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At first, it looks like a dream. Like the lingering feeling, one has when he wakes up, a bothering because the dream was bad. Then, as his brain becomes active and his body manages to feel the sensation around – the warm, the light, the hunger – he remembers what happened.
Haggar, the fight at the clone facility, his metal arm that was cutting down…
And that word…
Keith…
He wakes up suddenly, but a gentle hand placed on his chest kept him down.
“Relax. Everything is fine.”
Keith is there, and he’s alive. There is a gruesome scar on his right cheek, but overall he seems fine. He wears something similar to a Garrison uniform, but with red and not orange, and the symbol of Voltron instead of the Garrison one.
“A lot of things happened,” Keith murmurs again, his hand always on his chest. “I know this must be confusing.”
He looks around: he was lied in a pod, instead a room that doesn’t look like a Terran either Altean architecture, but a mixture of both of them. And he can feel the energy too.
“Haggar is no more,” Keith says. “We defeated her, so she can’t control you anymore. We wait to wake you up after that just to be sure. You’re free.”
Relief fell upon him, immediately substituted by the panic. “The others…!”
“They’re safe.” Keith nods. “I have a lot to tell you, but no rush. You must be hungry. Let me take something to eat.”
“Keith,” he calls immediately. “I… I am a clone… I didn’t… I’m so sorry…”
“I know,” Keith answers calmly. “Everything will be fine.”
If Keith believes it, he can too. As Keith is outside the room, he gets off the pod and checks the surrounding. There is a bathroom in the room, and clean clothes (Garrison uniform for officials) too. With difficulty, with only one arm, he takes off the old clothes and has a brief shower. When Keith turns back with a tray of warm food, he’s about to put on the jacket.
“Do you need a hand?” he asks.
“An arm and a shoulder too,” he jokes.
“We have to remove it entirely,” Keith informs him as he helps him to close the jacket buttons. “Sam Holt is working with Allura to make a new metal arm for you, but for now we prefer to take any risk.”
“I understand.” Shiro takes the trail with the food and, while eating, he looks intently at Keith. He looks bigger again, like quite some time passed between their last encounter. “So… what happened?”
Briefly, Keith tells him about Lotor’s defeat after their battle, and the consequent destruction of the Castle of Lions. He hears with horror about Sendak’s attack on Earth and the way Haggar used the Alteas against them. And then, Haggar final defeats.
“Right now, the Voltron Coalition is wandering around the universe to destroy the last remaining of the Galra Empire, and helping all the planets that may need it,” Keith finishes.
“Where are we?” he asks.
“IFG-Atlas. It’s a ship Sam built with Terran and Altean technologies, and it’s our new main base.”
“Looks powerful.”
Keith smirks. “You can’t imagine. If you’re ready, I wish you to meet the others.”
Being ready isn’t the right word, but he feels the first the better, so he nods and he follows Keith outside the room. The hallway of the Atlas is empty, and he guesses Keith asked everyone to stay away for a while.
They reach a meeting room: all the Paladins are there. Including Shiro. He gasps at the sight: the Shiro in front of him has entirely white hair, but no scar on the nose and two human arms.
“After the battle with Zarkon, we were able to find back another clone body,” Keith says. “Shiro’s soul was trapped in the Black Lion’s consciousness, and Allura put it in the empty body.”
“I see.” The Paladins smile at him, a courtesy smile. Shiro’s expression is serious. “So what am I doing here?”
“We,” and Keith throws a look around, “believe you deserve a second chance. Nothing was your fault, but Haggar.” He passes him a datapad.
“Ryou Shirogane?”
“He was my father’s name,” Shiro speaks for the first time. “Pidge hacked all the governance website, or at least what remained of them. At the look of everyone, you’re my twin brother, also kidnapped from the Galra for secret experiment.”
“No one will find out the truth,” Pidge assures him. “Well, except for the Atlas’ crew, but they’re loyal to us, so you’re safe.”
He looks around, incredulous.
“So, welcome to the Atlas,” Shiro murmurs, with a little smirk. “Kuro.”
For the first days, Kuro has no idea of what doing of his life. It’s not only the fact that, even unwillingly, he almost killed everyone back then and the fact that all the Atlas’ crew look at him with that sort of strange interest reserved to curious animals.
