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theashesofthefirststar · 6 years

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Here it is! The prologue for my "What if Keith's Mom Stayed" Klance fic.

Pairing: Keith/Lance

Summary: His peers at the Garrison always joked about how mysterious Keith was. Well, they weren't exactly wrong.With a neck always cover in splotches of black hair dye, boots always thick with mud, and a mom that no one has ever seen because, uh, reasons, Keith, part time guardian of a magical blue lion, is understandably hard to get close to.At least, he thought so, but then how does Lance make it look so easy?

....

Prologue

Keith was six years old when it happened.

His mom reached over the emergency brake that divided them to tug the hood of his red raincoat firm atop his head. He looked at her with a question in his eyes as she pulled back. He waited for her to explain why they were there, but she just smiled.

At the time, he was too young to articulate how that smile made him feel or just what about it was so different. So, he smiled back.

His mom made a motion for him to get out the car, but Keith just stared wide eyed out of the window in an attempt to see something. The rain was hitting the side of the truck in sheets, making everything look shapeless beneath its veil.

At that age, Keith didn't like the rain. It had never been anything but an inconvenience, something that kept him inside when he all he had wanted was to go out, and always at his moms insistence. She had seemed suspicious of the rain, as if unsure about what would happen if it touched her. His dad had thought that was funny for a reason Keith wouldn't understand until he got older. But at time, her skeptical attitude towards the rain was all he knew to act on. So Keith didn't move, just fisted the lap of his raincoat and wondered why his mom was asking him to go towards something she had only ever hid him from before.

“Its okay, Keith. There's a cave just a few yards that way. We’ll-” She paused, tapping a finger against the steering wheel. “What's that euphemism your father use- Oh! Make a run for it.” She smiled again, playful in a way he was more use to seeing from his pops. “Are you ready?”

He nodded yes, because why wouldn't he? This was his mom, and he had always felt the bravest when by her side.

Keith jumped down from the cab of the truck, swinging the door shut. He squinted against the rain, forcing himself to move forward with a blind certainty until he felt a hand gripping his wrist. His eyes kept forward, but there she was. A grainy vision coming in and out of his peripheral, familiar like the static of their satellite T.V. on rainy days.

He let her guid him until their entering the cave. The mouth was arched with cycle shaped rocks - limestone, his pops had called them, dripping like jagged teeth. It reminded Keith of other caves he'd explored with his parent's, of the way his pops made a game out of them jumping pass the threshold before the mouth could snap close and gobble him up.

He pulled a flashlight from the pocket of his raincoat an flicked it on, gaze wide and spanning.

Then Keith ran towards the cave wall, because he was impulsive even back then. More so. It was like the chicken pox he got right after his fourth birthday. An itch everyone told him not to scratch, but he did anyway. He came to realize that that feeling never goes away, but only gets harder to please. It was just simpler back then. Investigate that cave, read that book, climb that tree. It was a life with straightforward goals and a clear tradictory.

Until it wasn't.

On the wall there were drawings, blue marks made opaque by dust. Keith reached out and swiped a hand over what seemed to be a cluster of stick people looking up at a falling rock. He fanned the light down the wall to see more images in a continuous timeline like fashion. A lioness figure. Rising waves. A mysterious oblong spacecraft, each depiction seeming loosely interconnected like jumbled up dots that Keith's mind attempted to arrange in the right order.

And he just stood there, silently agape, stuck in the possibilities. At least, until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“They're interesting, yes?” His mom said.

“Yeah,” he rasped, still racking the walls with his eyes. “I wonder who lived here? I bet we could find some clues if we go deeper into the cave.”

Up until then, Keith had never seen anything like this. His pops had told him stories, about how there were people who lived long before them, how there were pieces of these people living beneath the rocks - in fossils - and painted on them too. Keith would listen to these stories with a far off sorta wonderment. The idea that there were whole worlds beyond the desert, beyond him and his parents, here but not here at the same time, was exciting, and yet ultimately just a concept. Nothing like actually seeing it.

