#kienokoru

Send a ‘📃’ for a short drabble involving our muses (Accepting) || @kienokoru​

remember that old AU we had where shiro was a werewolf that coped with his trauma by avoiding being human in general

Katie yawned as she unlocked the front door, and it greeted her with its usual creak. Kicking off her shoes, she dropped her backpack around the foyer. As soon as she clicked the door closed, Katie was thrown against it by a massive blur of fluff.  

She couldn’t help but laugh as she was snuffled into the ground. 

Shrio was always excitable, but when she stayed out later than usual, he got downright hysterical. For a second, all Katie could do was shield her face against his wet nose (It didn’t do much). 

Once Shrio had assured himself that she was alive and well, he let Katie pick herself up into a sitting position. That’s when he sat down on his haunches and stared her dead in the eye.

Maybe it’s because of some werewolf thing, or maybe it’s just because she’s known Shiro for pretty much her whole life, but Katie could read his expressions as if they were human. He was a mix between crossed and worried; he wanted to know what kept her out so late.

“I, uh.. Um. Got preoccupied.” 

Shiro furrowed his brow. It’s as if he funneled his words straight into her head: And what kept you so preoccupied?

“Well, umh..” She glanced up, down, left, and right trying to think of an excuse. Nothing was coming to mind until her eyes landed on her backpack. “Hey, what’s this!” The upwards inflection made Shiro’s ears perk up.  

Katie stuck her hand into the front pocket of her backpack and brought out a tennis ball (She kept one on hand for this very reason).

She stood up and held it high, all the while Shiro’s tail started wagging and he ditched the judgemental stare for a more bright-eyed look. Katie jerked the ball from side-to-side, egging Shiro on until he was bowing and barking.

The raising bark reverberated in her chest and Katie chucked the ball down the main hall. It bounced off the back wall and bounced somewhere into the spare room. In a clatter of half-barks and nails on wood, Shiro was charging after the ball. 

It was a kind of dirty trick, but Katie needed the space. She sighed and dragged both herself and her backpack to the couch. Taking a nosedive into the cushions, Katie stayed like that as she groaned into oblivion.

Today was awful. 

And not for any good reason, either. 

She hadn’t slept that much, which made her extra-sensitive. She managed to bend Matt’s frames, which left her sobbing for some reason (It was the straw to break the camel’s back). She didn’t want to cry in front of other people, which drove her into a library bathroom stall to continue her breakdown.

It all made for an exhausting, hypersensitive, and embarrassing day. Just thinking about it made tears prick at the corner of her eyes. 

Before a lump could properly form in her throat, Katie felt some snuffling in her ear. She turned over to find Shiro. 

He had the ball in his mouth while making this irritated face. It’s like he knew exactly what she did, but he also kinda wanted her to throw it again.

He dropped  it the second he recognized just how miserable Katie looked, though. His whine translated to something along the lines of: What’s wrong?

Katie sighed—again. It was starting to feel angsty. “Idunno, a lot I guess.” 

Shiro responded by lapping up her face, his own way of drying away her tears. Then he climbed up onto the couch, as carefully as his gawky limbs would allow him.

It was in this moment Katie wished he’d turn back into a human. She really wanted someone to pet her hair, and tell her, “It’s all going to be okay.” She can remember Shiro when he was almost always human. He gave the best hugs, and his voice was so calming—it was the kind of voice that was hard to imagine angrily yelling. She doesn’t like how she can only kinda remember his voice. It’s been so long since he’s actually spoken that Katie struggled to imagine the exact way he’d try to soothe her right now.

A story, maybe? It was an possibility.. It would probably just be some general assurances. Unless he had a pep-talk in store? She couldn’t be sure. 

Shrio remained in fur and claws. He curled up along the back cushions, so just his head would onto Katie’s side. His eyes bled with concern, but it wasn’t the same as him telling her it’s alright to cry, or how bad days sometime happen, or whatever his human-self might say.

It was just two big eyes staring into her soul. 

But Katie supposed it was the best she was getting. She twisted around so her arms grappled onto Shiro’s neck, then she settled her face into his coat. Shiro settled his head over Katie again as his fur collected her muffled tears.

Rage. It does not make her, it does not become her. Or so she tries to remind herself. But it does exist, in abundance. A river running deep within her veins, deeper than pain, deeper than the nanites. Or was it SORROW?

❝ I hate them! I hate them ! I hate — ❞

Loud bangs echo over her shrieks in the derelict hangar, fists making contact with steel. Steel bends under the burden of her force and crimson splatters like paint in her wake. Again and again, Kit’s rage stained the steel, a masterpiece of emotion and fear.

Shiro shifted uncomfortably. He tried to keep his movements minimal to avoid catching Sendak’s attention. Sendak’s ears swiveled towards him, though, and Shiro braced himself for the oncoming mind-games. It was either that or some greater violation of his humanity.

“What do you think of the fight, Champion?”

Funneling a long breath through his nose, Shiro bit back all the words he wanted to say. If he said Katie was was too young for this, then Sendak would say she had also been too young to be paladin. If he offered himself in her place, then Sendak would say he should schedule more fights until she was as experienced as him. If he said anything about how fucked-up all of this was, or tried to fix it in any way, then Sendak would turn it right back on him. It was best to give as neutral of a response as possible.

