WHERE: Vallo City: Nino's Parking Lot WHEN: July 6th, 2022 (Backdated) WHAT: Keith checks in on Blue and Blue unbans him from Nino's. WARNINGS: N/A STATUS: Complete
When he had heard about Noah, his first instinct had been to reach out to Blue and Gansey to make sure they were alright. But just as he was about to text one or both of them, he had second thoughts and put himself in their place. Would he want to hear from people if he was in their shoes? Not really. He would want to bury himself in work or spend time with Shiro, maybe blow some things up.
So he waited a few days, giving them time and space to grieve on their own.
Then he made his way to Nino’s on a day he knew Blue was working and waited in the back lot, near the picnic table that they sometimes hung out at. Keith opened his messenger app and sent Blue a text, takeout from the Thai place down the street sitting on the table behind him.
‘Take your break and come out to the back.’
Blue was not doing well. Physically, she was fine. All legs and arms intact, heart still pumping her judgy blood in her veins. But her head was a mess. Losing Noah again felt like someone had thrown her off a mountain and she was freefalling forever. But she had to toughen up, be some solid foundation for the rest of the house. Especially for Gansey, who was dealing with survivor's guilt in the worst way. There was nothing really Blue could say or do to make it better, just push through.
Working her shifts at Nino's was stupidly normal. And if customers were rude, or tipped badly, or asked for no ice in their drinks like a heathen, she could be moody right back and not feel bad about it. She was currently, aggressively, cutting slices of pizza which felt like a constructive way to let out her sad and frustrated energy when she saw the text from Keith.
She mumbled to her phone—you can't tell me what to do, Keith, not that he would hear it—before she took her break and came out back.
Waving the roller blade that she had forgotten to put down, Blue stomped up to Keith. "I thought I banned you," were the first words out of her mouth, and then she saw the Thai food. Her eyes narrowed even more suspiciously. "What happened?"
Maybe he felt the energy she gave his text message because he just knew she would come stomping out there like he had kicked her puppy. He didn't bother with a greeting, instead shooting back, "You ban me every week. It never sticks. Besides, I didn't come inside."
He didn't bother waiting for her reply (or checking to see if she would throw her roller blade at him), instead taking a seat at the bench and starting to open up containers. Keith knew the food smelled good enough to distract her, so he didn't try to bug her into joining him. She would do it herself when she smelled something other than pizza. "It still freaks me out that Aang looks so much like Kipp now," he said instead, knowing she was quicker to soften when she had someone else's problems to focus on.
Blue liked to put up a fight so that she didn't look easy, or knowable. She took pride in her ability to constantly keep people on their toes—was she going to invite them over for some food or pull out a switchblade and threaten to take off their ear? But ultimately she was tired, and putting up the front felt more exhausting than working a twelve hour shift at Nino's. She chewed on the inside of her mouth, considered this peace offering, and sat down across from Keith.
The Thai food did smell better than the marinara-mozzarella that seemed to permeate her clothes no matter how much she did laundry. Blue didn't wait for Keith to offer her the container, and she took one without even checking what it was, and put down her 'weapon'. Peace, truce, whatever.
"You're lucky Aang is chill about it. If it were me, and someone kept staring at me because I looked like their future kid, I would have found a way to, I don't know, throw you out a window," Blue said, but she didn't sound serious. Her mind was, obviously, somewhere else. "How long do you think it's going to be weird for you?"
“It probably would ruin his whole peace-love-Avatar vibe if he threw me out the window,” Keith said, digging through the sauce packets available to them and finding the chili sauces. He ripped open two with his teeth and poured it onto a portion of the pineapple fried rice he had bought. He wordlessly offered to her with a smirk, quick to snatch it away if she tried knocking it out of his hand.
“I don’t know, I guess when I get the nerve to talk to Shiro about the fact that we’re probably going to be meeting Kipp in the next couple of years and we should probably move out to the cabin finally.” It was still a work in progress, with them putting in the work, time, and money when they could, but it was definitely livable. “But that’s a conversation for another time. Why do you look like you’re a thousand miles away?” And that’s why he was really here, to give her a chance to get things off her chest without anyone else seeing it.
"This is comfort food," Blue said, accusatory. She had half a mind to stand up and stomp off, out of spite, because she wasn't being pitiful. She had done a good job of keeping it together, no reason to stop now but... still. Blue stayed put, frowned, and stared down at her food, pushing it around with a plastic fork.
The question wasn't a surprise—it was bound to come up eventually—and Keith had given her an opportunity to lie if she really wanted. She only half-lied. It was like a baby step into the truth.
"I'm not sad, you know. He's already been gone before." That was her argument, the one thing she kept circling back to. Blue reasoned she couldn't be sad because she'd already used her sadness when Noah left them the last, right? It was selfish to get upset again. Except that she had gotten two more years with him, where she didn't get that back home, and she was mourning that loss too. There was no happy ending. Noah was dead in every situation.
