catch-all

[spaceassassin]

WHO: Keith + "friends"
WHERE: The Netherworld...? LISTEN. All over.
WHEN: December
WHAT: Event shenanigans + other
WARNINGS: Language??


( ooc: if you'd like to do something with keith ( doesn't have to be event-related! ), feel free to PM, msg/add sevenhelpings or wildcard your own! )

Comments

would lance judge him if he did

[spaceassassin]

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

[particlebarrier]

[ 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.

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

[spaceassassin]

[ 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. ]

.... no >c

[particlebarrier]

[ 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. ]