WHO: Shiro and Matt WHAT: Shiro and Matt drink, talk, and play video games WHEN: Nov. 18 WHERE: Holt home WARNINGS: Vague discussion of violence
Shiro hadn’t been drunk in a very, very long time. Not that he had been a big drinker to begin with. He knew that, likely, what he had missed more was the kind of easy camaraderie that had come when he had been out drinking with other garrison cadets. And almost all of those nights he had been with Matt.
The last time he had likely been drinking was after they’d found out they’d been selected for the Kerberos mission.
Most days, that felt like an entirely different life. He didn’t really feel like the same person. And to be fair, he wasn’t. He’d taken his studies very seriously at the garrison, but he’d had no life-threatening challenges or crises. He’d been smart and diligent and he’d been talented at piloting.
Most days he felt more like a weapon than a human being. He hadn’t had time to think like that while he was part of Voltron, because there had only been more fighting to take care of. Those diligently honed fighting instincts had been beneficial. But being at rest in Tumbleweed had brought that all crashing to the surface -- the body that had gone from merely big to muscular, the scars that littered near every part of his body, the arm that was both Galra and literally a weapon.
Being around Matt made him aware of the changes, and made him miss who he had been. It also made him wonder why it was that he had never thought to let himself die in the arena. He had never worried about what it was going to cost him then. It had only been a matter of survival.
So, the drinking was nice, okay. It felt more like old times, having a beer and just hanging out with Matt, and his brain slowed down so that he could just focus on what Matt was saying, because he had really never fucking thought he’d see Matt again.
…
It had been harder and easier than Matt had expected to settle back into something resembling a normal life. He was constantly reminded of everything that was different, and he could not let himself forget the responsibility he had to his home universe. But part of him was grateful, too, that it was going to be hard and take a lot of time to get them all back there. Even if he did his damnedest to figure it out - which was precisely what he was doing.
In the meantime, he was sleeping in his own bedroom again, wearing normal Earthling clothes again, taking time to just hang out with his sister and their friends again. Aside from being with Pidge in their house again, getting to hang out with Shiro was probably the best part of this place.
He also hadn’t had beer in a while, or any alcohol, for that matter. There were always too many responsibilities with the rebels. They laughed and joked, sure, but that had a different feel. It was a brand of gallows humor, making light of their situation so that it was bearable, so that they didn’t always have to think about the risk.
But so far as Matt knew, he and Shiro were not going to be risking their lives in the morning, so they could just get drunk and be stupid tonight.
“So tell me,” he said. “One thing that you have to do on Earth before we go back to space.”
--
It was a little bit surreal to have so much focus on getting back again. Of course that was what Shiro had wondered over when he had first arrived here. He couldn’t be content with leaving everyone he knew behind when they had been in the middle of such a big battle. He had responsibilities to his team.
But he had been here for awhile now and had accepted, as a lot of people here did, that he wasn’t going to be heading home of his own volition. That being said, he knew better than to doubt Matt and Pidge, especially if Pidge had traveled to an alternate dimension.
Shiro laughed idly at the question. In truth, it had been overwhelming to realize all the things he could do back on Earth -- things that, like seeing Matt, he had never expected to do again. A lot of it had been just being outside. Seeing sunsets and sunrises. Being outside after a thunderstorm.
Food. It was shocking how much he’d missed food. It had become a survival thing when he’d been with the Galra. He never knew when his next meal would come and that had often been contingent on how well he’d performed during a fight. In the castle, with food easily at hand, Shiro had thought he’d returned to a normal relationship with food. But, in truth, it still had been about survival: making sure that he had the proper amount of nutritions to fight well, but the space goo -- even Hunk’s careful works -- were a far cry from just how much was available on Earth. More than once, Shiro had marveled at tastes. He was genuinely excited for Thanksgiving.
He’d been surprised to remember how much music there was, and how different it was. He’d been surprised to find that he missed driving -- but maybe that wasn’t surprising because everything he’d piloted since going into space had been at a high level of risk. Driving for the sake of driving had become almost comforting.
