First day of #adasheith week @adasheithweek is bitter/sweet!

#sheith plus Adam, temporary character death, paranoia, aftermath of graphic violence, memory issues

//

“I’m just saying,” Keith says, stirring his Cup Noodle with his chopsticks.

Shiro went to see the memorial today on Iverson’s advice. Below the marker on the wall, he set up a little memorial as best he could, a small peace lily and a little incense burner left on a stool.

𝘋𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬.

He gently picks at his ramen with his chopsticks. It’s not the kind of thing that leaves him hungry, just... hollow under his ribs.

“They were wrong about you,” Keith points out, not unreasonably. “And the Holts. They could be wrong about this, too.”

“Nobody came back from that squadron,” Shiro says quietly. Maybe he’s built up an unreasonable expectation in Keith, that anyone could ‘come back from the dead’ at any time. It’s not realistic, he wants to tell him. This isn’t a good way to grieve.

“Yeah, well, the Kerberos mission was pilot error, too.” Keith looks almost nonchalant as he picks at the hot dog slices in his briny broth. “The Garrison doesn’t have a great track record with declaring people legally dead recently, is all I wanted to point out.”

“He’s 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦, Keith. Sam showed me the cockpit footage.” There’s no way any pilot, even one as good as Adam, would have survived the onslaught from the Fire of Purification the way Sanda sent them out.

Keith shrugs. “Not buying it.”

“You think he’s still out there,” Shiro realizes, incredulous.

“Let me put it to you this way,” Keith tries, and slurps up a mouthful of noodles. “You’re talkin’ to a kid who wasch in foschter care half hisch life.” Chew, swallow. “No love lost between me and the government.”

If it were anyone else, any other situation, Shiro would call it paranoia. But he’s... actually thinking about humoring him.

“At this point, from the Garrison? They’d need to show me a body matched to dental records for me to believe what they tell me on this,” Keith says.

“And I know he’s your ex, and it’s the two of us now. I know it was rough, what happened with the breakup.”

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢, Shiro doesn’t interrupt him.

“But he deserves better than a Disney villain death. We can at least bury him if we find his body.”

It’s not the craziest thing Keith’s ever said. What truly scares Shiro is the alternative. “And if we find him alive?”

“We bring him back home.” Like it’s that easy, or simple, or straightforward.

“What if—”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “What if.”

//

(tbc!)

Here is what they know:

The pilots of the 153rd were sent to their doom by Admiral Sanda in the face of certain occupation and domination by Commander Sendak’s Fire of Purification a little over a year ago.

Shiro was gone for a little over a year before crashing back to Earth.

The ten pilots were sent out in the most technically advanced Alterran craft to date, retrofitted from Coran’s alien designs but limited by fuel consumption.

Shiro was sent to Kerberos in humanity’s best engineered spacecraft at the time.

Pilot error? Pilot error.

Adam’s craft was last tracked over dry, rocky scrubland a few hours west of El Paso. While the plane came down in chunks, debris impacted into the steppe, the main body is all in one piece. It’s crumpled in on the starboard side, the skeleton fire-ravaged.

There’s no body.

Not that Shiro expected there to be, with the burn damage to the chassis, but... not to be gruesome, but there’s no char. The jumpseat is busted, the seatbelt missing, but there’s no ash, no fat residue.

At least the black box is still intact.

“What do we do with this?” Shiro asks.

“Take it to the shack,” Keith answers.

“We don’t give it to the Holts?”

“Do you want Matt and Pidge to know what we’re up to?”

Point taken. “You can read this?”

“I have the equipment,” Keith says. “Got good at it, once.”

Shiro doesn’t want to think about how or why Keith picked up that particular skill. Doesn’t want to think about his partner, alone in the desert, wishing on every passing meteor and shooting star that it would crash into the sand and bring him home.

The dials and knobs on Keith’s ancient analog tech are a little beyond Shiro, and the machines are slow. It means they get a few days to themselves off-base, though. Keith uses the old corkboard on his wall to put up a map of New Mexico and start with his pins and strings.

𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺, a note reads in Keith’s tight handwriting, tucked behind the northwest corner.

(𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘢𝘺, Shiro leaves a matching, rhyming note right next to it.)