“You gave her a whip.”

“Of course.” Sendak purred, making Shiro’s gut twist with unease. “She already had some experience using one, with that bayard of hers. Also, there’s some symbolism to it.”

Shiro didn’t respond. He knew Sendak would bulldoze onto whatever sinister point he was trying to make; he knew he would have to spend the night picking it apart for a dozen new reasons to hate himself.

“She was suppose to be a ‘defender of the universe’—just like you. Now here she is, entertaining the slavers with a slaver’s tool. It’s almost like everything you did meant absolutely nothing.”

Sendak laughed. Shiro could feel those words slowly seeping into his brain, but he focused onto the match instead. He would be more useful pin-pointing Katie’s weak-points. While Sendak meant it as a form of torture, there was a small mercy in Shiro being the one to train Katie. He could help her survive.

So far, she had only been pitted against fodders. Sendak always threatened to pit her against actual fighters, but Shiro knew he enjoyed pitting fresh slaves against a Paladin of Voltron too much. The only thing Sendak had done to up the ante was increase the number of fodders Katie had to fight in a match (He was far too accustomed to the guilt of thinking about people in gladiator terms).

She had been scheduled to fight three fodders today. One of them was already down—having bowed and begged for the protection of Voltron so loudly that Shiro and Sendak could hear his sniffles from their box seats. Katie had approached him in a way that made the whole stadium dread that this match might be a wash, before she wound the whip around his neck and pulled until he was limp.

That sent the crowd into a frenzy, and the other two fodders into a panic. They had to have had some combat training before getting enslaved, because they picked-up a flanking strategy. Katie was wasting too much energy keep them both at bay, whipping at their feet in rapid-fire movements. Eventually, she was going to miss the mark, and one of them would have the chance to charge her. 

As if he spoke it into the universe, exactly that happened. Just as Katie was losing momentum, the fodder to her right came charging with his blade raised. Katie tumbled away from him, but that just gave the other fodder a chance to also charge her. Shiro balled his hands into fists as he watched this game of cat-and-mouse unfold.

The fodders had her on the defensive, making Katie duck, dodge, and bolt from all of their slashing, stabbing, and hacking. Shiro stopped taking mental notes, and instead hoped for Katie to win (He had already accepted the guilt of wishing others dead in the name of Katie’s own well-being).

All of the sudden, Katie was sprinting away. A cry was caught somewhere in Shiro’s throat, wanting to tell her that it was pointless to try to run away. Too many slaves died clawing at the entry gates.

But Katie was not making an escape attempt. She slid onto her knees, kicking up dust clouds as she twisted her body around. She had her whip brandished, and it struck the back-legs of the closest fodder.

With a horrible screech, the fodder came crashing down. He was still very much alive—flailing his arms around as he screamed. His legs laid useless behind him, though, as pink blood began to collect in a puddle beneath them. Katie had ham-stringed him, Shrio realized. Bile creeped up his esophagus thinking about the razor-sharp barbs that had to be lining the whip to tear through muscle-mass like that.

The other fodder staggered, but charged Katie again—this time with a warrior’s cry of vengeance. Katie was quick to jump back to her feet, and reached far behind herself before bringing her whip down again.

It cracked along the fodder’s face, and a line of blood was quick to follow. In quick succession, there were three more cracks of the whip. The fodder was already on his knees, but his face was in ribbons. Tendrils of flesh came peeling off of his head, hanging off exposed muscle before the fodder finally crumpled into his own puddle of pink blood.

At that, a horn sounded overhead. The match was over, and Katie raised her arms up in victory as cheers rang all around.

Shiro settled in his seat as vertigo spun his world. Relief flooded his brain, knowing that Katie was safe for another day. But disgust bubbled in his gut, as his eyes kept dragging over the fallen fodders. The asphyxiated one was already stiff, the ham-strung one only barely clung onto his last thread of life, and the scalped one laid in a heap of gore. This was the work of a monster—not a sweet little girl who dreamed of the stars.

Sendak was clapping beside him, and Shiro felt a spark of excitement. It made his slurry of emotions all the more confusing, but he knew that if Sendak was pleased, then he might grant them visitation. Right now, he just wanted to hug Katie—to tell her that she was still that sweet, little girl deep down. That’s all he had ever wanted to hear after his matches: that he wasn’t a monster for surviving.

Sendak leaned over to him, smirking in a way that made Shiro wish the inhibitor welded around his prosthetic arm would malfunction. “She’s far more theatrical than you ever were. Do you think she enjoys getting to play gladiator?”

send me a  💞  and i’ll tell you something i like about your portrayal (open) || @kienokoru

I like how you emphasize just how lost Shiro feels sometimes. He has his bluster, sure, but you get this very tangible feeling that Shiro is absolutely floundering. It makes for very interesting character dynamics, between those who can recognize this and those that can’t, as well as serves as some good meta about just how heavy of a toll Shiro has paid for pursuing his dream. Ultimately, a very tragic but very interesting character detail.