#haro writes

Time for a Classic for @vldtenyearanniversaryfest Day 7!

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~*~

It was different, having Shiro back. The real Shiro, all of him, the one that had grown up on Earth and the one made in an oversized test tube merged together, all of his rough edges and kind smiles, his strong leadership and his vulnerable nights. Keith loved each part of him, of course, and was all but too happy to have him back, whole and in as close to one piece as anyone could ask him to be.

Still, it left the question:

If Shiro was the pilot of the black lion, and Keith was the pilot of the black lion, then who was going to actually do the act of piloting the black lion?

The lion itself was of no help, rejecting neither of them when they sat at the controls, the deep and low toned purr of its conscious brushing up against both of theirs and utterly willing to fly for either of them. The team was no help either; all of them could think of both pros and cons to Keith and Shiro's leadership, Keith's quick reflexes and Shiro's calm head in the face of adrenaline-inducing foes both valued, both necessary.

Keith and Shiro were likewise unable to settle the argument between themselves, each of them insisting that the other was clearly the best suited for the role.

"Keith, the black lion chose you. And I'm proud of you! It's just the way things are now, I'm alright moving on."

"Shiro, the black lion is your lion, its your bayard, I'm not going to take your spot on the team, I'm the loner remember? The unreliable one, always off on Blade missions, and the black lion chose you first!"

It wasn't until Matt visited that the solution, which seemed fairly obvious in hindsight, became apparent.

Matt could copilot the green lion with Pidge. They were the one at the controls, sure, but Matt was in the cockpit, in a chair the lion seemingly manifested specifically for him, so he could work alongside his sibling.

"…" Keith looked at Shiro.

"…" Shiro looked at Keith.

"…you know," Keith said, rubbing at the back of his neck, "with the lions' ability to psychically link the pilots, and both of us being so close to Black…"

Shiro set his hand on Keith's shoulder and smiled. "We could probably figure out how to copilot, like we do when we form Voltron."

They smiled silently at one another for a long moment, feeling that synergy even without the lions' help.

Give it a read!

Okay and actually on time today it's @vldtenyearanniversaryfest day 4! What Pidge (and Matt) are up to post canon time

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~*~

"Mail for you," Matt mentioned, mug of coffee in hand and his long hair an absolute mess, not having brushed it yet.

"Oh, sweet, probably my name change papers," Pidge said, leaning back in their office chair and taking the envelope from their brother.

"You really are going through with it huh?" Matt asked warmly, taking a seat at the computer terminal next to theirs and smiling fondly at them. They kicked him in the ankle for posterity's sake, an absent gesture.

"I mean, the only people who really call me 'Katie' anymore are mom and dad," they said as they rifled through the small mountain of stuff they'd piled on their workstation. They really needed to clean this thing sometime. Or at least declutter it. "Might as well make it official." They found a novelty pen Keith had given them, the tip shaped like a knife, and y'know what it'd work as a letter opener in a pinch. Sure enough, it was the court order, signed by the judge, with Pidge Holt's brand new government-recognized name staring back up at them.

"Sweet," they mentioned, setting the paper aside and returning to their computer monitor.

"You're gonna lose it if you leave it there," Matt pointed out, sipping at his coffee.

"Mind your business," Pidge countered. They were researching whether light's property of self-torque was what made interstellar communications work the way they did. 13,000 years ago when near-instant communications across lightyears' worth of distance had been developed, people had found something that worked, but hadn't actually discovered why it worked. It was the acetaminophen of Pidge's field, and they were damn well going to be the researcher who finally cracked the case on it.

N-7 joined them with a hairbrush and pressed a robotic kiss to Matt's forehead before she started in on his unruly bedhead, Matt closing his eyes and humming contentedly, leaning into her touch. Pidge, once again for posterity's sake more than anything, made an ugly gagging noise at their gooey romantic sappiness.

"If you keep making that face, it's gonna stick like that," Matt mumbled without opening his eyes.

"Good," Pidge returned bluntly, not bothering to point out that he couldn't see what face they were making, or even to look away from their computer screen.

"Allura still swinging by tonight?"

"As long as being the beating heart that pulses the lifeblood of all things through this and every other reality doesn't take too much out of her, yeah," Pidge said. Which was mostly sarcastic, since that was Allura's every moment, and it wasn't like a long day could match up against the cosmic equivalent of what was essentially a goddess at this point. She'd make herself and Lotor a pair of physical forms and the two would pop into the material plane from time to time, always happy to come visit their friends and catch them up on what was going on elsewhere in reality. It was a good excuse to get the gang together; Lance was always so busy being an interstellar celebrity, spreading the legends and the facts of Voltron far and wide with Coran as his manager, Keith and Shiro were always out roadtripping around space with Kosmo, and Hunk was renowned far and wide for his diplomatic expertise, uniting essentially the entire known universe under the coalition's banner with good meals and warm company.

