lance alvarez (powpowpow) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-07-15 12:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, voltron: keith kogane, ₴ inactive: lance alvarez |
Lance wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been gone from the apartment. The sun had just started to peek out when he had left, it was well in the sky now. He was sure he was probably hungry but didn't feel it. He was sure he probably needed to drink something, but didn't feel it. Flying Red back to the Castle had helped, somewhat. Cleared his head a little at least. Settled the million little thoughts into some semblance of an order. Enough at least that he felt he could go back to the apartment without feeling the same sense of panicked anxiety he had earlier in the morning.
He unlocked the door and dropped his keys in the little dish on the table by the entrance. Toed off his shoes and bayard in hand made his way into the living room. He was quiet as he walked over to the couch, to Keith, and dropped down heavy beside his friend. And damn that was a lot more loaded of a word than it had been yesterday, now that Lance had caught up (and then some) to Keith. Now that he knew just how strong and deep that connection was.
"I found Red," he said, his voice a little hoarse, as he leaned forward to set his bayard down on the coffee table. He fell back against the couch, his head clunked against the back of it. There was - more to it than that. He knew that was most likely obvious as all hell. He was sure he looked a mess - red eyed and exhausted, the marks alone enough to indicate something had changed. But for the moment that was all he could get out.
When Keith had woken up that morning, it had been to Kosmo nudging him awake before his alarm. He joined Shiro on his early morning runs more often than not, but it had been too early even for that when he had woken this time. He has been dragged out of bed to where Lance had left a note addressed to him and Shiro and his concern had spiked immediately, reading it.
A memory update. He had heard of them, but hadn't had the chance to go through one himself or see anyone he knew suffer one. He knew it could be a good thing or a bad thing, but the note had implied it to be more of the latter. He had woken Shiro and they had quietly talked it out in the predawn morning, but had decided to let Lance have his space to process whatever memories he was now dealing with.
For now. It didn't stop Keith from sending the other man a text letting him know they read the note, but to come home at some point or else he was going to go after him, but left Lance alone after that.
So it was a relief that by midday, Lance was back.
Keith had been filling out an application to apply to the local university and for financial aid, trying to keep busy so that he didn't go after Lance prematurely, when he heard the door open and shut. He dropped the clipboard and pen he had in his hands onto the coffee table, before Lance rounded the corner and headed straight for the couch that Keith was on.
And what Keith saw...was shocking.
Lance looked older now, but perhaps even more so than he did even back home from the time Keith and Shiro came from. But that wasn't the shocking part. Nor was the news about Red.
It was the Altean markings on Lance's face. Keith had been frozen in shock while Lance deposited the very familiar bayard in his hand onto the coffee table, before he surged up to one knee on the couch so that he could lean over to put his hands on Lance's face. Thumbs smoothing over the markings and violet eyes wide, Keith asked in a worried tone, "What happened, Lance?"
Lance had just started to slip back into getting lost in his own jumbled thoughts when Keith's hands pressed to his face. The touch grounding him back to the present moment. To the couch in their apartment in Vallo, far from his room on the Atlas where he'd been holed up, trying to come to terms with all that had just happened. That Keith honed in on the marks was not really a surprise. Of everything it was those that marked him as different more than anything.
He looked up at Keith, reached his hands to rest lightly over Keith's on his face. It took a moment, to try to sort out where Keith's memories stopped and his own began.
"The Robeast, it was Honerva's - Haggar's -" when had they worked out they were one in the same, he wasn't sure. "She wanted to…" he trailed off a little, letting his eyes close as he tried to figure out the short version of a long story. "She wanted Zarkon and Lotor back and destroyed the very fabric of all realities when she realized she couldn't make it happen." There was more, of course, but Lance figured the details could wait.
"Allura - she - " Lance's voice cracked there and he dropped his head out of Keith's hands, rested his elbows against his knees and hid himself behind his own hands. "She's gone, Keith. She saved everyone, but no one could save her - " I couldn't save her.
Memories and timelines were a funny thing, but Keith knew about the Haggar/Honerva connection. Enough so that part wasn’t a shock, even if the rest of it was.
Especially the news about Allura.
They had been happy. They had finally faced down what they thought was the last of the Galra Empire threat. A mysterious new enemy had appeared, but that had been something for them to deal with in the future.
A future Lance had just seen and dealt with.
Flopping back down onto the couch, Keith stared at Lance huddled into himself and let his mind race a mile a minute, trying to understand everything Lance was saying. But he shook himself out of the muddled confusion of his own mind and moved to action. He reached over to put what he hoped was a comforting hand on Lance’s back. “Hey, come on,” he coaxed, trying to get Lance to look at him. “I…” he didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know what else happened, but whatever you’re feeling, you can get it out here. No one’s going to judge you.” He let his arms open a little, offering a hug.
Lance shifted and all but buried himself into Keith at the open arms. He knew Keith meant what he had said but Lance had gotten most of the worst of it out in Red. But he took comfort in the closeness with his friend still, knowing that even if everything felt awful and raw and terrible right now that it might get better. Eventually. That at the very least he wasn't alone in it all.
"She deserved so much better," he said after a long moment. And that was what it came down to wasn't it. His own feelings aside, his own dreams for a future they'd never have now, for a life after all the fighting and saving the universe. "Everything she went through, how hard she fought… she deserved to see her people happy and whole again, she deserved a life, a future."
It felt like an understatement to say it wasn't fair. They'd dealt with nothing but unfairness for so long, but this felt especially hard to swallow. That in the end, only four paladins had returned when five had set out.
When they had signed up to become Paladins of Voltron, an understanding had dawned after their first few battles. The understanding that any second, one of them could make the ultimate sacrifice. And there had been tears and worries and fears, but they had all come to accept the cost of trying to save the universe.