“You're right, there is something special in this cave.” A pause. “Several somethings, actually.”

At that, Keith turned to her. “You've been here? Without me?” His teeth gritted, biting against the nasty feeling he had no name for. All he knew was that exploring caves was something they all did together, and he didn't like not being a part of it.

“This cave is different than the other one's,” his mom explained evenly. “You were too young to come here before.”

Keith huffed, looking past his mom with an angry pout and muttering, “Not too young.”

She hummed, almost seeming amused. That just made Keith more upset. Later, he'll realize how petulant he was being, but at the time, to six year Keith, this was the biggest part of his life.

“Well, not anymore. Which is why you're here. Now, would you like me to show you what lives in this cave or would you like to stay here making faces?”

Keith - begrudgingly - flung out a hand for her to take, but continued to glare into the shadowy hollow of the cave, determined that he could do both.

Then she was guiding them again down a path that she was obviously familiar with. Keith kept his flashlight fixed towards their destination, to egar and focused to look at the walls that tunneled around them. As they went further, their descending track grew steeper. Which only made Keith want to speed up. He would have to, if not for the warning glare of his mom paired with a squeeze of linked fingers.

He made a hmp sound, but continued at the pace she set. That was until she said, “Before we get to where we're going, there's something I need to speak to you about. Something your father and I had a long discussion about last night.”

“Is this about the dog we found!” Keith asked, feeling hopeful enough to look away from the trail and up at his mom. A couple of days ago him and his mom had seen a dog nosing it's way through their trash. He had looked matted and sickly thin, so they had decided to bring him some leftover pork chops from their diner the night before. Or at least, they were until his pops got home from work and immediately ran inside to grab his shotgun. He hadn't hurt the dog, but he did chase it away, despite Keith's insistence that the dog was his friend. This had lead to a one day hunger strike and a lot of tearful fits that always ended in a dramatic exit whenever he'd inevitably be sent to his room.

“That wasn't a dog, Keith. It was a coyote,” she said, though by the just there twist of her lips, Keith could tell she was mildly disappointed. “And your father insist that their dangerous.”

“Not dangerous.” He muttered. “Probably just lonely.”

Keith felt something pull against him, restricting his steps. He turned to see him mom had stopped walking, so naturally, he stopped too, squaring his feet so that he was stable against the uneven ground.

“Are you lonely, Keith?”

Keith felt himself frown. The flashlight he held was pointed past her, yellow projecting against the cave wall at her back. Her face was thick with shadows, carving out an expression that none of Keith’s six years of life gave him a context for. It was his mom, but not. A little sad. A little unfamiliar, and it was that jarring sense of uncertainty that made him all the more aware of where they were at, underground and squeezed between two lengths of darkness. Which should of been fine. He’d been in caves like this before, but there was still this feeling, this wrongness pinching at him.

He glared at his feet.

“No. Why would I be lonely when I have you and pops?”

She didn't answer right away, and after a few long silent seconds, he peeked up at her.

Seeing herself be regarded, she stood a bit taller. “Your father left this morning to enroll you in school.”

“School?!”

“Yes, you know, an establishment where-”

“I know what a school is mom! But-but I don't understand. Why can't you keep teaching me at home?!”

Keith felt something warm and tight swoop in his stomach, burning frantically in his fingertips. This was wrong. All wrong.

“Your father and I think it's important for you to start spending time with other kids,” she said, her face hardened with a sternness that was only a relief in its familiarity. “It's not good for a boy your age to be by himself so much.”

Keith would later come to realize that kids often feel things that they won't comprehend until hindsight. Their frustration lacks self awareness. There's no eloquence in the voice they give it. But beneath that wall of callowness, there is reason. A reason six year old Keith kept grasping for, like the minoes he spent the summers trying to catch, too small and too slippery to really hold onto.

