terribly confused child. “That’s how being this goes. I might be the first from Earth, but halfbreeds are hardly new. And there are thousands of years of history proving that it’s always going to matter to people. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does, and that’s just how it is.“
The words, alongside whatever flare of adamancy that had struck to flame in her chest, die in an instant. Hearing Keith say it out loud — seeing how painfully familiar he appears of it all, how aware he’d been forced to be, by mere consequence of existing — makes something twist in her gut. He has to get used to it, the degrading comments and the scrutinizing eyes and the halfbred mutts thrown his way, because if he doesn’t —
— fuck. If he doesn’t, it would just be a life of it, wouldn’t it? Isolation, and shame. She can’t imagine anyone surviving that with their sense of self unbruised without layering on their armor, thickening up their skin. Because people are always going to believe that halfbreeds are less than dirt and people are always going to care that the leader of Voltron is one — a Galran hybrid, no less — and she can’t imagine that walking around the halls of the Atlas with his mother’s genes suddenly on such sharp display and nowhere to hide, when there are already so many eyes following his every move, could ever, in any universe, make any of that easier to deal with.
Briefly, her thoughts flicker toward Acxa. Towards Zethrid and Ezor and Naarti — fuck, even Lotor. Exiled from their own — from both halves of their nature — and told they were nothing. Spat on, barely considered as people. How much anger it nursed in them, the kind that ravages, that can do so much damage.
Keith runs a hand through his hair, pushing out a sigh. “I’m not — I’m not ashamed, or anything,” he says, like reading her mind. She wonders if her expression was just that telling, or if she’d somehow projected that heart-twinging feeling through the paladin bond unintentionally. “What happened today — I’m not angry, or ashamed of it, or anything like that. I love my mom. I’m proud to be her son.”
And it’s so simple, those words, and he says it so simply, but it’s enough to make Pidge’s eyes burn again, insistent and ready. Keith went to space with nothing — a shack in a distant desert his only companion for so long — and came back with a family. With his mother. A mother he loves, a mother he’s proud of.
“I just—” He breaks off, frowning again, corner of his mouth going tight with a crease between his brows. Struggling to find the words. He presses out another breath. “I just want to do my job, and fly my lion, and end this war. I’m not good with people. And the idea of having to justify, or, or explain it to every other person I see in the commissary lunch line because it’s right there and I can’t hide it anymore is just —”
Keith breaks off, voice failing.
How do we make it stop, he had asked her, begged her, and she feels sick now as she recalls her response. He was panicking, staring down the barrel of consequences to what he is, and she’d dismissed it so readily because — what? The idea of him finally made sense, like it hadn’t before? Because science has rules, and it seemed like Keith’s genome finally got the memo after twenty-three years of rebellion? Because this could be used for scientific advancement, panic-stricken eyes or not?
Her chin wobbles, just a little, and she bites it back. “For whatever it’s worth,” she says, “you don’t have to justify anything with us.”
Keith’s gaze find hers again, and the lines of his frown soften. “I know,” he responds, still quiet but steady nonetheless. Grateful. “Thanks, Pidge.”
“I mean it, too,” she assures, voice still choked. “No questions asked. You show up to breakfast one day totally purple, and I swear I won’t bat an eye.”
And it does what she’d hoped it would — gets Keith’s mouth turning up in a smile, an amused half-laugh hitching through soft breath, a quick flash of teeth and eyes crinkled at the corners. He shakes his head at her, even as his shoulder slump back into the couch and his eyes drift back to the stars. “Yeah, well — let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, huh?”
“I’ll kick anyone’s ass who’s mean to you about this. If it — if it happens again, or starts happening more. Anyone gives you a hard time, I’ll kill them.”
And the smile lingers at his lips when he says, “I know you would.”
It makes warmth bloom through her again. That despite what happened, despite the careless words, he knows where she stands — where her heart lies.
She turns back to look through the window, all that starlight bathing the night around them, and lets out an exhale. Closes her eyes, lets the stars keep watch over them.
“I’ll be okay,” Keith murmurs eventually into the quiet, voice soft. As if he, too, has let his breath go, has released something he’d been holding onto.
It takes Pidge a moment to respond, and when she does, all she can manage is a squeeze to his hand. Yeah, you will, she wants it to convey, though emotion still clogs her throat too much to speak.
Keith squeezes back, and she knows he understands.