More than that, it’s the awareness that he doesn’t know what he is and what he wants. He’s not a copy of Shiro in blood and skin, he’s him, with his memory and feelings. But now Shiro is back and Kuro has no place to be himself, to be something different from him.
He also keeps himself very far away from Keith. Not only he’s still guilty about the entire ordeal, now Keith has Shiro back. Everything – including that last, terrible, three words – were for Shiro the original, not Kuro. Better put a stone on that.
Slowly, he enters in a sort of routine when Sam gives him a metal arm and he decides to try piloting one of the MFEs’ ships. Despite his prosthetic is still one of the best pilots around it, and one of the best that can pilot that kind of ships, that are very difficult to maneuver.
Staying with the MFEs pilots gives Kuro a sense of normalcy he fears to have lost, especially because they weren’t friend with Shiro – they know him, of course, but not so well. And he’s their Captain, while Kuro is one of them. It allows Kuro to create some ties that aren’t Shiro’s.
It’s during one of their break after a training, that the MFEs make Kuro realize something. He hasn’t noticed before mostly because he tried to stay away not only from Keith but from Shiro too, and from both of them together even more. But when he starts pay noticed, it’s impossible to not realize that something is broken between Shiro and Keith.
Shiro’s hand doesn’t go for Keith’s shoulder anymore, they call each other “Paladin” and “Captain” and they sit at opposite sides of the table. It’s impossible to see them together outside to official meetings, while the other Paladins hang together all time.
At first, he thinks they’re together and they’re exaggerating into keeping a low profile. But then Nadia gossips about a mysterious date Shiro may have with a member of his bridge crew and Kuro really wants to understand what happened.
Maybe Shiro doesn’t hear, being trapped in the Black Lion, Keith’s confession.
Kuro finds Keith once he returns from a diplomatic mission on Daibazaal, where his mother and Kolivan are creating a new government.
“Hey,” Keith greets him, with his usual soft smile. “How are you going? I’ve heard you’re piloting with the MFEs now.”
“Yeah, it’s nice.” There isn’t a nice way to say it, so he bursts out, “what happened between you and Shiro?”
Keith visibly startles and freezes. “Why are you asking?”
“Everybody noticed something’s off.”
“Everybody…?” Keith doesn’t turn to face him. “Nothing happened. We’re just being professional.”
“For real? Calling him Captain where every other Paladins still call him Shiro? Unless is a complicate kink you really don’t want to talk about.”
“What?” This time Keith turns, and his cheek are less red than Kuro anticipates. He sighs. “Do you really want to know?”
“Unless you really don’t want to tell me. I’m just a little… worried.”
“Well, putting it simple, Shiro and I aren’t friends anymore.”
Kuro blinks. Of all the scenarios he anticipated, this is just so incredible he takes a couple of minutes to recover, under Keith’s resigned gaze. “Wait, what?”
“You heard it right the first time.”
“But why? How it is possible?”
“It’s easy, to be honest. I just did something Shiro didn’t really like and that was the breaking point.” He releases a humorless laugh. “Guess it’s easy to say eloquent sentences like ‘I won’t give up on you’ when you’re not the one that face the consequences of the other mistake. Apparently, not even Shiro is immune to selfishness.”
“I can’t believe it,” Kuro says. In his mind, there isn’t anything that Keith can do that will make him love him less. “What did you do?”
“First of all, I took the Black Lion from him.”
“He was the one-”
“I know,” Keith snaps exasperatedly. “But he thought he would have died. Like I said, it’s easy for him to promise things when he’s not directly harmed by them.”
“Okay, but I’m pretty sure it’s something you can work on.”
“We can’t. Because I’m not going to give back the Black Lion. I’m good with it. I am a good leader.”
“Better than Shiro?” Kuro asks. His mind goes back at the time he and Keith’s leadership clashed on Lotor’s action. Keith had a very different way to act, but Kuro can’t say it’s not good. Still, Kuro has more experience, and he’s more a team worker than Keith. Like Shiro.
Keith bits his lips. “Not better, but different. And I believed – I still do – that for what we had to do, my leadership is the better choice.”
“And were you right?”