“Fly something,” Shiro said, because he didn’t know if he still could, but he wanted to see if he could recapture the ease that had once been a part of that when he was in the garrison. Not that he hadn’t had to work hard, but flying, whether in a simulator or in a garrison craft, had always felt natural to him. Maybe that wouldn’t ever be the same again, not now that his first meaningful trip had ended in disaster, and flying with Voltron was on a whole other level. (He still missed the soft presence of Black in his mind.)
“You?” Shiro asked, taking another sip of beer.
…
“Mm. That’s a hard one.” Matt had come to understand that space travel was less common on this Earth, which meant that even if Shiro could get access to a ship, it would probably be a different, lower-tech version than the ones they’d grown accustomed to.
He wasn’t sure how Shiro would feel about traveling into space here, either. Matt certainly had his reservations about it. Although it was possible that was what they were here for, to save this part of the universe. If they were still somehow at home helping save their universe, maybe they should be concentrating on saving this one instead of trying to go home. Either way, he supposed, studying the portal was not a bad place to start on either project.
“Would you fly a plane? A helicopter? A hot air balloon?” He grinned; the last one was a joke. Although he supposed it would count as flying “something”.
He should have probably expected the question to come back at him, but he still wasn’t entirely prepared. He said the first thing that came into his head. “I wouldn’t mind driving a car again. But I might have to settle for a rental or a go-kart.”
--
It felt strange not to have that longing for space anymore. That had been the foundation of so much of his and Matt’s relationship, idly planning for missions and discoveries. They’d gone much farther than they had planned and learned even more.
And when it came to flying in space, he knew that nothing would ever compare to the Black Lion.
No, he wanted the simplicity that came with flying on this planet. The relative ease, the lack of needing battle instinct.
“A jet, probably,” Shiro said. That was what they had been trained on. “Though the hot air balloon would be tempting.”
Shiro snickered a little at Matt’s response.
“I can find you a go-kart, Holt,” he answered, amused.
…
“You could probably get a job with an airline,” Matt said. “Go places. See the world. I could be your stewardess.”
He laughed at that, even though it was a serious suggestion, and lifted his beer to his lips. He did like the idea of flying all over the world, even if he had already committed to a job right here studying the portal. “Or maybe you could just get me free tickets.”
Grinning, he turned his head towards Shiro. “You want to race me?”
--
That was an entertaining image. He didn’t think either of them would enjoy working for an airline. He knew Matt was capable of the friendliness needed for the job, but he could only begin to imagine how Matt would somehow manage to shove science into his tasks.
“I’m not sure you’d be able to call what would happen a race,” Shiro answered with a grin.
…
“A crash?” Matt asked, amused. “Are you that bad a driver, Shiro?”
He actually couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen Shiro drive a car. Compared to the other skills they’d been working on the garrison, it wouldn’t have been a big deal if it had happened. Now that he was thinking about it, it was a little weird to imagine Shiro behind the wheel. But he suspected Shiro would do just fine. He was a really great pilot.
--
“You’ll just have to find out,” Shiro said with false bravado, because it didn’t really matter who was winning a race or not. The race, in fact, wasn’t so much what was important right now. It was more just the flow of the conversation, the fact that, after capture, torture, separation, and fighting a war, they could still just act like themselves while they were together.
…
“You know what I have?” Matt said, suddenly. “Mario Kart.” He grinned. “After we finish here we should go play. It’s the only safe way to drink and drive.”
He winked at Shiro. Not one of his cleverest jokes, but he could blame the beer for that.
--
Shiro laughed at the idea. He couldn’t remember the last time he had played a video game -- that likely had been with Matt too. He knew his first time definitely had been, if you didn’t count the garrison’s simulators, which Shiro didn’t.
“You’re on,” Shiro answered.
..
Matt clinked his beer against Shiro’s. “Here’s to the race,” he said. He found it hilariously ironic that they were talking about racing when neither of them had moved from their chairs at all. “Not that I’m in any rush to get there.”