Keith dutifully takes notes of what the transcribed code tells him, but the real jackpot is that there’s an audio log. Just like the Garrison taught them.

Something twists in Shiro’s gut at the idea of hearing Adam’s voice again. But this is the softest of his war trauma.

And Keith doesn’t second-guess him over it, trusts Shiro to know his own boundaries and just says “sure” before pressing play.

“This is Adam—” the software glitches over his surname— “from the 153rd Fighter Squadron.” His voice sounds thin, tight. There’s a wet cough.

“I lost consciousness when I hit dirt. I don’t know how long I was out... or how much blood I lost. Val’s a lost cause.”

Shiro’s lungs burn. Adam named her Valkyrie. Of course he did. He’d always threatened to, back when—well, back when.

“I can’t move to get myself out of here. No hope of rescue. We were... it, for Earth. There’s no way we’re gonna...”

For a haunting second, Shiro’s sure he’s about to hear a death rattle.

There’s a rattle. It’s not Adam’s shaky breathing. Maybe the cockpit opening?

“I can’t reach my Ruger,” Adam whispers to his comm.

Another ugly noise, a shriek of metal bending in ways it is absolutely not meant to, and a rending noise that sounds just as bad as a crash. “Anyone in there?” a stranger’s voice grunts.

“One of ‘em Garrisons.”

“Rank?” It’s a Galra voice, the kind that still strikes a cold shiver of fear into Shiro’s gut.

The response is the same. “Two and a half bars.” Like Adam’s just a piece of meat.

“Please,” Adam says. It’s soft, wounded. Not a good start to a sentence. Shiro’s stomach turns.

The two Galra don’t let Adam finish it. “Haul out whatever’s left of ‘im ‘n’ get ‘im back to MCU.”

The recording ends in a gurgling scream and a crunch of bone before staticky feedback announces the end.

The shack is silent for a good few minutes, save for Keith taking notes.

Shiro keeps turning that word over and over in his head. 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦. The last word he might ever hear from Adam. Probably to be followed by 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘦, or 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦.

(𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦, 𝘛𝘢𝘬𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘪. 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘺.)

“MCU?” Keith asks him.

Shiro startles in his own skin. Right. Focus. Adam was clearly extracted from the cockpit—thus no body. Heavily injured, but still alive when he was downed. “Mobile command unit,” Shiro translates. “A specific ship for coordinating their robotics.”

Keith hums to himself, chewing his pen cap. “Not where I would have taken him.”

Shiro likes thinking out loud with him. It’ll be a good redirection for his energy, instead of spending it on reacting to... that. “Explain?”

“Where were you taken when you were abducted?”

“The bridge,” Shiro says. “I woke up on the bridge.” Blink—he’s there, can see it in his mind’s eye, everything saturated a sickly magenta—blink, blink—he’s back. “You think they should have taken him there?”

“Only if they needed a higher-up to make a decision about him.”

“Fair.” It had been Sendak himself to pronounce the verdict on the Kerberos abductees. “Where else?”

“A cell.” More aggressive pen-chewing. “Med bay.”

“To patch him up?”

“Prisoners need to be healthy before you can interrogate them.”

Shiro hates that Keith knows this.

“But they didn’t,” Shiro insists.

“They didn’t,” Keith agrees. “When we ended things—when it all stopped—do you know where the MCU ended up?”

“It would’ve deactivated,” Shiro reasons. “No need for sentries, no need for the ship. And if it was in atmo, it would’ve crashed.”

Keith cracks his neck, then his knuckles. Sneaks a look at his very fancy conspiracy mood board. “Sounds like it’s time for another road trip,” he announces.

/ /

(tbc! post-s7 no-s8 I guess)

It’s actually Pidge who gives Keith the lead on the MCU. Apparently she’s been trying to hunt down Galra chipsets to figure out how to hack their bots remotely. Like, across-galaxies remotely. It’s an endeavor, but if anyone can do it, it’s her.

Unfortunately, she’s still super-grounded by one Colleen Holt, Ph.D., who would generally like to keep her daughter out of intergalactic trash heaps hunting down alien hardware if she can at all help it. Thus, the calling-in of a favor.