Because he did want to make friends. He’d even sometimes watch old t.v. shows with his pops just to see how all the kids would play in groups and talk to people who weren't their parents. Keith couldn't help but to compare them to himself, someone who had never even spent time with another person that wasn't his mom or pops

Older Keith knew what younger Keith was only vaguely scared of. That most kids had extended families, whole communities even. Most kids played sports or took piano lessons. They had cousins and aunts and neighbors who came over for diner on the weekend. Most kids didn't have vibrant magenta hair or a large “birthmark” on their face or a mom with purple skin and yellow eyes. Older Keith knew what younger Keith was only vaguely scared of. That years of semi isolation and secrets put a barrier between him and other people that only got thicker with time.

Krolia knelt down in front of Keith, and he pushed down the urge to squirm away.

“Sometimes we have to do things that are hard, because if we don't, those things don't leave. They just become bigger, until there so big that they get in the way of us living our lives.” She cups Keith's cheek and he can't help but to lean into her warmth. “I don't ever want to get in the way of you living your life.”

A part of Keith wanted to be defiant, but his moms presences was just so nice, and he didn't want to fight it. She had always guided him after all, never had lead him anywhere he didn't want to be. Why should this time be any differently?

“Come on,” She said. “There's something up ahead that I think will help you understand.”

But it didn't, not at right away. His first thought when seeing a giant blue mechanical lion certainly wasn't ‘Ah yes, everything makes sense now’. That was okay though. His mom had stood back and allowed him to process.

His first real thought that wasn't just the long confusing beep of a Please Stand By screen was ‘woah cool robot lion’ which sent him hurtling towards the thing. He slowed too late and had to brace against the barrier, both hands landing flat. Keith didn't care though, he just looked up at the lion with a grin, one that quickly lost it's edges the longer he stood there and nothing happened.

His hands curled into fist. “Hey! Open up!” Keith demanded. “I want to be your friend!” No response, then suddenly, “Are you trapped? Don't worry, I'll get you out!”

Keith began banging his fist against the barrier. “Come on you stupid shield,” he muttered, kicking at it in frustration. He was about ready to find a large rock, when his mom said, “That won't work, Keith. She's not for you.”

Keith whipped around, alarmed. He had practically forgotten he wasn't alone.

“She's waiting for her Paladin. Her chosen one. And she won't put that barrier down until they find her.”

Keith didn't understand. Chosen one? As soon as he'd seen the lion, he felt a tug. Something instinctual that told Keith they were meant to meet. Did she not feel the same way? The idea that she didn't took all the warmth and meaning from his belly and pulled it to his throat. It sat expanding, that misplaced connection, until it forced its way out. He just couldn't swallow some thing that didn't belong to him.

Looking back, that was the first time he felt it; Rejection.

“I know you're confused, Keith, but once I explain everything, I promise this will all make more sense.”

And so she did.

From a satchel that rested against Krolias hip, she pulled out a throw blanket and laid it against the damp ground. They sat cross legged and face to face, knees bumping as she explained everything. He sat and listened as she confirmed what a part of him already knew on some level; that she, that they, weren't the same as everyone else. With a firm and leveled voice, she spoke uncompromising truths. She told him about the Blade, about her mission. She told him about the lore of Voltron, and hardest of all, she told him about the war, about exactly what they were protecting there in that cave.

Some people might judge his mom for the steely way she told him about the death that loomed between the stars. But it was something Keith would come to appreciate, the commander in her, because if she could stay calm living beneath a sky on the precipice of collapse, than maybe so could he.

He walked in the footsteps of her composure, finding them too big, but listening all the same. The words didn't seem real though. They steeped in him, and he felt his mind ach in resistance, the change leaking in a bit at a time until he was trembling against his pops later that night, begging him not to tell his mom how terrified he was. Because he finally understood. The danger was everywhere. And it was coming for him and everything he loved.

But his pops, who had only ever wanted Keith to have a normal, happy life, told him something that stayed with him in a way the exact details of him and his mom's conversation did not.

That one day, when Keith was ready, it would be the danger that trembled.

#my writing #keith #klance #lance #krolia #voltron

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