He bumped his knee against Shiro’s. “I missed hanging out with you.”
--
The subtle gesture and the comment unleashed a torrent of feelings in Shiro’s chest that, slightly drunk, he couldn’t entirely keep at bay.
“I missed you so much,” Shiro confessed. He’d tried to keep that under tight control while they were with Voltron, because it seemed so unfair to add his own erratic emotions about losing the Holts to Pidge’s. Especially when he had just accepted that they were dead -- it was the only way he could get through being in the arena.
…
“Hey, hey,” Matt said reassuringly. He put a hand on Shiro’s shoulder and then decided to go ahead and sling his arm across Shiro’s shoulders. “I missed you too. I’m here now, though. And I’ll be around in your future at home too. You can’t get rid of me that easy.”
He understood the feeling, because he’d felt it too, although he’d been more than a little bit convinced that Shiro was dead. It just seemed impossible that he could have survived the battle against that monster in the arena. But he’d always hoped, and it turned out that Shiro had indeed managed to survive it somehow. Like a badass.
--
He swallowed hard at the reminder of their future back in their own world. He was afraid to go back. Everyone else was still so steadfast in returning, but Shiro was afraid of being recaptured. He realized that with a blunt desperation. He knew he needed to go back and fight, and he didn’t want to, because he didn’t want to have to go through captivity again first.
“Am I…” Shiro tried to ask, because he knew he would have tried to hide it from the paladins as much as possible, because that’s what he had been doing all along, but if Matt was back -- who also had seen what it was like to be a Galra prisoner -- maybe he had shared more with him.
What he really wanted to ask was how human he was when Matt met him again. How wrong was he?
“Am I all right?” he asked instead.
...
The question surprised him, but Matt supposed that it shouldn’t have. Of course Shiro would be worrying about his future; he was going to disappear and be captured by the Galra again. Matt had not guessed at anything like that happening when he had seen Shiro in the castle, which he supposed was a good sign.
“I think so,” he said, after a moment. “I mean, you were all in one piece - including the new arm. We didn’t really get a chance to talk, so I don’t know exactly where your head was at.”
--
Some gallows humor rose in Shiro, and he was half tempted to say that because of the new arm, he would never be in one piece again. He squashed that urge.
“We didn’t talk?” Shiro repeated, surprised. It was so hard to decipher so much of what was happening in the future, because he only had pieces, but not what was going through his own head. It still deeply worried him that Keith had stepped away from being the pilot of the Black Lion and that he had somehow found his way back into that cockpit.
…
“Well,” Matt said, “Katie was kind of dragging me with her everywhere. And then I was in the green lion with her while you guys were forming Voltron, and then we were all pulling together for the attack on Naxzela, and I was coordinating with the rebels… there was a lot going on.”
He had meant to find a moment to talk to Shiro, but it just… hadn’t happened. He hadn’t really been concerned about it before, but Shiro sounded a little worried about it. “Why? You think something happened to you?”
--
Shiro struggled to sort through his thoughts to be able to explain exactly what he was worried about. But also part of him simply knew that if he had been with the Galra, how had something not happened to him, especially after he had unlocked the black bayard and with Zarkon’s connection to the Black Lion? He didn’t imagine the druids or Zarkon would be kind to a black paladin, especially not one who had been modified by Haggar herself already.
His belly went a little cold at the thought. Had any of them ever fully considered how dangerous it might be for him to be in the cockpit of one of the lions? When he literally cared Galra tech with him everywhere he went?
“My head wasn’t in a good place to begin with,” Shiro said, and that was putting it mildly. “I worry about how fit I would be to lead the team coming back.”
…
Matt was quiet for a long moment, trying to think all of that through. It was harder to think quickly or thoroughly now that he’d had a few beers, but he did his best. He wished he had thought about it sooner. He’d just trusted Shiro, like the others did, but hadn’t thought about the fact that Shiro might need him. To see something like this that maybe the others wouldn’t have. To… do something, though what that would be, Matt didn’t know. Maybe just to be his friend, instead of a soldier in arms.