Pidge has tracked the downed ship to a particular debris field that covers nearly a whole county in Iowa. She pings Keith the satellite images, local topography, last known census counts, and finally a shopping list of the parts she needs.

Looking at the mess of military metal in front of them, Keith is thankful that Shiro seems to speak that particular dialect of Holt jargon. Even if they don’t find anything else, this trip won’t be a total waste.

He’s really hoping to find something else, though.

If nothing else, Keith is stubborn. He honors his gut feelings and follows his hunches wherever they take him. He’s yet to be led astray by his instincts, even if logic tells him his faith is unlikely to be rewarded.

Maybe it’s paranoia. But he doesn’t trust the Garrison.

Now he has something to prove to Shiro, too. It’s less about putting Adam behind them and more about honoring his memory. If he’s gone, the Garrison did him dirty by not giving him his rites. If he’s here and the Garrison doesn’t know, they’re too stupid to be in charge.

If the Garrison knows but is keeping that knowledge from Shiro—from Voltron—it’s just one more reason to leave them on Earth to their petty political games while the Paladins try to restore justice to the rest of the universe scourged by the Galra Empire.

“I never expressed my condolences,” Keith realizes as he powers his jetpack over the fifth ship-length girder they’ve found in so many minutes.

“You don’t have to,” Shiro says.

“Not for that,” Keith clarifies. “For the break-up.”

“Oh.” Shiro sounds like he was punched.

“In my defense, I was just a kid.” Keith shoots Shiro a rueful smile; the meat of his cheek folds around the scar lancing up from his jaw. “I had a huge crush on my flight mentor and I couldn’t understand why anyone would leave him if they could just marry him instead.”

“A crush, huh?” Shiro asks.

“Not that it mattered. I should’ve been a better friend when Adam left.” Keith kicks at a support beam, uncovering a room full of shattered polyglass. They’re getting closer to the hub. “I could’ve at least said I was sorry it happened.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Shiro reassures him.

“I didn’t think it was.” Well, that’s not actually true: “I’d hoped it wasn’t.” Keith wants to think better of Shiro’s judgment than to believe he’d dated someone who could be that jealous of his friendship with his mentee.

“It wasn’t your fault, either,” Keith continues.

“But—”

“Or his.” There’s a portion of the MCU up ahead that’s embedded in the ground at a 20-degree angle; these hallways will be a steep climb, but the bridge should theoretically be in this chunk of the ship.

“I’m pretty sure it was his fault, Keith,” Shiro says, in that dry, light tone he uses to mock the absurdist comedy of his existence that is dying, being trapped in the mind of a sentient alien warship, then being forced into (and almost rejected by) the body of a clone.

“He might have ended it,” Keith concedes. “But that doesn’t mean he did anything wrong. Neither of you wanted the same thing by the end of it.”

The silence from Shiro means he’s chewing on his own tongue to taste out the truth of the statement before he says anything.

“And that’s okay,” Keith keeps going. “It sucks, learning that love doesn’t look the same to your loved ones as it does to you. You were sick, right?”

“Right,” comes Shiro’s hollow response.”

“Your arm was giving out, and he stuck around. You only broke up over Kerberos.”

“Because he wanted me to stay,” Shiro says.

It’s a reasonable assumption, but following it through to its logical conclusion is cruel. 𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴.

“Because he wanted to stay with you,” Keith rephrases.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Shiro’s tone might be teasing, but the way he flares his jetpack to overtake Keith in this narrow corridor shows his competitive side. He wants to be right. He wants to ‘win’ this ‘argument.’

“Not exactly,” Keith says, sidestepping the boost and kicking off with one of his own. “He couldn’t have wanted to marry you for no reason at all. He loved you.” Maybe it’s hard for Shiro to listen to, that he’s adored and desired and cherished, but it’s 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 tough love.

“Adam loved you so much he wanted to stay by your side, even as you were getting sicker. He was willing to watch you die if it meant being close to you at the end.”

“I would never have asked that from him,” Shiro insists.

“I know.” That’s part of why Keith loves him.

“Because you loved him, too,” Keith adds. “You loved him so much, you didn’t want him to see you suffer. You wanted his last memories of you to be ones where you were healthy and strong and determined. You were willing to die alone if it meant that he wouldn’t hurt so much.”