"That'll be nice," Matt said, getting up with a stretch and pressing an absent kiss to N-7's cheek.

Double feature update today! I originally had Part 7 and Part 8 all as one long part and then realized it made more sense if I split them up, whoops. Ding dong Viktor's gone!

*** Part 6 *** Masterlist ***

The first thing she did after Viktor got his ass out of Rayana's house was cheer so loudly her voice cracked from it, arms spread out to her sides, hands curled in fists, face upturned towards the heavens, legs stanced apart. The second, was to run absolute circles around her men on the training grounds, putting them all out flat on their asses one after the other, grinning wild and training staff in hand. The third, was drink what felt like a solid half of a keg of good thick beer, foamy and strong. The fourth was tumble Mori until they were both panting and sweaty and so covered in little love bites they looked like a wheat field after a swarm of locust. They'd ridden each other hard, both of them pent up with furious joy at having him gone, and Rayana had pulled on his hair maybe a bit harder than he typically enjoyed but his nails had been raking down her back just as viciously so she figured he hadn't minded too much. Soused and now thoroughly exhausted, she felt herself relax for the first time since her servants had spotted Viktor's flag on the horizon.

"Fuck your brother," Mori said into that sweaty afterglow, and Rayana grunted. "And I don't even mean the fun type, this time."

"Does that mean you'll quit joking about trying to bed him now?"

"Oh no, I'm still going to do that," Mori said airily, "Just. Not today. Or anytime soon. Fuck."

Whoops I made it sad. @vldtenyearanniversaryfest

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~*~

Altean funerals were supposed to be large.

A formal procession, with everyone who'd known and loved the deceased, a pyre, a scattering of ashes. Modern cremation made the pyre symbolic rather than functional, but it was built the same size as pyres of old, to keep the gravity of it all, and provide more ashes for scattering. Then a mourning period would be observed, all donned in pink and white to grieve their fallen loved one.

Coran had no body to cremate, and neither the space nor wood to craft a pyre. His pink garments were stored at home, not in the castle, and like the rest of Altea, were gone now. And with the Galran Empire continuing their wretched work, there was no time to observe a mourning period, not in its formal length.

He should've invited Allura. She was the only person left who could understand him, after all, the only person left who could understand this. But she was young, and with youth brought anger. She didn't want to grieve, she didn't want to mourn, she didn't want to sit with the overwhelming emotion and cry and process it. She wanted to fight, she wanted to strike back against the Galra who had taken everything from her, she wanted to kill Zarkon and all of his.

Coran couldn't and wouldn't fault her for it. He'd been young once, too. But he was older now, and ten thousand years older than he felt.

So he lit a candle alone, in his room, with the smoke detectors of the castleship temporarily disabled in a tinkering he would've called one of the ongoing repairs of the ancient vessel, had their been anyone who spotted him in the act. Someone should have. There should've been staff bustling to and fro, important ministers and diplomats on their way to meetings, petitioners here to take the ear of the king wandering through the magnificent halls while they were in the area anyway. But all those people who should've been here were dead and ten thousand years gone, and so Coran had disabled the smoke detector alone.

He didn't have any of his own mourning clothes, but he did find a large pink blanket in storage, and had gathered it around his shoulders like a shroud, fastened over his heart with the royal family's pin. Technically, it wasn't his to wear. But technically, King Alfor had always, always told him he was part of the family, and everyone who could take issue with him wearing it was long dead—save one.

He really should bring Allura with.

Maybe he'd do another "funeral," later. Once she'd calmed, a bit. Once that horrid rage had burned out of her, at least in part. Once she was able to sit with him, and watch the candle burn, and share in this quiet, heavy grief.

And @vldtenyearanniversaryfest day 6! Featuring some lovely post canon for the soulmates.

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~*~

Shiro had spent his entire youth saddled with the knowledge that anyone who wanted to get out into the stars would have to do so, so, so much math to get there. Would have to train and practice near relentlessly, would have to be a pilot and a scientist and a mathematician and an engineer, regardless of which of those things he actually, officially was on paper. He'd known he would have to follow the chain of command precisely, that he would have to be better than good, if he wanted to touch the stars, he would have to be the best.

And then he'd gotten into a giant robotic magical lion, and the universe expanded exponentially.

Well, okay, first he'd gotten kidnapped by aliens and forced to fight as a gladiator slave in their coliseum, and then escaped said aliens in a dinky little escape pod, but Shiro didn't really count that as him touching the stars. More like the stars had suddenly and abruptly picked him up by his shirt collar and rattled him around.