Matt had spent long enough with the rebels that apparently he’d forgotten to check on his people when there was a battle to fight, because that was the mentality the rebels had. It was an important mentality and one that had kept them alive more than once.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I should have checked in with you.” Guilt twisted in his stomach. Shiro had saved his life, and Matt had been given an opportunity to do something to help his friend, but he hadn’t. “For what it’s worth, though, you seemed like you were leading just fine.”
--
“No, no,” Shiro protested, trying to smooth the moment over. The last thing he’d wanted to do was make Matt feel guilty. “It’s not your fault. I’m probably worrying where there’s nothing to worry about.”
All the others had seemed to think nothing was amiss either. And he had to trust that Allura would have never let him near the lions if she didn’t trust him -- she’d known that he’d been taken captive by the Galra. If he was a risk, she would have let him know. And moreover, he didn’t think Black would have let him back as her pilot if he wasn’t fit.
…
“No, it’s not my fault,” Matt said. “But I still should’ve checked in with you. I’m sure I will do that, as soon as we have a chance to breathe.” He drew in a deep breath. “It sure is nice to have a chance to breathe.”
He hadn’t meant to ruin the conversation. He debated what to say next, wanting to figure out how to make Shiro feel comfortable speaking again. “Was there something in particular you’re worrying about?”
--
“It is good to have a chance to breathe,” Shiro echoed, hoping that would lighten the mood a little. He half smiled. It was at the very least true. With Voltron, it always seemed as if they were stumbling from one crisis to another or prepping for the next crisis.
Shiro sat back in the chair again, purposefully relaxing his posture.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I was just surprised to hear that I was piloting the Black Lion again after Keith had taken over.”
…
Matt realized he still had his arm loosely draped over Shiro’s shoulders; he pulled it back a little and rubbed at his upper back. His experience with fighting the Galra had been different from Shiro’s, but he wasn’t sure that either one was more or less stressful. Voltron was more powerful than any of the ships the rebels had, but it was also a big responsibility, and even more of a responsibility for Shiro to lead that team.
He still didn’t know much about what had happened with the Black Lion. He figured Shiro would have to go to one of his teammates for more information about that, and if he wanted to know, he’d probably already done that. He was more concerned with the other comment: my head wasn’t in a good place to begin with.
“Your head,” he said. “How’s it doing now? Here?”
--
“Fine,” Shiro said. The worry had just evolved into something else. It had gone from having too much responsibility to the frustration of not having any. All he could do was sit and wonder in a world that wasn’t his own.
He could only flip through the same shattered memories of his time with the Galra -- the regained recollection of injuring Matt so he could leave, most of the fight when he’d gotten the injury that still tweaked in his knee when the weather changed, and the blur of the druids surrounding him when they’d replaced his arm. Those memories were among the worst, because he’d known something was wrong, that they were doing something to him that couldn’t be reversed; in his pain and haze, he’d pleaded.
He never knew which memories were worse: the ones where he remembered what he had done to stay alive, or the ones where he remembered what the Galra had done to make him a weapon. They were two twining threads that had stripped him of his humanity.
So, yes, being here had given him time to process what he hadn’t been able to process while he had been leading Voltron, but that had also given him time to realize just how much of a danger he could have been to the others.
…
Matt raised his eyebrows at the one-word answer. “Are you sure?”
He wasn’t going to make Shiro talk to him, but Shiro had been so surprised that they hadn’t talked, which had made him think there was stuff Shiro still wanted to talk about. Maybe Shiro had only figured there was stuff to talk about in the future. “You can talk to me, you know. It doesn’t have to wait til future at home.”
--
He knew he was being dumb. He had just confessed that he thought Matt would be one of the rare people who he could open up to who would understand what he had gone through and then was refusing to tell him. It just … He had never talked to anyone, really, about what he had gone through. Not the full extent of jagged memories. He’d only shared with the team if they had been vital to a part of the mission.