But Allura, she had woken up from her sleep and had been ready to make that sacrifice from day one. Keith knew that, even as he felt tears prickle at his eyes at the thought of her gone.
“When we decided to get involved in this fight,” Keith started to say, choking back the emotion in his own voice and shifting so he could wrap his arms around Lance a little better. Thankfully, Lance wasn’t as bulky as Hunk or Shiro, otherwise, it would have been difficult. “We all knew we could pay that price. Allura most of all. I think, if what she did helped in the end, she would have been at peace with her choice.” He still didn’t understand the whole scenario, but he knew this much to be true. Hopefully pointing it out brought Lance some kind of comfort because it was difficult to see him like this.
He was usually so...alive, sarcastic, happy. The pain in his voice wasn’t new, exactly, but it wasn’t the usual. And it felt heavier. Like there was more Keith wasn’t getting.
Lance knew what Keith was saying. They'd all come close so many times to dying, to not making it back from some mission - hell, he had died. Briefly. Until Allura had brought him back from it. Or at least he thought he'd died, it sure had felt like it. They'd all known the risks every time they went out, risks that had gotten only more and more intense as their fight continued.
They'd lost Shiro. Gotten him back in all the ways that counted. They'd seen cities destroyed, people destroyed, they'd lost and they'd felt the pang of defeat alongside the joy of victory. And while Keith didn't have memory of it, Lance did. The moments they sat helpless as Honerva destroyed countless realities and the onslaught of pain from the very universe itself as she did.
So he knew maybe it was dumb, to be hung up on this one loss the way he was. But he was. Because he loved Allura, had stupidly let himself think of a future with her and now all of that was gone. Before they'd even really had a chance to see what it could be, outside the craziness of saving the universe.
He pulled back after a long moment and wiped at his already raw eyes with the sleeves of his hoodie. "I love her," he said quietly between them. Sincerely and such a far cry from the countless infatuations that had come before. "I promised her, when everything was all over, that she wouldn't be alone, that we would be - " he trailed off, rubbed a hand behind his neck. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now," he admitted.
God, the pain of losing Shiro, of having to move on and try to honor his legacy and wishes? It had been difficult for Keith and Lance had been a comfort in that time, even when they were still butting heads about how to move forward. He hadn’t understood why the loss had felt so deeply back then, why it felt like losing a part of him, but getting Shiro back? Had been the greatest joy he had felt.
So he got it. He understood what Lance was feeling when he spoke about Allura in that context. The surprise in Keith’s face was obvious, but he quickly tried to school it away as he worked on what to say. He was afraid of misstepping, of his words ringing hollow, so he just went with what he felt in his heart.
“You keep living your life, to honor hers,” Keith said, putting a hand on Lance’s shoulder and squeezing. Then he reached up to press a thumb against one of the new marks on Lance’s face and said, “Whatever this is...I know it means she would want you to keep living for her.”
The truth was, despite the past few years, Lance had been lucky. His life had been relatively without tragedy, without loss to mark his youth and put a definitive before and after point. He was what he'd told the mice so long ago: just a boy from Cuba. His life had been brimming with ordinary until suddenly it was anything but. And extraordinary it seemed, had a mark to leave. He felt lost right then, in the still unfamiliar ocean of grief and guilt. A stranger in the tragedy that had just played out.
But Keith's words rang true and he knew the sentiment behind them was what Allura would want for him. For all of them. That she had done what she did so they could all live… even if that might take some time.
Lance reached for Keith's hand on his face and linked their fingers together to give Keith's hand a tight squeeze. There was more he would have to say, about how far they'd come since those early days, about how much Keith had come to mean to him, how he got it now. Why they had been picked the way they had - Keith in Black and Lance in Red. But Lance was exhausted and hoped the squeeze of his hand, the warmth in his gaze despite the sadness that lingered there would say at least some of it for the moment.
"Thank you," he said. For listening, for grounding him.
His head pounded, the emotional and physical toll of the day catching up with him. The sheer exhaustion of having a couple years of memories shoved into his brain overnight. "I think I need to lay down for a bit," sleep probably but Lance really wasn't better on that one coming anytime soon. But closing his eyes sounded good, anything to maybe lessen the pounding in his head. He let go of Keith's hand and started to arrange the couch pillows to crash against. "Can you stay?" he asked as he flopped down onto the couch. He didn't care if Keith threw on some show to fill the silence, or went back to the paperwork on the table (another thing he made note to bring up later), he just didn't want to be alone with his thoughts.
The two of them had come a very long way from back when they were just kids at the Garrison. And Keith wouldn’t have traded it for the world, even with all their fighting and growing pains they had gone through. Lance was his friend, probably his best friend these days. But more importantly, he was family and while Keith was still learning the meaning of family and what it meant to him, he knew that family took care of each other and he was getting better at that too.
So he nodded, getting ready to leave Lance to his rest, when he stopped him with his request. Immediately he shifted from leaving to staying, nodding as he mentally changed gears. “Of course, Lance.” He could just stick around and finish working on the university paperwork, while keeping an eye on the other man. Shiro would be getting a text soon, letting him know what happened. “Rest now, I’ll be here when you wake up,” he promised, as he rearranged himself onto the ground next to the couch, within touching distance of Lance. And if it took a few days of sticking near to ease whatever burdens Lance was handling at the moment, Keith could do that too.
Lance got comfy on the couch, an arm haphazardly flung over the edge to press against Keith's on the floor. Not a huge touch, but just something. A reminder he wasn't alone in all this. Keith was there. Shiro was there. They'd all get through it the way they always got through it. Together.