Point being: he no longer had to be the best of the best. Earth was in contact with the countless other worlds that made up the Voltron Coalition and what had previously been the Galran Empire, and Shiro had been one of the fate-chosen few to save all of them. If he wanted, all it'd take would be one call and he could have the best space cruiser alien tech could build, outfitted and ready to take him back up into the stars and out wandering wherever he wanted, no limits, no strings attached.

And the longer he was the admiral of the IGF–Atlas, the more that hunger to get out, to go go go, to reach for the stars, hadn't he always reached for the stars, hadn't he always yearned for the stars, itched for them? He felt it underneath his skin. Felt it in every conference room and debrief and council meeting and little nitpicky speed bump the chain of command liked to put in his way. There were other people who could be admiral of the Atlas, surely. It had created an almost-psychic link with Shiro, but Shiro had piloted the Black Lion before. He knew what a real psychic link felt like. And this wasn't it. It was just the ship responding to the psyche of its pilot, and pilots could be changed, new pseudo-bonds forged. That awareness nagged at him. Pulled at him. He could leave. The universe was saved. Atlas didn't need Shiro, not like Shiro felt a growing, cloying, choking need to get the hell outta this place.

"Keith!" he greeted, delighted by the arrival of his partner.

"Hey, Shiro," Keith said, arm reflexively outstretched, immediately clasping Shiro's own and pulling him into a hug, fitting perfectly against him. Kosmo sniffed at Shiro with tail a-wagging, bouncing back and forth on his front paws, and Shiro laughed as he pulled out of the hug to ruffle his fur between his ears.

"Still training new recruits for the Blade?" Shiro asked, noting how tired Keith looked, the bags under his eyes. He wasn't bruised anywhere on his face, but Shiro was willing to bet he was sporting more than just a few underneath his Blade armor thanks to all the constant training he did.

"Kind of," Keith said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "Most of them have reached the 'practical experience' stage, which, has been almost nice for me, but it also means someone has to babysit them on missions so they don't do anything stupid."

"And you're the man for the job," Shiro said warmly, so proud of how far Keith had come.

"The thing is; I really don't have to be," he grumbled, and Shiro chuckled, slinging an arm around him.

That made two of them.

"…Say, Keith…?"

"Yeah, Shiro?"

Shiro would feel stupid for this, he was sure. But Keith was his closest friend, and had always provided important sanity checks for him, even when they were just two punk kids from Arizona sneaking out to go hoverbike racing in the desert.

"I've been thinking about quitting the Atlas," he said, and found himself surprised by just how good it felt to say out loud. "They don't need me here, and I miss exploring the stars. Would it be crazy if I just," Shiro felt the nervous impulse to clam up, to shut himself down, stay put, be dutiful and responsible and follow the system, "got a cruiser and went roadtripping through space?"

"That sounds amazing, actually," Keith said.

"Yeah?" Shiro looked at him hopefully, his arm around Keith's shoulders, Keith's arm around his waist. Then, because it was the day for voicing daring wants, "It'd be lonely, after too long."

Keith met his gaze for two long seconds, then smiled, just a little smirk that still had Shiro's stomach doing loops.

"Better not let you go alone, then. We'll need to make sure the cruiser is wolf-proofed. He likes chewing on things."

Shiro felt himself break out in a grin, vibrant as the day is bright.

And hello to you all for @vldtenyearanniversaryfest !!! I don't know if I can be forced to pick a FAVORITE favorite but OF my faves I know which one needs the most love <3

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~*~

Narti's tail flicked in tandem with Kova's, observing the salvaged sentries as they worked. Kova liked watching them, and Narti didn't mind letting the cat's attention wander where it was wont. As far as service animals went, some might question the choice of a domestic housecat, given how stubborn the animals could be when asked to do anything outside their own feline preferences, but Narti liked Kova plenty, agreed with his mental state far more than she might have with a canine, and took a certain amount of pride in being the one trusted to watch over the prince's childhood pet, the only possession he'd carried with him through the millennia that wasn't the armor on his back.

She leaned back on the roof of the ship and stretched her arms out far above her head, Kova lifting up onto his paws and bowing low with his front legs out, his toebeans spread, in an echo of her. He then placed himself neatly on top of her belly, the thick armor of her chestplate a bad spot for naps, and curled up in a sweet little ball. She scritched idly at his ears and if she'd had eyes, she would've closed them, enjoying the warmth of this planet's sun and the sun-warmed metal of their ship beneath her. She yawned, showing this planet's sky two rows of very sharp teeth, and listened.

Ezor and Zethrid were testing the waters with Acxa again, prodding her and poking at her until she snapped at them, a favorite pastime for the two rowdies. Prince Lotor was overseeing the repairs with a sort of irritated restlessness the other three didn't know him well enough (or long enough) to discern, his affect outwardly unchanged. The sentries were moving with their mechanical whirring, programmed to be ever so slightly imperfect to help with the uncanny valley of it all and prevent Galra soldiers from attacking them reflexively, and these sentries, having been either stolen or repaired (or both) even more imperfect than most.

