logs | catch-all

[ keith’s minding his own business. it’s his default approach to life – death?? – but especially lately, with clusters of mistletoe manifesting out of seemingly thin air and restless half-frozen. ever since this cold snap rolled in, there’s always someone needing five, no ten minutes of shared space, please, dude, please. gah! keep your head down, don’t make eye contact and book it through the streets to finish up the necessities; that’s the plan.

the errand he’s currently on? it’s technically not a necessity. last time he’d been this way, he’d outright dismissed esmeralda’s peddling of crystals that supposedly emit continuous heat. the catch being that they need to be charged prior to purchase. hogwash, really. with everything else that’s been going on with sprites and forced interaction, this had sounded like another headache in the making. but now, fresh from the shadowlands and having experienced one of those handheld space heaters… well…

it would be smart to have one of those, heh, on hand.

shiro is rubbing off on him, clearly. caught between wanting to sigh and smile, keith rounds a corner and comes into sight of esmeralda’s small establishment, only to spot someone he never wanted to see here. he falters in step, pausing in stride and everything freezes for one, solid beat before time starts up again, his legs moving faster to make up the difference. ]

You’re here? [ questions start rolling together in his head, but he’s not there yet. he’s not ready for a calm, collected, rational discussion of what this all means. instead, he’s closing in, the combination of worry and disappointment translating into a tone that’s more combative than he intends. ] You’re not supposed to be here!

[ apparently neither of them are adjusting particularly well to this turn of events. lance continues to blink in rapid succession as the cogs turn in his head. the grim reality is that they'd all been going space mad, losing track of time, place and even themselves for however long they'd been stranded without the lions in deep space. little reason exists to suggest lance dying precludes the others from meeting much the same fate, and yet: ]

You're damn right I'm not supposed to be here! Why are you here?!

[ they'd argued. hideously, at that. but that doesn't mean he'd wanted anything truly horrible to happen to keith or any of the others for that matter.

.... oh god, the others. far from calming down, lance looks around with renewed panic. ]

Wait, if you're here, does that mean -- Hunk? Pidge? Allura? Are they here too?

[ it’s confusing and keith does not do well with confusing. he should be better at confronting this; shiro and him went through this same thing, shuffling so fast between confusion, denial, anger, concern, to ultimately land somewhere in the vicinity of acceptance. but it’s far too easy to escalate when the backboard he’s bouncing his words off of is sassing right back at him. typical, instead of giving him something solid to go off of, it’s being turned around on him. still advancing, the distance is closing quickly and somewhere from one step to the next, he fills in the implied blank himself.

by now, the team’s already gone. i saw to it myself.

so the clone succeeded? no, that doesn’t make sense. shiro – the real shiro – said they made it out. the team survived; everyone, even shiro, rescued from being trapped within black’s consciousness. same reality? different reality? what lance is this? when is this lance?

lance’s expression shifts, as does his voice, but keith’s still moving through the same stride and same mindset, so he snaps back immediately: ]

No! They know how to stay alive!

[ … ah. that’s not just an insult to lance, is it? clamping his mouth shut, keith stops short a few feet from lance and makes up for his self-burn by folding his arms tight across his chest. hmph. he closes his eyes through the next heavy breath, brow twitching. ]

Just – what happened, Lance?

[ the snap back of a retort actually gets lance to stop twisting around trying to see if anyone else in the crowd is familiar. actually, it's more than that. he goes stock still, as if slapped and misses his cue to fire back a retort of his own.

the others would know how to stay alive, wouldn't they. hunk and pidge with their combined technological know-how and allura with all of her incredible space magic. lance has .. what, exactly? the ability to escalate fights?

no. it'd been keith who provoked the arguing in the first place, first by needlessly tearing allura down, then by going after hunk. the fight is over -- there are bigger things going on right now, but it'd be so much easier to snap, wouldn't it? as if keith , their runaway leader, actually cares about what happened. ]

Dude. You were right there bickering with everyone. What do you mean what happened? What do you think happened?