And that just made her sadder, so she huffed, seemingly irritated with her feelings. "I'm not ignoring that stuff you said about getting the nerve to talk to Shiro, either. I'm only answering questions if you do," Blue said. "Why are you scared to talk to him about moving?"
Keith knew all about half truths and about letting his feelings hide and fester. It had led to problems in the past, but this time, he was doing less of that and more of…planning to reveal things to Shiro in what he thought would be a more appropriate time. “Because it means leaving Lance alone and I don’t know if any of us are ready to be apart like that. ” It felt too soon, now that it was on the horizon with a livable cabin and a vague plan for the future.
“Why are you lying about being sad? Don’t tell me you’re not, I can see it on your face under the growling and angry eyebrows.” Question for question. He could work this game.
Blue understood that. She always wanted to get out of her house, with her mom and her aunts all up in everyone's business, but when they time actually came to roadtrip with Gansey and Henry, there was some bittersweetness to the whole endeavor of moving out.
"I have excellent eyebrows, thank you very much," Blue said, ignoring the question at first. But she had proposed this weird little game, and Blue—despite her aggressive take on many things—did not like unfairness, especially with her friends.
"Noah would be, I don't know, upset that I'm sad about him. He wouldn't even let me be sad when I found his body. You know, on account of being a ghost and everything," Blue said, trying to sound nonchalant. It was terrible, she was such a bad liar. "And Gansey is having survivor's guilt. Noah saved his life twice by dying on the ley line back home, and so his leaving is hitting him hard. Someone needs to stay strong through all of this."
She finally ate a bite of pad thai because it smelled good and she needed a pause in talking. "You're worried about abandoning Lance? Do you think Lance would see it that way? He's your best friend." That was two questions, so sue her.
Keith knew all about survivor’s guilt and feeling like he couldn’t grieve properly over friends that had died. He still hadn’t fully dealt with finding out about Allura’s death, but Lance had gone through so much, he had put aside his feelings about it and had been there for Lance. One day, that was going to bite him in the ass, but so far that day hadn’t come.
“You can be strong, sure, but I think Gansey would want you to lean on him too and give him something else to focus on.” He looked down at his rice, not really feeling hungry because this had been an excuse to go talk to Blue, but not ready to waste food either. “I don’t think Noah would be upset either. I just don’t think he’d want you to dwell on it or pause your own lives over it.” He hadn’t known Noah that well, but he had seemed the type to want to not be a bother to anyone. He reminded Keith of quite a few of his friends. “All I know is that you’re not going to get through it if you choose not to deal with it.”
And before she could hit him, he shrugged and said, “I think Lance would be the first one to throw us a housewarming party at the new place. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I was abandoning him.” Emotions weren’t logical in the least.
Blue dropped her head back, and groaned: she hated when Keith was right. She might have held out about pineapple pizza—even if somehow her tastebuds decided to change their mind, she would never give him the benefit of the doubt and agree—but holding back the sadness that had been building for days was ridiculous. But she wasn't going to cry, not while she was still on the clock at Nino's, break or not.
She shoved the heels of her hands into her hands though, because as a surprise to her, telling herself not to shed a tear was not that simple. "It's not pausing my life, I know he wouldn't want that but like, hell, shit. This was supposed to be his second chance. Not being a ghost. Not being murdered. And he doesn't get to go do normal teenager things when he goes home. He just goes back to being dead. It's stupid, it's so stupid, Keith, because it's unfair."
Yes, she was upset, but she was also angry, because there was nothing she could do about it. Vallo took Henry, her mom, and her aunt, and now it took Noah. She wanted to throw something, but she also wanted to focus on Keith's problem.
Blue sniffed, wiped at her nose, and frowned at Keith. "Wait, why do you feel like you're abandoning him? Did I miss something? I know I've been, you know, but you said I should give Gansey something else to focus on, you give me something else to focus on."
He wouldn’t disagree with her about life being unfair. His whole life had been a series of unfair circumstances, even after becoming a Paladin of Voltron. But it had turned for the better when he had finally worked out that he deserved good things and he deserved not to dwell on what he could have done better or right.
It wasn’t selfish to put yourself first.
Keith almost reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but had second thoughts about it when she turned the questioning back on him. “For the majority of the last four years of my life? We’ve been stuck together. Yeah there was that break for about two years where I was stuck on a space whale with my mom,” weirdest sentence of his life “But all the same…it’s been us, the Paladins of Voltron together through everything. And now I want to take my husband and run off to a cabin in the woods?” He shrugged. “It just feels selfish even though I know it isn’t. And he’s always had a hard time of it, being here without his family. I don’t want him to think we’re leaving him.”
The food was abandoned for now, so he could tuck his legs against his chest and rest his chin on his knees. Looking over at Blue, he asked, “Do you think Noah had a good life while he was here? Did he make the most of it with you guys?”
Blue nodded, then nodded again. "I'd like to think he did. He got to do his art and he was working on his food truck, Chicken Out. He always talked about it when he was—" She didn't want to say dead, and even a ghost was pushing it. Blue liked to continue thinking of him alive and happy here. "When he was around. I won't ever get to ask him, but I hope so."