“We won, didn’t we?” He releases a small sigh. “Once back on Earth. He took a lot of initiative about plans and everything, and then he became the Captain of the Atlas. He got a giant mecha only for himself! I didn’t think he was still pissed about Black. To be honest, it’s a little petty, and I don’t like it.”
“Did you tell this to Shiro?” Maybe Shiro doesn’t really mean it.
“No. I didn’t think it was necessary.” Keith sits down on the bed. “But after all, at that point my relationship with Shiro was already been compromised. I wanted to save it, but… not at the price of myself. I like being a leader, and I don’t like Shiro pretending more from me.”
Kuro frowns. “So there was something before Black.” And then he realized. “It’s about me, isn’t it?”
“You have nothing to do with this.”
“But my presence…”
“I was the only one who wanted to save you.” Keith stands up again. “The others are scared you were since the beginning on Haggar’s side, and Shiro… well, he’s not your biggest fan.”
“Guess it isn’t very surprising.”
“No, but still unfair.”
“Oh, Keith…” Kuro murmurs, and he comes near to hug him. “Why didn’t you let me go? Not even at the clone facility…”
Kuro remembers the way he tries to fight against Haggar’s power, the way he hopes to restrain himself enough for Keith to kill him, but Keith didn’t falter. He was even sad when he had to cut the arm.
“As many time as it takes. I promised, remember?” Then, he takes a step aside and shakes his head. “Well, that’s all. Now you have your answer.”
He returns at his jobs, the back turned at Kuro.
“What if Shiro will be in danger?”
“I’ll save him, of course.” Keith’s voice is confident. “The actual situation doesn’t change what Shiro’ve done for me. If anything, it makes it hurt more.”
The next stop for Kuro is Shiro’s office, a place he avoids usually. Shiro’s tone when he greets him, especially after having talked with Keith, really shows how much Shiro doesn’t like to be in Kuro’s company. Kuro doesn’t care.
“Is it true you and Keith aren’t friend anymore?”
Shiro frowns. “He told you that?”
“Yes. But I’m not the only one that noticed that something is off between the two of them.”
“It’s no one business.” Shiro scoffs. “But I guess Keith also told you why we’re not friend anymore.”
Kuro nods again. “And that’s bullshit. Are you really giving up your friendship with Keith over something so petty?”
“Petty?”
“Yes. Petty,” Kuro replies. “I’m you, remember? I remember everything about your time with Keith at the Garrison. I remember everything of the first time in space. So I ask again: do you want to lose all this?”
“You should ask that to Keith.”
“He’s not the one offended because Black. And no,” he anticipates Kuro, “I understand you. It hurts when Black rejected me like nothing in the world. But not enough to stop being friend with Keith for this.”
Shiro laughs, not happy. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. Do you forget he left the team because of you?”
Kuro remains a little bummed by the statement. “So you feel I was wrong, and you’re doing the same thing.”
“Things are different between you and me.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that Keith did everything for you!” Shiro stands up and smashes his hands on the table. “You wanted the Black Lion? He left the team so you can have it back. But me? He didn’t even ask me if I’d like it back, he just took it and pretend everything is fine. He could have asked me, but I guess he didn’t care enough.”
“He did it because he thought I was you. It’s you he wanted to give Black back.”
“Apparently not, since I haven’t Black back and I’m the real one.” Shiro shakes his head. “I saw everything; you know? When I was inside Black. I saw how he didn’t even try to kill you at the facility, and how he was even ready to die with you.”
“Because he believes it was you!” Kuro exclaims.
“No. At that point, he knew you were a clone. And nevertheless, he wanted you back. If he likes you more than me, fine by me. I don’t need him. And he has you now, so…” Shiro shrugs.
“Fine, then!” Kuro spats.
Until now, he has hidden his feelings for Keith into a corner of his mind. He is sure those feelings come because he considers himself Shiro, so they weren’t real. Besides, Keith acted in that way with him because he thought he was Shiro. Shiro’s the one he confessed to. He wasn't going to go and steal Keith's from Shiro, he isn't is man anymore.
But he’s not going to hide them anymore.
He doesn’t think Keith actually likes him more than Shiro, but he won’t let is occasion going away, if Shiro serves it on a golden plate.
“If you don’t want him, I will take him.”
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