Off, way off, in the distance, there was a gathering of denizens, chattering loudly enough that Narti could hear the murmur of them whenever the wind carried this way, likely primitives that couldn't fathom life beyond their own atmosphere and were gearing up to make first contact. Probably one of the things Lotor was worried about happening. Not as much as he was worried about the people who'd damaged their ship relocating them, that would've taken top priority, but a bunch of curious denizens would've just been another headache to add to the list.

Narti, for her part, wasn't worried. If their opponents relocated them, they'd load back in the ship and engage again, and they'd win this time. Lotor never lost the same fight twice. If Acxa ended up snapping at Ezor and Zethrid, they more than well deserved it, and they were big girls, they could handle themselves. If the primitives approached them, eh. Their ship was mostly repaired by this point. They could just fly away and avoid them.

Aaaand @vldtenyearanniversaryfest day 3! I GOTTA give Shay some love <3

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~*~

Shay sometimes liked to disobey her elders. Well, she did not like to disobey them, the act of disobedience brought her no pleasure, truly. But she liked the deeds that could only be done in a state of having skirted her Gran-gran's orders, her brother's protective gaze, and her family's cautious warnings. When it was just her and the Balmera, who loved her without condition, and seemed, in its way, to delight in her tiny mischiefs, harboring her secrets for her with a tiredness beyond its age, but with also fondness.

She trailed her hands along its walls, her oldest and truest friend (as the Balmera was to all its people, their friend always, the mother of their mothers, their home). It nudged her gently where she wished to go, and she smiled as she crept past the mouth of its tunnel into the great tower of the Galra's mineshaft.

It was laced with beams of metal from foreign planets, which pierced the Balmera like splinters it could not work free of itself, and which its people could not move, lest they risk the Galra's ire. The shaft was crooked, also, likely for ease of the Galra's ships to fly in and out of, always moving forward in some direction, though she often wondered if the beams would not act as hindrance to the same people who'd put them there. But those very beams were also the things which gave Shay what she needed, and so, here when all Galra were either asleep or guarding their night shift, and Shay's family was likewise resting, when her actions were known only to her dearest friend, she climbed.

It would've been easier if Rax were here. The two of them could lift one another upon their shoulders and climb easily from beam to beam, and catch one another should either of them fall. But Rax was not here, on account of how he was too governed by his fears, and would worry that the Galra would find them and punish them for feeling even the thinnest shred of joy. And so she climbed without him! Let him remain as joyless as the Galra who controlled them. The beams which were to far apart to leap from (which were most beams, to permit the Galran ships), she navigated by climbing the rough edges of the Balmera, crouching on the beams to rest her hands and flex her fingers. It often seemed that the Balmera itself had grown those bumps and ridges for her to climb upon specifically, which would have been a silly waste of its energy, when already they mined it beyond what it could offer, but Shay knew, too, the power of small joys. And who was she to begrudge her truest friend this little joy alongside her, when she was the one skirting all her family's wishes to take it?

She climbed higher, higher, higher still. Past the bend in the mineshaft. Up higher still. As high as she could possibly go, and perched on a beam, and settled her hand against the Balmera's rocky wall, and looked up.

She let her legs dangle off one edge and her tail off the other, still short but growing longer. She was not a woman yet, but on nights like this, neither did she feel like a girl anymore. Up, up, up, up, up the mineshaft, past the metal beams and twists in the Balmera's rock, Shay could make out small glimpses of the sky.

She leaned her head against the Balmera, feeling its warmth beneath her palm and cheek, and felt its deep, old joy echoing back at her. Her accomplishment at having climbed so high. Her wonder at those little scraps of sky. It shared those joys with her, and together they two settled into this quiet moment. Just the two of them, and the sweat of Shay's brow, and the stars, so far away, but still there. Just waiting for her.

"One day," she told the Balmera, a quiet whisper meant only for the two of them, though they already were alone. "One day, I will find a mineshaft which best suits my needs. I will discover what none else in my lineage have found, and I will go all the way to the top, and I will see the sky in its fullness."

How she would find the strength for this after a full day of mining crystals for her Galran overlords, or how she would escape their gaze while on the exposed surface of the top, she did not know, nor did she have a strategy for. It was reckless dreaming. She knew well how thoroughly the Galra quashed any sense of happiness in their conquered subjects, the savage glee they took with purple whips of pulsing energy and the beating of their own metal-clad fists on unarmored skin. She had seen it, and borne it, and heard it echoing down the tunnels, and felt it transmitted by the Balmera's silent and cavernous grief.