Some part of him was afraid that if he picked at these wounds, he would never be able to close them back up.
“I killed a lot of things, and I don’t know why,” Shiro said. “And I can’t ever forget that.” It looked back at him any time he looked in a mirror, showing in the scar on the bridge of his nose, anytime he did anything with his hands, when he was perpetually reminded that an entire portion of his body had been grafted onto him by his enemy, and whenever he tried to do so much as change his shirt.
…
“In the arena, you mean?” Matt asked, choosing his words carefully. He was a scientist; he didn’t want to reach any conclusions until he had all the information. It was possibly true that he understood what Shiro had been through better than the rest of the Voltron team, including his sister, but he also hadn’t been in the arena for very long. He had Shiro to thank for that. “Did you have reasons other than… surviving?”
--
“Is that a good enough reason?” Shiro asked seriously, looking at Matt. Yes, that was why he had fought and killed in the arena. He didn’t want to die. It was a simple but undeniably profound motivator. But now that Shiro was on the other side, he was no longer sure if he had made the right decision. It had been easier when he was still with Voltron, when he had had the ability to try and balance out all the wrongs he had done by freeing others who had been hurt by the Galra empire -- by only fighting those who were actually committing crimes, not other prisoners who were also just trying to get out alive.
…
“Yeah,” Matt said, looking back at him intently. “Yeah, Shiro, it is.”
He understood why it was a reason Shiro would struggle with. He was comparing the worth of his life against that of the… things, beings, that he had killed. That was a difficult comparison to make, especially if those beings had only been fighting Shiro because they were forced to, the same way Shiro was forced to fight them.
But Matt thought that was the wrong comparison, the wrong calculation to make. Maybe there had been other beings in that arena that deserved to live - other prisoners, who would not have fought or killed anything if any of them had been hurt. But would they have borne the burden of those memories the same way Shiro did, without turning into something violent and unlike their original selves? Would they have done any good in the universe afterward? Maybe, in which case the loss of their lives was a tragedy. But Shiro had proven definitively that his survival would result in a positive force in the universe. That meant he deserved to survive, too. If other beings that deserved to live had died, that didn’t make Shiro deserve it any less. Even if he was the one to kill them. That wasn’t his fault, not really; it was the Galra, who had forced that competition on them. Without the Galra in the equation, both probably would have survived. Take Shiro out of the picture, and the others captured by the Galra stood a good chance of dying anyway. Shiro didn’t have to blame himself for that.
--
“I killed someone else’s best friend,” Shiro answered bluntly. “I killed someone else’s son.” He had no doubt that somewhere in the fray he had killed someone like Matt, who was smart and loved by many, and didn’t deserve to be in the arena, but he had wound up across from Shiro. If Matt had been killed that day, Shiro knew he wouldn’t be sympathetic to his killer, so he couldn’t figure out how to extend the same courtesy to himself with the situations reversed.
…
“They would have killed you, wouldn’t they?” Matt said. “If you hadn’t fought better?”
He tried to put his thoughts into a more coherent fashion, since it was obvious Shiro needed a different explanation, a different way of looking at it. He turned his beer around in his hands and ran his fingers over the label. “Look at this way. They didn’t deserve to die, and killing them wasn’t a good thing. But if you weren’t there, they would have still been in that situation, and they might have been killed by someone else, or just...killed by the Galra. You were just unlucky enough to be the person that was there to fight them. You wouldn’t have killed them if you didn’t have to. They had a right to fight to survive, just like you, and your right doesn’t cancel theirs out, but… theirs doesn’t cancel yours out, either.”
He wasn’t sure, with the alcohol in his system, that his rambling had actually made sense this time. He tried to sum it up more succinctly. “You can be upset about the things that you did, and think that your actions were wrong, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve to get out of there alive, and that was what you had to do.”
