Work Text:
At first, it seems like everything is going well. Voltron forms, and through the bond there is a current of determination: to get Allura back, to defeat the Galra, to fight. They swoop through ships and battle fighters, and take out two of the Galra warbirds before they know what’s happening.
Of course, that’s when it all goes wrong. Maybe they had tempted fate with their plans for victory, maybe they were just too young and inexperienced against an empire that had lasted ten thousand years (and Shiro pushes aside his guilt at leading the others into this when they are all teenagers, ignores his guilt at losing Allura, and now, too, shoves down his guilt at letting Voltron fall apart. They don’t need to feel that over the link. He doesn’t need to burden them with his own problems, not while they’re still adjusting to being the only ones responsible for protecting the universe. Shiro cannot lose focus right now.)
Although, that mental link is quickly shattering. The Paladins each have their own unique jobs within Voltron, and as the Head, Shiro is responsible for making sure the bond stays in place, coordinating every thought and plan and limb to make sure Voltron functions. The bond does a lot – he can’t imagine how difficult it would be if they weren’t all linked mentally – but now, something is being driven into that bond. It’s dark purple, Shiro feels more than sees, and it’s insidious and creeping and distinctly not-right , and it makes the hairs stand up on the back of Voltron’s neck. It oozes into every cre vice within the link, sticky like tar, and pulls.
Shiro grits his teeth against it, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Black growls. No, she says, not yours anymore, but Shiro barely hears it. He is too busy trying to keep Voltron formed. He can feel the others’ anger, joining their efforts to stay together, but then the tar solidifies into a terrifyingly familiar presence, one that tugs on the bond. It feels almost like their teeth are being pulled, as their minds are yanked apart. Hunk cries out, and Shiro can’t hold this anymore.
The bond snaps, and suddenly the lions are spinning through space, separate. Keith is yelling his name, but Shiro can’t feel him anymore, and without Pidge, Lance, Hunk and Keith with him, he feels vulnerable. Afraid.
They’re speaking over the comms, he registers. He catches something about more ships, but Black is rumbling in his mind. He is her paladin, he knows this; she’s told him, but the tar has known her longer than Shiro has even been alive, and his claws are hooked in tight. (Zarkon, she supplies, or maybe he does. The fighting over his and Black’s bond is getting too loud to tell.)
Zarkon is too strong. Black is moving towards the Galra ship. She’s pushing sorrow at him down the bond, bittersweet regret, betrayal, anger. He betrayed me, she tells Shiro. I'm sorry, she says. She’s trying to fight it, but Zarkon knows her too well. That’s what made his betrayal so much worse: she gave herself to him, bared her soul and trusted him within her machinery. She thought she knew him.
I am scarred, she tells Shiro, but so are you. You are my paladin; this is why we can work. We are both afraid, but I cannot fight him. You can.
“I will,” says Shiro. He isn’t sure it’s out loud or not, but Black purrs in recognition.
He pushes on the controls. His mind is all mixed up, a pockmarked patchwork of emotion, of the fight within it, of memories both his and Black’s, of his body pushing on the ship’s controls to no effect.
“Shiro, are you okay?” Keith demands.
“Something is overriding the controls. My lion’s not responding,” Shiro replies. There are too many thoughts and too much is going on in his head to tell the others exactly what’s happening.
He closes his eyes, and although the feeling of Zarkon in the bond repulses him, he grabs onto it.
“No,” he snarls.
Shiro has said no many times in the past year. When the Galra first came and kidnapped him, Matt and Sam Holt. “No,” out of astonishment, out of fear. With Haggar in the labs. “No,” out of terror, out of pain, out of agony in his body and soul and mind alike. In the arena, every time he entered, every time his opponent was revealed, every time he was told to kill. “No,” out of fear, out of tiredness, out of horror, out of defiance. Sometimes it was under his breath, too afraid to say it where they could hear, but he always said it: to confirm that he didn’t want this, that no matter what the Galra made him do he didn’t want to, to remind himself that if he thought himself a monster, it was all too easy to trip onto his sword and never get back up. He had to survive. That was the most important thing, even as his time there faltered just out of his reach in his memory.
Shiro has to survive.
But he’s sick of that. Shiro doesn’t want to just survive, he wants to live. He wants Keith to live and be happy, for Pidge to find her family, for Hunk and Lance and Allura and Coran and Matt and Sam and everyone to not just survive, but be happy.
Shiro is sick of saying no and being ignored anyway. Zarkon trying to take Black is just another way that he is being hurt: in ways he doesn’t understand and can’t control. Shiro never wants to see Black like he sees himself every time he tries to sleep.
No, he can hear the Black Lion growling over the bond. It’s a quiet growl, almost dying.
Then, Zarkon, darkly pleased: “You cannot fight it. Your connection is weak.”
Black’s mouth opens, and suddenly Shiro is in the cold vacuum of space.