[ bickering with everyone…? okay. that doesn’t narrow it down. keith can think of a number of times, especially in the midst of battle, that the comms were fired up with the team yelling at each other. shiro’s the one who had the most success in reining everyone in and inspiring them into some sort of working order. shiro; fuck, this would be so much easier if shiro were here to referee.

but he's not. it's just keith. keith did lead the team at one point, to marginal success, though? he can do this. maybe. just – patience yields focus, right?

drawing a slow, steadying breath, keith tempers the more potent urge to play right into their, supposed, interrupted bickering with some renewed bickering and instead, opens his eyes to address this properly. ]

I think we’re from different points in time. [ a beat. ] Or realities.

[ shiro is some distance in the future. whether that’s keith’s future or not, is impossible to say for sure. the main points of their pasts seem to match up, though. there’s a good chance the situation with lance may be similar, because keith has a pretty good test of timeframes at his disposal and it’s right there on his face. ]

And seeing as you haven’t said a thing about my face… you recognize this, don’t you?

Wait, so you think we got yoinked through a giant space-rift thing and hauled into wherever this place is?

[ or more specifically, that lance has entered a different reality? the two questions aren't equivalent, but the possible explanation actually manages to calm lance down. if this whole experience is more akin to that time they slipped into the alternate reality with the altean empire, then that doesn't actually mean lance has to be dead, right? riiiiiiiight?

okay so maybe lance is huffing some quality copium here, but the frantic energy about him dissipates visibly, making lance heave a sigh, glancing at keith and his scar with relaxed shoulders. ]

I mean, it's not like I actually know-know how you -- err, my reality Keith, got that. For all I know you didn't get that scar while fighting a Shiro-clone.

[ despite the facetious wording here, his demeanor is serious enough that it's clear that it's not meant as any kind of barb. it's just -- the whole situation with the clone had been concentrated chaos and there just isn't a particularly good way of bringing that up. ]

Edited 2022-12-19 15:31 (UTC)

[ not exactly. keith is fairly certain his avenue for arriving in the netherworld has been death, not him falling into another rift. because if by some impossible odds, the trajectory of keith’s freefall from the crumbling facility had him hitting a space-rift, wouldn’t the clone be here, too? or maybe, the clone simply ceased to exist, having no actual soul of his own? fuck. keith doesn’t know how to even begin to unpack that possibility, his thoughts surrounding the clone perpetually closed off because every time he starts to peel back that first layer, he finds himself wracked with guilt and uncertainty, the fact that shiro is, usually, not too far away, compounding the feeling. and it’s a feeling he can’t afford, not when he’s soulbound to someone keith wants to keep entirely clear from having to think or feel anything related to the clone. to keith’s failure as a friend to see what was before him.

it is, unsurprisingly, a topic keith is cagey about, despite him being the one to, more or less, bring it up here. that should have him cutting lance slack, but shiro-clone is a touch too insensitive. unfair of him to deem it as such, seeing as it is entirely accurate. keith goes cold, though, bristling by annoyance that isn’t solely directed at lance. clipped: ]

That’s how I got it. [ and just to top off this horrid conversation, he clenches his jaw, holds for a beat and then tacks on: ] Pretty sure I died there.

[ a beat. ]

Shiro says I didn’t. [ another beat; he sounds progressively less hostile the more he talks – the more time lapses them away from shiro-clone. ] His Keith didn’t.

[ but millions of realities, one small difference could set them apart, etcetc. Hard to prescribe to the idea that the resignation he’d felt of that being the end of the line, proves to be entirely misplaced. That, somehow, everyone makes it out. He gives his head a short shake; oh yeah – ]

… Shiro’s here, by the way.

[ lance hears that bristling alright, but any thought of course correction is quickly derailed by that tidbit keith decides to casually throw out there. any chance keith had of getting lance to pay attention through the rest pretty much withers on the spot with pretty sure i died there, as several different rebuttals try to burst out of his mouth at once.

too bad, then, that the human mouth was only made for saying one word at a time so lance more or less just makes a garbled choking noise.

not that this keeps keith from shutting up and letting him process. noooooo, team leader's gotta just keep on chugging along and drop some other important bit of information about shiro being here and while that in itself invites a twist of anxiety, there's only so much a boy can process at once.

so before keith can get anything else out of his mulletface, lance puts both hands up and flaps his hands up and down to get the talking to stop. ]

Oh my god,, Keith, Keith -- you can't just drop that you think you died fighting the Shiro-clone and then act like that's no big deal and move on with the plot?? What do you mean you think you died? Is this like a "he stabbed me in the heart and I passed out unconscious from blood loss" or you don't actually know what happened?

