Keith dies first of the two of them.

The death does not come as a surprise to Lance. Someone has to go first, after all. The whole lot of them have been taking turns to die like they’re picking straws from a cup. They’ve reached the top of the escarpment after a long and arduous climb up the steep slope. Lance watches his friends and family take the plummet one by one with his toes at the edge of the drop.

He understands this truth very well—the fixed and irreversible notion of death—far more than the other engraved truth of birth and creation. It has meticulously woven itself into Lance’s shadow and lurked two steps behind him at all times, even well after the war ended.

Still, Lance hadn’t expected it to lunge forward and snatch Keith first.

From the blast that excoriated half of his back to the shock that rendered his heartbeat momentarily still, Lance had always been closer to death. War had branded him with more stamps of violence than necessary. Four fingers chomped off of one palm—at that point, just take the whole hand away. Emphysema for the lungs after all the smoke he’s ever inhaled and tendinitis from all that gun handling he’s done. And then there’s all the other conditions that come with being a human, the silly ones that Lance had never thought to consider during his prime. Diabetes, high blood pressure, migraines, foggy vision. Keith was a lucky one—he never had to deal with such things. Curse his undefeatable genes.

Keith died quietly, at least. Nothing like those rowdy days where he swooped around searching for pernicious battles to strike him down. Not at all. He simply laid down one night to sleep, next to Lance as he always had, and then never woke up. He passed right there, sometime during the creeping hours of the night. In one moment Keith had taken a deep, slumbering breath in and in the next, he didn’t. Never again would he do so. It was a peaceful death for a boy who was once a soldier. In Lance’s opinion, it was the kindest way he could go.

There were no memorable last words. Hell, Lance hardly remembers what he had for dinner the night before. They talked as they always had. Laughed as they always had. The friendly routine of their banter followed them up until the very end.

Lance misses him already.

He weeps quietly after the funeral—the real one where they buried Keith’s body in the same plot as his parents rather than the internationally broadcasted event. Lance cries into his stubby hands while Pidge sits nearby and smokes a cigarette. They’ve both got respiratory illnesses—Pidge has fucking lung cancer, but neither he nor Shiro’s daughter, a well-aged woman, tell her off. They and Coran are the only members of Voltron in attendance at the funeral.

Lance misses him so much. He finds that when he’s all alone in their big house with no job to keep him busy and a piloting license he’s well grown out of, he’s lonely. His daughter and her children come by, and he lets himself be strong, probably for the last time, in front of her. She’s distraught—even at fifty, she’s had Keith for far less time than he has. Lance holds her wrinkling hands on top of the kitchen counter and tells her encouraging words while pretending that Keith is next to him, speaking along.

He misses Keith’s leery sense of humor that didn’t particularly make sense. He misses his rigorous training schedule and he misses that era in their late forties where they decided to explore as much of Earth as they have of space. He misses seeing him at the altar. Lance craves Keith’s presence like a lung or a heart; he constantly wanders into rooms in hopes that he’ll stumble across his husband. Having him for seventy years wasn’t enough. Lance wants more. He can’t believe it’s over.

Simultaneously, this is the only way he’d be okay with letting go of Keith. The currents sweeping him away were calm and gentle. There were no storms, high tides, or downpours. Just a lulling river drifting Keith sweetly, softly. To die of old age in a home he called his own, in a warm bed next to someone he loves, with the rest of his heart only a call or flight away—there was no other end that a darling boy like Keith deserved.

Lance will follow quickly after. He knows. What more is there to do at eighty-four? He’s already accomplished his whole bucket list. Maybe he’ll pick up a minute hobby. Bug Pidge and Silvio into a rubbish knitting club. Something to keep him busy until his time comes too.

How cyclical it is, for them to die in this order. For Lance to chase Keith into death just like he chased him into space. They’ve met and parted in the same manner. It’s just like them.