--
They would have. Shiro knew this. (This whole conversation still felt surreal, and he wasn’t unaware that he was basically trying to convince Matt that he had deserved to die in that arena, and he wasn’t unaware that there wasn’t anyone among their paladin family who would agree with that assessment.
It didn’t necessarily change Shiro’s mind. They didn’t see. They didn’t know. They were still seeing him as the person he had been in the garrison, but he wasn’t that person anymore.)
He was a Galra weapon. He knew that wasn’t what Matt was trying to say, but that’s what he heard anyway, in the part of his head where Haggar still reigned. They would have died anyway, but Shiro had been the tool they had used.
“It’s fine, Matty,” Shiro said, patting Matt on the knee.
…
Matt eyed him. “You don’t agree with me, do you?”
He couldn’t really blame Shiro for holding this against himself, for taking it so hard. Matt had been there, but not really there in the same way; he’d never been part of the fighting. Shiro had made sure he wouldn’t be. It bothered Matt that he couldn’t at least help Shiro live with what he’d done a little easier. “You would have saved them instead, if you could have. That matters, you know.”
--
He didn’t agree with Matt, but he really didn’t want this to devolve into a debate over Shiro’s culpability. He wanted to go back to just drinking and playing Mario Kart, but he was the one who had opened this door in the first place, and he wasn’t surprised that it hadn’t been that easy to close.
Shiro paused.
Did it matter?
On the one hand, no. His intent did no matter, because those people were still dead. But on the other hand … it very much did matter, because Haggar had wanted to break him, and his will hadn’t broken. He had never killed willingly for her. He had never become an instrument that was honed finely enough to be taken out of the arena and put on a battlefield for the Galra.
“I suppose so,” Shiro answered.
...
Matt patted him on the shoulder. “If you didn’t deserve to survive, you wouldn’t feel so bad about having to kill for it.”
It was another way of getting at it, and he wasn’t sure it would be any more effective, but he seemed to be getting somewhere. Shiro was at least considering what he was saying. That was important. “And I’m really glad you’re alive, buddy.”
--
That last part was easier to latch onto. The odds of both of them surviving the Galra were astronomical. But here they were.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how good it is to see you again,” Shiro said.
…
Matt grinned at him. “It’s okay. I know the feeling.”
He leaned against Shiro’s side, with their shoulders pressed together. It didn’t seem quite the moment for a hug - which also would have been awkward with the two of them sitting next to each other - but there was enough sentiment that he felt like a shoulder pat didn’t quite cut it. “What do you wanna do after we retire from space rebellion?”
--
Shiro leaned amicably back against Matt, comforted just by his nearness.
He couldn’t help but laugh a little at the question. What did he want to do after the space rebellion? It seemed like too much to think about most days. It seemed like a second chance just to be out of a Galra cell, so actually making plans seemed a step too far.
He wanted to go back to Japan. He knew that. He hadn’t been back since he had enrolled in the garrison, and it seemed weird to go there now, knowing that his family still wouldn’t be there and that the Japan of his childhood might be marginally different than the one here.
“Just see more of Earth in general, I suppose,” Shiro said. He had spent so long looking at the stars that now he wondered what he missed out on from his own planet. But in terms of a career or something like that, he had no idea. What did one former pilot, current Voltron paladin more onto?
“You?” Shiro asked.
…
“That sounds good,” Matt said. “I’ll travel with you. That’s my plan.”
He nudged Shiro’s shoulder with his own again. The truth was, he didn’t have a real answer. He had spent a long time convincing himself not to think about it, to focus on the rebellion and not what he had left behind. He had only started thinking about that again when Katie had appeared. He supposed what he had really wanted was exactly what he had here: his sister, his friends, his planet.
--
“We’ll play Mario Kart on every continent,” Shiro remarked idly. He was quietly relieved that the conversation had pivoted back toward easier topics. He knew they had both been through a lot, but Shiro didn’t want to spoil their time together by focusing on all those darker things.
…
“Starting with this one,” Matt agreed, grinning. He clinked his beer against Shiro’s, and then finished it off. “Ready?”