They’re coming up on the doors to the bridge, sealed tightly with no access to power. Keith starts looking for a breaker—they’d need Pidge’s bayard to melt through the alloy—or, just kidding, Shiro can still sear through the hull even with this new arm of his, cracking the seam.

“How,” Shiro says to the broken door. Then, turning to Keith, “how did you see all of that?”

Keith shrugs. “Once upon a time, someone I loved decided that the best way to love me back was to leave me behind.” He’s not even talking about Shiro, either.

Krolia did what she thought was right. She bought them seventeen years where the Empire passed up Earth in looking for the Blue Lion. But she thought she had to leave Keith and his dad to keep them safe, and it hurt, not knowing her for so long. She still doesn’t feel like Mom.

Keith had two years to process that on the back of the space whale, talking it out with her in fits and starts of anger, bargaining, depression, cycling through constantly. Shiro gets two seconds for the five stages of grief to flit across his expression, one after the other.

The hug Shiro pulls him into is crushing, Keith’s face smashed into his broad breastplate and Shiro’s huge, hot arms wrapped around his back. Keith didn’t want an apology, he needed this—the physical comfort. “I understand,” Shiro says into his hair.

Keith believes him.

“When we came back to Earth, I thought we’d get to see him again,” Keith admits. “So much has changed. We all would have changed, so much, and I wanted you to be able to show him, not just that you got better, but that you cheated death, twice—and have the arm to prove it.”

Shiro’s chuckle might be a little wet, but it’s genuine, a humorous rumble under his armor that translates into Keith’s skin.

“And I wouldn’t be just some stupid kid. I could at least get to know someone who was so important to you for so long, even if it didn’t work out.”

“What if he tried to get back together with me?” Shiro asks, pulling back.

It’s a stupid question. “You’d have to show me what you love about him. I could probably learn to love him, too.”

Shiro chuckles again. Keith wasn’t trying to be funny. “You’re serious,” Shiro realizes.

“I’ve told you before.” Keith’s a little flirty, a little teasing. “You can’t get rid of me that easy. You’re stuck with me now, buddy. We’re a package deal.”

“We are,” Shiro agrees, and dips down to kiss him. “You’re surprisingly mature about all this.”

Shrug. “Space whale.”

“Space whale,” Shiro agrees, shaking his head.

They breach the bridge. There’s no power here, even though these are the screens they need. “Anything you can do to juice her up?” Keith asks him.

“Hold up,” Shiro warns, looking for a panel with his Altean hand.

A few seconds, a bright glow from his shoulder port, and then the entire room is lit up. “You can do that with that arm?”

“It’s fine,” Shiro grunts, leaning against the wall. It’s not fine, but Keith can let it go, so long as Shiro will agree to rest later.

While Shiro starts tackling Pidge’s checklist, Keith starts up a terminal, looking for data.

It doesn’t bring up the logo he expects, or the color. He was expecting blood-warm magenta, a symmetrical logo. Instead, this is a jagged cut in cool blue-purple.

“The Blade,” he says.

“They infiltrated?” Shiro asks. “Why didn’t they do anything?”

“That’s a complicated question.” One that Kolivan usually refuses to answer when Keith puts it to him. Thace was installed in Central Command for phoebs upon phoebs, after all. “This was probably their base.”

“You think the Blade might have been the ones that scraped Adam out of Valkyrie?” Shiro asks, tearing apart a station’s surface paneling.

“It’s as likely as anything else,” Keith says. “The voices were Galra, we’re Galra. They might have been trying to save him.”

“By doing what? He would have been close to death.”

“Well...” Keith is trying very hard not to look at Shiro’s right arm as he says this. “There’s a lot of scrap parts around here. We do what we can in the field, as far as medics, but most of us just get left behind.”

“Why not him?” Shiro asks.

“He was important,” Keith answers, thinking out loud as he browses file structures. “High-ranking, squad leader. He knew about Earth’s defenses. His life had more than just intrinsic meaning.”

And then he finds what he’s looking for:

Οεστ, Αδαμ

“Adam was here,” Keith whispers. “They had to have known what happened to him.”

/ /

(tbc!)