He’s spinning and spinning and spinning and he’s going to crash into the ship and he has to slow down – he activates his jetpack more on instinct than anything, still reeling from the mental battle.
His back smashes against the metal despite his attempts to slow his momentum. Sparks come from behind him, and he curses mentally. (Cursing out loud would revoke his rights to tease the paladins for bad language. Some things are too important to let go of even in battle, and both Pidge’s and Keith’s grumpy face is one of them.)
“My jetpack’s broken,” he tells the others. The handholds he has on the ship’s hull are tenuous at best, and the metal creaks as his prosthetic arm warps it to hold on better.
“Shiro!”
“Are you okay?”
“We’re coming to get you!”
“Hang tight, I’m almost there.”
“No,” Shiro says. Even though he’s climbing up the outside of an alien warship in space, he manages to sound calm. There’s a newfound fire to his voice, though, an anger that says I know that I may not win, but I will fight to the bitter end anyway. “I’m going for the Black Lion. You guys get the Princess now.”
He lights up his hand and sears a way in through the hull. Discarding his now broken jetpack, he sprints towards where he can feel Black. She’s already in a hangar, and her and Shiro’s bond is weakening with every moment Zarkon continues to fight.
But then he turns a corner, and the remaining breath he had left from his run turns to ash in his lungs.
Haggar.
She smiles at him, bares her teeth, calls him Champion. His heart is beating a desperate tattoo on the inside of his chest, and he can hear a version of himself somewhere within, crying, “No, no. Please.”
It’s a desperate, pathetic kind of no, and even though Shiro can’t place the memory, he knows it was ignored.
Present Shiro bares his teeth right back at Haggar. He swings, at her, misses, hates how she can disappear and reappear faster than his eyes can travel, hates the smell of the smoke she leaves behind, hates the metallic taste of magic and quintessence behind his teeth. He refuses to say, “No,” though. He might not win this fight, but he refuses to ask her not to hurt him. He will not give her more power than she already has. “No,” is just a word, but this time giving it would be like giving his dignity, his sense of self. Shiro barely managed to keep that during his year abroad. (He’s careful never to call it that in front of the others, but he finds it funny in his own head. He can’t get the year back; he can’t stop the nightmares or the flashbacks; making light of it is all he can do.) He will not give it willingly to Haggar, not this time. If he can’t win this fight, all he can do is make sure the others get out safe.
Speaking of, he sees Hunk and Allura rush in, although he isn’t convinced it isn’t just one of Haggar’s tricks. Her magic-smoke corrupts his vision, and he cries out as she lands a blow. He can hear Allura and Hunk yelling to each other, but his ears are ringing. He rolls with the next punch and uses his momentum to swing round and lash out at Haggar. His metal arm clips her, but all that happens is she dissolves away again. There are hundreds of Haggars around him, her eyes visible under her hood. They’re glowing yellow, and the world slows for a second.
He falls onto his side in what feels like slow motion, and he knows with unequivocal certainty within his chest that he.
is
going.
to.
die.
He doesn’t. The Hunk he thought was an illusion pulls the trigger on his gun, and dispels every trick in the room as he hits both illusions and the real Haggar. When he finishes firing, all that is left are Hunk and Allura, rushing over to Shiro.
Allura pulls him up, and he can’t even complain about her practically carrying him: it’s a lot faster than he would be walking by himself. His side and head are throbbing.
Through the pain, though, he feels a cry from Black. “My lion!” he cries, and they sprint down the halls of the ship as fast as they can.
As they run, Shiro leans on Allura, trusting her to guide him, and closes his eyes.
He focuses in on his bond with the Black Lion. It’s barely there, but it’s enough. Shiro latches onto Zarkon, who is clenching his connection with Black between his fists. Their human minds can’t always comprehend Altean magic the way the Alteans do, but Shiro perceives it as Zarkon attempting to wind the rope of their connection around his arms and fists.
No, Shiro thinks. He grips the rope and tugs hard, puts all his effort into it into pulling.
But then he realises Black is not something he can just claim like this. She’s metal and wires but she’s sentient, too.
Shiro lets go of the rope.
Instead, he pours his trust, his respect for Black down the connection. He recognizes that neither of them are perfect, but that they will try and they will protect each other and that is enough. He pours his love for the other members of Voltron, his worries and his care and unflinching devotion. He gives his everything to the connection. I want to be your paladin, he tells Black.
Black replies, you are.
Shiro smiles. He looks at Zarkon. He hasn’t so much let go of the rope as it has disintegrated. Black does not belong to him anymore.
Shiro stares at him, and says, “No.”
He will have to say it many more times before the Galra empire is destroyed, but for once he doesn’t care.
The war is not over, but Shiro has won this fight. He gets in Black, places his hands on the controls, and takes a deep breath.
Then, together, they slam forward, out of the ship. Black looks back, and she roars.