[ listen, it's an important distinction because lance himself can only infer that he died, and frankly if he's given any room not to infer that, he'll do precisely that, thanks. ]

'Cuz if this place [ another handflap. ] is gaslighting everyone into thinking they're dead, I need to know.

[ strike two: still using the shiro-clone lingo. or is this strike three? because lance’s dramatics are always worthy of earning a strike. maybe not this time, though. keith will not be saying as much aloud, but there is a certain level of bittersweetness to be found in being confronted with the familiar here. he doesn’t want lance to be here, due to what that means, but since he is here… – well, maybe keith can cut him some slack for old time’s sake. they do, afterall, have some history of bonding moments.

besides, keith can begrudgingly see that his delivery left something to be desired. something something patience; there is an art to breaking bad news. keith’s simply never learned it. why dance around what can and should be said? why waste the time when it doesn’t actually change anything? so his double-back clarification isn’t that much better. only marginally.

he skips over the sigh and goes right to the frown, voice detached with a business-like quality, like he isn’t actually outlining the details of his death. ]

We were fighting in a facility on some asteroid. It started falling apart and… we fell.

[ his shoulders roll up, like a shrug, and then stay tense. ]

I don’t know for sure if I died but… I dunno, not a lot of options to get out of something like that.

[ according to shiro, there had been. black. shiro trapped in black. but keith isn’t sure he lines up with that keith. see, he remembers the freefall and the forearm tightly clasped in his deathgrip. he remembers thinking of arizona and hoverbikes and shiro. mostly, he remembers closing his eyes and thinking, this is okay. that this could be the end and that while he couldn’t let go of shiro, maybe he could let go of everything else in that universe. ]

[ there's precious little that keith has said about the fight with the clone. famously tight-lipped about his personal affairs, team leader hasn't exactly been particularly forthcoming. so even this sliver of information that barely amounts to anything? it holds lance's attention, softening his expression as he listens.

and even so, it's a little close to the cusp of being insulting. would keith really have him believe that an asteroid they were on just conveniently, spontaneously started falling apart? lance sighs deeply, knowing better than to take a shitty hedge personally, but not quite rising above the slight either.

the point being: keith thinks he's dead. and maybe that's true in his reality. maybe it's arguably kinder to let keith think that instead of casually telling him, nah bro. pretty sure we all die a few weeks/years later stranded in deep space without the lions after a fight you instigated with the other paladins.

again, lance wants to sigh, sometimes having to be the mature one really sucks. ]

Okay.

[ he'll let that sit nice and quiet for a beat.

I'm pretty sure Black saves you and the Shiro-clone from that bad situation though because you totally come back to the Castle of Lions with him. Then we had this crazy fight with Lotor where he started ripping holes in our reality and we had to blow up the castle to keep space-time from tearing any further. Then afterwards Allura used magic or something to pull the real Shiro's soul out of Black and put it into the Shiro-clone. [ none of which gets a missed beat, despite the inherent wtf nature of it all. ]And then... then we were going back home. Earth, I mean. To try and regroup after we lost the castle.

[ and finally, he pauses. ]

So uh... definitely not dead in my reality.

[ at least not at that moment. ]

Edited 2022-12-26 18:57 (UTC)

catch-all

i was gonna say welcome but "a mullet truly deserving of banishment to the netherworld" WOW

THE MULLET!! not keith, gosh... is keith his mullet now!!

lance always talks like it's the main point of keith's identity, so, yeah!

listen. the mullet and keith can be two distinct entties...

but keith is nothing without his business up front, party in the back hairstyle

i mean if keith WANTS to soulbond with his mullet ...

would lance judge him if he did

lance wouldn't criticize keith for a step towards self improvement!

lance pls. lance really need to give the mullet life a shot. perhaps he'd change his opinion

.... no >c