It almost worked. Every time she would start to get too sad about Noah, she would try to think through Keith's answers to her questions about moving and Lance and those complicated abandonment feelings. She understood. Blue knew Gansey felt similarly when it came to the Barns, that eventually there would be a time when they would all split to have families and grow in their respective houses. The future was both continually distant and distressingly close.
"Does the cabin have to be in the woods?" Blue asked abruptly. "You're worried about abandoning him for the cabin but there doesn't have to be this intense seclusion if the thing that you want is the place not the location." Or the people and not the place.
“It…it would be nice to be secluded though. Some place where we can just be away from everyone, for it to just be us.” A recurring theme in Keith’s life had been to be alone. Growing up, after his father died, even at the Garrison with Shiro and Adam checking in on him so often…he hadn’t minded being alone. He liked it and he liked the idea of having Shiro to himself when they were done with their work days. “I like where the cabin’s located…but maybe we can install a magical closet. A portal for whenever he wants to pop in?”
It helped, talking this out with Blue. Let him brainstorm things to come up with some viable options. “But I guess I can’t even really start to plan for any of that until I talk to Shiro about all of this.”
“Noah liked skateboarding and glitter, right? Do you think it would help you guys to work through this by maybe getting together and decorating a couple of bare boards in his name?” A physical reminder that they got to spend more time with Noah that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, that he had made an impact on them and would be remembered.
"Do not install a magic closet inside your house for people to come by. Make sure it's outside," Blue said, like she was about to list the million-and-one-ways that would violate privacy and the purpose for seclusion. But instead she added, "Or I will abuse my privileges and bother you constantly."
She considered Keith's other question though, when it came to stuff about Noah. When he left, the glitter had stayed. Most of his projects. Everything he crafted here in Vallo was still stashed away in the art barn. Even the mini-skate park that Ronan built on the side of the property sat there, with the future potential of going unused. Blue didn't like that thought, abandonment, not when she had some say of it.
Blue nodded, in agreement. "He'd probably like it if I actually used whatever board I painted. Or someone did. But I don't know how to skateboard. He tried, you know. But I had more fun watching him have fun than trying. I probably would have skated right off into a ditch," Blue said, leaning her elbows on the table and proppering her chin in her hands. "Do you know? Is it some mysterious training you have hidden up your sleeve to pull out when I least expect it?"
Keith snorted and reconsidered the magical closet. He could see his friends having no problem walking in whenever, only to see him and Shiro mid coitus. The trauma. "Okay, a magical shed. Whatever. Something, where no one is getting scarred for life."
Keith scratched his chin, as he approached a set of memories that had a firm 'Dead Dove; Do Not Eat' stamped across them. They were memories from the time he had been in foster care and while not all of the placements were terrible, there were some truly horrible foster families that he never wanted to remember.
But there was one, that had an older son who had been pretty great, if Keith let himself remember. Keith himself had been about eleven in that placement and had been half-feral from the previous placement where he had been treated not so kindly. But somehow this family had managed to help him trust some people again and the son had even taught him how to ride a hoverbike and skateboards. He had been happy there, for the near two years he had been with them.
But then the parents had died in a car accident and the son had been sent to live with his elderly aunt, almost old enough not to even need a guardian. Keith had returned to a group home after that and stayed there until he had joined the Garrison. But he still vaguely remembered the feel of the skateboard under his feet. Clearing his throat to chase away the unexpected emotions, he said, "It's…it's been about a decade since I last skateboarded. One of my foster brothers taught me. I can try to teach you? But I can't promise I'll be any good at it or that you won't end up skating into a ditch."
"You wouldn't let me skate into a ditch," Blue said, grinning. It wasn't uncommon for her to smile, but lately it had felt forced, barrelling through the sadness when she could. But this grin was genuine, a very classic Blue Sargent expression. She liked the idea of dragging Keith out to teach her to skateboard. And if Noah came back—that was a sliver of hope she didn't want to get too attached to—she would be ready with her skills. Plus it had to be easier than driving a car.
She drummed her hands on the table, before grabbing for more Thai food. "I can unban you too. It's only fair if you're going to teach me to skateboard on my breaks." She dug into more food, chewing thoughtfully. Blue almost left the conversation at that; Keith had seen her get far too emotional than she was used to showing, and she wanted to keep moving on in a good direction. But she couldn't stop thinking about one more question, applicable to the both of them.
"Everything is going to be okay, right?"
“Thanks,” he said, dryly, though he returned her grin with a small one of his own. It was good to see some of that sadness lifted, even though he knew it would still take some time for it to really go. They’d work on it together though, if she needed it. The skateboarding lessons was the least he could do, though now he had to remember to go watch some YouTube tutorials to refresh the basics for himself.
Coming out of his thoughts to hear her question, Keith leaned over and nudged her with his shoulder. “Even if it isn’t, we’ll be here with you every step of the way. You have a lot of people that care about you, Blue.”