star heart.

Hearing the familiar voice and spoken Spanish he recognized as Veronica's (since she was one of the very few that called him by his middle name and was allowed to) had him turning in her direction, faux blue giving an intense look that clearly showed how angry he was but not directed at her. It didn't take long for him to catch up to her, though, long legs and all.

Veronica freezes for a moment, her eyes wide with disbelief. Insults directed at Hunk, of all people? She's known the yellow paladin, even if only on a surface level, since before he and Lance had been launched into space. The two boys have been attached at the hip since Lance’s early days at the Garrison. Hunk has always been sweet and dependable, the kind of friend everyone should want to have in their corner.

His father running his fingers through his hair is a small gesture that usually calms Keith, but the afternoon's revelations leave him deeply unsettled. How could he have possibly forgotten about people who are supposed to be so important in his life? A gnawing fear tugs at his heart—had they hurt him in some way that made him block them from his memory?

“Why did they leave?” he suddenly croaks, his voice strained and thick with unshed tears that threaten to spill over. “Did they not like us anymore?”

Nadia has been known to push the boundaries sometimes, such as the time when she snuck Ryan’s camera into a confidential debriefing. James damn near lost his mind when he found out later. He’s convinced Nadia has made it her personal mission to see how quickly she can turn his hair gray. 

"Hooligan, he says!" Nadia gasps dramatically, a hand coming to clutch at her chest in a play-hurt gesture.

Pidge nods, rubbing their eyes as they try desperately to fight the sleep that's clawing at them. "Hmm... tech.. yes.." A nod. "That's me.. I'm tech.."

Keith can't help but chuckle again. Pidge is clearly struggling to fight off sleep, but Keith is willing to let it happen because he understands how badly they need the rest. Determined to stay still and not disturb the green paladin's sleep, he leans back and relaxes, allowing Pidge to rest more comfortably against his arm.

It's quieter, like its sleeping, or like its hiding, but he knows its somewhere here. He just has to find it. He might have given up entirely, but this guy echoes somehow with what he felt before, just to a smaller degree. Close, but not the same.

His head cocks for a moment in confusion when Keith starts talking about movies, and his head tips all the way back to look straight at the sky, blinking a couple of times.

"Why would stars go to war? Most of them are nothing but fire and gas and energy. They have no intent."

He looks back at Keith again and its clear nothing about the fact that its fiction and movies manages to land like it's supposed to, more than simply that he hasn't seen said movies.

"Anyway," he spreads his arms out to either side of him, vaguely gesturing at their surroundings. "It's everywhere. But it's not everywhere equally."

He touches a knuckle to his lip for a moment, looking off to the side thoughtfully.

That clueless reaction to perhaps the most famous movie franchise to ever exist on Earth is the selling point for Keith to trust his instincts, not that he should have questioned them in the first place. Whatever Chuuya is, it's definitely not human, and the rest of their conversation now makes sense when framed by this knowledge.

Keith remains cautious. In his experience, situations involving aliens obsessively drawn to quintessence never end well. Now, more than ever, he needs to safeguard his identity and the lions' location... though if Chuuya is this quintessence-sensitive, it might only be a matter of time before he figures them out.

The right response would be to lie and mislead, to throw Chuuya off the scent, but Keith has always been a lousy liar, and dishonesty has never been his thing. Maybe grounding his statements in scientific fact can help him sound convincing enough.

"By the laws of conservation of energy, it can neither be created nor destroyed, only altered in form. Those alien ships that were attacking us were fueled by large amounts of quintessence. Now that their ships are destroyed, the energy's likely just redistributed over the surrounding space." Though the jury's still out on whether quintessence abides by the Earthen laws of thermodynamics. Its ties to magic and alchemy likely bend the rules in some form.

An utterly delighted gasp escapes Allura's lips as she admires the crystalline tiara. Maybe it's a childish response, but she hasn't been this genuinely excited about something in a very long time.

"it's okay. don't forget that i'm a hybrid too --- & part altean at that, so don't worry about me too much." even if he knew it was a moot point, considering how he'd probably worry anyway. "i wanted to come with you, remember?"

so, really, keith getting hurt was partially kai's fault.

Keith raises a brow, though he holds out his hand for Kai to inspect anyway. "That's not going to make me stop worrying about you, and you know that."

He would care no matter what, but he's become attached to Kai, even though he knows it's a bad call and would also never admit it aloud. Stars, he's really struggling with the whole "keeping people at arm’s length" thing lately. It's even harder to think about how Kai will eventually have to return to his own reality once they figure out how to get him back. He can't imagine that Kai's family is handling his disappearance very well.

"Besides, I think your parents would hold me responsible if anything happened to you, regardless of whether it was your choice," he snorts, though his expression soon relaxes. The edge of their earlier unpleasant encounter with the druids is wearing off, alongside the adrenaline, leaving exhaustion in its wake.

He's also gradually becoming more aware of the pain, and it brings with it a sharp taste of deja vu. If he had a GAC for every time he's nearly lost his hand to a druid, he'd have two GAC, which isn't much, but it's weird that it's happened twice...