tw// death (not mega angsty it's like old age stuff. more melancholy than sad) klance old man yaoi
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 theyāre picking straws from a cup. Theyāve 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 wellāthe fixed and irreversible notion of deathāfar more than the other engraved truth of birth and creation. It has meticulously woven itself into Lanceās shadow and lurked two steps behind him at all times, even well after the war ended.
Still, Lance hadnāt 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 palmāat that point, just take the whole hand away. Emphysema for the lungs after all the smoke heās ever inhaled and tendinitis from all that gun handling heās done. And then thereās 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 oneāhe 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 didnāt. Never again would he do so. It was a peaceful death for a boy who was once a soldier. In Lanceās 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 funeralāthe real one where they buried Keithās 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. Theyāve both got respiratory illnessesāPidge has fucking lung cancer, but neither he nor Shiroās 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 heās all alone in their big house with no job to keep him busy and a piloting license heās well grown out of, heās lonely. His daughter and her children come by, and he lets himself be strong, probably for the last time, in front of her. Sheās distraughtāeven at fifty, sheās 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 Keithās leery sense of humor that didnāt 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 Keithās presence like a lung or a heart; he constantly wanders into rooms in hopes that heāll stumble across his husband. Having him for seventy years wasnāt enough. Lance wants more. He canāt believe itās over.
Simultaneously, this is the only way heād 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 awayāthere 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? Heās already accomplished his whole bucket list. Maybe heāll 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. Theyāve met and parted in the same manner. Itās just like them.
Lance doesnāt know where death will take them. Maybe theyāll reunite. Maybe theyāll restart, quietly and steadily, like a slowly rising dawn. Or maybe theyāll turn into the stars, just like Allura had. The world will continue spinning and the universe will expand ever so slightly, with two stars twinkling in a little corner.
